Claire Read online

  “I wish you will call me Claire,” she offered suddenly, with one of those illuminating smiles of hers. “I am always having to live up to my husband’s name when you use it, you know; and occasionally I am only human.”

  George Canning met her eyes and nodded with a kind smile. “I had supposed you to have forgotten all about that,” he said quietly, “for I have. I say, Varian, I believe I shall have another drop of that stuff.”

  “You won’t mind to take it in with you, will you, Lord Canning?” asked Claire pleasantly, watching her husband pour the wine. “For I believe Stiles is at the door; Varian, will you give me your arm?”

  She saw him set down the decanter carefully and his glass beside it, still half-full; those blue eyes came up to hers, and a muscle tightened in his cheek, and then, with a slight bow, he offered her his arm, and the Drews, the Earl of Banning and his wife, led their guests in to dinner.

  She had already disappeared by the time he had shown his guests out the door at half-past eleven, into the drizzle of an autumn night. She went upstairs and undressed without Consuela and turned out the lamp and went to bed, happier than she had been in a very long while.

  She was no longer needed; her husband did not need her either. But she was necessary; she had seen that he had missed her, and she felt complete and whole in once more being in his dominion. She felt a great peacefulness in arriving here, in spite of not being needed.

  Necessary, but not needed; a fine balance of giving and taking. She closed her eyes and sighed, and went serenely to sleep.

  There was an early breakfast on the terrace; the rain had cleared in the night and Claire had left firm instructions with Stiles to arrange things just so if it were pleasant enough outside. Stiles had been very happy indeed to see her; he had complied with her wishes for breakfast with the greatest delight. So it was that Varian Drew came downstairs to find his wife, dressed in a long-sleeved, full-skirted gown of chocolate and cream, somewhat like her hair and her skin, before him, sipping her tea, and reading his paper.

  He stood for an instant on the threshold of the small parlor, staring, with a hint of reluctant amusement threatening at his mouth, and then she looked up and said, “Good morning, darling,” and his smile disappeared. He came outside and sat down.

  “Good morning,” he nodded, and watched her pour out his tea after she had handed him his paper. Behind her, the garden that she had so lovingly coaxed and tended into glory stood in verdant, rich color, fragrant with the promise of autumn. After eyeing her suspiciously for a moment, Drew opened up the paper and spread it out in front of his face. “You could have sent word you were coming,” he began.

  “You could have sent word that I ought to,” she responded immediately.

  “Why? For this affair today? I shouldn’t think it necessary that you go, if you don’t wish to,” he said.

  “Precisely what affair is it that I was allowed to blunder into over the conversation last evening?”

  The newspaper rustled as turned a page; he stared at a column that made no sense at all. “John Moore’s being knighted today, over Vimeiro,” he said. “I’ve been invited.”

  “You’ve been elevated, darling,” she said astringently. “Is it in your honor also, this small dinner this evening, a mere two or three hundred at Windsor?”

  “I suppose,” he said casually.

  “Over the nine French ships?”

  “Something to do with it, I imagine,” he said.

  “Is Tony coming?”

  “Tony is too busy,” said Varian Drew, with a sudden inflexible note in his voice, as he gave up and folded up the paper and put it away, “making love to his wife. He has gotten some acreage out of it; I’ve got an Earldom, and Rajat has got a new student, I see,” he finished, frowning at her.

  “Rajat?”

  “Actually Rajat has gotten his British citizenship out of the affair,” said her husband, picking up his tea cup as Stiles brought out his breakfast and removed the cover.

  “Have you told him?”

  “Of course; a fortnight ago,” he said.

  “Rajat has been with me in Essex for the past month,” she said quietly.

  Varian Drew picked up his fork without looking at her. “I was up once or twice to Banningwood and dropped by to see him,” he said.

  “I shouldn’t have minded if you had said hello to me,” she returned.

