A Modest Independence

by Mimi Matthews

  “We slept in the same compartment on the train to Marseilles. And again on the train to Suez.”

  “Yes, but…we weren’t in beds.” She paused before adding, “I know that must sound silly, but—”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “No?”

  “It makes perfect sense to me, unfortunately.” The train rattled and shook as it hurtled through the darkness. Tom put a hand on the wall to brace them. “We’d better sit.”

  Jenny sank down on the lower berth. Without its padded back, it was much deeper and far less comfortable than in its normal state.

  Tom sat down beside her, leaving enough room between them to have easily accommodated another person. Was he trying to maintain some measure of distance? Or were his actions merely inspired by the cloying heat?

  She turned to face him, wishing she could see his expression more clearly in the darkness. “Will you be too warm if I move a little closer?”

  “Probably.” He extended his arm to her. “Come here.”

  Jenny didn’t require an engraved invitation. In an instant, she was snuggled against his chest, his arm holding her close. He was warm. Deliciously so. She felt as if she were surrounded by him. His strength and his scent. Her nerves ceased their jangling. At last, her body seemed to say. At last.

  “Is this better?” he rumbled.

  “Mmm.” She slid her arm around his waist, feeling her eyes drift close as sleep finally beckoned.

  The last thing she was aware of was the feeling of Tom’s cheek on her hair as she drifted off, his breath a soft whisper against her temple.

  “Five days,” he murmured. “That’s how long it took before you were back in my arms.”

  There was nothing like a long journey in the sweltering heat to promote intimacy between the inhabitants of a railway carriage. Tom had seen gentlemen in various stages of undress rushing onto station platforms to get their breakfast and ladies swathed in shawls and colorfully patterned dressing gowns hurrying into the first-class carriage washroom only to emerge minutes later looking as neatly garbed and coiffed as they might in any British drawing room.

  His own lady—such that Jenny was—took a bit of convincing before she would admit to any level of comfort for herself. It was only on their second night on the train that she properly dressed for bed. She returned from the washroom in a prim flannel robe, her hair disposed in a long auburn plait over her shoulder. Her face was freshly scrubbed, her cheeks rosy.

  “After all,” she said, “you are my brother.”

  Tom didn’t know whether to grin or to grumble. He settled for helping her up into her berth, trying not to notice how soft she was without her usual underlayers of whalebone and crinoline.

  After their first night on the train, they’d managed to resist the temptation to sleep in each other’s arms. It had been disconcerting enough to do it once, awakening as they had to Ahmad and Mira bustling about.

  Tom had felt like the veriest cad. It was one thing to indulge his affection for Jenny when the two of them were alone, but to do so in front of others was worse than ungentlemanly. It was the sort of thing a fellow did if he held a woman cheaply. If he didn’t respect her. That they’d both been fully clothed hadn’t mattered one jot.

  What must Ahmad think of him? What must Mira? The pair of them hadn’t said anything, but he didn’t expect that they viewed his conduct in a very good light. Especially not after having worked so long at Mrs. Pritchard’s establishment.

  Fortunately, the sheer length of the journey made many such concerns secondary to one’s comfort. Both he and Ahmad spent a great deal of their time in the compartment coatless, with loosened neckcloths, opened shirt collars, and uncovered heads. Jenny and Mira were no less willing to forego their bonnets and gloves in the ever-increasing heat.

  When the train at last stopped for twelve hours in Allahabad, they stepped out onto the busy platform in various stages of exhaustion. The famous city, with its Moorish arches and grand structures of white marble, was situated at the junction of the Ganges, Jumna, and Sarasvati rivers and, therefore, of particular religious meaning to those of the Hindu faith. Many pilgrims had come to bathe in the sacred waters. Among the crowds Tom saw very few Europeans, save for a British soldier or two on horseback.

  He shepherded Jenny through the station, their progress intermittently delayed as she stopped to purchase sweetmeats from peddlers or to clasp the hands of the curious children who dogged their every step.

