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expanded with his career.”
“I have a question, Ma’am,” Davy said. It was the first time he’d spoken since dinner.
“I’d imagine you all have any number of questions,” Geraldine said with a snort of
amusement. “But what is yours?”
“Meaning no disrespect, ma’am, but do you think it is possible…I mean, seeing as how
they were on the same ship together when you met, coming back from England at the same time… and
then haste of the…with her husband barely dead…I don’t know quite how to say it, ma’am, but when
you look at the sequence…”
“You’re asking if it were possible that Anthony’s true affection was directed toward
Rose all along?” Geraldine said. “That poor Roland was a cuckold, that I was their cover, and that
Anthony’s professed loyalty to his captain was really just an excuse to stay close to the wife? Of
course it is possible. It was, in fact, the first thought that occurred to me when I got Anthony’s letter
all those years ago.”
Trevor was ashamed that this particular theory – which sounded so plausible when
clothed in Geraldine’s plain language – had not occurred to him. It had been neither his first thought
nor his fifth. And judging by the expressions around the shadowy table, neither Emma, Tom, nor
Rayley had imagined it as well. Painful to think that among them, only Geraldine and Davy were
clear-headed enough to see through the haze of romance and adventure to the tawdry possibilities
beneath.
Emma recovered first. “Speaking of Anthony’s letter,” she said. “The second one,
yesterday’s, was addressed to the ‘Bride of Rosemoral.’ Why should he call you such a thing?”
“A silly spasm of pride,” Geraldine said. “Despite the fact he presented it as mere duty,
being tossed over for Rose was a blow. I wrote him back that I too was about to be married and spun
quite an elaborate tale around the event, even going so far as to suggest the Queen and Prince Albert
would be in attendance. And I believe I may, in my foolishness, have signed this fanciful missive
‘The Bride of Rosemoral.’ Strange he would remember that now, after so long. Perhaps he did it to
mock me. After all, if he followed my history even half as avidly as I followed his, he would know
that I remain Geraldine Bainbridge.”
“I can’t think why he’d mock you,” Tom said. “Especially when requesting your help.”
“And that’s the real issue here, is it not?” Trevor asked. “Putting aside the man’s
audacity in even asking, what the devil sort of assistance does he expect you to provide?”
“Money?” Geraldine said archly. “Everyone always seems to need a little more of that
in times of trouble. British council for his defense, I’d imagine? An investigation, almost certainly. I
shall ask him, of course, when I get there.”
Another silence fell around the table. Not a pleasant, reflective silence, but the sort of
nervous, anticipatory silence that precedes a gunshot, or a storm.
“Get there?” Tom finally asked warily.
“Travel to India, even now,” Rayley broke in, “can be extraordinarily-“
“Geraldine, you don’t truly-“ Trevor began.
“Well of course I must go, darlings,” Geraldine said. “Anthony will find no justice in
Bombay, not unless someone somewhere stirs to help him. We all know that.”
“But you owe this man nothing,” Trevor sputtered. “Less than nothing.”
“You asked for the basic facts of our story,” Geraldine said, a trifle sharply. “And the
basics were precisely what I gave you. But matters of the heart are never so simple as they might
seem to those on the outside, looking in.” She glanced around the table, at the shadowy forms of the