Claire Read online

  “By right of being,” he said immediately, his jaw harsh, “your husband. I have kept my promise, Claire; I have not come to your chambers at night, just as you wished. Now you will make me a like promise.”

  She went white; for a moment there was a fleeting, trembling, agonizing breath of longing between them, almost tangible, and then she dropped her gaze. “Very well,” she said, in a low voice. “Ask what you will.”

  “I will,” he said, his voice a little calmer, “not allow that the shadow of dishonor or the question of behavior should be attached again to the name Banning. I have spent five years of my life regaining what my father destroyed, and I covet the respect that I have fought so hard for. Do you understand? I will not have even a polite sneer accompany the mention of my wife’s name. And that, my dear Lady Banning, means that you,” he said, his brown hands tensing slightly over the leather of the chair, “shall not ride out alone with Jonathan Fiske, nor Vincent Pershing, nor Seth Petersham, nor any of those other bachelors who seem to have attached themselves to you.”

  “How can you speak of dishonor!” she said quickly, intensely, before she had thought, before she had allowed her better sense to rule that regretted habit of hers.

  He did not answer her for a moment; she would not look up at him, and consequently did not see the pain run across his features, as if someone had struck him a physical blow, nor the sudden blink of his blue eyes, nor the way his chin jutted as he clenched his jaw. All she heard was a light, expressionless, “I see that Jonathan has told you that I cheated him out of a fortune,” he said, and when she nodded, he added, “And that you have believed him. Have you?”

  “Did you?” Claire glanced up at him.

  “What do you think?” Varian asked instead. “Do you believe him, or if I tell you no, then shall you believe me?”

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  She looked away; Drew knew by that single gesture that Claire thought he lied to her, and with a quiet oath, he stood behind his desk, and laid his hand over the carved woodwork of the chair there as he peered at nothing in particular. “You’ve ask me once before about how I made my fortune, Claire; very well, I shall tell you. I bought a burnt-out gold mine. Yes, from Jonathan Fiske. Only he led me to believe that there was quite a bit of gold left in it. In fact, I paid him fifty thousand pounds for the mine, and it wasn’t worth ten. It wasn’t worth what I paid for it when it was producing at its peak, and I bought it long after that. I hadn’t been in India but a month or two; I was determined to make my fortune and go home to England and buy back what my father lost, and I was determined to do it as quickly as possible. Against the advice of several men whom I respected and trusted, I bought the mine from Jonathan Fiske. He took my money, we signed the deed, and it was done. Then, two days later I discovered the truth.”

  At the moment she hardly heard him; all she could think of was fifty thousand pounds— where had he got fifty thousand pounds? He had left England penniless; she had known later that he withdrew the twenty thousand that her father had set aside for her dowry, and that he had done so without asking her; but fifty thousand pounds? Somehow— of course she supposed spying was a lucrative enough business—

  “What was,” Claire asked in a low voice, staring fixedly at the small box in her lap, “the truth?”

  “That I had been cheated,” Varian said evenly, without rancor, blinking at the lamp on his desk without seeing it. “That Jonathan Fiske had known very well what was the worth of that piece of property, and he had taken advantage of my inexperience and my rashness, and that I had lost every penny I had.”

  It was not what Mr Fiske had told her; he had told her, in that half-serious way of his, with those seductive black eyes smiling at her with invitation, that her husband had gone into partnership with him on a mine and had made a fortune out of it, and then had forged the papers to make it look as though he had bought the mine from him, instead of bought a share of it. The implication, although unspoken, had been obvious: Varian Drew had cheated Jonathan out of a fortune. Then Mr Fiske had refused, with that negligible shake of his head that hinted that perhaps he didn’t like to say things about a man to his wife, to tell her anything more.

  Claire had believed him.

  “Jonathan said that you forged the deed to the mine to make it look as though you had bought it, when in reality you had only paid him a share in it,” she said suddenly, without looking up from her lap.

