by Louise Allen
Nick reached down a hand and hauled her to her feet. ‘No, but I am going to do it anyway.’ He pulled the blankets off the horses and brought them to their feet with a whistle, shaking like dogs to get rid of the dust. ‘We will ride on a league or so and when we are out of earshot I will bring down some game for dinner. Then the muskets will be empty. We will rest a while, drink and I will show you how to load.’ He picked up one of the guns and looked from it to her with a grin. ‘Although I think you will have to stand on a rock to do it, Miss Laurens.’
‘Do not call me that.’ It was intolerable that he should treat her so casually and yet address her with angrezi formality by the name she rejected.
‘Anusha, then?’
‘Anusha,’ she agreed warily. ‘Nick.’
They remounted and rode on in a silence that seemed somehow more companionable than it had yet done.
*
After two leagues Nick halted and left her with the horses while he took the guns and padded off into the scrub. ‘Drink,’ he said, ‘and get into the shade.’
‘Yes, Major,’ she muttered, but did as she was told, not that there was much shade to be had.
Anusha heard four gunshots and when he returned Nick had a sand grouse and a hare dangling from his hand. That was good shooting with a musket, she knew.
He hunkered down in the small patch of shade beside her and reached for the canteen of water. It spilled from the sides of his mouth and she watched it run through the stubble on his cheeks, saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.
‘You are a soldier, so this is taking you from the army,’ she said when he put down the water and ran the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Why did they not send a diplomat for me?’
‘Because there was always the chance that something like this might happen. And I am a diplomat, of sorts. I move between the army and the princely courts as the Company requires.’ It explained why his Hindi was so good.
‘But this is not for the Company, this is for my father.’
‘His interests and those of the Company coincide when it comes to removing you from this situation,’ Nick said drily. ‘But he is so senior that if he wished me to go on his personal business there would be no objection.’
Sir George is like a father to me, he had said with the force of deeply held feeling. At the time the words had been a puzzle. Now, watching the relaxed, broad-shouldered figure, a startling idea struck her, and with it a stab of something that was disconcertingly like jealousy.
‘Are you my father’s son?’ she demanded.
‘No!’ Nick frowned at her. ‘Whatever made you think that?’
‘You look like him, you said he was a father to you.’ Now she felt a fool. But a suspicious fool, even so.
‘I do not look like him. I am the same height, the same build. But my eyes are green, his are grey—like yours. His nose is hooked, mine is straighter, my hair is lighter.’
Why was that a relief? If he was her half-brother, then she would have nothing to fear from him as a man, or from her own unruly desires. ‘But if you feel so much for him, then I suppose your real father is dead.’
‘No, he is in England. I have not seen him for twelve years, when he sent me out to join the Company as a writer at the age of seventeen.’
‘A clerk? That is very humble for a gentleman.’ Her mind kept worrying at that flash of relief. Surely she would not be jealous if Nick was her brother? That was very petty, for she did not love her father, after all. He could have fathered half-siblings all over Calcutta for all she cared—he would treat them and their mothers as badly as he had her, she was sure. She did not want to think about him—he did not want her and she did not want him. She should forget him, but the pain would not let her, like an old wound around her heart, forever nagging and weakening.
‘A writer’s post is the first rung on the ladder,’ Nick said. He seemed to be looking inwards, not at her, and whatever foolish emotions were plain on her face. ‘With luck and hard work—and provided one stays alive—it is very difficult for a writer not to become wealthy.’
‘So you must have been pleased at the opportunity.’
He was frowning, as though the memory was not a pleasant one. ‘Pleased? No, I was appalled. So I refused. I had no ambition to be a writer, no desire to go into trade, no wish to leave England. It did not help that I had no idea what I did want to do.
‘So then he beat me, cut my allowance and, when that did not work, had me forcibly delivered to the ship. Halfway out I contracted some kind of fever and I would have died if it were not for Mary—Lady Laurens. She deposited me, like a half-dead rat, on her husband’s front porch and he took me in.’
