Everything I Ever Wanted (50 page)

India stood slowly and absently smoothed the front of her gown. She waited until South casually took a step away from the bed before she slipped behind him. She hovered for a moment at his side, then began walking toward the door as he continued addressing Lady Margrave.

"He insisted you end your affair."

Watching India, the countess seemed to collect herself. "I did end it."

"Did you? Or did it end when you found you were pregnant with your husband's child?"

"He forced himself on me." She saw the hesitation in India's step and knew she was understood. "I would not let him have the satisfaction of knowing it was he who got me with child."

"But your lover knew the truth," South said.

"Yes."

"And he killed himself."

"Yes." She regarded India, her eyes imploring. "You must understand. I couldn't keep you. You were always a reminder of that rape, and a more painful reminder of what I no longer had."

India shook her head. "What I understand is that you thought only of yourself and your revenge. You sent me to the Hawthornes and then you took me away again."

"No! That was Allen's doing. He is the one who forced it. He wanted to meet you. He wanted to know his sister. I couldn't refuse him."

"He was nine years old."

The countess's hands curled into fists. Her voice wavered as it rose in pitch. "I couldn't refuse him!"

Using his back and shoulders to brace himself against the wall, Margrave climbed to his feet. "She's afraid of me," he said. "She always has been. Afraid of what I might say or do or become. She didn't want to bring you to Merrimont. The earl had asked her to do that, remember? He would have accepted you as a daughter. That was the argument I overheard. He had long since forgiven her and wanted you to live with us. It was Mother who was opposed to the idea."

"So you asked her."

"In a manner of speaking."

India knew the boy he had been. The adder. He would have threatened his own mother. If the dowager was right, he had been moved to kill the man who had been for all intents his father. "That was the purpose for the teas at Merrimont," she said. "You wanted me there."

"Can you doubt it?"

"And when my parents died, you" She stopped abruptly, and her hand flew to her mouth. Above her finger-dps, India's eyes widened. "You set the fire. You were responsible for it just as you were at Ambermede." She turned to South, her eyes darkening with the horror of what she knew to be the truth. "He killed my parents," she said, her voice hollow. "South. He killed my parents."

"I know." Seeing that she would not move toward the door now, South went to her. "He couldn't let anyone else have you, India. Even then. It is a trait he shared with his father." Over the top of India's head, he watched the countess's features become still as stone. "Isn't that what you meant, my lady? Your son shared the same obsession with his sister that your brother shared with you."

The dowager's keening cry was abruptly cut short by the gold cord Margrave wound around her throat. He twisted it in his fist, garroting her. She clawed at her neck and kicked out behind her. Her struggle only tightened her son's hold. "Have a care, Mother. You'll hang yourself." The very calm of his voice set the countess on her feet. She gasped for breath, choking, and looked to India and South for rescue.

South put India to his side and slightly behind him. The fact that she accepted this place told him what he needed to know about the state of her own mind. This last revelation had left her reeling. He measured the distance to Margrave and calculated how much time he had before the earl strangled his own mother. "What do you want, Margrave?"

"I want to leave."

"Then go. But release the countess."

Margrave shook his head. "You'd never let me pass."

"I give you my word."

"Give me India."

"No."

"My feet are still bound. I need her to untie them."

"Release your mother, and your hands will be free to do the thing yourself."

Margrave's passionless eyes sought out India. "Come here."

She stayed her ground. "No."

He turned his fist so the cord was pulled taut and then ordered India a second time.

India hesitated, then a took a step, but it was in the direction of the door. "I'll open it for you," she said.

"South's offer is made in good faith." Before Margrave could call her back, she flew across the last few feet and flung the door open, then fairly vibrated with the shortness of her stop. "Oh! You!"

Somewhat guiltily the three men on the other side of the threshold straightened. They looked past India to survey the scuffling scene in the bedchamber. South had used the distraction to wrest Margrave's hold away from his mother. The countess was on her knees, her hands at her throat, while Margrave tried to tear away the forearm South pressed against his Adam's apple.

"It seems we missed our cue," North said amiably.

East stepped into the room."Indeed we did. Most unfortunate."

West made a show of sighing as he regarded his friend. "You really cannot expect that we shall always save you, South. Now. What is to be done?"

Like a golden serpent, the braided cord wound its way around India's neck. Flexing its muscles, it coiled tightly. With each undulating ripple and slither, it bit more deeply into her skin and finally closed her air passage. She opened her mouth to draw in a breath, but no part of it reached her lungs, and her scream was a silent one. The pressure created in her chest was unbearable. Her heart thudded loudly and made her deaf to every sound but the roar in her ears. There were jagged flashes of light at the back of her lids, all of them crimson now. She tore at her throat, gasping.

"India!"

She flinched from the weight on her shoulder, arching her back, then rolling onto her side. Still clawing and heaving for breath, India curled into a protective fetal position.

"India!"

The weight landed again, heavier this time, gripping and insistent. She could no longer throw it off, nor could she endure its prodding. Tears stung her eyes, and her throat swelled with an ache she could not swallow.

