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There were a range of answers to that question, none of them ladylike. ‘The only strange thing about me is that I did not box your ears just now,’ Phyllida said. And why she had not, once Buck had gone, she had no idea. ‘Good day, sir,’ she threw over her shoulder as she walked away. He was smiling, a lazy, heavy-lidded smile. Phyllida resisted the urge to take to her heels and run.
She had tasted of vanilla, coffee and woman and she had smelt like a summer evening in the raja’s garden. Ashe ran his tongue over his lower lip in appreciative recollection as he looked around for his father’s English lawyer.
I will send the family coach for you, my lord, Tompkins had written in that last letter that had been delivered to the marquess along with an English lady’s maid for Mata and Sara, a valet for his father and himself. The most useful delivery of all was Perrott, a confidential clerk armed with every fact, figure and detail of the Eldonstone affairs and estates.
Given that your father’s rapid decline and unfortunate death have taken us by surprise, I felt it advisable to waste no time in further correspondence but to send you English staff and my most able assistant.
His father had moved fast on receiving the inevitable, unwelcome news. Ashe was recalled from the Principality of Kalatwah where he had been acting as aide-de-camp to his great-uncle, the Raja Kirat Jaswan; possessions were sold, given away or packed and the four of them, along with their retinue, had embarked on the next East Indiaman bound for England.
‘My lord, the coach is just along here. I have signalled to his lordship and sent the skiff back.’
‘The end of your responsibilities, Perrott,’ Ashe said with a grin as he strode along the quayside beside the earnest, red-headed clerk. ‘After seventeen weeks of being cooped up on board attempting to teach us everything from tenancy law to entails by way of investments and the more obscure byways of the family tree, you must be delighted to be home again.’
‘It is, of course, gratifying to be back in England, my lord, and my mother will be glad to see me. However, it has been a privilege and a pleasure to assist the marquess and yourself.’
And the poor man has a hopeless tendre for Sara, so it will probably be a relief for both to have some distance between them. It was the only foolish thing Ashe had discovered about Thomas Perrott. Falling in love was for servants, romantics, poets and women. And fools, which he was not. Not any longer.
His father had done it and had recklessly married for love, which was fortunate or he, Ashe, wouldn’t be here now. But then his father was a law unto himself. In any case, a soldier of fortune, which is what he had been at the time, could do what he liked. His son—the Viscount Clere, he reminded himself with an inward wince—must marry for entirely different reasons.
‘My lord.’ Perrott stopped beside a fine black coach with the crest on the side that had become familiar from numerous legal documents and the imposing family tree. It was on the heavy seal ring his father now wore.
Liveried grooms climbed down from the back to stand at attention and two plainer coaches were waiting in line behind. ‘For your staff and the small baggage, my lord. The hold luggage will come by carrier as soon as it is unloaded. I trust that is satisfactory?’
‘No bullock carts and a distinct absence of elephants,’ Ashe observed with a grin. ‘We should move with unaccustomed speed.’
‘The fodder bills must be smaller, certainly,’ Perrott countered, straight-faced, and they walked back to the steps to await the skiff.
‘There you are!’ Phyllida dumped her hat and reticule on the table and confronted the sprawled figure of her brother, who occupied the sofa like a puppet with its strings cut.
‘Here I am,’ Gregory agreed, dragging open one eye. ‘With the very devil of a thick head, sister dear, so kindly do not nag me.’
‘I will do more than nag,’ she promised as she tossed her pelisse onto a chair. ‘Where is the rent money?’
‘Ah. You missed it.’ He heaved himself into a sitting position and began to rummage in his pockets. Bank notes spilled out in a crumpled heap on the floor. ‘There you are.’
‘Gregory! Where on earth did this all come from?’ Phyllida dropped to her knees and gathered them up, smoothing and counting. ‘Why, there is upwards of three hundred pounds here.’
‘Hazard,’ he said concisely, sinking back.
‘You always lose at hazard.’
‘I know. But you have been nagging me about the need for prudence and economy and I took your words to heart. You were quite right, Phyll, and I haven’t been much help to you, have I? I even call your common sense nagging. But behold my cunning—I went to a new hell and they always want you to win at first, don’t they?’
‘So I have heard.’ It was just that she hadn’t believed that he would ever work that sort of thing out for himself.
‘Therefore they saw to it that I did win and then when they smiled, all pleasant and shark-like, and proposed a double-or-nothing throw, I decided to hold my hand for the night.’ He looked positively smug.
‘And they let you out with no problem?’ The memory of Harry Buck sent shivers down her spine. He would never let a winner escape unscathed from one of his hells. Nor a virgin, either. She blanked the thought as though slamming a lid on a mental box.
‘Oh, yes. Told them I’d be back tomorrow with friends to continue my run of luck.’
‘But they’ll fleece you the second time.’
