Dangerous Games. Charlotte MedeЧитать онлайн книгу.
the personal events in India, he didn’t know anymore. What was another child lost in the millions swallowed up in poverty and starvation and disease? Few white men would spend even an instant’s time in consideration of a misbegotten by-blow, the sorry result of miscegenation. All he did know was that his nerves were nearing the breaking point, the enervation of fatigue overtaking him. What he would do to be able to drift to sleep, consoling himself that at least he had survived another day. He feared sleep now, his home too quiet. In the distance he imagined his neighbors, and some distance away, he thought he heard a woman crying, or perhaps it was a child.
He stopped his pacing, listening to the creaking of the floorboards beneath his feet. If he paid heed, he imagined that he could hear a low moan coming from the depths of the cellar beneath the kitchen. Cursing swiftly under his breath although there was no one to hear, he wondered if he was loosening his grip on reason. A story he had read recently came suddenly and annoyingly to mind, a tale that had conjured the specter of a telltale heart beating beneath the floorboards, the fretful conscience of a murderer.
Ridiculous, fanciful nonsense. Almost without realizing it, Vesper again found his clammy fist clenched around the watch in his pocket. He of all people recognized that the haunting was the product of a diseased mind, of a psyche overwhelmed with guilt and remorse.
Another low moan, like a branch listing in a heavy wind. It was quite impossible. He had given the man enough laudanum to keep him subdued. The gunshot wound had narrowly missed its mark, and the man had bled profusely before Vesper had been able to staunch the blood. The damp, cold cellar was not the ideal place for someone in his condition, but it was the only area in the house—containing his laboratory and medical implements—that was not open to his housekeeper and scullery maid.
The scullery maid. Dear God, Lizzie. He hadn’t even inquired after her surname. His eyes filled from an excess of emotion and he removed his spectacles to wipe at them uselessly, smearing the lenses with his sweat and guilt. If she died, he would not see her in a pauper’s grave and, if he had the chance, he would see to a proper burial. The very least he could do.
The moaning was more audible now, his punishment no longer the fancy of his imagination but the keening of a man in pain. His eyes darted to his doctor’s bag, the leather scuffed and worn, sitting forlornly in the entrance hall. It held the instruments of his trade, a bottle of laudanum, and a syringe.
A few ounces more would surely not make a difference. And then he could get some much needed rest, far away from this inner torment whose tentacles were digging themselves, inexorably and relentlessly, into the innermost reaches of his increasingly febrile mind.
He shuffled to the narrow hallway and grabbed the bag. It felt solid and reassuring in his hands. Drawing himself up straight, he gripped the handle securely before making his final decision. Moments later, he disappeared down the darkened cellar stairs.
Chapter 4
Lilly Clarence Hampton was being watched.
Impossible. The barred windows of the Salt Tower, located in the Tower of London, reflected back only the darkness of the night and her bone-pale complexion. Iciness emanated from the worn granite beneath her feet, and behind her, obscured by layers of shadow, she had moments earlier discovered an antechamber, a small circular room with just one small window cut into the thick wall. It had stopped snowing, but she could not control a shiver against the damp and her knowledge of history. Queen Elizabeth had sent several Jesuit priests here to die, and if Lilly cared to look, which she didn’t, their last desperate scrawls were inscribed in the cold and implacable stones just several feet away.
If she cared to look, which she certainly did not. Hundreds of years of history promulgated ghost stories, of course. She clutched her reticule firmly. So what that even dogs refused to enter the edifice? Ghosts, real or imagined—she’d had enough of them.
Ignoring the sensation of heat drilling through the cashmere of her shawl and directly through to the center of her back, she turned to the object in the glass case surrounded by thick iron bars. It glowed sullenly, a multifaceted ostrich egg to her eyes, a stone that very probably dated from before the time of Christ. And for which many had died for stakes that were entirely too high.
Because whoever owned the Koh-I-Noor diamond ruled the world. Or so it was said. Koh-I-Noor, Mountain of Light, the most famous diamond in history, in its original one-hundred-eighty-six-carat form, rested here now in the Tower of London. She read the inscription disclosed to the right of the display case.
The Koh-I-Noor. Its value is Good Fortune, for whoever possesses it has been superior to all his enemies.
Politics and power, always a dirty business, now allied with superstition in the wondrous form of a gemstone. How many more would covet it, die for it?
Pinpricks danced up her spine. The sensation of being watched. She pulled her shawl closer to her body and surveyed her surroundings for at least the tenth time. The blackness of the night, outlined by the lone window, couldn’t hope to penetrate the circular room. She was in the third floor of the tower, at least two hundred feet from the ground. No spying eyes could possibly see…
Guilt was a toxic companion, accompanying her everywhere.
Lilly straightened her spine. A nervous disposition was definitely not permitted. She had no patience for weak, fainting women, their stays pulled too tightly for anybody’s good, their minds closed to logic and good sense. What she needed was a vigorous walk through Hyde Park, a rousing debate, or perhaps another evening spent with Isambard Kingdom Bellamy.
The diamond winked back at her. Mockingly.
She resumed her pacing, making a deliberate circle around the glass case, restraining her emotions with the customary discipline that had become as necessary to her life as breathing. Every few steps, she looked over her shoulder toward the door, fighting a gnawing anxiety. Bellamy was to have met her here this evening, to show her the diamond personally, expound on its history, its infamous significance. When she’d first arrived, almost one hour after midnight, the guards at the entrance had been nonplussed, ushering her up the damp, circular stairs, no wider than a child’s crib, despite her lack of illustrious companion.
She leaned in toward the glass case, studying the diamond closely. The architectural drawings of the Crystal Palace rose clearly in her mind, the soaring ceilings and the expanse of open space that were designed to welcome not only thousands of expectant visitors from near and far to London’s Great Exhibition, but also the historic diamond.
The muscles on the back of her neck tightened. She tapped a tattoo with one finger on the glass case. Too accessible. That was the problem. While the building design, radical and revolutionary, echoed the diamond’s faceted form, it would be next to impossible to protect the Koh-I-Noor and its presentation before the world to Queen Victoria at the opening of the Crystal Palace. It would be a historic occasion in commemoration of May 29, 1849, when the British flag was hoisted on the citadel of Lahore and the Punjab was formally proclaimed part of the British Empire in India.
As she had been apprised, the gem, which had been taken from Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk, would be surrendered by the Maharajah of Lahore to the Queen of England, by the hand of the chairman of the British East India Company, Isambard Kingdom Bellamy. A momentous event for the empire.
She continued her measured pacing. Other than the sound of her footsteps, the tower was silent. Yet her ears strained for what exactly—Bellamy’s arrival? The sensation of eyes boring into the back of her head refused to relinquish its hold. She glanced at the darkened antechamber behind her and then at the door, a thick iron grille separating her and the sentry guarding the diamond from the outside world. She was alone and she was protected. Although it wasn’t at all like Bellamy to allow himself to be delayed. He was prompt, attentive, and unfailingly courteous, a protective port in the storm that had become her life.
The face of Isambard Kingdom Bellamy momentarily blotted out the diamond encased in glass and iron. The other evening, at the Adelphi Theatre when they’d shared a glass of champagne, she had to admit that there was more to his attentiveness than simple friendship and that, somehow over the past year, they