by Louise Allen
‘The question is, can I make her a good husband? If I couldn’t make a marriage work with a meek little wife who wanted to be married in the first place, what hope have I got with one with spirit and wits who is making the best of a bad job?’ Nick enquired. And what does a happy marriage look like, anyway? Can I make her happy?
‘I’m not trying to wriggle out of this, I just want what’s best for her. I am sorry if I have disappointed you, George. Sorry if I am not the son-in-law you wanted for her.’
‘Disappointed me? Hell, no! Nicholas you’d never do that. She is just too much for us to handle, that’s all. I only wanted…security for her, I suppose. Safety. Just do your best to make her happy, that’s all I ask.’
‘Happiness I cannot promise, but I will do my level best. You have my word on it. And I will protect her with my life, that I can swear to.’
*
Anusha walked into her father’s study as soon as she heard him moving around in there. A sleepless night fighting with her conscience had left her in no state for an Anglo-Indian breakfast.
‘Anusha.’ He got to his feet and came round the desk to urge her into a chair. ‘You look—’
‘As though I have not slept. Yes, Father, I know. It was all very…sudden.’
He almost went back to the big chair behind the desk, then came back and sat down opposite her. ‘It is the best thing for you. Have you changed your mind? Don’t you want to marry Nicholas?’
‘I do not want to be a trouble to him.’
He watched her from under dark bushy brows for a minute. ‘You like him, do you not?’
She nodded. Of course I like him! Can you not see that I love him?
‘Do you desire him?’
‘Father!’
‘Well, do you?’ He had coloured up and he was frowning, but he persisted. ‘You haven’t got a mother to ask you about these things. Don’t pretend to me you don’t know what I am talking about, not with your upbringing.’
Anusha pressed her lips together and stared up at the painting over the mantelpiece of the Garden Reach of the Hooghly River with the fort in the background. If she said anything it would all come tumbling out, how she desired him, loved him, wanted him and how selfish it was of her to tie him down in marriage. And Father would tell Nick and then he would be uncomfortable and pity her.
‘I married too young,’ her father remarked in a conversational tone. ‘I married a very suitable bride, an intelligent, handsome woman I hardly knew.’
‘I don’t want to hear about—’ I do not want to hear you justifying yourself to me.
‘But I am going to tell you,’ he said gently. ‘And you will listen to the story of my stupidity and where it took me. I married Mary and she fell pregnant almost immediately. She lost the child after three months. We tried again. She lost another. And another. The doctors said she should not attempt to carry a child for at least a year to allow her body to recover. You understand what they were asking me?’ She felt the blood hot in her cheeks, but nodded, her eyes still fixed on the painting.
‘I was young and arrogant and I did not see why we should wait. It reflected on my virility that my wife was not with child, I thought, and besides, I was not cut out for self-denial. Within four months she was pregnant again and this time she brought it to term. It almost killed her because her body just could not cope. The child died and the doctors told us she could never conceive again.’
Anusha heard the pain in his voice and the self-recrimination. It serves him right, she thought, trying to harden her heart. Then, Oh, poor woman. Poor things—how old had they been?
‘I had an opportunity to come out to India with the Company, to make my fortune. I assumed Mary would come, too—I did not ask, just told her. And she refused. I had almost killed her, I had ensured she could never have a child and for the first time I saw what I had done to her, not just to myself.’
‘Why did you not divorce her? Or she you?’
‘In English law there were no grounds for divorce in our circumstances. A wife being barren and a husband being a selfish fool are not enough. So we separated. I made sure she wanted for nothing financially and she made her own life in England. But her sense of duty was strong. She wrote to me every month and I began to write back. Gradually it seemed we could be friends, even at that distance. Or perhaps because of it.’
‘But you were living with my mother.’
‘I will not pretend I lived like a monk, Anusha. But some years after I came to India I met your mother at your grandfather’s court and we fell in love.’
