by Olivia Drake
Soon all would be well again.
Her weary mind embraced the tidy solution. Her arms ached from holding the infant. She removed her chuddur and fashioned a sling to hold him at her waist. Then her gaze drifted over the boundless plains, over the silvery clumps of scrub and the groves of mango and tamarisk trees silhouetted against the moonlit sky. The peaceful scene held horror at bay.
Soon.
The rocking motion of the horse soothed her exhausted body. An overwhelming fatigue weighted her eyelids. The warm pressure of Damien’s chest against her back suddenly seemed more appealing than appalling.
Soon.
She awoke to a piteous wail.
For an instant Sarah puzzled over why the bed swayed so, why her pillow felt so hard, why a baby was squalling. The events of the night rushed back. The mutiny. Shivina’s death. The harrowing escape on horseback with Damien. Kit squirmed in his sling at her waist.
Sarah opened her eyes. She drooped against Damien in a shockingly intimate fashion. Her arm was tucked into his abdomen, her elbow riding the ridge of his hip. Her cheek was pressed to his ribs. Against the open neck of his tunic, her lips brushed the coarsely tickling hairs on his chest.
Flustered, she jerked upright.
“Easy,” Damien muttered. “You’ll spook the horse.”
“If the baby hasn’t done so,” she snapped, “then I doubt I will.”
Night lay thick around them. The moon had set, and only the dim sheen of starlight spangled the barren landscape.
She jiggled Kit, but he kept crying. He angled his face toward her breast and rooted against the silk of her sari. Biting her lip, she tipped a glance back at Damien. His features were indistinct in the gloom.
“He’s hungry,” she said, raising her voice above the din.
“That’s apparent.”
“What should I do?’
“Hell if I know. See if you can calm him.”
Annoyed by Damien’s nonchalance, she gave the baby the tip of her little finger. He sucked lustily for a few moments, then resumed squalling.
‘Can we get milk where we’re going?” she asked.
“I hope so.”
“How much farther is it?”
“It’s hard to tell in the dark. You’ll have to hold him off.”
She tried her fingertip again. The infant accepted the pacifier for only an instant before bawling louder. She hummed a lullaby, but to no avail. His distress jangled her nerves.
She said over her shoulder, “I don’t think he wants to wait.”
“He’ll have to.”
“He’s got to have milk, Damien.”
“Well, I don’t happen to have any. Do you?”
His gibe snapped the frayed strand of her temper. “Your son could starve to death. Don’t you even care? But of course not. You’d probably just as soon be rid of him.”
The instant the words were out, she was shocked at herself. It was a vile sentiment to voice, even to a scoundrel. Damien Coleridge inspired the worst in her.
“Thanks for the lecture, Miss Faulkner. But it’s you I’d as soon be rid of.”
She clenched her teeth. Though she deserved the rebuke, she wanted to lash back at him, to say she despised being close to him, too. But she was stuck for this miserable night in the circle of his arms.
Bowing her head, she focused on calming Kit. She took him out of the sling and rocked him back and forth in her arms. At last he managed to get his fist to his mouth. His indignant wail turned to loud smacking interspersed with an occasional whimper. Finally he lapsed into a restless sleep.
Poor mite, Sarah thought. Already he suffered from the loss of his mother. He’d never know Shivina. She vowed to tell him about his mother when he was old enough to understand.
Helplessness hammered at Sarah. If she couldn’t get milk, he really would die.
Awake and tense, she peered into the murk for a sign of life. Her body ached from holding the baby and from the constant jostling of the horse. Her mouth tasted of dust. After a time, a pearly luminescence tinged their surroundings. Blinking to clear the grit from her eyes, she realized the sky was beginning to brighten to the right. They must be heading north.
The flat alluvial plain stretched in every direction, its surface broken by rocky hillocks. A thin fog snaked over garden plots lying fallow for the monsoon rains and the summer planting. Hope shot through her. They must be nearing a settlement. She wanted to ask Damien when they’d left the main road, but she was reluctant to risk awakening the baby.
Sounds wafted through the mist. A cock crowing. The singsong melody of voices. The bleating of goats.
