Rogue Grooms (47 page)

He raised the knocker and brought it down with a hollow, purposeful thud. The door handle clicked, and, much to his surprise, he was faced not with a stern butler but with Emily herself. Her smile glowed with a radiance he had never seen; summer sunshine itself poured forth from her pale curls and pink cheeks.

“David!” she gasped, clutching his hands in hers and pulling him into the foyer. As soon as the door shut behind them, she looped her arms about his neck and went up on tiptoe to kiss him. “I have missed you so much.”

He laughed, tightening his clasp to hold her against him. “We only parted a few hours ago. You did not have time to miss me,
shona.”
Of course, he had missed her, as well, though he would not say it aloud. It seemed absurd to miss someone seen only the night before. But there it was. Something had happened while they were locked in the close darkness of that closet. Something rare and profound. A destiny fulfilled at last.

If there
was
a curse on his family, as his grandmother believed, surely Emily’s kiss had broken it. He felt free, and as young as the day when he first met Emily Kenton so very long ago.

“Nevertheless, it has been too long.” She kissed his nose and his chin, giggling like a delighted schoolgirl. “I do think that you should—”

A discreet cough behind Emily interrupted her. She swung around, her arms still around David’s neck.

“Oh. Hello, Alex dear,” she said, her voice just the slightest bit more subdued.

David untangled her arms and turned toward her brother, holding her hands in his. The duke’s face was utterly unreadable as he observed the scene his sister was creating in his own foyer. There was no frown, no smile—just the blank marble of a Roman statue.

“Good morning, Your Grace,” David said, with a polite bow. “I hope it is not too early for a—business call.”

“Certainly not,” was the reply, made in coolly measured tones. “Depending what that business is. I have been expecting you, Lord Darlinghurst. Perhaps you would care to step into the library? If you will excuse us, Emily.”

Emily nodded, her curls bobbing. As she stepped back, she whispered, “After you speak to Alex, David, meet me in the drawing room. I have something to give you.”

David raised her fingers to his lips for a quick kiss. Something to give him, eh? That sounded promising, indeed.

 

Emily paced the length of the drawing room, sweeping her fingertips over the tops of the marble and gilt pier tables as she went. She did not see the garden out of the tall windows, or the paintings on the walls or the ornaments scattered on the tables. She just turned at the end of the room and paced back.

David was spending an inordinate amount of time in the library with Alex. Much longer than it should take. Was there a problem of some sort? What was happening in there? She wished she dared go eavesdrop at the door. She also wished Georgina was here to reassure her, but her sister-in-law was upstairs dressing to go to the mantua-maker. Even Elizabeth Anne and Sebastian were occupied with lessons and napping. Emily was quite on her own.

Or perhaps not entirely on her own. She opened the little pouch she held tucked in her hand and peered down at the Star’s flash of blue fire.

Had it truly been only a few days ago that she was so overcome with a strange, restless melancholy she could not explain? When she listened to Georgina express worries about her failure to find a suitable match? That seemed so far away now—part of another life, another Emily. Her heart was still now, bathed in the same blue light of serene happiness and belonging she saw in the Star. It was David who made that happiness. David who showed her in so many ways—especially in the way he so gamely went along with her wild schemes—that they belonged together. Had always belonged together.

He made her laugh; he made her life seem merry again, when she thought she had lost the capacity for such untainted joy long ago. She saw the future now, not as a vista of the same meaningless balls, routs, and polite conversations and cruel witticisms, but as a series of endless possibilities. She and David and Anjali—and whoever might choose to come along later—would be a true family.

A tiny, nervous flutter ached deep in her belly, and Emily pressed her hand hard against it. All that would happen only if Alex gave David his blessing. But why would he not? He and Georgina had been wanting her to wed for the longest time!

Yet they
had
been in the library for an hour at least. Surely more than that—hours and hours! Were she and David going to be forced to make a dash for Gretna Green?

