Lying low had seemed the best thing to do. Lakshmi had hidden the corset in yet another place, but it seemed that Susannah had found it somehow, put it on, and liked the way she looked. So had he. His groin ached with the memory.
But she had that effect on him anyway, quite without trying.
Passing by earlier in the day he’d found Susannah poised on the doorstep, quite properly dressed. She’d waved as she’d waited for the carriage which would take her and her chaperone, Mrs. Posey, a whiskery female of great age and impeccable reputation, twice around the park to see and be seen.
It had occurred to him that they would not be gone long. It was about to rain. He thought he might call upon her.
Somehow the modesty of her costume had only added to her allure. Susannah had been wearing a high-necked dress of light gray silk with a subtle stripe in a darker gray. He remembered every detail. The stripes, nipped in and narrow at her waist, widened over her bosom in a distracting way.
Still stunned by seeing that very bosom nearly bare just a short time ago, Carlyle shook his head and put the delectable vision out of his mind, feeling a little ashamed of himself. He had promised her late father to take very good care of Susannah. To that end, he had brought her back to England and rented fully furnished houses side by side-one for her and one for him, with an eye to propriety and her safety. He had seen to the matter of her father’s will and her inheritance, and other financial concerns, and enlisted her only relative to help him launch Susannah in society-in short, he had done everything he could for her.
As much as he liked Mr. Fowler, Carlyle knew he had been artfully persuaded by him-the man had played upon his sympathies with uncommon skill. Knowing that his illness was terminal, Mr. Fowler had put his affairs in order.
He provided Carlyle with letters of introduction, and more important, a generous letter of credit, charging him to spare no expense to establish his motherless daughter in society.
Carlyle, who had rather a reputation, realized that the older man knew nothing of it. He had pointed out that he was not the best choice for such a delicate assignment, but Susannah’s father had replied that he was the only choice: there were no other Englishmen in Jaipur.
The man was dying. Carlyle could not very well tell him no.
Before that sad day came, Mr. Fowler drew up a declaration of guardianship himself, should anyone look askance at a worldly fellow of thirty-eight traveling with an unmarried woman of twenty-three. Whether the document was legally valid was an open question, but it looked impressive, bristling with gold seals and stamps and inky signatures, tied up with a thin red ribbon.
Mr. Fowler had made himself clear. His beloved Susannah could not be left in Rajasthan. Without a father or male relative to protect her, she would fall victim to intrigues among the women in the zenana, forever squabbling to advance themselves and their offspring in the regard of their aging ruler. Many would no longer feel obliged to be kind to the young English girl who had been raised among them.
As Carlyle well knew, a solitary female in that faraway land had few choices in life. Susannah might have ended up drifting from rich household to rich household as a governess, earning a pittance teaching the children of the East India Company families or Rajput princelings whose papas wished them to acquire a proper British education. But she would soon fade away into poverty and isolation.
His second promise to Mr. Fowler was turning out to be rather harder to keep: He was to find a suitably well-to-do Englishman of good character, although it had to be someone who would not ask too many questions about her somewhat unusual upbringing, and marry her off. Carlyle hated the idea.
Susannah would not discuss the subject with him in any case. He wondered why. An advantageous match was what every young woman dreamed of, or so he had heard. He was not the marrying kind himself. Nonetheless, she went out to balls and plays and dinners dutifully enough, escorted by Mrs. Posey. A distant half-aunt of hers, who lived in the country and seldom came to town, had charged her London friends to invite Susannah to anything attended by persons in trousers, to improve her odds.
Carlyle seldom went along. The easy familiarity of their relationship-they had known each other for more than a year in India-might have put off prospective suitors. Her father did not seem to have considered Carlyle himself as a suitable candidate for a husband, although he liked and trusted him, praising his intelligence and pluck and so forth, as so many did.
It did not matter. Whatever his sterling qualities, Carlyle was a second son who had gone to India to seek a fortune which had eluded him thus far. All the same, he might make one someday; she would have to marry one.
The odds were in her favor. In London, Susannah was an unknown, which made her all the more intriguing. She dressed beautifully-well, she was beautiful to begin with-and tailored her conversation to the company, which amused Carlyle, who had pegged her as a remarkably independent sort from their first meeting. But she seemed to have grasped that her late father’s wishes were as good as a command.
In the weeks since they had come to London she had been quite ladylike…almost prim. His fault, in a way. He had been a perfect gentleman, Carlyle thought ruefully. Not like him. Not like him at all. But he was determined to be satisfied with polite chitchat and discreet lusting after Susannah, and that was that.
A spark escaped the grate and Carlyle stamped it out with the toe of his boot, frowning.
If it were up to him, her lovely body would not be confined within the acres of material that constituted proper attire for a well-bred woman in the reign of Queen Victoria. In Jaipur, Susannah had floated about in gauzy, simple dresses. No swags, no furbelows, no bothersome drapery-it was simply too hot. No stiff petticoats-the climate wilted anything starched within seconds.
To preserve her complexion, she had favored wide-brimmed hats of light straw, delighting him on the first day he’d seen her with a flirtatious peek from under the brim of one.
Her eyes were large and blue, fringed with dark eyelashes. The fierce sun that beat down upon her hat made tiny dots of light dance on her cheekbones and the look she’d given him made his breath catch. He’d had to fight the impulse to raise a hand to her face and gently brush the light away.
She was impossibly pretty. He’d thought so even after she trounced him at chess later that same day, sitting inside a pavilion of pierced stone in the maharajah’s enclosed garden. Susannah had added insult to injury by pointing out that he had not been paying attention. Of course not. How could he, faced with so lovely an adversary?
And so she conquered. More than she knew.
After that day, they had played many more times, and he was far more watchful, but almost never won. In the ensuing months, they had become good friends, progressing to fond flirtation, but no more than that. Susannah was young and headstrong, a volatile combination. His respect for her father-and his own wish to steer clear of complicated romantic entanglements-meant that Carlyle kept a certain distance.
Until that night by the reflecting pool when he had almost kissed her.
She had looked enchanting in the moonlight, her blue eyes wide and expectant, her hands folded demurely in her lap. But he could not bring himself to touch his lips to hers-and in the end, it hadn’t mattered.
As her father grew increasingly weak, she spent all her time with him, until the inevitable. Clad in black, wrapped in silent grief, she never complained through the overland journey out of the Rajasthan hills to the coast and the long sea voyage home. Indeed, she had scarcely looked at him during those months until the stormy day they had arrived in London.
The fire before him now was not warm enough to make the memory less dismal. Carlyle crossed his arms over his chest and his legs at the ankles, thinking back on it.