Defiant Captive Page 35

  "May I return the compliment, My Lord Marquess. The duke will be very proud of you."

  "The duke is very proud of him," Hawke corrected from the doorway. His broad shoulders filled his impeccably tailored blue jacket, which he wore over a waistcoat of silver brocade. Elegantly severe black pants molded his powerful legs and disappeared into burnished boots.

  The shimmering silver garment matched his eyes, Alexandra thought numbly, as her own gown did.

  Hawke's face was dark and shuttered as he crossed the room to her and pulled from his pocket a leather box. "For you," he said coldly.

  Alexandra's fingers were stiff as she opened the long burgundy rectangle embossed with the Hawkesworth coat of arms — a rampant lion beneath a soaring hawk. How appropriate, she thought bitterly. Inside the box a necklace of diamonds and shimmering square-cut emeralds winked against black velvet. "It is beautiful, Your Grace," she said tonelessly. "But of course I could not wear it." She made to return the precious necklace, but Hawke's fingers tightened on her wrist.

  "Hadn't you better go and ask Hadley about those ices, Robbie?" Hawke reminded his son. A moment later, he and Alexandra were alone.

  Hawke's eyes scrutinized Alexandra's pale face. Soundlessly, he walked behind her and lifted the necklace to her skin. "Ah, but it is entirely unexceptionable — for the woman who is to become my wife."

  Alexandra watched frozen as their reflections merged in the mirror, silver fusing with silver, fathomless gray eyes probing luminous aquamarine. Hawkesworth's fingers brushed her collarbone, and she flinched at their cold strength.

  His eyes mocked her. "Yes, we'll make our happy announcement soon," he said in a voice harsh with sarcasm. "And then we return to Sussex. Robbie's been plaguing me for the pony I promised him, and several other matters in the country require my attention." He studied her reflection in the cheval glass, waiting for a protest that never came.

  She was achingly beautiful tonight, Hawke thought. There was a strange fragile radiance about her, almost like perfect crystal that could be shattered with one careless gesture. No, that was a rare joke, he thought. She was a diamond, rather, that would leave its hard mark on any other substance. "What, no protest?" he taunted.

  The cold weight of the necklace fell against Alexandra's skin, and she shuddered. His eyes scrutinized her face, and she forced herself to respond with the careless cruelty he expected of her. "Yes, by all means — let us be away from London. I should not like to be seen with my figure spoiled."

  His eyes flashed, and she knew she had angered him. With a mocking smile Alexandra held out her hand.

  With arms touching but hearts far apart they walked together down the corridor to the wide spiral staircase.

  Below, the knocker echoed loudly in the entrance foyer. Their dinner guests had begun to arrive.

  * * * * *

  The evening commenced with all the success that was due a duke. Robbie acquitted himself well, and even the prime minister pronounced himself impressed with the lad's aplomb. At the last stroke of nine Hadley showed the guests into the formal dining room, lit with winking candles. They sat down surrounded by tulips in white porcelain bowls, and soon their careless laughter swelled up to the high, vaulted ceiling.

  The first course began with turtle soup and a savory cream of almond soup, followed by salmon, crimped cod, and matelote of carp. In keeping with the increasingly popular French style of service, there were two removes — a saddle of mutton and turkey in a curried sauce (at which the excitable French chef had nearly balked) — followed by entrees of lobster patties, turban of fillets of rabbit, dressed quails, and roast pigeons.

  Lady Liverpool and Lady Wallingford made discreet but steady inroads upon the lobster patties and washed them down with liberal drafts of champagne. Hawke's deaf aunt, Lady Babbington, ate little and spoke less. The almond soup was well received, the curry sauce was pronounced a novelty, and the roast pigeons accounted perfectly succulent.

  All in all, the evening looked as if it would be a great success. Alexandra let herself slip into numbness. The liveried footmen had just arrived with the second course — pheasant, apple suedois, and lemon souffle — when Hadley announced a late arrival.

  "Sir Stanford Raffles," the butler intoned gravely, with just a trace of censure for this example of tardiness.

  Alexandra started and half rose from her chair. Hawke had not told her that her father's friend was to be among their guests!

