Читать книгу The Sins of Nightsong - V. J. Banis - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

San Francisco—1891

Lydia Nightsong stretched on tiptoe, trying to see Peter MacNair among the crowd of passengers aboard the ship, waiting for the gangplank to be lowered.

There—yes, there he was! She waved, but could not tell if he had seen her. Well, surely he wouldn’t have sent her the cablegram telling her of his arriving home if he had not intended for her to meet him.

It was odd, receiving the other cablegram, the one from April, the very same day Peter was to arrive from China. It had come only a short while before she’d left the house. Lydia took her daughter’s cable from her pocket and read it again: “Coming home. Stop. Will advise when. Stop” was all it said, except for her name.

David was dead; Peter’s cable had told her that. April was coming home, but not with Peter. What did it all mean, she wondered for perhaps the hundredth time? She hoped Peter could explain some of it to her.

Someone touched her elbow and Lydia turned, meaning to excuse herself. “Raymond!” she cried, surprised to find the husband April had abandoned in Paris standing beside her. “But I thought you were in Europe.”

“I just arrived back,” Raymond said, taking her arm in a proprietary manner. “Mrs. Clary, your secretary, told me you were here. Expecting a shipment?”

“I—no, I was looking for someone—a friend,” she said, glancing back toward the ship. The gangplank was down and the passengers were beginning to file off; there was no sign, however, of Peter.

“I’ll wait with you,” Raymond said. “I’ve been so eager to see you that I couldn’t stand to wait around for you to return to the office. Is your friend coming?”

Lydia scanned the crowds, but Peter seemed to have disappeared. Perhaps...but then she caught a glimpse of Lorna MacNair and a tall man with sandy hair—Peter—embracing her.

She felt a raging deep inside her but forced it back. She gave Raymond a helpless smile. “No, I suppose she isn’t on this ship after all,” Lydia said as the last of the passengers trickled ashore. She shrugged. “She did say there was a possibility she would have to catch a later one.”

Raymond gave her a peculiar look, but didn’t argue. He took her arm instead and began to lead her through the crowd toward where he had a carriage waiting.

In the distance, Peter caught a glimpse of Lydia leaving with the Frenchman. He turned his wife carefully away so that Lorna would not see them as they got into the carriage. It had been the merest bad luck that his secretary had taken it upon herself to inform Lorna of his arrival.

The merest luck too, he supposed, that he had seen that Lydia was with the Frenchman before he’d dashed down the gangplank and seized her in his arms as he had been burning to do. A pretty kettle of fish that would have been—her with her latest suitor on her arm, and Lorna there to watch the entire debacle.

“The carriage is this way,” Lorna was saying. “Heavens, what a mob...do you see someone you know?”

Peter watched as Lydia’s carriage disappeared away from the dock. He gave his head a shake and started resolutely in the direction Lorna had indicated. “No, no one,” he said.

As they settled themselves in the brougham Lorna studied her husband for a moment. “You are looking very tired, Peter.” She put her hand on his arm.

Peter tactfully reached for his handkerchief, moving away from her touch. “I am feeling very tired,” he said, ignoring her angry frown.

“I must admit, Peter, that I am completely at a loss to understand why you did not tell me you were arriving home today. And why isn’t David with you?” She saw his expression darken, as it often did when he wanted to shut her out. “I know we aren’t exactly the ideal married couple, but David is my son and I am still your wife. You could at least have written during all the time you’ve been in China.”

Her presence, the very sound of her voice, irritated him. He twisted the handkerchief angrily. She had to be told about David and now would be as good a time as any. He leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. “David isn’t coming home,” he said simply.

“What? What do you mean, David isn’t coming home?”

Peter let out a sigh and turned to look at her. “I’m sorry, Lorna. David is dead.”

He watched the color drain from her face. “Dead?” She stared at him as if she did not believe what he’d said.

“He was caught taking something from the palace, the penalty for which is death.” He would never tell her the horrible way David had died.

Lorna sat quite still, staring at him. Then a long, agonizing moan came from the depths of her being and she collapsed against the side of the carriage. She sat, not crying, just moaning with the terrible pain gripping her heart.

“David was trying to help me,” Peter admitted softly. He fumbled with the handkerchief in his hand, looking at it as though it were some odd object. “He knew about the financial trouble the company is in and he thought he would be able to help by taking one of the Empress’s scents, which we could then duplicate.”

Lorna suddenly stiffened, her eyes blazing. “Just as that odious Lydia Nightsong did! Damn you both to hell!” she shouted. “I’ll kill that evil woman with my bare hands. I’ll kill her, I tell you, if it is the very last thing I ever do...I swear I will.”

Peter closed his eyes, trying to let the sound of the carriage wheels drown out his wife’s voice.