  They put up at a native hotel for the day, too tired from their journey to summon any desire to explore the famous fort or the botanical gardens. Instead, he and Jenny dined on curried meat, rice, and ale with some of the other passengers in the hotel’s small dining room.

  Among the British travelers making their way to Delhi, the talk was solely of the mutiny.

  “The railway station was burned,” said Mrs. Goodwin, a widow traveling with her son and daughter-in-law. “And the tracks torn right out of the ground. The natives would have burned the trains as well had they not been frightened of them.”

  “Were you here at the time, ma’am?” Jenny asked.

  “I was not, Miss Holloway. But I’ve read all about it in the papers. The city was devastated. One wouldn’t know to look at it.”

  “No indeed, madam,” Mr. Walters said. He was a quiet gentleman. A missionary, Tom suspected. He’d seen him reading the Bible on occasion. “The burned houses have been rebuilt and new roads have been laid. The resiliency of the native residents is really quite something to behold.”

  “Everyone has been very friendly toward us,” Jenny said. “Ever since we arrived in Calcutta.”

  Mr. Walters smiled. “That is because you’re very friendly toward them, Miss Holloway. Anyone who treats the Indians with kindness and respect will find them a welcoming people. That has been my own experience.”

  Mrs. Goodwin’s son narrowed his eyes. “How then does one account for the atrocities committed by them during the mutiny?”

  “In the same manner one accounts for the atrocities committed by us.” Mr. Walters resumed eating his rice. “We have not come out of the mutiny with clean hands, sir. In many cases, it would be as fitting for us to ask forgiveness as to extend it.”

  “Do you mean to compare the slaughter and cruelty that they—”

  “I say, sir,” an older gentleman at the end of the table interjected in a booming voice. “My lady wife is present. I’ll thank you to turn the subject to one fit for females.”

  Tom exchanged a glance with Jenny. She smiled at him. One of her private smiles, a faint upward tilt of her lips and a glint in her sea-colored eyes. A smile reserved only for him. It never failed to make his heart beat faster, even now, surrounded by strangers in the sweltering heat.

  “A subject fit for females,” she murmured to him as they left the dining room. “How dreadfully dull.”

  His mouth quirked. “Don’t you enjoy discussing the weather?”

  “Hardly. How many ways can one express an opinion on the heat?”

  Tom walked Jenny to the door of her room. “You have time for a nap before dinner.”

  “I don’t think I’ll sleep.” She brushed her skirts. “What I need is a bath. I’ve never encountered so much dirt and grime in my life.”

  “Order one, by all means. We’ve plenty of time.”

  After settling into his room next door to Jenny’s, Tom took his own advice. Four servants clad in loincloths carried up the large copper tub and filled it with cans of hot water. When they’d gone, Tom stripped out of his dusty clothes and gratefully climbed in.

  As a boy, baths had been few and far between, and hot baths even fewer and farther. He’d never forgotten the deprivations of his youth. All these years later, a hot bath was still a luxury to him.

  His head came to rest on the rolled back of the tub, his eyes falling shu
t as the warmth and heat worked on his tired muscles. He imagined Jenny enjoying the same pleasure, her slim, shapely limbs relaxed and pliant beneath the steaming water, suds of Marseilles soap clinging to her skin.

  Would she wash her hair? Or would she leave it pinned up in its carefully plaited sections?

  He tried not to think of it. It wasn’t right or proper—certainly not while he was in the bath.

  But it was impossible not to think of it. Not to think of her.

  Sometime later, as the sun was lowering over the horizon, Tom emerged from his room freshly washed, shaven, and in a slightly better frame of mind. He made his way downstairs to the lobby. He’d seen Ahmad from his window, standing on the street, smoking a cheroot as he talked with an Indian gentleman in a turban.

  Outside the hotel there was no sign of Ahmad. Instead, Tom saw Jenny.

  And an elephant.

  It was an enormous creature, gray and whiskery, with a thin tasseled tail and fringed ears that twitched as Jenny stroked its shoulder. Beside the elephant stood its keeper, a rather grand-looking Sikh fellow garbed in dramatic white and scarlet.

