Forbidden Jewel of India
Forbidden Jewel of India
Louise Allen
TO OBEY HIS DUTY IS TO DENY HIS HEART Anusha Laurens is in danger. The daughter of an Indian princess and an English peer, she’s the perfect pawn in the opulent courts of Rajasthan. Even so, she will not return to the father who rejected her. Arrogant angrezi Major Nicholas Herriard is charged with bringing the alluring Princess safely to her new life in Calcutta.Nick’s mission is to protect, to serve – but under the searing Indian sun an initial attraction unfurls into a forbidden temptation. This beautiful, impossible Princess tests the very limits of his honour – especially when Nick is left with only one option to keep Anusha safe: marriage.But the fastflowing waters of the Ganges determine a different fate, and duty may separate them for ever…
Praise for Louise Allen:
MARRIED TO A STRANGER
‘Allen delivers a lovely, sweet story demonstrating how strangers can build a relationship based on lost love. The gentle, yet powerful emotions of a grieving brother are sure to touch readers, as will the budding romance between him and a shy but emotionally strong woman. Allen reaches into readers’ hearts.’
—RT Book Reviews
SEDUCED BY THE SCOUNDREL
‘Allen takes a shipwreck spying adventure with lots of sensuality and spins it into a page-turner. The strong characters and sexy relationship will definitely satisfy readers.’
—RT Book Reviews
RAVISHED BY THE RAKE
‘Allen illuminates a unique side of the Regency by setting her latest adventure in India …’
—RT Book Reviews
PRACTICAL WIDOW TO PASSIONATE MISTRESS
‘With the first in her new trilogy, Allen hooks readers with her charming and well-portrayed characters, especially the secondary cast. You’ll cheer on the hero and the strong-willed heroine to the very end of this highly enjoyable and addictive read.’
—RT Book Reviews
‘You …’ Anusha began, her face against the horse’s shoulder. Then she pushed herself upright and turned to face Nick. ‘You saved my life and I thank you for it.’
The raw emotion was gone, and as her chin came up and she looked at him she was every inch a princess for all the dust and her travel-stained clothing.
Her courage doused the fierceness of his anger and the heat in his blood, but Nick could not find it in himself to be gracious. ‘That is my job,’ he said, his voice cool. ‘To deliver you back alive and in one piece to your father.’
‘You will not let me thank you?’ She took a step that brought her toe to toe with him. ‘They kiss to say thank you, the English, do they not?’
With Pavan solid at his back he could not retreat. Anusha put her hands on his shoulders and stood on tiptoe, her body pressed against his. For an endless moment her mouth touched his, warm and soft.
Her lips parted slightly—an invitation he knew she did not understand. Time stood still while he fought the temptation to snatch her to him, plunder that beautiful mouth, lose himself in an innocence that wanted him. Him.
About the Author
LOUISE ALLEN has been immersing herself in history, real and fictional, for as long as she can remember, and finds landscapes and places evoke powerful images of the past. Louise lives in Bedfordshire, and works as a property manager, but spends as much time as possible with her husband at the cottage they are renovating on the north Norfolk coast, or travelling abroad. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite atmospheric destinations. Please visit Louise’s website—www.louiseallenregency.co.uk—for the latest news!
Previous novels by the same author:
THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER* (#ulink_c8b84005-d55e-5f8f-b6b1-545a6bd8f370)
THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM* (#ulink_c8b84005-d55e-5f8f-b6b1-545a6bd8f370)
THE SHOCKING LORD STANDON* (#ulink_c8b84005-d55e-5f8f-b6b1-545a6bd8f370)
THE DISGRACEFUL MR RAVENHURST* (#ulink_c8b84005-d55e-5f8f-b6b1-545a6bd8f370)
THE NOTORIOUS MR HURST* (#ulink_c8b84005-d55e-5f8f-b6b1-545a6bd8f370)
THE PIRATICAL MISS RAVENHURST* (#ulink_c8b84005-d55e-5f8f-b6b1-545a6bd8f370)
PRACTICAL WIDOW TO PASSIONATE MISTRESS** (#ulink_8e7f517c-6398-5b9b-b4cc-8944d1789164)
VICAR’S DAUGHTER TO VISCOUNT’S LADY** (#ulink_8e7f517c-6398-5b9b-b4cc-8944d1789164)
INNOCENT COURTESAN TO ADVENTURER’S BRIDE** (#ulink_8e7f517c-6398-5b9b-b4cc-8944d1789164)
RAVISHED BY THE RAKE† (#ulink_243eb3b2-360f-5c54-bb7f-6de5a8656eb0)
SEDUCED BY THE SCOUNDREL† (#ulink_243eb3b2-360f-5c54-bb7f-6de5a8656eb0)
MARRIED TO A STRANGER† (#ulink_243eb3b2-360f-5c54-bb7f-6de5a8656eb0)
* (#ulink_1e3b4536-1940-5c37-a56b-268398fdcb60)Those Scandalous Ravenhursts
** (#ulink_7dd8a168-9b62-55da-a010-41c1a2bda9a0)The Transformation of the Shelley Sisters
† (#ulink_92b115e8-2b9a-50e3-9215-0d7c4885d7e7)Danger & Desire
and in theSilk & Scandalmini-series:
THE LORD AND THE WAYWARD LADY
THE OFFICER AND THE PROPER LADY
and in Mills & Boon
HistoricalUndone!eBooks:
DISROBED AND DISHONOURED
AUCTIONED VIRGIN TO SEDUCED BRIDE** (#ulink_8e7f517c-6398-5b9b-b4cc-8944d1789164)
Did you know that some of these novels
are also available as eBooks?
Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Forbidden Jewel of India
Louise Allen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Chapter One
The palace of Kalatwah, Rajasthan, India—March 1788
Patterns of sunlight and shade fell through the pierced stone panels on to the white marble floor, soothing to the eye after miles of dusty roads. Major Nicholas Herriard rolled his shoulders to loosen them as he walked. The physical stresses of the long journey began to fade. A bath, a massage, a change of clothes and he would feel human again.
Running feet, the faint, sharp scratch of claws on marble. The hilt of the knife in his boot came to hand with the familiarity of long practice as he twisted to face the side passage, crouched to meet an attack.
A mongoose shot out of the opening, skidded to a halt and chittered at him, every hair on its body fluffed up with aggravation, its tail stuck out behind like a bottle-brush.
‘Idiot animal,’ Nick said in Hindi as the patter of running feet became louder and a girl followed the mongoose, her wide crimson skirts swirling around her as she caught her balance and stopped. Not a girl, a woman, unveiled and unescorted. The part of his brain that was still dealing with an attack analysed the sound of her footsteps: she had changed direction twice just before she emerged, which meant this was one of the off-set entrances to the zanana.
She should not be here, outside the women’s quarters. He should not be here, staring at her with all the blood in his brain heading south, his body poised for violence and a weapon in his hand.
‘You may put away your dagger,’ she said and it took him a moment to adjust and realise she was speaking in lightly accented English. ‘Tavi and I are unarmed. Except for teeth,’ she added, showing hers, white and regular between lips that curved into a smile of faint mockery. It masked, he was certain, shock. The mongoose twined between her bare, hennaed feet, still grumbling to itself. It wore a gem-studded collar.
Nick got a grip on himself, pushed the knife back into its sheath as he straightened and brought his hands together. ‘Namaste.’
‘Namaste.’ Over her own joined hands dark grey eyes studied him. The shock seemed to have turned to suspicion edged with hostility and she was making no effort to disguise either emotion.
Grey eyes? And skin like golden honey and hair that showed streaks of mahogany and deep brown as it fell down her back in a thick plait. His quarry, it seemed, had found him.
She did not appear disconcerted to be alone, unveiled, with a strange man, but stood there and contemplated him. Her full red skirts, weighted with heavy silver embroidery, hung just above her ankles, giving a glimpse of close-fitting trousers. Her tight choli revealed not only delightful curves and elegantly rounded arms decked in silver bangles, but also an unsettling band of smooth golden midriff.
‘I should go. Excuse me for disturbing you,’ Nick said in English and wondered if he was perhaps the more unsettled of the two of them.
‘You have not,’ she replied with crushing simplicity in the same language. She turned and walked through the opening she had appeared from. ‘Mere pichhe aye, Tavi,’ she called as the skirts of her lehenga whisked out of sight. The mongoose followed obediently, the faint click of its claws fading along with her light footsteps.
‘Hell,’ Nick said to the empty passageway. ‘That is quite definitely her father’s daughter.’ Suddenly a simple duty had become something else entirely. He squared his shoulders and strode off in the direction that led to his rooms. A man did not become a major with the British East India Company by being disconcerted by acid-tongued young women, however beautiful. He needed to clean himself up and seek an audience with the raja, her uncle. And after that, all he had to do was to transport Miss Anusha Laurens safely halfway across India, back to her father.
‘Paravi! Quickly!’
‘Speak Hindi,’ Paravi reproved as Anusha entered her room in a flurry of skirts and trailing scarf.
‘Maf kijiye,’ Anusha apologised. ‘I have just this moment been speaking to an Englishman and my head is still translating.’
‘Angrezi? How can you be speaking to any man, let alone an angrezi?’ Paravi, plump and indolent and her uncle’s third wife, raised one exquisitely plucked eyebrow, but she pushed aside the chessboard she had been studying and sat upright.
‘He was in the corridor when I chased Tavi just now. Very big with hair of pale gilt and in the red uniform of the Company’s soldiers. An officer, I think—he had much gold on his coat. Come and see him.’
‘Why so curious? Is he so handsome, this big angrezi?’
‘I do not know what he is,’ Anusha confessed. ‘I have not seen one so close since I left my father’s house.’ But she was curious. And there was something else, a tug of yearning, deep inside, at the memory of another male voice speaking English, of another big man, scooping her up in his arms, laughing with her, playing with her. The man who had rejected her and her mother, she reminded herself as the memory turned sour.
‘He is different from the men I am used to, so I cannot decide if he is handsome or not. His hair is so pale and tied back tightly and his eyes are green and he is tall.’ She waved her hands to illustrate. ‘He is big all over—broad shoulders, long legs.’
‘Is he very white? I have never seen an angrezi before except from a long way away.’ Paravi was becoming interested.
‘His face and his hands are golden.’ Like my father’s were. ‘But the skin of all the Europeans goes brown in the sun, you know. Perhaps the rest of him is white.’
Imagining all of the big Englishman produced a not-unpleasurable shiver which he did not merit. But any novelty was welcome in the restricted world of the zanana, even if this novelty brought with him unsettling reminders of the world outside the fort. The faint sensual tingle was lost in a wave of something close to apprehension. This man made her uneasy.
