A Modest Independence

by Mimi Matthews

  Tom had marked the faces of the young man’s friends. They were both fashionable gentlemen, clothed in smartly tailored suits and sporting gold-topped ebony walking sticks and jeweled signet rings on their fingers. The blue-blooded sons of other titled lords and ladies. Tom hadn’t known who they were by name. It hadn’t seemed important.

  When he’d recognized the daguerreotype of Giles at Fort William, that hadn’t seemed particularly important either. An unsettling coincidence, nothing more. It hadn’t mattered. Not truly. Not when Giles was dead.

  Not until now.

  If Tom lived to be one hundred, he didn’t think he’d ever forget the way Jenny had looked when she realized that the gentleman on the verandah was Giles. He’d never forget the way she ran to him, embracing him and bursting into tears.

  She clung to Giles’s arm as they entered the bungalow, her cheeks still damp. Tom followed behind her, Ahmad at his side.

  Ahmad hadn’t uttered a single word—neither of surprise, nor indifference—since they’d climbed the steps to the verandah. As always, he seemed content to keep his own counsel. But Tom saw the way his gaze moved about the shadowed interior of the bungalow, taking in the cozy arrangement of chairs and tables and the way Giles’s servant, Hossein, navigated amongst them with so much casual familiarity.

  “We thought the house abandoned,” Jenny said.

  “It is, essentially.” Giles motioned for her to sit down. “We’re cultivating new fields down in the valley. The workers and all of the staff have already relocated there.” His gaze cut to Ahmad. “You may join Hossein in the kitchen. He’ll be glad of the help.”

  Ahmad looked to Tom.

  Tom gave a brief nod. “Shall I go as well?” he asked Jenny quietly. “If you’d prefer privacy…”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary.” She glanced at Giles, a little uncertain. “Unless…?”

  “It makes no difference to me,” Giles said.

  “Very well.” Tom waited until Jenny was seated in a tufted chair by the fireplace before taking a seat himself. Giles hadn’t explicitly invited him to sit, but Tom had a feeling that if he waited for an invitation, he’d be waiting until judgment day.

  Jenny arranged her heavy skirts. “Giles…you don’t mean to say this place is yours, do you?”

  “No. I don’t own it outright. My own interest amounts to no more than a third. I bought into the venture shortly after regaining my health.” Giles flicked an irritated glance at him. “I trust that nothing I say here today will be used for nefarious purposes.”

  “Really, Giles,” Jenny objected.

  “Miss Holloway is my client,” Tom said. “I’ll do as she directs me.”

  “Your client.” Giles gave a short laugh. “Astounding.”

  “I don’t see what’s so astounding about it,” Jenny retorted.

  “Since when does a lady’s companion have need of a solicitor?”

  “I’m not a lady’s companion any longer. I don’t work for Lady Helena or for anyone else in your family. I’m wholly independent now.”

  “Yet, here you are.” Giles contemplated her down the aristocratic length of his nose. “Why are you here, Jenny?”

  “I was already coming to India. It seemed a reasonable enough idea to spend some of my time here trying to find out what became of your body after the siege. We’ve been all over the country. To Calcutta and Delhi. To Allahabad and Jhansi. And now, here we are. And here you are.” A notch worked its way between Jenny’s brows. “Heaven’s sake, Giles, I thought we’d be arranging a method for transporting your bones back to the Castleton vault in England. Why on earth didn’t you send word to us? Why didn’t you come home? You’ve no idea the damage you’ve caused by letting the world think you dead.”

  Giles’s face lost some of its color. “You mentioned something about Helena and an asylum. Is she—”

  “She’s perfectly safe. She’s thriving, in fact. I’ve never seen her happier.”

  “You said that she’d married.”

  “She did. Last September.”

  “To whom? Was it Lord Caraway or the Marquess of—”

  “No, no. None of those gentlemen. She married a former army captain. An ex-soldier who served here in India. His name is Justin Thornhill. He has an estate in North Devon.”

