Twilight 0f Memory (Historical Regency Romance) Page 2

  She bumped and pitched beneath him. "Let me go you... you... gorgio swine!" she cried.

  While he pinned her with his full weight, she attempted to buck free. Then abruptly she stopped struggling and gazed up at him. Golden sparks flickered in her jade-green eyes, but he saw no fear in those eyes. Instead, they seemed to hold a gleam of mocking amusement. Or perhaps... triumph? He had no idea what her game was this time, but he wouldn't be duped again.

  Trapping her hands above her head, he eyed her with disgust. "You don't like gorgios. I don't like gypsies. Every year you people arrive in hordes for the horse fair, camp on my grounds, help yourselves to my water, graze your stock in my fields, and all the while you eye me with contempt, so don't get your dander up with me, gypsy girl, because I don't much give a rat's behind how you feel. The way I see it, you can either return my money or replace that nag you sold me with an unadulterated black."

  She batted her long-lashed eyes. "I have no black."

  He inspected her more closely. Her features were delicate, her skin fair, her face more like a china doll than a gypsy hoyden. Obviously Eurasian. Not only were her eyes a striking shade of green, but her English revealed not a trace of Hindustani. But that didn't change the fact that she'd swindled him out of a sizable sum and he intended to recover every last rupee. "Then I'll have my money back."

  "I don't have it. Someone took it from me."

  He clenched his jaws. The chit was truly testing him, and he was quickly losing his patience. "You're lying and you're a bloody thief."

  "I am not a thief. You had the choice of examining the horse."

  "I bought a black, and that's what I expected to have after it rained!"

  She gave him a waggish smile. "As they say, it all comes out in the wash."

  He eyed her with vexation. "Maybe you won't find things so amusing when you're cooling your backside on the cold floor of a jail, which is where you'll be if you don't come up with my money." Slowly he released her hands, then guardedly moved from atop her and sat back on his heels, primed to grab her if she bolted.

  ***

  Eliza Shirazi raised herself to a sitting position and peered into a pair of eyes as cold as stone, deep-set, cobalt-blue eyes that held contempt. Typical gorgio. He'd like to see her locked up. He'd like to see all gypsies locked up, but that wasn't her plan, and so far, Lord Ravencroft had followed her plan as if he'd been the one who'd conceived it. "I'll work off the money," she said, holding his gaze, feeling a nagging uneasiness that this plan could turn on her. She didn't like the odd feeling that came when she looked at this particular gorgio with the cobalt eyes, burnt brown hair, and shadow of a beard on his broad jaw, a diabolically fascinating face that had hovered in her mind ever since she'd left him waiting with the horse three days before.

  He let out a snort of derision. "What kind of work? Robbing me blind?"

  "I was doing what my elders ordered," she said, "but I have worked as a ladies maid." The statement, though untrue, was not unfeasible. At Madam Chatworthy's she'd learned what every aristocratic young woman should know about running a manor house—the duties of servants, what to expect of a ladies maid. It had not been so long that she'd forgotten.

  Her mind drifted back to a time when she'd worn soft linens and fine silks instead of rough wools and coarse muslins, to a time when she'd slept on feather bedding instead of a horsehair pallet in the tight confines of a wagon, to a time when she'd been Elizabeth Sheffield instead of Eliza Shirazi. To a time when a dark wall in her memory blocked all further recollection. She had no trouble remembering Madam Chatworthy's School for Young Ladies in London, but no matter how hard she tried, the first eight years of her life, when she lived with her parents at Shanti Bhavan, the plantation where Lord Ravencroft now lived, remained veiled in darkness.

  "I have no need for a ladies maid as there is no Lady Ravencroft," Lord Ravencroft said, "but Cook can use another kitchen maid."

  Eliza considered that option then quickly dismissed it. Not only would she be relegated to the steamy bowels of the kitchen, but she'd have no chance of finding the opal if confined there. To carry out her mission, it was vital that she work as an upper servant. "As a ladies maid, I did not learn to cook."

  "So, when you wander with your tribe, am I to assume you take your own cook?" Lord Ravencroft said, with irony.