Lorna seethed. “It was that horrible woman who put the idea into your head before you left to find David. I know you saw her.”

“Stop it, Lorna. Lydia had nothing to do with what happened. David wanted to help when he learned of the company’s near bankruptcy. It was his concern for you and me and the children that led him to do what he did.”

“And you said nothing to dissuade him?” she accused.

He passed his fingers across his brow. It was true, he hadn’t tried to prevent David, but then would Lorna herself have done any differently? She was too accustomed to money to ever be without it, at whatever risk. “I tried to point out the dangers, of course. There was nothing more I could do.”

Lorna turned on him. She started to argue, but a terrible sobbing poured out of her as she collapsed against him.

It made him uncomfortable, to have her in his arms like this, yet he put a consoling arm about her shoulders. The long weeks overland and at sea had taken the sharp edge off David’s death, dulling it to a gnawing ache. He suddenly thought of Lydia again. He had to see her.

“I must go to the office,” Peter told Lorna as the carriage pulled up the curved drive of their Nob Hill mansion.

She clutched his arm. “Peter, please.”

He saw the need in her eyes, the pleading, but tactfully he eased himself away. “We’re almost broke, Lorna. I’ve made some contacts on my way from China. I can’t allow them to get cold.” He felt her grip tighten. “I’ll be back as soon as I can get away, I promise.”

“Forget the company for today, Peter. While you were away I made some arrangements for money.”

“I told you I didn’t want you to go to your family,” he said sternly. “I got us into this mess and I will get us out.”

Tears filled her eyes, but her voice went hard. “You are going to her, aren’t you?”

Peter got out of the carriage, helping her down.

“You are going to Lydia,” she said again. “I can see it in your face.”

“I will be home as soon as I can.” He got back into the carriage and rode off down the drive, leaving Lorna alone, staring after him.

Lydia was alone in her office when Peter walked in. The moment he got close to her, inhaled her haunting aroma, and saw her exquisite beauty, the old weakness grew inside him, making him tremble with desire. He looked at her and found himself once more in that shabby Chinese village, rescuing a shy sixteen-year-old girl from the amorous fumblings of a young lout in a bamboo grove.

“Thank you for coming to meet the ship,” Peter said. Anger tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I didn’t expect you to invite the Frenchman as part of my welcoming committee.”

Lydia put aside the accounts she’d been studying. “Nor did I expect to have to share your homecoming with your wife.”

“That was accidental. My secretary told her.”

Lydia found herself smiling. “We should do something about our efficient secretaries. That is precisely how Raymond happened to join me on the dock.” She came around the desk. The grief of David’s death was etched on Peter’s handsome face, but she could neither think of anything to say nor know whether she should say anything at all.

“A drink?” she asked, motioning toward the liquor cabinet in the corner of her beautifully appointed office.

Peter shook his head, gazing deep into her eyes.

Somehow, she found herself in his arms, crying over his loss. “Your cable...David....”

“He is dead, Lydia. Executed. You know the Chinese.”

“Oh, dear God. If only they had listened to us. Ke Loo....”

“It wasn’t Ke Loo,” Peter said. He told her of his meeting with David and how David failed to do what Lydia had once succeeded in doing. “The Empress was quick to punish him.”

Lydia began to shake, suddenly remembering the night she and April had fled the Dragon’s palace and had seen the head of the concubine who’d helped them escape, impaled on a pole in the courtyard.

As if reading her mind Peter said, “I buried David intact in the American legation cemetery.”

“Peter,” Lydia wept, groping for some words to comfort him, knowing there were none.

He let her cry for the both of them. After a moment, he tilted her face up to his. “We’ve lost them, Lydia. Your daughter and my son. We’ve lost them. I don’t think April will ever return now.”

Lydia sniffed back her tears and frowned up at him. “But I received a cable from her just today. It said she is coming home and would let me know when to expect her.” She fumbled in her pocket and handed him the message.

Peter read it and shook his head. “I don’t understand. David told me April had been restored to her royal station as Ke Loo’s daughter...a Manchu princess. David was going to try and force April to leave with him, but....” He sighed. “I wouldn’t put too much hope in that cable, Lydia, unless April is coming on orders of the Empress—and we know what that means. No, dear, I’m afraid we’ve both lost. April is where and what she has always wanted to be. I think it would be best if we just tried to forget.”

“April can’t remain in China, Peter. We both know that. She has as much of my blood in her veins as she does Prince Ke Loo’s. The Dowager Empress will never forget that, regardless of how many privileges and honors she grants the girl.” She forced back the tears. “I know her well, Peter. Believe me when I say that April is more me than she wants to accept.” She looked at the cable. “No. April will come home. Maybe not tomorrow, but she’ll come home.”