Page 24 of Mistress of Misfortune

When they reached the river, Lucetta tapped on the roof, and Harshad brought the horses to a halt. She didn’t wait for him to help her but climbed out and walked down to the embankment, now mostly brown with the grass that the first frost had withered. The damp, chill air slapped at her face, as if trying to pull her back from her dark thoughts. Yet Lucetta could not shake the sense that the rotten wood had not fallen by chance.

Something about Meredith’s latest accident whispered of evil intent.

Her thoughts followed the path most obvious: Alistair Thorne was to blame. Why would he take her into a tower he knew to be dangerous? He knew the moment he’d offered to show it to her that she wouldn’t resist; Meredith had chattered on several times about her admiration for the staircase towers.

Until today Lucetta liked Thorne, but now she wondered if her judgment had been flawed. Would the colonel have tried to deliberately hurt Meredith? For what purpose? Was he crazed? Did he take sport in tormenting the innocent? Had he caused her rig to crash to bring her under his sway?

You cannot paint every man with the same brush, her heart warned, but her head wanted no part of sentiment. She had a responsibility to protect Meredith. That came first.

Harshad came to join her, at which point Lucetta gathered her skirts and sat down. She would be sorry for that when she had to launder her gown, but just now she needed to be still and rid herself of all these unfounded suspicions. Fortunately, the steward only crouched down beside her, and said nothing. When she glanced at him she saw his dark eyes reflecting golden shards from the sun beams piercing the trees.

“You are a very good companion, Mr. Naveya,” Lucetta finally said. “Most men would inquire as to why I sit here like a broody hen.”

“Everyone wishes time to think,” he told her as he watched the sluggishly-moving waters. “Our thoughts are all that truly belongs to us and no other, Miss.”

Learning that he was a solitary soul wasn’t a surprise, and yet she suspected, like her, it was not by choice. She thought of how she had felt when she had left home to take up her first position. “It must have been very difficult to leave your family behind in India.”

“I did not leave them,” Harshad admitted. “My parents were killed by rebels when I was a young boy. Their killers took me and my sister to Malabar, where they sold us at the slave market.”

Lucetta went still. “My dear Mr. Naveya. I am so sorry that I reminded you of such a dreadful time.”

“Being a slave is dreadful,” he agreed. “Because I was strong for a boy of eight the man who purchased me sent me to work in his mine. Many slaves died in those tunnels, but I found an old passage they had forgot to close completely. Being small let me squeeze through it to escape. That was when the dreadful stopped.”

It hurt to think of him being used so savagely, and at such a young age. “What of your sister?”

He shook his head. “For a long time, I searched for her, but I know what they do to girl slaves in Malabar. I think if she still lives, she would not wish for me to find her.”

Lucetta reached out and briefly touched his hand. “I should not have pressed you for details. Please, think no more of it.”

“It is good to talk with you.” Harshad looked up at the sky. “Each day I wake and thank the Lord Ganesh for my freedom. Each night I kneel before the moon and ask for my sister to be blessed with the same. Do you pray, Miss Branwen?”

She wished she could, but since London she had been unable to even consider that God might exist. “I fear my faith is not what once it was.”

When she tried to rise he put his hands over hers. “You have carried a burden alone too long. Share it with me. Tell me what happened in London.”

“I was accused of being a thief by a man everyone believed to be respectable and trustworthy. My employer, Lord Carlton.” She waited for the steward to react. “I freely admit that I stole from him, and I will never return what I took.”

Harshad nodded but said nothing.

He had trusted her with his unhappy past; she could do no less. “I have always had trouble sleeping. One night I went downstairs to get a book, and heard a child sobbing. I followed the sound to one of the bookcases in his lordship’s library. The crying was coming from behind it, so I found the hidden latch, pulled it open, and walked into a secret chamber there.”

Harshad regarded her with sorrow in his gaze. “What did you find, Miss Branwen?”

“My employer, with one of his sons. They were both naked, and he was forcing himself on the boy, using him for his own gratification.” She curled her hands into fists. “I jerked Carlton away, and took the child upstairs and locked him in my room with me. He wept in my arms all that night.”

Harshad made a soft sound. “This is why he accused you of being a thief, to cover his own filthy crime.”

Lucetta shook her head. “Not at first. His lordship called me to his library the next morning. He informed me that what I had witnessed was something beautiful, a love he claimed that I could not understand. He offered me a sizable amount of money if I agreed to say nothing. I did. The moment he left the house I told his wife what I had witnessed. As I suspected she knew nothing of her husband’s abuse of the boy, and was horrified. I convinced her to buy passage for herself and her children on a ship to Canada, where friends of her family had settled. I gave her Carlton’s bribe along with all of my savings. When it came time for them to sail, I helped them slip out of the house and accompanied them to the docks. Then I returned to the house to await his lordship. When Carlton discovered they were gone, along with all the money, he demanded I tell him everything. I refused, and he had me arrested.”

“So, he thought to bully you this way,” Harshad said softly.

“I did steal from him. I took his money, and his wife and children from him. He simply could not prove it without revealing his own repulsive secret.” She lifted her chin and met his gaze. “As vengeance on me he made sure to ruin my reputation in London. I will never work there again.”

“You sacrificed yourself to save them,” he corrected softly. “This is a noble thing.”

“Noble?” She uttered a bitter laugh and shoved herself to her feet. “I wanted to kill Carlton in that dreadful room, right in front of that poor child's eyes. I wanted to take up an iron from the fireplace and beat his head with it until I cracked his skull open. I am a thief, Harshad, but I very nearly became a murderer.”

“You did not, Lucetta,” he insisted. “You saved a woman and her children by giving all that you had.”