Silk and Shadows (62 page)

Jenny's eyes narrowed to angry slits. "I came back to see you broken. Someday soon, I'll spit on your grave."

Slade put an arm around her taut shoulders. "I'm going to give you more mercy than you deserve, Weldon," he said coolly. "You're doomed. If you stand trial, the scandal will follow your daughter for the rest of her life. But if you die tonight, your crimes need never become public knowledge, and Eliza won't have to know how vile her father was. Since Peregrine intends to save the railway, your daughter will even be a rich woman someday from the stock she'll inherit."

Weldon's bitter gaze sharpened. "That would also make things easier for you," he sneered. "Well, I'm not going to take the coward's way out. Who knows what might happen in court."

Slade shrugged indifferently. "If you want to delude yourself that a miracle will save you, go right ahead. Your daughter will suffer, but not a tithe as much as the rest of your victims have." The lawyer set the loaded pistol on the dresser and withdrew with Jenny, carefully locking the door behind them.

Weldon stared at the door, then got up and limped over to pick up the pistol. Caressing the warm wood and cool steel, he turned the weapon over and over in his hands while he considered what Slade had said.

Eliza was the best thing in his life, the only pure female he had ever known. He thought of the expression in her eyes when he had found her tonight. She adored him, as a daughter should, and she would be devastated by her father's public vilification. Since she was female, Eliza would never be able to understand the irresistible allure of the dark side of life; she would come to hate the memory of her father, her innocent love destroyed by all the people who would say he had been wicked.

And if Weldon killed himself, he would deny Peregrine the pleasure of seeing him suffer. Quickly, before he could change his mind, Weldon put the pistol barrel to his temple and pulled the trigger.

Downstairs, Jenny shivered and drew closer to Slade at the sound of the shot. "Why did you let him do that?"

"It's better this way, Jenny. No more innocents suffer, there will be no trouble for Peregrine or his lady, no chance that your reputation will be damaged." Slade's ice-gray eyes gleamed with chilly satisfaction. Jenny's tormentor was dead. A good lawyer could do murder without ever touching a weapon.

His expression warmed. "Since you're going to be my wife, your reputation is my business. You
are
going to marry me, aren't you, Jenny?"

"Yes, Benjamin," she replied as warmth blossomed deep inside of her. She stood on her toes and gave him a kiss of aching promise. Then, with her lover at her side, Jenny left the house of death forever.

Insisting that he was perfectly well, Kuram chose to ride the horse, so Peregrine was alone with Sara inside the carriage. Wrapped in her cloak, his wife sat in the far corner of the vehicle, not touching him. The darkness was thick with tension. Peregrine knew that he should speak, but was painfully unsure where to begin.

It was a relief when Sara's soft voice broke the silence. "Why didn't you kill him?"

Knowing how important his answer was, he hesitated before speaking. "After you left Sulgrave, I did a great deal of thinking and realized that vengeance could not alter or heal the past. Today, if I had stayed in a white heat of rage for just a minute longer, I would have killed Weldon, but the sight of you broke my anger. After that, I could not do it."

"Are you saying that you gave up your revenge because of me?" she exclaimed, incredulous.

Obliquely he replied, "After you and I had that argument, I realized that you were talking not just about right and wrong, but about choosing whether to live a life rooted in hate or one rooted in love. For too many years, the center of my life was hatred, Sara. Then I met you, and slowly, without my conscious awareness, the center shifted."

He paused, searching for the right words to convey his meaning. "If destroying Weldon meant losing you, the price was too high, for I would be condemning myself to a living death." Then, wryly, he added, "Before we married, I said that I trusted you to always be good. Fortunately I didn't know then how difficult it can be to live with someone who is always good, or I would have been afraid to try."

"I sound like a dreadful prig," she said with a shaky laugh. A streetlight outside momentarily illuminated her pure profile.

"You are not at all priggish about matters that count." Briefly there was a smile in his voice, but he was deadly serious when he continued, "Yin and yang mean many things. Light and dark, good and evil, even love and hate. Together, opposites make a whole. You are my heart, Sara, and your light balances my darkness. Will you come home?"

Instantly she flowed across the carriage and into his arms. "Of" course I will!" she said joyously, her breath feather-soft against his throat. "When you told the driver to go to Haddonfield House, I was afraid that you didn't want me back."

