Virgin Star (46 page)

This story of her father held Shalyn spellbound. Her eyes were wide and luminous as she leaned forward, a delicate hand toying absently with the gold star around her neck. "What happened then?"

"A terrible dysentery swept through the camp. Many lives were lost. I am sorry to tell you one of them was your father."

Emotion shimmered in Shalyn's dark eyes before finally, as if too heavily laden with feeling, she lowered them.

"I held him in my arms as he died, and it was then that he told me about you, his daughter Isabel. Apparently, before the war he was stationed at the British outpost at Penang, then Malacca. You remember your mother's death?"

Shalyn nodded.

"He told me how your mother died in that accident, and the worst part, how only now, as he faced the certainty of his death, could he confront his unconscionable neglect of you, his daughter. His only excuse was that after his wife died he couldn't bare the ..." The duke sighed. "Well, he had left you in the care of a heathen—"

"Ti Yao," she supplied.

"Yes, this man Ti Yao and his mistress, a woman—"

"Gschu," she supplied.

"So, you do remember them?"

"I loved them both very dearly!"

"Yes, you always thought of them so kindly. Apparently you had grown very attached to them." He conveyed his dismissal of this affection, as if Ti Yao and Gschu were the rare servant one occasionally found oneself attached to. "I never met them, of course."

"What became of Ti Yao? Do you know?"

The silence stretched with the question, Seanessy came to stand behind Shalyn, afraid for her of what he would say. Butcher too squeezed her hand to show support. The duke rose and crossed the room to the lamps where he removed the glass chimney and lit his cigar.

Smoke filled the space around him. "I am quite certain, Isabel, that some things I will tell you will be a shock. Suffice to say, I never understood what compelled these Orientals to care for a young English girl, despite all the money your father paid to them. The woman had died when we finally reached that fishing village, hoping to question her. The man Ti Yao is dead, I believe. He was known to disappear for many months; you told me this part. The last time he never came back. For you, I sent a number of agents through the Canton province of China, searching for this man Ti Yao. He was never found."

Shalyn closed her eyes. Seanessy stepped behind her, his hands coming to her shoulders. She grabbed his hand tightly for support. "Somehow I knew he was among the living no more..." she said. As if she kept the tragedy close to her heart, weeping over the secrecy of her loneliness. Aye, she had been so lonely and… and trapped. The feelings came back to her, all the fear and dread and certainty of doom ...

"This upsets you," the duke saw. "And yet, Isabel, I have not said the worst. You have never been very strong, Isabel ..."

"I haven't?"

He shook his head. "Your feminine constitution. Indeed precious few of your sex could survive what you've been put through. You see, my agents finally found you in a house of an illustrious sultan of the Jahore province, a man named Yam Tuan something," he waved his hand in dismissal. "Munda, I believe. Something like that. Anyway, you were kept in the"—he appeared to have to force the words out—"women's quarters, with his wives and concubines. And there you suffered unconscionable abuse."

Thin dark brows arched. "I was in, in a harem?"

"I pray you never remember this part of your life. The sultan claimed he bought you from this woman Gschu you care so much for."

"She never!" Shalyn shook her head, sending an errant strand swinging down past her shoulders. "She wouldn't—"

"1 don't know why he would lie about it," the duke interrupted her protest, then quickly conceded. "I suppose he could have had you snatched away from her kindness, kidnapped if you will. Or perhaps he stole you after her death. In any case, the whole sordid story illustrates the consequences of trusting the dark-skinned heathens, especially with our women."

Shalyn tried desperately to remember. Yet she couldn't. The silence gathered and grew, broken at last by Seanessy.

"So," he said, his voice curiously devoid of emotion, "Then you found Isabel and shipped her off to your island. You never could find her English relations, I'm told, though you did try."

"Yes, for a number of years. My agents found no trace of them. We ... grew close as the time passed. Against conventional dictates of my nobility and station in life, I finally had to face the fact that I wanted to marry you/'

"You were married," Seanessy repeated.

"Yes. We were married."

"And so how is it Shalyn was a virgin after so many years of not just marriage, but of living in this sultan's ... harem?"

The duke stared at Seanessy for a long moment before at last he appeared to lose his phenomenal fortitude of composure. He looked away as he shut his eyes tight as if to steel himself against the previously unmentioned reality, as if he had known but had nourished the hope that perhaps it wasn't true.

His fist curled into a tight ball as he answered slowly, heatedly, "You are so irrepressibly bold, Captain Seanessy, tossing your unholy liaison with my wife in my face like that, the idea that she was in fact a virgin. If I were armed I would shoot you."

"Just my luck!" Seanessy exclaimed wickedly. "Now would you answer that question. Really. I am on the edge of my seat as they say."

The silence stretched and with it the duke's obvious discomfort. He swallowed his port whole. Finally, in a voice made tight with all the control he placed on it: "As I said, Isabel had been badly used at this, ah, sultan's harem; I'm sure you have seen how she is ... unusually qualified to defend herself—the unfortunate legacy of this other heathen, Ti Yao. After suffering more than one blow, the sultan threatened her, not with her own life, for it was quite clear she would gladly die before suffering his abuse, but rather he threatened to kill other women, even innocent children if she did not comply. Compliance meant being first tattooed, a mark that is recognized as meaning his, ah, property throughout much of the China Seas and then ..." His pause filled with the drama of Isabel's torture. "He tied Isabel up, for he had learned to take no chances with her." In a whisper that only hinted at his rage, he finished, "He apparently suffered a number of ailments; among them drunkenness. You can imagine the awful rest.