‘Where has he gone now?’ Paravi uncoiled herself from the heap of cushions she had been occupying. The mongoose immediately dived into the warm spot she had created and curled up. ‘I would like to look on a man who makes all those expressions chase across your face.’
‘To the visitors’ wing—where else should he go?’ Anusha tried not to snap. It was not flattering to be told her face betrayed her. ‘He was very dusty from the road, he will not be seeking audience with my uncle like that.’ She gave herself a little shake to chase away the foolish fancies. ‘Come with me to the Sunset Terrace.’
Anusha led the way through the familiar maze of passages, rooms and galleries that filled the western wing of the palace.
‘Your dupatta,’ her friend hissed as they left the women’s quarters to cross the wide terrace where the raja would sometimes sit to watch the sun sink over his kingdom. ‘There are no grilles here.’
Anusha clicked her tongue in irritation, but unwound the neglected length of cerise gauze from her neck and draped it so it covered her face to the chin. She leaned on the inner balustrade of the terrace and looked down into the courtyard below. ‘There he is,’ she whispered.
Below, on the edge of a garden threaded with rills of water in the Persian manner, the big angrezi was talking to a slender Indian she did not recognise. His body servant, no doubt. The man gestured towards a door.
‘He is telling him where the bath house is,’ Paravi whispered from behind her own dupatta of golden gauze. ‘There is your chance to see whether Englishmen are white all over.’
‘That is ridiculous. And immodest.’ She heard Paravi laugh softly and bristled. ‘Besides, I am not in the slightest bit interested.’ Just burningly, and inexplicably, curious. The two men had vanished into the guest rooms overlooking the garden. ‘But I suppose I had better see whether the water has been heated and someone is in attendance.’
Paravi leaned one rounded hip against the parapet and glanced up as a flock of green parakeets screeched overhead. ‘This man must be important, do you not think? He is from the East India Company and they are all-powerful in the whole land now, my lord says. Far more important than the Emperor in Delhi, even if they do put the Emperor’s head on their coins. I wonder if he is to be the Resident here. My lord said nothing about that last night.’
Anusha rested her elbows on the parapet and noted that her friend seemed to be in favour with her husband. ‘Why would we need a Resident? We do not do so very much trade with them.’ The intriguingly pale head appeared below as the man re-emerged from the door to the guest rooms. ‘I suppose we might be in a useful position for their expansion—that is what Mata used to say. Strategic.’ Her mother had much to say on most subjects, being both well read and greatly indulged by her brother the raja.
‘Your father is still a friend to my lord, even though he never comes here. They exchange letters. He is a great man in the Company: perhaps he thinks we are more important these days and deserving of a Resident.’
‘It must be a matter of great importance for him to bestir himself to think of us,’ Anusha said. Her father had not visited the state of Kalatwah since the day, twelve years ago, when he had sent his twelve-year-old daughter and her mother back, displaced from his home and his heart by the arrival of his English wife.
He sent money, but that was all. Her uncle added it to her dowry chest when she refused to spend it. He told her that she was foolish, that her father had no choice but to send her and her mother home and that Sir George was an honourable man and a good ally of Kalatwah. But that was the talk of men, of politics, not of the love that broke her mother’s heart, even while she agreed with her brother that there had been no other option.
Her father wrote to her uncle, she knew that, for he would tell her there were messages. There had been a note a year ago when her mother had died. She had not read it any more than she had read the others. The moment she saw her father’s name she had thrown it on the brazier and watched it burn to ash.
From the flash of dark eyes behind the veil Paravi was sending her sympathetic glances, which is not what she wanted. No one had any right to be sorry for her. Was she not, at twenty-two, the pampered niece of the Raja of Kalatwah? Was she not indulged with the right to turn down every approach that had been made for her hand in marriage? Was she not supplied lavishly with clothes and jewels and servants and all the luxury she wished for? Did she not possess everything that she could possibly want?
Except knowing where I belong, the nagging little voice in her head said, the voice that, for some reason, always spoke English. Except knowing who I am and why I am and what I am going to do with the rest of my life. Except for freedom.
‘The angrezi is going to the bath.’ Paravi drew back a pace from the parapet even as she craned to see. ‘That is a fine robe. His hair is long now it is loose,’ she added. ‘What a colour! It is like that stallion my lord sent to the Maharaja of Altaphur as a gift when the monsoon ended, the horse they called the Gilded One.’
‘He has probably got as high an opinion of himself as that animal had,’ Anusha said. ‘But at least he bathes. Do you know, many of them do not? They think it unhealthy! My father said that they do not have champo in Europe—they powder their hair instead. And just wash their hands and faces. They think hot water is bad for them.’
‘Ugh! Go and see and tell me about him.’ Paravi gave her a little push. ‘I am curious, but my lord would not be pleased if he thought I was looking upon an angrezi without his clothes.’
He would also have much to say if his niece was discovered doing just that, Anusha reflected as she ran down the narrow stairway and along the passage. She was not at all sure why she wanted to get closer to this stranger. It was not any desire to attract his attention, despite the shiver which was, of course, simply a normal female reaction to a man in his prime—far from it. She did not want those green eyes studying her—they seemed to see too much. There had been a flash of recognition in them when they had met. Recognition and something far more basic and male.
She left her sandals in the doorway and peeped around the corner of the bathhouse. The Englishman was already naked and face down on a linen sheet draped over the marble slab, his body gleaming with water. He rested his forehead on his linked hands as one of the girls, Maya, worked the mixture of basun powder, lime juice and egg yolks into his hair. Savita was bent over his feet, oiling and massaging. Between head and heels there was a great deal of man to be seen in an interesting shading of colours.
Anusha walked in with a warning nod to the two girls to stay silent and keep working. His neck was the colour that his face and hands, both hidden by his wet hair, had been. His shoulders, back and arms were a paler gold. His legs were lighter still and the skin behind his knees was almost white, a pinkish shade. The line where his belt must habitually lie was very clear, for his buttocks were as pale as the backs of his knees.
His legs and arms were dusted with brown hair, she noticed. It was wiry and much darker than his flaxen head. Was his chest like that, too? She had heard that some Englishmen were so hairy that their backs were covered with a pelt of it. They must be like bears. She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the thought, then found she was standing right next to the slab. How did his skin feel?
Anusha reached for the jar of oil, poured a little into her palms and placed them flat, one on each shoulder blade. Under her hands she felt his muscles tighten, the skin twitch with the contact of the cool liquid. Then he relaxed again and she brought her hands sliding down slowly until they rested at his waist.
The pale skin felt just like any other skin, she decided. The muscles though, those were … shocking. Not that she had any basis for comparison, of course. She had never touched a man’s naked flesh in her life.
Maya began to rinse his hair, pouring water from a brass ewer and catching it in a bowl. Savita had moved up to his calves and was kneading the long muscles. Anusha found she was stuck, unwilling, for some mysterious reason, to lift her hands, too disconcerted by the feel of a man’s body to venture any further.
Then he spoke, the vibration of his deep voice reaching her through her palms. ‘Am I to hope that you will all be joining me in my room after this?’
Nick felt the stir in the air, the faint pad of bare feet on the marble. Another girl—he was being treated as an honoured guest, which boded well for his mission. The strong, skilled fingers massaging his scalp made him want to purr, the muscles of his feet and ankles were relaxing into something approaching bliss. The new arrival brought with her a faint suggestion of jasmine to mingle with the sandalwood of the oil and the lime in the champo. He had smelt that earlier, somewhere.
Hands, coated with oil that had not been allowed to warm, settled on his back and hesitated. In comparison to the other two, this attendant was either unskilled or nervous. Then his brain placed the scent as the hands slid downwards to his waist and stopped again.
‘Am I to hope that you will all be joining me in my room after this?’ Nick said, in English. As he expected the sure hands at his head and on his calves did not pause in their smooth rhythm, but the fingers at his waist tightened into claws. ‘All three of you at once should be most pleasurable,’ he added with deliberate provocation, his voice sultry with suggestion as he teased her. ‘I shall ask for the bed chains to be fixed to the ceiling hooks to make a swing.’
There was a sharp indrawn breath and the claws tightened in a fleeting pain before she lifted her hands away. ‘How interesting that even the bathhouse attendants here speak good English,’ he added. It was only sporting to let her know he had realised she was there and had spoken deliberately. The faintest hiss of indrawn breath, the silken whisper of her clothing, the brush of air on his skin and she was gone.
Nick found he was breathing hard and made himself relax. If he was feeling aroused it was because he was stark naked while his body was massaged by highly skilled hands. George’s daughter had nothing to do with it. The little witch had doubtless thought it would be amusing to play a trick on him—she would not make the same mistake again. He made his mind blank and gave himself up to the sensations surrounding him.
‘Well?’ Paravi clapped her hands for the maids. ‘We will drink pomegranate juice while you tell me all about him.’ She cocked her head on one side and her nose ring swung with the movement, its tiny gold discs jingling.
‘He is a pig.’ Anusha plumped down on the pile of cushions opposite and disentangled her scarf with an impatient tug. ‘He knew it was me, even though he had his eyes closed, and he deliberately provoked me with indecent suggestions. The man must have eyes in the back of his head, or he uses witchcraft.’
‘So he had his back to you?’ Paravi appeared to find this disappointing.
‘He was lying face down on the slab being massaged and having his hair washed.’
‘So how did he know it was you?’
‘I have no idea. But he spoke in English to trap me.’ Paravi clicked her tongue. Anusha took a deep breath and attempted to report dispassionately. ‘He is not white, but the parts of him that have not been in the sun are pinkish. Like the muzzle of a grey cow is. Only paler.’
‘So.’ Paravi stretched. ‘He uses witchcraft, he is the colour of a cow’s nose and he is not a fool. Is he a good lover, I wonder?’
‘He is too big,’ Anusha said with the absolute confidence of a woman who had studied all the texts on the subject and had looked at a very wide range of detailed pictures while she was at it.
A wife was expected to have considerable theoretical knowledge of how to please her husband and Mata had made sure that her education in that area had not been neglected. Anusha sometimes wondered if knowing so much was not responsible for her reluctance to agree to any of the marriages that had been proposed for her.
If one had the luxury of choice it did make you look at the man concerned very carefully while you considered the matter. And then you tried to imagine doing those things with him and … and, so far, those mental pictures had been quite enough to make her reject every one of the suitors offered to her.
‘Too big?’ Paravi was still dwelling on her description of the scene in the bathhouse. Her eyes were wide with an amused surprise that Anusha was not certain she quite understood.