Anusha stiffened at the name. Lady Laurens, her father’s wife, the woman he had married before he came to India and who had refused to come with him. And then, fifteen years after they had parted, she decided it was her duty to be with her husband. Instead of ordering her to stay away as any wronged husband should have done, her father had allowed his wife to come out to India, had dismissed Sarasa, Anusha’s mother, and sent them back to her brother.
The disobedient, wilful wife, the one who had not borne him any children, was rewarded and the faithful mistress and companion, the mother of his daughter, discarded.
The memories of that day were still vivid. Despite the tears and the preparations she had not believed her mother when she said they must go. And then the ship from England arrived early and they were still in the house and there was Lady Laurens and all her baggage in the front yard and Sir George’s other family at the back. Sarasa had shut herself into the women’s quarters and ordered her servants to load their baggage animals immediately. She would not wait to be ordered out of her own home by this interloper.
But Anusha, not understanding, had run out to look for her father and wriggled through the bearers and the carts and the chaos. She had slipped up the steps on to the veranda and heard her father’s voice inside and a strange woman, speaking English, and she knew her mother was right: his wife who was a stranger to him had come and he did not want them any more.
She had turned around, swallowing the tears and the awful hurt, and bumped into a stretcher that had been laid out across chairs in the shade. On it there was a still figure.
Now she stared at Nick. ‘But I saw you! I saw you lying on the veranda. You were skinny and white and I thought you were dead. You were white and your hair was like straw.’
‘I thought I was dead, too,’ Nick said with a twist of his mouth that might have been dark humour or might have been remembered pain. ‘Between them George and Mary saved my life and my future.’
‘You were a boy, so more interesting than a mere girl, no doubt, even if you were not their blood,’ Anusha said, then bit her lip as she heard her own betraying bitterness. For her pride’s sake he must not think she cared.
‘You think I was a substitute for you?’ Nick got up and began to tie the legs of the game securely together. ‘No. I was a distraction at first, I think, something for them to worry about together as they rediscovered each other. And then, when I confounded all the doctors and did not die, George grew to like me and to take an interest in my career. But you have always come first in his heart.’
He tightened the knots and hooked the limp bodies over the pommel of his horse, not seeming to hear her snort of derision. Did he think her a fool to believe that? If she had any value to her father, he would not have sent her away. He only wanted her now because she had become a political pawn in some violent game of chess.
‘For Mary, I was almost a son, that is true. She had lost a child at birth and then was unable to have any more.’
‘Is that why my father left her for all those years in England? Why did he not get another wife if she could not give him sons?’
‘Because that is not legal in England. You must get a divorce and that is a ghastly process.’
‘Then why did he not bring her to India?’ Anusha demanded, determined to get t
o the bottom of this.
‘They became…estranged after the child’s death. The doctors said there would be no more children. She would not come to India with him, so he provided for her financially and left her in England.’ Nick swung up into the saddle and waited while she stood where she was, frowning up at him. ‘They corresponded and somehow things healed with the years. Then she received a letter from his secretary when Sir George was very ill with fever and decided it was her duty to be with him.’
‘My mother nursed him when he was ill,’ Anusha
flared. ‘He was better before the letter could have reached her. That woman had no need to come and because she did, he sent us away.’
‘She was his legal wife,’ Nick said with what sounded like strained patience. ‘Things are different in English society, the laws are different. If you want to know any more, you must ask him—I have no right to discuss it.’
Anusha mounted Rajat and sent him after Pavan with an impatience that made the black break into a canter. She reined him back, fuming. ‘So you are not his son, you are his obedient servant?’
‘Indeed,’ Nick said, so placidly she could have slapped him. He was humouring her. She wanted to fight, to argue, to shout at him and she did not understand why. Her fight was with her father—if she did not manage to escape before he had her in his clutches again. She fell in behind the grey and glared at Nick’s back. His very upright back.
