by Sandra Byrd
“I’ve just returned from India,” he said. “Captain Whitfield thought it might amuse you for me to bring some stories—some happy stories. We’d been corresponding on official business. He made a personal request, I was intrigued, and here I am.”
“I’m intrigued as well!” I said.
We were seated at the table, and the first course was brought out. Although Cook took great pains for the cooking aromas to remain confined to the kitchen as much as possible, I detected a familiar and welcome scent. I was proved correct when Landreth served.
“Curry!” I clapped my hands lightly.
“Cook thought it apt, given Mr. Breame’s level of comfort with spices,” Landreth said. But he’d pinked, and I could tell that he was pleased that I was pleased. How I would miss him! And dear, dear Cook!
Mr. Breame spoke of his time with the East India Company, and how things would change now that matters would be officially under the Crown and not the company. He was well groomed and his refined clothes and manners spoke of a man with both family and money. He was attractive in his own way but missed the vein of vitality that I always sensed in Whitfield.
“You speak Malayalam, honored miss?” he asked me in that language.
“Yes, respected visitor, I most certainly do,” I answered likewise. “Where did you learn to speak Malayalam so well?”
“I have an Anglo-Indian friend of many years who was originally from Kerala,” he said. “She taught me. A bit of Tamil, too.”
Ah. She. He saw my recognition, and also that I did not press for further details, as no lady ever would. I wondered if this was perhaps the Anglo-Indian Luke had spoken of during our time fishing. “It’s a delight to speak in what is, in many ways, a native tongue to me and one I miss hearing.”
We reverted to English, and after the final course, Mr. Breame spoke up. “Captain Whitfield asked me, if at all possible, to return with a gift. I’ll have you know, Miss Ravenshaw, that the gift was difficult and cumbersome to transport. It must be that he holds you in high esteem.”
“I’m eager to see what it is,” I admitted, standing up. Then I realized that was probably unseemly and continued. “Whenever the time is right, that is.” I sat down again. Luke winked, seeming to approve of my eagerness and curiosity.
“The time is right.” Luke came around and pulled out my chair, placing his hand on the small of my back, for just a moment. Even after he removed it, a slow, resonant burn remained at the place his hand had rested.
We walked toward the music room. Captain Whitfield opened the door, and there on the floor, surrounded by cushions, was a sitar.
“Oh, my goodness!” I impulsively wrapped my arms around him in thanks, and he, caring not for propriety, embraced me in return. His thumb stroked my shoulder blade, a welcome and intimate gesture. Then, wanting to smooth things over, I also quickly hugged Mr. Breame and Mrs. Ross.
The sitar had a long neck, and the split gourd base of it was perfectly shined. “Teak?” I asked.
“Burmese teak,” Mr. Breame agreed. “Whitfield mentioned that your father had served in Burma and I thought this would be particularly apt.”
“Oh, yes, yes it is.” I eyed it.
“Would you like to play?” Luke asked me softly.
“I would love to play,” I answered as I held his gaze and lowered my voice. “For you.”
“It’s strange that your parents allowed you to learn,” Mr. Breame said.
I shook my head. “It’s only been in the past few years that Englishmen have been discouraged from learning about the culture they came to live in. Missionaries, in particular, are interested in understanding the people they came to serve. My parents felt that they came both to share the Gospel, teach and provide, but also to learn and to understand.”
“Besides”—I ran my hand up the neck and as I did, I saw Luke place a hand to his own—“there are several famous women sitar players.” I tuned the sitar, lightly.
“There are typically six or seven strings on top, and many more underneath.” I touched each string in turn.
I closed my eyes.
The hardwood floor that my mother had just swept was beneath me. The fringes of the cushion I’d embroidered, badly, tickled my leg and I smelt the heat fused with the rains of the monsoon just past. Hookah smoke floated across the air and through our window. My mother did not care for the scent of it, but I loved its musky woodiness. A lizard skittered across the corner of our house. I plucked some strings.
There was a tinny jangle, a tangy note, like yogurt stirred into curry. Then the swaying melody that most sitar songs lent themselves to, deeper, softer, quicker. I could visualize elephants treading. People walking, baskets on their heads. An unrest of color and a chatter of language.
Soon enough the song was over and I opened my eyes back to England. My home now, beginning to be beloved as well. As I sat for a moment, I noted that, while I’d still had a few night terrors, when I spoke of India aloud, mostly to Luke, or shared a moment of India with him nearby, like now, the memories often came in pleasant waves instead.
“Your song makes me want to set sail on the next ship back home,” Breame said in Malayalam.
I smiled. “Do you consider India your home?” I asked in Malayalam.
“Yes,” he replied. “But that’s a secret between us.”
I smiled. I turned to Whitfield, who had said nothing aloud but whose eyes held unconcealed pleasure and tenderness. Awe, even. I was delighted that though, as Michelene had pointed out, I was not the most beautiful woman in Winchester, nor a pianist, I could delight him in some unusual way. He’d called me a most unusual woman. I strove to keep that title. “I hope I shall be able to play once or twice more before Mr. Breame leaves?”