"India." Gently now, South pulled her toward him. His hand slid under hers, and he tugged at the flaxen braid curled around her neck. It slipped through her fingers, though not without effort. Her next breath was drawn harshly, and then there was a wrenching sob that tore at South's heart. He turned her into his chest and let her weep against his nightshirt. She lay with one arm flung across his abdomen and the other burrowed under his pillow. Her tears dampened the cool cotton comfort under her cheek. South untied the ribbon that held her thick plait together, and let his fingers unwind the platinum-and-gold cords of hair.

"India." He whispered her name this time. His breath lifted delicate strands of hair. He breathed in the scent of her. The fragrance of lavender salts from her bath still clung to her skin. There was the hint of womanly musk in the warmth of her body. He kissed the crown of her head. Her hair tickled his lips, and he pressed his small smile there. "A dream, India. It is naught but a dream."

She felt the heat of his arm across her back, proof of the security of his embrace. She needed it just nowespecially now, when the dark memories stole into her dreams and became nightmares. At first she had worried that he would grow weary of this disruption to his sleep, yet he had never once suggested an alternative to their arrangement. To be fair to him, India had broached the subject. Before she could finish laying out her proposal, South's arch look from under that single raised eyebrow made her fall silent She had not mentioned it again.

"They are fewer and farther between," South said. He pressed one corner of the sheet into her hand so that she might dry her eyes. "It has been more than six weeks since the last. Did you know that?"

She hadn't. Somewhat self-consciously she asked, "Do you keep an accounting?"

"India." His voice gently chided her. "Do you really think that?"

"No." Easing herself out of South's embrace, India sat up and leaned against the headboard. She wiped her eyes, then tucked the blankets around her. "It is just that it does not seem so long ago to me."

"I imagine not." He plumped a pillow under his head and turned on his side to see her better. She was already leaning toward the nightstand to light the lamp. Where once she had insisted upon the cover of darkness, India found in the aftermath of her nightmares that she wanted light. He waited for her to settle back before he spoke. "I remember the last time because Elizabeth and North had come calling in the afternoon. Remember? Elizabeth confided to you that she was pregnant."

"Yes." India recalled it quite well. It was impossible not to feel something wonderful in the wake of Elizabeth's joy. Northam had looked rather dazed by his good fortune, and South had had rather too much amusement at his expense. It had been a pleasant day passed in the company of friends, and India was unconvinced it lay at the root of her previous nightmare. "You do not think it was their visit that precipitated"

She stopped because South was shaking his head. "No," he said. "That is not what I think at all. It is merely that I recall they were here some six weeks ago. Have you forgotten it was also the same day a post from Lady Margrave arrived?"

India had forgotten that. It had come just as they were sitting down to tea. India had ignored it until later that evening, when she and South were once again alone. "There was a post from her ladyship today."

"I know." He could not fail to notice that India did not refer to the countess as her mother. It was still a difficult transition for her to make. South did not press her to think about it differently. If it were to happen at all, India would come upon acceptance in her own time. "Darrow told me."

She smiled faintly. "There is nothing that gets past him."

South's own grin was lopsided. "No. Nothing does."

India became quiet, thoughtful. Her brow creased. "Is it her missives, do you think?"

"Not precisely. More likely they simply cause you to reflect on all that has happened. You speak little of what she writes, and less of what you think of it. You would have me believe it does not distress you any longer; then you have the nightmares. It would seem that what you try to hide from me, you cannot hide from yourself."

She considered that"I am not certain I like you knowing me so very well."

Treading carefully, South said, "I assure you, I do not. Women, by their very nature, are unfathomable."

"What poppycock." India's lip curled in amused derision. "Did the marquess tell you that? Given the muddle East made of his odd engagement to Sophie, one can see how he might arrive at that conclusion. Simply because he did not have sense enough to understand what was before him, she must be incomprehensible. It is very badly done by men."

South laughed. "You have me there."

She ran her fingers through his thick hair and ruffled the strands at his nape. "Promise me there will be no repetition of such inane utterances."

"I swear it." He would no doubt have occasion to think it many times, but he would bloody his tongue before he said it aloud in India's presence. South took her hand and rubbed the pad of his thumb back and forth across her knuckles. "What did Lady Margrave write?"

India welcomed the light pressure of his hand against hers, the knowledge that she was not alone in this. "You would have it out of me, then? There is no moving you from the subject?"

"Is that what you wish?"

The choice was hers. He always gave her the choice. "No," she said at last."I want you to know. She has invited me again to Marlhaven."

"I see." He had suspected it might be something of that nature. "There were previous invitations?"

India nodded. "She extends it each time she writes. I am sorry I did not mention it before." She hesitated, worrying her lower lip. "I don't think I'm prepared to make that journey just yet."

"Did you believe I would press you to do otherwise?"

"No," she said quickly. "I knew you wouldn't. It's simply that telling you would have forced me to consider it more often. I wanted to put it from my mind, not examine it." India smiled ruefully. "But it seems that you are right. Putting it from my mind is not so easily accomplished. There are the nightmares to plague me." She touched her throat, rubbing the hollow lightly with her fingertips. "I dreamed Margrave was choking me. At first it was his mother that he had in his hands, just as he had her at Marlhaven, but this time there was no rescue. You did not come for me. Neither did your friends. He killed Lady Margrave and then he came for me."

