The Serpent Beguiled Read online

  The Serpent Beguiled

  Betina Lindsey

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Author’s Note

  More from Betina Lindsey

  Connect with Diversion Books

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1992 by Betina Lindsey

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition October 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-68230-142-5

  Also by Betina Lindsey

  Waltz with the Lady

  The Swan Series

  Swan Bride

  Swan Witch

  Swan Star

  To dreams, soul mates, and karmic promises…

  Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere;

  they are in each other all along.

  —Rumi

  Chapter 1

  England, 1885

  Lilith Cardew waited.

  She lay in a strange bed, in a strange house—waiting for a stranger.

  Her ears strained to catch each unfamiliar sound: the footfalls along the terra-cotta tile beyond her latticed screen door, the gentle rain of water from the marble fountain in the solarium court, a tropical bird’s lively caws and the flurry of its wings stirring the palm fronds as it flew through hothouse foliage.

  She shifted, smoothing the neck-to-toe lawn nightgown knotted about her legs. Incense swirled into her nostrils and she neared the point of sneezing. Perfume, tobacco, and springtime always made her sneeze—now incense. She felt misplaced, nervous, and wildly curious.

  She had never quite experienced a room or a house such as this. Though she knew she was in London, the moment she and her mother had stepped across the threshold of Eden Court she’d felt as if she’d stepped into the Forbidden City. All that was rare, exotic, and bizarre from every corner of the world was reflected in this household. Her gaze circled her bedchamber from the fierce-eyed stone cobras coiled on the blazing hearth to the demon ceremonial masks glaring against the walls of ebony lattice. There was no true privacy here; the rooms opened to the garden court. One could easily hear and see the muted shadows of passing servants through the screen walls.

  It all seemed fantastic to Lilith. This November night, the circumstance of being in this house, the chiming strikes of midnight which echoed through the garden court colonnade like a litany in a sacred temple. She doubted she could ever fall asleep in such strange surroundings.

  In the candlelight the scarlet brocade drapes of the Mandarin canopy bed shadowed and shimmered scenes of gardens, firebirds, and dragons. On closer look she discovered the headboard was carved with high-born men and women in various diversions—no, they were more than diverting, they were…

  Lilith’s eyes widened and she swallowed back her nervousness. Slipping from under the red silk sheets, she sat up and reached for the candle and pulled the drapes closed, encircling herself beneath the canopy. By candle flame, she slowly studied the intricately carved columns, seeing men and women embracing and kissing—nude. At that moment Lilith’s conscience urged her to shut her eyes to such lewdness and blow out the candle. But she could not muster the breath to do so. Her eyes riveted to still another more explicit portrayal. A maid lay supine as a man kneeled between her open legs. Lilith swallowed again. Her insides felt like melting butter and a cloying warmth spread between her thighs. Her curious eyes moved on…

  She could not decide whether this was art or depravity. Could such actions be welcomed? Her prior—and only—governess, Annie Tuft, would declare she was sinning just to look. Yet, tonight was her wedding night, and she had only a vague knowledge of what might be expected of her.

  The scenes were fast becoming an erotic spiral until Lilith heard a pounding which she at first mistook for her guilty heart, but soon she realized someone had knocked at her door.

  He had come.

  In the shock of the moment she blew out the candle as if to hide the evidence of her virginal wantonness—the flowing juices between her thighs and the piquant nubs of her breasts.

  “Come in,” she managed softly, not daring to peek from behind the bed draperies. She heard the lift of the latch, a latch which had no lock. Her heart pounded and her hands perspired.

  “Mistress?” came a woman’s voice.

  Slightly disappointed, Lilith slit the drapery and peered out. Lantern in hand, Rupee, the sari-wrapped Bengali maid of the household, stood patiently. “Mistress, your mother has no more medicine. She is greatly agitated. I cannot calm her.”

  Keeping herself from view of the maid, Lilith questioned, “How can it be? This very morning the chemist assured me I’d enough to see her through a fortnight.”

  “She believes he gave you the wrong mixture.” Rupee’s dark face looked tired and her voice sounded weary. “She is greatly agitated,” she repeated. “I discovered her dressing to go out herself.”

  Lilith’s stomach tightened with apprehension. “We are strangers to London, but even I know no one does trade this time of night.” She climbed through the bed drapes and reached for her silk wrapper and black veil which would conceal her fire-scarred face.

  Wear the veil, child, was always her mother’s caution. People will run at the sight of you thinking you have the pox or worse…

  Let them run! Lilith had wanted to shout. She had been ten years old when the oil lamp had fallen from the bed stand and ignited her blanket and pillow. In the subsequent months, then years, nothing could have been worse than the continual visits from one gawking physician to the next. She had been soaped, tarred, and greased with every miracle elixir known to man, but the scarring across her face remained.