  “Did he?” His voice lost a little of its intensity; he smiled sadly. “I hated those years in India, Claire,” Varian said abruptly. “I know that you think I keep secrets from you, but it is only because I dislike so much the recollections. I wanted to come home to England, and yet I had to stay, and I hated every second of it. It was why I bought Rajat, just to defy the insanity of the place, you know. What sort of place— ”

  “You bought him?” Claire asked in surprise.

  “Yes. He is an untouchable. Do you know what that means?”

  “No.” She glanced at him unsurely; unaware of her gaze, Varian was staring at his hands over the back of the chair by the desk, and she watched his strong face from beneath half-lowered lids.

  “There are castes in India; something like our own class system, except there the classes are much more absolute. Rajat was born into the lowest class; the Untouchable, as it is called. They cannot live in villages except with their own kind; they cannot marry anyone else, they have no property, they cannot speak to anyone except another of themselves. They cannot even work for a living for someone above their caste. They are completely outcast.”

  “I see.”

  “It is a great deal like— having spent a year in debtors’ prison.”

  “Varian— ” She raised her head in sudden anguish for him. “I wish you will not— ”

  “I felt a sort of kinship with him; he stole a book from my luggage, you see, which is how I came to meet him. The book was French; the penalty for its theft, which I could not believe, was death. Rajat was to die,” he said, still in disbelief, “for having taken a worthless copy of Candide from my luggage on the docks. The only alternative was that I should buy him, as my slave. I paid— less than a shilling for him, Claire; a shilling— ”

  She had not known the amount, but she had heard the gist of the story from Rajat himself. “He told me.”

  “I had to reeducate him completely; at first he would not look at me, he would not speak to me. He had read everything I owned within a week, some of it rather stout stuff, and he did not think himself worthy to address me. There was nothing I could do to get through to him; he waited on me, he cooked for me, he washed my clothes, he cut my hair— and he would not speak to me. In the end, it was that damned mine that finally made us into friends; I shan’t call it anything else. We’re friends. He is my servant, but more than that, Rajat is my friend. He saved my life.”

  “The mine?” For Rajat had not told her this; he would say nothing other than that Drew was the only Englishman in the world whom he trusted.

  “Yes.” Varian sighed, and turned away slightly, and seemed to consider something, and then he went over and poured himself out a cup of tea. “Shall I pour you some tea? I— ”

  “No. But— ” She bit her lower lip. “I should like to hear the rest of it, if you wish to tell me.”

  He took his tea and sat down at his desk and laid his hands out along the smooth, glossy mahogany in reflection. “Rajat and I went to this mine to see what we had bought; we discovered within two days that whatever else I had purchased, I had not got any gold with it. It was worked out; everyone in the village laughed, for the mine had been untouched for two or three years. There was no gold left. Everyone knew it.”

  “Then— ”

  “But I was determined,” Drew said slowly, far away in his thoughts. “I took a pick and a spade— and that damned cane— and went down into the deepest shaft and started digging. Rajat and I worked twelve hours the first day; on the second day, the s
haft, which had never been very well-constructed and had been rotting for years with seepage, collapsed behind us. We were buried. I thought that was it, Claire.” He nodded slowly to himself. “I thought that was the end of it. Somehow we managed to climb up the rubble; there was a cavity above it that the cave-in had opened up, and there was fresh air coming down on us. It took us four or five hours— I don’t know. Rajat half-dragged me to the top; I’d hurt my foot again, you know, and the cane was worthless in the loose dirt. We made it, somehow. And over the top there was an opening, just large enough for a man to crawl through, and then a ledge, and down below that, twenty feet down, and above it, a hundred feet above us on the ledge, stretched this— this cavern. Some sort of underground cave. An underground spring had its source there. The cavern itself was enormous, and not dark, either. I knew we’d found a way out. Of course it took us two days to make it to the surface; we followed the river, and sometimes the passage was hardly wide enough to pull yourself through. But there was fresh air and light. Rajat thought he knew where the river came above ground, and I knew that whatever we were doing, wherever we were going, it was our only chance. So we took it. And also, you see, because I had found something in the walls of that cavern. I had found my fortune, Claire. Diamonds.”

