Laura Kinsale (2 page)

“As the matter rests,” the earl pursued with stubborn venom, “so long as you are my only heir, unwed and childless, I am forced to concern myself with you, and crush these interesting plans that you concoct to bring yourself to an untimely end.”

“Your paternal devotion is heroic, as always,” Viscount Winter murmured, handing the papers back to his father. “I hope you didn’t have to sell too many votes in the Lords to obtain this. My removal from the expedition list bought a tidy sum of funding for the Society, I expect?”

“We will be at Swanmere for Christmas,” the earl said, apropos of nothing.

“You need not trouble the maids to air my room. I will be abroad.”

Belmaine stood facing his son, his teeth clenched beneath a smile. “Have no fear,” he said courteously. “I would not trouble a swineherd on your behalf.”

Lord Winter bowed. “May I bid you good day?”

“Good day.” The earl turned away. At the pillared entrance to the library, he paused and looked back. “I wish you joy of your birthday.”

Viscount Winter made no answer, still as carved stone.

The Earl Belmaine had meant to leave on that acid note. But he looked at his tall son, at the cold handsome face that did not betray a flicker of outrage or emotion, did not betray anything at all in the steady gaze, and the earl could not quite burn every bridge behind him. Even as he asked, his own weakness angered him. “May I have the honor of knowing where you will go?”

“So that you may find a way to prevent me?” the viscount inquired coolly. “No, I think not.”

The earl governed his temper, well aware that he had already given sufficient provocation to spark any unpredictable consequence. He would not put it beyond the viscount to bring home some painted female out of a harem and present her to his parents as his wife. He understood neither his son’s sense of humor nor his reckless wanderlust, but he had learned, with some difficulty, never to be careless of either. “Happy Christmas, then,” he said dryly.

“The same to you,” Lord Winter said. “Sir.”

His father departed, leaving the long room utterly silent, without even the turning of a page. The viscount stood watching him go, his face perfectly composed. Then he returned to the window table where Sir John and Lord Gresham still waited beside the stacks of books and notes.

Lord Winter resumed his seat. He poured himself a glass of sherry. He gazed pensively down into his drink, then took a sip and set the glass aside.

“Gentlemen,” he said quietly, “I am inclined to render material assistance in the matter of your Arab horse after all.” A faint, cynical smile lit his strange eyes as he looked up. “In fact, I’ll see to it personally.”

The Travellers’ Club library remained silent after Sir John and Lord Gresham took their leave with effusive and passionate thanks. All through the afternoon, the only sounds were the hiss of the fire, the turn of the viscount’s page and the soft snores of a French diplomat stretched upon a sofa with a Viennese newspaper spread over his face. At length, as the rumble of dinner conversation began to float down from the dining room, this signal seemed to insinuate itself into Lord Winter’s consciousness. He stood and stretched, choosing a book to carry with him and leaving the rest open on the table.

He went up the stairs two at a time, passing other members coming down. A trio of clubmen lounged at the door to the dining room, leaning against the wall and laughing while one of them finished off his pipe.

“Here he is!” one of them declared, looking aside at the viscount. “Our noble Lord of the Desert!”

Lord Winter halted and glanced from one to the other. “Here I am,” he said. “Good evening.” He started to go past.

“Such an antisocial fellow Winter is.”

They grinned at him. They seemed to mean well, but he felt his old stilted unease come over him. He gave them a quirked smile. “A wandering mind, I’m afraid.”

“Well, reel it in, old fellow, and dine with us.”

Lord Winter hesitated. Then he inclined his head. “Much obliged, but I’m devilish bad company.” He lifted his hand in a brief sketch of salute and walked by them into the dining room.

His usual table was at hand, a single, a few feet behind the door. As he sat down, some eccentricity of acoustics brought their lowered voices clearly to him above the hum of general conversation.

“Damned solitary sort.”

“You know him? Never see him with anybody.”

“He’s hardly in the country long enough to be seen at all. Been wandering about the Syrian deserts forever, but now he’s off to the south pole.”

“The south pole, by God. Now there’s a facer for ye old Travellers’ clubmen. What’s his school?”

“Governesses and tutors, I imagine. Couldn’t risk him at school. He’s Belmaine’s heir, don’t you know.”

“Ah!” The single syllable held a wealth of discovery. “Belmaine.”

“The only son. No other children. Immense bloody fortune-—and there’s the title, of course. Lucky brute.”

“How agreeable, to occupy your pedestal all alone.”

“Seems to suit the bastard. Asked him to dine with us, didn’t I?” There was a pause; an all but audible shrug. “Devilish poor company, like he said.”

Lord Winter riffled through the pages of his book and began to read.

CHAPTER ONE

Syria, June 25, 1839
 

The Reverend Mr. Thomson was understandably shaken. Indeed, it was a few moments before he could compose himself in the face of a pile of human bones heaped up outside the crypt, the skull on top, the whole ghastly scene lit only by two tapers stuck through either eye socket of the grinning thing. Weird shadows flickered over the planked coffin and gloomy faces of the wild-looking throng of Mohammedan servants gathered around.

