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‘She was the only mistress I ever had, I suppose,’ he said, his attention apparently fixed on the piece of Meissen in his hands. ‘Before her there were… encounters. After her, liaisons. I learned my lesson with Reshmi.’
‘She was Indian?’ Phyllida took the statuette from his unresisting hands. ‘Tell me.’
‘Her name means The Silken One. She was a courtesan at my great-uncle’s court. Beautiful, very sweet, gentle. Exquisite.’ Phyllida saw with a pang that his eyes were closed, the thick, dark lashes shutting her out. ‘I let myself fall in love with her and, far worse, I let her fall in love with me. The mistress of the women’s mahal spoke to the raja and he showed me that I was simply being unkind to her and that it must stop.’
‘But why? If you loved each other—’
Ashe opened his eyes and smiled, the twist of his lips bitter. ‘My great-uncle pointed out to me that I was the heir to a marquess’s title, that I would be leaving India for England very soon. Did I expect to drag an uneducated Indian girl halfway across the world to be my mistress for as long as I remained besotted with her? I protested that this was love, that I would marry her. He told me not to be a fool and to go away and think about it.’
Phyllida watched him as he wandered across the room to end up with one foot on the hearth stone, his hands braced on the mantelshelf, his back to her. ‘So I thought about it. My mother is half-Indian, an educated daughter of a princely house, trained to run a great household, confident and used to European society and yet I knew she dreaded coming here, however well she tried to hide it. How could I uproot the daughter of a peasant from everything she knew—and how could I create such a scandal for my parents with such a marriage?’
‘How did she take it?’ Phyllida asked, dreading his answer.
‘She sobbed and pleaded and then, when I was adamant, cruel because it was hurting me so much, too, she controlled herself, bowed her head, murmured that it should be as her lord commanded. She walked away into the gardens at the foot of the walls and I let her go, thinking she needed to be alone to compose herself.’
‘Ashe, she didn’t kill herself?’
‘No. I tell myself not. She trod on a krait, a small, very deadly snake, and died in agony.’
Oh, God. Phyllida struggled to find the right thing to say, if the words even existed.
Ashe pushed himself away from the fireplace and came back to stand beside her. ‘And when I had stopped wallowing in my self-indulgent grief I understood two things. That I would marry as befitted a future marquess, someone who would be a support to my parents, not a source of embarrassment to make their lives harder, and I would put juvenile fancies of love to one side before I hurt anyone else, let alone myself.’
‘Ashe, love is not a juvenile fancy, it is real and strong. It exists.’ She took his hand as though she could somehow infect him with that belief. ‘Don’t your parents love each other?’
‘Passionately, without reservation. That sort of love is like a lightning strike, rare beyond belief.’ The emotion, the pain, had gone from his eyes as he pulled his hand free. ‘Enough of this.’
He would not confide further, not now. She had caught him off balance and he was regretting exposing that emotion and that weakness.
‘If you wish to be useful, you could help me unpack these chests,’ Phyllida said briskly, as though she had not wanted to weep for him and for that poor girl. And for yourself. All you can ever be to him is a lover.
‘The tartness of your tongue is a constant delight to me,’ Ashe observed, his change of tone startling her so much she almost dropped the set of fire irons she had found packed at the bottom of the chest.
‘Then you must give me leave to observe that you are attracted to the strangest things in a woman.’ He appeared to have recovered, which she found worrying. All that had happened, she was certain, was that he had buried the pain behind a formidable barrier of charm.
‘And whoever packed these things away had the oddest ideas of what could be safely placed with what,’ she added, beginning to drag the empty box towards the door.
‘Let me.’ Ashe strode across the room and lifted it, dumped it outside and took the chisel she was using to pry off the lid of the next one. ‘Why are the footmen not assisting you?’
‘I have them moving furniture so the drawing room can be cleaned.’
‘Then sit down here,’ he ordered, placing a chair next to a clear length of table, shrugging out of his coat and rolling up his shirtsleeves. ‘And I will lift things out for you to check.’
‘Very well,’ Phyllida agreed meekly. Her legs were a little tired, to be sure, but it was also a pleasure to watch Ashe working, however unladylike it was to appreciate the play of muscles in his back and shoulders and the way his breeches pulled tight over
an admirably trim backside when he bent over. He seemed to find some relief for his feelings in physical work.
The desire to see him naked, to touch him, to run her fingers over those muscles, those tight buttocks, warred with the need to hold him and comfort him. The former he would agree to without hesitation, the latter was impossible.
‘To revert to your observation just now,’ he continued as he lifted a bronze figure out, grimaced at it and took it straight to the rejects table, ‘I have spent a lot of time in a place where I could not converse at all with respectable ladies and then three months on board ship with only my mother and sister for feminine company. It is a pleasure to talk to an intelligent woman who is neither a relative, a servant nor—’
‘A concubine?’ she murmured and could have bitten her tongue out.
‘Exactly.’ Ashe dumped the rest of the contents of his box on to the table and pushed a stack of badly chipped delftware towards her.
She pushed it back. ‘This is in too bad a state.’
‘That’s the last of the boxes from the hall. Come and help me explore some of the rest of the house for half an hour.’