“The sitar is yours, Reb . . . Miss Ravenshaw.” Luke’s voice was rough with emotion and he cleared it twice.
“Mine?” I caught my breath and looked at him, hoping, but not able to accept such a gift. “Oh no, that is too generous.” Burmese teakwood, carried here from India!
Captain Whitfield shook his head. “For your hospitality these many months . . . for saving Notos from the snake. You might just yet save me.”
“From what?” I asked.
He laughed to lighten the mood, but I saw the seriousness behind it. “From myself. ”
We were in the company of others, so I turned back to the sitar and ran my hand over the wood again to refocus. “This is truly, genuinely, absolutely mine. Yes?” Even Breame beamed at my enthusiasm.
“It’s yours,” Whitfield said. “Truly, genuinely, absolutely. I hope, when I’ve moved on, you’ll think of me each time you play it.”
The air thickened with intimacy. “I shall,” I said, already mourning the loss. “Depend upon it.”
We said good night and then I took my leave. Michelene came and helped me undress. “I could hear the music,” she said. “It was enchanting. I see why they say that is the music to charm the snakes.”
I laughed. “That’s not snake-charming music.”
“Isn’t it?” She pulled my hair out of its arrangement and brushed it to a shine. “They seemed charmed to me.” I glanced at her in the mirror, just above my shoulder. We were of the same age, same build and coloring, almost. She was definitely the prettier of the two of us, exotic even. And yet she served me. Could she have been jealous?
“Why do you think Mr. Breame and Captain Whitfield are snakes?” I insisted. “It could not have been a better evening.”
“There are prey animals and predators,” she said. “One or the other.”
“And men are predators?” I asked.
“Not all of them,” she admitted.
“Women can be predators, too,” I said.
“Touché.” She smiled and left for the night.
I closed my curtains, looking for just a minute across t
he way to the guesthouse. Although I could see into its sitting room, there was no movement present. No lamps were lit in the bedrooms, either, as far as I could judge.
I went back to bed, and as I was falling asleep Marie meowed. She’d been under my bed, and now she crawled out and clawed at the door.
“Oh, all right, then.” I got out of bed, kept it dark, and slowly opened up my bedroom door. She tore down the hallway like a bolt of lightning, all the way down to the dark right wing. A door was open. It was her bedroom.
I pulled my peignoir around me, quietly closed my door, and walked partway down the hallway, which was usually dead, and now, at the end, was a pulse of life and light. Voices murmured. Men’s voices. I could not hear what they were saying, so I crept a bit farther down. The floorboards squeaked and I thought I would be discovered. But the men were too busy talking to pay attention. I became aware that I was, in fact, dressed indecently to be seen by two men. But what were they doing on this floor now, at night, anyway? In my home!
I had not seen anyone in that room since I’d returned to England. Why did Captain Whitfield still have the key? I would insist on having a complete set of keys for myself, immediately. I should have acquired them long ago; indeed, I’d asked Mrs. Blackwood for one and it seemed to have slipped her mind, too.
I crept down the hallway, one step at a time, wanting to go far enough to hear what they were saying but no farther and be caught out. I stopped when I could hear them.
“I can’t read it well,” Mr. Breame said. “I cannot make out much. This . . .” There was a pause and then he spoke again. “This is the word evil.”
“Evil!” Captain Whitfield’s voice rose. “Can you read no more of it, man?”
Some time elapsed. “No, I cannot. Why would someone write this?”
“I should have had it scratched out,” Captain Whitfield’s voice came again.
“Why?” Breame’s voice sounded suspicious now.
“It’s . . . difficult to explain, might cause discomfort. I . . . I shouldn’t like to leave it for Miss Ravenshaw to find. It could distress her. I shall do it soon. Let’s leave.”
At that, I turned and fled. I quietly closed the door to my room and leaned against it, panting with effort and concern. Fear, perhaps. Who had written evil ?
I would speak with Mrs. Blackwood, promptly, about the keys. Before Whitfield could return and scratch out whatever it was they’d been trying to read. Did it implicate him?
The next morning I rang for Mrs. Blackwood.
“How may we assist?” she asked, arriving in the breakfast room.
“Are there several sets of house keys?”
She shook her head. “Just the two—the one we have and the one Landreth carries.”
“I’d like one made for me, if possible. And, if it’s not too much to ask, I’d like the key to the bedroom where the woman posing as me stayed, today.”
“That’s the one key I do not have,” she said. “I gave it to Captain Whitfield and he has not yet returned it.”
“Can you ask for it to be returned, presently?”
She nodded.
Of course. He’d been in there with Breame. “I’d like it today, if at all possible,” I pressed.
Mrs. Blackwood nodded. “Yes, I will speak with the captain after breakfast.” Then she said, “We understand Captain Whitfield will be taking his leave shortly. To India.”
“India?” I stood.
She blushed, unusually. “We shouldn’t have said anything. It is, after all, a new discussion, since Mr. Breame arrived and invited him into his business dealings there. We were told only as the household was inquiring after our new positions, if we’d be expected to move to Derbyshire.”
