Her Master's Touch (29 page)

Damon let loose a string of expletives. "Damn
that bloody little bastard of a man! His monkey was trained to
crawl through small places. Well, Cedric Hadleigh will either turn
the opal over to me, or face a longer yet stent in jail."

The sounds of excited voices could be heard
in the distance.

"It's been discovered missing," Elizabeth
said in an excited voice.

"Then we'd better get the bloody hell out of
here." Lifting Elizabeth in his arms, Damon made his way out the
dak
and down the road to where the path cut a swath to the
river. With haste, he picked his way to where the boatman stood
waiting for them and climbed into the boat.

As the boatman guided the small vessel down
the Hugli toward Calcutta, Elizabeth leaned heavily against Damon
on a narrow seat in the high-arched front of the boat, Damon's arm
close around her. The two men lay bound securely in the rear of the
boat.

Elizabeth's stomach was queasy, things were
swirling around her, and her face felt as if it were on fire. But
what troubled her more was the fact that they were returning
without the opal. She'd fulfilled her part of the bargain, and it
was Damon's fault that the opal had vanished, so she still expected
him to give her title to
Shanti Bhavan
, along with an
annulment.

But now, Damon was left without the opal that
she'd taken from him two years before, and he'd soon be turning the
title to
Shanti Bhavan
over to her, which would leave him no
recourse but to sell Westwendham. Or marry a woman of wealth. But
she couldn't think about that now. Everything was spinning again,
and darkness was quickly closing in around her. She leaned into the
security of Damon's strong arm and closed her eyes...

***

Elizabeth awakened in her own bed at
Shanti Bhavan
. She had no idea how long she'd been asleep,
but the sun was well up and the room was abuzz with activity. She
was surprised to find Damon sitting in a chair beside her bed.

"How do you feel?" he asked, when she'd
turned sleepy eyes on him.

"Tired." Elizabeth rubbed her face and looked
around. "How long have I been asleep?" she asked in a weary
voice.

"About twelve hours," Damon replied.

"How long have you been sitting here?"

"About twelve hours."

Elizabeth looked down and saw that she wore
one of the new gossamer gowns that had been included in her
trousseau. She also realized she was clean. Yet she remembered
nothing about being bathed or dressed in the gown. The last she
remembered was feeling unclean, violated in fact, in the bearer's
soiled clothes, and disgustingly dirty after laying on the mattress
in the
dak
and crawling around on hands and knees while
searching among mouse droppings for the opal. But once in the boat,
everything went black.

"Was I bathed in the tub?" she asked,
wondering if Damon had been present.

"No," Damon replied. "The
ayahs
washed
you while you were in bed."

"Were you sitting there when they did?" she
asked.

He nodded. "Yes."

She looked away, not wanting him to see the
color creeping up her face. Why his seeing her naked bothered her
now, she couldn't explain. She'd been shockingly indecent when
she'd worked for him two years before, allowing him to fondle and
suckle her breasts. And the night of the masquerade ball she'd
purposely revealed her breasts beneath the sheer blouse for Damon
to see. And it had been too hot on the steamer to worry about
modesty. And there were the times when she'd allowed him to come
between her thighs, even flesh to flesh. But now, for some reason
it mattered. He mattered.

"You're my wife, Elizabeth," Damon said. "And
I want you to always be my wife."

"I imagine you do," Elizabeth clipped. "That
way you can keep
Shanti Bhavan
. But it's the only way you
can keep it, because I did fulfill our bargain. It's only because
you removed the pouch with the opal from my leg, while I was
asleep, that it's gone. So I still expect to receive title to the
plantation. Along with an annulment. And I think any court of law
in the land would see things my way." She stared at him, her mouth
set in a firm line.

Damon looked at her beautiful, angry face.
But of course she'd believe that the only reason he wanted her now
was so he could sell
Shanti Bhavan
and restore Westwendham.
And he'd play havoc trying to convince her that more than anything
else—more than having
Shanti Bhavan
, or Westwendham, or even
the
Burning of Troy
—he wanted her to return to England with
him as his wife, because he loved her.