‘She deliberately sought you out, she told me.’ Long hot afternoons, with her mother’s voice, soft and reminiscent, telling the story of that long-ago love affair. ‘It was very shocking.’
‘Indeed. I was thirty-five, she was twenty. By some miracle the raja approved the relationship, because he could refuse her nothing and because he could see the Company would be a great power in the land. We were in love and we were so very happy when you were born.’
‘And then you sent us away, you did not want us any more.’ She tried to keep the hurt from her voice, but she knew that it showed.
‘Mary thought I was ill and she had come to believe it was her duty to be with me. The letter telling me she was on her way reached me before there was anything I could do to stop her. She was my legal wife—I could reject her, risk her life again by sending her back for another three months of danger and misery at sea, or I could do what honour told me I must, and welcome her.
‘I tried to discuss it with Sarasa, but she refused to even listen. I could see no way out of it except for you both to go back to Kalatwah where I knew you would be safe and treated with respect. I would not dishonour both women by keeping one as a mistress behind my wife’s back.’
His voice caught and he stopped speaking. Anusha turned her head slowly, painfully, to look at him. There were tears running down his face although he made no sign that he realised.
Something turned over in her heart: his pain, as though it were hers, and the realisation that she had never tried to see anything but her own anger and betrayal. ‘Then you still loved us, Papa?’ Her face was wet, too, she found.
‘With all my heart. Never doubt it, Anusha. With all my heart.’ He reached out and she took his hand in hers.
‘So it was not because, with Nick, you had a son and did not want a daughter any longer?’ It was shameful to reveal her fears and jealousy, but she had to know.
‘No! He was the son for Mary that she could never have. For me, it took longer, for I was still mourning you and your mother, but I grew to love him like a son. Anusha—
love isn’t finite. I could love both of you, and I do.’
‘Oh.’ She held his hand and let herself feel at last. ‘Oh, Papa!’ And then she was in his arms and they were both weeping and nothing else mattered except that she was home again.
*
‘Good afternoon, Miss Laurens.’
Anusha looked up from the two miniatures her father had given her. One of her mother, the other of his wife, the woman who had saved Nick’s life all those years ago. She put them down carefully and watched him as he came and stood in front of her. ‘Where have you been all day, Nick?’
‘I thought you and your father needed time alone together. Are you all right now? Your eyes are red.’ He was still in uniform, his face cleanly shaven, his hair tied back. He looked formal and remote.
‘I have been crying,’ she said with dignity. ‘So has Papa. He is going to send a cow in calf to that village,’ she added, thinking suddenly of the way that Nick had looked up from the fireside, directly at her, and something had clicked into place in her heart. I fell in love with him then, I just did not know it.
Nick smiled and then, to her shock, went down on one knee.
‘What are you doing?’
‘This is the correct manner for making a proposal. I feel a trifle idiotic, but if you will forgive that… I hardly did it properly last nig
ht. Miss Laurens, will you do me the honour of accepting my hand in marriage?’ When she did not answer him, and continued to look at his clasped hands resting on his raised knee, he added, ‘I wanted to make sure you had not changed your mind.’
Does he want me to? Is he hoping that I have? Anusha
looked into the face so close to hers and knew that she should say no and knew that she simply did not have the strength.
‘I will do my best to look after you, to give you as much freedom as I can, to make you happy,’ Nick said as she was silent, not trusting herself to speak.
‘But you wish you did not have to.’
‘Make you happy? Of course I want to do that.’
Strange how she had never noticed that thin scar across his right knuckles, how the tendons stood out when his hands were tightly clasped. Perhaps he was as nervous as she was. She knew she was blushing and saw from his face that he could read her mind, a little.
‘There are more ways to make someone happy than sex,’ Nick said drily, ‘but at least that will be a good start, if we are going to be so frank.’
She swallowed. ‘What about your mistresses?’
‘Plural? I have never had more than one at a time and I do not have one at the moment. Anusha, look at me.’
