by Olivia
She was once more excluded from his mind. Morosely, Olivia followed him up onto the deck, where the freshness of dawn stung her cheeks and chill breezes whipped her skin into blushes. Spectral vapours lay on the waters but the river was beginning to stir into daily life. The reviving breezes cleared Olivia's head of its encroaching fatigue but she walked in a daze, unable to assimilate reality. So much had happened in this one night, too much! She felt sad and happy and confused with a mind like jelly and a body still marvellously enriched by the intoxicating passions of the night that had fulfilled her as a woman. Savouring the delicious languors weighing down her limbs, she stretched with feline pleasure. Sheer force of habit brought an eternal question to her lips but, with a smile, she bit it back; she knew, as always, that she would see Jai Raventhorne again, albeit in his own time, at his own choosing. In the meantime she was content to wait. Content? No, not content! But she would wait. If it took the rest of her life, she would wait. There was nothing better she would want to do with it anyway.
"Take care of your health. The ague can be notoriously persistent; it will weaken you further."
The return of his concern for her, the gentle worry in his face, suffused Olivia with warmth. For a fleeting second she clung to him on the deserted deck. "I love you, Jai. I love you with all my heart."
"Yes. I know." Just that, no more.
Against all good judgement, the eternal question erupted. "When...?"
He put a finger across her lips. It felt cold. And in the coppery dawn light, his pallor was bloodless. "I have loved you neither wisely nor well, Olivia, but I have loved you. Can you remember only that?"
"How can I not, oh how can I not?" Torn with longing, she surrounded him with her arms and held him close.
"Then will you trust me, Olivia, trust me?"
"Yes!"
"Promise me that you will."
"I promise, I promise." Anxiously she searched his face for a motive for his urgency, but she could identify none. He was still unsmiling, his skin still pallid white. "Of course I trust you, Jai!"
Briefly, a strange smile touched his mouth. "Then, perhaps, you will find the humanity to also forgive me."
"There is nothing to forgive." Aching to dally, to stay with him longer, she curbed her yearning to raise a matching smile. "I have loved you wisely, well and willingly, Jai—how can you still not know how willingly?"
He merely shook his head. "Then make haste and go. Soon it will be bright and you must not be seen." He did not kiss her.
From the longboat below, Olivia shaded her eyes and squinted up for a last look at his beloved face. The dhoolie she had retained had obviously long since been dismissed, for it was nowhere to be seen. With neither fear nor embarrassment, she waved. Standing motionless at the deck rails, he did not wave back. His concern for her reputation moved and amused her; by tomorrow there would be no more need for deceit. She was proud, yes proud, of her chosen destiny. And by tomorrow all Calcutta would know it too! With a light laugh she looked up again, savouring a last glimpse. He stood in the same spot, straight and immobile. The wind blew his jet black hair into a cloud around his face; his eyes, Olivia knew, were upon her. In the rapidly lightening morning a shaft of early sun caught and held his features. Something glistened; Olivia's waving hand stilled and on her lips her smile died.
In Jai Raventhorne's eyes there were tears.
"They're having such a lovely summer in Norfolk, Cousin Maude writes. The Broads are chock-a-block with boats and the banks are very lively with Sunday picnickers." Lady Bridget heaved a wistful little sigh. "Maude says she went to Kew for a friend's wedding and the Gardens were bursting, simply bursting, with summer flowers."
Picking at a piece of toast and scrambled eggs, Olivia said nothing.
Lady Bridget lowered the letter she was reading. "I wish you hadn't missed luncheon, my dear. You do look, well, feverish. Are you sure you are well enough to be out of bed?"
"Yes, of course." Olivia smiled. "I'm just a little tired."
"Even with all that sleep? Perhaps it's that draught you took. They do tend to deplete the energy entirely." She returned to her letter.
It was almost four in the afternoon. Nine hours of sleep following her furtive return from the Ganga had not refreshed Olivia. Her body felt languid and ached in secret places, a throbbing reminder of the night that had unfolded for her the meaning of love. The memory flooded her cheeks with crimson; in her eyes there were far-away, vacant glints that made her stare without seeing anything.
But yes, I do love you . . .