South did not like to think how close they had come to just that end. That was the stuff his own nightmares were made of. He closed his eyes briefly, suppressing the shudder that India surely would have felt.

Enough time had passed that they were able to think more clearly abqut Margrave's obsession with India. It was neither love nor hatred that compelled him to take the actions he had, but rather a twisted combination of both those powerful emotions. He found himself at once drawn to her and repelled by his own desires. The fact that she was his sister only seemed to intensify his jealousy and possessiveness. There was no escaping the fact that if the truth of her parentage had been known by the late earl, India would have been publicly recognized as his daughter. Instead of Lady Margrave's pregnancy being concealed, it would have been celebrated.

India was heiress to a fortune.

It was not greed alone that tortured Margrave's heart and mind. He had never shown particular interest in the title or wealth that had been his. It was the fear that he might be exposed as a bastard that eroded rationality. From his early days at Hambrick Hall, when he witnessed how bastards like West were treated by the Society of Bishops, Margrave determined he would set himself apart from that stigma. Later, when he discovered that he was the offspring of an incestuous relationship, Margrave's fear turned to something, that was icy and forbidding, and India became the object of all that fascinated and frightened him.

There were no self-imposed limits for Allen Parrish, Earl of Margrave. There was nothing he would not do to secure his ends. With no moral compass to guide him, the law offered no deterrents. He existed for India, and in his confused mind she existed for no one but him.

His peculiar madness had allowed him to justify all that he had done. With the Compass Club, India, and his own mother for an audience, Margrave had offered a rambling, ranting confession. It was a disturbing soliloquy, even more difficult to listen to than it was to deliver. There was a certain relish in the earl's voice that made the hair stand up at the back of their necks.

First, there had been the fire. Killing India's parents had seemed a perfectly reasonable solution to the problem of how to bring her back to Merrimont and keep her there. He had not been able to anticipate the consequences of having India at the estate, or the trips she would make to Marlhaven. While he was away at Hambrick Hall, he imagined that she was becoming a favorite of his mother. More important to him was his growing suspicion that she might usurp his place with the earl. To prevent that from happening, Margrave determined that he would have to eliminate the man he now knew was not his father. Poison presented the simplest solution, just as Lady Margrave had come to believe.

The earl's death was meant to remove a rival, but it did not entirely provide the outcome Margrave had hoped for. He had not foreseen that his mother would send India away. He did the only thing he could: he followed her.

Margrave had described in detail how he had removed the lecherous Mr. Olmstead as an opponent by raising the height of the stone fence so that his mount could not make the jump. With Olmstead incapacitated, Margrave believed India would come back with him to Marlhaven. Instead, she ran to London.

He followed again, this time making himself necessary to the theatre company where she had found work. As Mrs. Garrety, he had entree into every aspect of India's life. It was he who insisted she take the name Parr because it was the diminutive of Parrish. As a secret benefactor of Kent's troupe, he was able to influence productions, locations, and India's progression from small roles to leading actress. Each time she tried to rebel or in any way end the arrangement, he manipulated her into staying with an attempt on his life.

Margrave had not understood how his mother had struck her own bargain with India. He never knew that in some ways he had become as much watched as he was the watcher. It was no easier for India to call a halt to her agreement with the countess than it was to finish with Margrave. She was too neatly caught.

For all that they knew about each other, there were aspects that were secret to both. During the earl's chilling recitation, it became clear to South that India was correct: Margrave had had no knowledge of her involvement with the colonel. That secrecy had been a death sentence for Mr. Kendall. Margrave could not imagine another reason Kendall was so often in the company of India, save that he desired her. With so many disguises at his disposal, and a gift for mimicry, it was Margrave who fashioned himself into the woman that Kendall met before his death. The earl retained wits about him enough to hire footpads to deal the fatal blows. In a similar fashion, he had dispatched Mr. Rutherford, removing the man's heart for no other reason than that it offended him.

About the assassination attempt on the Prince Regent, Margrave was less clear. He seemed to have difficulty collecting his thoughts, and the expression of them was sometimes incoherent. Listening to him, South had wondered cynically if the madness had taken control of Margrave or if Margrave controlled the madness.

In the end, they all heard enough to know that whatever was to be done about him required a private reckoning. It was not for the dowager countess's sake that this decision was reached, but rather for India's. A public accounting of the earl's crimes would have raised as many questions as it answered. Lord and Lady Macquey-Howell's marriage would have been exposed for the odd convenience that it was. That the object of the lady's love was another woman and not the Spanish consul would have provided a feeding frenzy for the ton . Better to let them scavenge for other food this season.

South saw that some color had returned to India's complexion. It was her eyes that remained as darkly troubled as the course of her thoughts. "What are you thinking?" he asked.

One corner of her mouth lifted slightly in a plaintive smile. There was no chance that she might prevaricate. He would have the answer from her and know if it was true or not. "The paintings," she said. "I was thinking about the paintings."