"The effects were naturally devastating to her constitution," he continued after a thoughtful moment. "She could not suffer a man's touch; it frightened her. Any approach on my part gave her night terrors when she'd wake in the middle of the night, not knowing where she was or who was with her, more scared than you can imagine. Of course I hoped that with time, and the blessing of love, I could eventually win her affections ...

"So there it is," the duke finished quietly, drawing on his cigar. "The whole story."

For one of the few times in Seanessy's life, he had been rendered hopelessly speechless. He started to speak but then turned away, changing his mind. Butcher and Kyler sat in a similar silence. Kyler stared up at the boards on the ceiling, while Butcher thoughtfully considered his hand spread over the table, then studied the duke as he drew on his cigar, finally watching Shalyn closely through a thick cloud of smoke and slightly lowered lids.

A chill faced up her spine. She swallowed, forcing herself still and unmoving, as she waited for someone to say something, anything, but it seemed, as with Seanessy, that the story of her life struck each one of the men quite hopelessly mute.

"I don't remember any of it," she said softly.

"None of it, darling?" Seanessy managed to inquire.

"Truly. None."

Finally the duke said, "There appears little left to say past that I will pray you accept an invitation to view our home—your home, Isabel. Since I have not helped to spur your memory, my only, my last hope is that moving through your rooms, the castle, and your garden will restore your past.

"Would you do that much for me at least?"

She had no idea. "Will I, Seanessy?" she asked.

"Why not?" Seanessy asked. "Needless to say, I share your own interest in sparking her memory."

"Excellent," the duke said. "I will send a boat for you in the morning."

He bowed ever so slightly before withdrawing. The door shut. Still no one moved as they listened to the duke call his men. The ladder dropped, and the duke and his party descended. A splash followed, the result of Toothless's concoction. French curses sounded as they attempted to recover the fledgling swimmer.

*****

Chapter 13

“
So what do you think of my life's story?" Shalyn inquired tentatively.

Yet Seanessy could not at first reply for the sudden roar of laughter. For a long while, the men simply could not stop laughing. Seanessy’s actually leaned over with the weight of his mirth.

"Didn't I tell you it was ripe?" Kyler slapped Butcher's back. "I swear it gets better every time he tells it!"

"Lord." Butcher laughed. "I haven't heard so much bull since the last Irish wake!"

Shalyn sighed as they laughed, rolled her eyes, and drummed her fingers on the tabletop, waiting for their laughter to subside. "Oh, please. Really! What do you think?"

"I'm sorry, Shalyn," Seanessy finally managed to swallow the better part of his laughter after some effort, at least long enough to answer her question. "What do I think of your life story as told by that bag of foul air? Well! It is remarkable, simply remarkable! What a dazzling performance the snake gave tonight. Imagine how surprised I was to hear him cast himself as the virtuous, at last much misunderstood, hero."

"That part was simply chilling," Butcher cried, wiping at his eyes, his whole body shaking with laughter again.

"Aye!" Seanessy continued with as much drama, "I loved how our slithering hero saved your poor father, befriending the poor Brit in the enemy camp, only to—how tragic--watch him succumb to—what was it? Dysentery?"

Butcher wiped his eyes, his chest still bouncing like a child's ball. "The sultan! That was the best part."

"That was fantastic." Seanessy's eyes were alive with amusement as he said, "How our fair and innocent maid valiantly fought the dark-skinned heathen's greedy hands until at last he had to tie you up for his repeated rapings. I was so bloody relieved to hear that our slovenly sultan knew how to belt a few drinks before bedtime. I was quaking with anxiety until he explained that part!"

"You men," Shalyn said crossly. "How would you feel if your life were reduced to the unlikely plot of a penny dreadful novel? I'd even wager Tilly herself has never read one quite so dreadful!"

"Aye," Kyler said. "All we need now is a Fleet Street publisher."

"I pray this story is never repeated!"

"Oh, let’s don’t forgot," Butcher said to her, still struggling to quiet his laughter. "You've never been very strong—that lamentable feminine constitution of yours!"

This reference sent the men back with wild hoots of rancorous laughter. "But did you not see how much he hates me?" she asked. "The way he stared! It kept lifting the hairs on the back of my neck; I half thought he was going to reach out and strike me." With feeling she asked, "What have I done to him?"

Butcher wiped his eyes and finally stilled his bouncing chest, and only with the reminder of the man's violence, a violence directed at the lass. "Aye. I can only reason you would be dead but, but—"

"He wants something from you, Shalyn," Seanessy said. "And I don't think it's that precious body of yours. It's just like Richards said—I can see it now. The man is as queer as a sweet-smelling water closet."

"What does that mean?"

Kyler swallowed his port and said, "He, ah, doesn't care for women, lass."

"Yes?"

"His, ah, amorous preference is for men."

More confused, she shifted restlessly. The pink silk gown shimmered as it settled. "What does that mean?"

"Shalyn," Kyler said gently. "He's the villainous sultan. Only his problem wasn't drunkenness."

"Please," Seanessy begged, "don't put the pictures in my mind."

"He was the one who ... who ..."

The men watched enlightenment dawn on the lovely face, enlightenment accompanied with relief. Relief that she didn't remember these horrid scenes. Or, very much of them. This sweet and heady relief passed quickly to anger. Anger at Seanessy as she demanded, "Well, if he is that villain; then why didn't you shoot him?"