  “Look, Claire— ” He sliced into his sirloin. “Shall we discuss this here and now and have it done with?” The sirloin, done to perfection just the way he liked it, tasted like ashes; he swallowed, and reached for his tea. “I for one am ready to make some sort of agreeable arrangement with you, and then we shan’t have to trouble over it any longer.”

  “Arrangement?” she questioned in a low voice. “What sort of— arrangement?”

  “Shall I find you a house close to your sisters in Essex and furnish it for you? Perhaps you would rather live in London,” he said.

  “Yes; I had rather live in London,” she replied, her face suddenly cast down. “Or Essex, if you like; and I have not seen Banningwood yet, but I am certain I shall like it also.”

  “I’m sorry; Banningwood is not an option,” he said, buttering a piece of toast. “I’ll be happy to find you a comfortable house, but I shan’t part with Banningwood. It was bought too dearly.”

  “Are you trying to tell me,” Claire asked expressionlessly, “that you no longer wish to live with me?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Perhaps,” she said quietly, “you will reconsider. Oh, I shan’t make any demands on you; if you send me away, I suppose I shall go and not give you a great deal of trouble over it. But on the other hand, if you will consider retaining me as a wife, in the most formal sense, of course, to play hostess and run your house, I shall also be happy to have that much of you. Did you think I would give up, just like that, Varian?” she said, much as he had said to her the first morning they had breakfasted here, so long ago, it seemed; last May.

  Those blue eyes rested on her face for a moment as his fork and knife hung motionlessly over his plate; and then his gaze bent back to his breakfast. “You are hoping for something, Claire, that shall not happen, and I at least have feeling enough left for you not to wish you any more pain over it. Wouldn’t you rather allow me to do what is best?”

  With firmness there will be good fortune; with the sincerity which is declared in it, there will be brilliant success. “No,” she said simply, as Rajat had taught her to do. She smiled. “I shan’t lie to you about why I have come, Varian. Do you wish to know?”

  He took a breath. “It is not necessary to explain,” he said, laying down his knife and fork suddenly and slowly leaning away from her, away from the table, back in his chair. He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “You think that I shall change; I shall not. My decision has been made.”

  “The legend was that the Defeater who would come would be part god, and part human; he would be a king wearing a crown, and he would be wise, and lean on a cane, and— ”

  “What are you babbling about?” he interrupted impatiently.

  “The legend about the defeat of Balaghat, of course,” she said, after one look at his face. He was struck suddenly speechless. “Rajat has been telling me about India.”

  He turned away slightly and picked up his tea. “Have you come to defeat me, Claire? Is that it? Have you come to force me to accept you?”

  “No,” she said. “I have not. I have come to fight my Balaghat; he is not you. He is myself. Do you know all of the legend?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Perhaps you should ask Rajat to tell you the rest of it,” she said, and excused herself and went upstairs, and in a little while she ordered her carriage and went out shopping for Chloe’s babies and Clytie’s toddler and Cleo’s nursery, feeling unneeded and as if she had lost a battle, which she had, although she had not yet given up the war.

  They went that evening to Windsor Castl
e to be entertained by the King and his household of remarkable appendages; there was Farmer George, half mad, sitting in magnificent obesity over his table, guzzling his wine and talking nonsense, and everyone within his hearing was falling over him to tell him how well he looked doing it. Next to him on one side was General Arthur Wellesley, commander of the combined British and Portuguese forces that had forced the French out of Portugal, and on the other was Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, King George’s Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. Next to Wellesley was Sir John Moore, who had recently replaced Wellesley as commander of the combined Peninsular forces, due to Wellesley’s unwilling participation in signing the armistice after the Battle of Vimeiro, and it was rumored that there might even be an official investigation into the terms of the Convention of Cíntra.