  The intense blue eyes met hers above his wineglass; he smiled faintly. “Out of that burned out gold-mine not worth ten thousand, that I had paid fifty for, I took three hundred thousand pounds-worth of diamonds in the first two weeks. And Jonathan Fiske has hated me for it since. I don’t suppose it matters what happened, only that I think you should know that he— he wasn’t precisely— ”

  “Wasn’t precisely what?” Claire questioned.

  He smiled faintly. “No, I shan’t say it.” He shook his head in rueful cognizance. “I see that he has told you a great deal about me in just that very tone of reluctance, as though he really ought not to be saying it, and as though he wished it weren’t true. I shan’t return the favor. You may believe of both of us whatever you wish.” With a bitter half-smile, he looked down at his teacup, then suddenly raised it and drained off the whole.

  “So— so you weren’t ever partners?”

  “With Jonathan Fiske?” he said distastefully. “Never. He’s— There are a few things about him that I don’t particularly care for, that would have prevented my ever accepting him on such terms. It has nothing to do with him; just my own character. I don’t care for him overmuch, but you are right: it is because of me, not him.”

  “Will you tell me where— ” She held tightly to the box in her lap. “Where you got the fifty thousand to pay for the mine?”

  His eyes fell; “No,” he said after a moment. “I have promised . . . not to, until— until a certain time. So I can’t tell you.”

  “Was my dowry part of it?” she asked frankly, meeting his eyes across the darkly-paneled room.

  A rueful smile. “The truth of it is, yes.” He stared at the empty porcelain cup in his hands. “It was.”

  She looked away, her eyes stinging with the threat of tears that she held firmly in abatement. “Did it never occur to you to ask?” she said, in a perfectly even voice.

  “No. I— ” Like a sudden burst of wind he was out of his chair and went straight to the sideboard and uncapped the decanter and poured out a glass of wine. “Look, Claire; I cannot tell you anything about it, except that I didn’t know that it was your dowry. I didn’t know, for God’s sake. I— ” A second of struggle; he swallowed part of the wine and turned slowly to face her. “I found out the morning after you— you asked me about it; I went to the City, to my bank, the next day, and inquired over it, and Mr— It was Mr Haversley. Mr Haversley said there had been a dreadful error; that the money was withdrawn by mistake. Your father— your father had put it in my name, you see; Banning. And when I went in to withdraw my funds before I left for India, the clerk didn’t have an idea; he gave me all of it. I’m sorry; I never knew.”

  “It didn’t occur to you,” she asked carefully, in that precise voice of hers, “that perhaps you had twenty thousand too much?”

  “Christ, Claire— No! I— I can’t explain it. I’m sorry. I’ve put back your twenty, and given you five per-cent per annum interest. It’s all there.”

  She stared at her husband for a moment longer, half in shadow, his golden head gleaming in the light of the late afternoon sun through the colored glass behind his desk; tall, bronzed, broad-shouldered, those blue eyes dark with some unknown emotion.

  For a second longer she fingered the box in her hand, and then she stood and very carefully laid it on the corner of his desk, and said quietly, “Did you think,” as she passed Balaghat, “that it was the money that mattered?” and went out into the hallway without looking at him again, and up the stairs to dress for dinner, without looking at him at all. She did not want him to see her crying.

  He did not go with them to Almack’s that evening; in fact, Varian did not even come down to dinner, nor send any excuse. After Tony Merrill arrived and the three of them had sat in the drawing room for a quarter of an hour past the bell and Varian still had not appeared, Claire smiled that cool and reserved smile of hers and said she rather thought he had told her this afternoon that he was to meet some friends this evening, some friends from India, and that he meant to take them to dinner at his Club; so very forgetful of her. They had nodded and smiled at each other, Tony Merrill, and Claire and Claudia, and then the three of them had gone in to dinner, with that place sitting there at the end of the table, so horribly vacant and staring, mocking, as Claire laughed somehow through dinner, and then laughed somehow through the dancing, and laughed somehow through the evening, until she had come home.