  Eliza bit back a snide retort. Her tongue had become sharp during her two years with the gypsies, but if she expected to work as a servant for this man she'd have to curb that tendency. "I have never been required to prepare food. My job in the kumpania is tattooing."

  Lord Ravencroft eyed her, dubiously. "What kind of tattoos?"

  "Whatever a person wants. Birds, reptiles, monkeys."

  "I'm not in need of a tattoo artist so I'll turn you over to my housekeeper for placement. Mrs. Throckmorton rules a well-disciplined domain." Lord Ravencroft arched a dark brow. "She also keeps a hawk-like vigilance over her staff."

  Eliza pondered that. His housekeeper might be sharp-eyed, but the woman could not be on guard every minute of the day, or night, and one skill she'd learned while living with gypsies was the ability to creep on silent feet. She'd carry out her daily duties, and at night while everyone slept, she'd methodically search the house until she found the opal then quietly slip away with it.

  Looking at her new master she said in a tone she hoped would sound convincing, "You may not believe it right now, my lord, but I feel duty-bound to make amends to you since it was not my idea to sell you the horse. I was acting on orders. But, I assure you, I'll carry out my duties in a manner with which even your Mrs. Throckmorton will find no fault."

  Lord Ravencroft eyed her, guardedly. "I trust that will be the case. If not, I'll personally turn you over to the constable."

  From his unflinching gaze, Eliza knew he meant just that. Recouping the opal would be more of a challenge than she'd anticipated, and it would take all the skills she'd learned from the gypsies. She only hoped she was up to the task.

  After returning the horses to their owners they went to the encampment where Eliza's wagon stood parked. While she changed into a plain brown dress and fetched her bag with her few belongings, Lord Ravencroft stood outside. She looked through the small window at him. His excessive height and broad-shouldered frame gave him a commanding presence. Clad in a white shirt that lay open at his throat, and wearing breeches that defined powerful thighs, he was not your typical blue-blood. This one was strong-willed, self-assured, and dangerous in a way she was only now beginning to realize. While catching his attention at the horse fair she'd all but promised her favors in his bed, which he was not apt to let pass. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, she'd let him know that what he assumed was not an option.

  As she stepped outside, she glanced at the large, ornamented wagon on the fringes of the encampment and saw Januz Kazinczy watching her. A week ago, she'd waited outside that wagon while the tribal council decided her fate. When the Kris Romani had been ready to receive her that day, Januz opened the door and pinned her with baleful eyes. "You come now, posh-rat." He'd spat the derogatory name for a British half-blood.

  To Januz she was, and always would be, a pariah among pariahs, unless she could shed her gorgio ways and take on a true gypsy countenance. If there was one sole mortal flaw in her being, it was that she desperately wanted to be the rawnie her grandmother would have her be. The old woman had worked tirelessly to teach her the ways of her people. Eliza thought this was her chance. The Kris Romani had called for her that day for a reason.

  When she entered the wagon, Istvan Czinka, primas for the assemblage, got right to the point. "We know where is Kalki-Avatar. It your job to get it back,"

  She'd looked at Istvan with a start. Her grandmother had held the talisman for the tribe for over forty years, but while she lay on her deathbed the opal went missing. Many pointed fingers at Eliza, claiming it was because of her presence among them that the opal was gone and with it the luck of the tribe wou
ld cease.

  Istvan continued. "Anglez gorgio who live in great manor house where you once live have opal. You work there, find opal and return it to Kuraver. This you do, Eliza Shirazi, and you be one of us."

  She'd made the mistake of letting her gaze fall on Januz Kazinczy, who looked at her with disdain and said, "But if you fail, posh-rat, you banished..."

  Lord Ravencroft took her arm. "Come with me."

  Clutching her bag, Eliza turned her attention away from Istvan Czinka's wagon and walked with Lord Ravencroft to his coach, a green and black brougham hitched to a pair of blacks. A turbaned footman wearing an embroidered waistcoat waited beside the horses.

  Before stepping inside, Eliza glanced around and saw Januz eyeing her with contempt. In spite of him, she would recover the opal and return it to the Kuraver and prove that the luck of the tribe had not changed because of her presence among them.

