Her Master's Touch

by Patricia Watters

  "Elizabeth!" he called again, his voice fearful.

  She stood on wobbly legs. "I'm here."

  "My God!" He rushed over and took her in his arms. "I thought someone had taken you," he said, his voice troubled.

  For the first time since she'd become his wife, Elizabeth felt arms around her in a way that made her feel special. Perhaps even loved. She rested her head against his chest and said nothing. Maybe it was the effects of the snake bite. Or maybe a reaction to the ordeal they'd just been through, but she felt a kind of bond with him she could never have imagined two months before. But like her marriage, it was transitory. Feeling lightheaded, she moved out of his arms and sat on the bed. "Where did you go?" she asked, wishing the room would stop spinning.

  "Down to the river to tell the boatman to wait for us," Damon replied.

  "But... it seems like you've been gone for hours," Elizabeth said, baffled. "Certainly it would have taken far longer than you simply going down to the river for me to sleep off the effects of the serpentina"?

  "It has been hours," Damon replied. "On my way back from the river I was approached by an Indian who suggested we travel together to protect each other from robbers. Suspecting him to be a thugee, I jumped him, and when I threatened to slit his throat, he told me he was not a thugee, but was hired by Cedric Hadleigh to steal the opal from me and make it look as if thugees had taken it. Both the snake charmer and the man with the monkey were with the gypsies, but the man with the monkey—the jewel broker—also worked for Cedric, though Cedric had no idea he was also with the gypsies. The broker passed on to Cedric the names of people purchasing gems. Cedric's thugs waylaid them, and the jewel broker resold the gems. Cedric's gotten away with it for years, but soon he'll be cooling his heels in jail."

  Elizabeth pursed her lips. "I haven't trusted that man since the first time I laid eyes on him, and he knew it," she said. "He knew I'd had a connection with gypsies, and that was the reason he didn't want me around, though he tried to make it look like he was just after your best interests."

  Damon laughed. "You're right. But tonight, as soon as the man who approached me would have discovered I didn't have the opal, he would have come after you. He knew from the snake charmer that you were here in the dak."

  Elizabeth looked up at Damon, whose darkened image was barely discernable, and said, "But... if you don't have the opal, where is it? The pouch is missing from my leg."

  "I hid it under the bed before I left for the river," Damon replied. "If someone came in and searched you and didn't find it, they'd assume I had it and come after me." He squeezed her shoulders. "Are you sure you're alright?"

  "The room is turning a little," Elizabeth said, "but I think the worst is over. I'll just lay down for a few more minutes. Where is the man who approached you?"

  "Bound and gagged in the boat, along with the snake charmer," Damon said. "Another reason I was detained. On my way back here I found him trying to coax his snake back into his basket. The snake is headless now, and the man is in the boat. The boatman is watching both of them. Meanwhile, we'd better get the opal and get out of here. We're lucky no one's discovered what we did yet, but the moment they do, they'll be looking for us, since they will probably have found the bearers and know exactly what happened."

  "I'm feeling very dizzy," Elizabeth said. "I don't know if I can make it to the river."

  "Then I'll carry you," Damon replied. "You shouldn't be exerting yourself." He got on his hands and knees and reached under the bed for the opal. Unable to locate it, he reached further back. Nothing. "I don't understand," he said, puzzled. "I put the opal behind the front leg of the bed, but it's not here." He lay on his side and stretched his arm as far as he could reach, fanning it over the floor, but finding nothing. "I locked the door before I left and it was still locked when I came back, so no one could have come in." He stood up and shoved the bed with Elizabeth on it against the wall, then padded his hand around the area where the bed had been.

  "It could not just simply have vanished," Elizabeth said. "Light a lantern. I'm sure there's one on the table."

  "No. That's too risky," Damon replied. "Someone could see the glow."

  Elizabeth sat up slowly, then lowered her legs over the side of the bed and got down on the floor and started patting around. Feeling dirt and grime and mouse droppings everywhere, she withdrew her hand, and said, "Feel around the room for a broom. We can sweep the floor for it"

  "I'll sweep the floor," Damon said. "You get back in bed and stay still." He found a broom beside the door, and although he couldn't see where he was sweeping, he did so methodically, sweeping narrow strips at a time, until he was certain he'd covered the entire floor of the small bungalow. Staring into the darkness, he said in a dismal voice, "It's just not here."

