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“I fear I am being obscure,” Geraldine said, wiping her eyes. “Which is the very last
thing I intended to be.”
“These are memories which have likely gone unspoken for some time,” Rayley said with
sympathy, his own mind darting back to Paris and the extraordinarily ill-fated liaison he’d
experienced there the past spring. How long would it be before he would speak of Isabel Blout, he
wondered, and if he ever did, would he manage to tell the story in a sensible fashion?
Geraldine smiled at him. “Thank you, dear, but Trevor has asked me to stick to the
basics, so I must start again.” She gave a great exhalation to steady her nerves. “I boarded a ship,
having assured my gullible parents and even my far-from-gullible brother that I wished to find a
suitable man and marry. I had a substantial inheritance and a decent bosom, one of which I luckily
still retain. But despite these assets, I had never been particularly marriageable by English
standards. I was forceful, perhaps too full of opinions and too certain I was right. The eligible men in
my circle had demurred, each in his turn. And so, when a full fifteen years after my lavish debut I
remained unattached, my family was easily persuaded I might try my chances on the subcontinent.
They took me to the port of London and onto the ship I went.”
“And who was named your chaperone?” Trevor asked.
“Very good, my dear,” Geraldine said. “Your question is quite apt and proves why you
are the leader of us all. See there, everyone. A single shot in the dark and Trevor has managed to hit
the one fact that will advance our story. For I was entrusted, you see, to the care of a matron a few
years above my own age, a woman named Rose Everlee who was returning to India to join her
husband in Bombay. And as fate would have it, Anthony Weaver was the dashing second in command
in that same unit. Roland Everlee’s lieutenant, in fact, and also his closest friend.” Geraldine paused
and frowned. “I say all that as a matter of course, but was Anthony truly dashing? They always use
that word with officers, so I suppose he must have been. Or at least dashing enough for me.”
“Rose Everlee introduced you to Anthony Weaver,” Trevor gently prompted.
Geraldine nodded. “Before we had left London harbor. He was at my side even as I
waved goodbye to Leonard and my parents.”
But Emma was frowning. The letter which Leanna had read referred to a woman named
Rose. Apparently over the course of the years, the commanding officer’s wife had somehow become
the dashing lieutenant’s wife and, more to the point, had also managed to get herself murdered. What
sort of tangle had Geraldine stumbled into?
Noting Emma’s expression, Geraldine nodded again. “Yes, my dear, yes. As unlikely as
it seems, my chaperone for the voyage was the very same woman who now lies dead. But perhaps I
am getting ahead of myself once again.”
“You sailed,” Trevor said pointedly.
“We sailed,” Geraldine said. “Weeks upon the water, three of them spent simply drifting
in the complete doldrums of the Indian Ocean, with nowhere to seek shelter except the terrifying
prospect of the African coast. The captain assured us that if we took harbor there we should be
devoured on sight, and, fools that we were, we believed him. And so we sat. Too little wind, too
much water. Too little food, too much sun. It was during those doldrums that Anthony and I...we
indulged ourselves, I suppose that is the best way to say it. In ways which would not have been
allowed in London, or even Bombay.”
Silence. Everyone waited.
“The months that followed,” Geraldine said softly, “were the happiest of my life. But