by Louise Allen
‘My lord wishes to speak with you privately, without his councillors. Come to my chamber.’
Anusha realised that there were no maids present—neither her own, nor any with the rani. She stood up from the low couch, slid her feet into sandals and followed Paravi while her mind whirled with speculation.
Her uncle was unattended, his face starkly under-lit by the little lamps flickering on a low table by his side. Anusha made her reverence and waited, wondering why Paravi had pulled her veil over her face.
‘Major Herriard here has come from your father,’ Kirat Jaswan said without preamble. ‘He is concerned for you.’
Her father? Her pulse jolted with something close to fear. What could he want with her? Then the raja’s wording struck her. ‘Here?’
The big man stepped out of the shadows and bowed, unsmiling. He was still in Indian dress. The lamplight caught the gleam of the emeralds in his ear lobes, the silver embroidery and buttons of his coat. He looked both exotic and utterly comfortable, as at home in this guise as he seemed in the scarlet uniform.
‘I thought you were from the Company,’ Anusha challenged him in Hindi. ‘Not my father’s servant.’
The raja hissed a word of reproof, but the Englishman answered her in the same language, his green eyes meeting hers with a bold, assessing stare. No man should look at an unveiled woman not of his family like that. ‘I come from both. The Company is concerned about the intentions of the Maharaja of Altaphur towards this state. And so is your father.’
‘I understand why they should be concerned about a threat to Kalatwah. But why is my father thinking about me after all these years?’ Her uncle did not reprove her for not veiling herself. It was as though he was suddenly treating her as an Englishwoman, she thought with a shiver of alarm. The rani had slipped back into the shadows.
‘Your father has never ceased to concern himself with your welfare,’ the man Herriard said. He sounded irritated with her and when she shook her head in instinctive denial he frowned. ‘He saw the offer of marriage from Altaphur as a threat, a way of pressuring the Company through you.’
Her father knew about that? Kept such a close watch over her? It took her a moment for the meaning to force its way through resentment and the unsettling atmosphere of conspiracy. ‘I would have been a hostage?’
‘Exactly.’
‘How dreadful, that I might inconvenience the Company and my father in that way.’
‘Anusha!’ The raja slapped his palm down on the table.
‘Miss Laurens—’
‘Do not call me that.’ Her knees were shaking, but no one could see beneath the long skirts of her robe.
‘It is your name.’ Presumably the man spoke to his troops in this manner. She was not one of his troops. Anusha’s chin went up—that stopped it trembling as well.
‘Your father and I agree it would be better for you to return to his house,’ her uncle said. His quiet voice with its expectation of instant obedience cut across their hostility.
‘Go back to Calcutta? Go back to my father after he threw us out? He does not want me, only to stop me interfering with his political schemes. I hate him. And I cannot leave you and Kalatwah when there is danger, my lord. I will not run away—never!’ In her mind the crackle of flames and the clash of steel mingled with the sound of a big man’s belly-laugh and her mother’s stifled sobs.
‘Such drama,’ Herriard drawled, blowing the swirling images away like a draught of cold air. She itched to slap his well-defined jaw. ‘Ten years ago your father was in an impossible position and did the only honourable thing open to him to ensure the well-being of yourself and your mother.’
‘Honour! Pah!’
Herriard went very still. ‘You never, in my hearing, defame the honour of Sir George Laurens, do you understand?’
‘Or?’ Her neck muscles were so tense it was painful.
‘Or you will find it a matter for regret. If you will not leave because your father commands it, then do it for his Highness, your uncle. Or are your grudges so deep that you would hamper the defence of his state, the safety of the family, to indulge them?’
Grudges? He can calmly dismiss feelings about the betrayal of love, the rejection of a family, as a grudge? The marble floor seemed to quiver like sand beneath her feet. Anusha choked back the furious retort and looked at her uncle. ‘Do you want me to go, my lord?’
‘It is best,’ Kirat Jaswan said. He was everything to her: ruler, uncle, surrogate father. She owed him her total obedience. ‘You…complicate matters, Anusha. I would have you safe where you belong.’