Olivia stirred; the secret she had concealed in her bosom for so long no longer needed to be hidden. "Aunt Bridget, there is something I feel I must tell you . . ."
Her aunt looked up. "Yes dear?"
"There is someone I... I have become . . . attached to." She swallowed and steadied her voice. Beneath the table her nails cut half moons into her palms. A trickle of sweat dripped between her breasts. It felt strangely cold. "I . . . have not been as ... as honest with you as . . ." She swallowed hard again and stopped, her courage so strong only a moment ago suddenly ebbing. Help me, God, help me!
Lady Bridget leaned forward and covered her hand with her own. Oddly enough, she was smiling. "I know, darling," she breathed. "I know. You don't have to spell it out for me—I'm not exactly blind! Just the other day I was telling Josh how strongly I sensed something in the air. Otherwise why on earth should the dear boy be sending you all those letters?" She laughed happily and squeezed Olivia's hand hard. "Take your time, dear, take all the time in the world. You can tell me when you're good and ready. I've waited so long, I can wait a little longer." Her eyes suddenly shone with tears and, filled with emotion, her voice quavered. "You have no idea, my child, no idea at all how much what you have to say will mean to me, oh how much!" She sniffed damply, dabbed her eyes with a hanky and, lips trembling, returned to her letter.
Olivia stared at her aunt, bewildered; she could not imagine what she could possibly be talking about. But then the penny dropped—Freddie Birkhurst! Olivia almost laughed out her incredulity; her aunt actually believed it was to Freddie she was referring? On the strength of those tiresome letters he had been sending and which she had been consigning to the waste-paper bin unopened? Why, it was laughable! But laughable or not, the inadvertent touch of farce had provided a note of anticlimax and, already ebbing, her courage deserted her altogether. For the first time Olivia was struck forcefully by the sheer enormity of the announcement she had been about to make, and by the grim seriousness of the consequences it would no doubt have on her family.
They had to be told, of course, and soon, very soon. She could no longer continue to live under conditions of such gross duplicity. But the words with which she dropped her indubitable bomb-shell had to be carefully chosen. Tact would be needed to soften what would certainly be a blow of monumental cruelty to them. There would be scenes, terrible scenes, with melodrama and fainting fits and tearful vituperations. Olivia's heart dipped, but at the same time her intentions hardened; whatever the consequences, they had to be faced, if not today then tomorrow. Naturally, there would be a scandal. Oh, how Calcutta would love that scandal! And, also naturally, she would have to move out of the Templewood home. Where would Jai take her—to the Chitpur house? The Ganga? Wherever it was, he would want her to be with him. Limp with renewed longing, Olivia shivered with happiness thinking of those telltale tears at the moment of parting, that desperately anxious promise he had extracted. But yes, I do love you . . . Her throat went tight; yes, whatever the consequences, however bitter and insufferable, she would not be able to hold on to her beloved secret much longer.
". . . would you, dear?"
Her aunt, still suffused with happy anticipation, had asked a question, which she had missed.
"I was wondering, dear, if you would take a cup of tea to Josh," Lady Bridget repeated with a smile of knowing indulgence. "He's been so dreadfully preoccupied all day."
Olivia c
ame back into unpleasant reality with a jolt. Uncle Josh! She shot with involuntary anger at the mere mention of his name. With Das's sworn deposition in his possession, of course he was "dreadfully preoccupied"!
Bearing a teacup and a sour taste in her mouth, Olivia finally tracked him down in the rose garden, where he was busy at work, pruning. She stared in suspicious surprise; if Sir Joshua's interest in his home was cursory, in his opulent gardens it was nonexistent. They were, to him, his wife's preserve and responsibility. The sourness in her mouth increased; it was his machinations that had brought death to two men, and a third, wholly innocent, had been almost tarred, feathered and lynched in the frame-up, yet he could sit there casually trimming rose-bushes?
"Aunt Bridget has sent you some tea," she announced coldly.
Sir Joshua waved aside the tea and bent to pat Clementine's head as she blissfully trapped an earth-worm. "Did you know, m'dear, that roses existed twenty million years ago?"