Gregory closed his eyes again with a sigh that held more weariness than a simple hangover caused. ‘I lied to them. Told you, I’m turning over a new leaf, Phyll. I took a long hard look in the mirror yesterday morning and I’m not getting any younger. Made me think about the things you’ve been saying and I knew you were right. I’m sick of scrimping for every penny and knowing you are working so hard. We need me to attach a rich wife and I won’t find one of those in a Wapping hell. And we need to save the readies to finance a courtship, just as you planned.’
‘You are a saint amongst brothers.’ Which was an outrageous untruth, and this attack of virtue might only last so long, but she did love him despite everything. Perhaps he really had matured as she said. ‘You promised me we could go to the Richmonds’ ball tomorrow night, don’t forget.’
‘Not the most exclusive of events, the Richmonds’ ball,’ Gregory observed, sitting up and taking notice.
‘It would hardly answer our purpose if it was,’ Phyllida retorted. ‘Fenella Richmond enjoys being toadied to, which means she invites those who will do that, as well as the cream of society. We may be sure of finding her rooms supplied with any number of parents looking to buy a titled husband in return for their guineas.’
‘Merchants. Mill owners. Manufacturers.’ He sounded thoughtful, not critical, but even so, she felt defensive.
‘Your sister is a shopkeeper, if the ton did but know it. But, yes, they will all be there and all set on insinuating themselves into society. If they think that Lady Richmond is wonderful, just imagine how they are going to enjoy meeting a handsome, single earl with a country house and a large estate. So be your most charming self, brother dear.’
Gregory snorted. ‘I am always charming. That I have no trouble with. It is being good and responsible that is the challenge. Where have you been all day, Phyll?’
Best not to reveal that she had been looking for him. ‘I was in Wapping, too, buying fans from the crew of an Indiaman just in from China.’ And being attacked by a weird crow and kissed by a beautiful man. As she had all afternoon she resisted the urge to touch her mouth. ‘I’ll go and put this money in the safe and let Peggy know we’re both in for dinner.’
Phyllida scooped up her things and retied her hat strings as she ran downstairs into the basement. ‘Peggy?’
‘Aye, Miss Phyllida?’ Their cook-housekeeper emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands. ‘His lordship’s home with a hangover, I see. Drink is a snare and an abomination.’
‘We will both be in for dinner, if you please.’ Phyllida was used to Peggy’s dire pronouncements upon almost any form of enjoyment. ‘And Gregory has brought both the rent and the wages home with him.’ She counted money out onto the scrubbed pine table. ‘There. That’s yours for last month and this month and Jane’s, too. I’ll pay Anna myself.’ Jane was the skinny maid of all work, Anna was Phyllida’s abigail.
‘Praise be,’ Peggy pronounced as she counted coins into piles. ‘Thank you, Miss Phyllida. And you’ll be putting the rest of it away safe, I’m hoping.’
‘I will. I’m just going to the shop, I’ll be back in half an hour.’
‘Rabbit stew,’ Peggy called after her as she ran back upstairs. ‘And cheesecakes.’
The day that had started so badly was turning out surprisingly well, she decided as she closed the front door, turned left along Great Ryder Street, diagonally across Duke Street and into Mason’s Yard. The rent and the wages were paid, Gregory was finally behaving himself over the campaign to find him a rich wife and there were cheesecakes for dinner.
No one was around as she unlocked the back door of the shop, secured it behind her and made her way through into the front. The shutters were closed and the interior of the shop in shadow, but she could see the flicker of movement as carriages and horses passed along Jermyn Street. She would open tomorrow, Phyllida decided as she knelt before the cupboard, moved a stack of wrapping paper and lifted the false bottom. The safe was concealed beneath it, secure from intruders and her brother’s ‘borrowings’ alike, and the roll of notes made a welcome addition to the savings that she secretly thought of as the Marriage Fund.
Gregory’s marriage, not hers, of course. Phyllida secured the cupboard and, on a sudden impulse, opened a drawer and drew out a package. Indian incense sticks rolled out, each small bundle labelled in a script she could not read, along with a pencilled scribble in English.
Rose, patchouli, lily, white musk, champa, frankincense… jasmine and sandalwood. She pulled one of the sticks from the bundle and held it to her nose with a little shiver of recollection. It smelled clean and woody and exotic, just as he had. Dangerous and unsettling, for some inexplicable reason. Or perhaps that had been the scent of his skin, that beautiful golden skin.
It was nonsense, of course. He had kissed her, protected her—while taking his own amusement from the situation—and that was enough to unsettle anyone. There was no mystery to it.
Phyllida let herself out, locked up and hurried home.
It was not until she was changing in her bedchamber that she realised she had slipped the incense stick into her reticule.
