Bold Destiny

by Jane Feather

  The gray eyes impaled her, probing the secrets of her soul as his fingers probed the secrets of her body. “No future, my Anna?” he whispered. “How can you tell me there can be no future when I feel you throb with promise, quiver with hunger; when I read the love and the lust in your eyes?”

  Her eyes closed, but she knew it was too late to deny the truth, although her head moved on the quilt in a parody of denial. No one but Kit had called her Anna, and he used the private name sparingly, as if its assertion of his special place in her life was too important to be diminished by use.

  “You will admit it in the end,” he declared quietly, unclasping the chalvar at her hip and pulling them down, casting the loose, flowing trousers to the floor. “If it takes me all night, I will hear you say it.” His hands ran in a stroking caress down the backs of her thighs as he raised her legs, pressing her knees against her body, and she leaped beneath his mouth and the sweet piercing pleasure of his tongue.

  She could no more resist the surging, plunging delight than she could the power of his avowal and his knowledge that she shared it whatever she might say. When he flung off his britches and entered her body in a searing thrust that brought a cry of joy to her lips, she rose to meet him, thrust for thrust, and her eyes were open, candid in their recognition as they met his.

  “No future, my Anna?” He withdrew to the very threshold of her body, holding them both poised on the brink of extinction.

  Her eyes closed for a second as the myriad sensations of bodily bliss mingled, centered on the point of their fusion, and she seemed to hang suspended in a viscous pool of delight.

  “Say it, my Anna,” he insisted, moving fractionally within.

  Her eyes opened. “Perhaps,” she said.

  He smiled. “I won’t insist on a complete conversion … not yet.” Then he drove deeply inside her, becoming bone of her bone, blood of her blood, sinew of her sinew, and there was no longer a past, a present, or a future, simply an intermingling in ecstasy of the cells and atoms that constitute separate entities.

  It was a long time before they returned to the recognition of their separateness. Annabel became conscious of her tunic clinging damply to her body, of the feel of Kit, soft within her, his breath rustling against her neck, the pungency of their loving hovering in the air. She stroked his head in languid benediction. He raised his head to look down at her.

  “You are so beautiful, my Anna. Such a wondrous being.”

  She smiled, a hint of mischief beneath the residual sensuality. “You were threatening to do any number of terrible things to me a little while ago. If that was what you meant, I must remember to provoke you more often.”

  Kit groaned in defeat and rolled off her. “I don’t want you to go into Kabul. It’s asking for trouble.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” She sat up, pulling her tunic over her head. “I’m all sweaty.” Sliding off the bed, she padded barefoot to the ewer and basin on the dresser. “I will promise to weigh the risks with the advantages. Will that satisfy you?”

  He watched her as she sponged her body with natural ease, unaware of the grace of her movements as she raised an arm, shifted a leg, handled her own body with a deft familiarity that despite fatigue rekindled the ashy coals of his desire. There was no point arguing the toss with her, he decided, getting off the bed with a purposeful step. And no point postponing present pleasure for a future they might never have.

  But his recognition of that fact was one he would keep hidden in the darkest recesses of his soul. Only thus could he deny it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “In the name of the Almighty! This cannot be happening.” Colin Mackenzie stared, sick with horror, at the scene on the plain beyond the ramparts of the cantonment. “They’re running like rabbits.”

  “Better give them covering fire,” Bob said curtly, shouting an order to the sergeant in charge of the riflemen lining the ramparts. “Damnation, but they’re so intermingled, it looks as if ours and theirs are going to come in together.”

  It was the following day, a day when Shelton again tried to retake Behmaroo from the Kohistanee tribesmen. News had reached the cantonment throughout the day of the appalling losses he was taking as the Afghan garrison was reinforced, and of how the infantry had refused to respond to the command for a bayonet charge, and the cavalry had sat like stones as the bugle called the charge. But not even the liveliest imagination of the most pessimistic and despondent amongst them had envisaged this panic-stricken rout.

  Across the plain streamed the British force in total disarray, infantry scattered, their lines and squares broken, cavalry troopers thundering toward the cantonment; on their heels, so close that it did indeed seem to the horrified watchers that they were mingled with the fleeing British, came their Afghan pursuers, on horseback and on foot, jezzails cracking, khyber knives and scimitars wreaking deadly havoc.

  Men fell, to be left wounded on the plain by their escaping comrades, to be cut to pieces with merciless savagery as they lay.

  The loud, imperative blast of a trumpet rang out above the incessant, chaotic sounds of battle. The gates of the cantonment were flung wide and a troop of cavalry, swords and lances poised, galloped forth in a wild charge toward the deadly melee.

  “Isn’t that Kit leading the charge?” Bob squinted through his field glass. “He never misses an opportunity to get out there these days.”

  “No,” Colin agreed, his own glass trained on the line of fire. “It’s almost as if he has a personal vendetta … Adjust to the left, Sergeant, seven points.”

  “Seven points to the left,” came the bellowed correction, and the muskets swung accordingly.

  “I think he has,” Bob said seriously. “Love does the strangest things to people.”

  Colin glanced sharply sideways. “Love! That’s a powerful word.”