Through the ghostly grayness a cluster of huts loomed into view. The hamlet sat beside a stream, likely a tributary of the Ganges, Sarah thought. In the early dawn, silver-bangled women fetched water, their clay pots balanced on their heads.
Others pummeled their wash on flat stones along the bank. Men in loose pajamalike clothing sat mending plows and harrows.
On the crooked path that divided the village, they passed an oxen cart creaking under a load of sugarcane. The boy perched atop the mound stared and then grinned, waving his long switch.
“Burra sahib!” He twisted around to gaze after them. “But where is your picture-box?”
“I’ll bring it another time,” Damien said.
As the cart and boy trundled out of earshot, Sarah couldn’t resist murmuring, “Great master?”
“Feel free to address me so, if you like.”
“If ever you’re my master, I will.” Her sarcastic tone implied the impossibility of such a circumstance.
A sacred cow, chewing its cud, lifted its head to fix them with a bovine stare. Chickens ran clucking across the dusty lane. Half-naked children stopped playing to study the newcomers, and the women who squatted upon doorsteps hastily covered their heads at the sight of a man and a strange woman.
A trio of barking dogs circled the horse. The baby squirmed and began to wail again. Though her arms and back hurt, Sarah tried to shush the infant. Outside the largest hut, several girls of stairstep ages sat plaiting each other’s hair. From inside emerged a small wiry man in baggy trousers, his head crowned by a bright orange turban. He shook a bamboo pole at the dogs; they turned tail and scattered.
Damien swung out of the saddle. Sarah waited for him to help her down, but instead, he bowed to the middle-aged man. “Salaam, Jawahir.”
“Your honor, it is I who salaam,” Jawahir said in Hindi. Jabbing his pole into the dust, he bent low; then he looked Damien up and down. “What is this mark of blood upon your clothing? I pray you are not hurt.”
“I’m fine. I seek shelter for me and my son.”
“Your firstborn is a son, then. I was burdened with seven daughters before Madakka bore my heir.”
Jawahir shuffled closer and flashed a gamin grin at Sarah. She tugged at the bedraggled sari in an embarrassed attempt to cover her bare calves. But he was already squinting at the infant.
“Ahh,” he said in satisfaction, swinging back to Damien. “The boy has a hearty cry for one so small. He bears the look of Shivina.” The headman’s brown-toothed smile vanished. “But where is the boy’s mother?”
“Dead,” Damien said. His eyes were black and distant. “She was killed during the fighting last night in Meerut.”
Jawahir went perfectly still. Then he passed a gnarled hand over his race. “So. She moves on in the wheel of life. You must tell me how it happened.”
“It is a long story—”
“Excuse me, Damien,” Sarah broke in loudly. “I trust you haven’t forgotten that your son needs to eat.”
His gaze whipped to her, then to the whimpering baby. To the headman, he said, “May I ask your assistance in this matter?”
“Of course,” said Jawahir. “For you, burra sahib, I would give milk from my own wife.”
Hurrying to the house, he shooed away the girls and clapped his hands. Two women appeared in the doorway, one with a leath
ery face and beaky nose, the other smooth-skinned and fine-boned, her nubile form clad in a blue cotton sari. He motioned to the younger one. Her eyes lowered, she followed him to the horse.
“This is Madakka, my second wife,” he said. “She will share my son’s milk with your son.”
Sarah gratefully handed down the infant to Madakka, who gave her a timid smile before scurrying inside.
“Lakshmi,” the headman said to the matron standing on the doorstep, “take the woman of my friend inside.”
Mortification stung Sarah. “I’m not his—”
“Run along, Sarah,” Damien cut in. Turning to Jawahir, he said, “Now, my friend, I shall tell you of Meerut.”
The men sank onto their heels, Indian fashion, and launched into a discussion of the mutiny. Exhausted and furious, Sarah dismounted. Her legs wobbled, and she leaned against the lathered horse to keep from falling. Her head throbbed from lack of sleep. Her whole body hurt, from the bruises caused by her tussle with the fakir to the sore muscles inflicted by a night in the saddle.
Resentment invigorated her. How dared Damien pass her off as his woman. How dared he dismiss her in his rude, arrogant way.
