She sighed. Susannah had yet to meet a man in London she liked. The raffish Englishmen she’d known in India were very different, adventurous by nature, and not well suited for husbandhood. If pressed, she would have to count Carlyle among them.
She had not been quite sure then what he did to earn his living, and she still wasn’t sure. Her father had mentioned that the young officer had some connection to the East India Company, that he showed great promise, that he had an excellent head for business and was thoroughly trustworthy in all his dealings, but precisely who employed Carlyle Jameson or why was never made clear to her.
The details of the day she had met him-and all the time they had spent together-were still clear in her mind. By contrast, she had very little memory of the months after her father’s death, but perhaps that was to be expected. Yet Susannah knew her father would not have wanted her to mourn overlong-he had loved life and hoped she would find happiness.
Was it wrong to wonder if that might be found with Carlyle? She liked everything about him, including just looking at him. He had dark hair that was almost black and gray-green eyes; and he was strongly built and tall, far taller than many Englishmen in India, who seemed to wilt in the heat upon arrival and never recover. It might be said that he thought a trifle too highly of himself, but a single defeat at chess had curbed that tendency on the day they had met.
He had seemed so startled when she checkmated him. Susannah had explained her strategy, pointing to the chessboard.
“I placed my bishop here-and a knight there-so that you perceived an attack where there was none, Mr. Jameson. You wasted precious time and too many moves on an imaginary enemy. And so I conquered.”
He had given her a wry look that acknowledged as much, but he managed to smile at her. “Well done, Miss Fowler. You are a sly one.”
The remark had piqued her. “That is not a compliment.”
“It is the truth and the mischievous look in your eyes is proof enough.”
“Then I must accept it.” She’d packed away the chessmen in an ivory box, handling each piece with care. She looked up and caught him admiring her.
Carlyle cleared his throat, embarrassed. “Hmm. I would be happy to play once more. I thought I was rather good at the game.”
She’d inclined her head, twirling a wayward strand of dark brown hair around her finger. “You are. But I have had lessons from the maharajah’s teacher. The Indians invented chess, you know.”
He possessed some skill at the game, but he was too bold by nature to be brilliant at it, a sword-waving warrior rather than a strategist. Susannah smiled to herself. Boldness was a very appealing quality. And she hadn’t minded winning so often. She knew it was not because he let her.
Her father and his eccentric friends-a mélange of races-were nothing like Carlyle, preferring to sit and smoke cheroots and talk about old times. But the newly arrived Englishman preferred to ride and shoot and charge around in the open air, seeming to sit down only when he wanted to recount his adventures or challenge her good-humoredly to another match or simply to listen to her talk.
His company was a very great pleasure. They often went into her favorite haunt, the maharajah’s library, when he sought to find out something about the land he had come to. Perhaps that had been only a pretext for getting to know her. It had worked.
Susannah had instructed him in all things Indian, naively not realizing that he was just as interested in how she looked by moonlight as he was in evening ragas…until that moment she had wanted him to kiss her.
She liked to think that he had somehow planted the suggestion in her mind. After all, he was handsome and gallant, and love was a game he could very well beat her at, especially when he was the only Englishman around. He had competition here in London-of a sort. The men she had been introduced to thus far were extremely dull by comparison.
At least she could choose, unlike an Indian bride. It was unfortunate that none of the possible candidates had interested her. But she had been polite, exceedingly so, to all of them.
Susannah stifled a yawn. Eventually she would marry. Women did. But she hoped she would not end up with a husband like the fellow occupying the seat next to hers in the theater box tonight, an acquaintance of Susannah’s half-aunt. He had dozed off before the second act. She and Mrs. Posey left early.
The prospect of attending an unending series of social occasions with her elderly chaperone was not a pleasant one. Susannah frowned. Mrs. Posey exhorted her to think of her future-but did that mean becoming the wife of a man she could never love? To be truthful, she doubted that she could find one who would love her.
She sensed the disapproval in the whispered comments about her “background,” as her life in India was referred to by the more narrow-minded. Some seemed to regard her as positively exotic, though she looked as English as any of them. And it had been a rude shock to find out that an excellent education was considered a drawback in a woman.
It occurred to her that her father would have told them all to go to the devil. She might just do the same some day, given a cup of strong punch. Carlyle would laugh, she knew. Oh dear. Why had her father not simply left instructions that she was to marry him? She supposed he was penniless. That was why second sons got packed off to places like Rajasthan.
Still, it was Carlyle she hoped would come to call, his boots she wanted to hear upon the stone steps of the town-house in Albion Square, his face smiling down at her that she wished to see.
He continued to keep a courteous distance, though, which discouraged her. Susannah frowned, not wanting to think about it. She attacked the clutter upon the dressing table, tucking engraved invitations back into the mirror frame, putting her brush and comb back on their silver tray, and capping the jar of sweet-smelling powder. She collected her hairpins and put them in a china dish, then looked about for something more useful to do.
There was the corset. There was no reason for Lakshmi to fret over such a minor repair. Susannah could sew the pearls on just as well.
She rose and got her sewing basket from inside the wardrobe, taking out a shawl to cover her bare shoulders too. Wrapping it carelessly around herself, Susannah looked in the sewing basket for her half-spectacles, which she put on, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror again.
Fie. She looked like an old maid. She pouted in a way that would have amused her father, and picked up the corset from the chest of drawers.
Once settled in the armchair, a small pair of scissors in her other hand, she looked for the pearls that hung by a thread and found them. She could not decide whether to snip the thread or save it, and while she was thinking, accidentally jabbed the sharp point of the scissors into one padded rib of the corset.
A flash of dark red made her suck in a breath, thinking she had cut herself without knowing it. She squinted at her thumb. She hadn’t. She squinted at the corset. But she had-there was a drop of dark red blood. Yet the pink silk was not stained by it, which was odd. She touched the drop and realized that it was hard.
Very odd.
Susannah sat up straight and the shawl fell off her shoulders without her noticing it. She squeezed the slash in the silk. A ruby popped out and fell in her lap, glowing red against the white material of her petticoat.
What on earth…? She ran a fingernail along the rib. Another ruby fell out, then another. When she was done, there were twenty in all. She left them in her lap and held up the corset to count the ribs. There were ten on each side of the front hooks. Now that she had emptied one rib, the others felt suspiciously stiff.