He was good to look at, she admitted. His broad shoulders tapered to a narrow waist cinched by a dark blue sash; the skirts of his coat fell over the saddle, but she had seen his naked body and knew his buttocks were firm and shapely, his thighs long-muscled. He rode as though he and his horse were one, easy in the saddle and yet as focused as an archer before he loosed the bowstring.
‘Stop sulking,’ he said without looking back.
‘I am not sulking,’ Anusha retorted, startled to realise that she was not. I am looking at your body and thinking that I desire you, that I would like to put into practice all those things that the texts show a woman and a man can do together… Aghast, she blinked, as though that would turn him into a short fat clerk or a skinny youth or… No, Nick Herriard was still just as he had been when she closed her eyes and so was the hot, tight feeling low in her belly. She had to do something.
‘Ma ub gayi hu,’ she said and dug her heels into
Rajat’s flanks.
‘Bored? You are bored?’ she heard Nick say as she passed him. ‘Hell, woman, what do you get up to in
Kalatwah every day if you find this boring?’
‘I find you boring,’ she tossed back and slapped the reins on her mount’s neck. For a moment she thought he would let her go, then the hoofbeats behind her speeded up, began to gain. Anusha glanced back over her shoulder—Nick had taken up the challenge and was racing.
*
‘Little witch,’ Nick muttered under his breath. He was tempted to let her go, gallop off her sulks and bad temper. If she had been a youth, he would have done just that, but, he thought with resignation, she was George’s daughter and they were in tiger country and so—
‘Chalo chale, Pavan!’ The big grey needed no urging. He gathered his hocks under him and surged after his stable-mate. Damn it, but the girl could ride, she had not exaggerated. I am Rajput, indeed, he thought as he let her keep the lead for the moment. She’s going to be a handful to turn into a little English lady.
He eased the reins and Pavan responded, up to the black’s flank now, then his nose was level with the girth. Anusha looked across and grinned and kicked for more speed.
Nick looked at the strong, slim legs gripping the horse, remembered the feel of her hands, cool and hesitant on his bare skin, and shuddered as the wave of desire went through him. No.
His hands must have jerked. Pavan pecked, recovered and, with a triumphant little crow of laughter, Anusha urged Rajat ahead again. Then there was a sinuous movement in the dust before them, the black horse swerved violently and jumped clear over the lethal creature beneath its hooves.
Anusha was thrown sideways, landed out of the saddle, high on Rajat’s neck, then fell, tumbling in the sand towards the king cobra that had reared up, hood spread, furious and lethal.
Chapter Six
Nick swung out of the saddle as Pavan reared to avoid the other horse. He rolled as he landed, his hand drawing the dagger from his boot even as he came to his feet. The reptile swayed, hissing, its hood spread wide, its head darting from side to side, undecided whether to strike at the nearer danger—Anusha sprawled motionless—or himself, moving, but further away.
‘Lie still!’ He waved his hand and the glittering eyes followed the movement, the coils shifting to balance the swaying, deadly head. Anusha was either unconscious or frozen in obedience, he could not tell. Nick edged further to the side, still gesturing with his hand, drawing the creature’s attention from her body.
Then Anusha moaned and stirred, her fingers clenching into the sand. She must have been stunned, he realized, as the snake swayed back, raising itself to strike the closer figure. There was no time for subtlety or calculation. Nick launched himself into the narrow space between her body and the cobra, his left arm coming up to take the strike, his right swinging round to plunge the knife into the body below the hood as its fangs fastened on his wrist.
As it bit he slammed his left fist down on to the ground, taking the snake with it, pulled out the knife, struck again and ducked back instinctively as another knife flashed down past his shoulder to slash into the thick, writhing body. Nick wrenched his arm free from the fangs and fell back, pulling Anusha with him away from the creature’s thrashing death throes.