  But no one noticed her reaction, their attention focused on the handsome intelligent face of the recently knighted Raffles, who could be expected to delight them with tales of his ten years in the Orient. His stories of the peculiar native customs, the strange flora and fauna, and the mysterious statues hidden in the jungles of Jokyakarta were the stuff of which great dinner parties were made.

  Unnoticed, Alexandra slid back into her chair, her heart drumming painfully, as Sir Stanford apologized gracefully for his tardiness. He had been detained at Carlton House in an interview with the prince regent. Nothing less could have kept him so long, he vowed warmly. He only hoped the Duke of Hawkesworth and his guests would forgive him.

  No matter, Hawke said carelessly. He was only happy that his distinguished guest could accept on such short notice. They had just begun the second course and the evening was still before them. Was Sir Stanford acquainted with the other guests?

  In a blur Alexandra heard the polite words spoken. White faced, she waited for the moment when her friend would recognize her.

  "Lord and Lady Liverpool you know, of course. Lady Wallingford and her charming daughter. The Wallingford lands march next to mine in Sussex. My friend Morland you must remember as well — his reputation makes him difficult to forget." Everyone laughed, well entertained by Hawke's lazy charm. Everyone but Alexandra. "I fancy you haven't forgotten George Canning, either. He is very taken with your ideas on the course we ought to steer in the East, particularly now that Java is to be returned to the Dutch. But I think you have not met —"

  "No, you do not know me, Sir Stanford," Alexandra interrupted, laughing brightly — too brightly, "but I must avow myself thrilled to meet you at last. I am delighted for the chance to hear your descriptions of Java. In fact, I hope I might engage you in discussion about several points of interest of my own."

  Sir Stanford's eyebrows rose sharply and he bowed, carefully concealing his surprise at seeing the daughter of an old friend profess to be a stranger. "With the very greatest pleasure. But I'm afraid I did not grasp your name."

  "Miss Mayfield," Hawke interrupted coolly.

  "Miss Mayfield," Sir Stanford repeated, his eyebrow raised fractionally. "I look forward to answering any questions you might have. Perhaps later you might even answer a few of my own."

  "Is it true you sent Princess Charlotte those charming ponies for her phaeton, Sir Stanford?" Lady Wallingford began breathlessly. "And that you've brought a Malay servant with you, along with all manner of Javanese treasures? Some two hundred cases?"

  "Quite true, Lady Wallingford. It would be criminal to deny to the English public the beauty that I discovered far across that vast waste of seas, where English sovereignty yet burns so brightly."

  Lord Liverpool nodded and his wife smiled complacently over her laden plate. It appeared that the prime minister had forgotten his disagreement about Raines's assessment of the Crown's proper policy in the Orient.

  "Well, Sir Stanford," George Canning said briskly, "your labors in Java alone would entitle you to a knighthood, even had you not enhanced them with this monumental two-volume History of Java. The prince regent seems delighted with the work — so much so that he actually appears to have exerted himself to read some of it."

  "It is a small enough contribution on my part," the diplomat said with quiet dignity. "We have yet a great deal to learn about the East, but if we gain such knowledge we will be greatly rewarded in future decades."

  "Is it true you barely escaped slaughter at the hands of a heathen sultan?"
Lady Wallingford demanded, in one of her grating shifts of subject.

  Raffles laughed dryly. "The Sultan of Jokyakarta and I had a — shall we say — minor disagreement about protocol, Lady Wallingford. Fortunately, we were able to resolve the problem amicably."

  "That's not the story I heard," Canning interrupted with a booming laugh. "One false step, and his soldiers would have cut your head off and fed it to the wild pigs, or so the dispatches to the board of control read. No need to disparage your contributions, Sir Stanford. God knows, we do quite enough of that back here in London."

  Raffles's face became thoughtful. "In the East life is very different, you know — different almost beyond belief unless one has lived there. In the Orient such a thing as the placement of a chair or the degree of one's bow may make the difference between courtesy and the grossest disrespect. Sometimes it is difficult for those accustomed to the rational and enlightened behavior of London to understand those idiosyncrasies."

  Hawkesworth's eyes were drawn to Alexandra's face. She was very pale, he noticed, her pallor sharpened by the emeralds flashing around her neck.

  "With all due respect, Sir Stanford," the prime minister countered, "you must recognize that we hold the larger picture back here in London, and we are unswayed by local prejudices. Yes, we're the ones best equipped to make decisions that affect more than one region or even one country. Just take this wretched business in Vellore, for example."

