by Mary Balogh
———
“Mama,” said little Sammy, leaning at her side as she played and sang to him on one dreamy golden evening, “shall I ever have a new papa?”
Rosamund’s hands came crashing down on the keys. “What are you talking about? You have a father; he is gone from us, but he will always be your papa.”
“I know that,” the child replied with a wave of his plump hand. “But a second papa would be most convenient. He would be here.”
Rosamund couldn’t dispute that logic. She hugged her son to her. He needed his own father, whom he could not recall despite her stories. And lacking a father, he needed male discipline when he left the nursery.
How she would miss him when he went away! Soon he would be old enough for school, and he would be better off in England. Her clergyman assured her that Sammy needed a strict environment; her friends agreed that a mother’s tender heart was no guide for bringing up a boy. Rosamund knew she was overly sentimental in wishing to keep him by her. Send him to England she would, though Sammy, with his mixed heritage, would not have the world’s easiest time in that land.
But her son was a strong little fellow. He would survive, and so would she without him. She had long ago made up her mind to staying in India, in her home, while her child was at school.
Now, though, she began to wonder if she shouldn’t travel with him when he went. She might rent a house near Eton, or whatever school she settled on, and see him every holiday. She had not considered this path before; as the widow of a rich man, she must be admitted to some society, though there would be the inevitable whispers about the Ashburnham blood. Would she like to go back to England?
For ten years she had thought that land still held John Fairburn, and she would not have hesitated to say no. Now, though, she might escape him by returning to the country of her birth.
Perhaps they should leave for England now, though Sammy was much too young for school. Minna could go along as a sort of companion and be found a position or a husband on British shores as easily as here.
The parrot squawked from his place in the corner, and Sammy stirred against her. “Mama, you’re holding me too tight. Babur is scolding you.”
“Sorry.” She released her son and patted his shoulder. “I was thinking.”
“About a new papa for me?”
So he hadn’t quit that topic. Children did tend to stick to a thing. “What has put such an idea into your head, Sammy?”
He shrugged expressively. “I don’t know. Somebody was asking me the other day.”
“Who?” Rosamund spoke sharply.
The child apparently noticed. He looked a touch uncomfortable as he answered, “I don’t remember, Mama.”
Male dissimulation, Rosamund suspected as she eyed him keenly. But she could read nothing sly on her boy’s little face and chose not to insist on his searching his memory. Some dowager had probably been teasing him about his mama’s likelihood of remarriage. More than one old lady incessantly harped on such a possibility, to Rosamund’s perpetual distress. One could expect nothing better, she knew, in the restricted society of Calcutta.
“People like women to be married,” Rosamund said, half to herself. Sammy gave her a startled look, but made no remark.
Babur squawked again.
“Did you hear that, Mama? He almost said a word.”
“What word?” Rosamund scrutinized the untalented parrot for signs of new intelligence.
“I couldn’t quite tell. Will you sing to us?”
Another, louder squawk escaped Babur’s beak, something that Rosamund could not understand. It did sound close to a word, but which word?
“Who has he been talking to?” Rosamund asked, eyeing the bird suspiciously. She hoped he would not come out with some Hindustani curse.
To forestall any such indelicacy, she immediately began to play and sing Sammy’s—and Babur’s—favorite song.
———
Colonel Fairburn, meanwhile, was spending what free time he had in musing over what might have been. This he did despite his conviction that such idiocy was ruinous to his peace and of no practical use to his future.
Still, he found himself doing it at the oddest moments, especially when he should have been about his military duties: sometimes actually in the middle of a meeting to plan strategy! Once he had passed an entire interview with no less a personage than the new governor-general, hearing nothing of his lordship’s talk, merely counting the hours until he could once more present himself, dragging his nephew, at Lady Ashburnham’s.
Being a man of sanguine temperament, he soon passed from musing to a definite wish for action.
