by Louise Allen
‘Only a fool is not afraid of a king cobra,’ he said flatly. If a man had accused him of fear, he would have struck him.
‘I was not…I did not mean—’ She broke off and shook her head, impatient with both of them. ‘You did not hesitate for one second. That is what I meant. You were right to be afraid and yet you risked your life and killed it. My father sent a brave man for me.’
The wide grey eyes fixed on him and Nick felt the colour rise over his cheekbones as he fought the need to look away from the painful honesty in her gaze. If he walked across and took her in his arms, she would yield to him, he realised. Not out of wantonness or admiration for his actions, but because something had happened just now that stripped feelings bare and left only what was elemental and basic. Anusha was too brave and too honest to hide those feelings. And too innocent to know what they were, he told himself.
‘Are you certain you are not hurt?’ he asked as though nothing had been said since she asked him about the horse. Anusha nodded, her expression once more veiled and wary, that moment of burning clarity gone. She turned and he watched her closely as she walked across to take Rajat’s reins and stroke his sweaty neck. She moved stiffly, but that was all.
‘You…’ she began, her face against the horse’s shoulder. Then she pushed herself upright and turned to face Nick. ‘You saved my life and I thank you for it.’ The raw emotion was gone, and, as her chin came up and she looked at him, she was every inch a princess for all the dust and her travel-stained clothing.
Her courage doused the fierceness of his anger and the heat in his blood, but Nick could not find it in himself to be gracious. ‘That is my job,’ he said, his voice cool. ‘To deliver you back alive and in one piece to your father.’
‘You will not let me thank you?’ She took the step that brought her toe to toe with him. ‘They kiss to say thank you, the English, do you not?’ With Pavan solid at his back he could not retreat. Anusha put her hands on his shoulders and stood on tiptoe, her body pressed against his. For an endless moment her mouth touched his, warm and soft.
Her lips parted slightly, an invitation he knew she did not understand. Time stood still while he fought the temptation to snatch her to him, plunder that beautiful mouth, lose himself in an innocence that wanted him. Him.
Instinct told him not to hurt her pride or give her a challenge. Hands at his side, he returned the pressure of her mouth, then raised his head. ‘Unmarried young ladies of good family do not kiss men, I fear,’ he said with a smile to take any sting from the words. His body tightened painfully, but he thought he had kept the desire from his face.
‘No?’ Her eyes were wide and very dark and the colour was up under the fine skin of her cheeks and temples. ‘Then I will not do it again.’
‘Good.’ She was destined for marriage, this girl, not a dalliance. While he was briefing Nick for this mission Sir George had confided that he intended to make a good match for his daughter with an eligible Englishman. And he, Nick Herriard, soldier, adventurer, failure as a husband, was most definitely not eligible, even if he would ever be rash enough to give up his heart for another pounding.
He kept his voice light and amused as he turned to his horse. ‘All I can say is that I have the deepest sympathy for the poor man who has to turn you into a young lady.’
‘I am a young lady already.’ Anusha pushed her foot into the stirrup and mounted, although not after a moment or two of undignified hopping about. She was more shaken than she let on. Behind that sharp tongue and fierce courage there was a vulnerability that made him want to protect her from whatever threatened—the maharaja, snakes… Men like himself.
Nick swung into the saddle. ‘You are not an English young lady and that is what he will want you to be.’
‘Hah! Corsets,’ Anusha muttered.
‘And curtsies and learning to dance and to converse with men at parties.’ Nick had his temper under control again. He seemed positively amused, describing such indecent things as dancing with men, talking to them.
It was very dangerous to mix the sexes like that. She was discovering it only too vividly herself and this was just one man. Anusha gave herself a little shake. It was incredible how danger and a shock made one feel. For a moment back there every inhibition had vanished, leaving only a primitive urge to lie with this man, to roll naked in the dust with him. She could only hope he had not realised.
