by Rue Allyn
“The way you treat us as racially inferior.”
“I should hope not. And how do you know such flawless English?”
“My mother taught it to me.” Learned it from her British soldier, Warren presumed. The girl looked away from him and toward the marble floor. The challenging expression was still set by the fierce look in her eyes, but she seemed to be trying to displace it somewhere else.
He narrowed his eyes at her. Her hands were clasped behind her back, and her head was turned slightly downward now. There would be no more information from her today. But she was spirited. She was willing to share the details he needed. And she was, he noted, Raj’s sister. If he could not gain information from Raj himself, she would be the next best source. Perhaps I will return home with useful information after all.
“Miss Singh, I do not think I want you as a household maid.” Warren smiled. This would work out very well. “You will assist me, and me alone, in my study.”
The girl looked up; her large, brown eyes widened in surprise and her lips parted slightly, but she said nothing.
“My study is in that direction.” He pointed down the hall. “That is all. Thank you,” he added in Hindi to Raj.
Warren couldn’t resist one last peek at the fireplace. Miniature marble columns flanked the collection of ashes and flame on both sides. No traces of the letter. For now, his identity was safe.
His footsteps echoed on his walk to the study. The framed portraits of British generals before him lined the walls. Their images looked the same, one after another: brown uniform, handlebar mustache, judgmental gaze at Warren’s disguise.
The Anglo-Indian girl’s pretty face as she dismissed him on her way out of the room flashed through his mind. He furrowed his brow. When had he ever cared for women’s looks when on a mission? Her appearance didn’t matter; her words did.
Judge me now, he wished to say to the paintings. For however long his mission would last, he would not return to the States empty-handed. He hadn’t just found a maid—he’d found a source of information.
• • •
“What was it? What did he say?” Raj grabbed Parineeta’s shoulders and whirled her around to face him.
“I...” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I am to help him in his study?”
“Perfect!” Raj grabbed both of his sister’s hands. His weathered palms squeezed her smooth ones. “I want you to remember everything he says, all right? Anything he says about our independence movement … I want you to remember it all.”
A sense of unease gathered in her gut. She knew her brother had always wanted an inside perspective of how the British assessed the growing noncooperation movement. “But he did not ask me to be his maid. I have no training to assist in office work.”
Her brother rattled on. “Aye Bhagwan, this has worked out better than I’d hoped.”
She scratched the back of her ankle with her other foot, shifting her weight. It didn’t make any sense. She nibbled her lower lip. “Why would he ask me, though?”
Raj shrugged. He leaned against the doorway of their grandmother’s house, one hand resting on the wooden frame. “Why does it matter? The gods have chosen you to help us win our freedom! Don’t you want that?”
She stepped inside the house, passing through the cramped kitchen. “Of course I do, I just…” She could have sworn the sparkling crackles of a flame had singed the air when she spoke to General Carton. She’d half-expected him to strike her for disobedience. The same punishment happened to countless other girls when they spoke out against a British master or made a mistake. Why had he looked amused when she spoke instead?
“This is your purpose in life, Nita. Never forget that. This is how we avenge the death of our mother, the abandonment of your father…”
She bristled at the sudden mention. The deceptive scum of a British soldier who’d abandoned her mother when he found out she was pregnant? She’d heard the story only too many times from their mother before her passing.
“I know, Raj.”
Her brother stayed in the doorway, surveying her. Ambition gleamed in his brown eyes. “Remember when you used to follow me to revolutionary meetings?”
She’d been but a child at the time. Her gaze shifted in the direction of the other small houses in the village, covered in dust and still exactly the same as fifteen years ago. “Whatever happened to those meetings?”
“The previous general who lived here suspected us. We meet in a neighboring village now.” He lifted his chin. “Would you like to join us at the next meeting? Not as an observer but as an active participant?”
The heady rush of Raj’s invitation washed over her. Her bare feet stood still in the swirling dirt as the scorching rays of the sun beat against the back of her neck. “Why?”
“You are a woman now. You will help us win this fight. You will help us defeat this foreign ruler and all the other men like him who seek to deny us independence.”
The general’s blue-green eyes hadn’t conveyed an angry man who would command troops on the palace grounds or one who barked orders to his Indian servants. His eyes seemed … kind. Parineeta shook her head. She couldn’t let herself be distracted. Kind or not, this man was capable of dangerous things.
She hadn’t found a job; she’d found a way to help free her country.