Silk and Shadows(113)

Minutes passed before he said in an almost inaudible voice, "Most of what you've heard tonight is true."

Walking to the table that held the decanter and glasses, Mikahl poured himself another drink, his hand less than steady. "Would you like some brandy, Sara? If you want to hear the sordid story of my life, it is going to be a long night."

"Please." Sara closed her eyes with a shuddering sigh of relief, passionately grateful that Mikahl was once more the husband she knew and loved.

When he placed a glass in her hand, she opened her eyes. "The part about you being a male whore and madly in love with Charles—that is the part that is false, isn't it?"

He stared at her a moment. "Sometimes, Sara, you make my blood run cold. Why do you say that?"

"I cannot believe it of you," she said simply.

"You are quite correct—he was lying about those things." He began pacing the room, too restless to sit. "However, just about everything else Weldon said was true: I was born less than five miles from here, near the East End docks."

Sara shook her head in amazement. "So you are really English. Incredible."

"I was born in London, and spent the first eight years of my life here, but that does not make me English," he corrected sharply. "The England I knew is very different from the world you grew up in."

She knew that he spoke the truth, yet still, he was as English as she was. Perhaps more so; her privileged life was the exception rather than the rule. "Who were your parents?"

"No one you would know," he said dryly. "My mother was a country girl from Cheshire who ran away with a soldier. After he abandoned her, she became a barmaid in a London dockside tavern. My father was a sailor in the Royal Navy. He lived with her when he wasn't on duty. He had an estranged wife so he couldn't marry my mother even though he loved her, or so she told me. Perhaps that was so. It pleased her to believe it."

"What happened to them?"

"My father died at Trafalgar when I was two years old. I don't remember him, but my mother used to say I looked just like him." Mikahl perched on the edge of the windowsill. "Her name was Annie. She was casual and good-natured. She never complained and could always find something to laugh at.

"She wasn't a prostitute, but after my father died, she had a series of male 'friends' who stayed when they were in port and who helped with the bills. When I began to run wild, she sold the gold necklace one of her lovers had given her, and used the money to put me in a dame school. That helped keep me out of trouble and saved me from being completely illiterate."

"What was your original name?"

"Michael Connery, after my father. He was Irish." His face was pensive. "I suppose I'm not really entitled to the Connery name since I'm a bastard, but my mother called herself Mrs. Connery. I never knew what her maiden name was."

Michael Connery. Pronounce it with a different accent, and it became Mikahl Khanauri. Sara examined her husband with fresh eyes: the height, the black hair and fair skin, the green eyes, the ability to charm the birds from the trees when he chose. "Irish. I should have guessed," she said with dawning understanding. "The first time I met you, you said that green eyes were not uncommon among your father's people."

"Which is the truth." His expression was sardonic. "You may not believe this, Sara, but I've tried to avoid lying to you."

Sara cast her mind back over their conversations. At length she said, "I do believe you. Thinking back, I don't recall you ever actually saying that you were Kafiri. And there were many other times like that, when my expectations shaped what you said. You certainly are a master of selective facts."

"A minor skill, but one that I excel at." His voice was self-mocking.

Sara's brows knit as she thought of a new question. "What about your accent? It is impossible to place. If I had to guess, I would have said that you speak like an Asiatic who had attended Oxford University. Certainly not like a cockney."

"After I left England, I was exposed to standard English. Then for many years I never spoke my native tongue, though I read it whenever I found an English book. I didn't want to forget the language because I always knew that I would need it again someday," he explained. "When I went to India and had the chance to speak English again, I found that my original accent had been modified by the other languages I had spoken over the years, so I cultivated the new accent as a way of covering up the cockney. I knew that when I returned to London, I would be accepted more readily as a rich foreigner than as an East End slum rat who had made good."