Bold Destiny

by Jane Feather

  “Oh, Kit—” she began, but he shushed her imperatively.

  “Charlie will only give of his best if he accepts you as his rider, and you’re going to need him to give of his best.”

  Bob looked doubtful. “I’d be happy to, of course. I taught my sisters to ride, but … but, well …” His hands waved in an inarticulate attempt to explain how he felt about instructing such a one as Annabel Spencer.

  Annabel smiled. “I won’t give you any trouble, Bob. I will be every bit as amenable as one of your sisters. I shall be completely enveloped in a chadri, will say not a word to you, but will follow instruction without question.”

  “Are you teasing me?” The mild blue eyes looked suspiciously at the blandly smiling countenance.

  “Not in the least. When you are free, come and fetch me. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “Around noon, then,” Bob said and went off to ensure his own place in the coming night’s endeavors.

  “Come,” Annabel said, rising gracefully to her feet. “Harley will prepare you a bath. You’re as black as the ace of spades.”

  “Gun smoke,” Kit explained, hauling himself wearily to his feet. “Am I about to discover yet another facet of Ayesha?”

  “You are,” she nodded firmly. “You are about to discover how an Afghan woman cares for her warrior on his return from battle.”

  “Oh,” Kit said. “I wish I weren’t so tired.”

  “I can promise you it will only add to the pleasure,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “Put yourself in my hands, Ralston, huzoor.”

  “With the utmost willingness. But what of your pleasure?” He followed her into the bedroom.

  “It comes in many forms,” she said, deftly unfastening his sword belt. “Sit down now, and let me take off your boots.”

  “This time, you may do all the work.” Kit leaned back in the chair, stretching out his feet for her as she bent to seize his boots. “But only because I would conserve my strength for later, when I can promise you, sweetheart, I fully intend to ensure that you don’t know whether you are in this week or the next.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.” Her eyes met his in a moment of sensual promise that transcended fatigue, before she returned to her self-appointed duties, ministering to him in ways that reminded him of the nursemaid of his childhood—except that the touch of Ayesha was most definitely intended for an adult male.

  Had he been less mesmerized, the absurd comparison would have made him laugh. As it was he could only store it up for later enjoyment. “Lie beside me for a while,” he murmured, sliding between the crisp sheets.

  “If that is what my lord wishes,” she responded with a salaam.

  “He does,” said Kit sleepily, watching through half-closed eyes as she undressed and slipped naked into bed beside him. “Lie on your side so I can hold you.” He curled around her, molding his body to hers, his hands cupping her breasts, his breath warm on the back of her neck, and she felt him glide into sleep, his body relaxing, his hands heavy in their possession.

  For a couple of hours she lay with him as he slept, sensing that her presence brought him peace and renewal even in the depths of unconsciousness. When she gently disentangled herself, he groaned in protest and tightened his arms. Laughing softly, she wriggled free and out of the bed.

  “Where are you?” He didn’t open his eyes and his hands groped blindly over the bed.

  “Getting dressed. Aren’t I supposed to ride Charlie with Bob?”

  “Oh, yes.” He flipped onto his other side, muttering, “Practice without the saddle this time.”

  Annabel gave the hump in the bed a somewhat quizzical look and murmured in an ironic undertone, “Yes, Ralston, huzoor.”

  Bob appeared on the stroke of noon, leading Charlie and looking a little nervous. His nervousness dissipated to some extent under Annabel’s cheerful greeting, directed both at him and at the horse, who responded with a whicker of recognition and pawed the ground eagerly as his rider landed neatly in the saddle with a helping hand from Captain Markham.

  “Does Kit permit you to keep the saddle?” Bob asked as they reached the riding school.

  Annabel looked down at him, regarding him through the ru-band in her chadri, her eyes clear and surprised. “I am not a trooper, Bob,” she said in blithe prevarication. “I hardly think it’s necessary for me to drill as if I were.”

  “No … no, I suppose it’s not,” Bob said doubtfully. “But drilling bareback does ensure a degree of concentration you don’t need with a saddle.”