“New positions?” Michelene looked up, alarmed. She looked shocked. “This is possible for me, too?”
“Unfortunately, perhaps so. If economies demand it. I should certainly hope not,” I said.
For once, she lost her cool reserve and seemed shaken.
I turned back to Mrs. Blackwood, shaken myself, but for another reason altogether. “So he’s leaving?” The room felt a little like it was spinning, and I focused on a portrait on the wall to center myself. Derbyshire was one thing. India something else! I desperately did not want him to leave, and yet he apparently did not as desperately want to stay. I knew not what to make of it just yet.
“It’s all just talk, miss.” She did not address my concerns, but rather, perhaps, her own. “Please don’t mention it. We should hate for him to think us indiscreet. We just thought you might want to know.”
I understood. If there was something that needed to transpire between the captain and me, there was not much time. She was warning me as plainly as she dared. I truly believed she wanted him to stay for my sake, not only for her own. “I shan’t say anything.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
An hour or so later, I stood by the sitting room window, watching; I walked around the room, stood up and then sat down again. I composed a letter to Penelope and John Mark but was so distracted that I wrote nonsense. Finally, the carriage appeared in the distance at the beginning of the long drive. Landreth polished the silver salver in the hallway once more. I went to wait for my guests at the top of the steps that led to the front door, aware that they might be ill at ease and that it was my duty to put their uneasiness to rest.
Daniel stopped the carriage and as he did, the carriage door flew open and Matthew jumped out, bare feet sending a small powder of dust into the air.
“Ho, there, young man.” Daniel came round and steadied the lad. “You’re to wait for someone to open the door and assist you as you come out. You’ll see, here, I’ll help your mother.”
He reached his arm into the carriage and I could see a female foot with a well-worn slipper appear on the silver step meant to help passengers alight.
As a woman stepped out I was relieved that there was some distance between us, because it masked my shock when I realized that she was little older than myself. That would have made her perhaps fourteen when Matthew was born, as I’d placed him to be about ten years old. She carried herself well, but her shawl was frayed and much too heavy for summer. Her dress had once been a lovely lawn, but it had been faded into bleached white with passage of time. She carried herself with dignity.
She nodded as she saw me, but Matthew streaked up the stairs. “Miss Rebecca!” Then, seeing Landreth standing there like a statue, Matthew halted. He took his hat off and bowed. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”
He turned to me and whispered loudly. “Is that your husband?”
Landreth went red and disappeared into the hallway. I nearly burst out laughing.
“No, he’s not.” Just then, his mother reached the top of the steps. “Thank you very much for visiting today, Mrs. . . .” I was at a loss. I did not know her name.
“Miller,” she said.
I nodded. “Please, come through to the drawing room.”
I led them to the sofa so they could sit together and I took a nearby chair. I signaled to Annie. “Would you care for tea?” I asked Mrs. Miller.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
“Don’t mind if I do!” Matthew chimed in. Annie brought teacups round and then the trays with cakes and sandwiches. Matthew took a sandwich and popped it into his mouth and then put another in his hand before seeing a stern look from his mother. It reminded me of my own mother, who never let us take more than one at a time.
“Thank you very much for accepting my invitation,” I said. “It means a lot to me.”
Mrs. Miller cleared her throat. “I’m very grateful for the invitation, and Matthew had a lovely ride in your carriage. But I have employment, Miss Ravenshaw, and we do not need charity.”
I sipped my tea in order to take a minute to think. I hadn’t thought that she might be offended at my offer. Perhaps m
y plan had been ill conceived and high-handed.
“I don’t think that at all.” I revised my idea as I spoke. “Matthew seems such a bright boy. Curious. He reminded me of my brother, and I thought, well, if there is some way I can help . . .”
“Your brother?” she said.
“He passed away in India.”
“In the Rebellion?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No, but my parents died then.”
She slowly sipped her own tea, then, perhaps revisiting her understanding and intentions as I had mine. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said.
“As am I,” I replied gently. Matthew helped himself to another small sandwich. Annie had turned the tray so he’d have the best selection and I caught her eye and smiled before changing the subject.
“Do you mind if I have Matthew’s shoes brought out?”
“Not at all.” She smiled.
I rang for Landreth, but he had apparently been just outside, and he brought the box to me. I opened the lid, saw it was the lad’s shoes, and quickly closed it again before handing it over to Matthew.
“I do believe these are too small for me,” I jested, “and it would cause some comment if I wore men’s boots, in any case. Here.” I handed the box to him.
He eagerly took the box, and opened the lid. He inhaled and held his breath as he withdrew the first caramel-colored boot from the box, then the second. He looked at me, and I nodded, and then at his mother, and she nodded, too.
He slipped them on and stood. I was certain they fit perfectly, because the cobbler had measured his feet, but Matthew seemed to totter just a little. It occurred to me that he had not often worn shoes of any kind and would need some time to get used to them.
“They, they are beautiful, miss. I hope I never grow any more after this so they will fit me always.”
“The cobbler will be happy to stretch and then replace them as you grow,” I said. Because I’ll pay him to, even if it means I do without for a season.