Curling her fingers tightly around the Star’s pouch, Emily paused before one of the windows to stare out at the garden. Elizabeth Anne was there now, walking with her nursemaid, the sun turning her long red curls to molten fire. She waved up at her aunt, beaming.

Her niece’s smile lifted Emily’s spirits again. As she waved back, she heard the drawing room door open behind her, and she spun around to see David there. For an instant, his face seemed so solemn and serious that her heart sank once more. Then, he grinned—and the whole room, the whole world, flooded with light.

Emily dashed into his arms, and he lifted her off her feet, laughing.

“Well?” she demanded impatiently. After all, she had waited for this very moment since she was a little girl.

David just smiled. “Lady Emily Kenton, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”

“Yes!” Emily cried, and kissed him. Once, twice, three times.

David chuckled through their kisses, the sound vibrating warmly through her. “Now, Em, I had an entire speech planned about how I intend to spend the rest of my life making you happy. I was going to go down on one knee and declare my undying devotion. Anjali has assured me, most solemnly, that ladies adore it when a gentleman goes down on one knee to propose.”

“I do not need declarations of undying anything,” Emily said stoutly. “You more than proved your devotion by hiding in that cupboard with me last night, when any other man would have sent me directly to Bedlam. All I need, David—all I have ever needed—is you.”

“Just as I need you.” Their lips met again in a kiss of such tenderness that it seemed eternal, made of all the love that had come before them—David’s parents, her parents, Alex and Georgina—and all the love that would go on long after they were gone. “I love you, my brave Boudicca.”

“And I love you.
Ami tomake bhalobashi.”

“Ami tomake bhalobashi.
”

Emily stepped back from his enticing kisses, taking one of his hands between both of hers. “I have something for you, David. An early wedding gift of sorts.”

“I thought the bridegroom was meant to give the bride a present, not the other way around.”

Emily shook her head. “You gave me back my necklace and earrings, my precious birthday gift. That is all the present I need. And what I have to give you is not so much a gift—it is not really mine to give. It is more of a return. A putting to rights.”

David’s brow creased in puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

Emily removed the Star of India from its pouch and placed it carefully into his hand. “I believe this belongs to you.”

David stared down at the jewel, turning it over so that its facets again flashed. It sparkled even more radiantly than before, as if rejoicing in its freedom after such a long confinement. As if it rejoiced at being home.

But David was silent for several long moments—so silent Emily could almost vow she heard her own heart pounding.

He raised his gaze to hers, the dark depths of his eyes unreadable. “Where did you get this? How long have you had it?” His voice was quiet, but thrummed with a barely leashed power.

“Only since this morning,” Emily hurried to explain. “Georgina was tossing out some of Damien’s old things, and I realized that there was something not quite right about one of his trunks. It was hidden in a false bottom. He had never sold it at all.” Her own gaze dropped to the Star. It was so very lovely, resting there on David’s hand. But was there truly a malevolence hidden in its glorious depths? “I vow to you, David, I did not know it was there! I would never have gone to the lengths I did, had I known. I just thought—”

Her words escaped her as she was suddenly caught in a tight embrace, David’s arms around her, holding her as if he would never let her go.

“Em,” he muttered roughly. “He never deserved such a sister as you.
I
do not deserve such a wife as you. My darling, clever Boudicca.”

Emily laughed from sheer relief and utter joy. All was right—she and David
would
marry, and the Star was in its proper place. “So, we shall not be cursed, now that the Star is back? The cows and chickens at Combe Lodge won’t wither away, and Anjali won’t grow up to hate us for being dreadful parents and elope with her dancing master?”

David threw back his head and laughed. “No, Em. I think any curse was lifted the moment I saw you standing there in that ballroom. We are together again. No ill can come to us. My grandmother always quotes an old proverb which says that a stick floats, as does a swimmer. It is the swimmer that the sea loves to bear, for he has sensed its depths.”

“Then I just have one question for you.”

“And what might that be?”

Emily smiled at him.
“How soon
can we be married?”

