A Modest Independence

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A Modest Independence Page 31

by Mimi Matthews


  Jenny wrinkled her nose. “I suppose we must thank Mrs. Plank for advising us to bring so many linens.”

  Tom came up beside her, dropping his voice. “This won’t do, Jenny.”

  “It’s a little rough, to be sure, but I’m certain—”

  “Something’s wrong here. It doesn’t feel safe.”

  “It can’t be that bad. We aren’t the only travelers staying.”

  “A ramshackle lot of missionaries and the families of injured soldiers? We don’t know them any more than they know us. If anything were to happen—”

  “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  Tom thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers. He disliked being out of control of things, and here, in this remote outpost far above Darjeeling, he had less control than ever.

  Senchal Ridge was isolated and the visibility was poor. He didn’t speak the language with any fluency and he didn’t know any of the people outside of the drivers and servants they had traveled with from Siliguri.

  How different it all was from London.

  There, he knew every jarvey, street sweeper, and petty thief. Information was never out of reach and every problem easily solvable with an eloquently written brief—or the subtle application of a few shillings.

  He wondered what Fothergill was doing right now. It had been months since Tom had visited him at his townhouse in Belgrave Square. Then, he’d thought Fothergill on the brink of death. Waxen and wasting away, yet still well enough to order his former clerk about.

  Take some time off, he’d commanded.

  No doubt he’d expected Tom to retire to his rooms for a few days. To go to the theatre or attend a musicale or two. More than that would have been unthinkable.

  India would have been unthinkable.

  Tom had posted a letter to him in Delhi, conveying no more than was strictly necessary. There was no need to explain about Jenny or about Lady Helena’s missing brother. Fothergill could learn such details easily enough on his own. Even ill and confined to his chair, his spider’s web reached everywhere. He’d have known within three hours of Tom boarding the steamship at Dover that his protégé had left the country.

  The law is a demanding mistress, my boy. She must come first, last, and always. Take care that you don’t forget it.

  Tom hadn’t forgotten it. Indeed, he was in expectation of returning to his old life very soon.

  With Jenny at his side.

  “How much time do you require to wash and change?” he asked.

  Jenny moved to the door, directing Ahmad where to place her trunk and leather portmanteaus. She glanced at Tom over her shoulder. “A half an hour, at most.”

  “Is that all?”

  “I’d like to visit the plantation as soon as may be.”

  Ahmad dropped the last case down onto the floor. “Shall I speak to the driver?”

  “If you please.”

  Tom caught Ahmad’s eye. “Tell him that after the plantation we’ll likely want to visit the convalescent depot. We might have better luck there.”

  “Am I coming with you?” Ahmad asked.

  “We’ll need you to translate,” Jenny said. “But Mira needs to rest. Do you think she’ll be safe here on her own?”

  Mira paused in the act of opening one of the portmanteaus. “You mustn’t worry about me, madam.”

  Ahmad ignored his cousin. “I’ll speak to the groom.”

  “But—”

  “It will be better this way, Mira,” Jenny said, interrupting her maid’s protest. “You’ll be able to get some rest without worrying about what that Khansama is up to. I don’t trust the man. He has a shifty look about him.”

  Tom exchanged a private glance with Ahmad. “Offer the groom something to keep watch by her door.”

  Ahmad inclined his head and withdrew. Mira followed after him. Seconds later, his voice sounded outside the door, calling to the driver.

  Jenny brushed her hands on her skirts as she walked back toward Tom. Her countenance was grave. “Tom…if we find out what happened to Giles’s body—”

  “Don’t,” he said. “You’re only setting yourself up for disappointment.”

  “I realize we probably won’t discover anything new, but if—by some chance—we learn where they’ve buried him—”

  “Jenny…” He shook his head.

  “I know it sounds morbid, but we must take him back with us. Whatever’s left of him. I don’t want him resting here alone where no one knows him. His place is with his family. His mother and his father, in the Castleton family vault in Hampshire.”