How did Englishwomen cope with this constant nearness to the opposite sex? But perhaps they were not really alone with them as she was with Nick, perhaps there were rules and older married women to stop things becoming…elemental.
But English women were allowed to fall in love, so Mama had told her. Even in Altaphur, for a lady of the court, one with influence, there was the possibility of choice. Is that why I kept turning down those marriage offers? Did I think it would happen for me as it did for her?
Apparently her mother had taken one look at her father and then acted in the most scandalous manner to make sure she met him. Anusha could not understand it. Her own first sight of an angrezi as an adult woman most certainly did not provoke any desire to place her entire future in his hands, whatever alarmingly lustful feelings he provoked. And her mother had done that foolish thing—she had fallen in love and thought George Laurens had too. Obviously he had not. Or he had fallen out of love, which proved how fickle men were. How cruel.
She urged Rajat up alongside the big grey so she did not have to look at Nick riding in front of her. That had been what had led to all this in the first place.
‘I do not want to be an English lady,’ Anusha stated.
‘What do you want, then?’ he asked, still tolerant. Anusha shot him a sideways glance, but his face was unsmiling.
‘To travel.’ It had never occurred to her before, but now, experiencing the freedom and the dangerous excitements of being free, it was as though she could see the entire world unrolling before her.
‘Rich unmarried European ladies of rank travel alone, often in disguise, I have read of them. A Lady Montague, I think, and others. I will go to Europe and North Africa and the lands of the Middle Sea.’ Moving on, not settling, meant she would never have to decide who she was, would never have to face not belonging anywhere.
‘Eccentric spinsters,’ Nick said with distaste. ‘Rich ones with a bee in their bonnet. They end up sick and old, dying in some ramshackle castle, miles from family and friends, preyed upon by unscrupulous dragomen and fortune hunters.’
‘Spinsters? That is an English word I do not know. Do ladies spin, then? And why would they have bees in their hats?’ Bonnets she did understand. Mama had told her about ludicrous angrezi hats. And piles of false hair even when one had perfectly good hair of one’s own and corsets to pinch you in and push you out and padding.
‘Unmarried women who are on the shelf—beyond marriageable age—are called spinsters. And having a bee in your bonnet is to have a foolish obsession with something.’
‘Hah! Well, I am not on a ledge, it is only that I do not choose to surrender myself to some man. And I have no bees in my hair. But when I have my money—’
‘What money?’ Nick enquired and this time when she glanced across at him she saw he was smiling, a quizzical smile that made her want to hit him.
‘My father is a rich man, is he not? So I am rich. I am his only child.’
‘He will make you an allowance, of course. When you marry a man he approves of, then he will settle money on you for your children.’
He was telling the truth. She had learned to believe what Nick said in that calm way he used when he was explaining things. So, she would have money, although there would be more when she married. And she had her jewels. There were not many, but they were very fine. And perhaps her father would feel guilty about the way he had treated her and her mother and she could persuade him to give her more money, more gems, enough to run away with.
It had been foolish to give Nick some hint of her plans, even if he mocked them and di
d not believe she could do it. ‘Is it acceptable for a lady to be alone with a man as I am with you?’ she asked after a few moments, the continuation of her earlier thoughts presenting a possible escape. Surely not, not when there was the possibility of a kiss like the one they had just shared. He had hardly touched her and yet her heart was still beating too fast as she thought of it
‘It is not. It is scandalous, but there is no need for anyone to know how you reached Calcutta,’ Nick said. There was something in his voice, or perhaps the sudden tension in the long body, that warned her that she was on dangerous ground, but she did not understand why.
‘Yes, but if they did know,’ Anusha pressed, ‘will they not think I am no longer a virgin and refuse to receive me?’
‘Are you suggesting that it would be assumed that I would have ravished you?’ Nick enquired, his tone so even that for a moment she missed the fury beneath it.