  Elizabeth looked at the window and saw the faint glow of light passing through and could tell that the glass was raised slightly. "Did you open that window before you left?" she asked.

  Damon glanced at the window. "No. Once I got you settled, I headed for the river."

  Elizabeth stared at the partially-opened window, her mind searching for something elusive... a shadowy figure... small... a pungent odor... Ignoring Damon's order to stay in bed, she went to the window and tried to raise the sash, but it was stuck fast. Her fingers found something snagged on the bottom of the window. She pulled it away. "It feels like a small hat," she said, puzzled. "Strike a match."

  Damon patted his hand over the table and located the matches, then struck one close to where Elizabeth stood. A small red hat emerged. "The monkey's hat," she said, bewildered. Then everything seemed to come into focus. "He was here. I could smell him when I was asleep. And I felt his breath."

  Damon let loose a string of expletives. "Damn that bloody little bastard of a man! His monkey was trained to crawl through small places. Well, Cedric Hadleigh will either turn the opal over to me, or face a longer yet stent in jail."

  The sounds of excited voices could be heard in the distance.

  "It's been discovered missing," Elizabeth said in an excited voice.

  "Then we'd better get the bloody hell out of here." Lifting Elizabeth in his arms, Damon made his way out the dak and down the road to where the path cut a swath to the river. With haste, he picked his way to where the boatman stood waiting for them and climbed into the boat.

  As the boatman guided the small vessel down the Hugli toward Calcutta, Elizabeth leaned heavily against Damon on a narrow seat in the high-arched front of the boat, Damon's arm close around her. The two men lay bound securely in the rear of the boat.

  Elizabeth's stomach was queasy, things were swirling around her, and her face felt as if it were on fire. But what troubled her more was the fact that they were returning without the opal. She'd fulfilled her part of the bargain, and it was Damon's fault that the opal had vanished, so she still expected him to give her title to Shanti Bhavan, along with an annulment.

  But now, Damon was left without the opal that she'd taken from him two years before, and he'd soon be turning the title to Shanti Bhavan over to her, which would leave him no recourse but to sell Westwendham. Or marry a woman of wealth. But she couldn't think about that now. Everything was spinning again, and darkness was quickly closing in around her. She leaned into the security of Damon's strong arm and closed her eyes...

  ***

  Elizabeth awakened in her own bed at Shanti Bhavan. She had no idea how long she'd been asleep, but the sun was well up and the room was abuzz with activity. She was surprised to find Damon sitting in a chair beside her bed.

  "How do you feel?" he asked, when she'd turned sleepy eyes on him.

  "Tired." Elizabeth rubbed her face and looked around. "How long have I been asleep?" she asked in a weary voice.

  "About twelve hours," Damon replied.

  "How long have you been sitting here?"

  "About twelve hours."

  Elizabeth looked down and saw that she wore one of the new gossamer gowns that had been inc
luded in her trousseau. She also realized she was clean. Yet she remembered nothing about being bathed or dressed in the gown. The last she remembered was feeling unclean, violated in fact, in the bearer's soiled clothes, and disgustingly dirty after laying on the mattress in the dak and crawling around on hands and knees while searching among mouse droppings for the opal. But once in the boat, everything went black.

  "Was I bathed in the tub?" she asked, wondering if Damon had been present.

  "No," Damon replied. "The ayahs washed you while you were in bed."

  "Were you sitting there when they did?" she asked.

  He nodded. "Yes."

  She looked away, not wanting him to see the color creeping up her face. Why his seeing her naked bothered her now, she couldn't explain. She'd been shockingly indecent when she'd worked for him two years before, allowing him to fondle and suckle her breasts. And the night of the masquerade ball she'd purposely revealed her breasts beneath the sheer blouse for Damon to see. And it had been too hot on the steamer to worry about modesty. And there were the times when she'd allowed him to come between her thighs, even flesh to flesh. But now, for some reason it mattered. He mattered.