"No." Olivia handed the unwanted teacup to one of the attendant gardeners and ordered that it be returned to the pantry. Had he been drinking again?
"See this?" He seemed not to notice her coldness. "Bridget imported these last year from France. The Rosa multiflora—floribunda to us. Some call it primrose. Spectacular, eh?"
Olivia made no response, surprised even more by his horticultural knowledge than by his sudden inclination to share it with her.
Sir Joshua stalked down the path towards a riot of blood red flowers. "The Rosa chinensis, m'dear. I brought this from Canton years ago. Oddly enough, they now call it the Bengal rose. I understand they're growing it in Europe with considerable success." In gathering bafflement Olivia trailed after him, certain that he had indeed been at the bottle again. He went down on a knee to gingerly part two branches of a bush heavily studded with thorns. "The Prunus spinosa. In other words," his oblique glance at her was strangely sly, "the black thorn. You see, Olivia, in strict botanical terms, thorns are only modified branches. The sharp point at the end pricks, of course, and often its poisons can be lethal...," he jabbed one hard into the ball of his thumb and a pin-point of blood bubbled up, "... but it is also easy to remove, see?" With a finger-nail he scraped the thorn clean off the stem. "Of course, it does attempt to leave a scar, but that heals remarkably fast, with surprising efficiency." He stood up, wiped his hands on a handkerchief and smiled. "So you see, m'dear, nature poses problems sometimes, but then she also readily provides the answers."
Olivia decided that he had been drinking, but at the same time her pulse skipped a beat: He was trying to tell her something! What? Renewed fear assailed her; could he be up to some fresh trickery? Boldly she asked, "I hear that Mr. Slocum has returned from Kirtinagar—has there been any further news from there?"
"Only what was expected. Arvind Singh will not press charges." He shrugged. "That is his privilege, of course."
His volte-face alarmed her even more. And why was he not concerned about Das's damning deposition? "In that case, the prime suspect will go free? He will not be charged?" Her heart beat hard in painful hope.
"He will not be charged, no." He bent down to lift a fat, furry caterpillar off a leaf and tossed it aside. "But he will not go free."
"Oh?" Her stomach gave a sickening lurch; she studied his determined face. His mouth was set and he breathed heavily, as if with unusual effort. Uncaring of how odd he might consider her questions, she followed close on his heels as he strode into his study. "So, there have been some unexpected new developments, have there?" Oh God, she had to know!
He lifted his coat off the back of a chair and started to thread his long arms through the sleeves. "New, yes. Unexpected? No, I would not say so." He fell silent. For a long, agonising moment Olivia despaired of him telling her more, but then, all at once and abruptly, he did. "Remember that fellow Das whom your aunt cannot abide?"
Her heart stopped. "Yes?"
"Well, I'm told he's missing."
"Missing?" Her tongue, dry and sluggish, could hardly move. "Is that of any . . . significance?"
Carefully, Sir Joshua unfolded his silken cravat, walked towards the mirror hanging over a tallboy and started to arrange the tie meticulously around his neck. "No, except that he isn't missing. He's dead." Cravat draped to his satisfaction, he patted it firmly into place.
Olivia almost stopped breathing. "Dead? How do you know?"
"Instinct. Pure and simple intuition." He turned, smiled vaguely and pinched one of her cheeks. His fingers were like ice; she was faintly startled to note that they also trembled. "You see, my dear, Raventhorne has killed him. I would have been surprised if he hadn't."
This time her breathing did stop. "Why?" she whispered, shocked at his apparent unguardedness, the fluency with which he spoke of matters that he, more than anyone else, must want to keep secret. In her mounting trepidation she suddenly saw that today his mood was also utterly alien. The faint whiffs of alcohol her nostrils picked up were hardly enough to warrant such recklessness.
"You see, Olivia," he said in a tone pleasantly conversational, ignoring her question, "he has killed Das and concealed the body. Slocum will not find it in a thousand years." His stare bored through her like a drill; mesmerized, she could not pull her eyes away. What he insinuated was clear, horribly clear.
"And . . . you can?"
"Oh yes," he said softly, "oh yes. I know the native mind down to its last trick, m'dear. And Raventhorne's mind . . .," he smiled, "... I know it as if it were my very own."