‘How could someone so large be supple and sensual?’ she added in explanation, with what she felt was crushing logic. ‘He would be a lump. A log of wood.’ He had certainly felt like teak under her hands. A contrary memory flickered through her mind of him twisting, fast as a snake, the knife in his hand. But that had simply been trained violence, not the subtle magic of the sensual arts.
‘A lump,’ her uncle’s wife echoed, her lips curling into a wicked smile. ‘I must see this human log more closely.’ She gestured to the maid. ‘Find out at what hour my lord holds audience with the angrezi and in which diwan.’ Paravi turned to Anusha, suddenly every inch a rani. ‘You will join me in my gallery.’
Chapter Two
Nick changed, choosing his clothing with some care—the message from the raja had stipulated no uniform. When the escort came he walked, relaxed, between the four heavily armed members of the royal bodyguard. He had not expected to be received with anything but warmth, but it was good to have that confirmed. If Kirat Jaswan had decided his interests lay elsewhere than with the East India Company now that his sister was dead, then Nick’s mission would have become both dangerous and exceedingly difficult.
He supposed, if diplomacy failed, it was possible to remove an unwilling, intelligent and able-bodied princess from a heavily fortified palace in the middle of her uncle’s kingdom and get her back across hundreds of miles to Delhi with an angry raja’s troops at his heels, but he would prefer not to have to try. Or to start a small war in the process.
As it was, he felt good. He was clean, he was relaxed by the bath and the massage and the amusement of teasing the infuriating female he had to escort out of here.
Now, with her mother dead, and her father’s own wife gone, there was no one to hurt by George removing his daughter from the raja’s court and turning her into an English lady. And there were a number of very good political reasons for bringing her to Calcutta into the bargain.
Nick strode into the Diwan-i-Khas, the Hall of Private Audience. In his peripheral vision he was aware of marble pillars, the men in the robes and the ornate safa turbans of the elite on either side, of guards, their weapons drawn in ceremonial salute.
He kept his eyes on the slight figure in a gold embroidered chauga seated amidst piled cushions on the silver-embossed throne on the dais before him. As he reached two sword-lengths from the steps he made the first obeisance, aware of the flutter of silks, the drift of perfume, from behind the stone grillework of the gallery. The ladies of the court were there, watching and listening. Those in favour would have access to the raja, would give him their opinion of his guest. Was Miss Laurens there? He was certain that curiosity would have brought her.
‘Your Highness,’ he said in English. ‘Major Nicholas Herriard, at your service. I bring salutations from the Governor of the Calcutta Presidency with most grateful thanks for the honour of my reception.’
The white-clad munshi looked up from his writing desk at the raja’s feet and spoke in rapid Hindi. Raja Kirat Jaswan replied in the same language while Nick kept his face studiously blank.
‘His Highness, Lord of Kalatwah, Defender of the Sacred Places, Prince of the Emerald Lake, Favoured of the Lord Shiva …’ Nick stood frozen in place while the munshi reeled off the titles in English. ‘… commands you to approach.’
He stepped forwards and met the shrewd dark brown eyes that were regarding him from beneath the jewelled and plumed brocade of the turban. Overhead the ropes of the punkah fan creaked faintly.
The raja spoke. ‘It gives me pleasure to welcome the friend of my friend, Laurens,’ the secretary translated. ‘You left him in good health?’
‘I did, your Highness, although low in spirits from the death of his wife. And … another loss. He sends letters and gifts by my hand as does the Governor.’
The secretary translated. ‘I was sorry to hear of his wife and that his heart is still in grief, as mine is for the death of my sister last year. I know he will have shared my feelings. There is much to discuss.’ He waved a hand at the munshi. ‘We have no need of a translator, I think,’ the raja added in perfect English. ‘You will join me and we will relax, Major Herriard.’
It was a command, a great favour and exactly what Nick was hoping for. ‘My lord, you do me honour.’
The rani’s position in the women’s gallery around the audience hall was the very best position for observing and listening. Anusha had settled comfortably against the piled pillows next to Paravi as maids placed low tables covered in little dishes around them.
‘We should hear well,’ said the rani as they waited for the raja to arrive. The acoustics had been carefully designed in all the rooms: in some to baffle sound, in others to enable eavesdropping with ease. Here, in circumstances where the raja would consult with his favourite after a meeting, a conversation in a normal tone would reach easily to the pierced screens.
‘Savita tells me that your log of wood is as supple as a young sapling,’ Paravi added mischievously. ‘Such muscles …’
Anusha dropped the almonds she had just picked up. Rummaging in the cushions to retrieve them at least gave her the chance to compose her face and suppress her unruly imagination. ‘Truly? You amaze me.’
‘I wonder if he has read all the classical texts,’ Paravi continued. ‘He would be so strong, and most vigorous.’
Anusha took an incautious mouthful of nuts and coughed. Vigorous …
‘And he has very large … feet.’
There was no answer to that, especially as she was not sure what Paravi meant and suspected she was being teased. Anusha feigned interest in the arrival below of the male courtiers as they poured in to fill up the hall in a noisy, jostling, colourful mass. As the servants went from niche to niche, lighting the ghee lamps, the mirror fragments and gems in the walls and ceilings began to reflect back the light in scintillating patterns like constellations in the darker sky of shadows.
Faintly, there was the sound of the musicians tuning their instruments in the courtyard. It was beautiful and familiar and yet Anusha felt an ache of something she was beginning to recognise as loneliness.
How was it possible to feel lonely when she was never alone? To feel she was not part of this world when it had been her life for ten years, when she was surrounded by her mother’s family?
Her uncle walked through the crowd and took his place, gestured for the courtiers to be seated, then beckoned.
A tall figure in a sherwani of gold-and-green brocade over green pajama trousers walked through the seated men to the steps of the throne. For a moment Anusha could not place him until the pale gold of his hair, falling on his shoulders, caught the light. He bowed his head, his cupped right hand lifting to his heart in the graceful gesture of obeisance. As he straightened she saw the green fire of an emerald in his earlobe.
‘Look,’ she whispered to Paravi. ‘Just look at him!’ In the costume of the court the major should have looked more ordinary, but he did not. The brocade and the silks, the severe lines of the long coat and the glitter of gems, made the pale hair and the broad shoulders and the golden skin seem more exotic, more strange.
‘I am doing so!’
The raja motioned impatiently to the servants and they lifted the cushions from the foot of the dais and arranged them on the right side of the throne where the munshi’s desk had stood. ‘You will join me,’ Kirat Jaswan said.
‘My lord. You do me honour.’ The Hindi was accurate, perfectly accented. The big Englishman sank down and crossed his legs beneath him with the ease of an Indian. The raja dropped his hand to his shoulder and leaned over to speak.
‘I cannot hear,’ Paravi complained. ‘But here is the food, they cannot both whisper and eat.’
Indeed, as a succession of small dishes were presented to the raja, and he offered them in turn to the angrezi, the two men straightened up and most of what they said could be heard. But, to Anusha’s frustration, it was all the most innocuous conversation.
She ate absently, her eyes on the fair hair beneath, the glimpses of the Englishman’s profile as he turned his head to answer her uncle. His voice held the easy rhythms of a man who had not only been taught Hindi well, but who used it, day in, day out. What had he said his name was? Herriard? A strange name—she tried it out silently.
Then the food was finally cleared away, the scented water and cloths presented for the washing of hands and the great silver hookah was brought, with an extra mouthpiece for the guest. Both men appeared to relax as the music began.
‘They are discussing something of importance now,’ Paravi said. ‘See how they use the mouthpieces to shield their lips so that no one can read them.’
‘Why should they be so concerned? It is only the court around us.’
‘There are spies,’ the rani said after a swift glance. She lifted her hand with apparent casualness to shield her own mouth. ‘The Maharaja of Altaphur will have men in the court and agents here amongst the servants.’
‘Altaphur is an enemy?’ Surprised, Anusha twisted to face her. ‘But my uncle considered his request to wed me and sent him a fine horse when I refused. He said nothing then about any enmity.’
‘It is safer to pretend to be friends with the tiger who lives at the bottom of one’s garden than to let him see you know about his teeth. My lord would not have allowed the match even if you had agreed, but he made it seem the refusal was a woman’s whim, not a ruler’s snub.’
‘But why is he an enemy?’
‘This is a small but rich state—there is much to covet here. And, as you said earlier, we are in a position that interests the East India Company so they will make concessions to whoever rules, perhaps.’ Paravi spoke as though she was just working this out, but Anusha sensed a deeper knowledge behind the words. She caught an edge of fear in the other woman’s voice. Much had been hidden from her, she realised. Even her friend had been wearing a mask. No one had trusted her with the truth. Or perhaps they just thought her not important enough: the niece with the English blood in her veins.
‘There will be war?’ The state had been at peace for almost seventy years. But the court poets and musicians told the stories of past battles and of terrible defeats as well as glorious victories, of the men riding out, dressed in their ochre funerary robes, knowing they were going to their deaths, and the women filing down to the great burning pyres to commit jauhar, ritual suicide, rather than fall into the hands of the conqueror. Anusha shuddered. She would choose to ride out to die in battle, not go to the pyre.
‘No, of course not,’ the rani said with a confidence that Anusha did not believe. ‘The Company will protect us if we are their allies.’
‘Yes.’ It was best to agree. Anusha looked down at the golden head, bent listening. Then the Englishman looked up to meet the raja’s eyes and she caught the intensity in his face as he spoke with sudden passion, his hand slashing out in a gesture she could not interpret.
The court was moving back to clear space for a nautch. The dancers entered amidst the music of the bells on the silver chains around their ankles. Then they began to move, perfectly together, their wide, vivid skirts swinging out like exploding fireworks. But the two men did not spare them a glance and Anusha felt a cold finger of apprehension trail down her spine.
She went to her bedchamber unsettled and restless, her mind churning with her anxieties over the threat from across the border and the humiliation of the bathhouse.
‘Anusha.’ Paravi came in, her face serious.
‘What is it?’ Anusha dropped the book she was thumbing through and pushed back the loose hair that spilled over her shoulders.
‘My lord wishes to speak with you privately, without his councillors. Come to my chamber.’
Anusha realised that there were no maids present—neither her own, nor any with the rani. She stood up from the low couch, slid her feet into sandals and followed Paravi while her mind whirled with speculation.
Her uncle was unattended, his face starkly under-lit by the little lamps flickering on a low table by his side. Anusha made her reverence and waited, wondering why Paravi had pulled her veil over her face.
‘Major Herriard here has come from your father,’ Kirat Jaswan said without preamble. ‘He is concerned for you.’
Her father? Her pulse jolted with something close to fear. What could he want with her? Then the raja’s wording struck her. ‘Here?’