She managed to lift her head. He was very serious, although his eyes were smiling. Perhaps this was going to be all right after all.
‘I told you last night. Anusha, for some time now there has been no other woman but you and there never will be, I swear. I will be faithful to you, always.’
What Nick promises, he does. And he would promise that for me? To be faithful even though he does not love me? Oh, Nick. I do love you. Anusha managed to smile and was rewarded by the way he looked at her. ‘I have not changed my mind. I will marry you.’
‘Thank you. I am honoured.’ He leaned forwards and kissed her lightly on the lips and she closed her eyes and let herself dream.
Chapter Nineteen
It took a month to be married, they told her. ‘So short a time?’ Anusha asked. ‘But what of all the preparations and the feasting and the dancers?’ Lady Hoskins laughed and Anusha blushed. This was a different world and she had forgotten.
The time seemed to flow past like water and as the day grew closer a panic closed around her heart like
a fist. She had trapped him. She should have known when she had wept in his arms that he would always protect her, only this time it was not with his life, but his freedom, and he would grow to resent her, she was certain.
Ajit returned from Kalatwah with messages and news: everyone was safe, they missed her. The maharaja’s spies had been eliminated, for the moment. He slipped back into Nick’s service, a soft-footed, smiling shadow.
The horses arrived from Kalpi, tired, but unmarked by their journey. Nick took her to the maidan early each morning so she could ride Rajat astride in her Indian clothes, but she knew she would have to master the side-saddle soon.
Nick had been using part of the disused women’s quarters as his bachelor’s rooms when he was in Calcutta, although he had a house in the hills a day’s ride away. Now her father had them turned into a self-contained home for the newly-weds with two bedchambers, dining room, drawing room, a study for Nick and a sitting room for Anusha and a wide veranda overlooking the gardens at the rear.
Except for these morning rides they seemed to see very little of each other. Nick was at the fort most of the day and when he was at the house he seemed remote and formal. It was expected that a bridegroom kept his distance, Lady Hoskins explained, and of course, she did not want to be a trouble to him, but she missed him.
‘Do you mind?’ Nick asked ten days after their betrothal as they sat on their veranda and watched the gardeners turning a small patch of tangled vegetation back into a garden. He had come back mid-morning and, unusually, seemed intent on spending time with her.
Anusha did not pretend not to understand him. ‘Not having a separate house of our own in Calcutta? No, Papa would be lonely and so will I be when you are away.’
‘You will miss me?’ It was asked casually.
‘Of course. And I will worry about you, now I know the kind of risks your missions lead you into.’
‘Don’t worry. I cannot imagine that any future commissions will necessitate escorting dangerous young
ladies.’ He means it as a joke, she told herself. ‘How will you spend your time when I am away?’
‘I shall help Papa and be his hostess. Lady Hoskins says that is the best way to learn to be a proper English lady. Then when you come home I will know how to…deport myself.’
‘Comport.’
‘I thought that was something for putting fruit in. And I will make the house nice and buy clothes and accustom myself to them.’ Instinct told her to keep the conversation light. Like that she could almost pretend they were still on their journey. She flipped her skirts back and forth, exposing a bare foot.
‘Anusha! Are you patterning your feet with henna?’ Nick dropped to one knee and lifted her foot in his hand. ‘Wicked woman.’
‘No one can see under my stockings and shoes.’ His thumb was stroking the top of her foot, following the complex twisting design. She glanced around, the gardeners had gone. It seemed a very long time since they had been alone together.
‘So this is just for your husband?’
‘No, of course not.’ She tried to cover herself, but he bent his mouth to the bare skin and desire washed through her. ‘Stop doing that!’ But she twisted in the chair, tried to position her foot in the perfect place for his caresses. ‘Nick!’ He sucked her toes into his mouth and began to tease them with his tongue. ‘Nicholas, that is very…very…’
Unable to speak, he waggled his eyebrows at her lasciviously and she collapsed into giggles. It felt so good to laugh, such a long time since she had. ‘Idiot man, stop it at once or the servants will see.’
