Once and Always

by Alyssa Deane

  At the gatehouse, the keeper offered to have water brought to her, but without assurances that it had been boiled, she told him she would not be able to drink it and insisted on seeing someone from the house. Eventually, the man relented and brought her up the short lane to the main residence.

  Large pots of sweet sultans lined the verandah, nearing the end of their season. Empty chairs of sissoo wood, the cushions lifted against the curved backs, were situated in haphazard fashion before the windows. The windows themselves were still covered, the chiks not yet rolled back for evening. From inside, Roxane could hear feminine voices and the intermittent sound of bells, followed by laughter, and then a rather large bump, which vibrated through the floor to her feet.

  “One moment, memsahib," said the gatekeeper, with a formal bow. He disappeared inside. Less than a minute later, a young woman hurried to the door, breathlessly removing a kerchief from her hair. She was, Roxane noted, very thin, with a milky complexion and a bounty of glossy, light-brown curls. Her eyes were blue—not the blue of autumn, like Unity's, but the dark of the evening sky once the sun had set, surrounded by long, thin lashes which gave her the appearance of being startled, even though it was apparent by her smile that she was not.

  Roxane explained who she was and her predicament, and the younger woman extended her hand in welcome.

  “Olivia Waverly,” she said. “Do come in."

  Her teeth were extremely white and even and terribly small, like a child's.

  The foyer was crowded with crates, some still sealed, the others opened, contents spilling out in varying stages of dispersal. Paintings stacked in single file against a far wall awaited hanging. Roxane glimpsed furnishings in the rooms off the foyer, from which only some of the sheets had been removed, and servants hastening to finish their job.

  “I've come at an awkward time,” she said.

  “Nonsense,” responded the other woman. “You couldn't very well have waited, could you? Here, wash up, and then we'll have a little something to eat and drink."

  “Oh, no, I couldn't,” Roxane protested. “A glass of water or juice would suffice, and then I will be on my way."

  However, Miss Waverly insisted and showed Roxane to a ewer and basin, which she ordered filled with fresh water. “If you don't mind, we will be informal and eat on the crates in the hall. Nothing else is ready."

  Despite Roxane's opposition, Olivia Waverly was quite persuasive. Roxane discovered herself partaking of a small meal with the woman, followed, almost as a matter of course, by assistance in Olivia's endeavor to empty the crates in the foyer. A message was sent by runner to the Stantons.

  “I am so glad,” Olivia said, signaling without missing a beat for the servants to place chairs around a dining table stacked high with a variety of items, “that we had this opportunity to meet and spend time together before your departure for Delhi. Father has spoken of Colonel Stanton. They met when we were in India three years ago, but Father's position had taken him elsewhere. We were in Lahore then, and left Calcutta after only a short stay."

  Roxane related the adventures of her first day, although she intentionally left out the name of her rescuer, for to her it was a very private matter. Every other detail she embellished so that Olivia laughed until the tears ran.

  “Oh, Miss Sheffield,” she exclaimed, wiping at the corners of her eyes with her napkin, “it is such a shame that you are leaving. I should like to hear more of your stories. You do have more?"

  “A few,” she replied, with a dry smile.

  Olivia began carefully uncrating the dishes. Sawdust flew, and she waved it away, sneezing.

  “Did you tell me why you were going to Delhi, rather than to the hills, or am I bold in asking?"

  “I did not say, but I do not mind doing so,” Roxane answered, brushing the wood shavings from her skirt. “I am going to be reunited with my father."

  “After how long?"

  Lifting a particularly long curl of cedar, Roxane snapped it in two with her fingernail against the ball of her thumb. “Fifteen years,” she said, and stood, carrying a stack of dishes to the sideboard.

  Olivia followed, depositing a silver salver and utensils beside the china plates.

  “That is a terribly long time."

  “I know."

  “He must seem as a stranger to you."

  “He is a stranger to me,” Roxane said, grateful that this young woman did not pry, but accepted her statement without question.

