by Jane Feather
“You look as if you could do with some attention yourself,” Bob commented, handing his horse over to a trooper. “You’re welcome to share my bungalow if—”
He broke off at a horrified exclamation from Kit. The reason for the exclamation burst upon them, all flashing eyes and swinging copper hair. A cloak flung loosely around her shoulders, Annabel bounced on her toes in front of Kit.
“You have been out there!” she declared in a voice trembling with fury. “Without telling me, you went to fight the Ghazi. You promised you would not again forget to tell me—”
“For God’s sake, stop it!” Kit was white, and the men around him dumbfounded, even the more knowledgeable Bob, who could not imagine how his friend was going to deal in satisfactory manner with this appallingly public scene.
“You did not think I would be wondering where you were,” she continued, paying no heed to his interjection. “You said you were going to the gate for a few minutes … and you have been gone for hours and hours, without a word … and I find you have been in danger—” The tirade came to an abrupt halt as Kit, his face now scarlet, gripped her shoulders with bruising purpose.
“Be quiet!”
Slowly her gaze ran around the stunned group in their immediate vicinity, and then to the rest of the square where people stood staring. “I am sorry,” she said, her voice now low, her eyes wide with contrition. “But I was afraid for you. I forgot everything else.”
“Whoever is that young woman?” demanded a matron in piercing accents from the far side of the square. “I haven’t seen her before. And whatever is she wearing?”
“Go back to the bungalow and wait for me to come to you,” Kit said, controlling his voice with some difficulty. “I will deal with this then.”
She went immediately, hurrying through the gaping crowd, drawing the hood of her cloak over her face, keeping her eyes on the ground as if this reversion to Ayesha-appropriate modesty could undo the damage.
“Whew!” Colin whistled softly. “What a tigress, Kit. Who is she?”
“The woman I intend to make my wife if we ever get out of this godforsaken hole,” Kit said almost distantly. “If I haven’t wrung her neck first, of course.”
“Really?” Bob looked at his friend with kindled interest. “I didn’t realize that was the way the land lay.”
“Neither did I,” said Kit, his lips set. “But I should have. Let us go and make our report. The sooner it’s done, the sooner Colin can get some rest.”
“Look, there’s no need for us both to go to Elphinstone,” Bob suggested. “Hadn’t you better go back and see—?”
“No,” Kit interrupted curtly. “She can damn well sit there and wonder what I’m going to do to her when I do get back! It would serve her right if I marched her straight round to Lady Sale and abandoned her,” he added savagely, striding toward headquarters.
“Dear me!” Colin murmured. “It’s not like Kit to become so exercised. I didn’t think anything would ever scrape the surface of that implacable disillusion.”
“The lady’s a trifle unusual,” Bob offered in explanation.
“Yes, I had rather gathered that. You must tell me the details when we’ve finished with Elphinstone and Macnaghten. It might cheer me up.”
The general and the Envoy received Captain Mackenzie glumly. They offered neither explanation nor apology for abandoning him, but were kind enough to commend Captain Markham and Lieutenant Ralston for their swift action in offering reinforcement.
“I wish I knew what is to be done now,” the general mumbled. “General Nott attempted to send a brigade from Kandahar, but they were forced to turn back because of the weather. The snows are beginning to fall. I do wonder, Sir William, if we should not consider making terms.”
“So long as our supplies remain intact, General, we can hold on throughout the winter,” declared the Envoy. “I have written to Mohun Lal with instructions to begin intrigue amongst the chiefs. Matters will soon right themselves.”
Elphinstone did not look convinced, but he did not argue; instead, he fixed Lieutenant Ralston with a rheumy eye. “Lieutenant, it was a captaincy you held in the Seventh Dragoons, as I understand it.”
“It was, sir.” Kit had found reduced rank a matter of small importance beside the greater one of his exile, and now he responded without much interest. His thoughts were far too busy elsewhere.
“Mmmm. Well, I think it only right that you should hold the same rank with the East India Company’s Cavalry,” the general said. “You have performed sterling service in negotiating with Akbar Khan and in this evening’s action.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Captain Ralston with much the same note of indifference.
“Well, gentlemen, I think that’s all for the moment.” The general struggled up from his chair. “I will have your promotion posted immediately, Ralston.”
“I was wondering when he was going to do something about your rank,” Bob commented outside. “It was manifestly absurd, after your years of service.”
Kit laughed, but without much humor. “Service is hardly the way I would describe five years on Horseguards Parade, Bob. Anyway, if you’ll both excuse me, I have a pressing affair to deal with. If you would care to join me for supper in about an hour, Miss Annabel Spencer will have something to say to you.”
“At least Kit’s got something to take his mind off this suicidal lunacy,” Colin observed, as he and Bob made their way to the latter’s bungalow. “And what a something,” he added, managing a weary chuckle. “I trust you’re going to fill me in.”
Annabel had indeed been chewing her nails in a fair degree of apprehension in the hour since her return from the square. The more she thought about her outburst, the more she cringed. She, who for eight years had never so much as raised her eyes to a man without permission, had railed at Kit in front of complete strangers in the most intemperate fashion. And since she could neither explain nor excuse such behavior to herself, her chances of producing a convincing defense to the justifiably furious Kit were remote.
