Star of the East: A Lady Emily Christmas Story Page 5

  “Correct though that may be—and I assure you I am not arguing the point—I would not take one without the other. Had I stolen the bangle and returned the diamond, if something bad ever did happen to someone who decided to flaunt tradition and wear the diamond alone, I should blame myself, even if it is irrational, and I believe that most people would feel the same.”

  “So you believe whoever took the jewels was unaware of the curse?”

  “I do, and, as I said before, I think he—or she—returned the diamond hoping that no one would care about the still missing bangle.”

  “It is a fair theory,” Colin said, “but misses one point. No one in this house was unaware of the curse.”

  “Lady Emily?” A housemaid poked her head into the room. “There is a Mr. Capet here to see you.”

  “Capet?” Colin asked. “Sebastian Capet?”

  “I don’t know, sir, would you like me to inquire?” the maid asked.

  “No, no,” he said. “Lady Emily will be right down.”

  “How on earth did he manage … ?” My voice trailed. Colin had agreed that sending an advertisement to The Times was the best way to contact our friend, but neither of us could comprehend why he would have arrived at Darnley House before the notice would have appeared in the paper.

  “Unless, of course, he has had his eye on the maharaja’s jewels from the time the boat docked in Southampton,” I said, as we made our way to—oddly enough—the ballroom, where we found Sebastian holding court. How he had managed to persuade my mother that this was an appropriate place for drinks before dinner I could not imagine, and I would prefer not to inquire. He was fawning over her, making a disgusting spectacle of himself.

  “I expected to see you wearing a beard,” I said, looking critically at his clean-shaven face.

  He took a step back from me and grimaced. “A beard? I understand that you do not admire beards, my darling Emily, and I should never want to do anything to lower the esteem in which you hold me,” he said, making a great show of kissing my hand.

  “I do not think it would be possible for such a thing to occur,” I said. “One can only go so low, Mr. Capet.”

  “Do not force me to beg you to once again use my given name. You are not so cruel, are you?”

  “Why did you not tell me you have such a charming friend, Emily?” my mother asked. “Mr. Capet is quite a connoisseur of art and is desperate to see my murals.”

  “Your mother was kind enough to open the room for me,” Sebastian said, “and even more kind not to object when I suggested we have champagne while we view them.”

  “Mr. Capet tells me he has never seen their equal, even in Italy,” my mother said. The murals in the alcoves of the ballroom at Darnley House were, so far as I could tell, competent enough but largely unremarkable. I looked around the room, trying to determine what Sebastian actually wanted to see. Surely he would not attempt to steal the Murano chandeliers?

  “I was hoping, Mother, that I might speak to Mr. Capet privately, just for a moment. You will excuse us?” I smiled sweetly as I led him to the far corner of the room, my heels echoing in the empty space. “What, exactly, are you doing?”

  “I expected a kinder greeting, Emily. It was you who reached out to me.”

  “Via an ad that has not yet run in the newspaper.”

  “I have a friend at The Times who gets in touch whenever someone places a classified with any of the words in ancient Greek.”

  “Does this happen often?”

  “More than you would think,” he said. “I fear we are not the only ones who rely on the language of Homer to communicate our true feelings.”

  “I had hoped you would not misinterpret the passage,” I said. “Fly for me, O gnat, a swift messenger.”

  “I knew you were not suggesting I am a gnat, and I do know the rest of the verse: one awaits thee waking; and thou sleepest, O oblivious of thy lovers.”

  “I did mean to suggest, Sebastian, that you are the gnat.”

  “I am the gnat?”

  “Yes.”

  “I shall consider it a term of affection and adopt the gnat as my standard.” He tapped his long fingers against his cheek. “I wonder if Garrard could do me a diamond cravat pin in the form of a gnat. It could look rather elegant, so long as it was done in a size larger than life.”

  “Enough,” I said. “What do you know about the missing jewels?”

  “What missing jewels?” he asked.