  “We will write to each other, then,” stated Olivia, after a moment.

  Roxane hesitated only minutely. “Of course,” she agreed, and reached for the next stack of dishes.

  For a short time following, they worked in silence, until Olivia, having apparently come to some resolution in her mind regarding what she was about to ask, let out a short breath through her nose and looked Roxane directly in the eye.

  “Have you no husband, then?"

  Roxane stilled, the cloth she had been using for wiping down glasses before handing them to a servant lowering to the table.

  “No, I have not,” she answered.

  “You are too young for a widow..."

  “I have never been married, Miss Waverly."

  “Olivia, please."

  “Olivia,” Roxane said. A slow trickle of sweat was dripping annoyingly between her shoulder blades. She thought longingly, but briefly, of a bath.

  “Is there no one? If I am being too personal, please tell me so. I—I just feel that even though you and I have only met, there is a certain—affinity? Besides,” she added, “you have a look about you."

  “A look?” Roxane echoed, warily.

  “Yes. There are certain women who are attractive to men, whether they will it or no. And there are those who are only attractive to men through device. You are of the former group."

  Roxane's brows lowered in a frown. “That is nonsense,” she said.

  “No!” Olivia protested. “It is truly so. Though they are not necessarily beautiful, there is that about the former group which men cannot resist. You possess that quality."

  “Though I am not beautiful,” Roxane countered, with the beginning of laughter in her voice.

  Olivia blushed. “Forgive me. I did not mean to imply ... for you certainly are..."

  Roxane laughed outright. “Never mind,” she said. “No harm done. I do not care if I am beautiful or if I am not, nor if I am desirable or if I am not—"

  “That is only because you are those things,” Olivia interrupted. “You might very well care if you were, rather, none of them."

  Roxane paused, considering. “Well,” she said, “nonetheless, there were not droves of men on my doorstep, so perhaps your theory, or your perception of me, is not entirely accurate."

  “Are you certain?” Olivia persisted, picking up the cloth Roxane had discarded. “Or did you not habitually turn them away? For you have that look about you also."

  “I beg your pardon?” Roxane gazed at the younger woman beside her with suspicion and amazement, wondering at Olivia's uncanny insight. Olivia was right. There had been those young men who had attempted courtship, but she had routinely put them off. She had claimed it was their interest which was lacking, for how could they maintain an interest in a woman who possessed an inability to worship them as they would have wished? All along, of course, it had been her own inability to trust which had ruled her behavior.

  Trust me, Collier had said. Trust me.

  Roxane closed her eyes, lifting her chin very slightly, breathing in the scent of a perfume drifting, unexpected, on the warm air.

  “There is a man,” she said, quietly.

  “There is that, too"—Olivia smiled beside her—"in your eyes."

  With an impatient noise, Roxane snatched the cloth back from Olivia's grasp, wiping the glasses in earnest.

  “You are too astute,” she said. Olivia turned away to answer a question posed to her about the nets to be placed over the beds in the bedchambers.

&n
bsp; “Is he handsome?” she asked, turning back.

  “Yes. Though I know I would feel no differently were he not. Or do I say that merely because he is so handsome, Miss Waverly?"

  Olivia laughed. “When a woman looks at a man with love, it is with her heart, not her eyes, therefore, it truly makes no difference."

  “You sound,” scoffed Roxane, smearing dust across her brow with the back of her hand, “like Unity."

  “Unity?"

  “Unity Stanton, who is forever extolling the virtues of love."

  “Virtues you do not believe exist?"

  “I have no proof they exist."

  “The proof will make itself known, over time,” Olivia assured her.

  “You are very young, to speak of time,” argued Roxane.

  “I observed my parents as I grew."

  “Therein,” answered Roxane, ruefully, referring to her own, “lies the crux."

  Following an awkward silence, Olivia asked:

  “Do you love this man, Roxane?"