  Giles’s brow creased. “I’m not familiar with the name. Who are his people?”

  “He hasn’t any people,” Jenny said. “None you’d recognize. But he helped to save Helena last year when your uncle was being so ruthless. If not for Mr. Thornhill and Mr. Finchley, I daresay she’d be dead now. Either that or locked away somewhere, beyond all hope.”

  He ran a hand over his face. “Good God. Was it… Was it because of me? Because of the money I left her?”

  Jenny didn’t answer. Not directly. “She’s fine now, Giles. Truly. It’s all been sorted out. And she’s kept the money safe. She’s always said you would come back one day. That you would need it when you resumed your role as Earl of Castleton.”

  “The little fool. Perhaps I should have… But I thought it would be easier…less difficult to bear… A clean break, I thought.” Giles stood from his chair. “Where’s Hossein with that bloody tea?”

  Tom exchanged a brief look with Jenny. Her eyes were troubled, her lips compressed into an anxious line. If they’d been alone, he’d have taken her hand. As it was, he could do no more than offer her a faint, reassuring smile.

  Hossein entered a moment later with a heavy brass tea tray. Ahmad came in after him, carrying another tray, weighed down with extra cups and a decanter of something that looked to be sherry.

  The next quarter of an hour was taken up with Jenny pouring out their tea and dispensing sandwiches and biscuits.

  Tom watched her, knowing how hungry she must be after a night spent in the bullock cart and a morning in which they’d yet to partake of breakfast. In the past, she’d never failed to eat with a healthy appetite. But now, in front of the coolly aristocratic Earl of Castleton, she consumed her sandwich in dainty bites, seeming at pains to be as ladylike as possible.

  It irritated Tom to no end.

  She shouldn’t have to change herself for anyone, least of all the blackguard who’d taken advantage of her when she was his sister’s companion.

  Did Giles even realize how much he’d hurt her? He must have known. He’d referenced the kiss he’d stolen in that letter of his, apologizing for it even as he’d abdicated all responsibility, dismissing any obligation to propose to her or otherwise make amends.

  Such events loom large in the life of a young woman.

  It did Tom no good to wonder if Jenny would have accepted a marriage proposal from Lord Castleton, but wonder it he did, all through tea.

  “The leaf is from the new estate in the valley,” Giles said. “It has a delicate flavor and a subtle fragrance, rather like perfume.”

  Jenny lowered her cup back to its saucer. “I’d no idea you knew anything about tea or tea growing.”

  “I’ve spent the better part of the last ten years in India. There’s much to learn about the food and drink here if one has a mind to.”

  “And that’s what you’ve been doing since you’ve been gone? Making a study of tea cultivation and the culinary arts?”

  Giles exhaled. He returned his teacup to the tray. “I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that.”

  “I wish you would explain it to us. We’ve only been able to discover so much on our own from talking to Colonel Anstruther and—”

  Giles brows lifted. “You spoke to Anstruther?”

  “And to his wife, and to Sir Eustace Tavernier at Fort William, Lieutenant-Colonel Tremaine in Jhansi, as well as to Mrs. Kumar at the mission there.” Jenny ticked the names off on her fingers. “We’ve questioned everyone we could think of.”

  “How much do you kno
w?” he asked.

  “We know that you were injured after storming the walls of the city. That you…that you lost your arm. After that, the accounts began to differ. Anstruther said you expired from your wounds and that your body had been burned in a pit with the rest of the dead. But Mrs. Kumar said you were saved, taken to the mission and then to one of the hill stations to recover. She said you’d likely died along the way.”

  “I did lose my arm, as you see.” Giles gave his empty sleeve a frowning glance. “But the wound didn’t kill me, though I was out of my head for a very long while. Thank God for Hossein.”

  “Was it he who came to your aid?”

