Лорен Уиллиг: The Betrayal of the Blood Lily

Until the carriage rocked to a stop and Freddy set her aside with no more concern than if she had been a carriage rug provided for his convenience on the journey. Lust might work to get his attention, but it was remarkably ineffectual at keeping it.

Penelope quickly straightened her bodice as the inevitable crowd of servants descended upon the carriage, yanking open the door, carrying over a portable flight of steps, running forward with blazing torches that too clearly illuminated Penelope’s disarray.

By the time Penelope reached up to fix her hair, Freddy had already swung out of the carriage. He had been trained to do the gentlemanly thing, so he held out a hand in her general direction, but he was already angled towards the portico, the party, the inevitable card room.

“Pen . . . ,” he said impatiently, waggling his hand.

Penelope paused as she was, arms curved above her head, pressing her breasts into prominence. She leaned forward just that extra inch.

“If you will muss my hair . . . ,” she said provocatively.

Freddy was no longer in the mood to play. “If you will behave like a wanton,” he countered, hauling her down from the carriage.

Penelope narrowed her amber eyes. “I’m not a wanton. I’m your wife. Darling .”

Freddy might be lazy, but he had a marksman’s eye. “And who’s responsible for that? Ah, Cleave!” Donning charm like a second skin, he waved to an acquaintance and carried on without pausing to introduce Penelope.

“Whose party is this?” hissed Penelope as she trotted along beside him.

“Begum Johnson — Lord Liverpool’s grandmother,” Freddy tossed in, as though that explained it all. “She’s a Calcutta institution, been here longer than anyone. It’s the first place one comes on arrival.”

“Begum?”

“I think it means ‘lady’ in the local lingo,” Freddy said vaguely. “Some sort of form of honorific. It’s what they call her, is all.”

With that elucidating explanation, Penelope found herself swept along in his wake into a vast white-walled mansion decorated with English furniture and English guests as Freddy scattered greetings here and there to acquaintances. The rooms were a colorful blur of brass-buttoned uniforms from every conceivable regiment, embroidered waistcoats straining across the bellies of prosperous merchant traders, large jewels decking the hands and headdresses of the middle-aged ladies in their rich silks. In one room, a set of couples formed rows while a sallow young lady in sweat-damped muslin and a cavalry officer cinched into a woolen jacket danced down the aisle, the familiar tune and figures of the country dance contrasting oddly with the fan sweeping slowly overhead. It did more to displace than dispel the muggy air. Through one archway, Penelope could see bowls of cool beverages sweating beads of water down the sides and iced cakes on porcelain platters. Through another, a room had been set out for cards, in small clusters of four to a table.

Freddy’s eyes lit up at the sight of that last. “You’ll excuse me, won’t you, old thing?” he said, without looking properly at her. “I have a few old scores to settle.”

Without waiting for a response, without introducing her to their hostess or fetching her a beverage or even making sure she had a chair to sit in, he was off. Penelope found herself standing alone in a drawing room that smelled faintly of foreign spices as a tropical monsoon battered against the windows and the chatter of the other guests shrilled against her ears like so many brightly colored parrots. Penelope gathered her pride around her like a mantle, trying to look as though she had always meant to be standing there on her own, as though she weren’t entirely without acquaintance or purpose in a strange drawing room in a strange city, abandoned by her husband in a lamentable breach of manners that he would no doubt justify to himself by the fact that he had never intended to shackle himself to her in the first place.

Unfortunately, the little scene had not gone unobserved. Penelope found herself facing the regard of a man in the bright red uniform of one of the native regiments, spangled with enough gold braid to suggest that he had attained a suitably impressive form of command. He was no longer in the first, or even the second, flush of youth. His hair must once have been as red as her own, but age had speckled it with white, making his face seem even ruddier in contrast. His face was seared by sunshine and laugh lines and liberally spattered with a lifetime of freckles. Beneath wrinkled lids, his pale blue eyes were kindly.

Too kindly. It made Penelope want to shake him.

He strolled forward in an unhurried fashion. Just as Penelope was prepared to stare him down with her best Dowager Duchess of Dovedale glare, he said, “That’s always the way of it with these young men, isn’t it?”

He gave a sympathetic wag of his head, his matter-of-fact tone making it sound as though abandonment by one’s spouse was commonplace, and nothing to be bothered about at all.

“No sooner do they arrive at a party than they’re straight off to the card tables. A blight on society, it is, and a lamentable offense to all the fairer sex.”

Penelope’s stiff posture relaxed. It wasn’t that she cared what people thought — but it was very unpleasant to be left standing by oneself.

“I imagine you are a notable card player yourself, sir,” she riposted.

“Not I,” he averred, pressing one hand to the general vicinity of his heart, but there was a twinkle in his sun-bleached blue eyes that told Penelope he must have been quite a rogue in his youth. It took one to know one, after all. “I have my share of vices, to be sure, but the cards are not among them. At least, not when there’s a lovely lady present.” He swept into a bow that would have done credit to the court of St. James. “Colonel William Reid, at your service, fair lady.”

“I am — ,” Penelope began, and stuck. She had been about to say Penelope Deveraux, only she wasn’t anymore. She was Lady Frederick Staines now, her identity subsumed within her husband’s. She wasn’t quite sure who Lady Frederick was, only that it wasn’t really her. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” she substituted.

Mistaking her hesitation, the Colonel leaned away, holding up both hands in a gesture of contrition. “But not without a proper introduction, I wager. I should beg your pardon for being so bold as to impose myself upon you. After years in a mess, one forgets how to go about.”

“Nothing of the sort,” Penelope hastened to correct him. “It’s just that I’m recently married and I still forget which name I’m meant to call myself. My husband’s name doesn’t feel quite my own.”

A sentiment with which Freddy would heartily agree.

“Married?” The Colonel rearranged his features in a comical look of dismay. “That’s a pity. I meant to introduce you to my Alex.”

“Your Alex?”

“My boy,” the Colonel said proudly. Before Penelope could stop him, he raised his arm to hail a man who stood in conversation with an elderly lady in an exuberant silk turban, his back to them. “Alex! Alex, lad.”

Hearing his father’s exuberant hail, the man turned in a fluid movement that bespoke a swordsman’s grace. “Boy” was the last word Penelope would have used to refer to him; he was tall and lean, with the muscles of a man used to spending long hours in the saddle. Unlike his father, he wore civilian dress, but the indifferently tailored breeches and blue frock coat looked wrong on him, like a costume that didn’t quite fit. His face was as tan as the Colonel’s was ruddy. Had she not been told otherwise, Penelope would have taken him for an Indian, so dark were his hair and eyes. A thin scar showed white against the dark skin of his face, starting just to the left of one eyebrow and disappearing into his hair. He was a handsome man, but not in the way the Colonel must have been handsome once. Where one could picture the Colonel in a kilt and claymore, standing by a distant loch, his son looked as though he belonged in a white robe and Persian trousers with a falcon perched upon his wrist.