With a gust of laughter, he said, "I was trying to do the gentlemanly thing, though it went against my nature.'' The knot of tension in his chest miraculously dissolved as he pulled her onto his lap and drew her close. "Whenever you wondered why I married you, I always said that I did it because I wanted to, and I never looked any deeper." He stroked a gentle hand through Sara's silky hair, which had come unpinned during her struggle with Weldon. "After you left, I realized that my words were a coward's way of saying that I love you."

Sara inhaled deeply. "I didn't believe you would ever say that." Tenderly she lifted her hand to his cheek and caressed the chiseled plane with her fingertips. "You've changed so much. When I first met you, you were like some exotic, alien creature, forever wild and incomprehensible. It seemed impossible that you could ever love me as I love you.''

"I started changing as soon as I met you, though I didn't realize it at first. And when I did, I can't say that I enjoyed the sensation. But the formative years of my life were spent here, and the longer I stay, the more I feel like an Englishman. This is my heritage, and I no longer want to deny it." His tone became teasing. "In fact, I have succumbed to the most banal of ambitions: to become an English country gentleman and live quietly with my wife and raise children and horses."

"There is nothing banal about happiness," Sara retorted. "If life as a country gentleman is a common ambition, that is because it is a good life. But you will never be banal—there has never been a man like you, and there never will be again. And in spite of the way you deny it, you are a good man."

"As long as you think I'm good enough," Mikahl said, amused. After reaching into an inner coat pocket, he said, "Give me your left hand."

When she complied, he slid her wedding ring onto her third finger. Then he raised her hand to his lips, and kissed it with lingering reverence. "I want to be with you always, Sara," he said softly. "To make love with you, laugh with you, be silent with you. And most of all, I want to be the man that I am only when I am with you."

"And I want to be the woman that I am only with you." Sara's fingers tightened around the ring. Shyly she went on, "If you are willing, I would like to have a wedding ring made for you—one that matches mine."

"I would like that." After a thoughtful pause, he said, "Since I intend to stay in England, perhaps I should become Michael Connery again. We can tell people that I decided to Anglicize my name for the sake of simplicity. Will you mind being Sara Connery?"

Intuitively she knew that he was not just suggesting a name change; he was accepting his past—all of it, the bad and the good. That acceptance had come from healing. Finally, after too many years, the wounded boy was whole and had become a man.

In the half-light of the carriage, Sara looked into the vivid depths of his eyes. "I love you," she whispered as she lifted her face to his. "I'll always love you, whether you are Peregrine, Michael, or Mikahl."

Their lips touched, at first lightly, then in fierce declaration as they pledged their souls without words.

Pledge and promise turned quickly to passion, and the trip across London passed in a haze of touch and love and laughter. On reaching Mayfair, Mikahl gave orders to continue to their own town house rather than to Haddonfield House.

When they arrived home, he climbed out first and let down the steps, then caught Sara around the waist and effortlessly whisked her from the carriage. "Before I take you upstairs and make love to you," he said as he set her feet on the ground, "perhaps you should say good-bye to Peregrine, for I am a wanderer no more."

"So my hawk has become a dove?" Hair tumbled and eyes dreamy with desire, Sara caught his face between her hands. "Welcome home, wanderer, welcome home."

Author's Note

Kafiristan, also sometimes called Dardistan, lies in what is now eastern Afghanistan. The Hindu Kush was one of the most remote areas on earth, and Kafiristan was not officially charted until George Scott Robertson visited in 1889. The country took its name from the Arabic "qafir," meaning "unbeliever." (Arab slavers applied the same word to the tribes of East Africa, and "kaffir" became a derogatory term for black Africans.)

As indicated in
Silk and Shadows
, the natives of Kafiristan claimed Alexander the Great as an ancestor. Some of their customs seemed more European than Asiatic, and they welcomed the first Europeans as long-lost kinfolk. (The Russians believed that the Kafirs were a Slavic tribe.)

A romanticized version of the country was the goal of the adventurers in the movie
The Man Who Would Be King,
which was based on a story by Rudyard Kipling. In 1895, Amir Abdur Rahman, the ruler of Afghanistan, conquered Kafiristan and forcibly converted the inhabitants to Islam. Since then the region has been known as Nuristan, "the country of light."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MARY JO PUTNEY is a graduate of Syracuse University with degrees in eighteenth-century literature and in industrial design. In 1988, she received the
RWA Golden Leaf
Award for Best Historical Novel, and the
Romantic Times
Award for Best Regency Author. In 1989 Ms. Putney won three awards for her Regency
The Rake and the Reformer
. Her novel
Dearly Beloved
received the
RWA Golden Leaf
Award for Best Historical Novel in 1990.