That was a way out of having to be turned into an English lady. ‘Well, there might be suspicions…’ Carelessly she had let the thought colour her voice and he picked up on it at once.
‘And you would blacken my name, impugn my honour so that you could wriggle out of whatever plans your father has for you?’
There was no mistaking it now—he might as well have hit her over the head with a brass cooking pot to express his anger. ‘I am sorry,’ she stammered. ‘It would be thought so very bad of you, then?’
‘It would bar me from decent society and jeopardise my position in the army, besides causing me deep personal shame,’ Nick said tightly. He was staring straight ahead between Pavan’s ears but the colour slashed across his cheekbones like a warning flag. He was looking, sounding, very angry, almost as if she had pricked his conscience. Which was absurd because he was behaving just as he ought.
‘Then I would never say anything about it,’ Anusha hastened to assure him. This angrezi honour was a very different thing. Any Indian nobleman who had such an opportunity would snatch at it without hesitation, use her as a bargaining counter to secure concessions and riches from her uncle in return for marrying her once she had been compromised and shamed. They would think Nick a fool. He, it seemed, would consider them wicked and unprincipled. ‘Only…someone must know we are together.’
‘There will be a handful of people who will know that this journey did not take place with a full escort from your uncle. They will be left under the impression that I had my groom with me and you had a palace eunuch and a maid with you.’ He appeared to be relaxing again a little.
‘Then perhaps it would be better if we pretend that I am your brother,’ she suggested. ‘I am dressed like a youth. If we practise that, then we can enter Calcutta unobtrusively.’ And it would make life much more comfortable. Nick made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a snort. ‘You do not think you can think of me that way?’ True, she could not imagine him as a brother, either. ‘Your sister, then?’
‘I have no sister, so I do not know how to behave to one, but I can assure you, I find it hard to think of you in that role.’ This time it was definitely a laugh, but one with an edge to it.
‘No sisters? Brothers?’
‘I am an only child, unless my father has remarried, although I doubt he would find anyone who would have him.’
‘So your mother is dead?’
‘Yes.’ From the set of his jaw he did not appear to want her sympathy on that. She could understand it—when people sympathised with her about Mata she was hard pressed not to cry, even now.
‘But then your father sent his only child away. Did he not desire to keep his heir by his side?’ Nick had said his father had bullied and beaten him to make him come to India and had then forced him on to the ship.
‘There was little to be heir to,’ Nick said. ‘My father is a second son so it was up to him to make his own way in the world. He could have gone into the army or the navy, the church or have made the small estate he inherited from an uncle into a larger one. He chose to marry a woman for her money and then to spend it on drink and gaming. She made the mistake of falling in love with him and spent the rest of her life breaking her heart over him.’
‘His father must have been angry,’ she ventured. It must have been dreadful growing up in such a household. It had been bad enough for Mata, but at least the break was final and she did not have to live with a man who abused her.
‘My grandfather disowned him.’
Nick said it lightly as though it were no great matter, but Anusha sensed that it was, that it was like a black cloud somewhere in Nick’s consciousness. ‘Then why did your father not want to keep you with him? I would have thought—’
‘I was no use to him and I criticised him,’ Nick said. ‘When my mother died I—’ He broke off as though he realised he was betraying more of his secrets than he had intended. ‘We quarrelled badly. I seem to have been a reproach to him whenever he looked at me. I took after my mother in looks, a little, and I was probably a sanctimonious brat.’
She still felt the pain of her father’s rejection twelve years ago very deeply—how must it feel to have a father who spurned you, a grandfather who had cast his son, and therefore his grandson, away?
‘Your grandfather is still alive? Is he an important man?’
‘I suspect he will live for ever. He is sixty-eight now and, reports say, as tough as a whip. As for importance, he is a marquis. Like a maharaja, I suppose. A duke would be a very senior maharaja. A marquis comes next. Then an earl is a third-ranking nobleman—a raja.’