‘How very European and repressed of you, my dear.’ He released her foot and sat back in his chair. Anusha wriggled her wet toes and tried to look reproving.
‘I am trying to learn to be good.’
‘Well, don’t learn it for the bedroom,’ he said, his voice suddenly husky.
‘No. I won’t.’ The silence that followed seemed to need a lot of filling. Anusha scrabbled for a safe topic. ‘Lady Hoskins says that I am fortunate not to have to learn all the things that an aristocratic lady must know, like how to go on at court and how to wear the strange court dress, and being a political hostess and holding a salon in London and managing an enormous house in the country. She says that young ladies are brought up from childhood to know all that.’
‘So I believe. I never saw much of it, with my father being estranged from my grandfather, but court life is a nightmare, by all accounts, and London society is a good match for the plotting in a zanana. Although I doubt rival heirs are ever garrotted by eunuchs.’ He studied her face, suddenly serious. ‘You can put that in the balance of positive things about this marriage—you will have nothing more to worry about than Calcutta society.’
‘I do not need to find things to be glad about,’ she said carefully. ‘But I knew that I would never marry an aristocrat anyway. Lady Hoskins explained that,
too.’
‘Why not? There are a good sprinkling of lordlings around—younger sons, heirs-in-waiting, men doing a more-than-usually-adventurous version of the Grand Tour.’
‘Because I would not be received at Court, of course.’ Surely he knew that better than she did? ‘My parents were not married and my mother was Indian. You only have to look at me.’ She extended one arm, the lace around her sleeve falling back to reveal the honey-coloured skin. ‘And Papa is in trade. It is a good thing—I would not want to have to balance an ostrich on my head.’ Whatever that was.
‘Just some of its plumes,’ Nick said absently. He was frowning. ‘Is that woman telling you that you are not good enough?’
‘For the English Court? Of course.�
� It did not worry her—after all, she would never go to England, she accepted that now. ‘I thought they would snub me here because of Mata, but they do not, so that is all right.’
Nick still looked troubled. ‘Are you sure? If anyone says anything about your birth or your looks—’
He would fight them for me. I do love him. It made her want to cry, a little, so Anusha reached over and rubbed at the crease between his brows and scolded instead, ‘Stop frowning. You do not look handsome when you frown. No one is unkind to me.’
‘Good.’ He leaned forwards and smoothed her skirts back over her bare feet and she gave an involuntary murmur of disappointment.
‘Stop tempting me, you wicked woman. I am resolved to resist ravishing you until our wedding day.’
‘Oh.’ She tried to sound disappointed, and one part of her was, the part that ached and yearned and tingled when he touched her. But it was also…charming that he should respect her and should obey the conventions in order to do this properly for her. Unless it meant that he was not as eager for that part of their marriage as she was. But if he was not, then what did they have? Only his sense of duty?
‘That does not mean that I do not intend kissing you until your toes curl. Kissing you all over,’ Nick added, so softly that for a moment she thought she had misheard him. Anusha sat up sharply, but he was lying back in the wide rattan chair, eyes closed, apparently about to drift off to sleep.
Was he playing games with her? He must be. Or it was her own longings that she was hearing? Anusha got up and crept barefooted into the house and the shuttered gloom of the drawing room. There was no furniture here yet, only a pile of rugs, haphazard on the floor at her feet, their vivid colours spilling patterns like all the riches of the garden. The sight stopped her in her tracks, memory clogging her throat so she had to swallow hard against it.
‘What is wrong?’ Nick came in, silent behind her, and caught her by the shoulders to pull her back against his chest.
‘Those carpets. There were rugs heaped like that in my rooms that day I was packing and you were the other side of the screens and we quarrelled. Or I tried to quarrel and you walked out on me. Very unfair.’ Anusha took a deep breath and kept her voice light and amused. ‘That was the last time I was in that room before everything changed.’