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 had been drifting toward courtship, their association taking on a new and stronger dimension. A long-time business associate of Charles’s, Bellamy was not well known to her during the course of her marriage, other than in a social sense. But he had made himself readily available to her after the tragedy with kind words and a patient benevolence that she had never encountered before. Not that she had ever been a good judge of character, Lord only knew. After Charles, self-doubt was a troublesome attendant. The last thing she needed to do at the moment was to question why Bellamy would find interest in a widow, with an unimpressive family background, who had been absurdly and unfashionably in love with her late husband.
Her mouth thinned and she adjusted her shawl. Bellamy, for whatever reasons, demonstrated only the best of intentions toward her. He was a powerful man, and if she required further evidence, she needed only to remember how neatly he’d dispatched the inspector at Covent Gardens a fortnight earlier. Insistent, disrespectful, and very public with his inquiries, the inspector had made it clear that he was a terrier with a bone, ferocious and implacable. Until he had met with the wolfhound that was Bellamy who, with a low snarl, had sent the man packing. She had not been harassed since, not a coincidence, surely. Bellamy’s influence reached to the highest corridors of government, and a single word could definitively halt an entire army on the other side of the world, not to mention an inconsequential investigation.
Marriage to him would mean she could continue her work discreetly. As with most men, he was vaguely supportive of her pursuits, and that was enough, more than enough. He spent most of his time with his vast business concerns in India, a situation that would translate into a measure of freedom for her. And security. No one would dare cast aspersions…the rumors would stop. She took a breath against the tightness around her heart. Then she—and the world—could forget the death of Charles Hampton.
The lights flickered strangely. A breeze perhaps snaking its way through one of the barred windows. The Tower was not yet outfitted with gas fixtures, the tall candles dripping wax on the cold stone floor. The outlines of her profile etched eerily against the glass case, she deliberately returned her attention to the diamond, shutting out memories, too painful and too dangerous. When she looked up again, she saw the face hovering over hers.
Haggard and masculine, stopping the breath in her lungs.
This was no ghost. A heavy arm roped around her neck and shoulders, pulling her back toward a hard chest.
“Obscene.” The low whisper was hot menace in her ear. No time for thought, she clawed instinctively and ineffectually at the solid muscles of an arm. Reflected in the glass, his eyes glittered strangely, dark as onyx. Her head felt light, and her reticule, clamped in her hand, slid to the floor.
Her body frozen, her mind skittered with hundreds of possibilities. Obscene. Her eyes returned to the Koh-I-Noor. He was referring to the diamond. “What do you want?” The barely managed words were hoarse, strangulated.
He dragged her away from the glass case and toward the small antechamber behind them. Plunged into medieval gloom, she could make out three missing bars from the lone window in the room, weak moonlight the only source of illumination. Realization dawned, inconceivable as it was indisputable. The man had scaled two hundred feet in the dark.
She didn’t know whether she’d cursed under her breath or aloud. “Let go of me—I can scarcely breathe.” As if that should matter to him.
Trapped at such an awkward angle, her stays were gnawing into her abdomen, her breath coming in halting pants. But he refused to relinquish his hold. Anger was beginning to replace the numbing fear in the pit of her stomach.
“See reason.” Words were the only weapon she had, and she knew how to use them. “There’s a guard standing outside the door and he’s expecting me to emerge at some point.”