The tantalizing aroma of curry and rice wafted from the hut. Her stomach grumbled. Lakshmi waited, a patient Hindu wife, ready to offer food and drink, perhaps a comfortable place to rest. The prospect suddenly lured Sarah from the urge to confront Damien.
Walking toward the hut, she aimed one last glare at his broad back. Why bother arguing anyway?
She’d be rid of the rogue soon enough.
Chapter 8
She didn’t know it yet, but she was going with him.
Damien stood beside the charpoy and studied Sarah’s slumbering form through the shadows of dusk. She lay curled on her side, one arm flung over her head, the other crooked around Kit. A borrowed sari in gold-banded olive silk wrapped her slim figure. The Indian garb looked incongruous beside the honey-hued hair fanned around her pale English features. Her gentle, dreamy expression lent her an aura of soft femininity.
An unwelcome warmth disturbed the deadness inside him. He entombed the feeling in the cold reaches of his soul.
He wasn’t deceived by her innocent repose. Sarah Faulkner was a snooty do-gooder, a meddlesome female. But he needed her.
Instead of awakening her, as he’d come to do, he leaned against the mud wall inside the women’s sleeping room. A wisp of evening breeze penetrated the window slit, stirring the sultry air and fluttering the saris strung like colorful ghosts from a rope stretched across the ceiling.
Sarah Faulkner baffled him. She had the manners of a shallow Englishwoman, concerned only with selfish vanities and sham righteousness. Yet she had risked her life in an attempt to rescue Kit and Shivina.
Shivina.
Shame and self-loathing clamped around his throat like a suffocating shackle. Damien tilted his head back against the cool wall. His breathing rasped through the quiet room. Once again he’d failed someone close to him.
Memory crucified him. He saw poor Shivina hacked to death. He smelled the copper scent of her blood. He felt her limp body, still warm and soft. Then came the unspeakable horror of watching the flames devour her like the maw of a nightmarish monster...
His fingers dug into the familiar mass of scar tissue, smooth and thick. The horny claws of a devil.
A devil with an angel for a son.
He looked down at the sleeping infant, and his savage emotions melted into unbearable tenderness. Wrapped in a thin cloth, Kit lay nestled against the pillow of Sarah’s breasts. Even in the semidarkness, he was the picture of innocence. Wisps of black hair haloed his sweet face. Dark lashes set off his pure ivory-brown skin. His tiny fists were propped against plump baby cheeks.
He looked so fragile...so vulnerable...so dependent.
Sweat drenched Damien’s tunic. Groping in the pocket of his jacket, he located the stub of a cigar and a match. God help him, he was unfit to be a parent. He didn’t know the first damn thing about babies. He’d ruin his son’s life.
That was why he needed Sarah Faulkner so badly.
He struck the match against the wall. His hands shaking, he carried the tiny flame to the cigar. A lungful of smoke calmed him. Odd, how she could appear so girlishly sweet in slumber when, awake, she irritated him like a heat rash that could drive a man insane. But she had one redeeming grace. She loved his son.
He watched the speck of fire burn nearly to his fingertips before crushing the match beneath his heel. Sarah would give Kit the proper care. She’d see to his feeding and comforting.
She’d make sure he didn’t die.
Bending, Damien shook her shoulder. “Sarah. Wake up.”
The voice reached to Sarah down a long dark tunnel. Heaviness weighted her lashes. Her mind resisted leaving the warm sea of unremembered dreams.
“Sarah. I must speak to you. It’s about Kit.”
She opened her eyes. Damien’s swarthy face loomed above her, so close she might reach up and touch the bristly unshaven shadow along his jaw. She started to lift her hand. In the same instant she came fully awake. Other than the baby asleep beside her, she and Damien were alone.
Alarm swept over her. She sat up. “The fakir—?”
“—is dead.” Damien peered curiously at her. “You must have been dreaming.”
Panic ebbed and she scooted away, careful not to awaken the baby. She scrubbed the sleep from her eyes, adjusted the wrinkled sari, and began repinning her hair. Surreptitiously she studied Damien. He’d exchanged his bloody clothes for an ill-fitting white tunic that strained across the breadth of his shoulders, and a short dhoti that revealed muscular calves.