  Giles nodded. “He was acquainted with one of the young missionary girls at the school. He took me to her, and thence to Mrs. Kumar. The next thing I knew, the girl was tending to me as we made the journey from Jhansi to Darjeeling. I don’t recall much. She fed me ground-up roots and herbs—tinctures to help with the pain and make me sleep. I spent the next five weeks on a pallet, as helpless as a baby.”

  “Was the girl’s name Zaina Chatterjee?” Jenny asked. “Mrs. Kumar said she escorted you to the tea plantation where her parents worked.”

  “And here I am.” Giles made a broad gesture which seemed to encompass the bungalow and all the tea fields beyond it. “Miss Chatterjee, alas, is no more.”

  Hossein said something to Giles from the doorway. Giles answered back, in the same language, his tone clipped.

  “He doesn’t like me to speak of her,” he explained after Hossein retreated back to the kitchen. “She was like a sister to him.”

  “Was?” Jenny echoed. “I don’t understand. Is Miss Chatterjee dead?”

  “It’s the price she paid for helping me. As I regained my health, she lost her own. The cholera took her within a week of our arrival here. It took her parents as well.” Giles’s expression was taut. “No good deed goes unpunished and all that.”

  “Oh, Giles. I’m so sorry.”

  He waved off her condolences. “It’s going on two years since she passed. A lifetime ago.”

  “Why in the world did Hossein take you to her and not to the depot hospital? Surely it would have been better to have been treated by one of the field surgeons.”

  Giles made no reply.

  “And why have you stayed on here?” Jenny pressed him. “You seem well enough now, yet you’ve chosen to live here among strangers rather than go back to your own home. Your own people.”

  “Have you seen the ridge?” Giles asked abruptly. “Really seen it?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Giles rose from his chair. “Come for a walk with me.”

  Jenny looked at Tom.

  “Come,” Giles said again, making the word a command. “You can be without your solicitor for ten minutes.”

  Tom stood. “Go ahead, if you like. I’ll wait here with the servants.”

  She gave him a reluctant nod. “Very well.”

  Tom watched them go. Watched the way Jenny walked at Lord Castleton’s side, holding herself with such dignity and rigid self-restraint. Her eyes were still red from crying, her brows still knit with worry. As they exited the bungalow, he saw her take Giles’s arm in the same way she’d often taken his.

  A jolt of bitter jealousy speared through him.

  “Well,” Ahmad said, coming to stand beside him, “what are we going to do now?”

  Jenny stood atop the ridge next to Giles, her gaze drifting over the snowy mountain range in the distance. The air was crisp and cool, biting at her face and throat. She twisted her cashmere shawl more firmly about her shoulders. “It is beautiful here.”

  “The most beautiful place in the world.”

  “But it isn’t your home. It’s not where you belong.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about me, Jenny.”

  Jenny inwardly winced. It had been a long time since she’d been in company with Giles alone. Long enough to forget how easily he could flay her with a careless word or humiliate her with one of his aristocratic looks.

  At one time, such humiliations had been a daily occurrence.

  When she’d been fresh up from the country, an unpolished vicar’s daughter experiencing her first taste of life in town, how often had he made her feel as if she were something less than the society ladies with whom he regularly associated? How often had he ignored her very presence when she was in the room with Helena, treating her as if she were no more than a piece of furniture?

  She’d forgotten how it felt. How it hurt.

  “I know enough to recognize that you’re being selfish by remaining here. Worse than selfish. Had you cared one jot about your sister, you’d have—”

  “You presume to lecture me about my sister?”

  “Someone must do so. And as I’m already here—”

  “You haven’t changed, have you? Always trying to manage other people’s affairs.” He ran a hand over his hair. “If you must know, I didn’t come home precisely because I do love my sister. I wouldn’t wish my presence on her. Not in the state I was in then.”

  “She loves you. She wouldn’t have minded if you were hurt.”

  “It wasn’t my injuries.” He cast an absent glance at his empty sleeve. “Though this has taken some getting used to.”

  “If not your injuries, then what? What good reason could you possibly have for letting us think what we did?”