‘So you are a milord?’ Mata had tried to explain the English nobles to her, but it was very complicated and strange.
‘No. I do not have a title. My father is styled the Honourable Francis Herriard. His elder brother uses my grandfather’s second title, Viscount Clere—he is called Lord Clere. My grandfather is the Marquis of Eldonstone.’ He glanced across at her and the expression on her face seemed to lift his mood, for he grinned at her. ‘Confused?’
‘Completely. Why are you not a prince?’
‘Because only the sons of the king are princes and they are usually dukes as well.’
‘But—’ She broke off as Nick reined in and sniffed the air.
‘I smell smoke.’
People, danger? Her dagger, the one in her boot that Nick had not found, was still there when she reached down and trailed her fingers unobtrusively over it, bracing herself for whatever was going to be thrown at them this time.
Chapter Seven
Nick inhaled deeply. ‘There is a village ahead. I can smell cow dung burning.’
‘Will it be safe?’
Please let him say it will be, pleaded the tired, frightened part of her mind, the part she was trying so hard to ignore. The thought of the company of other women, of being able to wash, to sleep on a bed, even if was only a crude charpoy with ropes threaded on a wooden frame, made her ache with longing. And this was only the second day.
Anusha stiffened her spine. She had boasted that she was Rajput and she would not show weakness even if Nick said this was not safe and they must spend the night in the open again with no food.
He sent her a flickering look. Reassurance or assessment? ‘Let us hope so. This has been an eventful day and, speaking for myself, I have had about enough of it. We are a long way from any source of news here, they cannot have heard about us,’ he added.
They saw the goats first, then the white humped cattle. Small boys, sticks in hand, leapt up from where they crouched guarding the animals and dogs came skirmishing out, barking.
‘Are!’ Nick called. ‘Where is your home?’
They crowded round, skinny in their skimpy loin cloths, all dark eyes and eager tongues, chattering in excitement and vying to point out their village to this man on horseback who towered above them. He was surely a raja, Anusha heard them say, a great warrior with his firearms.
‘Do many men on horseback come this way?’ she asked, leaning down to speak to the tallest lad.
‘Nahi.
Not for many months, not since the tax collectors came before the rains.’
Nick caught her eye and nodded approval of the question. Their pursuers had not visited here—they were safe for a night at least.
‘We are travellers,’ he said. ‘Will you take us to your headman?’
The boys broke into a run, streaming ahead of them, the dogs yapping. The village appeared behind a low bluff of land: a dozen or so round huts of mud brick, their roofs thatched with thin branches and straw, the whole surrounded by a mud-brick wall, mended here and there with bundles of thorn.
Women were gathered round a well and they turned, pulling their veils across their faces with one hand as they balanced the big copper water vessels on their heads with the other. Their clothes were vivid crimson and orange and sharp, acid green. The men clustered in the gateway, the boys falling silent as the headman walked forwards to deal with this unexpected visitation.
He was bent, thin-shouldered, but had once been tall. His drooping white moustaches fell below his chin and his turban was huge, a construction of twisted white-cloth ropes coiled together.
Nick swung out of the saddle, dropped the reins and put his hands together. ‘Namaste.’ Anusha followed his example, waiting behind him as the greeting was returned.
‘We come from the west,’ Nick said in his clear,
idiomatic Hindi. ‘We travel to the Jumna to sail down to meet the Mother Ganga and we seek shelter for the night.’
There were murmurings and much gesticulating at the mention of the sacred River Ganges. The villagers would feel they had gained merit by helping pilgrims.
‘Welcome.’ The headman’s rheumy eyes studied Nick and then turned to her as she stepped to his side, pulling the tail of her turban across her nose and mouth—she had no wish to offend.
‘This lady is under my protection. I take her to her father,’ Nick said.
They were too polite to stare or to speculate. The group parted, ushering them into the compound, and the headman called to the women, ‘Wife! Daughters! Make our guests welcome.’