The big man stepped out of the shadows and bowed, unsmiling. He was still in Indian dress. The lamplight caught the gleam of the emeralds in his ear lobes, the silver embroidery and buttons of his coat. He looked both exotic and utterly comfortable, as at home in this guise as he seemed in the scarlet uniform.
‘I thought you were from the Company,’ Anusha challenged him in Hindi. ‘Not my father’s servant.’
The raja hissed a word of reproof, but the Englishman answered her in the same language, his green eyes meeting hers with a bold, assessing stare. No man should look at an unveiled woman not of his family like that. ‘I come from both. The Company is concerned about the intentions of the Maharaja of Altaphur towards this state. And so is your father.’
‘I understand why they should be concerned about a threat to Kalatwah. But why is my father thinking about me after all these years?’ Her uncle did not reprove her for not veiling herself. It was as though he was suddenly treating her as an Englishwoman, she thought with a shiver of alarm. The rani had slipped back into the shadows.
‘Your father has never ceased to concern himself with your welfare,’ the man Herriard said. He sounded irritated with her and when she shook her head in instinctive denial he frowned. ‘He saw the offer of marriage from Altaphur as a threat, a way of pressuring the Company through you.’
Her father knew about that? Kept such a close watch over her? It took her a moment for the meaning to force its way through resentment and the unsettling atmosphere of conspiracy. ‘I would have been a hostage?’
‘Exactly.’
‘How dreadful, that I might inconvenience the Company and my father in that way.’
‘Anusha!’ The raja slapped his palm down on the table.
‘Miss Laurens—’
‘Do not call me that.’ Her knees were shaking, but no one could see beneath the long skirts of her robe.
‘It is your name.’ Presumably the man spoke to his troops in this manner. She was not one of his troops. Anusha’s chin went up—that stopped it trembling as well.
‘Your father and I agree it would be better for you to return to his house,’ her uncle said. His quiet voice with its expectation of instant obedience cut across their hostility.
‘Go back to Calcutta? Go back to my father after he threw us out? He does not want me, only to stop me interfering with his political schemes. I hate him. And I cannot leave you and Kalatwah when there is danger, my lord. I will not run away—never!’ In her mind the crackle of flames and the clash of steel mingled with the sound of a big man’s belly-laugh and her mother’s stifled sobs.
‘Such drama,’ Herriard drawled, blowing the swirling images away like a draught of cold air. She itched to slap his well-defined jaw. ‘Ten years ago your father was in an impossible position and did the only honourable thing open to him to ensure the well-being of yourself and your mother.’
‘Honour! Pah!’
Herriard went very still. ‘You never, in my hearing, defame the honour of Sir George Laurens, do you understand?’
‘Or?’ Her neck muscles were so tense it was painful.
‘Or you will find it a matter for regret. If you will not leave because your father commands it, then do it for his Highness, your uncle. Or are your grudges so deep that you would hamper the defence of his state, the safety of the family, to indulge them?’
Grudges? He can calmly dismiss feelings about the betrayal of love, the rejection of a family, as a grudge? The marble floor seemed to quiver like sand beneath her feet. Anusha choked back the furious retort and looked at her uncle. ‘Do you want me to go, my lord?’
‘It is best,’ Kirat Jaswan said. He was everything to her: ruler, uncle, surrogate father. She owed him her total obedience. ‘You … complicate matters, Anusha. I would have you safe where you belong.’
So I do not belong here? No matter how she had been feeling these past months, this was too sudden, too abrupt. Her uncle had cast her out too, as her father had. Now she truly was adrift with nowhere to call home. To protest, would be futile, and beneath her. She was a Rajput princess by training, even if her blood was mixed. ‘I do not belong with my father. I never did, he made that clear as crystal. But because you, my lord and uncle, ask it, I shall go.’
And she would not weep, not in front of that arrogant angrezi who had got what he came for, it seemed: her surrender. She was of a princely house and she had her pride and she would do what her ruler commanded and not show fear. If he had commanded her to ride into battle to her death with his troops she would have done. Somehow that felt less frightening than this. ‘When must I go?’
The Englishman Herriard answered. It was as though her uncle had already washed his hands of her and had given her over to the other man. ‘You leave as soon as the vehicles and animals can be gathered and the journey provisioned. It is a long way and will take us many weeks.’
‘I remember,’ Anusha said. Weeks of blank discomfort and misery, clinging to her mother who was too proud to weep. Sent away because the big, loving, bear of a man who had hugged her and spoiled her, who had been the centre of her world and her mother’s universe, had cast them out. Because love, it seemed, was not for ever. Expediency conquered love. It was a lesson that had been well learned.
Then what Herriard had said penetrated. ‘Us? You will take me?’
‘Of course. I am your escort, Miss Laurens.’
‘I am so very sorry,’ she said, baring her teeth in a false smile. She would make every league a misery for him, if she could, the insensitive brute. ‘You obviously do not wish for this duty.’
‘I would walk the entire way in my bare feet if Sir George asked it,’ Major Herriard said. The cold green eyes looked back at her without liking or anger, as hard as the emeralds in his ears. ‘He is as a father to me and what he wants, Miss Laurens, I will ensure that he gets.’
A father? Just who was this man whose devotion went so far beyond a soldier’s obedience? ‘Fine words,’ Anusha said as she turned to leave. ‘I do hope you will not have cause to eat them.’
Chapter Three
‘If that man sends one more message about what I must and must not take I will scream.’ Anusha stood in the midst of harried, scurrying maids and searched for a word to describe Nicholas Herriard. With a phrase quivering on her tongue she caught Paravi’s amused gaze and compromised. ‘Budmash.’
‘Major Herriard is not a villain or a knave,’ the rani said, her tone of reproof in conflict with the curve of her lips. ‘And he will hear you—he is only on the other side of the jali. It is a long journey. He is right to make certain you will have everything you need, yet not too much.’
‘What is he doing there?’ Anusha demanded, raising her voice. If the wretched man was listening behind the pierced screen wall then he deserved to hear her opinion. The men who ruled her life had left her two choices: she could weep and give up or she could lose her temper. Her pride would not allow the first, so the major must bear the brunt of the other. ‘This is the women’s mahal.’
‘There is a eunuch with him and curtains have been hung around the room,’ Paravi hissed. ‘He is checking everything as it is packed.’
‘Hah! My uncle says I may have twenty elephants, forty camels, forty bullock carts, horses …’
‘And I say it is too much,’ said a deep voice from behind the far wall of pierced stone. Anusha jumped and stubbed her toe on a studded chest. ‘Anyone would think you are going to marry the Emperor, Miss Laurens. And besides, your father will want you to wear Western clothes and jewels in Calcutta.’
‘Mata told me about those clothes.’ Anusha marched across a stack of carpets until she was next to the jali. A large shadow on the silk hangings was all she could see of him through the screen. ‘Corsets! Stockings! Garters! She said they were instruments of torture.’
There was a snort from the other side. ‘They are not things a lady mentions in the presence of a man,’ Herriard said, laughter quivering in his voice.
‘Then go away. I do not require your presence here. I do not require your presence at all, anywhere, gloating because you are getting your way. If you listen from hiding like a spy, then you must endure whatever I say.’ There was a faint moan from the rani behind her. ‘Go away, Major Herriard. Twenty elephants are no slower than ten.’
‘Twenty elephants eat twice as much as ten,’ he retorted. ‘We leave the day after tomorrow. Anything that is not ready, or will not go on half the transport you have listed, will be left behind. And whilst I feel the greatest satisfaction in following your father’s wishes, I am not gloating.’
Anusha opened her mouth to retort, but the sound of footsteps leaving the other room silenced her. It was intolerable to be prevented from arguing because the man had the ill manners to remove himself.
‘Find me a dagger,’ she said, narrowing her eyes at the nearest maid, who was apparently rooted to the spot. ‘That at least I will take—I can imagine a nice broad target for it.’ And she would take all her jewels because when she was in Calcutta and Major Herriard was no longer her jailer she would need them to pay for her escape from her prison. From her father’s house.
Her dagger was in her hand and she would use it because the wretched angrezi was shouting at her and shaking her and drums were beating the alarm and there was danger all around.
‘Ah! Ra—’ Anusha’s shriek of rape was choked in her throat as a large hand clamped over her mouth. She had been asleep, dreaming, but now—
‘Quiet,’ Nicholas Herriard hissed in her ear. ‘We must leave, at once, in secret. When I take my hand away you will whisper or I’ll clip you on the jaw and carry you out. Do you understand?’
Furious, frightened—do not let him see that—Anusha nodded and he removed his hand. ‘Where are my maids?’ He jerked his head towards the corner and she opened her mouth to scream as she saw the two crumpled bodies lit by the flickering light of one ghee lamp. The hand came back, none too gently. The skin bore the calluses of a rider and chafed her lips. He tasted of leather.
‘Drugged,’ he murmured in her ear, pressing his palm tight over her mouth to foil her attempt to bite. ‘There are spies, I cannot risk it. Listen.’ He freed her mouth again.
Now she was awake she realised that the drums that had been echoing through her dream were real, their sound vibrating through the palace. She had never heard them like this, at night, so urgent. ‘An attack?’
‘The Maharaja of Altaphur has moved fast. There are war elephants and cavalry not four hours distant.’
‘He discovered you are here? That you had come for me?’ Anusha sat up, dragged the covers around her as Herriard sank back on his heels beside the low bed. He was wearing Indian dress again, but now it was plain riding gear with boots and a tight, dark turban to cover the betraying shimmer of pale hair.
‘He was already mobilising his troops—he must have been to get so close so fast. Then his spies told him that someone from the Company was here, perhaps that I intended to take you away, perhaps that I was negotiating. My guess is that he decided on a pre-emptive strike to seize the state before your uncle made an alliance with the Company.’
‘My uncle will not surrender to him!’ The floor was cold under her bare feet as she scrambled out of bed, the night air chill through the thin cotton of her shift.
‘No, he will stand firm. The raja has already despatched riders to his allies in Agra and Gwalior and to Delhi. The Company will send troops as soon as it receives the news and then I suspect Altaphur will back down without further fighting. Your uncle only has to withstand a siege for a matter of weeks.’
Was he attempting to soothe her with easy lies? Anusha tried to read his face in the gloom and control her churning stomach. ‘You will stay here and fight?’ Why one more soldier would make any difference, she did not know, but somehow the thought of this man at her uncle’s right shoulder made her feel better. He was arrogant, aggravating and foreign, but she had no doubt that Major Herriard was a warrior.
‘No. You and I are leaving. Now.’