  As Sir John Moore had said last evening, the entire affair had been disastrous. After the Drews had departed for England, Wellesley had been poised to pursue Junot in his retreat, but then old Harry Burrard and that fool Hew Dalrymple had arrived and taken the command from Wellesley, and they had insisted that the terms for the French retreat be negotiated. As Sir John had confided in the Drews and George Canning last evening, “Dalrymple was confused and incapable beyond any man I ever saw head an army. The whole of his conduct then and since has proved him to be a very foolish man. What military man in his right mind wouldn’t pursue his enemy in retreat and make short work of an army that might next month, or next year, otherwise come back to haunt him? Damned fools, both of them!” Not only had Wellesley been prevented from pursuing Junot, the British Navy had actually transported Junot and the French army back to France, along with all their guns and weapons, as well as a huge amount of baggage, which turned out to be mostly goods looted from the Portuguese.

  So the evening’s company was a bit on edge. The absence of Burrard and Dalrymple was not remarked upon, but Wellesley’s ill humor was obvious.

  The Drews, having been invited as guests of honor, were seated to Castlereagh’s right between Major General Rowland Hill and Brigadier General Henry Fane, two of Wellesley’s infantry commanders, neither of whom were acquainted with Lord Banning or his wife, and consequently the evening’s conversation was stilted and polite, which was a very good thing after all, for that was precisely the sort of conversation that Varian Drew desired to have with his wife.

  Claire was ravishing. She was like a queen, as brilliant as the diamonds around her neck, which she wore, along with some exquisite and expensive satin affair that looked as if it had been made for just such as ostentatious occasion. Varian Drew was unwillingly and inordinately proud to have even the slightest claim to such a creature; he recalled her peasant dress in Portugal, and how well it had looked on her, that bright scarf flung over her head and shoulder, and then he cast a surreptitious eye over this polished, witty countess and decided that she would, indeed, have made an excellent duchess.

  John Wood had been knighted in a short private ceremony in the afternoon in the Garter Throne Room, and he sat this evening close to the King, just to the left of Wellesley. Afterwards, after the elaborate dinner was over and most of the rank and file of the guests had departed, the rest of King George’s guests were escorted to the Queen’s Presence Chamber, where a small concert had been arranged to entertain the party with Mr Händel’s music. And so the Drews departed toward ten o’clock and came home to a silent house at a little after one in the morning.

  “Do you wish a glass of wine, Claire?” Drew inquired politely, when they had come inside. Neither had spoken a word in the long drive home.

  “No, I don’t believe so,” she replied, equally polite. She had taken his gloved hand out of the carriage, but she had released it the instant she was to the walk and had come up the step ahead of him.

  “I thought perhaps you might satisfy my curiosity,” he said. And she realized that his motives were not seduction; far from it. For he was fighting, too; only he was fighting her, with knowledge, and skill, and a strong stomach.

  “You needn’t bribe me,” Claire said, smiling coolly at him, her hand laid on the banister rail to go upstairs.

  “Very well,” he said. The house was in darkness, except for a lamp at the top of the stairs that Stiles had left burning for them, and which now glinted momentarily off the diamonds on her bare shoulders as she moved. Varian Drew was forced to admit that those diamonds, spectacular as they were, would never outshine the brilliance of the woman who wore them. “What’s this legend you have asked me if I knew of?”

  “Ask Rajat,” she said, and placed her foot on the stair.

  “I have,” he said; and added when he saw that she did not mean to stay, “he has told me that you will recite it better than he. I think his citizenship has gone to his head.”

  “Perhaps in the morning? I am very tired,” she said frankly.

  He hesitated, briefly, in the darkness; a gradual advancement to the dry plains, a husband who goes on an expedition from which he does not return, a wife who will not nourish her child. There will be evil. “Very well; I have business in the City at ten.”

  “Yes, I have business tomorrow also,” she nodded, and did not elaborate, and told him good night, and went quietly up the stairs.

  She did not set out the breakfast table in the morning on the terrace, but had her toast early and went outside with Sully to work for a little while, for there were not many days remaining of pleasant weather, and she meant to have the garden well-weeded before winter. When she saw him coming outside toward her in his riding clothes, she pulled off her gloves and took off her apron and called to Consuela to bring a tea tray outside, and then smiled at her husband and said good morning and asked if he would care to sit with her for a while in her gazebo.