  She and her mother were an ill-conceived pair who now had only one another. Since early childhood, while her father explored the world, she’d given herself over to nursing and caring for her mother, whose health never seemed to improve. Her mother lived in a world apart. Rarely lucid, time held no meaning for her, as she spent her days confined to drape-drawn rooms.

  Despair settled upon Lilith as she lowered the veil over her head and shoulders and reached for silk slippers. She spoke to Rupee, whose dark eyes were leveled on the floor—people always lowered their eyes when they saw her without her veil.

  “Is Dunraven about?”

  “Aye, he and his companion still converse in the library.”

  Lilith stepped onto the dhurrie carpet and crossed the room to the bamboo writing desk. Carefully she wrote a request that he send a servant to the chemist for her mother’s medicine as soon as possible, then she folded the parchment note and put it into Rupee’s waiting fingers. “Give this to him. I will go to my mother.”

  Rupee bowed and backed out of the room. Lilith listened to her soft footsteps pad through the tiled court, but above that was another sound—her mother’s weeping.

 
Emotion gripped her. The fires of maidenly desire fully doused by reality, she cast a parting glance to the Mandarin canopy bed and hurried from the bedchamber. Without her medicine, her mother would begin ranting soon. And then what would Dunraven imagine he had gotten himself into?

  And what about herself?

  Marriage to a stranger. A stranger she had idolized for years. Even from the first when her father wrote to her of meeting Dunraven in the jungles of Borneo, she had admired him. The lines of that letter burned in her memory. I had not expected to meet another white man, let alone an Englishman, in Borneo. But there he was, a young Adonis, his golden head above the small black haired Iban tribesmen. He wore only a breech-cloth, bush knife, and native paint. Cascades of earrings spangled to his broad shoulders and a serpent tattoo coiled his left cheek. Son of a Lord, a fellow of Eton, he has turned native during the time he’s been researching. Not my methods, mind you, for I’m of the old school and must have my tea. But Dunraven is of another ilk. He is a scholar of the first degree.

  At seventeen, when every other blossoming female of Devonshire was coming out, Lilith had remained in her customary seclusion scouring map and atlas, pinpointing her father’s and Adam Dunraven’s whereabouts. In the past years, she had ferreted out and read his correspondence with her father, descriptions of his celebrated exploits, and his every anthropological treatise. Until this very day, when she stood beside Dunraven at Saint John’s Kirk vowing love, honor, and obedience, she’d never laid eyes on him. But he was all her father had described and more. He’d worn a sleek black frock coat and silk cravat and queued, shoulder-length golden hair, looking alternately civilized and savage. Even without the serpent tattoo on his left cheek, she’d have known him anywhere.

  Today when she had written her signature in the marriage register beside the hasty, bold scrawl of his own, she’d closed her eyes and swallowed back her disbelief. It was too much like a fairy tale. She was the isolated Rapunzel, separated from the world by her veil and he, the dashing prince come to take her in his arms. No, he never took her in his arms, even when the cleric paused to say, “You may now kiss the bride.” Instead, he had taken a step back, left her veil lowered, and politely bowed.

  As she turned down the court colonnade, the breeze of her passing caused an azure feathered parrot to flutter high into the potted palms and the candle flames to flicker in their sconces. Her breast rose with a futile sigh as she shelved her maidenly dream of a love-filled wedding night.

  Adam Dunraven was a man who smiled with resistance. Yet, this moment as he opened the note handed to him by Rupee, he laughed aloud. He laughed a wry, skeptical laughter which settled on the myriad volumes of his library like dust.

  “What is it?” asked his longtime friend Charles Vivian, who looked up from his perusal of the most recent Royal Geographic map charting the islands of the South Pacific.

  “I must leave on an errand. Indeed, life does take its turns.”

  “It is not surprising for one such as yourself,” smirked Charles. “The news is out ‘The Daring Dunraven’ has returned from his most recent exploit. Have you announced to your father he now has a Tibetan monk in the family?”

  “Do not fault me, Charles,” he said forthrightly. “Unlike your directionless self, my past three years have been spent in solitude, celibacy, and the ascetic life. It is a rare existence quite unencumbered by troublesome people like yourself.”

  A crooked smile warmed Charles’ clean-shaven, almost boyish face. “And now I suppose you are reborn in Buddha.”

  He quirked the corners of his mouth with tolerance, thinking how much he’d missed Charles’ dry wit. “I remain a gentle agnostic. But you, Charles, are a cynic of the first degree.”

  “We Darwinists always are. So why did you return to the illusion?”

  “Honor.”

  “Honor?”

  “You remember my longtime friend and mentor, Andrew Cardew—he died during his last expedition to the Himalayas.”

  “Yes, I had heard.” Charles turned his full attention to Dunraven.

  “When he became seriously ill, his bearers brought him to me at the monastery in Lhasa.” He paused, ever so briefly, and then said, “He died in my arms.”

  Charles straightened and placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. “I did not know.”