  "You're my wife, Elizabeth," Damon said. "And I want you to always be my wife."

  "I imagine you do," Elizabeth clipped. "That way you can keep Shanti Bhavan. But it's the only way you can keep it, because I did fulfill our bargain. It's only because you removed the pouch with the opal from my leg, while I was asleep, that it's gone. So I still expect to receive title to the plantation. Along with an annulment. And I think any court of law in the land would see things my way." She stared at him, her mouth set in a firm line.

  Damon looked at her beautiful, angry face. But of course she'd believe that the only reason he wanted her now was so he could sell Shanti Bhavan and restore Westwendham. And he'd play havoc trying to convince her that more than anything else—more than having Shanti Bhavan, or Westwendham, or even the Burning of Troy—he wanted her to return to England with him as his wife, because he loved her.

  But it would be futile to tell her that now. Maybe sometime in the future, after she was the independent woman she wanted to be, he would approach her again. For now, he'd leave her be. Nothing he could say would change her mindset. "You'll get your title," he said, "and your annulment. And you won't have to fight me in court for it."

  He left the room then, and returned a few minutes later with a letter, which he handed to Elizabeth. "This arrived yesterday while we were gone. It's from your father." He turned his back to her and stared out the window while she read the news. It all seemed pointless now, he realized. What good was it that two witnesses came forward, testifying that he'd shot his half-brother in self defense, or that his name had been cleared and he could return to England, or that he'd been declared Lord Edmund Damon Carlisle, Earl of Westwendham? Without the opal, or money from the sale of Shanti Bhavan, there would be no funds to restore Westwendham, so he'd have no recourse but to sell the place and establish himself elsewhere. But even that didn't matter, because without Elizabeth, even life seemed pointless.

  "Then you'll be going back soon?" Elizabeth said.

  He nodded. "I'll go to my attorney tomorrow and see to turning title over to you."

  As he left the room, Elizabeth was swept by a sense of loss. She'd be gaining Shanti Bhavan, but she'd lost Damon. But then, she never had him. Not really. And even though he'd said he wanted her to remain as his wife, if he'd truly wanted that, he would not have been so eager to give her the annulment, or to place the title to Shanti Bhavan in her name.

  Perhaps it was for the best. Shanti Bhavan still held secrets, and she would not find the answers to them in England.

  Feeling despondent, she summoned her ayahs to help her dress, then went to the garden, where she hoped to find solace. As she walked down the path to the gargoyle fountain, she set her mind on planning the English garden that would soon be there. She'd have the malis start on it right away. She'd have them put up the brick wall first. Then she'd have them lay the walkways and set the benches in place so she could arrange the plants and shrubs around them. There would be flowers. Lots of flowers. Sweet peas and petunias and snapdragons. And copious pansies with their little smiling faces. And fountains and bird baths. And in her private garden, unseen behind the wall, she could sit on a stone bench, surrounded by birds and flowers and fountains, and at last find solitude.

  With that thought, a desolate kind of wretchedness settled over her. Until now she'd always loved solitude. It was a time when she could conjure up spirits and sibyls and whimsical nymphs, and listen to the singing of crickets and the croaks of frogs and the sweet flute sounds of birds. But somehow, without Damon in her life, the solitude she'd once loved seemed meaningless. And with that thought, tears welled.

  Disturbed with her sudden rush of irrational emotions, she walked over to the gargoyle fountain and splashed water onto her face. Cold water... Fresh and clear... Splashing against her cheeks and rolling down her chin... Hands patting the water...

  An image came to her suddenly...

  A baby brother patting the water with his tiny hands... laughing with glee as water splattered against her face. She saw herself clearly then, not more than six years old, reaching out to pick up the baby. But he crawled away on his pudgy little legs, laughing his high-pitched baby laugh. Then everything happened so fast. The scorpion. The baby's pitiful screams. The fever. The baby in a tiny coffin....