  I sighed. “Please do not trifle with me.” I met his eyes directly. “If you have ever cared for me in the least, do not trifle with me.”

  “I was able to wriggle very little out of your mother’s footman. Something has been stolen?”

  I explained as quickly as possible. Sebastian made no attempt to conceal his mirth at the situation. “What a missed opportunity! If only I had known. I should never have returned the Star of the East, cursed or not. What sort of a fool would do such a thing?”

  “Do you swear on whatever it is you find sacred that you had nothing to do with this?” I asked.

  “Emily, it is perfectly clear that the maharaja and his family ought to have the tika. I feel no need to liberate it from them. Only someone who truly appreciates an object would insist on keeping it even after the power of its curse has been demonstrated. It makes me rather fond of the old boy, if you must know. I do hope his son proves to be a worthy successor.”

  “Were you following the maharaja? Wearing a saffron-colored turban?”

  “No, but it slays me to not be able to claim the idea. Brilliant. I shall reserve it for future use.”

  “Do be serious, Sebastian,” I said. “Can you offer me any assistance in this matter?”

  “You’ve a motley crew of suspects,” he said. “Are you quite sure your mother isn’t behind it all? She’s rather wily.”

  “She is mortified that it occurred in her house.”

  “I should have thought she would be angry,” Sebastian said. It was almost as if he knew her.

  “She was,” I said, “but the feeling passed.”

  “I shall do whatever I can to assist you, Emily. It is cruel to render the diamond unwearable, quite against everything for which I stand. You have, I presumed, questioned the staff at length?”

  “Of course. We don’t suspect any of them, not really, and no one admits to having seen someone enter either Sunita’s room to get the jewels or mine, to leave the tika.”

  “I would expect nothing else. Your mother is something of a dragon, from what I can tell. If you worked for her, would you admit to having seen anything out of the ordinary? I should be in mortal fear of being flung from the house without a character.”

  “I agree,” I said. “I did all I could to assure them that Colin and I—”

  “You and your oh-so-devoted husband can offer them nothing. They may prefer you to your mother, but they work for her, and you are her daughter. You have no authority when it comes to their situations. Let me cast my spell over them all. I will find out whatever it is you cannot.”

  “Thank you.” I sighed. “I am in your debt.”

  “I would have it no other way. Your husband is beginning to glare at me so I had better return you to him before he challenges me to a duel. Such a thing would be tedious in the snow and regardless, I object to firing pistols on Wednesdays.”

  Dinner that evening was an extraordinary affair. Sebastian doted on my mother, ignored the maharini, and rose from his chair halfway through the meal to announce that he had it on good authority that Sunita was the most beautiful girl on earth. When the ladies retired to the drawing room, I made the excuse of having a headache, and went upstairs, where I followed the corridors that would lead me to the Blue Room rather than my own. Sally was there, turning down the bed and preparing Sunita’s nightclothes.

  “Do you need something, milady?” she asked.

  “Are you planning to light the fire?” I asked, noticing the chill in the room.

  “No, the princess
said she prefers the room cold when she sleeps.”

  I poked at the ashes in the hearth. “I am hoping our thief has left some clue as to his identity.”

  “His identity?” Sally asked. “So you are certain it was a bloke who did it?”

  “Not necessarily. I chose the pronoun not for its specificity but for the sake of simplicity.”

  “You’ve right lost me, milady.”

  “That’s fine, Sally. Don’t let me distract you.” There were the charred remains of burnt paper in the fireplace, and I knew they would not have been left from before Sunita occupied the room. My mother would never have allowed it. I fished them from the ashes and inspected them. Only one bore the remains of writing, and what was left was too little to decipher at all. I could not make out a single letter. I folded them carefully into my handkerchief on the off chance they might prove useful later, and went into the dressing room.