  “She belongs to the rajah.” Mr. Walters was seated beneath the veranda at the front of the hotel, a small sketchbook open on his lap. The pencil in his hand moved in short strokes over the page. “He often lends her to honored guests for transport from the railway station.”

  Tom stopped beside him, trying to keep his mouth from falling open.

  “Have you never seen an elephant, Mr. Finchley?”

  “Once or twice in a menagerie, but never like this.”

  Jenny laughed as the elephant touched her with its trunk. Her face glowed with pleasure, her plaited auburn hair radiant in the sun.

  Tom’s chest tightened at the sight of her—even more so when Mr. Walters gave voice to his thoughts.

  “Your sister appears well suited to India, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Yes, she—” Tom broke off. “She has an adventurous nature.”

  Mr. Walter’s tilted his sketchpad in Tom’s direction. “I’m not a professional portraitist by any means, but I do believe I’ve managed to capture something of her spirit.”

  Tom stared down at the pencil sketch. His mouth went dry. Indeed, it wasn’t a proper portrait. And yet…somehow, Mr. Walters had caught the very thing that made Jenny so captivating. It was there in the arch of her brows and the stubborn uptilt of her chin. There in the curve of her soft lips and in the way tendrils of hair determinedly escaped from her carefully pinned coiffure.

  “The elephant was more difficult, surprisingly.” Mr. Walters examined his drawing with a frown. “Something about the legs. I shall have to study the proportions and try again.” He tore the sketch out of his book and offered it to Tom. “With my compliments.”

  “Thank you.” Tom looked at the piece of paper a moment longer before folding it carefully away into a pocket of his waistcoat.

  “Happy to be of service.” Mr. Walters gathered his things and stood. “If you’ll excuse me, I must ready myself for dinner.”

  Tom bid him good evening.

  In the street, the elephant’s keeper drove it onward. Jenny stood awhile, watching it go. And then she looked at Tom, still smiling. “Did you see her, Tom?”

  He crossed the short distance to join her. “She was hard to miss.”

  Jenny met him halfway, dusting her hands on her skirts as she walked. “Wasn’t she marvelous? And so intelligent, too! She understood everything her handler said to her.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t a trick? Like the whist-playing dog at Cremorne Gardens?”

  Her eyes twinkled. “I’m surprised you remember.”

  “How could I forget?” They had encountered the famous Learned Dog Lily last year while visiting the pleasure gardens with Justin and Lady Helena. The memory of dancing with Jenny that evening, of laughing with her and squiring her about on his arm, was one of Tom’s most treasured.

  “An elephant is smarter than a dog, surely,” she said. “One only has to look into its eyes to know that it’s thinking profound thoughts.”

  “That may be taking things a bit far.”

  “Nonsense. You’d have seen it yourself if you weren’t hanging back with Mr. Walters.”

  Tom smiled down at her. “I was admiring you. I’ve rarely seen you look so happy.”

  A flush rose in her cheeks. “You make it sound as though I’m gloomy all the rest of the time.”

  “Not at all.” His gaze drifted over her face. “Did you realize that you’ve begun to freckle from all of this sun?”

  She looked vaguely horrified. “Have I?”

  “It’s rather charming.”

  “It’s careless, is what it is.” She touched her nose. “If I were smart, I’d have been carrying a parasol every day and employing a lemon juice wash every night.”

  “Alas, we can’t all be as intelligent as an elephant.”

  She burst out laughing. The sound of it warmed him from the inside out. “On that chivalrous note,” she said, taking his arm, “you’d best escort me back to the hotel for dinner.”

  What Tom wanted to do was to take her in his arms and kiss her laughing mouth. They hadn’t kissed since their memorable ride in that Calcutta gharry—and he had a sinking feeling that they never would again. It was for the best, really. But that didn’t stop him longing for her.

  They dined with the other guests, seated far away from each other at the table, and then—at nine o’clock—boarded the train that would take them through Cawnpore and on to Delhi.

  There were delays, of course. It seemed, when it came to Indian rail travel, that there were always delays. However, within an hour they were rattling along the tracks at a good rate of speed, all of them tucked snug into their berths for the overnight journey.