‘I am not going to leave my uncle and run away! What do you take me for? A coward?’ His eyes flickered over her and she was suddenly aware of how thin her garment was, of how her nipples had peaked in the cool air. Anusha swept the bedcovers around her like a robe and glared at him as he got to his feet. ‘Lecher!’
‘I rather hoped I could take you for a sensible woman,’ he said with a sigh. He added something under his breath in English and she pounced on it.
‘What is this? A tutty-hooded female?’
‘Totty-headed. Foolish,’ he translated. ‘No, clawing my eyes out is not going to help.’ He caught her wrists with contemptuous ease. ‘Listen to me. Do you think it will help your uncle to have to worry about you on top of everything else? And if the worst happens, what are you going to do? Lead the women to the pyres or become a hostage?’
Anusha drew in a deep breath. He is right, may all the demons take him. She knew where her duty lay and she was not a child to refuse out of spite. She would go, not because this man told her to, but because her raja willed it. And because this was no longer her home. ‘No, if my uncle tells me to go, then I will go.
How?’
‘You can ride a horse?’
‘Of course I can ride a horse! I am a Rajput.’
‘Then dress for riding—hard riding. Dress as a man and wear tough cloth and good boots, wrap your hair in a turban. Bring a roll of blankets, the nights are cold outside, but only pack what you must have. Can you do that? I will meet you in the court below. Jaldi.’
‘I may be totty-headed, Major Herriard, but I am not a fool. And, yes, I understand the need to hurry.’
‘Can you dress without help?’ He paused on the threshold, a broad shadow against the pale marble.
Beyond words, Anusha threw a sandal at him and its ivory toe-post broke against the door jamb. He melted away into the darkness, leaving her shivering, the drumbeats vibrating through her very bones. For a moment she stood there, forcing herself to think clearly of what she must do, then she ran to the two maids. Under her groping fingers the blood beat strongly below their jawbones. Spies or not, they were alive.
She lifted the nightlight and took it round the room, touching it to the wicks of the lamps in every niche until there was enough light to see by. The mirrored fragments in the walls reflected her image in a myriad of jagged shards as she pulled out the last of the trunks, the one containing clothes for use on the journey. She dressed in plain trousers, tight in the calf, wide at the thigh, then layers above, topped by a long, dark brown split-sided coat. Her soft riding boots were there and she pulled them on, slid a dagger into the top of the right one and another, a tiny curved knife, into her belt.
It was quick to twist her hair into a tight plait to pile on the crown of her head and she wrapped and tied a turban out of dark brown cloth, fumbling as she did so. Sometimes she secured her hair like this when riding, but her maids had always tied it.
Money. How much money did Herriard have? Anusha pulled the long cloth free, rummaged in the trunk again and found the jewels she had intended to wear as they arrived in Calcutta, chosen to emphasise her status and her independence. She stuffed the finest into a bag, coiled her hair around it and rewrapped the turban.
Two blankets rolled around a change of linen, toilet articles, a bag containing hairpins and comb, tinder box. What else? She rubbed her temples—the drums stopped her thinking properly, invaded her head. Soon someone would come to check on her, fuss over her, shepherd her to the inner fastness of the palace where she really wanted to be. Where it was her duty not to go.
Anusha found her little box of medicines, added that, rolled up the blankets, tied them with leather straps and caught up the bundle in her arms. The walls were honeycombed with passages and stairs and she took one of the narrowest and least-used ways down, tiptoeing as she reached the doorway.
But Herriard had seen her. He stepped away from the wall, his eyes glinting in the reflected torchlight, and reached for the bundle.
‘I can manage. No, not that way, I must say goodbye to my uncle, to the Lady Paravi—’
‘And risk being seen? They know what we are doing and they have other things to think about just now. Come on.’ He pushed her in front of him through the door, back into the palace. He seemed to know the way as well as she, pulled her into alcoves as servants ran past, knew when to stop and slide into the shadows to avoid a distracted sentry, his attention on someone shouting on the battlements.
A slender figure stepped out right in front of them and she stopped so abruptly that Herriard ran into her and gripped both her arms above the elbow to steady himself. His body was hard and immovable against her back and his voice was a soft rumble. Suddenly she was glad of his size. When he released her it was as though a bulwark had been removed.
‘Ajit, are the horses ready?’
‘Yes, sahib,’ the man said and she recognised the major’s servant. He must have run up the steep road from the base court for he was panting. ‘Pavan and Rajat and a good mare for the lady. The lower gate is still open for soldiers taking up positions outside the walls, but we must hurry or we will be noticed.’
They ran, skidding on the black stones worn smooth by the passage of elephants and horses and men over hundreds of years, hugged the walls that loomed over them, slowed at every one of the gates where the road changed direction, all the better to confuse attackers if they got within the outer defences.
One more gate, Anusha thought, as she bounced painfully off a ring set in the wall. There was a cry ahead, a thud and Herriard stopped, bent over Ajit’s sprawled figure.
‘Collarbone, sahib,’ the man gasped. ‘Broken. I am sorry.’ He sat up and she saw his right shoulder sloped down at an unnatural angle. In the torchlight his face was grey.
‘You must stay.’ Herriard helped him to his feet and propped him up against the wall. ‘Go back up and see the court physician. He is to be trusted. Tell him to let his Highness know we are safe away.’
‘Sahib, take my bundle, too—there are weapons.’
‘I will. You take care, Ajit, my friend, I will see you in Calcutta.’
Herriard picked up the fallen bundle, took Anusha’s arm and dragged her on. ‘How good a rider are you?’ he demanded as they slowed for the final gate before the lower court. He stopped, watchful, the shadows of the vicious spikes set at the height of an elephant’s forehead lying in bars across his face.
‘Excellent. Of course.’ She looked up at the rows of handprints at the side of the gate, left by the women who had gone through it to become sati on their husbands’ funeral pyres. She shuddered and the Englishman felt it and followed her gaze.
‘Another good reason for not marrying a maharaja twice your age,’ he observed as he took her elbow and steered her into the courtyard.
‘Do not touch me!’
He ignored her until they were past the bustle of the elephant lines and into the straw-strewn stables, virtually empty now the cavalry had ridden out. Then he stopped, jerking her against him. He would say it was so he could keep his voice low, but she knew it was a show of dominance.
‘Listen to me, Miss Laurens. Hard as it may be for you to believe, your beauty does not inflame me with lust and, even if it did, I am not fool enough to waste time dallying with you when a small war is about to break out around our heads.’
He released her and began to strap the blanket rolls behind the saddles of the three horses that still stood in the stalls: a handsome, raking grey, a smaller, well-muscled black and a bay with the brand of her uncle’s stud. ‘Take this.’ He thrust the bay’s reins into her hand. ‘When I need to touch you, I will touch you, and when I do you had better be prepared to obey me because it will be an emergency. I promised your father I would get you back to him, but I did not promise him not to tan your backside in the process.’
‘You … swine,’ Anusha hissed.
Herriard shrugged. ‘If I am, then I am the swine who is going to keep you alive. And, while we are on the subject of touching, I should point out that you are the one who sneaked into the bathhouse and touched me when I was naked. Your hands were cold and your technique could do with some work.’ He led out the other two horses and tied the black’s reins on its neck—the blanket rolls were strapped to its back. ‘Here, I’ll give you a leg up.’
‘I do not need your help.’ Anusha jammed her foot in the stirrup and swung into the saddle. ‘And I only wanted to see—’ She shut her mouth in confusion at where her temper had led her.
‘See what?’ He was up on the grey now. In the torchlight his lean features showed nothing but amused curiosity.
‘What colour you were,’ Anusha snapped.
‘And your curiosity was satisfied?’ Herriard clicked his tongue and the grey and the black moved out into the yard. Anusha dug in her heels and sent her horse after them.
‘Yes. Where you are not touched by the sun you are pink. Not white at all.’ She would not be shamed or embarrassed by him.
‘I suspect that after many days with you I will be turning white on a regular basis,’ he said. ‘Now, be quiet and cover yourself.’ He pulled the tail of his turban round and tucked it in to veil the lower part of his face. Seething, Anusha followed his example and the three horses passed out of the main gate and down the road towards the town without challenge.
She twisted in the saddle for a last look at the great walls towering above her, the fort that contained a palace, the palace that had been her home. Now she was simply a fugitive, neither Anusha, the raja’s pampered niece, nor Miss Laurens, the rejected daughter of an Englishman. The thought was frightening and strangely liberating. She did not have to think about where she was going or how she would get there—for days she would be floating on the stream of fate.
At the pressure of her heels the bay drew alongside Herriard’s big grey. ‘Where do we go?’ she asked in English. She had best practise it, she supposed.
‘Allahabad to start with. Speak Hindi.’
‘So we do not attract attention?’ Anusha tucked the end of the cloth more snugly into the turban as he nodded. ‘You do that without a word spoken. You are too big and too pale.’ She would die rather than admit that she found the sheer size of him comforting.
‘With my hair covered I can be taken for a Pathan,’ Herriard said.
‘They are tall and light-skinned and they have grey eyes, some of the men from the north, I have seen them,’ she agreed. ‘But your eyes are green.’
The town was seething like a disturbed ant heap with the news of the maharaja’s approaching army. The bay snorted and sidled at the press of bullock carts, the running figures and the trains of camels. Herriard reached for her rein, then withdrew his hand when she hissed at him. She had her mount back under control within seconds.
‘I am flattered that you noticed my eyes.’ He skirted round a cow that lay in the middle of the road chewing the cud as it ignored all around it with complete indifference.
‘You should not be. Of course I noticed—you are different. Strange,’ she added to make certain he did not think it a compliment. ‘It is a long time since I saw someone like you.’
He did not answer her, but guided his horse around a spitting, grumbling knot of camels and out over the rickety bridge that spanned the river. So, he was either not easy to goad or he simply dismissed her as unimportant. The moon was up, noticeable now they were away from the torches and the fires, and the angrezi stood in his stirrups to survey the road in front of them.
‘We can take that track there.’ Anusha pointed. ‘It cuts through the fields and it will be deserted now. We will make better time and no one will see us.’
‘And we will leave the tracks of three horses plain on soil that is trodden only by bare feet and oxen. Here, on the road, we will be less easy to track.’
At least he explains, Anusha conceded, then the implication hit home. ‘We will be followed?’
‘Of course. Once it is realised that you are no longer in the palace the maharaja’s spies will pass the word out. I am counting on half a day’s start, that is all.’
Anusha’s stomach tightened. Suddenly the Englishman’s frankness was no longer so welcome. ‘It is more dangerous out here than in the fort. Why did we not stay there until help came?’