  “Even if he was the gentleman Mrs. Kumar remembers being removed to Darjeeling—”

  “But he was. I’m sure she can’t have been wrong.”

  “Very well, let’s say he was. And let’s say he succumbed to his injuries mid-route.”

  Jenny looked at him in pale-faced expectation.

  Tom’s expression softened. “My dear, they might have buried him anywhere from Jhansi to Darjeeling. The odds of finding his remains are—”

  “I understand that. But if he’s here…” She rested her hands on Tom’s waistcoat. “Oh, but I feel he must be. There’s something about this place. The beauty of it and the isolation. Giles would have appreciated it. If he drew his last breath here, I think he may have died at peace.”

  Tom covered her hands with his. “I hope he did. And I hope that—whatever we discover—you and Lady Helena can finally put his ghost to rest.”

  “That’s all I want. It’s not too unreasonable, is it?”

  “No,” he said. “It isn’t.”

  After leaving Jenny, Tom retired to his own room next door. It was in no better shape than hers, but it was serviceable enough for its purpose. He washed and shaved with ice cold water and changed into clothes more suitable to the weather.

  Woolen trousers, a waistcoat, and loose-fitting sack coat seemed out of place in the Himalayas; however, it was no different from the garments worn by the other European gentlemen at the guest house.

  It had been one of the only constants during their journey. No matter how far they traveled, by train, ship, or dak cart, the gentlemen were still in coats and cravats and the ladies still in their corsets and crinolines. After all, Tom thought wryly, a remote location was no excuse for letting one’s standards slip.

  He wound his pocket watch as he waited for Jenny outside her bungalow. Ahmad was already perched atop the cart alongside the driver. The two of them were engaged in murmured conversation.

  Jenny emerged moments later, garbed in a simple woolen dress with a cashmere shawl wound round her arms. It was the color of rich cream, the ends adorned with swirls of elaborate red, blue, and gold.

  “You look too fine to be traveling in a bullock cart,” Tom said as he handed her up.

  She sat down, adjusting her skirts around her. “It’s either this or by palanquin.”

  Tom climbed in beside her as the cart started forward. “Mr. Walters called them perambulating coffins.”

  “How horrible.”

  “And rather accurate.” The palanquins, or palkee gharries as they were called in Darjeeling, were windowless, hearse-like rectangular boxes in which people traveled lying down. Pulled by two horses, they were faster than a bullock cart but a bit unsettling.

  “Did you know,” Jenny said, “a husband and wife can travel in one together if they’re lying side by side.”

  “Can they?” Tom gave her a look. “Pity we aren’t married.”

  Her cheeks flushed pink. “Even if we were, I shouldn’t like to ride in one. I far prefer sitting upright, even if it is in a bullock cart.”

  “We could always walk.”

  “We may have to if the road gets any bumpier.”

  The Serracold Tea Estate wasn’t far from the guest house. It resided farth
er up the ridge on a vast plateau. As they reached the top, the view expanded to a breathtaking degree. Patches of mist clung to the encroaching forest, and in the distance the snow-capped peaks of Mt. Everest and Kangchenjunga rose up against a clear blue sky.

  Tom gazed at them in awe-stricken silence. Jenny was equally transfixed.

  “It makes one feel very small and insignificant,” she said at last.

  “Perhaps we are,” he replied. “In the grand scheme of things.”

  The cart rolled on, coming to a rattling halt at the end of a long, uneven dirt drive. A sprawling bungalow was visible in the distance, the verandah extending out over what appeared to have once been tea fields.

  Jenny’s brow furrowed. “What happened to it?”

  Tom’s gaze drifted from the brown fields to the empty huts that had once housed the workers. “It looks as if it’s been abandoned.”

  “It can’t be. There’s smoke coming from the main bungalow.”