  Sunita’s luggage had been neatly stacked in one corner, and her gowns hung in the armoire. I hated to think how long it must have taken Sally to iron them after Sunita had trampled them on the floor. Her jewelry, all of it in beautifully carved wooden cases, was out on the dressing table. I opened each of them, astonished by what I found inside. The maharaja had spared no expense to see his daughter bejeweled. Many of the pieces, covered with rubies and emeralds, appeared to be antique, but there were at least six items that had to have been recently made, as they were in the style currently favored by society debutantes.

  “Has the princess received any messages during her stay?” I asked, returning to the bedroom, where Sally was smoothing the duvet.

  “Not that I am aware of, milady.”

  I wanted to question her further, to ask her if she—or any of the other servants—had seen someone in the corridor the previous evening, but I believed Sebastian to have been correct in his observation that, no matter what my intentions, my mother’s servants were unlikely to be candid with me. I had best leave that to Sebastian. Sunita had not brought any books with her, but she had left, on the small writing table near the window, a stack of envelopes. Two were addressed to her younger sisters in India, one was to a dressmaker, and the last to a Miss Dorothea Beale in Cheltenham. There was nothing else of note to be found.

  Always careful to preserve propriety, my mother had put the gentlemen as far as possible from the Blue Room. I followed two corridors to Ranjit’s room, which was in a state of some disarray. A deck of cards lay scattered and abandoned on a table, a pair of gloves dangled on the edge of a chair, and a haphazard pile of books rested on the floor in the corner. The prince’s taste in reading was eclectic—he had two volumes of the history of the natural sciences, a copy of Darwin’s Origin of the Species, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and a well-battered copy of Chamber’s Descriptive Astronomy that had been purchased secondhand from Mudie’s Select Library in London. In the dressing room, flung on the floor, was a long piece of scarlet cloth. I assumed this to be the sad remains of the turban he had worn the previous evening.

  Ned Drayton occupied the room across from Ranjit, and appeared, in all ways, to be much neater than his friend. He had been wearing his evening shoes at dinner, of course, but the only other footwear in his dressing room was a pair of boots that showed signs of hard wear on the soles. His clothes were all fashionable enough, but two of his jackets had been mended. On the bedside table were two volumes of Rudyard Kipling’s short stories, Plain Tales from the Hills and The Phantom ’Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales, both from my father’s library. Inside the former was a scrap of paper with a list of names (Anne, Hugo, Hilda, and Margaret) that appeared to have been used as a bookmark, but whether Ned, my father, or some other person altogether had placed it there was impossible to say. There were no other books, papers, or correspondence to be found in the room.

  Back in the corridor, I started in the direction of the rooms my mother had assigned to the maharaja and maharini. I hesitated, feeling that I ought not search them. I could not in good faith say that I suspected either of them in the theft, and it felt too much like spying on my own parents. Invading either of their rooms was, so far as I was concerned, absolutely out of the question.

  Footsteps on the stairs told me that I was not the only one of our group to have decided to retire early, so I slipped into the Chinese Bedroom before anyone saw me, my heart pounding as I considered how easily I might have been caught somewhere I ought not have been. The menacing Chinaman on the wallpaper scowled at me and I felt a sense of general unease. In another moment, I heard someone directly outside the door, and my heart raced even more. When it opened to reveal my husband, I all but collapsed in a fit of relieved laughter.

  “Good heavens,” he said. “I did not believe for a moment that you had gone upstairs with a headache, but you do look a fright. Are you quite well?”

  “I have been skulking about everyone’s rooms and feel very much like I did when I lived in this house—constantly on the verge of finding myself in very deep trouble and disgrace.”

  “Anything worth finding?” he asked, slipping off his jacket and hanging it over the back of a chair.

  “I have not yet decided,” I said. “What about you? Was the talk over port of any use?”

  “Other than it having the effect of making me very much want to throttle Capet, no, but I don’t know that I can credit the emotion to the conversation. I have never been overly fond of the man. Has he left you any roses yet?”

  “No. Perhaps I have fallen in his esteem.”

  “We should be so lucky. Or rather I should be so lucky. You might enjoy the attention.”

  “It does seem to have the effect of keeping you on your toes,” I said.