At the sound of the front door, she jumped to her feet and stood facing the sitting room door.
“Salaam, Ralston, huzoor,” she said humbly, touching her hands to her forehead as he stalked in.
“Don’t give me that!” The door shut under a vigorous push. “You harpy! How dare you treat me to such an abominable display, like some Billingsgate fishwife?”
“But you promised—”
“No, you promised,” he interrupted. “You promised you would behave with circumspection in the cantonment. And what do you do? You descend on me, berating me with all the obvious intimacy of someone who has shared my bed, in full sight and earshot of the entire cantonment. The story will be on everyone’s lips by the morning, and how the hell am I to explain it?”
“Tell the truth,” she said. “I’ve told you it does not matter to me.”
“And I have told you that it matters to me. Quite apart from that, I have never been so embarrassed by anyone, ever.”
“I am sorry,” she said simply. “It was inexcusable. I was just afraid for you, and I have never felt that way about anyone before.”
“But how could you forget everything we have discussed?” He tossed his cloak over the couch and ran his hands through his hair, where the lamplight caught deep golden lights. “How, Annabel?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t understand what is happening to me. I used to have a quick temper as a child, I remember that, but the last time I lost it was with the Ghazi who gave me to Akbar Khan. Since then, I learned to control it absolutely.” She turned away from him and stood staring into the fire, her words coming slowly as she seemed to feel for explanation and understanding. “It’s as if I’ve been in some way released from the need to step quietly at all times, to watch my every move and weigh every word.”
“You are not released from that,” Kit told her bluntly. “The consequences of forgetting may be different in this place, but they�
��re no less potent.” Catching her by the shoulder, he swung her around to face him. “And I give you fair warning, Annabel Spencer. If you ever embarrass me like that again, I will return the experience in full measure, most powerfully and publicly.”
There was a short silence while they both absorbed the exchange, its causes and what lay beneath those causes.
“Have a brandy,” Annabel suggested suddenly. “It might make you feel less annoyed.”
“I thought I was eschewing the demon drink,” Kit said.
“Just not taking it to excess,” she declared, her eyes twinkling at him now. “Will you tell me what happened this evening?”
He gave her a faithful account, not excluding his surprise promotion, and matters were in a fair way to returning to normal between them when the door knocker banged.
“Who’s that?” Annabel did not sound particularly pleased at this interruption, at a point when equilibrium was still a trifle fragile.
“I expect that’s Colin and Bob.” Kit stood up, frowning again. “I invited them to have supper with me. And if you wish to join us, you will damn well apologize for that scene. They were thoroughly discountenanced.”
He went to the door. “Come in. Colin, you have not met Miss Spencer, have you?”
“I have not had that pleasure.” Captain Mackenzie bowed politely toward the still figure, standing beside the fire.
Annabel stepped forward with an air of resolution. “I owe you all an apology. I behaved abominably, and I most truly beg your pardons for any embarrassment I may have caused you.” She looked toward Kit, one eyebrow lifted. “Will that do?” He nodded and she smiled with relief. “Then we can forget it now?”
“We can,” he said with resigned emphasis. “But I don’t think anyone else is going to. You’ve now made your presence most dramatically felt throughout the cantonment, and God alone knows how I’m going to explain it.”
“I shouldn’t bother to try,” Annabel said cheerfully, moving toward the door. “I’ll go and see if Harley needs any help with supper.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t bother to try,” Bob agreed, shrugging lightly. “There’s enough going on at the moment to make a nine days’ wonder out of it if nothing is said.”
“Let us hope so.”
* * *
The next morning, however, brought a most unwelcome summons. Lady Sale wished Captain Ralston to wait upon her at his earliest convenience.
Kit received the summons with darkening brow, and Annabel regarded him warily, wondering if his anger were about to be rekindled. “Perhaps it’s not about—”
“Of course it is,” he interrupted. “Interfering busybody that she is.” He pushed back his chair from the breakfast table. “The trouble is she’s the bear-leader in this place, and Elphinstone thinks the sun shines out of her …” He swallowed the vulgarity and turned his irritation on the cause of the trouble. “We could have pulled this off, Annabel, if you had kept your promise.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t help, does it?”
“I suppose not.” She played with the crumbs on her plate. “If you really don’t wish her to know my history, why do you not tell her I was a mixed-race harlot in the bazaar who took your fancy? There are some, and they might conceivably speak English. Afghan women frequently dye their hair with henna; it’s a favored color.” She looked up at him. “There’s no reason why an unmarried officer shouldn’t have someone to warm his bed, is there? That obtuse colonel made that assumption.”
Kit sighed. Even if he wished, it was too late to revert to his original plan and throw the pathetic, innocent, rescued orphan on her ladyship’s considerable mercies. Annabel had made the nature of their relationship all too clear by her outburst. He was going to marry her, but he was going to do it properly, in St. George’s, Hanover Square, with an engagement notice in the Times, banns, and congratulations. His intended bride did not know this, of course, and he rather thought it best kept to himself for the time being, but it did mean that for the present she had to assume a different identity for the likes of Lady Sale.