 

“
I
s it not beautiful, Mama?” Anjali whispered, leaning out of their open carriage as it made its slow progress down a narrow, curving road. Heavy, emerald green trees and thick vines twisted above their heads, casting flickering shadows over her black hair and white muslin dress.

In the valley below them, like an illusion or dream, was the great temple of Shiva, drifting on a fog-shrouded base of tangled blue-black vegetation and moss-encrusted ancient stones. Carved figures covered every inch of the façade, dancing and bathing ladies, warriors on horseback, elephants, and Shiva’s bull, Nandi.

Emily put her arm around Anjali, leaning out beside her. “Oh, yes, my dear. It is beautiful indeed.”

Beautiful
was not adequate. It was—otherwordly. Since their arrival in India, Emily had seen many strange, exquisite sights—things she would never have thought she could observe outside of books. None of them could compare to this, but all were marvelous. Grand dwellings of white stone, their windows shielded from the hot afternoons by elaborately carved shutters; ladies fanning themselves on long terraces as they sipped
lassi
and watched servants building shrines in the overgrown gardens. Deer and gazelles bounding free along the lanes. Bright pink and orange and red flowers, which her maidservants twined in their hair.

She had tasted food unlike any in England: papaya which burst sweet and tart on her tongue, the spices of vegetables and tender meats, leavened by sauces of cooling yogurt. She had danced in moonlit gardens to music of such mystery and a deep, moving spirit.

She made love with her husband beneath a hazy mosquito netting, on mattresses spread with silk and strewn with flower petals. Afterwards, they would lie entwined in the night, the heavy, sweet-scented breeze cool on their heated skin, listening to the far-off music from the water. She thought then of the saying she had seen carved over an ivory screen at the Red Fort in Delhi—“If there is a paradise on earth, It is this, it is this, it is this.”

It was an enchanted life—one she never could have imagined. One day, not very far off, they would have to leave it and return to the reality of their lives and responsibilities in England. But she would carry all of this in her heart forever. Along with the family who had brought her such splendors and made her life complete.

She hugged Anjali close to her. How tall her daughter was growing! Soon she would be a young lady in truth.

David’s arm came about Emily’s waist, holding her safe as the carriage jolted over the rough trail. The rains had not yet come to turn the path to impassable mud and muck, and it was baked to a stonelike hardness. His hand rested protectively over the slight swelling of her belly that was as yet the only outward manifestation of a blessed event still several months in the future.

Emily turned to smile at him, reaching up to cradle his cheek in her palm. He wore his Indian garb today, loose white cotton trousers and tunic, and his raven hair ruffled in the breeze. He grinned at her, looking as young and free as he had the first day they met, so many years ago, when his father brought him to tea with their new neighbors. But the gleam in his dark eyes spoke of a newer and very grown-up memory, of last night in their chamber.

“I have never seen anything like it, David,” she murmured. “It is wondrous indeed.”

“I am glad you approve,
shona.”

“How could I not? It is a fitting home for our treasure.”

The carriage rolled to a halt several feet away from the temple’s shadowed entrance, beyond a small pool that guarded the vast, forbidding portal. Anjali scrambled down the steps, pulling up the white straw bonnet that dangled down her back from its ribbons and tying it beneath her chin. As she stared up at the temple, wide-eyed in awe, her merry smile faded and her pretty face took on a solemn, almost prayerful aspect.

Emily felt that very solemnity deep in her own heart as she let David help her to the ground. This place held such mystery, an ineffable spirit that wrapped about her like incense smoke.

This was not the dwelling place of her own God, to be sure. But yet something
was
here, something that moved her, and she felt the presence of the sacred. She felt welcomed and blessed.

The closed carriage which bore David’s grandmother, Meena, and her attendants came to a halt behind their own vehicle. Emily turned to watch the grand lady step down, swathed in a sari and veils of deep blue silk embroidered in gold. In her jeweled hands she held the small, elaborately etched silver box containing the Star of India.