It was a while since she had bought the bundle, so it was as well to test the quality of them, she supposed. The coating spluttered, then began to smoulder as she touched the tip of the stick to the flame and she wedged it into the wax at the base of the candle to hold it steady. Then she sat and resolutely did not think of amused green eyes while Anna, her maid, brushed out her hair.
She would act the shopkeeper tomorrow and then become someone else entirely for a few hours at Lady Richmond’s ball. She was looking forward to it, even if she would spend the evening assessing débutantes and dowries and not dancing. Dancing, like dreams of green-eyed lovers and fantasies of marriage, were for other women, not her. Coils of sandalwood-scented smoke drifted upwards, taking her dreams with them.
Chapter Two
‘May I go shopping, Mata? I would like to visit the bazaar.’
‘There are no bazaars, Sara. It is all shops and some markets.’
‘There is one called the Pantheon Bazaar, Reade told me about it.’
Ashe lifted an eyebrow at his father as he poured himself some more coffee. ‘It is not like an Indian bazaar. Much more tranquil, I am certain, and no haggling. It is more like many small shops, all together.’
‘I know. Reade explained it to me while she was doing my hair this morning. But may I go out, Mata?’
‘I have too much to do today to go with you.’ Their mother’s swift, all-encompassing glance around the gloomy shadows of what they had been informed was the Small Breakfast Parlour—capital letters implied—gave a fair indication of what she would be doing. Ashe had visions of bonfires in the back garden.
He murmured to his father, ‘Fifty rupees that Mata will have the staff eating out of her hand by this time tomorrow and one hundred that she’ll start redecorating within the week.’
‘I don’t bet on certainties. If she makes plans for disposing of these hideous curtains while she’s at it, I’ll be glad. I can’t take you, Sara,’ the marquess added as she turned imploring eyes on the male end of the table.
‘I will,’ Ashe said amiably. Sara was putting a brave face on it, but he could tell she was daunted as well as excited by this strange new world. ‘I could do with a walk. But window shopping only, I’m not being dragged round shops while you dither over fripperies. I was going along Jermyn Street. That’s got some reasonable shops, so Bates said, and I need some shaving soap.’
An hour later Sara was complaining, ‘So I have to be dragged around shops while you dither about shaving soap!’
‘You bought soap, too. Three sorts,’ Ashe pointed out, recalling just why he normally avoided shopping with females like the plague. ‘Look, there’s a fashionable milliner’s.’
He had no idea whether it was in the mode or not. Several years spent almost entirely in an Indian princely court was not good preparation for judging the ludicrous things English women put on their heads and he knew that anything seen in Calcutta was a good eighteen months out of date. But it certainly diverted Sara. She stood in front of the window and sighed over a confection of lace, feathers and satin ribbon supported on a straw base the size of a tea plate.
‘No, you may not go in,’ Ashe said firmly, tucking her arm under his and steering her across Duke Street. ‘I will not be responsible for explaining to Mata why you have come home wearing something suitable for a lightskirt.’
‘Doesn’t London smell strange?’ Sara remarked. ‘No spices, no flowers. Nothing dead, no food vendors on the street.’
‘Not around here,’ he agreed. ‘But this is the smart end of town. Even so, there are drains and horse manure if you are missing the rich aromas of street life. Now that’s a good piece.’ He stopped in front of a small shop, just two shallow bays on either side of a green-painted door. ‘See, that jade figure.’
‘There are all kinds of lovely things.’ Sara peered into the depths of the window display. Small carvings and jewels were set out on a swirl of fabrics, miniature paintings rubbed shoulders with what he suspected were Russian icons, ancient terracotta idols sat next to Japanese china.
Ashe stepped back to read the sign over the door. ‘The Cabinet of Curiosity. An apt name. Look at that moonstone pendant—it is just the colour of your eyes. Shall we go in and look at it?’
She gave his arm an excited squeeze and whisked into the shop as he opened the door. Above their head a bell tinkled and the curtain at the back of the shop parted.
‘Good morning, monsieur, madame.’ The shopkeeper, it seemed, was a Frenchwoman. She hesitated as though she was surprised to see them, then came forwards.
Medium height, hair hidden beneath a neat cap, tinted spectacles perched on the end of her nose. Perfectly packaged in her plain, high-necked brown gown. Very French, he thought.
‘May I assist you?’ she asked and pushed the spectacles more firmly up her nose.
‘We would like to look at the moonstone pendant, if you would be so good.’
‘Certainement. Madame would care to sit?’ She gestured to a chair as she came out from behind the counter, lifting an ornate chatelaine to select a key before opening the cabinet and laying the jewel on a velvet pad in front of Sara.
Ashe watched his sister examine the pendant with the care their mother had taught her. She was as discriminating about gemstones as he was and, however pretty the trinket, she would not want it if it was flawed.