He shot her a glance, the silvery light catching his eyes, making them unreal, like the greenish pearl of the inside of a shell. ‘Because your uncle could not be certain that he could protect you within the palace. Your father makes you a very tempting prize for a man who wishes for nothing but his own power and to keep the Company at bay.’
‘I was in danger within the palace?’
‘I think so. I removed you easily enough, did I not?’
‘Yes.’ She took a deep breath. Treachery, spies, danger, lies. And she had thought her life had been so tranquil, so … boring. I could have been kidnapped at any time.
‘Frightened?’
‘Of what?’ she demanded. ‘There is much to choose from.’
That surprised a laugh from him. ‘Of the pursuers, of the journey, of where you are going. Of me.’
‘No,’ Anusha lied. She was afraid of all of those things, but she was not going to admit it. His faint snort of derision showed what he thought of that.
‘You appear to be competent, so I imagine you will evade pursuit,’ she said. It seemed important to convince him of her courage, her ability to undertake this journey. ‘I look forward to being able to look around me, to see things openly and not through the screens of a travelling palanquin. I will deal with my destination when I get there. And as for you, Major Herriard, you are a—’ She searched for the equivalent in Hindi and resorted to English. ‘Gentleman, are you not, if you are an officer? And my mother said that English gentlemen must behave honourably to ladies.’
‘That is the theory,’ he agreed, his voice dry. And then he laughed and spurred his horse into a canter, leaving her to follow, her body tight with apprehension.
Chapter Four
‘Why are we stopping?’ Anusha demanded. The horses had dropped into a trot and then a walk as Major Herriard turned off the road. Beneath their hooves the ground was stony and uneven. ‘This is a terrible surface, we cannot canter on this.’
‘Are you going to question every decision I make?’ he asked without turning his head.
‘Yes.’ Now she did not have to concentrate on keeping her aching body in the saddle the desire to slide off and simply go to sleep was overwhelming. Perhaps when she woke it would all have been a bad dream.
‘The moon will be down very soon and then it will be hard to see where we are going. There are trees over there, cover. We will make a temporary camp and sleep until sunrise. I turned off here because the ground will not show tracks.’
‘Very well,’ Anusha agreed.
‘That is very gracious of you, Miss Laurens, but your approval is not required, merely your obedience.’ Herriard was a dark shape now as he sat motionless on the horse and studied the small group of trees and thorn bushes in what was left of the moonlight. He spoke absently, as though she was peripheral to his interest.
‘Major Herriard!’
‘Call me Nick. Stay here. Your voice has probably scared off anything dangerous lurking in there, but I will check first.’
Nick. What sort of name was that? She translated to take her mind off the fact that she was suddenly alone and things were rustling in the bushes. Quite large things. Was nick not something to do with a small cut? Well, that hardly suited him—the man had the subtlety and brutal force of a sabre slash.
‘There is a small shrine in there, a stone platform we can sleep on and some firewood. We can light a fire and it will be shielded by the walls,’ he said as he rode back to her side. ‘There are water jars for the horses, which is good fortune.’
‘You would plunder a shrine?’ Anusha demanded, more out of antagonism than outrage as she guided her horse after him. Taking water was hardly plunder.
‘We will do no damage. We can leave an offering if you wish.’ He swung down as he spoke and came to hold up a hand to her.
‘I can manage. And what is a Christian doing leaving an offering at a Hindu shrine?’ Her feet hit the ground rather harder than she had been expecting and her knees buckled. Nick’s hand under her elbow was infuriatingly necessary. ‘I said I can manage.’
He ignored her and held on until she had her balance. It felt very strange to be touched by a man, a virtual stranger. It felt safe and dangerous all at the same time. ‘It would cause no offence, I imagine. And after twelve years in this country I am not at all sure what I am. A pragmatist, perhaps. What are you?’
It was a good question. She supposed she had better decide before she reached Calcutta. Her mother had converted to Christianity after she had lived with Sir George for five years. For ten years Anusha had gone with her to church. And in Kalatwah she had lived as a Hindu. ‘What am I? I do not know. Does it matter, so long as one lives a good life?’
‘A sound philosophy. At least that is something we do not have to fight over.’ He did not unsaddle the horses but loosened the girths and then dumped their kit on the stone platform.
‘We do not have to fight at all, provided you treat me with respect,’ Anusha retorted. And stop watching me like a hawk. She found a twiggy branch and began to sweep an area clear of the leaf litter that might harbour insects or a small snake.
‘I will treat you with the respect that you earn, Miss Laurens.’ Herriard … Nick … hefted an urn over to the stone trough by the horses and poured out water. ‘You are a woman and your father’s daughter, which means I do not deal with you as I would a man. After that—’ he shrugged ‘—it is up to you.’
‘I do not wish to go to my father. I hate my father.’
‘You may wish what you will and you may think what you wish, but you will not abuse Sir George in my hearing. And you will obey me. Stay there.’ In the semi-darkness she could not read his face, but Anusha heard the anger. Again he showed that fierce, puzzling, loyalty to her father. He turned and walked away.
‘Wait! Where are you going?’ Surely he was not going to punish her by leaving her here in the dark?
Nick vanished into the scrub and she heard what sounded like boots kicking at the low branches. When he walked back he was doing something to the front of his trousers and she blushed in the gloom. ‘There is a nice thick bush there,’ he said, gesturing. ‘With no snakes.’
‘Thank you.’ With as much dignity as she could muster Anusha stalked down the three steps to the ground and over to the bush. The mundane implications of being alone like this with a man were beginning to dawn on her. There might be vast areas with hardly a bush. How was she supposed to manage then? The wretch seemed to have no shyness, no modesty about mentioning these things at all. Never, in the ten years until she had chased Tavi and found herself in that corridor with Nick, had she been all alone with a man, even her uncle or one of the eunuchs.
When she emerged his attention was, mercifully, on lighting a small fire in an angle of the wall. The flames made a pool of light on the platform, but would be hidden from anyone approaching from the direction they had come. A bed of blankets had been made up close to the fire.
In the shadows she could see the stumpy pillar of the Shiva lingam and the firelight glinted for a moment on something that trickled down its side. ‘People have been here recently.’ She went and looked at the pool of fresh oil on the head of the ancient stone phallus, the spray of flowering shrub that had been laid on the curve of the stylised female organ that it rose from.
‘I have,’ Herriard said as she joined her hands together in a brief reverence. It seemed that, whatever his beliefs, he knew how to show respect to the gods, if not to her. More in charity with him, she turned back and he gestured to food laid out on a large leaf beside the blankets. ‘Here. Eat and drink and then rest. Do not take anything off, not even your boots.’
‘I have no intention of removing anything!’
‘Then you are going to have a very uncomfortable few weeks, Miss Laurens. Oh, sit down, I am far too weary to ravish you tonight!’
That was a jest. She hoped. Warily Anusha sank down on to the blankets. ‘Eat and keep your strength up. Now we can only rest for a short while. Tomorrow night I hope we may take longer.’
‘Where are you going to sleep?’ She took a piece of naan, folded it around what looked like goat’s cheese and ate, surprised at how hungry she was.
‘I will not sleep. I will keep watch.’
‘You cannot do that every night,’ she pointed out.
‘No,’ Nick agreed. ‘I will rest when it is safer and where you can keep watch.’ He tore off a piece of the flat bread and ate it. She caught a glimpse of strong white teeth.
‘Me?’
‘Look around you, Miss Laurens. Who else is there? Sooner or later I must sleep. Or are you not capable of acting as a look-out?’
‘Of course. I am capable of anything. I am a—’
‘Rajput, I know. You are also your father’s daughter, which should mean that there is a brain in there somewhere, despite all evidence to the contrary.’
Anusha choked on a mouthful of water from the flask. ‘How dare you! You are used to this sort of thing, I am not. I have been dragged from my bed, forced to ride through the night with a man—I have never been alone with a man for ten years—I am worried about Kalatwah …’
‘True,’ Nick conceded. It was not much of an apology. ‘I will do my best to preserve your privacy and your modesty, but you must behave as much like a man as you can, for your own safety. Do you understand that?’
‘As you guessed, I do have a brain,’ she retorted. ‘Now I am going to sleep.’
‘Namaste,’ he said, so politely that he must be mocking her.
‘Namaste,’ she returned as she rolled herself into the blankets. She would just close her eyes, rest her aching body. But she would not sleep—she did not trust him.
Anusha woke, suddenly and completely alert, with that thought still in her mind. She had been foolish to fear, it seemed. Her rest had been undisturbed, her blankets were still tight around her. Herriard was moving about, attending to the horses.
From the light it was just past dawn and she must have slept for at least two hours. And he had slept not at all. Anusha watched from beneath half-closed lids as he checked the horses, led them to a patch of longer grass where they might snatch a few mouthfuls. Lack of sleep seemed to have simply made him more alert, the lines of his face tauter.
He was not at all like the men she had lived among for so many years, Anusha decided. Most of the Indian men were slender, lithe. There was an English word and she searched for it. Yes, sleek, that was it. Nick Herriard was not sleek, he was too big, too overtly physical. The high cheekbones, the big nose, the strong chin—all asserted power and will. Anusha remembered the feel of his muscles under her hands and shivered, just as he turned and found her watching him.
She thought that colour came up under the golden tan, then he gestured towards the fire. ‘There is water heating if you want to wash. I will go and scout the road.’
Anusha waited until he had walked out of sight, his musket in one hand, then disentangled herself from the blankets. She used the convenient bush, then washed as best she could. He came back, whistling tactfully, as she was rolling up the blankets.
‘All right?’ He did not wait for her answer, but squatted by the fire and began to make tea, throwing leaves into the boiling water from a pouch that lay amongst the food he had set out. It was the same as last night and the bread would be dry. And she supposed from the brisk manner with which he was preparing it that she should have done this while he was away. She had never been without servants before, either.
‘Eat,’ Nick said, pushing the food towards her and pouring tea into a horn beaker. ‘There is no one in sight, we should get on.’
‘When will we be able to get more food?’ Anusha chewed on the dry bread and wondered if the cheese had been this pungent the night before.
‘When we come across someone who can sell us some.’
‘The next big village is—’
‘We are not going through villages, big or small. Do you want to leave flags to mark our route?’
‘But surely they will give up? We could be anywhere by now.’
Nick washed the stale naan down with tea that was too hot and contemplated the haughty, exquisite face of the young woman opposite him. It was a reasonable question and she was sorely in need of reassurance and comfort, despite the mask she was putting on.
But what Anusha was going to get was a bracing dose of reality and he was going to allow his irritation with this entire situation to ride him. It was the only way he was going to be able to ignore the tension in his groin and the heat that seemed to wash through him whenever he looked at her. Or when she looked at him. He was still recovering from the impact of those grey eyes studying him as he dealt with the horses. It was odd that she should affect him so—Miss Lauren’s spiky personality was hardly alluring.
