“At your age!” Mary said with more candor than tact.
Lady Hathaway’s mouth thinned. “When you have reached my advanced years, Mary dear, I do hope you will have acquired a little wisdom to compensate for the loss of your good looks.”
Jonathan’s lips twitched with a suppressed smile, but Mary seemed not to notice how thoroughly she had been put in her place. There was a complacency to her, the self-satisfaction of the young, I thought. She knew well enough that in a short while, she would be undisputed mistress of Hathaway Hall. Her things would be moved into the master suite, no doubt after she had redecorated, stripping away every last reminder of Lady Hathaway. By virtue of her age alone, she would triumph. Viewed in that light, it was rather sordid and a little sad, I decided. Lady Hathaway had clearly been a person of some influence, accustomed to wielding power over those around her. With the passage of time, she had become smaller until all that remained were the tiny tyrannies of the elderly inflicted upon the young.
It all made me exceedingly grateful that I had no proper family to speak of. I enjoyed the smug solitude of an orphan, with no obligations to trouble me and no expectations to stifle my whims. It might be lonely at times, if I were entirely honest, but how much better to be alone with my dignity intact than at the mercy of my relations!
It was only a few short minutes until Effie and Anjali returned bearing a small casket. I was not familiar enough to distinguish among the various styles of Indian workmanship, but the artistry was clearly from that part of the world. It was wrought silver, badly tarnished but still lovely. Effie presented it to her grandmother with a flourish while Anjali handed over a key, an enormous thing with a thick silken tassel attached to one end.
“Granna,” Charles Hathaway began, half rising from his seat, “is that—”
She waved him back to his chair. “It is indeed, Charles. Do not fuss.” She settled the casket on her lap and fitted the key to the lock. It turned with an audible protest, and Effie had to help, but at last there came a decisive click and the lid sprang free.
Lady Hathaway beamed down at the contents, an expression of fondness warming her features. “There you are, my darlings,” she crooned. “It has been a long time.” She reached a hand into the casket and brought it up again, dripping in rubies.
We gasped as they caught the light, flinging it back again, the glittering scarlet sparks warming the pale, withered flesh of her hand. She gave a delighted laugh and dipped her hand again, this time emerging with a string of emeralds. Pearls followed, long strands of them looping about her arm. She presented earrings and brooches and bracelets, all set with the same gems, and a turban ornament in the shape of a peacock’s tail, paved with rubies.
“Do you see that little hollow?” she asked us, demonstrating the empty chamber at the top of the turban ornament. “That is where a plume would go, always an ostrich feather of purest white. And here,” she added, touching a spot just above the elaborate scarlet tail, “this is where the heart of the peacock belongs.”
She reached a last time into the casket and drew out a velvet box. She handed it to Jonathan. “Open it, lad,” she ordered.
He gave her a questioning look, but she flapped her jewel-laden hands at him. “Do as I say.”
He looked at the group. My own expression must have been one of wide-eyed wonder, for I had never seen such an assemblage of jewels and I had once worn the crown jewels of the Alpenwald. The others looked frankly astonished at the magnificent display heaped in her ladyship’s lap.
Jonathan took a deep breath and opened the box. He caught his breath, and I knew he was not pretending. His awe was entirely sincere. With reverent fingers he drew out a stone, an enormous thing, as red as blood and shimmering with the crimson glow of a still-beating heart.
“The Eye of the Dawn,” Lady Hathaway said as he held the gem up to the light. “Perfect pigeon’s-blood color and without flaw. It was mined in the mountains of Persia and has a fascinating history. It was given by the Shah of Persia to a maharajah as a peace offering after years of violence between them. It is said that the stone was originally a diamond but turned to a ruby from the blood shed between these two warlords. The maharajah had it set into the turban ornament to display it proudly, but he wore it for only a month before he died. His son and successor wore it less than a year. After that, it was believed cursed for men to wear it, and it was removed from the turban ornament and placed into a necklace instead for the maharani. Eventually it passed into the hands of a particular maharani whose husband was instrumental in the Sepoy Mutiny. During the confusion of the rebellion, the jewels came into my husband’s possession. He presented them to me, of course, and they have been mine ever since.”
Stoker and I exchanged glances. Her ladyship had not been forthcoming on how the jewels came into her husband’s possession, but it was presumably not through legitimate means. Colonials had used the mutiny as an excuse to seize property owned by the native royals, and more than one upstanding English family had found itself the richer for it, albeit no one ever admitted publicly to behaving like privateers. If priceless gems and expensive bric-a-brac suddenly found their way from palace strongrooms to the necks and drawing rooms of the British in India, who would complain? Certainly not the various nobles whose possessions had been plundered. The collapse of the mutiny had left many of them in the precarious position of having openly supported the overthrow of the authorities who were firmly entrenched in India. A few ropes of pearls or blooded horses were a small price to pay to avoid serious repercussions for having been on the losing side of the rebellion. Whether Sir Geoffrey Hathaway had stolen the gems outright or exerted pressure upon the prince to hand them over, they had certainly not been given freely, I surmised.
“Magnificent,” Effie breathed.
“It is,” Jonathan Hathaway said in a low, reverent voice.
“It will be yours, lad,” Lady Hathaway told him. “I have sent instructions to my solicitor and the necessary codicil has been signed.” Jonathan opened his mouth but Lady Hathaway held up a hand. “Do not fuss. I mean to keep them until I am dead, for I do like to look at them now and again, but when I die, they are yours.”
Mary gave her husband a sharp look and he interjected. “But, Granna, surely you recall that the jewels were being fetched from the bank so that Mary might wear them for her portrait,” he began.
Lady Hathaway curled a lip. “The jewels are my own private property, Charles. And it is not your concern what I do with my property,” Lady Hathaway said firmly.
“Of course,” he replied, holding up a hand. “Certainly. Right you are.”
Mary said nothing, but her lips were clamped tightly together. She rose and smoothed her skirts. “If you will excuse me, I must look in on the children.”
Charles looked after her as she left, clearly unhappy at being caught between his wife and his grandmother. He fell to fiddling with his pipe, turning out the ashes onto the hearth and tamping in a fresh plug of tobacco.