  Roxane stepped back to survey the empty table, one hand clutching the grimy cloth on her hip.

  “I do,” she whispered, without looking at the other woman.

  “Does he love you in return?"

  Roxane waited somewhat longer before answering.

  “Yes."

  “It would not, then, be a marriage of convenience, prior arrangement, or avarice."

  Roxane's lip lifted crookedly at the other woman's bluntness. “We are not betrothed. We have spoken of marriage, he and I, but I have not agreed."

  “Why not?"

  “I—” Roxane faltered, then turned her green eyes to Olivia's deep blue ones. The younger woman pulled off her apron. Somewhere in the depths of the house, a clock's brass bell signaled the hour.

  “Because,” Roxane admitted, “I am afraid."

  Olivia nodded once. “Perhaps,” she said, folding the apron into a tiny square of gingham, “you will have to make every conscious effort to ensure that the love you share is enough."

  Listening to her, Roxane felt terribly young and inexperienced, and foolishly high-idealed. She dusted her hands off. Olivia clasped one with abrupt energy.

  “Stay for dinner,” she urged. “I believe it will only be father and I, and I would so dearly love your company. You see,” she said, with a little, tinkling laugh, “it is almost as if we are friends already."

  Roxane hesitated. Time felt suddenly and inordinately short. She wanted to see Collier, to speak with him, of what was in her heart and in her mind. As she was only two days from leaving the city, she had hoped to see him sometime during the course of the evening. Still, there had been no message, and there were hours following dinner during which she could seek him out, or he her.

  “I would be happy to accept,” she said.

  “Good.” Olivia set the apron down on the edge of the table. “Then you shall come with me to retrieve my father. He is in his office, and I promised I would bring the carriage around for him. He had a late meeting—something mysterious and prohibited, which he would not share with me. In other words, it had a great deal to do with finance, I am sure, which he does not believe I have the head to understand.” She made a face, causing Roxane to laugh.

  The vehicle belonging to the Waverlys was gilded paint over white, with a pair of white mares to pull it. A servant snapped the reins urging the horses into motion. Before leaving, Olivia had washed her face and hands and changed her dress to a fresh pink-and-white cotton frock. Her hair she brushed to a sheen, confining the curls to a snood at the base of her neck. She tied a white bonnet with pink rosettes about her head, smiling at Roxane from beneath the wide brim. Beside her, Roxane felt grimy in her perspiration-dampened frock with the smudge of dirt across the skirt where she had been kneeling. Olivia laughed, feeling it her duty to remind her that men thought her beautiful no matter what she wore.

  Roxane rolled her eyes.

  “If we are indeed to be friends, Olivia, you must stop saying that."

  “Agreed,” Olivia laughed. Watching Roxane, she twirled the ribbon of her bonnet about her finger, then released it in a long curl.

  “Miss Sheffield,” she whispered, darting nearer for the confidence, “I, too, am to be married."

  Beneath Roxane's gaze, a tint of rose crept into Olivia's creamy skin. Discomfited, the young woman ducked her head. Roxane smiled at her, wondering if her own sentiments concerning Collier were so transparent. She could only hope not. There was something more than a little disturbing in knowing the world could discern your innermost feelings at a glance.

  Collecting herself, Olivia looked around.

  “Here is my father's office,” she announced.

  Roxane turned her head, following where Olivia was pointing to an open door at the top of a double-sided staircase. Something about the facade of the small building looked decidedly and incongruously colonial, like the illustrations she had seen of American architecture. She would have asked, in her natural curiosity about such things, about the design, had she not recognized Unity's ayah sitting in what could only be the Stantons’ conveyance, parked directly by the staircase. And there—there was Unity, standing on the walk, her entire face in disarray, crumpled strangely in upon itself, red and swollen, as if she were—as if she were crying!

  “Unity!"

  The girl looked up, sunlight reflecting in the tears coursing down her skin. She appeared naturally confused at finding Roxane there, then horrified.