‘How many armed men do you think it would need to take me?’ he asked. When she just shook her head, he answered himself. ‘Eight, ten perhaps. I have three muskets, but we have lost our other marksman and besides, muskets take time to load. I am good, Miss Laurens, and lucky—I would not be alive today if I was not—but I am just one man. And the maharaja’s spies will have told him that. It will be a blow to his pride that you have escaped him, so he can easily spare a dozen riders to come after us. And they’ll know we’ll be heading east, that is the logical direction to go in.’
He expected fear, possibly tears. Instead she looked at him down the straight little nose that she had definitely not inherited from her father and said, ‘Then teach me to load a musket and go somewhere that is not logical.’
So, he had not been wrong—she had her father’s intelligence after all and her late mother had the reputation for both learning and political cunning. He could have his hands full with her. Even as he thought it he winced at his choice of words—he wanted very much to have his hands full of Anusha Laurens.
‘All right, I’ll teach you to load, that makes sense.’ At least, it would if she could manage it. He had short India Pattern muskets with him, not the British army Land Pattern version, but even so she would be wrestling with a weapon almost forty inches long. ‘And I can aim directly at the Jumna River to find a boat and not head further south-east to Allahabad. But I must do it by the sun and stars—there were no detailed maps of this area and any deviation will add time.’
‘I do not wish to be with you, Major Herriard, but I would like even less to be with that man. Take however long is necessary.’
‘Then we will go more to the east than the road to Allahabad,’ Nick said, getting to his feet and recalculating. The map that he had studied before he had set out was fixed in his memory, but it was sketchy to put it mildly.
‘The muskets?’ she demanded, rising from the dusty stone with the trained grace of a court lady.
The wish that he could see her dance came into his head, irrelevant and unwelcome. A well-bred lady would only dance with her female friends, or for her husband. To do otherwise was to lower herself to the level of a courtesan. Nick found himself pursuing the thought and frowned at her, earning a frigid stare in response. She was not used to being alone with men, and it was a long time since he had been alone with a respectable young woman for any length of time. How the devil was he supposed to treat her? What did he talk to her about?
‘Muskets?’ Anusha repeated, impatience etched in every line of her figure. She was slender, small—the top of her head came up to his ear. He would have to stoop to kiss her … Nick caught himself, appalled, and slammed the door on his thoughts, remembering another slender woman in his arms, of how fragile she had been, how clumsy she had made him feel. But Miranda had been frail as well as fragile—this girl had steel at her core.
‘When we stop to rest at noon.’ He was equally impatient now. The more distance they had between themselves and the fort, the happier he would be. He strapped the blanket rolls on the bay horse and led Rajat, Ajit’s black gelding, forwards for her. In a crisis he could let the bay go and leave her with a horse as highly trained as his own Pavan.
‘Why this one?’
Must she question everything? But he almost welcomed the irritation, it distracted him from fantasies and memories. ‘He knows what to do. His name is Rajat; let him have his head.’
Anusha shrugged and mounted. Nick tied the end of the bay’s long leading rein around his pommel and led them away from the shrine, not back to the track but out across the undulating grasslands, following the line he had mentally drawn on the map in his head.
‘This is deserted,’ Anusha observed after half a league.
‘Yes. Except for the tigers.’
‘We will starve or be eaten. You are supposed to be looking after me.’ She did not sound petulant, merely critical of an inefficient servant.
Nick breathed in hard through his nose and controlled his temper. ‘We have plenty of water. The streams are still running. The horses will sense tigers.’ I hope. ‘Food we can do without for a day or two if necessary. I am, as I promised your father and your uncle, keeping you safe. I never made any promises about comfort.’
She was silent. Then, ‘Why do you dislike me, Major Herriard?’
Pavan pecked, unused to a jerk on his rein. ‘What? I do not know you. And I am not used to young ladies.’
There was a snort and he glanced across at her. The little witch was grinning. ‘That is not what I heard.’
‘Respectable young ladies,’ he said repressively.
‘No?’ She was still laughing, he could hear it, although she was managing to keep her face straight. ‘Is your wife not respectable?’
‘I do not have a wife.’ Not any longer. Nick gritted his teeth and concentrated on scanning the undulating plain before them, plotting a route away from the stands of trees that might harbour a striped death.
‘But why do you not have a wife? You are very old not to have a wife.’
‘I am twenty-nine,’ he snapped. ‘I had a wife. Miranda. She died.’
‘I am sorry.’ She sounded it; the mocking edge had gone from her voice. ‘How many children do you have? Will you marry again soon?’
‘I have no children and, no, I have no intention of marrying again.’ He tried to remind himself that this intense curiosity about family was simply the normal Indian polite interest in a stranger. He was inured to it, surely, by now?
‘Oh, so you were very much in love with her, like Shah Jehan and Mumtaz Mahal. How sad.’ When she was not being imperious or snappy her voice was lovely, soft and melodious with something deeply female in it that went straight to the base of his spine.
‘No, I was not—’ Nick snapped off the sentence. ‘I married too young. I thought it was expected of me as a career officer. I married a girl I thought was suitable, a sweet little dab of a thing with no more strength to cope with India than a new-born lamb.’
‘What was she doing here, then?’ Anusha brought her horse alongside.
‘She was newly arrived in India as part of the Fishing Fleet.’ She murmured a query and he explained. ‘The shiploads of young ladies that come out from England. They are supposed to be visiting relatives, but actually they are on the catch for a husband.
‘I should have taken one look at Miranda Knight and realised that the country would ruin her health within the year. And it did. If I had not married her she would have gone back to England, wed a stout country squire and be the mother of a happy family by now.’
‘She must have loved you to marry you and risk staying here,’ Anusha suggested.
‘Do not turn this into a love story. She wanted a suitable husband and what did I know about marriage and how to make a wife happy with my background?’
‘What background?’
He glanced at Anusha, saw her read his mood in his face and close her lips tightly. After a moment she said, ‘I beg your pardon,’ in careful English. ‘I forgot that the Europeans do not like personal questions.’
He was going to be alone with her for days, weeks probably. It was foolish to make a mystery out of himself. Best to get the questions over and done with now. ‘My parents made a suitable, loveless match. It turned very rapidly into boredom on my father’s part, then anger when my mother persisted in wanting … more. I am not certain I would know what a happy marriage looks like.’
How simple it sounded put like that. All those years of distress and unhappiness, not just for his mother but for the little boy in the middle, aching for the love that both parents were too busy tearing each other apart to give. He was not a little boy now, and he knew better than to expect love. Or to need it.
‘Oh.’ She rode in silence for a while. Then, ‘So you have many mistresses now? Until you marry again?’
‘Anusha, you should not be discussing such things.’ She regarded him quizzically. Of course, she was used to an entirely different model of marriage and sexual relationships. ‘There is no reason for me to marry again. I do not live like a holy man—a sadhu. But neither do I have more than one mistress at a time, and none at the moment.’
‘And did you have a mistress while you were married? No, do not say Anusha like that. I want to understand.’
‘No, I did not. Some men do. I do not think it right.’ And his resolve had been sorely tried after a few weeks of Miranda’s vapours. However careful he was, however gentle, she had decided that sex was crude, unpleasant and for one purpose only. Her relief at becoming pregnant and having a good reason to bar him from her bed had been all too obvious. The familiar guilt came back like an aching bruise: he should have had the self-control to stay out of her bed until she had grown acclimatised to India, talked to her. Not got her with child.
Women before and since had assured him they found bliss in his arms. It seemed he was an acceptable lover and a failure as a husband.
‘I am sorry if I should not have asked these things. Thank you for explaining,’ Anusha said in English, sounding not at all contrite.
‘Don’t mention it,’ he replied in the same language. She was demanding, both emotionally at some level he was not used to, as well as practically. And she was distracting him, taking him away from the present and into the past, and that was dangerous.
The hairs were prickling on the back of his neck—he had learned to listen to his instincts. Nick wheeled Pavan. The grass was still long and lush although the ground was dry. The light wind was already blurring the marks of their passage so it would be hard to see how many horses had just passed.
Anusha had turned with him. ‘There is no one behind us,’ she said. ‘Is there?’
The prickling unease was still under his skin. Nick stood in his stirrups and shaded his eyes. There, in the distance, was a small puff of dust kicked up by a group of riders coming at the gallop. ‘There is. See?’
Chapter Five
‘There is no cover, not for three horses.’ Anusha was proud of how calm she sounded. She could not see the pursuers, but if Nick said they were coming, then she believed him. She loosened the little dagger in her sash.
‘Follow me, exactly,’ he said and turned to ride over a hard-pan of dry baked mud where the rains had once made a large pool. At the middle he swung down from the grey, took the bundles from the back of the bay horse and flung them over Pavan’s saddle. ‘Stay here.’ He swung up on the bay and left the hard ground. As soon as he was on the softer earth he kicked it into a gallop, then lashed it across the flanks, swung down and rolled clear as it careered off into the distance.
‘Take Pavan.’ He tossed her the reins when he got back to her. ‘Walk slowly towards that bush.’
Puzzled, but obedient, her heart thudding uncomfortably high in her throat, Anusha did as she was told. Behind her Nick walked backwards, sweeping a branch over their tracks. She realised as she reached the bush that it was on a very slight swell in the ground, but even so, it was too thin and too low to hide a donkey behind, let alone two horses.
‘Are you going to shoot the horses?’ She slid to the ground as he backed behind the thorn bush next to her.
‘No need.’ He removed both saddles, then whistled, two clear notes, and the horses folded their legs, sank to the ground and rolled on to their sides, necks stretched out. ‘Get down.’
Anusha lay behind the swell of Pavan’s belly as Nick spread the dun-coloured blankets over both animals, then propped the two muskets up on Rajat’s flank and began to check over his hand guns. He laid everything out in order—ammunition, guns, sabre—loosened the knife in his boot and then glanced across at her. ‘Army horses, both of them,’ he explained, then glanced down at her hand. ‘What the devil have you got there?’
‘A knife, of course.’ She would keep the one in her boot hidden until it was absolutely necessary and she had to kill someone. Or herself. A dark excitement was surging through her, as strong as the fear. She wanted to hurt the people who were attacking Kalatwah, her family, her kingdom. For the first time she understood what had taken those warriors out to fight to certain death, understood the spirit of the women who had gone to the flames rather than face slavery and shame.
‘You are not going to need it.’
‘But there will be a fight, a battle.’ She could hear them coming now, the faint drum of hoofbeats. The maharaja’s men had picked up their tracks.