So I do not belong here? No matter how she had been feeling these past months, this was too sudden, too abrupt. Her uncle had cast her out too, as her father had. Now she truly was adrift with nowhere to call home. To protest, would be futile, and beneath her. She was a Rajput princess by training, even if her blood was mixed. ‘I do not belong with my father. I never did, he made that clear as crystal. But because you, my lord and uncle, ask it, I shall go.’
And she would not weep, not in front of that arrogant angrezi who had got what he came for, it seemed: her surrender. She was of a princely house and she had her pride and she would do what her ruler commanded and not show fear. If he had commanded her to ride into battle to her death with his troops she would have done. Somehow that felt less frightening than this. ‘When must I go?’
The Englishman Herriard answered. It was as though her uncle had already washed his hands of her and had given her over to the other man. ‘You leave as soon as the vehicles and animals can be gathered and the journey provisioned. It is a long way and will take us many weeks.’
‘I remember,’ Anusha said. Weeks of blank discomfort and misery, clinging to her mother who was too proud to weep. Sent away because the big, loving, bear of a man who had hugged her and spoiled her, who had been the centre of her world and her mother’s universe, had cast them out. Because love, it seemed, was not for ever. Expediency conquered love. It was a lesson that had been well learned.
Then what Herriard had said penetrated. ‘Us? You will take me?’
‘Of course. I am your escort, Miss Laurens.’
‘I am so very sorry,’ she said, baring her teeth in a false smile. She would make every league a misery for him, if she could, the insensitive brute. ‘You obviously do not wish for this duty.’
‘I would walk the entire way in my bare feet if Sir George asked it,’ Major Herriard said. The cold green eyes looked back at her without liking or anger, as hard as the emeralds in his ears. ‘He is as a father to me and what he wants, Miss Laurens, I will ensure that he gets.’
A father? Just who was this man whose devotion went so far beyond a soldier’s obedience? ‘Fine words,’ Anusha said as she turned to leave. ‘I do hope you will not have cause to eat them.’
Chapter Three
‘If that man sends one more message about what I must and must not take I will scream.’ Anusha stood in the midst of harried, scurrying maids and searched for a word to describe Nicholas Herriard. With a phrase quivering on her tongue she caught Paravi’s amused gaze and compromised. ‘Budmash.’
‘Major Herriard is not a villain or a knave,’ the rani said, her tone of reproof in conflict with the curve of her lips. ‘And he will hear you—he is only on the other side of the jali. It is a long journey. He is right to make certain you will have everything you need, yet not too much.’
‘What is he doing there?’ Anusha demanded, raising her voice. If the wretched man was listening behind the pierced screen wall then he deserved to hear her opinion. The men who ruled her life had left her two choices: she could weep and give up or she could lose her temper. Her pride would not allow the first, so the major must bear the brunt of the other. ‘This is the women’s mahal.’
‘There is a eunuch with him and curtains have been hung around the room,’ Paravi hissed. ‘He is checking everything as it is packed.’
‘Hah! My uncle says I may have twenty ele
phants, forty camels, forty bullock carts, horses…’
‘And I say it is too much,’ said a deep voice from behind the far wall of pierced stone. Anusha jumped and stubbed her toe on a studded chest. ‘Anyone would think you are going to marry the Emperor, Miss Laurens. And besides, your father will want you to wear Western clothes and jewels in Calcutta.’
‘Mata told me about those clothes.’ Anusha marched across a stack of carpets until she was next to the jali. A large shadow on the silk hangings was all she could see of him through the screen. ‘Corsets! Stockings! Garters! She said they were instruments of torture.’
There was a snort from the other side. ‘They are not things a lady mentions in the presence of a man,’ Herriard said, laughter quivering in his voice.
‘Then go away. I do not require your presence here. I do not require your presence at all, anywhere, gloating because you are getting your way. If you listen from hiding like a spy, then you must endure whatever I say.’ There was a faint moan from the rani behind her. ‘Go away, Major Herriard. Twenty elephants are no slower than ten.’