  Annabel inclined her head in graceful acknowledgment, but said, “For a trooper, maybe. Charlie and I are simply getting acquainted.”

  Bob still did not look convinced; however, he was far too diffident to argue with her. The riding school was empty, the sounds of gunfire from the earthworks ample reason for the absence of drilling troopers. Perfecting the finer points of equestrian expertise took second place to the need for defense against the sporadic harassment from without.

  Annabel found Bob’s style of instruction very different from Kit’s. He was so chary of sounding in the least officious that she had difficulty differentiating between corrective criticism and praise. Finally, after one particularly confusing comment, she said, “Bob, just say that again as if you were talking to one of your troopers.”

  He looked at her, startled, then suddenly began to laugh. “Forgive me, I was trying so hard not to sound critical.”

  “I’m not such a frail reed that I will break beneath a word of criticism,” she said. “I understand I was doing it wrong. I could feel Charlie’s confusion.”

  Matters improved after that, and when Kit, looking refreshed and cheerful, sauntered into the building half an hour later, he watched with approval for a few minutes before going over to Bob and inquiring softly, “Did you think she wasn’t ready to dispense with the saddle? I had judged her to be perfectly competent.”

  Bob turned in surprise. “But Annabel said you thought there was no need for bareback practice.”

  “Artful hussy,” Kit observed with the utmost cordiality. “I told her to do without the saddle today. Presumably she didn’t care for the idea.”

  “Kit!” Annabel saw him and came trotting across the ring, the smile of pleasure that they could not see nevertheless apparent in her voice. “Are you feeling rested?”

  “Completely,” he said. “Dismount, now. I want that saddle off.”

  “Oh, Kit. What possible difference can it make?”

  “A big difference, as you will discover. Down, please.”

  “Why must you be such a perfectionist?” Grumbling, she swung herself to the ground and stood glowering as they removed her saddle. “In a minute, you’re going to expect me to carry a sword and lance.”

  “Stop carping.” Impervious to her plaints, he gave her a leg up onto Charlie’s very broad back. “Now, just for that piece of insubordination, miss, you may give me a series of eights. Lead off by the left, please.”

  “Heartless brute!”

  Kit laughed and Bob, grinning, picked up his shako. “If you can manage without me, I’ll leave you to it.”

  “They’re sending foraging parties to the village of Behmaroo,” Kit informed him, not taking his eyes off his pupil. “I met Colin as I was coming over here. It seems we can replenish our supplies to some extent from the village. It’s a bare half mile out of the cantonment … Annabel, Charlie needs to combine left front with right back. You’re confusing the poor beast.”

  “Sorry,” she called back. “But it’s the very devil trying to give him commands when I have no purchase. My knees are not strong enough.”

  “You don’t need strength, just skill,” Kit responded amiably, receiving a stream of virulent Persian in return.

  Bob chuckled. “I’ll go to headquarters and see what else is in the wind. If we’ve eased the supply situation for the time being, matters are looking up.”

  “I wish I had your confidence.” The laughter faded from Kit
’s eyes. “But maybe, if we succeed tonight, it might put a brake on ’em. Did you manage to get a place on that junket?”

  “I did. Griffiths was only too delighted to welcome anyone who evinced the slightest degree of enthusiasm. It’s as cheerless as the grave over there, with Elphinstone still wittering and Macnaghten looking black.”

  “Well, I’ll see you in the square at dusk … That’s good, sweetheart. Try it from the right now.”

  Bob left his friend and his extraordinary lady to their lesson—a lesson Annabel brought to an abrupt halt as soon as the school door banged shut on his departure.

  “Kit, I have had enough now,” she announced, drawing rein at the conclusion of a right turn caracole.

  “Dear me,” he murmured. “Are you compounding insubordination with mutiny? The penalties are severe, I should warn you.”

  “I’ll risk them,” she said, suddenly pulling the chadri over her head and tossing it down to him. “Just as I’ll take the consequences of unveiling.” She laughed down at him from her perch atop Charlie.