  She also wanted to return to Shanti Bhavan. Maybe there she could tap into buried memories and at last learn the reason behind her mother's sudden departure from her life so many years ago, and her father's deception. Even her mother had refused to talk about it when Eliza learned of her whereabouts years after she disappeared, offering nothing more than disdain for the man she'd married who'd cruelly cast her out because of her religious beliefs.

  Elizabeth stepped into Lord Ravencroft's coach and settled against black morocco cushions and breathed in the fragrance of fine, soft leather. The vehicle dipped under Lord Ravencroft's weight as he stepped up. He sat in the middle of the seat so his arm brushed Eliza's and his thigh pressed against hers. Trapped against the coach door, she could either open it and climb out, or endure his subtle advances. And there was no question, he was making overtures.

  The coachman gave the command and the coach rolled forward, rocking gently on its leather straps. Their arms rubbing with the motion, Lord Ravencroft looked down at her and said, "I believe I shall enjoy having you in my employ, Miss…?"

  "Eliza Shirazi," Eliza replied.

  "Miss Shirazi. Yes, I'm certain I will."

  Eliza averted her gaze. She'd not missed the innuendo in his tone, which was expected. At the horse fair she'd bent low to display what lay beneath her blouse, and she'd lifted her skirt to reveal a bare ankle to his view—brazen moves to catch his notice and make her way into his employ—but unless she presented a different demeanor he'd take with a clear conscience what she'd offered at the fair. Edging away from him, she said, "I'm certain your Mrs. Throckmorton will be pleased with me."

  Lord Ravencroft inched his way over until their arms again met. "If not, we both know a way you can repay your debt, something more suitable for a woman of your spirited nature."

  Raising her chin a notch, Eliza said, "I may have a spirited nature, my lord, but that does not diminish my ability to follow orders. Nor, is what you have suggested an option."

  "What, exactly, do you think I suggested?" Wry amusement touched Lord Ravencroft's lips.

  Eliza let out a snort. "It's quite obvious. Just because I'm gypsy does not mean I'm obtuse."

  Pinpoints of light danced in Lord Ravencroft's eyes. "I'll try to keep that in mind."

  Unsettled by the man's dark gaze, Eliza turned toward the window and looked at the jute fields, her apprehension growing as the coach carried her ever closer to the house where she'd been born, a house that held its own dark secret. She couldn't visualize the place now—all memory had faded with the rest—yet she envisioned the house being pink. A peaceful pink like its namesake. Shanti Bhavan. House of Peace.

  How ironic. There'd been no peace there. After the sudden disappearance of her mother, her father packed her off to boarding school in England, claiming her mother was dead. Yet, she remembered nothing about her mother dying. No illness. No tears. No preparing her body for the funeral pyre. She was simply gone. And Eliza was placed in the care of an English woman she'd never met and put on a steamer bound for England. Exiled to a colorless world of boarding schools devoid of love, she'd been a strange hybrid there, her body in one country, her heart in another, yet belonging to neither. But slowly, inexorably, she forgot India, and Shanti Bhavan, and her mother's face, completely. Until she was sixteen…

  "We're on my land now," Lord Ravencroft commented, drawing Eliza out of her musing.

  She gazed at rows of sod-roofed huts lining pale-green fields of jute. Scores of turbaned, dhoti-clad workers hunched down, weeding and thinning the plants. Then the coach turned into a lane that cut between an orderly layout of hedge-bordered paths, sunken flower beds, tended lawn, and a systematic arrangement of palms, banyans and magnolias. And strutting about with an air of avian arrogance were several blue-breasted peacocks, one spreading its tail like a great jeweled fan, another perched on a stone fountain with gargoyles spurting water...

  …a fountain with gargoyles spurting water...

  A feeling of dismay settled over her. She stared at the fountain, turning her head to hold it in view. Something about the gargoyles made her feel despondent...

  "My fountain seems to have got your attention," Lord Ravencroft interrupted her thoughts. "Is there a reason?"

  Eliza blinked several times. "Umm... no." Yet, something about the fountain held her mind captive, though it was nothing but a fountain.

  Lord Ravencroft remained quiet for a few minutes, as if lost in thought, then he looked askance at her. "I failed to ask, but who was your employer?"