  She was right. A white vapor swirled up into the sky from one of the bungalow’s chimneys.

  Ahmad turned in his seat to look at them. “The driver can take us no farther. He doesn’t want to risk his cart getting stuck.”

  “Well,” Jenny said. “I was right about us walking.”

  Tom jumped out of the cart to assist her down. He looked at Ahmad. “Tell him to wait for us.”

  Ahmad relayed the request to the driver before leaping down himself.

  Jenny dusted her skirts off as she peered ahead through the mist. “It’s not very far, is it?”

  “It’s far enough.” Tom offered her his arm. She took it, her gloved hand tightening on his sleeve. “Be careful where you step. You could easily twist an ankle.”

  The three of them proceeded down the road, picking their way carefully around the potholes and mud puddles.

  “Do you suppose this is where Zaina Chatterjee’s parents worked two years ago?” Jenny asked.

  “I think it may be,” Tom said.

  “Perhaps one of them is still here? As a caretaker or something?”

  Tom didn’t like to see her get her hopes up. What he’d observed so far of the old Serracold estate seemed to indicate that it had been abandoned a long time ago. There was not a patch of green in the fields to indicate healthy tea growth. Only the smoke from the chimney gave evidence of life. “Anything’s possible.”

  As they drew closer, the mist gradually began to dissipate. The verandah of the bungalow came into better view. There was a native gentleman seated there, his features shaded by a flat-brimmed straw hat. At the sight of them, he rose, very slowly, to his feet.

  The midday sun cast a glare on Tom’s spectacles. He couldn’t see entirely clearly. But it seemed to him that there was something odd about the man. Something vaguely off-kilter.

  “Thank goodness,” Jenny said. “There is a caretaker.”

  Ahmad called out a greeting in Bengali, but the gentleman didn’t answer.

  The hair on the back of Tom’s neck lifted in warning. And then—

  And then realization struck him like a lightning bolt.

  The gentleman was no native.

  And he was missing an arm.

  He gazed down the drive at them, standing stock-still beside one of the pillars of the verandah. “Jenny Holloway,” he said at last, in accents straight out of a fashionable London drawing room, “I might have known it would be you.”

  Jenny’s hand fell, nerveless, from Tom’s arm at the sound of the man’s voice. The next thing she knew, her heavy skirts were clutched in her hands and she was running, full out, the remainder of the distance up the road. All thoughts of propriety—every scrap of caution and good sense—disintegrated the instant she recognized him.

  “Giles! Giles!” She reached him in seconds, flinging her arms about his neck and bursting into tears. “It’s you. You’re alive.”

  His arm came around her in a tentative embrace. “There now. Let’s not make a fuss over it.”

  “We thought you were dead.”

  “It wasn’t a great loss, I imagine.” He drew back from her. “What are you’re doing here, Jenny? I distinctly remember commanding you to look after my sister. Don’t say you’ve brought Helena to India?”

  Jenny stared up at him. He was still breathtakingly handsome, his dark blond hair streaked with gold and his face as perfectly sculpted as a Greek God. But he was so painfully thin now. Thin and browned by the sun, the linen shirt sleeve of what would have been his right arm pinned, empty, to his chest.

  She dashed the tears from her eyes. “I didn’t bring Helena. She’s home in England with her husband.”

  His hand spasmed on her arm, almost hurting her. “Helena’s married?”

  “Oh, Giles, don’t you know anything? Haven’t you read the papers?”

  “I’m lucky to see a newspaper every three months. Time moves more slowly here.” Giles looked over her head. “Who are these fellows, then? Your guides?”

  Jenny turned as Tom and Ahmad came to join them. She thought Tom would be as astonished to find Giles as she was. She expected some expression of shock or amazement. But Tom’s face was completely void of emotion. He looked cold and businesslike. As if he were meeting an adversary rather than finding the object of their months-long quest.

  Giles stiffened. “You.” He moved Jenny aside with his hand, taking a step forward to face Tom. “I know you.”