  Exhausted, Claire leaned against her chamber door after she closed it at half-past midnight, and put a shaking hand over her face and closed her eyes. She did not care that her tears were soaking the fingers of her best white gloves, and that she would make her paint run.

  Claire Drew was twenty-one years of age; she had been twenty-one for a day, half a day, and she was old, so very old, and wanting only to die. She cried silently into her glove, wondering if her husband thought her completely an idiot not to understand precisely where he had got that money, and wondering where he had been this evening, and wishing that he had not spoken of dishonor as though he were innocent. He was guilty; she hadn’t an idea of what his father had done to dishonor his family’s name, but he— Varian had done far, far more— that he could imagine that she would commit the least indecency— that he could think for an instant that she, Claire Ffawlkes, no matter that she was Lady Banning or the Duchess of Kent, would allow the least indiscretion to be attached to her name, as if he did not care that there was anyone behind that precious title, as if he had not cared that she had held the letter from Mr Haversley in her hand two years ago and felt used, as if he did not care that it was him betraying her—

  Without calling her maid, Claire undressed with shaking hands and cast her gown over the chair and unpinned her hair and brushed it out. She put on her nightdress and climbed into bed and blew out the lamp, and lay there, staring at the dark shadow of the bed-canopy over her, until the black edged into gray, and then into a thin, hollow white. She knew only that she hated him, and that he had lied to her, and that she hated him.

  “Claudia?” The middle Ffawlkes sister glanced up from the breakfast table; behind her, red tulips on the white wall of the garden terrace framed her quiet face. In her large blue eyes was a genuine smile of surprised pleasure at the sound of her name. She was alone; there was a book laid open, face down on the table beside her, with her spectacles folded up neatly next to it.

  It was the volume they had found in the Westminster bookshop a few days ago, some medieval love poetry. Tony, quite unexpectedly, had bought it for her.

  “Lord Merrill! Good morning. Would you like breakfast?”

  “Where is everyone?” the phlegmatic gentleman inquired, strolling over to the table.

  “I
— I’m not certain,” Claudia admitted, and some of the smile went out of her face, as if she had suddenly and logically realized that of course, he had not come to see her, nor was he particularly pleased that it was only her, here at the breakfast table. “Have you come to see Drew? I believe he left early this morning.”

  “Well, I had wanted to talk to him,” nodded Tony. The large gentleman had not been at all deceived by that pleasant story that Claire had given out last evening to explain Varian’s absence. Tony thought that things were perhaps more serious than he had imagined; he had come early this morning, hoping to find his friend. “Claire? Is she still upstairs?”

  “She’s ill this morning.” Claudia’s blue eyes met Lord Merrill’s gray ones as he sat down across from her. “Shall I pour you a cup of tea?”

  “Claire’s ill?”

  As always, Claudia was calm, reserved, invariably polite. “Yes; have you had breakfast?”

  “Claire’s never been ill a day in her life,” said Tony Merrill blandly.

  Claire’s elder sister stared unsmilingly at the placid face across the table. “She asked if I would teach her servants their English this morning,” she said, without explanation, laying down her fork and lowering her gaze to his waistcoat.

  “Claudia— ”

  There was a bird in the garden, somewhere; a housemaid, passing the terrace door in the hallway inside, laughed and said something unintelligible to someone behind her. Claudia raised her eyes, with the red tulips behind her head casting her ivory skin into a cameo-fineness. “Yes?”

  For a tiny second Merrill hesitated, and then he inquired innocently enough, “What are you reading this morning?”

  The blue eyes fell again, but the calm smile over the silver service did not change. “Only a poem or two.”

  He took the book from across the table and turned it up and looked at it. “Patience, though I have not The thing that I require, I must of force, god wot, Forbere my moost desire.” He glanced up at her; her beautiful eyes, intent on his face, lowered in shyness, as feathery lashes brushed the fair skin of her cheek. “I am very patient, you know. Will you call me Tony, Claudia?”