  His breath caught as he gazed at her. Her hair hung in its heavy plait down her back, every lean and sinuous line of her body delineated in the leather trousers and tunic, the jade eyes glinting with mischievous invitation.

  “I seem to remember promising you something earlier this morning,” he drawled, draping the chadri over his arm. “It might be advisable if you were to dismount.”

  “Advisable for whom?” she bantered, keeping her seat.

  For answer he simply crooked a finger, and she obeyed the summons with her imp of Satan smile, in which anticipation and confirmation joined in a promise of contracts about to be honored.

  “Sweet heaven, but you’re a miraculous creature,” he whispered as she came, lithe and light, into his arms. His hands moved hungrily over the body wreathing around him, tracing the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips. “I’ll take Charlie to the stables. Go home, take off your clothes, and wait for me.” The instruction was a husky throb, and he felt the current of passion jolt through her as he held her. Her thighs contracted, hard against his; her lower body pressed into his, her head fell back, lips parted, eagerly expectant.

  He looked down at her upturned face, where the rich brown eyelashes lay in luxuriant half moons against the cream-white complexion. His hold shifted to her bottom, cementing her against his own arousal as his head bent and his mouth took hers, his tongue exploring within the willingly opened lips. A fleeting thought of the rissaldar, of troops of cavalry come to drill, flashed and vanished. He had a promise to keep.

  It was a promise Annabel fully intended he should keep. She moved against him, in response not initiation, yielding all self-determination to her lover’s orchestration. When at last he released her mouth and drew back, his breathing ragged, she smiled dreamily, making no attempt to move out of his hold.

  “I’ll be no more than half an hour,” he said. “Be naked for me when I come to you.”

  She nodded. He took his hands from her and she glided away from him. “Anna,” he called softly, holding out her chadri. “Better put this on.”

  The shortening of her name was an anticipation of fulfillment. Her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing, simply veiled herself before leaving him.

  In a fever of impatience, Kit took Charlie to the stables, praying he wouldn’t be waylaid and obliged to conduct some ordinary conversation or make some irksome, routine decision when images of white skin, sensuous limbs, tumbling copper hair, and lust-filled eyes rioted in his head.

  The sound of gunfire had become part of the everyday noises of the cantonment, and he barely noticed it, brusquely handing the horse over to a sepoy trooper and hastening back to his bungalow.

  There was no sign of Harley, whose instinct for discretion had always been one of his greatest virtues. He entered the bedroom.

  Annabel was sitting cross-legged upon the bed, her only covering the burnished torrent pouring down her back, drifting over her shoulders.

  “Salaam, Ralston, huzoor,” she said, touching her hands to her forehead, her eyes glinting in the firelight.

  “Greetings, Ayesha.” He unfastened his tunic. “Can you remember what I promised you?”

  “That I would not know whether I was in this week or the next,” she answered, watching as he pushed off his britches, his movements swift and economical, watching as he came over to her with springing step, most beautiful in his arousal.

  “I always keep my promises,” he said, bringing one knee up on the bed and catching her chin with his finger. “This time you will put yourself in my hands.”

  “Most willingly.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Akbar Khan stroked his beard. “Ten thousand rupees for the head of each chief. That is what the letter offers.”

  His audience remained impassive beneath their turbans, smoke from bubbling hookahs coiling in the air of the council chamber warmed by a potbellied stove.

  “The Envoy’s representative, Lieutenant Connolly, has written thus to Mohun Lal,” Akbar Khan continued in the same pensive tone. “He suggests that Hadji Ali might be bribed to accomplish this bringing in of heads.” The bright blue gaze ran around the room, encountering stony faces and grim eyes. “It would seem to me that those who would employ assassins cannot be trusted to honor any contracts made with them,” the sirdar quietly pointed out, and a rustle of agreement swelled into an articulate consensus.

  “When Macnaghten, huzoor, professes to negotiate in good faith, I find myself doubting his word.” Akbar Khan permitted a smile of derision to touch the incisive mouth as he gently labored his point.