Frozen, Olivia asked mechanically, "What will happen then, when you find the body?"
He stood absolutely still for a space, lost to her, blind and deaf to the world. "Then," he said, squaring his shoulders, "Raventhorne will hang." He walked to the door and called out to her as he left, "Tell your aunt I will not be home for dinner." Disconsolate at being abandoned, Estelle's puppy sat and whined at the door he closed behind him. Olivia did not hear it; she remained where she was, impaled with dread. Her uncle knew more than Jai suspected!
Lady Bridget sat in the verandah, still happily immersed in her mail packet. Behind her the gardeners hand-sprinkled water over huge chrysanthemums that looked like floor mops, and sugar candy-pink clouds sailed across the sunset. In the driveway Sir Joshua was dismissing his carriage and asking for his giant bay gelding to be saddled instead, chop, chop! Slipping quietly into the chair opposite her aunt, Olivia stared blindly at nothing.
"Flora Langham writes of her holiday in Brighton, where she says she met this most gifted man," Lady Bridget's face was serene with contentment. "Apparently, he plays the piano like a dream—she does too, you know—and he paints wild flowers. I sense a little romance brewing there and oh, I am pleased! Flora was quite the nicest, most devoted governess Estelle had, not at all like that silly Perkins woman who just would not learn to do the ringlets right . . ."
Olivia heard nothing. Her mind was frantic with conjecture, her thoughts chasing each other in endless circles. She must do something, but what? And how? It was not yet dark, and the servants would see her if she went over the wall behind the vegetable plot. She had to warn Jai without delay, but her uncle already had a headstart. Oh God, oh God . . .!
". . . to the flour mill. Sarah, as wilful as her daughter was to be later," still lost in her nostalgia, Lady Bridget laughed, "refused to give heed to Croakie's warnings—she was our nanny, you know, dear, dear Miss Croker. Well, of course Sarah lost her footing and of course she went crashing down into the vat, our Sarah did, all arms and legs and flapping pigtails!" She laughed again at the cherished memory. "And, my goodness, she did look like a ghost, quite a hoot! It took poor Croakie hours, simply hours, to scrub it all off. Father roared with laughter but Mother was very cross indeed. She always was a tomboy, you know, your mother. If the stork hadn't blundered, Father always said, Sarah would have been born a boy. Always up to mischief, like the time when . . ."
Olivia had heard the stories before. Normally, she loved listening to anecdotes about her
mother's childhood and early life in England, but today, with frustration and fear raging, she could scarcely keep still. Finally, almost cutting her aunt off in mid sentence, she muttered some inane excuse and fled. Upstairs in her room she sat down to compose a message. Her hand shook badly and it took several attempts to make her handwriting legible and the message adequately clear. It was more than likely, of course, that Jai already knew everything, but she could not take that chance. Better to be teased later for needless panic than to court a lifetime of regrets.
For one silver rupee, the stable-boy assured her rapturously when she sought him out at the water trough, that he would not only deliver her note to the boatman of her choice, he would also sell her his soul if she so desired. She gave him another rupee for the boatman, instructed him carefully, made him repeat all her instructions twice and then, with a warning not to dawdle, sent him packing. He grinned cheekily, leapt over the back wall with the nimbleness of a squirrel and, without the malis having noticed, sped away into the dusk. Olivia almost collapsed with a relief that could only be meagre, for the note might well arrive too late to be of use. Still horribly agitated, she returned to the verandah.
It was almost dark. Lady Bridget was sitting quite still and in her hand she held a letter. Olivia slipped back into her seat and observed idly that the handwriting on the envelope that lay on the table face up was that of Estelle. Her aunt had been expecting a note from her seeking permission to extend her stay with the Pringles, of which Lady Bridget quite approved. Hunched tiredly in her chair, Olivia leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. It was when she reopened them that she noticed something odd about her aunt's figure, still in exactly the same position. Her hand, up in the air, held onto the letter but she neither moved nor appeared to be reading it. In fact, her eyes seemed to be fixed unblinkingly on some spot on the wall. When, after a moment or two, Olivia could perceive no movement in her aunt, she quickly rose and bent over her.