Page 6 of Mistress of Misfortune

He inclined his head. “Rest, and we will talk again at luncheon.”

* * *

With reluctance Thorneleft Meredith and returned downstairs to his study. The stack of letters on his desk awaiting his response did not interest him, for he knew they were more of the same entreaties from his former Army comrades in India. Even the General himself had written, demanding to know why he had resigned his commission.

You have been the most effective field officer under my command,Jarvis had penned in his own bold, slashing hand. You must know that I cannot replace you. If you desire a promotion, you shall have it. If it is a question of finances, they will be managed. You have but to name your terms, and I will attend to them personally.

Jarvis did not exaggerate or make false promises; Thorne could ask for virtually anything, even his own elephant, and the General would have it waiting for him on the docks in Mumbai. Yet he could not return, for he remained unfit to serve king and country.

A throat cleared behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder at Harshad. “What of the mare?”

“She is well, Master. The stablemaster found nothing amiss,” his steward said. “He has replaced the shoe and watered and fed her.”

Thorne imagined that news would relieve his guest. “The young lady has injured her arm, and with the storm she must stay the night. I have put her in that green guest room. Advise Cook there will be two for the meals.” He saw Harshad's expression. “What is it?”

“Kshantu heard a dog howling in the night,” Harshad said. “It means–”

“Death is coming.” Thorne did not subscribe to such superstitions, but while in India he had learned to respect how seriously his native troops attended to them. “Does he mean to string lemons and chilies over the doors?”

Harshad grimaced. “That he is has already attended to, Master. But he feels the rig crashing out on the road was no accident. Someone has beset the girl with the evil eye.”

“We do not curse ladies in England, Harshad.” Even as he said that, Thorne felt again that something seemed very odd about Meredith Starling's mishap. Could she have contrived it in order to gain admittance to the house? She did seem particularly enchanted by Dredthorne. “Once the rain stops bring her rig into the barn. While you're there please assure Kshantu that this is all simply an unhappy coincidence.”

“As you say, Master.” His steward bowed and retreated from the room.

Thorne went to the north-faced window of his study, and looked out through the murky panes at the drive. As soon as the weather cleared he would have to return Miss Starling to her family, and endure the accusations they would hurl. Any attempt to bully him into offering for their daughter, however, was doomed to fail.

Even before he had been beset by his affliction, marriage had never tempted him.

Thorne had spent his childhood watching his ill-suited parents grow apart. His mother despised the port towns in which they had lived while his father was off at sea, and kept to her rooms most of her life. His father in turn felt contempt for his wife’s petulant inability to perform even some of her duties as a mother. A succession of nannies had raised Alistair until he was of age to be sent away to school.

Nor had there been any choice of professions for the only son of Captain Thomas Thorne; once his studies had ended his father had promptly begun making arrangements for his entry into the Navy. But Alistair had never cared for the sea, and preempted the captain’s machinations by taking a commission in the Army.

The only act of outright defiance Alistair had ever committed had been enough to completely sever his relationship with his father. Thomas Thorne had immediately declared him disowned, and had never spoken to him again.

Alistair tried to keep in contact with his mother by writing to her, but never received a single reply. He imagined the captain had also seen to that by destroying the letters or forbidding his wife to respond. In time he had abandoned writing, and from then on considered himself as good as an orphan.

Rumor mills and grapevines riddled the military, and it was through the latter that Alistair learned his parents had drowned when a pleasure boat they had chartered sank off the coast of Spain. Although Thorne had not seen his family in more than a decade, their loss ended all hope of someday reconciling with them.

He almost threw away the letter that came from Thomas’s attorney. Yet when he read that the captain had not, in fact, legally disowned him, grief over losing his parents twice had finally made him weep.

As the sole heir of Thomas’s estate, Alistair discovered he was suddenly and enormously wealthy, thanks to his father's bewildering legacy. Throughout his life he could not recall the captain ever once mentioning his family, their wealth or Dredthorne Hall. Wherever his father had left them, Alistair and his mother had lived comfortably but simply in unpretentious houses staffed by only a few servants.

Major Nigel Robbins, his closest friend in the regiment, had come upon him just after the letter arrived. “I say, Alistair, you look dreadful. Have you been eating the native swill again?”

Without a word he'd handed the letter to his friend, whose eyes widened as he read through the pages.

“Good God, man. You are become Croesus.” Nigel set down the letter and dropped into the camp chair beside him. “What will you do now that your late father has enabled you to purchase any middling-size country on the planet?”

“I defied the Captain when I joined the Army, and he never forgave me for it. I daresay he despised me until the day he died, and drowned my mother with him.” Alistair took up the letter, held one corner to his tent lamp until it caught fire, and dropped it in his washing basin to watch it burn. “I want no part of it.”

“I understand your sentiments completely,” Nigel said solemnly. “Will you give it to me, then? I should dearly like the means with which to buy most of England.”

His friend had gotten him to laugh on that dreadful day, and many more after it, Alistair remembered. When Nigel had been killed during an uprising Alistair had ignored his own injuries to carry his friend from the battlefield. He remembered little of what followed; later he was told he collapsed outside the casualty tents, still clutching his dead friend. Alistair spent the next weeks in hospital, barely clinging to life himself. Yet while in time his bodily wounds healed, he discovered that the grisly battle had robbed him of more than the best of friends. Now he suspected his affliction a punishment that, like his guilt, would only end when his life did.

I should have died in Nigel’s place.

Several thumps on the ceiling above Thorne dragged him out of his brooding thoughts. The green guest room lay directly above his study, which meant Miss Starling was the source of the noise. “What the devil is she doing up there? Rearranging the…”