Silk and Shadows(42)

In perfect charity, they worked their way through the upper floor. It proved equal to the ground level, with a dozen spacious bedchambers. Bathrooms and water closets needed to be updated, but when that was done, the accommodations for house parties would be ample and luxurious.

Last they investigated the long gallery that ran across he back of the house. It was an attractive room, with fireplaces at each end and large casement windows with padded, built-in seats overlooking the garden. After studying some of the gloomy portraits, Sara asked, "Are the portraits also part of the sale?"

"No, the paintings are to be shipped to Canada." After examining one, his mouth quirked up. "I could use some respectable ancestors, but I find these a boring lot. Perhaps I shall commission a painter to do a new set for me."

He glanced across the gallery, his smile fading. Releasing Sara's arm, he crossed the room for a better view. It took a minute to unlatch the casement. Then he threw the sashes wide and leaned out, bracing his hands on the sill and balancing with one knee on the window seat.

Below him lay the English countryside in all its aching beauty, the misty hills rolling to forever. He reacted to the sight with the same intensity as when he had first seen Sulgrave. He temporarily forgot his companion, and it was a surprise to hear her voice at his elbow.

"This house sings to you, doesn't it?" she said softly.

"I suppose that is as good a way as any of putting it." He tried to understand why, and couldn't. Probably he would not have explained even if he did know the reasons. Instead he said, "You are an English aristocrat, born and raised to this kind of life—the richness, the beauty, the peace, the chance for justice. You can't appreciate how much it means."

"Probably not." The window-seat cushion shifted as she sat at the other end. "But you were a rich man in your own country, and Ross said that Kafiristan has its own matchless beauty. Does this mean more to you?"

"Not more, perhaps, but it is different." Peregrine turned and sat on the window seat, only two feet of space separating him from Lady Sara. She was cool and self-possessed, except for the warmth in her grave brown eyes. Sara St. James, as much a woman as she was a lady. She'd left her riding hat downstairs, and the slanting sunbeams touched her hair to molten gold.

Something twisted deep inside him, and again he experienced the surging, uncontrollable desire he had felt downstairs. It was not just her serene beauty, nor her quiet strength, that aroused him, though he admired both.

Perhaps it was her Englishness—like Sulgrave, like England itself. She represented a way of living that now, against all probability, lay within his grasp. He did not know if it was a life he wanted, nor would he have the leisure to decide until he had finished with Charles Weldon. But in the meantime, there was no denying Lady Sara's allure.

It took all his willpower to remain still. He yearned to touch her, to call forth her latent passion, but not yet, not when his own desire threatened to cloud his judgment. Better to talk, to weave a web of words until he was in control again. "Kafiristan is a poor country, unbelievably poor. It is not even really a country, just a collection of related tribes. It didn't take much wealth to be a great man there."

"But Ross said you were very rich. How... ?" Sara stopped, faint color appearing across her high cheekbones.

"I gather that it is rude and un-English to ask about a man's money? No matter, I am not easily offended," he said, amused. "The source of my fortune was not in Kafiristan. Have you ever heard of the Silk Road, the ancient trade route from China to the Mediterranean?"

"I've heard of it, but no more than that."

"For perhaps two thousand years, caravans carried goods between the East and West, from ancient Cathay to imperial Rome. Silk and jade, spices, gold, and amber, and a thousand other things passed through many different hands, and were carried by every kind of beast used by man." Unconsciously his voice took on the compelling rhythms of the storyteller.

"Traders risked bandits and disease, but far worse were the natural hazards of mountains and deserts. Perhaps the most dangerous part of the journey was Chinese Turkestan. There, in the fiery, blasted heart of Asia, lies a desert called the Takla Makan, a wasteland of shifting, treacherous dunes three hundred feet high, surrounded by the tallest mountains in the world. It is a desert that makes Arabia seem tame by comparison, a place where the kara-buran, the black hurricane, can bury whole caravans with no trace of man or beast ever seen again."

"You speak as one who has been there and survived."

He nodded. "The Silk Road skirted the southern edge of the Takla Makan, and cities grew up at the scattered oases. Once they shimmered with wealth and power, but several centuries back, most of the cities died, and the sands of the desert reclaimed them. I am not sure why, though the development of sea routes must have had much to do with it. There are many legends about the lost cities—tales of how heaven destroyed them for their wickedness, warnings of the demons that guard the buried riches."