  Memories came flooding back. A year later, a sister too tiny to pick up… Healthy in the morning… Dead of fever by night. The baby's sudden death seemed to make Elizabeth's mother go mad. But the following year, there was another baby...

  A hideous awareness began to creep into Elizabeth's soul, a memory of herself, ill with fever, her mother hovering over her, peering down at her through mosquito veiling. Her mother gone... a great commotion because the new baby was missing... Elizabeth, burning with fever, stealing out of her room to search for her mother...

  Her inner vision sharpened, and her blackest memory began to emerge. She was in the garden near a small stone temple, watching a bizarre ceremony in which her mother slit the baby's throat and offered the dying infant to some aberrant stone goddess in the temple. Elizabeth remembered nothing after that except finding herself in her bed, fading in and out of delusions in which everything—the stone temple, her mother, the baby, the stone goddess—was blood red. When she'd recovered from the fever, her mother was gone, and all memory of the horrible killing lay buried in the deepest chambers of her mind.

  As Elizabeth stared at the gargoyle fountain, the hideous truth began to settle into her awareness. Her mother had been demented, overwhelmed by tragedy and desperate to appease a goddess she believed would take her firstborn child too. But at last Elizabeth understood what drove her father to send her to England and claim that her mother was dead. The realization came to her that India had robbed her of everything she'd held dear—her siblings to the pests and diseases of the infested land, her mother to the false promise of a profane Pagan goddess, her father because he'd tried to protect her from the truth, and herself to a land that would never accept her. She also knew she did not want to stay at Shanti Bhavan. She wanted to sell the place and return to England with Damon as Lady Carlisle, and bear Damon's children, and curl up with him every night of her life and feel his arms around her and know he'd always be there...

  And then she remembered Mara, who, it seemed, would also be there, at least for the moment. Unless certain marital expectations were set in place early on in their marriage.

  And she'd set them in place now, and face the consequences with Damon, later.

  Returning to the house, she changed into her riding outfit, grabbed her crop and went to the stables, where the syce prepared her mare for the ride to the bungalow. As she cantered alongside the jute fields, all manner of winged creatures slapped her face and flitted into her eyes and slipped between her parted lips. And air that once seeme
d fresh and sweet during her morning rides was heavy with the musty odor of fungus and mold and decaying matter mingled with the stench of fires of the dead burning on the ghats. Whether it would be with Damon, or alone, she would leave this place that clung to her like a dark shroud clinging to dry bones...

  ...it's damned near impossible to keep India from seeping into our bones. It's hot as hell. And you can't deny, the lot of them worship more gods than they have people, and every god has a sacred temple. It's damned barbaric...

  Odd how Damon's words came to her now. But he was right. India had seeped into her bones. The oppressive heat, the insects, the snakes, the Pagan gods, the brain-fever bird screaming incessantly at night until a person could go mad. Had gone mad. And like her mother, perhaps India would drive her to insanity too, if she stayed.

  She looked ahead as the bungalow came into view. Mara's phaeton was parked alongside the house, and Damon's horse was tethered out front. This was not the way she intended to confront Mara. Nor did she relish seeing a couple of sweaty, naked bodies writhing between silk sheets. And of course the sheets would be silk...

  ...I would have given you anything you wanted, a buggy and a pair of fine horses, priceless jewels, anything a prized mistress would demand to keep her warming my bed...

  Elizabeth felt her temper rise. Well, if Damon wanted her to remain as his wife, as he claimed, he could damn well provide her with buggies, and horses, and fine jewels.

  But as she climbed the steps to the bungalow, she knew it wasn't buggies and jewels she wanted. It was Damon. Only Damon. And she'd be happy living with him in a dak bungalow if it came to that. As long as he loved her, just a little bit.

  But there would be no mistresses. That's where she'd draw the line. And if it took a cat fight to get rid of Mara permanently, then let the fight begin. Lifting her knotted fist, she knocked rapidly, and with firm resolve. It seemed an eternity before Damon opened the door. She suspected he was rushing around to put on his clothes, so she wasn't surprised when he stood in the doorway wearing only his drawers. He looked at her, clearly baffled as to why she was there, and waited for her reason.