Rogue Grooms

by Amanda McCabe

  What a hum that was. She ran everyone’s life in their family, and she well knew it.

  “Didu,” David said gently. “This is not my only home, as you well know. My father has been dead for years now, and I have neglected my estate and duties in England for far too long. It is past time I attended to them. I have told you all of this before.”

  “You have a manager for that wretched English estate! A most competent one, by your own account. Surely that fulfills any duty you have there.”

  “It would be remiss of me not to take a personal interest, as the earl. Indeed, I have been remiss. I would not be the honorable man you and Father raised me to be if I did not go back there.”

  Meena sighed in resignation, as she always did at the conclusion of these disagreements. She sat up against the bolsters, and arrayed the folds of her sari more attractively about her. “You are too tall, David. Sit down before I get a crick in my neck looking up at you, and have some refreshment.” She snapped her beringed fingers, and one of the hovering servants brought forth a tray. As the servant melted back into the shadows, Meena arranged the tea things, the bowls of papaya and guava, the plate of sweet shandesh.

  “Very well,” she said, pouring out fragrant mint tea into paper-thin porcelain cups. “I understand that duty calls you back to the land of your father, and I can even agree that you are doing the correct thing, though I cannot like it. I knew from the moment of your birth that you could not be ours forever. Yet why must you take Anjali as well?”

  David sipped at his tea, more to give himself time than for the refreshment. This, too, was an old quarrel, one that had been ongoing ever since he announced his intention to return to England. And it was not a quarrel that was as easy or as clear-cut as his own duty.

  “Anjali is my daughter,” he answered. “She deserves to know all of her heritage, to decide for herself how she will live in her adult life.”

  Meena snorted in derision. “Decide for herself! A female cannot decide such things.”

  “Anjali will be able to, when she is older and clearly aware of her options.”

  “She is nine years old. We should be thinking of a suitable marriage for her, teaching her more of the female arts such as music and embroidery. You should not be dragging her away to the other side of the world, where she will know little of the customs and manners. The English here in Calcutta are so very barbaric. To think that my own granddaughter will learn their ways!”

  David set his teacup down with a sharp click. “I will not argue with you about the manners of the English here. But to learn English ways is precisely why she must come to England with me now. She is just a child—she has time to learn anything she needs to know. Her English is excellent; I will hire an English governess for her as soon as we are settled. She is smart and quick—just as her great-grandmother is. She will be fine wherever she goes. And in a few years, if she wishes it, she can come back here.”

  Meena slumped back against the bolster, a hint of a pout touching her carmine-red lips. “By then, she will be too old for any suitable Bengali match.”

  David grinned at her unrepentantly. “Then she will just have to marry an Englishman, won’t she?”

  “And you, David? Will you marry an Englishwoman?”

  His gaze narrowed as he looked into his grandmother’s oh-so-innocent expression. This was a new tack of hers. They had not spoken of marriage for him since his wife, Rupasri’s, death two years ago. He should have been expecting it. Marriage and matchmaking were Meena’s chief delights in life.

  He sat back against his own cushions and shrugged carelessly. “I will probably never marry again.”

  “Not marry again?” Meena’s tone was deeply shocked, as if such a thing was utterly unthinkable. “But, David, you are young! You will want a son, to inherit your wealth and title and say prayers for you when you are dead.”

  “My father has cousins who can have the title, and Anjali can have my money when I am gone. And I daresay she can say a prayer for my soul as well as anyone.”

  “Of course she cannot! She is a female.”

  “You forget, Didu,” David said, in a deceptively quiet voice, “that Anjali and I are Christian, not Hindu. Even Rupasri was Christian. God will hear Anjali’s prayers as well as He would those of any son.”

  Meena lapsed into a heavy silence. The point of faith was a sore one with them and always would be. Usually, they just ignored their differences and went on.

  Meena was not about to let the issue of marriage go quite so easily, though. “You are a fine match, David. You are handsome, just as your grandfather was, and wealthy. You have a title, which they say the English ladies like.”

  “Is that what drew my mother to my father? His grand English title?”

  “Don’t be so impertinent, David! My daughter was a silly, romantic, headstrong girl. Gayatri fell in love with his golden curls and green eyes, and would have no other man. We had begun to arrange a most suitable match for her, but her father foolishly indulged her and let her marry where she would. And now you will be just as indulgent with Anjali.”

  “It hardly signifies at the moment, Didu. Anjali is just a child. Her marriageable years are far in the future.”

  “But yours are not. You are twenty-eight, David; you have been a widower these two years and more. Anjali needs a mother, and you need a companion. Since you are so determined on your course to leave us and go to England, I suppose it must be an English wife. But even that is better than nothing.”

  David remembered the chilly reception he and his father had received in England, the whispers about his dark complexion, his “heathen” mother. He shook his head. “I doubt there is any Englishwoman who would have me.”

  “What? Not one on that entire rainy island? I cannot believe that.”

  Unbidden, an image flashed in David’s mind, a picture of a girl he had known so long ago. Emily Kenton laughed in his memory, the sunlight shimmering on her pale curls, her dark blue eyes full of admiration as she watched him.

