by Лорен Уиллиг
Her bruised ribs chafed against the still-damp material of her dress. Her skin was raw from where the rope had rubbed repeatedly against her. Her whole body felt battered and buffeted and drained of all energy. It had been silly to insist on riding from the river to the camp. She ought to have taken the offer of the palanquin and dozed her way to camp.
Perhaps Freddy was right and she oughtn’t to have jumped into the river in the first place.
But, then, who would have? Penelope rested her elbows against her knees, propping her head in her hands, her damp hair falling straight around her face, screening the world in red. It never curled unless she curled it, stick-straight and as much of a disappointment to her mother as everything else about her.
She was tired, so tired, tired and soggy and drained, and all she wanted was someone to put a warm blanket around her shoulders and hug her close. Back in London, the last time she had careened into a large body of water, Henrietta had been there, to comb out her hair and hug and scold her and tell her she was an idiot and bring her tea and want to know what exactly the water of the Serpentine tasted like, all in the same breath. There had been a proper bed with proper blankets and a maid coming in to tend the fire and Lady Uppington bustling about with disgusting smelling possets, which Penelope had poured out into the chamber pot as soon as she wasn’t looking. Lady Uppington had wanted to know what the Serpentine had tasted like, too, although only after delivering a proper maternal lecture on the follies of driving other people’s curricles into large bodies of water. So much love and so much care and all of it so very far away.
With difficulty, Penelope worked free the buttons on the short jacket of her riding habit. The wet fabric clung stubbornly to her arms, tailored too close for convenience. She peeled it painfully off, sleeve by sleeve, every movement feeling like a minor battle. The blue dye had soaked through to the cambric shirt below, and the once-white fabric clung bluely to her skin, like the painted pelt of a Pictish princess.
She had gone as Boadicea to a masquerade last Season, brandishing a spear and thirsting for the opportunity to drive a chariot into battle, rather like — what was it that Captain Reid had called her? — an Amazon.
Penelope didn’t feel much like a warrior maiden at the moment.
It was bloody tiring being so fractious all the time. Had Boadicea ever felt tired? Worn out? Unhooking the suspenders that held up her riding skirt, Penelope let the weight of the wet wool drag it to the floor, leaving her clammy and blue in her chemise. The hand mirror revealed that not only was she vaguely blue, but she had streaks of dirt across her face and there was mud caked in her hair. She didn’t look like Lady Frederick Staines, consort of the new Envoy to the Court of Hyderabad, or even like the dashing Miss Penelope Deveraux, scourge of the London Season. Snarl-haired and hollow-eyed in her discolored chemise, she looked like the less-prosperous class of harlot.
What had possessed her to pick a fight with Freddy just now?
Penelope spat on a handkerchief, scrubbing the square of cloth against a streak of dried mud on one cheek. It was just so irresistible when he was so . . . well, Freddy. But he was all she had here, stranded in the middle of a strange land with unfamiliar birds chattering around her head and flowers to which she couldn’t give names unfurling unfamiliar blossoms on curiously shaped trees.
Shrugging into a light muslin dress and flinging a shawl over it against the dropping temperatures of the evening, Penelope poked her head out of the flap of the tent. Cotton fields lay to one side, the Musi River to the other. Penelope could already see the dots of dozens of cook fires reflecting eerily off the waters of the river, like Chinese lanterns in a garden. From the bank came the muted sound of mealtime conversations, as foreign as the scent of the rice and spices steeping in the pot-bellied pots. By the makeshift paddock, the hamals had lit a great fire of cotton scrub to keep the flies from the horses. The smoke grimed the evening air, blending with the falling dusk, creating shadows against shadows.
“Freddy,” she called softly, but no one answered.
It didn’t take much imagination to guess where he might have gone. Either he had grabbed up his gun and tramped off into the brush to see what he could shoot as a way of soothing his wounded feelings, or he would have made for the sepoy encampment, where the guard that made up part of their escort lay. Lieutenant Breese, their commanding officer, had only an East India Company commission. Under normal circumstances, Freddy might have been inclined to snub him. But in a party in which Englishmen were scarce, he was still an officer and a gentleman — of sorts — and thus good enough to play cards with.