  Tom returned Giles’s stare. “I thought you might.”

  Giles shot a look at Jenny. “What are you doing with this man? Don’t you realize who he is?”

  It was her turn to stiffen. “I know exactly who he is. He’s Thomas Finchley, my solicitor—and that of Helena and her husband.”

  “My sister has employed this villain? Has the world gone mad in my absence?” Giles’s face was the picture of well-bred outrage. “This man nearly ruined the father of one of my closest friends. A cobra couldn’t have been more venomous, nor more uncivilized. He’s pursued the Earl of Warren for years, destroying his life at every turn, attempting to force the man into compliance.” He fixed Tom with an icy glare. “Because of you, sir, the earl’s children lost their inheritance. One of them took his own life. All so you might gain ownership of a plot of land.”

  Tom climbed the steps of the verandah to join her, Ahmad close behind. “Not me,” he said. “My client.”

  “Atwater,” Giles uttered the name like a curse. “What sort of solicitor would represent such a scoundrel?”

  “Even scoundrels are permitted competent legal counsel, my lord.”

  “I wouldn’t categorize you and your partner as competent legal counsel. The hounds of hell, more like. How much did Atwater pay you to ruin Warren’s life?”

  “Stop it,” Jenny said. “Stop it, the both of you.” She turned on Giles. “I can’t believe you. We’ve only just discovered you’re alive and all you can do is cast accusations at the gentleman who helped me to find you? I call that very ungrateful.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know that he’s an honorable man. And I know that last year he saved your sister from being wrongfully committed to an asylum.”

  Giles’s face fell. “What?”

  “That’s right. You left her alone to fend off your uncle. She knew in her heart you weren’t dead. She insisted to everyone that you were still alive somewhere. And he made her suffer for it. If not for Mr. Finchley—”

  “It’s all right.” Tom rested his hand on the small of her back. “You don’t have to defend me.”

  Giles gaze flicked from Tom’s hand to Jenny’s face. “Did you travel here alone with this man?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Jenny exclaimed. “Haven’t we more important things to talk about?”

  The door of the bungalow creaked open and a native servant peered
out. He was a young, handsome man—no more than five and twenty at Jenny’s guess. He addressed Giles in Hindustani, his attitude one of familiarity rather than subservience.

  Giles replied in the same language, his cadence sounding almost as natural as Ahmad’s did. “This is Hossein,” he said when he turned back to Jenny. “My former batman, now my Khansama. He’s going to make us some tea. Shall we continue this discussion inside?”

  It took a great deal to surprise Tom. He’d been thrown off-balance when Jenny stroked his brow while he dozed on the sofa in Half Moon Street. He’d been dumbfounded when she kissed him on Dover pier, and when she confessed to having feelings for him. And when he’d gone to her room at the Westbrook Hotel in Delhi and found her weeping at the thought of never seeing him again, he’d been stunned. Staggered.

  But not now. Not when faced with Giles Reynolds, 6th Earl of Castleton, standing before him in an air of aristocratic disdain—austere, disapproving, and very much alive.

  There had always been a chance they’d find him thus. A small chance, admittedly, but a chance nonetheless.

  Tom hadn’t expected it. He hadn’t planned for it. But when confronted with a living, breathing Giles, he felt no sense of shock or dismay, only a grim resignation at the way fate had conspired to thwart his future with Jenny.

  The one-armed fellow before him was indeed the same gentleman Tom had encountered in Fleet Street so many years before. It had been at the height of the legal conflict between the Earl of Warren and Viscount Atwater. Warren’s youngest son had come to Fleet Street, in the company of two of his aristocratic friends, to rail at Fothergill over a legal maneuver of Tom’s that had effectively reduced Warren’s shares in a profitable railway venture to nothing.

  That was to be my inheritance, he’d said, a vein bulging at his temple. You had no right.

 

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