‘Twenty elephants eat twice as much as ten,’ he retorted. ‘We leave the day after tomorrow. Anything that is not ready, or will not go on half the transport you have listed, will be left behind. And whilst I feel the greatest satisfaction in following your father’s wishes, I am not gloating.’
Anusha opened her mouth to retort, but the sound of footsteps leaving the other room silenced her. It was intolerable to be prevented from arguing because the man had the ill manners to remove himself.
‘Find me a dagger,’ she said, narrowing her eyes at the nearest maid, who was apparently rooted to the spot. ‘That at least I will take—I can imagine a nice broad target for it.’ And she would take all her jewels because when she was in Calcutta and Major Herriard was no longer her jailer she would need them to pay for her escape from her prison. From her father’s house.
*
Her dagger was in her hand and she would use it because the wretched angrezi was shouting at her and shaking her and drums were beating the alarm and there was danger all around.
‘Ah! Ra—’ Anusha’s shriek of rape was choked in her throat as a large hand clamped over her mouth. She had been asleep, dreaming, but now—
‘Quiet,’ Nicholas Herriard hissed in her ear. ‘We must leave, at once, in secret. When I take my hand away you will whisper or I’ll clip you on the jaw and carry you out. Do you understand?’
Furious, frightened—do not let him see that—Anusha
nodded and he removed his hand. ‘Where are my maids?’ He jerked his head towards the corner and she opened her mouth to scream as she saw the two crumpled bodies lit by the flickering light of one ghee lamp. The hand came back, none too gently. The skin bore the calluses of a rider and chafed her lips. He tasted of leather.
‘Drugged,’ he murmured in her ear, pressing his palm tight over her mouth to foil her attempt to bite. ‘There are spies, I cannot risk it. Listen.’ He freed her mouth again.
Now she was awake she realised that the drums that had been echoing through her dream were real, their sound vibrating through the palace. She had never heard them like this, at night, so urgent. ‘An attack?’
‘The Maharaja of Altaphur has moved fast. There are war elephants and cavalry not four hours distant.’
‘He discovered you are here? That you had come for me?’ Anusha sat up, dragged the covers around her as Herriard sank back on his heels beside the low bed. He was wearing Indian dress again, but now it was plain riding gear with boots and a tight, dark turban to cover the betraying shimmer of pale hair.
‘He was already mobilising his troops—he must have been to get so close so fast. Then his spies told him that someone from the Company was here, perhaps that I intended to take you away, perhaps that I was negotiating. My guess is that he decided on a pre-emptive strike to seize the state before your uncle made an alliance with the Company.’
‘My uncle will not surrender to him!’ The floor was cold under her bare feet as she scrambled out of bed, the night air chill through the thin cotton of her shift.
‘No, he will stand firm. The raja has already despatched riders to his allies in Agra and Gwalior and to Delhi. The Company will send troops as soon as it receives the news and then I suspect Altaphur will back down without further fighting. Your uncle only has to withstand a siege for a matter of weeks.’
Was he attempting to soothe her with easy lies?
Anusha tried to read his face in the gloom and control her churning stomach. ‘You will stay here and fight?’ Why one more soldier would make any difference, she did not know, but somehow the thought of this man at her uncle’s right shoulder made her feel better. He was arrogant, aggravating and foreign, but she had no doubt that Major Herriard was a warrior.
‘No. You and I are leaving. Now.’
‘I am not going to leave my uncle and run away! What do you take me for? A coward?’ His eyes flickered over her and she was suddenly aware of how thin her garment was, of how her nipples had peaked in the cool
air. Anusha swept the bedcovers around her like a robe and glared at him as he got to his feet. ‘Lecher!’
‘I rather hoped I could take you for a sensible woman,’ he said with a sigh. He added something under his breath in English and she pounced on it.
‘What is this? A tutty-hooded female?’