  I won’t forget, she had whispered.

  Yes, there had been one English girl who stood as his friend. Even after all these years, after everything that had happened—his life in India, marriage to Rupasri, the birth of his daughter—he cherished that memory. With Lady Emily, he had been able to be entirely himself, to forget the bittersweet nature of his life in England, to just laugh and talk like an ordinary boy. She made that time not just bearable, but even—fun. And special.

  But that was many years ago. Emily was surely married by now, a grown-up beauty with a family of her own. Perhaps they would even meet when he was back in England, at a ball or a rout or riding across their lands at Combe Lodge and Fair Oak. Yet she would not remember him. Not as he remembered her.

  His grandmother watched him with an odd expression on her face, and he realized that his silence had stretched on much too long.

  “We shall just have to see once I am settled in England, won’t we, Didu?’ he said lightly.

  “Indeed,” Meena answered, her tight tone saying she was not entirely convinced by his carelessness. “But there is something else I must speak to you about before you leave, David. Something very important.”

  She peered up at him with her onyx eyes, and something in their depths killed the flippant remark he had been about to make concerning the relative importance of matrimony. “What is it?”

  Meena folded her jeweled hands carefully in her lap. “When your mother married your father, she gave him something—something that was not hers to give.”

  David knew immediately of what she spoke. He had expected her to bring it up as soon as he and his father returned to Calcutta fourteen years ago, yet she never had. She treated his father with the same icy, remote politeness she always had, and she had not even mentioned it when the earl died. Now David knew she had just been biding her time. “The Star of India.”

  “Yes. The Star.” Meena looked more solemn than he had ever seen her, yet her eyes
took on a deep glow as she spoke of the Star. “Our family gave the jewel as a sacrifice to the temple of Shiva—it belongs to the god. Gayatri was always a silly girl, and she was overcome by her infatuation with your father. She foolishly took it from the very feet of Shiva and gave it to her husband, in a bid to secure his love to her forever. It was a very great wrong. It brought a curse onto our family—a curse that killed your mother!”

  David felt an enormous disquiet at his grandmother’s demeanor. She was often full of drama and tears to get what she wanted. Yet now, as she told a very dramatic tale indeed, she was only aglow with quiet intensity, religious fervor.

  “Childbirth killed my mother,” he told her softly. “She was trying to bring my baby brother into the world.”

  Meena shook her head decisively. “If she had not stolen the sapphire, your brother would have been safely born and Gayatri might still be with us. It is so written. And then your father left the Star in England, who knows where or with what blasphemous sorts of people! If he had brought it back, we could have returned it to Shiva. Now, the curse—and the duty to erase it—have fallen onto you, my grandson.”

  So that was it. He was to be the means of erasing a “curse.” David did not believe in such things as curses himself. But he did believe in the power of suggestion, and he knew his grandmother sincerely thought she was under a god’s curse. A god’s displeasure. “What would you have me do?”

  Meena took a deep breath. “You must find the Star and return it to the temple. Only then will you and Anjali be safe.”

  David studied her face carefully, searching for any flicker of deception. “Is this a ploy of yours to entice me to return soon to India?”

  She gave an indignant huff, her gold nose ring shimmering. “I might be a foolish old woman, David, but I know when I must be serious! If you are unable to return to India, you must find a safe way to send the Star to me and I will take it to the temple. The most important thing is that you find it. Can you do that for me, David? Please—I beg of you.”

  He nodded slowly. Begging was not his grandmother’s way. This must truly be of deepest importance to her. He did love his grandmother—she had been like a mother to him when his own had died, and he found himself all alone in this strange land. He did not want her mind to be unquiet in any way. “Yes. I will find it for you, Didu.”

  Meena closed her eyes with a small sigh. Suddenly, she looked all of her years and more. “Thank you, my dearest grandson. Lokhi mei.”

  David went to her and pressed a kiss to her brow. He did not tell her that he had known all along where the Star was to be found—with Emily Kenton’s family.

  “Papa, Papa! Here you are at last!” Anjali dashed across the nursery floor to throw her arms around David’s waist. “You were gone a very long time.”

  “I went to see your great-grandmother. She had a great many instructions for our journey.” David lifted Anjali up against his shoulder, even though, at nine years old, she was almost too big for him to do so. She was a tall girl, as her mother had been—tall for a Bengali female, with slender arms and long legs, and a warm, honey-colored complexion. Her hair was the same shining raven black as David’s was, as Rupasri’s had been, falling to her waist in a shimmering curtain. Yet her eyes were green, as green as emeralds or the English countryside in spring. Those she had gotten from David’s own father.

  Anjali stepped back from him, a tiny frown puckering her brow at the mention of their voyage. “Yes. My ayah and I have been packing my trunks today, but I don’t know what I should bring. What will I need in England, Papa?”

  “You may bring anything you like, shona-moni,” he answered. “Your books and dolls and clothes—everything.”

  “Ayah says that England is always cold and damp,” Anjali said, her tone full of doubt. “I don’t think any of my clothes are right. Will you look at what we have packed and tell me? I don’t want anyone to laugh at me for not being right.”