  “Only if I shall have the legend out of you,” Drew said, with a small smile that was not completely friendly.

  “If you like,” Claire nodded, and sank gracefully onto the bench inside and leaned back on the lattice work behind her. “To be perfectly honest, I think Rajat has made it all up; there wasn’t a legend at all, was there, until after you appeared and killed the tiger?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” he said pleasantly, and sat down.

  “Don’t you know of the legend of Balaghat?” she inquired lightly. “Of the one who would tread on the tail of the tiger, who would not bite him?”

  His gaze narrowed slightly, those sky-blue eyes so assessing and unrelenting in the early morning mistiness. “You are right; Rajat has made it up,” he said.

  “Then you don’t care to hear it,” she said, brushing off her skirts. The blue muslin dress was gone, well and truly gone, into the rag-bag; she had had another made up out of blue muslin, true enough, but with a pretty apron to keep her skirts clean and with sleeves tied at the elbows and large pockets for her gardening things, and with a low, curved neck and a full, concealing skirt.

  “Tell me,” he said casually. “I shall hear it as an entertaining story instead.”

  He was part god, part man; he would be a king wearing a gold crown, and he would be known as a wise man because of his cane. He was old, and thus he limped; he was young, thus he was strong. And he would kill Balaghat, and there would be a great feast, and he would become famous through his valor.

  Varian chuckled. “It certainly sounds like me in places, although frankly I don’t attribute much worth to it; has Rajat told you all this?”

  “Yes,” Claire said, smiling also. “And the rest of the legend? Isn’t that what you wished to hear?”

  “There is more?” he asked, still amused.

  “A little,” she said. “Ah, Consuela; thank you. I’ll pour.” She pointed to the bench beside her and her servant sat down the tea tray, and after Varian had refused his, she poured herself out a cup, and then pulled out of her large pocket a small book, brown, its corners worn and rounded, and handed it to him, still wearing that pleasant smile, and took her teacup into her hands. “You might want to s
ee it; Rajat gave it to me.” He turned the book over and leafed through it briefly, glancing up at her, and then back down at the book. “I don’t read Hindu, of course, so I can’t testify as to what is really there, but Rajat has said that’s where he first heard of the legend. The book is almost a hundred years old. Balaghat was either immortal, according to Rajat, or one of a long line of preying tigers to inhabit Madras.”

  For an instant the book hung motionless in those strong brown hands, as though he had almost dropped it; then he looked up at her, sitting across from him in her blue dress, against the red brick of the garden wall past the roses and the immaculate hedges. “All right,” he said, swallowing. “What’s the rest of it?”

  “That the blood of the god-man and the blood of Balaghat would rise up from the dirt into a blue-eyed woman, of course, who was to be created as reward for the victor. Had you not won, I suppose I would have been Balaghat’s dinner,” she said, with an effort to keep that light teasing in her face and her voice.

  He went white under his tan; in a quiet voice she heard him say, “Christ, Claire— ”

  “And that from the scars of the victor,” she added, her smile fading only slightly, as she met that intense blue gaze, “from those four small white lines that you carry on your chest, would leap four sons. I suppose you ought to know that the first one is due to arrive in January.” She stared at him, swallowing this sudden fear in her throat, the smile lost somewhere in the last sentence, suddenly trembling as though she had been cast out into a winter storm. “The prophecy denotes a three-year wait, but I suppose the gods did not fully realize your prowess.”

  A measureless expanse of time passed between them; he did not smile, or lower his gaze, or allow any expression at all into his face, although he could not keep feeling from his eyes. For a long, interminable moment she held her teacup forgotten in her hands and opened her heart to him.

  Without response, after she could hardly bear any more of that cold, fierce blue gaze, he rose lithely, like a young tiger, or one who treads on his tail, and went straight up to the terrace and inside the house.