  “Stop the carriage. Stop—stop the carriage!” Roxane leaped out before the wheels had ceased to turn, stumbling over her hem. Hurrying to Unity's side, she took both thin shoulders into her hands, bending to look into the girl's face.

  “What is it, Unity? What has happened? Has someone been hurt?” Gasping for air and sound, Unity shook her head. Frustrated as well as frightened, Roxane resisted the urge to shake her. “What is it?” she asked, more gently. “Unity, is it—” And then, at the expression in Unity's eyes, she hurried on. “Is it Captain Harrison? Tell me Unity. Tell me, what has happened!"

  Unity's renewed sobbing was interrupted by the scrape of a boot on the landing behind Roxane's head. Releasing the girl, Roxane turned and looked up. Above her, Collier stood in the last light of the evening sun, his dark hair standing in ridges back from his forehead, where his fingers had dragged repeatedly through the dark mass. His officer's shako was held in a crushing grip beneath his arm. The muscle in his jaw, which Roxane had come to recognize as a signal of anger, stood in sharp relief against the strange pallor of his skin; and his eyes, his wonderful, expressive, slate-gray eyes, were hard, and cold, and unfocused.

  “Collier?"

  Blinking, he looked down at Unity first. Moisture puddled along his lower lids, and he blinked again before turning his gaze to Roxane. Her heart began to gallop, unreasoningly, and she made to ascend the stairs to his side, but he shook his head, once, sharply. He might as well have slapped her. She stopped on an indrawn, painful breath, feeling icy with dread, despite the perspiration chafing beneath her cotton gown.

  “Collier?"

  Out of the corner of her eye, Roxane saw a blur of white and pink, and knew that Olivia had passed her, pausing at the bottom of the staircase to her father's office. Collier turned his head stiffly, like a puppet fabricated of wood and twine, and stared down at her.

  “Miss Sheffield,” asked Olivia, “is your friend hurt? Has something happened? Perhaps we can be of assistance,” she offered in concern, climbing the stairs to lay her slender hand on Collier's arm.

  “Miss Sheffield,” she said, “this is my fiancé, Captain Harrison."

  Chapter Nine

  Delhi

  June, 1856

  Max Sheffield strolled along the ridge two miles outside of the old city of Delhi, mopping the back of his neck with a handkerchief. Beside the river, the Emperor's Fort rose behind the city walls, blood-red in the harrowing sun. Sheffield looked to the horizon, where a single cloud had appeared, qu
ite gray against the white haze of the sky. Soon, if not today, the rains would begin. The merciless dust would be pocked and pitted by the first, large drops, and then the steam would rise from the earth, and from the stones of mosque and fort and the myriad of structures within the city and without, as though from a cauldron. After, there would be no relief, the monsoon rains as relentless as the heat in India's cycle of extremes.

  Yesterday, Roxane had come. He had silently practiced, for years, the things he would say to her when they met again. But he had been totally unprepared for the sight of her, and all the phrases he had hoped would ease the moment had passed clean from his head. Even though he had recognized the passage of time, knew, to the day, her age, he had not truly provided for the visual experience of coming face-to-face with a daughter who was now a grown woman. He had had no real concept of her growth, her changes, her stature, or her beauty, nor of how she looked so very like her mother. Except for the height and the green Sheffield eyes, they might have been one and the same person. This, alone, was enough to still his tongue, and he had merely stared at her in an anguish of guilt and loss.

  It was Roxane who made the first move, extending her hand to him in a gesture that, although not friendly, at least was not reproach.

  We will make it up, Roxane, he silently vowed, I swear it.

  * * * *

  Roxane stood in the shade beside the Stantons’ carriage with Unity, searching for the words to say good-bye. They had both made promises to write, and to see each other again, most probably when the Stantons passed through on their return from Simla. Now Unity had grown silent, staring out at the feathered row of green tamarisk trees. Her young countenance was sadder than it should have been, and Roxane wondered what she was thinking.