“It will serve,” he said. “But I shall have a peal rung over my head on the subject of moral laxity and indiscretion—the latter being the greater sin. If you had been discreet, everyone would have turned a blind eye to what went on under the privacy of my own roof.”
“Are you always this unforgiving?” she inquired with a hint of testiness of her own now. “It really doesn’t seem to be at all useful. I have tried to offer constructive suggestions, and all you can do is complain about what’s past.”
Kit smiled reluctantly. “I used to say that to my father, when he would worry away at some past peccadillo of mine until I was no longer in the least sorry and more than prepared to go out and sin again.” He shook his head in some bewilderment. “I don’t know what you are doing to me, Annabel.”
“I wouldn’t do anything to you that you didn’t want done,” she said, leaning back in her chair, amused by the faintly puzzled expression in the gray eyes, the rueful curve of the sculpted mouth. “What would you like me to do to you now?” She stood up with deliberate purpose, her eyes sparking with unmistakable promise. “Or shall I surprise you?”
“I am going to face the music,” Kit said, stepping hastily away from her as she came toward him. “Now, don’t be wicked, Annabel.” The last plea was a groan as she reached against him, molding her body to his, putting her arms around his neck, bringing his mouth to hers, and her hands palming his scalp. She was wearing one of his dressing gowns and as she lifted her arms the loosely tied girdle came undone and the garment opened so that her body, warm and naked, was pressed to his.
He held his arms away from her for as long as he could, but yielded finally, slipping his hands inside the robe, running his palms over the silken curves and contours as his body rose hard and wanting in response.
“There,” she said softly, moving her mouth from his. “Now you may go to Lady Sale and tell her that what you do with your harlot from the Kabul bazaar is entirely your business. You will feel more like saying it now, won’t you?” Her hand, intimately mischievous, touched him in pointed emphasis.
He looked down at her, into the jade eyes where beneath the naughty laughter swam the shark of passion, as sharp-toothed as his own.
“You are an imp of Satan,” he declared, his fingers tightening on the bare curve of her hips. “I do not know how such a one manages to work celestial magic. It is a contradiction in terms.”
“But one worth unraveling,” she said. “Aren’t you going to let me go?”
“I don’t know,” he said with mock gravity. “I haven’t decided whether or not to exact some penalty for this devilment.”
“Like what?” The words seemed suddenly to stick in her throat as she caught her breath on a jolt of desire.
He felt the shock course through her body, read it in her eyes, and smiled with smug satisfaction. “Like that.” He took his hands from her. “Having done to you what you did to me, sweetheart, I’ll leave you to contemplate the frustrations of beginning something you don’t intend to conclude.”
He left her standing in the middle of the dining room. Ruefully, she ran her hands over her aroused body, cupping her breasts where the sensitive peaks stood out in aching readiness. Then, with a half smile, she refastened the robe, reflecting that she had been given only what she deserved.
Kit, having decided to take the offensive with Lady Sale, offered her ladyship a bland smile as she received him in her drawing room, waving him into a chair, her expression severe.
“I heard a most disturbing report, Christopher,” she said without preamble. “I am certain you know to what I refer.”
Kit shook his head. “Indeed, ma’am, I am afraid I do not. I was not aware that I was in any way accountable to you.”
“The tone and conduct of this cantonment is my responsibility,” she responded acerbically. “Quite apart from my friendship for your mother,
I feel obliged to ensure that your behavior is not lowering the tone of our community, or damaging your reputation.”
“Which is long past repair, ma’am,” he reminded her. “Just as I am long past the age for being hauled over the coals in this fashion. Whom have I offended?”
Her ladyship had begun to look distinctly disconcerted. “I was given to understand that you have a … a young person under your protection.”
“It is not uncommon,” he said gently. “You must be aware that most of the unmarried men, both in India and here, take care of their needs as it seems appropriate.”
Lady Sale’s color heightened. “I know nothing of such things. What you men do with the natives is nothing to do with me. But to flaunt one of our own women, of whatever class, in full view of the innocent young ladies in this close society of ours is indefensible. It is a gross insult. What is someone like poor little Millie Drayton to make of it?”
Kit frowned and appeared to give the thought some attention. “Well, ma’am,” he said finally, “I have no intention of flaunting anyone in front of these delicate maidens. It seems to me it would be in the worst possible taste. Just as it seems to me, if you will forgive me, that your assumptions are somewhat out of line. Who could you possibly imagine I have under my protection?” He looked suitably bewildered. “An Englishwoman? Here? You cannot truly believe that, Lady Sale. And a native woman is, as you say, a matter of no importance.”
Her ladyship was now looking very flustered. “Well, I heard—”
“Perhaps one should not refine too much upon what others may have heard,” he interrupted, a distinctly chilly note in his voice. He had now realized that he was not going to be obliged to enter into any elaborate untruths, and the knowledge gave him considerable satisfaction. He would confound the self-righteous with his own brand of that defect. “A great deal was happening in the barrack square last night. I find it difficult to believe anyone could have formed an accurate impression of anything.” He stood up. “I have duties to attend to. So, if you will excuse me.” He bowed.