Unless, of course, something else had befallen Freddy. There was that broken girth. . . .
Moving with more haste than grace, Penelope threaded her way towards the sepoy encampment on the very edge of their camp. Through the canvas of the largest tent, she thought she could see the outline of two men at a table, a bottle between them. Freddy and Lieutenant Breese? Most likely.
For a moment, Penelope stood staring at their silhouettes, caught between relief and irritation. To think she had always mocked Charlotte for having too loose a grasp on reality! That was what she got for letting her imagination run away with her. Freddy in danger, indeed. Freddy getting foxed, more like. More fool she, to come running out like an avenging Amazon to defend his person against miscellaneous malefactors. He neither needed nor wanted her for that. Or for anything else, save what could be found between the sheets.
Penelope’s head throbbed and the shadow images in the tent seemed to shimmer against the canvas.
Too much river water, she told herself. Too much heat and exertion. She was just plain worn out, and that was the only reason she felt a completely inexplicable impulse to sit down in the cotton scrub and cry. It was nothing more than physical weakness, and a good night’s sleep would put her right as rain again, like a toddler who had spent the day too much in the sun and needed to be put to bed.
Penelope gathered her skirt to turn back, but the hanging branch of an acacia tree scratched across her arm, tangling in her shawl. Penelope yanked at the fabric, not caring what she tore, just so long as she got away before Freddy saw her standing there, like some pathetic waif in the night, or a dog left outside its master’s door. Blast it! Penelope tugged, but the fabric was as stubborn as she was, clinging to its twig like an eloping heiress to her lover. Muttering nasty things under her breath, Penelope changed tactics, fumbling at the fabric with impatient fingers, trying to disengage it from whatever malevolent collection of splinters was holding it fast.
“Do you need help?” asked a now-familiar voice.
The branch sprang free, releasing the scent of fresh flowers into the damp night air.
“I’m quite all right on my own,” said Penelope stiffly, grateful for the darkness that hid the damp blue chemise beneath her too-thin frock and the appalling condition of her hair. She shouldn’t have been surprised at his appearance. Captain Reid had an unsettling talent for being everywhere she didn’t want him to be. She yanked her shawl firmly over her shoulders, knotting it to keep it from going astray. “As you can see.”
“Of course,” said Captain Reid, and she hated him for it, hated him for having caught her unprepared, hated him for being kind. Such kindness wasn’t a gift but a goad, scraping against one’s skin like a yoke of thorns. She would have preferred him stiff, defensive, even offensive. “Shall I see you back to your tent?”
Penelope bristled at the implied criticism, all the more infuriating for being justified. It was not the brightest thing to wander about alone at night in a camp of eighty men and miscellaneous beasts. Not that she would ever admit that to Captain Reid. “In case tigers attack me over the next ten yards?” she said belligerently.
“Merely as a courtesy,” he said mildly, and she felt doubly shamed. “But if you know your own way . . .”
Penelope fought back with the only weapon in her arsenal. Her voice was as cloyingly sweet as the flowering branch and just
as thorny as she looked up at him from under her lashes. “Will you miss me if I get lost along the way, Captain Reid?”
Captain Reid stepped back, as clear a rejection as a slap across the face. “I’m sure your husband would,” he said stiffly.
In Lieutenant Breese’s tent, the shadow Freddy reached for a card, kicking back in his chair to stare at his hand with the sort of intensity he never reserved for her. Not since last December, at any rate.
Penelope’s laughter etched acid across the evening air. “I wouldn’t wager on that, Captain Reid. And, no,” she added bitingly, “you needn’t see me back.”
Without waiting for his response, she made a full turn and stomped off in the direction of her own tent. She ought, she supposed, to make an effort, to sway her hips or toss her hair, but it didn’t seem worth it. Captain Reid might respect her Amazonian tendencies, but he had made quite clear he had no use for her in any other way. It was a bizarre and baffling turn of events, and one that Penelope had no interest in analyzing. One could only accept so much rejection in one evening.