  “It may not qualify as a good reason, but I—” He broke off. “You know what became of my mother. You know Helena and I have a sadness in us. A melancholy that threatens whenever we let down our guard.”

  Jenny did know. The sadness had nearly consumed Helena when she first received word that her brother was dead. She’d wept inconsolably, long past the time her uncle believed suitable for mourning.

  “Mine has become worse over the years.” Giles stared out at the mountains, his mouth set in a hard line. “When first I came here, I was subject to it in the worst way. You can’t imagine what it’s like for a fellow. This encroaching sorrow. And I had no earthly reason to be sad. Anyone would say I had the world on a platter. It was mine for the taking. And yet…some mornings, I could barely summon the strength to rise from my bed.”

  “I understand the climate sometimes affects people—”

  “It wasn’t the climate. It’s never been anything but who I am. A sickness I inherited from my own mother.” He blinked rapidly. “There’s no cure for it, but activity helps to keep it at bay. Within a month of being here, I realized there was no other place I’d rather be. It’s something in the air, you see. Something in the food—in the tea—and in living as I do amongst the people. It’s taken me outside of myself in a way that nothing else ever could. Hossein understands it. He always has. It’s why he took me to Miss Chatterjee instead of the depot hospital. I daresay he thought it was my way out of it all.”

  “Out of the army?”

  “The army. The world.” Giles paused, a deep breath expanding his chest. “When I woke up, after the cholera had taken Miss Chatterjee and her parents, Hossein brought me here to this very spot. I sat atop this ridge, my bandages still bloody, and I looked out at this view and I realized…”

  “What?” she asked softly.

  “That the Earl of Castleton wasn’t so very important a man. That there was something bigger out there.”

  “You’re speaking of God.”

  “God, Allah, Brahman. The name doesn’t matter. All I know is that I’ve found peace here. I’ve found purpose again. From that moment, my life in England was over.”

  Jenny thought she understood. He’d had a sort of spiritual awakening. An epiphany of the soul.

  Either that or he was simply being self-indulgent.

  “What about Helena?” she asked.

  “I made arrangement for her to inherit before I left London. In the event of
my death, she’d be well taken care of.”

  “I don’t mean the money. I’m speaking of her heart. You broke it, Giles. She’s still grieving for you.”

  “You said she’d married.”

  “One can experience love and marriage and still be grieving for the loss of a family member. We’re not all solid shades of black or white, Helena least of all.” She touched Giles’s arm, feeling him stiffen beneath her fingers. “She’s as subject to these bouts of sadness as you are. How do you think it affected her to lose her brother? The least you could have done was write and tell her you’d decided to remain here.”

  “It’s better this way.”

  “Better for you, perhaps.” She paused, adding, “And don’t dare spout any more nonsense about the peace you’ve found in India. I can’t believe any deity would grant you that peace at the expense of your family. God expects us to be responsible. To shoulder our burdens, not to shift them onto people who aren’t capable of bearing them.”

  Giles gave her a scornful look. “A vicar’s daughter to the last.”

  She nearly laughed. “If you think I learned about taking responsibility from my father, you’re much mistaken, my lord. My father never met a burden he didn’t mind foisting onto me. A gentleman shouldn’t behave in such a way. Not if he expects to be worthy of the name.”

  “You’d have had me return and be miserable. All for the sake of the Castleton family name.”

  “I don’t give a snap of my fingers for your family name.”

  “Do you know, I don’t believe that you do.” He turned away from the view. “Where are you staying?”

  “At a guest house on the opposite side of the ridge.”

  “The one with the dubious Khansama?” Giles heaved a sigh. “You’d better put up here.”

  She searched his face. “Very well. If that’s what you wish. I’ll send Ahmad to fetch my maid and our luggage.”

  He shook his head. “You really did it. You came all the way here to find me.”

  She made a soft sound of disagreement. “I came here for the adventure. Finding you was a secondary concern.”

  “One for which you brought along the most lethal attack dog you could find.”