  Dunraven frowned. “He made a deathbed request—as of noon today, I am husband to Andrew’s disfigured daughter and supporter to Andrew’s opium-addicted widow.”

  Charles’ mouth dropped open and he stepped back with shock. “Good God, man! You never cease to amaze. I have been in your company all evening and you just reveal to me you have, this very day, married a woman—married her without courtship or betrothal.”

  He looked over. His gray eyes leveled a hard, intent gaze on Charles. “I am not like you, Charles. I may be a peer of the realm, but since that night I climbed from our dormitory window at Eton and ran off to sea and adventure, you should not expect me to live as one.”

  An injured expression on his face, Charles perched himself on the edge of an overstuffed armchair. “Believe me, I have never underestimated you. I have always admired you and ever stood beside you. Perhaps I am a little offended you did not ask me to stand up with you on your wedding day.”

  “You have my apologies.” He turned away, crumpled the note in his hand and tossed it into the hearth. For a moment he stared into the fire and watched the parchment curl up into the flames. Then he explained, “The marriage is in name only. There will be no joining and it would be a sham to celebrate it as such. Andrew died a near pauper. I give his women financial security and my protection.”

  “Why did you not just give them a stipend and save yourself from a loveless marriage?”

  He turned from the hearth to face Charles. “Believe me, that would have been my first choice. However, Andrew specifically requested me to marry his daughter. One does not easily sidestep a dying friend’s direct request. And of course there is my father, the Lord. Lord, what a lord he is! I had just received a letter from him commanding me to give up my foolish philosophy of celibacy and return to England, marry, and concentrate on producing an heir.”

  Charles chuckled. “Yes, I see his concern. It is impossibly difficult for a celibate man to produce an heir.”

  Dunraven did not share his friend’s mirth. “My father will have to find another heir, for I intend to remain celibate.” His jaw clamped firm.

  Charles straightened with shock. “You? The same Adam Dunraven, a one-time devotee of the Tantra and, I might add, participant in every primitive mating rite from Siam to Timbuktu! I do not believe it! You give up women? Hah!”

  “Scoff if you must. The man who left England many years ago has become a nomad of the world. My tribe is mankind, Charles. My God, the universe. I am primate, I am seeker, I am celibate!”

  “And you are off the deep end!” Charles threw up his hand, somewhat exasperated. “I knew it would happen someday—your drinking all those native concoctions and chewing all those hallucinatory herbs. It was inevitable.”

  With a tilt of the head, Dunraven admitted thoughtfully and aloud, “In honesty I must say things have happened to me which defy description or explanation.” He looked down his hawklike nose to hold Charles’ wondering eyes. “I walk between earth and heaven.”

  Not breaking his gaze, Charles asked, “And is not that place called hell?”

  After a long moment he said, “It can be.” Then his features lightened, his smokey eyes gleamed wickedly, and he shrugged. “But he who knows how to go about it can live comfortably even in hell.”

  Charles began laughing. “You are the serpent himself, Dunraven. To you, nothing is sacred.”

  “You are wrong, Charles. To me, all is sacred. Whether it be a savage’s burlesque war dance or a gentleman’s pas de deux. It is one and the same to me.” He crossed the room. “And now I must be on my way to Upper Swandam-Lane.”

  “What business have you in that part of
London this time of night?”

  “As I have said, Cardew’s widow has a fondness for pure poppy. Chandoo in Swandam is the only trader I know and trust.”

  “But Adam—,” Charles opened his mouth to speak, but he cut his words off.

  “Do not question my ethics, Charles. I have none.” He sat down and began slipping off his shoes and shrugged from his shirt.

  “What are you doing, man? It is usual to dress, not undress, when one goes out.”

  “I am about to demonstrate a point to you. Under the collective term of lung-gom, Tibetans include a large number of practices which combine mental concentration with various breathing gymnastics, and aim at different results either spiritual or physical. The term lung-gom is especially used for a kind of training I have undertaken which develops uncommon nimbleness and especially enables its adepts to take extraordinarily long tramps with amazing rapidity. With the fleetness of a panther, I intend to run to Swandam and return within the quarter hour.”

  “I wager that is impossible for a single-harnessed phaeton let alone a man on foot.”

  “Then wager and ready your timepiece.”

  Charles watched him strip off his shirt and wing his lean-muscled arms in preparation. Without another word, he strode toward the outside door wearing only his black striped trousers.

  Charles followed at his heels, scrambling for his frock coat, cane, and narrow brim hat. “I intend to follow you.”

  Dunraven’s eyes flashed with the challenge. “You are welcome to try.” Charles near-tripped over Dunraven as he momentarily paused on the outside steps. Preparing himself, he shut his eyes, palmed his hands before his broad chest in an attitude of prayer, and breathed deeply, fully, and expansively.

  Anxious not to let him out of his sight, Charles took the interlude to hail a passing hansom and leaped up beside the cabman just as Dunraven’s bare feet hit the cold cobblestones of the November night.