His attention drifted, caught by the edge of awareness that he had always assumed was a hunter’s instinct. Something was wrong… no, out of place. He shifted, scanning the small space of the shop. No one was watching from behind the curtain, he was certain there were only the three of them there.
The vendeuse, he realised, was watching him. Not the pendant for safekeeping, not Sara to assess a potential customer’s reactions, but, covertly, him. Interesting. He shifted until he could see her in the mirrored surface of a Venetian cabinet. Younger than he had first thought, he concluded, seeing smooth, unlined skin, high cheekbones, eyes shadowed behind those tinted spectacles, a pointed little chin. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and moved her hands as though to stop herself clenching them. There was something very familiar about her.
‘How much is this?’ Sara asked and the woman turned and bent towards her. Something in the way she moved registered in his head. Surely not?
Ashe strolled across and stood at her shoulder as though interested in her answer. She shifted, apparently made uncomfortable by his nearness, but she did not look at him.
She named a price, Sara automatically clicked her tongue in rejection, ready to negotiate. He leaned closer and felt the Frenchwoman stiffen like a wary animal. She had brown hair, from what he could see of the little wisps escaping from that ghastly cap. They created an enticing veil over the vulnerable, biteable, nape of her neck.
‘I would want the chain included for that,’ Sara said.
He inhaled deeply. Warm, tense woman and… ‘Jasmine,’ Ashe murmured, close to the vendeuse’s ear. She went very still. Oh, yes, this was just like hunting and he had found game. ‘You get around, madame.’
‘My varied stock, you mean, monsieur?’ She spoke firmly, without a tremor. Her nerves must be excellent. ‘Indeed, it comes from all over the world. And, yes, the pendant suits your wife so well that I can include the chain in that price.’
‘But—’ Sara began.
‘You want it, my dear?’ Ashe interrupted her. ‘Then we will take it.’ Interesting, and subtly insulting, that his acquaintance from the quayside assumed he was married. Perversely he saw no reason to enlighten her immediately, and certainly not to pursue this further with Sara sitting there.
What sort of man did she think he was, to kiss and flirt with chance-met women if he had a wife at home? Ashe knew himself to be no saint, but he had been brought up with the example of marital fidelity before him daily and he had no time for men who were unfaithful to their wives.
Which was why he intended to choose with extreme care. This was England, not India, and flouting society’s rules would not be excused here. The family were different enough as it was, with their mixed blood, his maternal grandfather’s links to trade and his paternal grandfather’s reputation for dissipation.
Ashe had a duty to marry, to provide the next heir, to enrich the family name and title with the right connections and the estate with lands and money. He glanced down at his sister, reminded yet again that her own hopes of a suitable, good marriage depended on respectability. But he would be tied to the woman who brought those connections and that dowry with her. There had to be mutual respect or it would be intolerable. Love he did not expect.
‘This is your own shop?’ he asked as he peeled off his gloves in order to take banknotes from the roll Perrott had provided. He calculated currency conversions in his head, valuing the stock he could see. Even at Indian prices there was a considerable investment represented on the shelves around him.
‘Yes, monsieur.’ She was doggedly sticking to her French pretence. Used to negotiating with hostile Frenchmen in India, he could admire her accent.
‘Impressive. I was surprised that the name is the Cabinet of Curiosity, not Curiosities.’ Without the conflicting stinks of the river and the alleyway the subtle odour of jasmine on her warm skin was filling his senses. His body began to send him unmistakable signals of interest.
‘My intention is to provide stimulation to the intellect,’ she said, returning him his change. Her bare fingers touched the palm of his hand and he curled his fist closed, trapping her.
‘As well as of the senses?’ he suggested. She went very still. Her fingers were warm, slender. Under his thumb he felt her pulse hammering. He was not alone in this reaction. Stimulation to the senses, indeed.
‘To find the treasures here one needs curiosity,’ she finished, her voice suddenly breathless. Her accent had slipped a trifle.
‘You may be sure you have stimulated mine,’ Ashe murmured. ‘All of them. I will return, with or without my… sister.’
Her hand tensed in his and as suddenly relaxed. Oh, yes, she was as aware of him as he was of her and the news that he was unmarried had struck home.
‘I must wrap the pendant, monsieur.’ She gave a little tug and he released her. There was no wedding ring on those long slender fingers with their neat oval nails. The hunting instinct stirred again and with it certain parts of his body that were better kept under control when he was supposed to be escorting his sister on a blameless shopping expedition.
Ashe slipped the flat box into his breast pocket, resumed his gloves and waited for Sara to gather up her reticule and parasol. ‘You open your shop every day?’
‘Non. I open as the whim takes me, monsieur,’ the lady of curiosities said, a little tart now and very French again. He had flustered her and she did not forgive that easily, it seemed. ‘I am often away buying stock.’
‘Down by the Pool of London, perhaps?’