But it would be futile to tell her that now.
Maybe sometime in the future, after she was the independent woman
she wanted to be, he would approach her again. For now, he'd leave
her be. Nothing he could say would change her mindset. "You'll get
your title," he said, "and your annulment. And you won't have to
fight me in court for it."

He left the room then, and returned a few
minutes later with a letter, which he handed to Elizabeth. "This
arrived yesterday while we were gone. It's from your father." He
turned his back to her and stared out the window while she read the
news. It all seemed pointless now, he realized. What good was it
that two witnesses came forward, testifying that he'd shot his
half-brother in self defense, or that his name had been cleared and
he could return to England, or that he'd been declared Lord Edmund
Damon Carlisle, Earl of Westwendham? Without the opal, or money
from the sale of
Shanti Bhavan
, there would be no funds to
restore Westwendham, so he'd have no recourse but to sell the place
and establish himself elsewhere. But even that didn't matter,
because without Elizabeth, even life seemed pointless.

"Then you'll be going back soon?" Elizabeth
said.

He nodded. "I'll go to my attorney tomorrow
and see to turning title over to you."

As he left the room, Elizabeth was swept by a
sense of loss. She'd be gaining
Shanti Bhavan
, but she'd
lost Damon. But then, she never had him. Not really. And even
though he'd said he wanted her to remain as his wife, if he'd truly
wanted that, he would not have been so eager to give her the
annulment, or to place the title to
Shanti Bhavan
in her
name.

Perhaps it was for the best.
Shanti
Bhavan
still held secrets, and she would not find the answers
to them in England.

Feeling despondent, she summoned her
ayahs
to help her dress, then went to the garden, where she
hoped to find solace. As she walked down the path to the gargoyle
fountain, she set her mind on planning the English garden that
would soon be there. She'd have the
malis
start on it right
away. She'd have them put up the brick wall first. Then she'd have
them lay the walkways and set the benches in place so she could
arrange the plants and shrubs around them. There would be flowers.
Lots of flowers. Sweet peas and petunias and snapdragons. And
copious pansies with their little smiling faces. And fountains and
bird baths. And in her private garden, unseen behind the wall, she
could sit on a stone bench, surrounded by birds and flowers and
fountains, and at last find solitude.

With that thought, a desolate kind of
wretchedness settled over her. Until now she'd always loved
solitude. It was a time when she could conjure up spirits and
sibyls and whimsical nymphs, and listen to the singing of crickets
and the croaks of frogs and the sweet flute sounds of birds. But
somehow, without Damon in her life, the solitude she'd once loved
seemed meaningless. And with that thought, tears welled.

Disturbed with her sudden rush of irrational
emotions, she walked over to the gargoyle fountain and splashed
water onto her face. Cold water... Fresh and clear... Splashing
against her cheeks and rolling down her chin... Hands patting the
water...

An image came to her suddenly...

A baby brother patting the water with his
tiny hands... laughing with glee as water splattered against her
face. She saw herself clearly then, not more than six years old,
reaching out to pick up the baby. But he crawled away on his pudgy
little legs, laughing his high-pitched baby laugh. Then everything
happened so fast. The scorpion. The baby's pitiful screams. The
fever. The baby in a tiny coffin....

Memories came flooding back. A year later, a
sister too tiny to pick up… Healthy in the morning… Dead of fever
by night. The baby's sudden death seemed to make Elizabeth's mother
go mad. But the following year, there was another baby...

A hideous awareness began to creep into
Elizabeth's soul, a memory of herself, ill with fever, her mother
hovering over her, peering down at her through mosquito veiling.
Her mother gone... a great commotion because the new baby was
missing... Elizabeth, burning with fever, stealing out of her room
to search for her mother...

Her inner vision sharpened, and her blackest
memory began to emerge. She was in the garden near a small stone
temple, watching a bizarre ceremony in which her mother slit the
baby's throat and offered the dying infant to some aberrant stone
goddess in the temple. Elizabeth remembered nothing after that
except finding herself in her bed, fading in and out of delusions
in which everything—the stone temple, her mother, the baby, the
stone goddess—was blood red. When she'd recovered from the fever,
her mother was gone, and all memory of the horrible killing lay
buried in the deepest chambers of her mind.