  Raffles's eyes darted toward Alexandra, who had meticulously replaced her silver upon her plate. Hawkesworth felt a sudden prickling along his spine, a sort of primitive intuition of danger.

  "On July 10, 1806," the prime minister began dramatically, "the sepoys — that's the name for the native troops in India," he explained, with a condescending smile for the ladies at the table — "took it into their heads to revolt. In the early hours of the morning they captured the weapons stores at Vellore and attacked our forces, who were outnumbered five to one. Over 250 Europeans were slaughtered that night, slaughtered in cold blood before a detachment of cavalry could be summoned from Arcot to put down the revolt."

  An uncomfortable hush fell upon the table.

  "At the time there was considerable disagreement about the cause of that revolt, Liverpool," Hawke said, a sudden tension in his voice. "Some felt that the orders upon the commander-in-chief and the governor-general were too strict. After all, the country is barely emerging from the Middle Ages."

  "Nonsense!" the prime minister announced dismissively. "You assented in the final decision, Hawkesworth. Your name was on the board's letter of recall, right alongside Canning's. Our instructions to Lord Maitland had been quite clear. He chose to ignore them, to his misfortune, and he was recalled in disgrace for that refusal — and the slaughter that attended it. We must have conformity among our troops, and they must be brought up to the high standards we set back home. If they don't care to shave their beards or remove their marks of caste," the white-haired official announced angrily, crashing a fist down upon the table for emphasis, "why then, they must be stripped of their rank and drummed out of our regiments, by God!"

  An uncomfortable silence blanketed the room in the wake of Lord Liverpool's outburst. Alexandra sat up very straight in her chair, ignoring the wild drumming in her head.

  "Did you know," she said quietly, "that the sepoys in India are paid only one-sixth the wage of our British troops there?"

  "They probably don't deserve even that," Lady Wallingford said with a disapproving sniff.

  "Did you also know," Alexandra continued, ignoring the laughter Lady Wallingford's comment had provoked, "the sepoys spit in the dust when a British officer passes? That they salute with their left hands — a mark of gravest insult? Perhaps you want to know what they say at night when they camp around their fires. Kabhi sukh aur kabhi dukh; Angrez ka naukar. 'Sometimes pleasure,' " she translated slowly and clearly, " 'sometimes pain — to be in the service of the English.' How could it not be so, when our officials ignore the fact that the sepoys are as different from each other as they are from any European?"

  Hawke was gripped by a frozen sense of inevitability, watching that perfect crystal facade shatter into a thousand pieces.

  "Jats and Sikhs may drink from a water vessel of skin," Alexandra continued, her eyes dark and shimmering, "while Rajputs and Dogras require water vessels of brass. Brahman soldiers require food prepared by a Brahman cook, lest they be profaned by the meal. The Muslim may eat beef but not pork. The Hindu may eat pork (if it is not the meat of a female pig), but not the flesh of the cow. This made even the Duke of Wellington despair of ever organizing a system of supply in India. Yet Lord Maitland was expected to enforce a system of English rules in complete disregard for the ancient customs and religious practices of the country."

  "Are you saying that the Vellore decision was unjust, Miss Mayfield?" the prime minister asked stiffly.

  "I am saying that the decision was both unjust and uninformed — nay, unpardonable!"

  Alexandra looked at her hated enemy and she saw him as if through a tunnel, everything to right and left a blur. His face was expressionless — only his glittering eyes hinted at his fight to control his anger.

  "It was a policy," she continued, ignoring the silver sparks flashing from Hawke's eyes, "made by men who were lamentably ignorant of the real situation in India, men who seemed almost proud to preserve their ignorance. I am saying," she said, rising white faced from her chair, a fierce fire in her eyes, "that Lord Maitland was ordered to do the impossible, and that innocent men died because of the intransigence and carelessness of well-fed bureaucrats back here in London!" Her heart was pounding as she saw Hawke's lips twist in fury. She turned to the prime minister. "I am also telling you, Lord Liverpool, that this was not the first time a sepoy regiment has mutinied — nor will it be the last! And now I'm sure you will excuse me."