  “I believe it to be true. The impervious Christopher Ralston has fallen victim to Cupid’s dart. And he’ll kill every Afghan with his bare hands if it will enable him to get Annabel Spencer safely out of Afghanistan.”

  Colin whistled softly. “I had thought it simply a grand passion, appropriate enough here but completely unsuitable anywhere else. Surely he realizes that?”

  Bob shook his head, but further elaboration became impossible as the stampeding troops drew closer to the gates and the range of the covering fire from the ramparts had to be adjusted moment by moment.

  “I was hoping to find a friendly face.” Annabel scrambled breathlessly up between the two men. “I suppose Kit has gone out there.” She was wearing her leather riding dress and boots, her hair knotted at the nape of her neck, a fur-trimmed cloak tossed over her shoulders.

  “Shouldn’t you be wearing a veil?” Bob asked automatically.

  Annabel gazed at the spectacle of catastrophe, absorbing the pandemonium, before observing somberly, “I don’t imagine such concerns will be of any relevance now. It looks to me as if you’re not going to be able to hold them off. And once they’re within the gates—” She left the sentence unfinished. They all had the impression of inhabiting a nightmare reality as the unstoppable pursuit drew ever closer, seemingly immune to the musket fire from the ramparts and only slightly checked by Kit’s cavalry charge.

  “Sir, I think they’re falling back!” excitedly called a sentry.

  “By God, I think you’re right.” Colin put up his glass again. “Yes, look, they are falling back.” Just when it had looked as if the enemy tide would pour over the fugitives and overwhelm them completely before surging under their own momentum into the cantonment, the Afghan pursuit had inexplicably slowed.

  “May I borrow your glass?” Annabel was straining her eyes into the confusion. “Thank you.” She took the glass Colin handed her. “It’s Osman Khan,” she said. “He has called them off. I wonder why. He is no more merciful than any of the other sirdars.”

  “You know him?” Bob looked at her with interest.

  She shrugged. “I know most of them to some ex
tent. There are always antechambers and tapestries for clandestine listeners. I know who the waverers are, and who are the most powerful. Osman Khan is one of the most powerful, and is strongly aligned with Akbar Khan.” She handed back the glass. “I think it’s time my knowledge was put to some use, do you not?”

  “In what way?”

  “The fighting is done,” she said softly. “You will have to begin negotiations. I know how the Afghan negotiates. I know how their minds work. Such knowledge must surely be invaluable.”

  “I’m not sure Kit will agree with you,” Bob said. “He’s coming in now.”

  Annabel rested her elbows on the rampart, watching as the anarchic crowd tumbled through the gates. There was no order, no apparent chain of command, only the appalling mortification of panic and defeat. Kit’s troop of cavalry stood out as they brought up the rear, holding to an orderly line. But then Kit’s troop of cavalry had not been broken under a day of decimating, relentless enemy fire and sudden, violent attacks by armies of screaming fanatics. They had not been thrown again and again against an unyielding target until the murderous pointlessness of it all had swept them into a terrorized stampede for a spurious safety.

  Brigadier Shelton rode in through the gate, his posture erect, his eyes fixed on some spot straight ahead as if he had no place in this scene of turmoil and disgrace. He spoke to no one but dismounted in the barrack square and strode off to headquarters.

  “Can’t help but feel sorry for him,” Bob muttered. “He’s a damned good soldier, just bullheaded and not inspired. But he doesn’t deserve to be implicated in such a shameful business.”

  “Feringhee complacence,” Annabel said succinctly. “A little less of it, and that would never have happened. I am going to find Kit.”

  “I do wish she wouldn’t say things like that,” Bob declared uncomfortably. “I always feel I ought to argue with her, that it’s letting down the side not to, but then if you really think about it … ”

  Colin frowned. “It’s not the sentiment, it’s the manner of expressing it that rankles. No one enjoys hearing home truths from the bloody enemy, and that’s what she sounds like sometimes. I’m off to headquarters to hear Shelton’s report.”

  “I’ll come with you.” The two men left the ramparts where desultory fire continued behind them in the gathering dusk.

  On reaching the square, Annabel strode boldly across to where Kit was dismissing his troop. She stood to one side until he had completed his business, then stepped out into the light of an oil lamp.

  “Are you well?” The soft question startled him and he swung around.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “The world and his wife are here,” she replied, gesturing at the scene. “I have been on the ramparts with Bob and Colin.”

  “Why are you unveiled?”

  Her eyes met his steadily. “There seems little point in further charades, Ralston, huzoor.”

  He said nothing for a minute, then shrugged acceptingly. “No, you are right. We have reached the end here.” He looked around and shook his head in an inarticulate gesture of disgust and disbelief. “Shelton said all along that the troops were not capable of such a battle. They’re dispirited, weakened by poor provisions, exhausted by this constant defensive fighting. You can’t really blame the poor buggers. But, dear God, I never thought to see British troops turn tail like that.”

  “To have left the Kohistanee in command of Behmaroo without a fight would have been tantamount to a request for a negotiated withdrawal,” Annabel pointed out.

  “Which is all that is left to us, anyway,” he said, suddenly harsh. “Maybe there would have been an element of dignity in a strategic acceptance of the inevitable.”