As Elizabeth stared at the gargoyle fountain,
the hideous truth began to settle into her awareness. Her mother
had been demented, overwhelmed by tragedy and desperate to appease
a goddess she believed would take her firstborn child too. But at
last Elizabeth understood what drove her father to send her to
England and claim that her mother was dead. The realization came to
her that India had robbed her of everything she'd held dear—her
siblings to the pests and diseases of the infested land, her mother
to the false promise of a profane Pagan goddess, her father because
he'd tried to protect her from the truth, and herself to a land
that would never accept her. She also knew she did not want to stay
at
Shanti Bhavan
. She wanted to sell the place and return to
England with Damon as Lady Carlisle, and bear Damon's children, and
curl up with him every night of her life and feel his arms around
her and know he'd always be there...

And then she remembered Mara, who, it seemed,
would also be there, at least for the moment. Unless certain
marital expectations were set in place early on in their
marriage.

And she'd set them in place now, and face the
consequences with Damon, later.

Returning to the house, she changed into her
riding outfit, grabbed her crop and went to the stables, where the
syce
prepared her mare for the ride to the bungalow. As she
cantered alongside the jute fields, all manner of winged creatures
slapped her face and flitted into her eyes and slipped between her
parted lips. And air that once seemed fresh and sweet during her
morning rides was heavy with the musty odor of fungus and mold and
decaying matter mingled with the stench of fires of the dead
burning on the ghats. Whether it would be with Damon, or alone, she
would leave this place that clung to her like a dark shroud
clinging to dry bones...

...it's damned near impossible to keep India
from seeping into our bones. It's hot as hell. And you can't deny,
the lot of them worship more gods than they have people, and every
god has a sacred temple. It's damned barbaric...

Odd how Damon's words came to her now. But he
was right. India had seeped into her bones. The oppressive heat,
the insects, the snakes, the Pagan gods, the brain-fever bird
screaming incessantly at night until a person could go mad. Had
gone mad. And like her mother, perhaps India would drive her to
insanity too, if she stayed.

She looked ahead as the bungalow came into
view. Mara's phaeton was parked alongside the house, and Damon's
horse was tethered out front. This was not the way she intended to
confront Mara. Nor did she relish seeing a couple of sweaty, naked
bodies writhing between silk sheets. And of course the sheets would
be silk...

...I would have given you anything you
wanted, a buggy and a pair of fine horses, priceless jewels,
anything a prized mistress would demand to keep her warming my
bed...

Elizabeth felt her temper rise. Well, if
Damon wanted her to remain as his wife, as he claimed, he could
damn well provide her with buggies, and horses, and fine
jewels.

But as she climbed the steps to the bungalow,
she knew it wasn't buggies and jewels she wanted. It was Damon.
Only Damon. And she'd be happy living with him in a
dak
bungalow if it came to that. As long as he loved her, just a little
bit.

But there would be no mistresses.
That's
where she'd draw the line. And if it took a
cat
fight
to get rid of Mara permanently, then let the fight begin.
Lifting her knotted fist, she knocked rapidly, and with firm
resolve. It seemed an eternity before Damon opened the door. She
suspected he was rushing around to put on his clothes, so she
wasn't surprised when he stood in the doorway wearing only his
drawers. He looked at her, clearly baffled as to why she was there,
and waited for her reason.

"Well, I might as well get this over with,"
she said. Not waiting for his response, she swept past him and
marched to the closed door of what she surmised was the bedroom.
But she wasn't sure. She'd never been in the bungalow before.

Throwing open the door, she stared at an
empty bed with rumpled muslin sheets. She looked around the room.
There were no signs of female occupancy. No mirrored dresser with
tortoise combs and silver-handled brushes. No oils and pomades and
other female notions set about. No sheer negligees or frilly
chemises or lace-trimmed drawers—the kind of garments a man like
Damon would expect of a prized mistress—strewn about after a
morning of passion. All she saw was a room stripped of everything
but a rumpled bed, a wardrobe with men's clothes, and a
straight-back chair with Damon's robe tossed over the back and his
boots standing together where they'd been removed.