  Raising a trembling hand to her mouth, Alexandra slipped from her chair and ran from the room. Her limp was pronounced as her kid slippers clicked loudly in the tense silence that gripped the room in her wake.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  "By God—" the prime minister announced angrily, but his wife's hand upon his arm silenced him in midsentence.

  "I beg Your Grace's indulgence," Sir Stanford said gravely, studying Hawkesworth's hard face. "Miss Mayfield, so I understand, has particular ties to India, where she was long resident. This must explain her emotion in this matter. I am sure the prime minister, too, being a man of broad experience and tolerance" — Raffles nodded gravely toward the mottled face of Lord Liverpool — "will be indulgent enough to overlook her outburst. For my part, I would beg a word with Miss Mayfield. I fancy, as a fellow Resident of the Orient, I might be of assistance to her in her distress."

  The duke looked at Raffles's troubled face, seeing the grave features move but hearing nothing. Hawke's blood was pounding too fiercely, and savage anger coursed through him with each surge of his heart.

  She had dared to do such a thing! By God, if he weren't so furious, he might almost laugh at her boldness. As it was, Hawke burned to run her down like a small animal, crushing her fragile frame within his hands.

  But he did not, because the very ferocity of his feelings frightened him. And he had guests to mollify, powerful guests. So Hawke sat immobile in his chair, the vein pounding at his temple the only sign of his rage.

  For thirty-eight years the Duke of Hawkesworth had been trained by the most exacting of masters to conceal his feelings. Parents, tutors, and peers had conspired to teach him this hard lesson, and he had learned it so well that he sometimes wondered if he had lost his emotions altogether. Sometimes, clasped rigid in passion against an anonymous female form, he felt as if he had lost the better part of his soul somewhere along that long, treacherous journey to manhood.

  And now one slip of a green girl — one fragile, stubborn, exquisite creature with a frail ankle — had managed to strip away his hard-won facade and probe the raw, wounded heart ben
eath.

  Rage consumed him for a moment, and his fingers trembled against the fragile crystal anchored in his hands.

  But Hawke was still the man his past had made him. Because of that past he did none of the things he was burning to do. Instead, he reached slowly for the champagne bottle that a startled footman had left on the table during Alexandra's outburst. Very carefully, he tipped the sparkling liquid into his goblet.

  The uneasy silence around him finally jerked Hawke from his fierce interior landscape, and he realized that Sir Stanford had spoken to him.

  About what, Hawke had not the faintest idea, for he'd heard nothing that his guest had said. Since he couldn't very well ask the man to repeat his question, Hawkesworth merely nodded curtly. The duke admired Raffles's sangfroid at such a time as this. The man was a born diplomat, Hawkesworth thought. He would go very far indeed.

  Silently, Raffles rose and walked from the room. His departure rekindled the spellbound group around the table.

  "Whatever can have gotten into the girl?" Lady Wallingford demanded of no one in particular. "Perhaps the unwholesome air of that heathen country. Dr. Sudbury told me —"

  "Not now, Mama," her daughter cut her off sharply.

  "Well, really," the older Wallingford began pettishly, but one look at her daughter's face silenced her.

  Miss Wallingford, meanwhile, was watching the Duke of Hawkesworth refill his champagne glass for the third time. Smoothly, he tipped the crystal goblet and emptied it, only to reach out and pour himself another. In the candlelight the angular lines of his face were very harsh.

  Miss Wallingford's eyes narrowed fractionally. "It is a shame to spoil a wonderful evening, Your Grace," she said. "Shall you not proceed? I am persuaded that Miss Mayfield would want you to."

  "Quite right," Hawke drawled. His face was carefully expressionless as he nodded to the liveried servant who stood nearby. "The dinner must go on — you are entirely correct. And now, Canning," Hawke said, turning indolently to the man seated beside Miss Wallingford, "tell me, can this news that Byron's wife is seeking a medical statement concerning his sanity possibly be true?" His voice was lazy with amusement as he wove a spell over them all, leading them to forget the scene that had just transpired. "What can the woman's aunt, Lady Melbourne, be about to countenance such a thing? No doctor's report can be more damning than Caro Lamb's, at any rate. One hears she is even now readying a literary account of their affair. For his part, poor Byron places little store upon the success of her characterization. 'The picture can't be good,' so he told me only several weeks past, 'for I did not sit for it long enough.' "