“Babur,” he informed Rosamund’s parrot one day, “love is a snare. As a bird, you must be especially wary of snares.” The parrot was his only companion, for Percy was entertaining Miss Peabody across the room. Rosamund was out. Colonel John Fairburn was talking to parrots. Nothing was as it should be on this ill-arranged morning.
John scowled right at the insipid Minna, who was looking at him and started violently. He had the grace to glance away. He had not meant to frighten the chit, he had merely been thinking murderous thoughts of Lady Ashburnham’s banyan. Why hadn’t the fellow said his mistress was out? John would swear that Hari had had a sly look in his eye as he ushered the gentlemen in to—of all the deadly dull things!—the sole presence of Miss Peabody.
“Sir,” piped a small voice at John’s side, “why are you talking to my parrot?”
John was surprised to see young Sammy Ashburnham standing by his chair. “Don’t you talk to him?” he asked with a smile.
“Why, yes,” Sammy replied. “But grown people don’t. Not often. And I’ve never seen a gentleman speak to him.”
“Do you meet many gentlemen here?” Contemptible though the tactic was, John couldn’t resist trying to find out something more about Rosamund’s life. Perhaps he had a more serious rival than her husband’s ghost.
“Oh, yes, a quantity, though I’m usually in the nursery,” the boy was answering. “They like Mama, you see. She’s so pretty.”
“She is,” John agreed, smiling again. This was quite a winning little fellow. “And does she like any gentleman in particular?”
“A new papa, you mean? I’ve been trying to find out. I don’t think so,” Sammy said with a sigh. “Babur could tell me if only he’d learn to talk. He’s down here often when I’m not.”
“Babur is a gentleman. He doesn’t repeat gossip,” said John. “Now tell me, little friend. I see there is a ball in your hand. Do you have a cricket bat in the house?”
“Oh, yes, sir, a new one. I’m not quite big enough to play, but I’m going to be ready.”
“I propose you fetch your new cricket bat, take me to a likely spot in the garden, and I’ll show you some tricks of the game. Do you suppose Miss Peabody and her suitor would like to join us?” With these words he indicated Percy, who appeared to be telling the young lady a long story. John would wager his nephew would be glad to give his prattle-box a rest in favor of some exercise.
“Oh, yes,” repeated the boy, brown eyes nearly brimming over with joy. “Minna, Minna!” He crossed the room at a run.
Words tumbling over one another, Sammy explained the colonel’s plan to the others. Minna looked at John with sparkling eyes; she appeared to be taking the compliment to herself. Percy winked at his uncle, rose and bowed to Miss Peabody, and offered to escort her to the garden. Sammy dashed away for the cricket bat.
John was about to follow the young couple when he felt a tug at his coat.
“She don’t like him, you know; she likes you,” Sammy whispered in a confiding tone. “Better watch yourself, sir.”
“Thank you for the warning, my boy.” John was more than ever convinced that Rosamund’s little son was a most knowing young man who would go far.
———
The cricket game was precisely what was needed, as it turned out, for the ideas to flow from John’s brain regarding h
is situation with Rosamund. They were so close; only a little push on his part should suffice to make them love again.
As soon as he was free, he called upon Lady Tidbury in her opulent garden house upriver from the city and set his plan in motion.
“A dinner,” Lady Tidbury muttered, looking narrowly at the colonel. “You want me to give a dinner?”
“Not just any dinner,” he said. “A Saint Valentine’s Eve dinner. With perhaps a little dancing in the evening—informal, by all means.”
“Why not a ball the next day?” demanded the lady. “A Valentine ball? Since Sir Magnus has provided me this splendid house, with an adequate ballroom, I wish to show it off as much as possible, and to as many people as I can collect. A dinner for ten or twenty will be positively dull.”
“No, the exact date is important. And it wasn’t a ball.” John shook his head.
“What wasn’t? I thought we were discussing the future, young man,” snapped the general’s lady.
“May I speak plainly to you, Lady Tidbury?”
“I wish you would, sirrah.”
John hesitated the merest instant while he surveyed her ladyship’s stern profile. Could he trust her? More important, did he have a choice?