  Eliza had anticipated the question. "A district officer in the Indian Civil Service." She was reasonably certain Lord Ravencroft, being a planter and at the bottom of India's British social hierarchy, would know few, if any, in the Indian Civil Service, the reason she'd invented such an employer. She'd considered giving him the name of the family that hired her as nanny to their three children and paid her passage on the steamer to India when she was sixteen, but they'd dismissed her shortly after they arrived, believing she'd taken a piece of jewelry she'd known nothing about. But without a letter of recommendation she had no chance of getting work with other families, the reason she'd joined her mother's tribe, sharing her grandmother's wagon.

  "What was your employer's name?" Lord Ravencroft asked.

  "Lord Hall," Eliza replied.

  "Which Lord Hall?"

  "Which Lord Hall?" Eliza was unnerved that there was apparently more than one Lord Hall in Civil Service. She'd counted on there being none.

  Lord Ravencroft eyed her with mistrust. "Yes, Miss Shirazi. Which Lord Hall? Or is your Lord Hall part of a background you've fabricated?"

  "I have no reason to fabricate a background. My employer was Lord... Edward Hall."

  "Which district?"

  Eliza looked at him with mounting concern. Picking a jurisdiction at random, she said, "Ganjam. But that was several years ago. He has since returned to England." She hoped he'd be done probing into her background. She was running out of excuses.

  Lord Ravencroft shrugged. "I'm not familiar with Lord Edward Hall."

  Anxious to focus on another subject, Eliza looked at the score of Brahmin gardeners tending the grounds, and said, "They all work for you?"

  Lord Ravencroft nodded. "They do now, but soon I'll be selling the plantation and returning to England. India has served its purpose."

  Eliza looked at him, annoyed. India had served its purpose, just as it had for her father. "Which means, in typically British fashion you have—" She caught herself up short. Some habits were difficult to break.

  "I have what?" Lord Ravencroft waited.

  "It was nothing, my lord, just idle thoughts aloud."

  "I'm curious now. I insist you disclose those thoughts."

  "Very well. I was merely thinking that in typical British fashion you have exploited coolies on promise of wages never intended to be paid in full, while viewing it as doing your duty." Just as her father explained in his letters to her at boarding school. But having lived with the Kuraver she knew differently.

  "The British are not in India to make friend
s," Lord Ravencroft said. "We're here to rule."

  "Ah yes, part of the great civilizing mission to dispense with too many pagan gods, too many temples, too many people."

  Lord Ravencroft eyed her curiously. "For a ladies maid you're very outspoken. Didn't you learn you're to be seen and not heard unless addressed?"

  Eliza pressed her lips together. If she continued her outspoken ways she'd not even get to Shanti Bhavan, much less find her way inside. "I'm sorry, my lord. I didn't realize I'd spoken out of order. It's a fault I've been working on and I'll say no more."

  Lord Ravencroft nudged closer. "On the contrary, I want you to continue. I find it amusing. I'm also curious to learn what else you think of us British, so please, speak your mind."

  Heat from Lord Ravencroft's arm permeated hers, and Eliza could do nothing but remain wedged between him and the coach door. Refusing to look at him, she said, "I'd rather not say, my lord. I fear I have said too much already."

  Lord Ravencroft raised a finger and turned her face toward his. "As your master, I insist."

  Eliza found herself peering into a pair of dark eyes dancing with devilment. "Very well. I believe you British are here to dispense with anything that puts you in danger of getting too close to India, allowing it to seep into your bones."

  Lord Ravencroft let out an ironic laugh. "It's bloody near impossible to keep India from seeping into our bones. It's hot as hades. And you can't deny, the lot of them worship more gods than there are people, and every god has a sacred temple. It's barbaric."

  "Perhaps from your viewpoint," Eliza said. "The irony is, Indians think the British are depraved. British women walk about unveiled, they mingle with men who are not their relatives, and they dance in public like harlots. And the Brahmin lump the British with sweepers and other untouchables, finding it necessary to go through a purification rite if an Englishman touches them." She caught his look of awareness and knew her appraisal was right. He was as British as the rest. Which meant: the land was there to bear riches, the people to be exploited.