  “It’s said that Elphinstone, huzoor, is growing weaker by the moment,” one of the sirdars rumbled. “That is why Shelton and his brigade were ordered into the cantonment from the Balla Hissar.”

  “According to my sources in the cantonment, that is the case,” Akbar Khan said. “I think it’s time we increased the pressure a little. Despite the British success in storming Mahomed Shereef’s fort the other night, our tribesmen are now occupying all the forts on the plain between Seah Sung and the cantonment. I suggest we fire directly upon the cantonment from the Rikabashee fort.”

  “And the village of Behmaroo?” Uktar Khan sipped sherbet. “How long are we prepared to permit them to replenish their supplies from that source?”

  “No longer,” Akbar Khan said. “Although they are able to draw barely subsistence rations from the village, it is a lifeline and one that must be cut. And once it is cut, they will have no choice but to negotiate a withdrawal before they starve.”

  “The snows are coming.”

  “Yes, the snows are coming, and their fuel stocks must be almost exhausted.”

  The shura broke up on a note of union unusual with this disparate, factious group, and Akbar Khan remained alone, staring into the middle distance in complete meditative immobility.

  Ayesha would know what was being planned. How did she feel, impaled in the cantonment amongst the weak and vacillating fools he had taught her to despise, awaiting the end in which she knew she would have to participate? When should he remove her? It would be easy enough to accomplish at any time, the cantonment was so thoroughly infiltrated with his own people. Should he leave her there to learn the pangs of hunger; to experience the dread of inevitability as the collar tightened; to shiver in terror as her imagination, fed by the knowledge of experience, suggested the various fates her khan might have in store for the unfaithful one?

  He missed her. Insofar as Akbar Khan ever permitted concerns of the flesh to obtrude in his single-minded purpose, he missed Ayesha’s softness, the softness that overlaid that certain sharpness he enjoyed so much, that set her apart from the women to whom he was accustomed. He missed her ready response to his challenges as much as he missed her skill at the art of love. He missed the sense of being tuned to her every thought and twist of emotion. He could only guess at what she was feeling now, and he wanted to know. She had chosen to r
emain with the feringhee, but had she chosen the whole people, or just the ephemeral joys of Christopher Ralston’s bed? The latter he could forgive. He would punish the infidelity, but he would forgive, since the situation was in some part his responsibility. But betrayal was a different matter.

  He frowned slightly as he came out of his contemplative trance. He would leave her where she was for the time being. Exploiting the witless treachery of Macnaghten required all his concentration.

  “Dear God!” Kit exclaimed, running his hands distractedly through his hair. “The regiment at Kurdurrah has been cut to pieces. And now this.”

  “What’s ‘this’?” Colin Mackenzie came into the adjutant’s office looking harassed. It was a universal expression in headquarters these days.

  “The cantonments at Charikar have fallen,” Kit said grimly. “The Gurkha regiment under Codrington did what it could to defend them, but those damned Ghazi fanatics massacred the entire garrison.”

  “Families?”

  Kit nodded bleakly. “Pottinger and Haughton staggered in this morning, the only two survivors, and Haughton’s barely alive.”

  “Sweet Jesus!” Mackenzie went to the window and stood staring out into the deserted street. The winter wind rattled the glass and sent autumn’s fallen leaves scurrying before its vicious sweep. Across the country, British garrisons were falling before the Afghan jezzails and scimitars. On the plain outside Kabul, tribesmen were massed, pouring fire into the cantonment with almost derisory ease.

  “We should evacuate the cantonment and move into the Balla Hissar,” he said. “For once I agree with our esteemed Envoy. It’s the only sensible option. It’s well defended, and has a relatively commanding position. Down here, we’re like rats in a trap.”

  “Shelton won’t have it,” Kit said. “I’ve been listening to the deliberations all morning. He’s in favor of falling back on Jalalabad where Sale is holding, and the brigadier is afraid that if we move into the Balla Hissar it will delay the retreat.”