He plunged into speech. “I find that I can only be happy if I win a certain lady. She and I parted ways through an unfortunate accident, some years ago in England. Our last evening together was Saint Valentine’s Eve, and at the house where we were both staying, there was a small dinner. She had to leave the next morning—pressing engagements, you understand—and so the little gathering meant a great deal to us. It was our last chance to be together, you see.”
“Charming,” Lady Tidbury muttered. “A man who remembers dates! Never thought I’d see the day.” She looked as though she didn’t believe a word of his story.
John inclined his head in modesty, pretending not to notice the touch of satire in the lady’s words; far be if from him to confess that it had taken the hints of his lady to recall the date to his mind—if it had ever been there at all.
“So tell me, Fairburn: why exactly did you jilt Rosamund Ashburnham?”
John’s jaw dropped, and he found himself at a complete loss for words.
His elderly companion continued quite as if he’d made some rejoinder. “Oh, it’s obvious to anyone with an eye. You’re mad for her, and there’s something about the two of you together—one can tell you’ve met before.”
This was an uncomfortable notion. Were the secrets of one’s heart indeed laid open for the amusement of the idle multitudes? Upon reflection, he supposed they were. He had never been good at hiding his feelings. “Why do you assume I jilted her?”
“J know her ladyship came out to India a Bengal Bride,” Lady Tidbury said flatly. “Impossible to suppose she would have done the jilting, a girl in her position. She’d have been glad to marry the devil himself to stay in England. So why didn’t she marry you?”
“Misunderstandings,” said John. “Partings which did not have to be. The usual thing, I believe.”
“The world would run a lot smoother if everyone, not just myself, would speak plainly at all times.”
“I agree. Yet we had no lack of plain speaking.” A smile played about John’s lips. Oh, he and Rosamund had spoken very plainly. “Our problem had more to do with erroneous information; assumptions, if you will.”
“Sounds to me as though five minutes telling each other what’s what would have done the world of good, and not left you ten years older, begging a sharp-tongued harridan to help further your suit.”
“You do yourself too little credit, madam,” John said with a bow. “I don’t consider you sharp-tongued at all.”
“You’re a fool,” cried the lady, but her eyes were twinkling, and she ended the interview by agreeing to give a dinner on the date in question.
John resolved to make good use of the time remaining to him before that day arrived. He had not been making much headway with Rosamund; indeed, he hardly knew what to say to her beyond the commonest of civilities. He still had inconvenient spells of wishing to wring her pretty neck for leaving him on that night so long ago. If she had only stayed by him… Still, even such a dullard as he ought to be able to manage to pave the way to a charming rapprochement by Saint Valentine’s Eve.
———
“Do you know, Rosamund, that Fairburn fellow is determined to bed you,” Lady Tidbury said the next time she called at the Ashburnham house—which was, not incidentally, the very morning after John Fairburn’s visit to her.
“Oh, dear.” Rosamund tried for a bored air. Lady Tidbury had surprised her in her favorite garden retreat. Wearing a wide-brimmed hat with a hole cut out of the crown, Rosamund was letting her hair take the sun while her face did not, a necessity if she was to maintain her blondness.
The first and only time she had been taken ill from too much sun, shortly after her marriage, Rosamund had noticed with approval what the sun had done to her hair even as she bemoaned the temporary disfigurement of her skin. Since that accident, she always took care to bathe her hair in sun as she had since read the Italian ladies of the Renaissance used to do long ago. She had been thrilled to escape, even in so superficial a manner, from her young self.
She had done quite well in that project. A change of name; hair altered by a few shades; and a figure and face vastly improved. She was nothing like that stupid, naive Elizabeth she remembered with shudders. If it had been possible, she would have changed the color of her eyes… but she couldn’t escape John, she thought drowsily. Neither she nor Elizabeth could resist John.