‘It bit you.’ She twisted in his arms, tore at his sleeve. ‘A tourniquet, hurry. Then we must cut the wound, squeeze—’
‘It did not bite me.’ Nick tried to get a grip on her, steady her so he could check her for injuries, but she pulled free and caught at his clothing, as intent on his wounds as he was on hers.
‘Do not be a fool, of course it bit you. We have minutes at most. Less, if it caught a vein.’ There was a thready note of panic beneath her sharp orders. Nick ripped back the sleeve so she could see his arm and the leather wrist band he wore to support an old injury when he was riding for long distances. ‘Oh.’ She touched the two deep indentations in the leather with a shaking finger. ‘Did it go right through?’
Had it? With a sick twist in his gut Nick unlaced the strap. The skin beneath was marked by the pressure of the bite and she caught at it, stretched it smooth with both hands to check for punctures, then snatched up the leather and held it to the light.
‘Oh,’ she said again and swayed where she huddled in the dust. ‘But it might have missed the strap. It might have killed you.’
‘And you might have broken your foolish little neck,’ he snapped, his fear for her mixing with his body’s reaction to the struggle with the cobra, that sickening realisation that it might have left its venom in his body. He hated snakes, would sooner face a tiger than a big king cobra, and his stomach was churning now. What if he had hesitated, had let that fear master him? Anusha
would be dying in his arms now.
Stop it, he snarled inwardly. Imagining death slowed you down, got you killed. You did not hesitate, you are both alive.
The snake had ceased to twitch. Anusha was the only target for his feelings. ‘What the devil were you playing at? Are you hurt? Have you broken anything?’
‘No, I am not hurt. Why are you angry? I helped you, I had my knife—’ Her turban had come off, her hair lay in a coil as thick as the great snake across her heaving breast and her face was paler than he had yet seen it. She still clasped his left forearm with both hands, then released it with a sob and burrowed into his lap as he sat on the crushed grass.
Instinctively his arms closed, cuddling her close. Against his body he could feel her, rounded and slender and trembling, and he smoothed his hand down her back, the fine hairs escaping from her plait ca
tching on the roughed skin of his palms. Could she feel his heart pound, his pulse race? Was it the aftermath of the encounter with the snake or something far more dangerous, a response equally as primitive?
Lust burned through his veins, the desire to possess, to celebrate being alive, to bury the memory of that second when the flat black eyes had locked with his and he looked at his death. And he wanted her, wanted this woman who was an innocent and who must stay that way.
Anger was the only way to deal with it, anger at himself, anger at the woman in his embrace. ‘What the hell are you doing with a knife? You are not safe out with a weapon.’
Anusha recoiled against the cage of his arms, the pressure of her squirming backside on his groin only inflaming both desire and temper even more. ‘Of course I have a knife! You saw it when the maharaja’s men came. And I can use it.’ She was shaking still, but with shocked anger, not with fear now. ‘They will not take me alive. I—’
‘If they take you alive, someone can rescue you. If you are dead, you are dead and a lot of use that will be, except to start a war,’ Nick snarled as he opened his arms and she fell with an undignified thump from his lap to the ground.
He got to his feet and pulled the knives from the limp body of the cobra. Hers was an expensive, deadly little gem with a damascene blade and a jeweled-ivory handle. He wiped it and stuck it in his boot next to his own. ‘If you have lamed Rajat…’
‘You cannot beat me. I am a princess,’ she flashed at him, scrambling to her feet. Apparently his exasperation was all too clear on his face and she had remembered his empty threat to tan her backside.
‘Then behave like one,’ Nick said and bent to check the black’s legs.
‘Is he all right?’ Anusha asked after a minute’s crackling silence.
‘Yes,’ Nick conceded and made himself look at her. The turban was back in place, but she was still ashen and her lips were compressed tightly as though to hold back a sob or to stop herself shouting at him.
‘You were afraid,’ she said, a statement not a question. ‘That is why you are angry with me.’