  “Do you like that?” He reached up and starting removing my hairpins.

  “In fact, I do.”

  I draw a veil over the remainder of the evening as it bears no importance to the narrative at hand. Suffice it to say I consider myself extremely fortunate in my choice of spouse.

  * * *

  I cannot account for the clarity of mind that I awoke with the following morning. Perhaps it was due to the peace that came from nearly eighteen hours without Henry having caused a commotion in the house. Or perhaps it was the shot of excitement I felt when I threw open the curtains to find a fresh, bright layer of snow covering the ground. Or perhaps it was an unanticipated effect of my husband’s vigorous demonstration of his affection for me the night before. Regardless, I descended to breakfast confident that I would soon be able to reveal the identity of the thief in our midst—other than Sebastian, of course.

  There was only one remaining difficulty: I had not the slightest idea as to what had become of the gold bangle. Two difficulties, now that I thought about it. My evidence was slight at best, and based more on intuition than fact.

  Sunita looked rather sullen as she poked her fork at a plate of eggs. Ned had brought down with him the copy of The Phantom ’Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales, and was reading it quietly while he munched on toast spread with a rather astonishing quantity of orange marmalade. I wondered if he had transferred the paper I seen in Plain Tales from the Hills. If so, it might suggest that the list was his, not something left in the volume by another reader.

  “That is one of my favorite books,” I said to him. “May I take a look? I get chills whenever I think of Mrs. Wessington’s rickshaw. I don’t think I could ever ride in one without picturing her ghost.” He passed me the volume and I flipped through it, ostensibly searching for a passage. “Here,” I read, “The presence of the ’rickshaw filled me by turns with horror, blind fear, a dim sort of pleasure, and utter despair. I dared not leave Simla; and I knew that my stay there was killing me. I knew, moreover, that it was my destiny to die slowly and a little every day. Does it not give you the most delicious shivers?” I dropped the book on the floor and took the opportunity to flip through it while I was crouched down picking it up. There, twenty odd pages in, was the scrap of paper. I shoved it back inside and handed the volume bac
k to him. “I do hope I haven’t lost your place.”

  “No, the bookmark is still here,” he said, no hint of concern in his voice. “They are marvelous stories, aren’t they? Your father and I were up long after midnight talking about them.”

  “He adores Kipling,” I said, removing a plate from a stack on the sideboard and filling it with sausage and eggs before accepting a steaming cup of tea from a footman.

  “I have never read him,” Sunita volunteered, still moving the food around on her plate without ever putting any on her fork.

  “I think you would enjoy it,” I said.

  “I shall give it a try,” she said. “Do I hear your mother coming?”

  “You do, and Mr. Capet is with her. His voice is unmistakable,” I said a moment before he flung open the door and bowed as she entered the room in front of him.

  “Emily, Emily, I am thoroughly out of sorts with you,” Sebastian said, waving off the footman and his tea and refusing to so much as look at the food on the sideboard. He was wearing a scarlet turban, clearly fashioned from the cloth I had seen the previous evening in Ranjit’s room. “How is it that you have kept me from your charming mother all of these years?”

  “Mr. Capet, you are a dreadful cad,” my mother teased.

  “You have no idea.” I gritted my teeth.

  “Do come take a turn with me, Emily. I have some very stern words for you.” Sebastian wrenched me from my seat without giving me the chance to reply. I did not protest, as I suspected this was nothing more than a ridiculous and unnecessary ploy to get me alone so that he could tell me what he learned when he spoke with the servants.

  “There is no need to be so rough,” I said, pulling my arm away once we had reached the music room, far across the house from where the others were breakfasting.

  “I did not mean to hurt you,” he said, his voice soft. “I have a tendency to get carried away when I take on a role. Will you forgive me?”

  “It is of no consequence,” I said. “Please tell me you got something of use from the servants.”

  “I do believe that I have convinced at least two of the footmen that they ought to read Karl Marx. His views on the bourgeoisie ought to resonate with them after having worked for your mother.”