  “I would like to talk to the general and the Envoy,” she said directly.

  “No,” Kit said.

  “There are things I can tell them, things I know that they do not.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I will not have you exposed to mess gossip and drawing room tittle-tattle.”

  “I thought we had agreed the time for charades was past.”

  “But not the time for discretion.”

  “Kit—”

  “No!” He turned on his heel and left her standing in the square, a remarkable figure with the coloring of the feringhee and the garb of an Afghan. She watched him go, a deep frown between her eyes. Then she, too, left the square, her stride for once long and impatient, the cloak fluttering behind her as her leather-clad legs hastened through the cantonment.

  “Young woman!” At the imperious hail, she slowed, looking toward the piercing tones she recognized as those of Lady Sale.

  “Ma’am?” She realized instantly that her automatic response had given her away. If she had continued on her way, as if she had not understood the summons, the charade would have been preserved. It was too dark in the street for Lady Sale to see anything but the bright hair and the familiar Afghan costume.

  “Come over here.” Her ladyship beckoned imperatively from her front garden, and Annabel crossed the street. Lady Sale raised her lorgnette and scrutinized her in the thin light thrown by the lamp-lit window at her back, missing not a detail of her unusual coloring, revealed for the first time now that the familiar figure was without chadri or veil. “I thought as much,” she announced. “I do not know what is going on here.” The statement was made in tones of disbelief, as if such a happenstance had been hitherto inconceivable.

  “There has been a rout, ma’am,” Annabel said, willfully misunderstanding her. “The enemy pursued your troops across the plain—”

  “That is not what I am talking about,” interrupted Lady Sale. “And why would you say ‘your’ troops? You are as English as I am, are you not? And clearly from a good family, judging by your voice. But I will tell you that those clothes are a disgrace.”

  “Unfortunately, ma’am, they are the only ones I possess.” For one absurd moment Annabel was transported to her mother’s drawing room in Peshawar, when as a little girl in muslin frock and frilled pantalettes she had made her curtsy and responded politely to the catechisms of her mother’s guests, and tried not to wriggle when kissed by avuncular whiskered gentlemen smelling of brandy and cigars.

  “I knew Christopher was prevaricating,” her ladyship muttered, frowning fiercely. “I’ve known him too long for him to pull the wool over my eyes. Where do you come from, gal?”

  “Peshawar,” Annabel said blithely.

  “Nonsense! I know all the families in Peshawar.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t wish to be discourteous, but I am not convinced I am obliged to answer your questions,” Annabel said gently. “But I can assure you that where I do answer, I tell only the truth.”

  Lady Sale drew her cloak tighter against an icy finger of wind, laden with the promise of snow, and demanded bluntly, “Are you livin’ under Christopher Ralston’s roof?”

  Annabel gave the question due consideration. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then you’re no better than a camp follower.”

  “If you say so, ma’am.”

  Her inquisitor stared at the blandly smiling young woman, whose speech was of the carefully modulated brand of the upper class, whose jade eyes were carefully expressionless, yet they stood out against the milk-white complexion in a curious, involuntary challenge.

  “I do not understand this at all,” her ladyship pronounced. “But I intend to.” She turned back to her front door.

  “I beg your pardon, Lady Sale, but I think there are more important matters requiring your attention at present.”

  The older woman stopped, looked over her shoulder to where Annabel still stood at the gate. Her frown deepened as she seemed to consider something, then she asked abruptly, “Do you think we’ll come through?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Annabel, as if the strangely confidential question were not in the least inappropriate in the light of their conversation. “But whatever strengths
we have, we will need. And those who lead must be seen to do so.”

  There was a moment’s reflection, then Lady Sale nodded. “You may be a shameless hussy, miss, but your head appears to be straight. I bid you good night.”

  “Good night, ma’am.”

  Annabel waited until the servant had admitted Lady Sale to her bungalow before continuing on her way, wondering whether to tell Kit of that encounter. He was bound to hear of it from Lady Sale, anyway. It would undoubtedly annoy him, but it had had the strangest effect on herself. Something had crystallized, and she was not sure she wanted to face that something. She was beginning to belong behind these ramparts. Her fate was inextricably tied to that of the inhabitants of the cantonment, but it was not simply by virtue of her physical presence here.

  It was not simply by virtue of her physical presence here.

  Her swift step faltered as the implications of that realization crept beneath her skin. How had it happened? That subtle sliding from Afghan contempt to alignment with the supposedly contemptible enemy? Was it just that she was aligned in love with Kit? In friendship with Colin and Bob? In understanding with Harley? Or was it something more fundamental? The legacy of her childhood springing anew, vigorous, bursting through the overlay of Akbar Khan’s teaching, so that Ayesha became the construct and the essential Annabel renewed herself in the soil of her growing?

  It was a profoundly disturbing concept, yet strangely exciting. And it was one that informed her determination to put the knowledge she had to best use. If these were her people, then she owed them her loyalty and the benefit of her experience. No one else in the cantonment knew what she knew, and it was inconceivable, in the light of the day’s disaster and the present hopeless position, that they would reject what she had to offer.