Even so, she was very aware of Captain Reid’s shadow in the lee of the acacia tree, watching her safely back to her tent.
Chapter Six
Watching Lady Frederick pick her way back across the camp, Alex was aware of an unexpected and inconvenient emotion: pity.
It didn’t do to feel sorry for Lady Frederick. It didn’t take the stiff set of her back to tell him that she wouldn’t be grateful to him for it. What did he have to pity her for, after all? Her earrings alone would pay his salary for a year. It was senseless to dwell on the waste of it, a clever woman married to a lout of a husband. She had chosen her lout. And Alex had other responsibilities.
Pushing away from the tree trunk, Alex headed determinedly in the other direction, away from the camp. It had been, he told himself briskly, a bit of luck that Lady Frederick had been too distracted to demand where he was going in the middle of the night. And she would have. Alex’s lips curved in the ghost of a grin. Oh, that she would.
Leaving the camp behind, Alex skirted the edge of the road they had traversed earlier that day. It was a well-traveled road, and there were other parties who had made shift for themselves for the night by the water of the river Musi, eschewing the dubious comforts of the nearest dak-gharis or caravanserai. Across the river, a troupe of Brinja rees, the ubiquitous grain merchants of India, had camped with their herd for the night, while farther along a party of Dutch jewelers from Masulipatam had paused on their journey to the fabled diamond market of Hyderabad.
Among all these travelers, the tent of a local nobleman, however large and well-appointed, was scarcely worth noting. The others in the column had ridden past without giving it a second glance. As Alex approached, a man emerged from the tent to lounge decoratively by its side. He might have stepped out of a Persian painting, fair complexioned and dark haired, with a small, thin mustache, dressed in a richly figured robe banded with pearls at the wrist and forearms. On his head, he wore a jaunty silk cap with a single curling feather. All that was missing was a hookah in one hand.
It wasn’t a costume. Tajalli Ali Khan was exactly what he purported to be, which made his choice as messenger all the more brilliant.
“How fortunate,” said Tajalli cheerfully, “that our paths should cross like this just as I return from acquiring a new falcon.”
“Liar,” said Alex, embracing his friend in the local fashion. “Did James send you?”
“Of course,” said Tajalli. Extracting something from the folds of one sleeve, he handed over a small, rolled scroll of paper. “He sent you this.”
Alex didn’t need to unroll it to know that it would be in code. James might trust Tajalli, but only so far. It wasn’t a slight; he only trusted anyone so far. The courts of India were rife with espionage and counterespionage, with everyone from the rulers to the British residents keeping his own stables of spies. Despite all their vigilance, Alex knew that they had informers among the Residency staff, just as their own informers were sprinkled through the household of the Nizam, the First Minister, and the major players in the durbar. Ever since a disconcerting experience during which key documents had reached their enemies before reaching Calcutta, James had been very careful to put almost everything in code.
“I did get that falcon, though,” Tajalli added blandly, as Alex neatly palmed the small scroll of paper. “Wait till you see her. You’ll be sick with envy.”
“Until I win her off you.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
The two friends grinned at each other in perfect harmony.
Their backgrounds could not have been more dissimilar. The son of a Hyderabadi nobleman, Tajalli could trace his lineage straight back to the Prophet. He had been raised to be exactly what he was, the consummate courtier, quick to turn a phrase, fearless at the hunt, at ease with pomp in a way Alex could never be. He had never experienced the hardscrabble life of an army camp, never had to worry about preferment or advancement, never turned his purse inside out to find it empty. It gave Tajalli no pause to spend on a single night’s entertainment what Alex earned in a year. That new falcon had probably set him back a pretty penny, more than Alex could ever countenance spending on a whim.
Yet they were friends, and had been friends since the first month of Alex’s appointment in Hyderabad, when they had found themselves flung together on a cheetah hunt hosted by the Resident. Alex admired his friend’s insouciant ease of manner, even while he knew he could never hope to emulate it.
