Mary Jo Putney - Silk and Shadows

AN ONYX BOOK

ONYX

Published by the Penguin Group

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Published by Onyx, an imprint of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.

First Printing, December,1991

Copyright Mary Jo Putney, 1991

All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA RBGISTRADA

Printed in the United States of America

To Estill, who wanted a book that was all her own.

England,1839

He called himself Peregrine, the wanderer, and he came to London for revenge.

It was dusk as the Kali drifted up the Thames , her goal a berth at the Isle of Dogs. The air was thick with the rank scents that occur where water meets land, and too many people live in too little space.

Peregrine leaned against the foremast, watching the lights of London flicker on and listening to the water splashing softly under the bow. An onlooker would have thought him casual, but the relaxation in his lean figure was a product of years of discipline, a habit of pretense so long established as to be second nature. He had learned early that it was safer to let no one know the true state of his mind and heart; over the years he had become so adept at dissimulation that he himself did not always know how he felt.

But tonight he had no doubts about the nature of his emotions. This bland, civilized English darkness concealed his enemy, and that knowledge burned triumphant in his veins. He had waited a quarter of a century for this moment, when the time was right to extract a slow and exquisitely painful blood price for what he had suffered.

The flame of hatred had been fired when he was a boy of ten, and over the years he had tended it with black, bitter care. Waiting and preparing for his revenge had been a strange mixture of pleasure and pain. He had wandered the face of the earth, acquiring wealth in many ways, honing mind and body until he was a more deadly weapon than any knife or rifle, learning how to survive and prosper in any land, among any people. Every skill, every golden coin, every sharpening of wit and hand, had been treasured as another step toward his ultimate goal.

And now all his preparations had led to this: London , called the greatest city on earth, with its wealth and squalor, snobbery and noble ideals.

He left the routine of docking and regulations to his captain, preferring silence and the voluptuous ecstasy of anticipation. From a distance he had already begun to spin his web about his prey. Now he would weave the final threads himself, learning the best and subtlest torments to apply. Peregrine wanted his enemy to know why he was being destroyed; he wanted to be close enough to see fear and fury grow, and to glory in the ultimate destruction.

When they had cleared customs, Peregrine sent a message to Lord Ross Carlisle, who was important to his plans. Then he waited. The man known as Peregrinewarrior, wanderer, rich beyond avarice, hero to a mysterious people who lived beyond the bounds of British lawwas good at waiting. But very soon, the time for waiting would be over.

The message reached Lord Ross Carlisle quickly, and he boarded the Kali within two hours. As the tall, rangy Englishman swung onto the ship's deck and into the pool of lantern light, Peregrine watched from a vantage point in the shadows.

It had been two years since they had last seen each other, and he wondered how strong the bonds of friendship would prove to be here in England . It was one thing for the younger son of a duke to fraternize with an adventurer of dubious background in the wilds of Asia , quite another to introduce such a man to his own circle. The two men could hardly have come from more different backgrounds, but in spite of that, there had been surprising harmony of mind and humor between them.

Even near death in the mountains of the Hindu Kush , Lord Ross had been unmistakably an English aristocrat. Now, gilded by lamplight and wearing garments whose price would feed a Kafir family for a decade, he looked like what he was: a man born to the ruling class of the greatest empire the world had ever known, with all the assurance of his kind.

Peregrine pushed himself away from the mast and stepped forward into the circle of light. "I'm glad my message found you at home, Ross. Good of you to come so quickly."

The two men's gazes met, exactly level. Lord Ross's eyes were brown, an unexpected contrast to his blond hair. There had always been competition as well as friendship between them, and the undercurrents of this meeting would not be simple ones.

"I had to see if it was really you, Mikahl." The Englishman offered his hand. "I never really thought I'd see you in London ."

"I said I would come, Ross. You should not have doubted me." In spite of the wariness in the atmosphere, Peregrine gripped the other man's hand hard, surprised at how much pleasure he felt at this reunion. "Have you dined?"