The sun always made her sleepy. Perhaps she was dreaming now; had only imagined that Lady Tidbury had come storming in to see her over the protests of Hari, who knew that Rosamund’s time in the garden was private time, and was now plumping her robust self down in a handy garden seat after delivering that blunt statement about John. Rosamund focused her attention on her visitor and saw that it was indeed so.
“You’re in love with him,” Lady Tidbury accused, peering through an eyeglass. “Silly chit! Your pride is at stake, girl. He cast you aside like an old boot. You can’t let him charm you now.”
“How do you know all this?” Rosamund asked in anpalled curiosity.
“Guessed,” muttered the other. “The dignity of womanhood is at issue here, my dear. Don’t let him play with you again.”
Rosamund knew her face must be red and was thankful for the sheltering hat. “This is dreadful,” she said, meaning her ladyship’s uncanny guesses as well as John’s supposed designs on her virtue. “What does he plan to do?”
Before she would answer the question, Lady Tidbury snapped her fingers. At once her hookahburdar was at her side. A pause in the conversation ensued as that servant busied himself with the water pipe, placing it on a suitable small table, readying it for his lady’s pleasure. Rosamund looked on fascinated at the spectacle, which was becoming increasingly rare in society. The gentlemen really preferred cheroots these days, and few ladies smoked hookahs—only the elderly and opinionated ones clung to the habit.
Lady Tidbury qualified on both counts. She took up the agate mouthpiece and puffed, then, having built up enough suspense, finally returned to the conversation. “Fairburn has got me to promise to give a party in a couple of weeks. The day before Saint Valentine’s Day, for some odd notion. I gather he wants to sweep you off your feet by re-creating your first meeting, or your last—forget which. Either way, it’s not worthy of you, my dear. You won’t be taken in.”
Rosamund agreed that she would not. Burrowing even deeper under the hat, she wondered what on earth John was trying to do.
“Colonel Fairburn must be put in his place,” Lady Tidbury said firmly, fingering the black tube of the hookah. “They say widows are easy game, but you must prove them wrong, child. I’m counting on you to be strong. For the—”
“Yes, for the dignity of womanhood,” Rosamund interrupted with a sigh. She wished that Lady Tid
bury were not quite so emphatic on this issue. Rosamund felt bent under the weight of becoming a symbol for all females.
A squawk pierced the air. Rosamund looked past her hat brim to see Minna, Babur the parrot perched upon her shoulder, standing quite close to the two women, right beside the mango tree that shaded Lady Tidbury. The girl was staring at Rosamund in horror.
Rosamund remembered that Minna often liked to take Babur for a constitutional around the garden, but she had never known the girl was in the habit of eavesdropping.
“I suppose you’ve been standing there for a long time,” Rosamund said, feeling tired.
“You never told me a thing about you and—him,” lashed out Minna, and then she was gone, Babur fluttering a bit, but clinging to her shoulder. A particularly loud squawk drifted back on the air where they had just been.
Rosamund frowned in perplexity. “What did that parrot just say?”
“ ‘Love.’ “ Lady Tidbury shrugged. “Rubbish. I taught mine to call me the queen of the world in Persian. Sets one up a great deal, especially early in the morning.”
Domestic harmony in the Ashburnham house did aot improve markedly after the incident in the garden. That very afternoon, Rosamund found Minna packing her modest traps.
“You have betrayed me,” the girl cried into an already sodden handkerchief, turning from Rosamund in distress as soon as her hostess entered the room.
“My dear girl, I once knew your Colonel Fairburn. That is all. Would you have me pretend I did not?”
“Did he really jilt you?” Minna demanded, drying her eyes.
“I don’t know,” Rosamund said quietly, remembering John’s story of a fruitless search of ships. “I simply don’t know.”
“There! You see? We are bitter rivals.”
“You sound pleased, Minna. I’ve been thinking our relations with the Fairburn gentlemen are very like a play. Is this to be the dramatic climax?”
Minna looked scornful, then insulted. Both these expressions softened into mere uncertainty.
Rosamund took this as a good sign and decided to try an authoritative tone. “Now do tell me where you plan to go in this wild state.”