“I’m surprised you didn’t bring a few elephants, while you were at it,” said Alex, looking pointedly at the gaudy tent. “Or maybe a few dancing girls to strew roses in your path?”
“I’m being inconspicuous by being conspicuous,” retorted Tajalli. They spoke court Persian, the lingua franca of the aristocratic Mughal world, which had the additional bonus of being unlikely to be understood by any of the servants, sepoys, or miscellaneous followers of either of their camps. “Can you really see me disguised as a servant?”
Alex looked at Tajalli. Even had he been wearing a plain cotton jama and speaking Urdu, his friend would never be able to pass as anything but what he was. The set of his shoulders and the angle of his head marked him for what he was as surely as did the pearl bracelet on his wrist.
“No,” Alex said bluntly. “You’d stand out like an elephant in a herd of cattle. What made you volunteer to play messenger boy for Kirkpatrick?”
Tajalli spread both hands in a gesture that gave the appearance of responding while indicating absolutely nothing at all. It also showed the rings on his fingers to excellent advantage. “I was bored. It’s been damnably tedious with you away these past few weeks.”
Alex suspected there was more to it than that, but he decided to bide his time. Tajalli would tell him when he was good and ready.
“Poor you,” said Alex, peeling back the tent flap and ducking under. “Nothing but hunting and nautch girls to while away the empty hours.”
“It’s a damnable shame,” agreed Tajalli, giving him a slight push to speed him along. “Look who else I’ve brought to greet you.”
A figure moved in the dim interior of the tent, rising off the piles of rugs and cushions that Tajalli considered essential for even the briefest of jaunts.
“George!” exclaimed Alex.
“Surprised you, didn’t I?” said his brother with evident satisfaction. The elaborately pierced lamp picked out the copper tints in his hair, part of George’s legacy from their father. “I knew you wouldn’t expect me.”
Alex hadn’t, but he was damnably glad to see him. He thumped his brother on the back in greeting. “Shouldn’t you be in Sardhana? How did you persuade the Begum to give you leave?”
George’s eyes shifted away. “It’s not ‘leave’ precisely. The Begum had an errand she wanted me to run in this part of the world.”
“And you’re not happy about it.” George had always been an open book. At least, he ga
ve the impression of being so, an impression that was frequently very useful to him, especially in his dealings with women. It was, Alex thought, as much a part of his legacy from their father as his coppery hair and Scots blue eyes.
It was a legacy that had passed Alex entirely by. He took after his mother’s side, dark-complexioned Welsh preachers with stiff spines and morals to match.
George grinned at him. “Something like that,” he admitted. “I’ll tell you what I can of it.”
“I wouldn’t ask for more,” said Alex, and meant it. “Don’t tell me anything that might come back to bite you.”
Now that the Begum Sumroo was bound by treaty to the British, their interests were theoretically in alignment, but Alex knew it would take only a moment to change that. If George were to be caught ferrying information to the British side, his life could be forfeit. Any confidence that might endanger his little brother wasn’t worth knowing.
It was a damnable situation they were in. Beginning when George was just out of swaddling clothes, a series of orders had come down from the Governor General’s office, disqualifying anyone with an Indian parent from serving in the East India Company’s army. With his Rajput mother, George was banned by his birth from joining his father’s regiment, forced to seek service instead as a mercenary in the employ of a native ruler.
It never ceased to amaze Alex that George seemed to bear no resentment at all against his father or his father’s people for the restrictions they had placed upon him for no greater fault than an accident of birth. Alex resented it for him. It was one of the reasons that Alex had decided to leave the Madras Cavalry. It didn’t feel right to belong to a force that wouldn’t take his own flesh and blood, simply because the blood ran darker on one side. Even that was a misnomer. George was fairer than he was and always had been, from the moment he had bounced into the world. He had been a fat, fair, chuck-ling baby with a cap of red curls that had gradually darkened to the color of an antique shield as he grew from a toddler’s dress into boots and breeches.