‘Totty-headed. Foolish,’ he translated. ‘No, clawing my eyes out is not going to help.’ He caught her wrists with contemptuous ease. ‘Listen to me. Do you think it will help your uncle to have to worry about you on top of everything else? And if the worst happens, what are you going to do? Lead the women to the pyres or become a hostage?’
Anusha drew in a deep breath. He is right, may all the demons take him. She knew where her duty lay and she was not a child to refuse out of spite. She would go, not because this man told her to, but because her raja willed it. And because this was no longer her home. ‘No, if my uncle tells me to go, then I will go. How?’
‘You can ride a horse?’
‘Of course I can ride a horse! I am a Rajput.’
‘Then dress for riding—hard riding. Dress as a man and wear tough cloth and good boots, wrap your hair in a turban. Bring a roll of blankets, the nights are cold outside, but only pack what you must have. Can you do that? I will meet you in the court below. Jaldi.’
‘I may be totty-headed, Major Herriard, but I am not a fool. And, yes, I understand the need to hurry.’
‘Can you dress without help?’ He paused on the threshold, a broad shadow against the pale marble.
Beyond words, Anusha threw a sandal at him and its ivory toe-post broke against the door jamb. He melted away into the darkness, leaving her shivering, the drumbeats vibrating through her very bones. For a moment she stood there, forcing herself to think clearly of what she must do, then she ran to the two maids. Under her groping fingers the blood beat strongly below their jawbones. Spies or not, they were alive.
She lifted the nightlight and took it round the room, touching it to the wicks of the lamps in every niche until there was enough light to see by. The mirrored fragments in the walls reflected her image in a myriad of jagged shards as she pulled out the last of the trunks, the one containing clothes for use on the journey. She dressed in plain trousers, tight in the calf, wide at the thigh, then layers above, topped by a long, dark brown split-sided coat. Her soft riding boots were there and she pulled them on, slid a dagger into the top of the right one and another, a tiny curved knife, into her belt.
It was quick to twist her hair into a tight plait to pile on the crown of her head and she wrapped and tied a turban out of dark brown cloth, fumbling as she did so. Sometimes she secured her hair like this when riding, but her maids had always tied it.
Money. How much money did Herriard have? Anusha
pulled the long cloth free, rummaged in the trunk again and found the jewels she had intended to wear as they arrived in Calcut
ta, chosen to emphasise her status and her independence. She stuffed the finest into a bag, coiled her hair around it and rewrapped the turban.
Two blankets rolled around a change of linen, toilet articles, a bag containing hairpins and comb, tinder box. What else? She rubbed her temples—the drums stopped her thinking properly, invaded her head. Soon someone would come to check on her, fuss over her, shepherd her to the inner fastness of the palace where she really wanted to be. Where it was her duty not to go.
Anusha found her little box of medicines, added that, rolled up the blankets, tied them with leather straps and caught up the bundle in her arms. The walls were honeycombed with passages and stairs and she took one of the narrowest and least-used ways down, tiptoeing as she reached the doorway.
But Herriard had seen her. He stepped away from the wall, his eyes glinting in the reflected torchlight, and reached for the bundle.
‘I can manage. No, not that way, I must say goodbye to my uncle, to the Lady Paravi—’
‘And risk being seen? They know what we are doing and they have other things to think about just now. Come on.’ He pushed her in front of him through the door, back into the palace. He seemed to know the way as well as she, pulled her into alcoves as servants ran past, knew when to stop and slide into the shadows to avoid a distracted sentry, his attention on someone shouting on the battlements.
A slender figure stepped out right in front of them and she stopped so abruptly that Herriard ran into her and gripped both her arms above the elbow to steady himself. His body was hard and immovable against her back and his voice was a soft rumble. Suddenly she was glad of his size. When he released her it was as though a bulwark had been removed.
‘Ajit, are the horses ready?’
‘Yes, sahib,’ the man said and she recognised the major’s servant. He must have run up the steep road from the base court for he was panting. ‘Pavan and Rajat and a good mare for the lady. The lower gate is still open for soldiers taking up positions outside the walls, but we must hurry or we will be noticed.’