  “We’ll be in Delhi by tomorrow afternoon,” Jenny said into the darkness of their compartment. “The end of our quest, for good or ill.”

  Tom lay on his narrow berth beneath her, one arm bent behind his head. How familiar it had all become. The intimacy of having her with him. Of hearing her voice after the carriage lamps had been doused. “Who’s to say it’s the end?” he asked. “It may well be just the beginning.”

  Delhi, India

  April, 1860

  Jenny clasped her hands in her lap to keep them from trembling as she and Tom waited in the study of Colonel Marcus Anstruther’s villa. It was a marble-faced monstrosity on the outskirts of Delhi, decorated with furnishings of wood, leather, and varnished bamboo. Hunting trophies and weaponry adorned the walls. Elephant and tiger heads, and even the mounted head of a rhinoceros. The whole of it made Jenny distinctly uncomfortable.

  “Do you suppose he killed all of these animals himself?” she asked Tom in a whisper.

  Tom’s face was expressionless. Clothed in a dark three-piece suit, he appeared every inch the formidable London solicitor. He had done since their arrival in Delhi yesterday afternoon. While she’d been restless with anticipation, he’d been calm and focused, addressing the preliminaries of their visit to Colonel Anstruther with solemn efficiency.

  At first it had all seemed to be going according to plan. In response to Tom’s note informing him of their arrival in Delhi, the colonel had sent a terse response, inviting them to call on him the following morning.

  Jenny had been up most of the night pacing her hotel room, riddled with anxiety and excitement, only to be disappointed when they had at last arrived at the colonel’s villa and found the man not at home.

  Fortunately, the Anstruther’s majordomo—or Khansama, as he was called in India—had not turned them away. He’d bid them wait in the colonel’s study. And wait they had, for the past twenty minutes, surrounded by the carcasses of dead animals.

  “He did kill them,” a trilling feminine voice sounded from the doorway. “M
y husband is adept at killing things. There’s no sport he enjoys better.”

  Tom and Jenny both stood as the owner of the voice floated into the room in a sea of flounced, floral-printed muslin. Her fair hair was arranged in ringlets that framed a face of waxen beauty.

  “Mrs. Anstruther,” Tom said, bowing.

  “And you’re Mr. Finchley, the solicitor come to ask after Lord Castleton. The late Lord Castleton, as we must call him. Why, it seems only yesterday I saw him in Poona. So young. So vigorous.” She motioned for Tom and Jenny to resume their seats, arranging herself in the chair across from them. “Your letter to my husband said you were acting on behalf of Lord Castleton’s family.”

  “Indeed, ma’am. May I present Miss Holloway, Lord Castleton’s cousin?”

  Mrs. Anstruther turned her doll-like eyes on Jenny. “Are you? I can see no resemblance.”

  Jenny returned the woman’s gaze with a measuring look of her own. She’d often heard that the climate in India didn’t agree with Englishwomen and here, in the face of Mrs. Anstruther, was visible proof. She was beautiful, to be sure, but she was also oddly colorless. As if the very lifeblood were drained from her body. “We’re distant cousins, ma’am.”

  “Lord Castleton never mentioned any cousins. It was only his sister he spoke of.” Mrs. Anstruther looked about the room. “How stifling it is today. Did Khansama offer you refreshment? Ah, but here he is with the tray. Khansama? Is my husband back?”

  The Anstruther’s majordomo entered the room carrying a pitcher and three tall glasses on a brass tray. “No, memsahib.”

  Mrs. Anstruther’s face tensed. “He’ll return soon, I daresay. He knew you were calling.”

  “He must be a very busy man,” Tom said.

  “Oh yes, he has many responsibilities, though he is quite retired now.” She poured out three glasses of lemonade. Her hand, clad in an ecru openwork mitt, shook as it gripped the handle of the pitcher. “Have you been in Delhi long?”

  Jenny watched the unsteady progress of the pitcher with growing concern. A spill seemed imminent. “We arrived yesterday afternoon on the train from Calcutta.”