He had not meant to lose his way amid the labyrinthine garden within Dar Joon’s fortress walls. But it was two hours past midnight, and after the servants, with their turbans and drooping mustachios, had hefted the coffin to carry Lady Hester Stanhope to her final resting place, Mr. Thomson had lingered behind just a few moments to familiarize himself with the funeral rites of the Church of England, so that he might say them without any disrespectful hesitation or scrambling for pages.

This had proved to be most ill-advised. Immediately after the funeral cortege with their torches and lanterns had left the courtyard, vanishing into Lady Hester’s black jungle of a garden, a misfortunate draft of hot wind had left the American missionary in utter darkness. He had been forced to feel his way through a maze of winding pathways, the soft voices and occasional dim glow of a torch always just beyond another oriental screen or a turning that seemed to go nowhere. For some time he had wandered, stumbling upon roots and brushing hanging jasmine vines aside, until at last he came upon the arbor.

The macabre sight that met his eyes caused him a strong degree of agitation. But the English consul Mr. Moore moved to his side, gesturing vaguely at the bones, and murmured, “Never mind him. It’s only a Frenchman.”

Mr. Thomson rolled his eyes toward the consul like a nervous horse. “I see,” he said.

“Name of Captain Loustenau,” Mr. Moore whispered. “Took him out to make room for her. Poor sod came here on a visit, got a pain in his belly and died all of a sudden. Years ago. She doted on his bones.” He gave a slight shrug. “Lazy, encroaching rascal, to hear it told. But rather in her style, if you understand me.”

Mr. Thomson cleared his throat in faint question.

“Young and good-looking,” Mr. Moore amplified.

“Ah,” Mr. Thomson said dubiously.

“Old Barker was the consul in her glory days,” Mr. Moore added in a suggestive murmur, “and he used to say Michael Bruce was the handsomest devil that ever walked on two legs.”

“Indeed,” the missionary said.

Mr. Moore gave him an amused look. “Her lover, you know.”

Mr. Thomson pursed his lips.

“Took him to her bed when he was twenty-three, she did,” the consul remarked. “She was—oh, must have been thirty-four, thirty-five, if she was a day. Regular spinster by then. Traveled all about Turkey and Syria together, the two of them. Proud as a lord, she was; didn’t care a button for what anybody thought. Dressed in trousers and rode astride like a Turkish pasha. Never would marry Bruce, though they say he begged her. Made him leave her here alone. Old Barker said she was boastful of it. Considered it a noble sacrifice, so that he could go home and become a Great Man.” Mr. Moore shook his head. “Not that he ever managed that, more’s the pity.”

“I see,” Mr. Thomson said. “How—singular.”

The two men gazed at the coffin, each thinking of the withered white corpse they had found, after a fast day’s ride from Beyrout, lying uncovered in the oppressive heat. Mr. Thomson felt that he should make some comment upon the wages of sin, but this pathetic end, dying abandoned among unchristian strangers and rubbish and the ruins of her desert fortress, seemed punishment enough for a transgression that must have taken place a quarter century ago. Mr. Moore merely thought it incredible that peculiar old Hester Stanhope, the mad Queen of the Desert, could ever have had the power to enslave such a lady-killer as Bruce was said to have been. Although Mr. Moore had never clapped eyes on her alive, he well knew Lady Hester by her reputation, not to mention her relentless feuding with any English consul, including himself, so unfortunate as to be posted within the orbit of her concern. But Mr. Moore’s imagination failed him when he tried to envision Lady Hester as anything but an elderly recluse declaiming prophecies and interfering with consulate business, sending out scathing letters to everybody and complaining about her debts from the unbreachable sanctum of her mountain fastness.

“Devilish odd woman,” he muttered. “Nasty sharp tongue in her head, too, let me tell you.”

“May God have mercy on her soul,” the missionary said softly.

“Amen,” Mr. Moore said. “Best get on with it in this heat.”

Mr. Thomson took firm possession of his wits, lifted the prayer book and began to read. As the stentorious words echoed about the arbor, another English gentleman moved quietly into the edge of the flickering light.

The consul glanced over at him, gave a courteous nod, and then piously lowered his eyes again. Reverend Thomson paused in his recitation, in case this should be a mourner with some real attachment to the deceased, who might wish to console himself with a nearer position to the coffin. But the latecomer did not join him in the front, instead remaining a little removed from either the servants or the officiators.

He was a tall man, well built, dressed in boots and an English shooting jacket, a powder flask clipped on the belt slung across his chest. His hair was as black as the mouth of the crypt. In the uneasy light, his eyes appeared quite dark as pitch, and his general aspect, to the Reverend Thomson’s already frayed nerves, rather uncomfortably satanic.

“Lord Winter,” Mr. Moore muttered under his breath.

As this name meant nothing to the American missionary—and since Lord Winter returned Mr. Thomson’s nod of invitation with nothing but a silent stare—he resumed his service. The reverend was still feeling ruffled, but reflected that this bizarre funeral, along with some other incidents of his sojourn among the benighted of the East which he had recorded in his diary, should at least collect nicely into a volume of travel memoirs when the time was ripe.