  “No one will laugh at you, sweetest. And of course I will look at your luggage.” David took her small hand in his and let her lead him to the trunks arrayed next to the whitewashed wall. They knelt down together on the pink and pale blue carpet, and he watched as she took out and displayed garments and toys for his inspection.

  He saw that Anjali was right—few of her clothes would be suitable for an English spring, which was when they would arrive in London. He had always seen to it that she wore English frocks, high-waisted gowns trimmed with ribbons and embroidery, except on very special occasions when she visited her great-grandmother and wore silk saris. But her dresses were all made of light muslins, with tiny puffed sleeves. There were no sturdy wools and tweeds, no cloaks, and only one cashmere shawl. Her shoes were all thin kid and silk. What would protect his girl from the brisk sea breezes they would encounter on the voyage, let alone the winds and rains of England?

  He was woefully unprepared to be the sole parent of a little daughter. He realized this as he turned a small slipper over in his hand. Before, his inadequacies had been covered by the advice of his great-grandmother, his female cousins, and Anjali’s ayahs. He was a man—he had no idea what wardrobe requirements Anjali might have, what qualities he should look for in hiring an English governess, even what she ate for dinner.

  Once they boarded the ship and turned toward Europe, his daughter would be completely dependent on him.

  “Ayah says I will catch my death of cold in England,” Anjali said fearfully.

  David felt a deep surge of anger toward Anjali’s ayah. This change was hard enough for the girl; how could the woman make it worse by filling her with fears? Anjali was a very sensitive child, and took such things very much to heart. He placed the slipper back in the trunk and turned to give his daughter a reassuring smile. “Ayah is wrong. England is not as cold as all that, though it is cooler than Calcutta, to be sure. We will buy you a whole new wardrobe in London, one that is the very height of fashion. You will like that, won’t you, my Anjali?”

  She gave him a flicker of a smile, and cradled her favorite porcelain doll closer against her shoulder. “May I have a pink gown, Papa?”

  “You may have as many pink gowns as you like. And a red velvet cloak trimmed with fur, and a bonnet with feathers. Once we are settled at Combe Lodge, we will see about finding you a pony, too, and teaching you to ride. All fine English ladies ride.”

  “So, I will be a fine English lady? Like Lady MacGregor at Government House?”

  David laughed at her doubtful moue, and leaned over to kiss her cheek. “Lady MacGregor is not the only English lady in the world, you know! You will be far finer than her. Though you are a very small English lady, to be sure.”

  Anjali laughed, and he reveled in the sweet, sweet sound. Her laughter was too rare since her mother died. “I think I would like a pony, Papa.”

  “I know that this change is not easy, Anjali,” he told her. “But England is not such a very frightening place. It has many beauties, and there will be much for you to learn and enjoy there. And you will never be alone. I will always be with you, and you must be sure to tell me if there are things you dislike or do not understand.”

  “Of course, Papa.” She opened her mouth as if to say something else, but then she closed it again, her gaze sliding away from his.

  “What is it, Anjali?” he asked her.

  “I just—Ayah says that you are going back to England to find me a new mama, because none of the Indian ladies suit you. Is that true?”

  Now, where would the woman have heard such a things? David thought wryly. He remembered his grandmother pressing him about marrying again, remembered the lists of eligible ladies his cousins devised. Why would they all think he must have a wife? It was maddening!

  Then he recalled his utter confusion in the matter of Anjali’s clothes. Once they were settled at Combe Lodge, there would surely be other things he knew nothing of, such as housekeeping and meals and hiring proper servants. As Anjali grew older, there would be Seasons to pla
n, gowns needed, suitable suitors found.

  Perhaps a wife would have advantages, then. A comfortable home and a properly raised daughter were no small matters. But—and perhaps this was foolish of him—he did hope for more. He cared very much for Rupasri; she had been a fine lady, and excellent mother to Anjali, accomplished in all the arts of a Bengali lady. Yet their match had been an arranged one, undertaken for the benefit of their families when they were very young. If he married again, he wanted it to be from his own desire only.

  But that was a romantic hope, a distant possibility. He had other, more pressing duties to think of. And his life would be theirs for a very long time to come.

  David drew Anjali close to his side, doll and all, and said, “We are going to England to see about your grandfather’s properties, and so that you can learn more about that side of your family. We have duties and obligations there. That is all.” And also to retrieve the Star from the Kenton family. But Anjali did not need to know that. She had never even heard of the Star of India.

  “So, I will not have a new mama waiting there?”

  “No, shona-moni. No new mama waiting at the dock. One day I might marry again. But not soon, and only to a lady who would be a very fine mama indeed. Very well?”

  Anjali nodded. “Very well, Papa. Now, will you look at these books? May I take them all with me?”

  David watched as she pulled a pile of leather-bound books from one of the trunks, yet he did not truly see them. For the second time that day, he was lost in the mists of the past.

  Anjali was nine years old now, very nearly the same age Emily Kenton had been when they parted so long ago. But the two girls were so very different. Anjali was quiet and studious, shy and uncertain, where Emily had been full of vibrant energy and life, always dashing about, always laughing.