“I need to talk to you about Kit, too,” she said.
“We’re leaving in the morning,” Damien stated. “You’re coming with us.”
The news slapped her like a dash of ice water. She stopped pinning her hair and stared. “To where?”
“To safety in the hills. You’ll watch over Kit.”
“I’ll gladly care for him. But I can’t go to Simla yet. As soon as the mutiny is over, I’ll take him with me back to Meerut—”
“No.” Damien paused to draw on his cigar. The tip glowed orange in the dimness. “It’s too damned dangerous. The Ganges plain is a powder keg of military stations ready to explode.”
She wrinkled her nose at both the profanity and the odor of his cigar. “You speak as if the entire country is in revolt. You can’t know for certain that the violence will spread.”
“A sepoy passed through the village while you were asleep. He brought word that the rebels have marched to Delhi. The city’s already fallen.”
“That’s impossible!” But Sarah remembered the frenzied faces of the mutineers, their insatiable fury against the English for the unforgivable violations of religious creed. A dismal shock reverberated inside her. She must have been dreaming to think she could return home today.
“There’s bound to be more bloodshed,” Damien said. “And whatever you think to the contrary, I won’t put you or my son in danger.”
The memory of her vindictive words came hurtling back. She met his hard gaze. “I know you won’t,” she murmured, rising to her feet and clasping her hands. “Please forgive me for what I said earlier. I...was overwrought.”
He accepted the apology with a nod. “We’d both been through hell.”
He stared at the neat rolls of bedding along the far wall. She wondered if he was recalling Shivina. How much grieving did he permit inside his stoic soul? Sarah didn’t know the answer; on the matter of thoughts and emotions, he was as communicative as the mud-brick wall he lounged against.
She looked down at Kit’s tiny features and knew with a heavy heart that she could not carry him back into peril. “I’m sorry,” she told Damien, “I can’t go with you. Reginald will worry about me.”
Damien closed his lips in a taut line. With a peculiar intensity, his gaze bored into her. Abruptly he swung around and peered
out the window. “No, he won’t worry. He’s dead.”
The softly spoken statement slammed into her heart. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but stand trapped in a void of shock. In sluggish motion her legs wilted, and she sank onto a low wooden chest.
“You’re lying,” she accused in a hoarse whisper. “You can’t know that. How can even you be so cruel?”
“It’s the truth, Sarah. I saw Reginald fall myself, cut down by a badmash in the cantonments last night.”
He turned to look at her, and his somber gaze persuaded her of his candor. Bowing her head, she groped for her locket and held hard to the flesh-warmed gold. She recalled the night in the garden when Reginald had given it to her. He’d seemed so pleased at her acceptance of his proposal, so impatient to marry her, so...alive. Now her handsome, debonair fiancé was gone forever, the doctor who would have given her the family she craved.
Blinking back tears, she murmured, “Tell me how it happened.”
“He tried to stop the mutineers from taking the magazine.” Damien paused. “Perhaps it’s little consolation, but he died a hero.”
“You might have told me earlier.”
“There didn’t seem a good moment. As you said, you were already overwrought.”
She swallowed past the thickness in her throat. Loneliness draped her like a heavy woolen blanket. She had lost everything, everyone, the last of her blood kin, even the future.
“My aunt was killed, too, did I tell you?”
“No...I’m sorry.”
His regret sounded so genuine, fresh tears bathed her eyes. Years folded back, unveiling memories of a time when both her parents had been alive, when their London home had rung with laughter. Among all the holidays and special occasions, one episode shone with brilliant clarity.
“Do you know,” she mused aloud, gazing down at her clasped hands, “when I was a little girl, Aunt Violet would come visit us from time to time. She always brought me sugarplums. Once I ate the entire tin at one sitting and was frightfully ill. She shooed away Mama and Papa, and sat with me the entire night. I still remember waking up in the morning and seeing her squashed into the nursery chair beside the bed, sound asleep and snoring, her curls gone limp and her ribbons sagging. Even though I was only five years old, I knew then how very much she loved me.”