‘Not unless I have made a mistake.’ Nick was rubbing handfuls of dust over the musket barrels to mask their shine. ‘They should ride past, find the bay, conclude it was a ruse to send them off the road.’
‘But we must kill them!’
‘Bloodthirsty little wild cat,’ Nick said, low-voiced. She sensed amusement in him. He had a strange sense of humour if he found this funny. ‘If they do not come back, then the maharaja knows they have found us and will send more men. If they go back without seeing us, he will conclude we have gone another way.’
‘Oh. Strategy.’
‘Tactics, to be exact. Now, be quiet.’
There were eight riders. They passed at the gallop, vanished. Anusha released her pent-up breath and slid a little closer to Nick.
Time stretched on. Her left leg was becoming numb. ‘They have gone.’
‘Wait.’
As Nick spoke she heard them returning more slowly, scanning the ground as they came, the bay on a leading rein. They rode past, then the only sound was the buzz of insects, the rumbling of Rajat’s stomach under her ear, the mew of a hawk high overhead.
‘Stay here.’ Nick began to ease away. ‘You can let go of my coat.’
‘Oh!’ Anusha’s fingers cramped as she released her death-grip. ‘I didn’t realise I was holding it.’ But Nick was already moving, a musket in each hand, pistol in his sash, keeping low over the ground as he dodged from bush to bush.
It was like trying to see a ghost—if she took her eyes from him he would vanish. She blinked and he was gone into the long grass. Even behind the bulk of the horses she felt incredibly exposed, utterly alone. She had not realised what a large emotional space he filled. An infuriating, man-shaped, protective space.
What would she do if she heard shooting? Anusha studied the weapons he had left behind. One musket, one pistol, the bag that contained the ammunition, his sabre. Now was not the time to learn how to reload, but she could take it all to him. She worked out the best way to carry the weapons, wondering if the horses would obey her and get to their feet.
A hand closed around her ankle.
Anusha twisted, her knife in her hand, her other lashing out, fingers bent, nails raking down.
Nick laughed and rolled to one side, releasing her foot. It was the laugh that made her temper snap, that and the long-held tension. Anusha dropped the knife and launched herself at him, intent on hurting his male pride, if nothing else.
The next moment she was flat on her back with her hands pinned above her head and the weight of one very large man on top of her. And he was still laughing. ‘Wild cat. I was right.’
‘You—’ Words, and breath, failed her. ‘Get off me.’
For a long unfathomable moment he stared down into her eyes and his own seemed to darken. Nick stopped laughing. For an instant she thought he had stopped breathing.
‘It is not seemly,’ she managed to say as her mind tried to assimilate all the new sensations of a hard male body pressed against her own softness. She liked them. All of them.
‘No, it is not.’ Nick rolled off her and got to his feet in one fluid movement. He is as supple as a young sapling, Paravi had said. Heat washed through her. ‘I am sorry, I could not resist it. You were quivering like a hound wanting to be let off the leash.’
‘I was listening for shots,’ Anusha said with as much dignity as she could muster, flat on her back and filled with what she was horribly afraid was sexual desire. ‘Have they gone?’
‘They have, no doubt thinking that only a fool would head into the wilds with only two horses and a princess.’
He meant to mock her when he called her princess, she knew that. ‘And are you a fool?’
Nick reached down a hand and hauled her to her feet. ‘No, but I am going to do it anyway.’ He pulled the blankets off the horses and brought them to their feet with a whistle, shaking like dogs to get rid of the dust. ‘We will ride on a league or so and when we are out of earshot I will bring down some game for dinner. Then the muskets will be empty. We will rest a while, drink and I will show you how to load.’ He picked up one of the guns and looked from it to her with a grin. ‘Although I think you will have to stand on a rock to do it, Miss Laurens.’
‘Do not call me that.’ It was intolerable that he should treat her so casually and yet address her with angrezi formality by the name she rejected.
‘Anusha, then?’
‘Anusha,’ she agreed warily. ‘Nick.’
They remounted and rode on in a silence that seemed somehow more companionable than it had yet done.
After two leagues Nick halted and left her with the horses while he took the guns and padded off into the scrub. ‘Drink,’ he said, ‘and get into the shade.’
‘Yes, Major,’ she muttered, but did as she was told, not that there was much shade to be had.
Anusha heard four gunshots and when he returned Nick had a sand grouse and a hare dangling from his hand. That was good shooting with a musket, she knew.
He hunkered down in the small patch of shade beside her and reached for the canteen of water. It spilled from the sides of his mouth and she watched it run through the stubble on his cheeks, saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.
‘You are a soldier, so this is taking you from the army,’ she said when he put down the water and ran the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Why did they not send a diplomat for me?’
‘Because there was always the chance that something like this might happen. And I am a diplomat, of sorts. I move between the army and the princely courts as the Company requires.’ It explained why his Hindi was so good.
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Louise Allen
TO OBEY HIS DUTY IS TO DENY HIS HEART Anusha Laurens is in danger. The daughter of an Indian princess and an English peer, she’s the perfect pawn in the opulent courts of Rajasthan. Even so, she will not return to the father who rejected her. Arrogant angrezi Major Nicholas Herriard is charged with bringing the alluring Princess safely to her new life in Calcutta.Nick’s mission is to protect, to serve – but under the searing Indian sun an initial attraction unfurls into a forbidden temptation. This beautiful, impossible Princess tests the very limits of his honour – especially when Nick is left with only one option to keep Anusha safe: marriage.But the fastflowing waters of the Ganges determine a different fate, and duty may separate them for ever…
Praise for Louise Allen:
MARRIED TO A STRANGER
‘Allen delivers a lovely, sweet story demonstrating how strangers can build a relationship based on lost love. The gentle, yet powerful emotions of a grieving brother are sure to touch readers, as will the budding romance between him and a shy but emotionally strong woman. Allen reaches into readers’ hearts.’
—RT Book Reviews
SEDUCED BY THE SCOUNDREL
‘Allen takes a shipwreck spying adventure with lots of sensuality and spins it into a page-turner. The strong characters and sexy relationship will definitely satisfy readers.’
—RT Book Reviews
RAVISHED BY THE RAKE
‘Allen illuminates a unique side of the Regency by setting her latest adventure in India …’
—RT Book Reviews
PRACTICAL WIDOW TO PASSIONATE MISTRESS
‘With the first in her new trilogy, Allen hooks readers with her charming and well-portrayed characters, especially the secondary cast. You’ll cheer on the hero and the strong-willed heroine to the very end of this highly enjoyable and addictive read.’
—RT Book Reviews
‘You …’ Anusha began, her face against the horse’s shoulder. Then she pushed herself upright and turned to face Nick. ‘You saved my life and I thank you for it.’
The raw emotion was gone, and as her chin came up and she looked at him she was every inch a princess for all the dust and her travel-stained clothing.
Her courage doused the fierceness of his anger and the heat in his blood, but Nick could not find it in himself to be gracious. ‘That is my job,’ he said, his voice cool. ‘To deliver you back alive and in one piece to your father.’
‘You will not let me thank you?’ She took a step that brought her toe to toe with him. ‘They kiss to say thank you, the English, do they not?’
With Pavan solid at his back he could not retreat. Anusha put her hands on his shoulders and stood on tiptoe, her body pressed against his. For an endless moment her mouth touched his, warm and soft.
Her lips parted slightly—an invitation he knew she did not understand. Time stood still while he fought the temptation to snatch her to him, plunder that beautiful mouth, lose himself in an innocence that wanted him. Him.
About the Author
LOUISE ALLEN has been immersing herself in history, real and fictional, for as long as she can remember, and finds landscapes and places evoke powerful images of the past. Louise lives in Bedfordshire, and works as a property manager, but spends as much time as possible with her husband at the cottage they are renovating on the north Norfolk coast, or travelling abroad. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite atmospheric destinations. Please visit Louise’s website—www.louiseallenregency.co.uk—for the latest news!
Previous novels by the same author:
THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER* (#ulink_c8b84005-d55e-5f8f-b6b1-545a6bd8f370)
THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM* (#ulink_c8b84005-d55e-5f8f-b6b1-545a6bd8f370)
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THE DISGRACEFUL MR RAVENHURST* (#ulink_c8b84005-d55e-5f8f-b6b1-545a6bd8f370)
THE NOTORIOUS MR HURST* (#ulink_c8b84005-d55e-5f8f-b6b1-545a6bd8f370)
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PRACTICAL WIDOW TO PASSIONATE MISTRESS** (#ulink_8e7f517c-6398-5b9b-b4cc-8944d1789164)
VICAR’S DAUGHTER TO VISCOUNT’S LADY** (#ulink_8e7f517c-6398-5b9b-b4cc-8944d1789164)
INNOCENT COURTESAN TO ADVENTURER’S BRIDE** (#ulink_8e7f517c-6398-5b9b-b4cc-8944d1789164)
RAVISHED BY THE RAKE† (#ulink_243eb3b2-360f-5c54-bb7f-6de5a8656eb0)
SEDUCED BY THE SCOUNDREL† (#ulink_243eb3b2-360f-5c54-bb7f-6de5a8656eb0)
MARRIED TO A STRANGER† (#ulink_243eb3b2-360f-5c54-bb7f-6de5a8656eb0)
* (#ulink_1e3b4536-1940-5c37-a56b-268398fdcb60)Those Scandalous Ravenhursts
** (#ulink_7dd8a168-9b62-55da-a010-41c1a2bda9a0)The Transformation of the Shelley Sisters
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Forbidden Jewel of India
Louise Allen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Chapter One
The palace of Kalatwah, Rajasthan, India—March 1788
Patterns of sunlight and shade fell through the pierced stone panels on to the white marble floor, soothing to the eye after miles of dusty roads. Major Nicholas Herriard rolled his shoulders to loosen them as he walked. The physical stresses of the long journey began to fade. A bath, a massage, a change of clothes and he would feel human again.
Running feet, the faint, sharp scratch of claws on marble. The hilt of the knife in his boot came to hand with the familiarity of long practice as he twisted to face the side passage, crouched to meet an attack.
A mongoose shot out of the opening, skidded to a halt and chittered at him, every hair on its body fluffed up with aggravation, its tail stuck out behind like a bottle-brush.
‘Idiot animal,’ Nick said in Hindi as the patter of running feet became louder and a girl followed the mongoose, her wide crimson skirts swirling around her as she caught her balance and stopped. Not a girl, a woman, unveiled and unescorted. The part of his brain that was still dealing with an attack analysed the sound of her footsteps: she had changed direction twice just before she emerged, which meant this was one of the off-set entrances to the zanana.
She should not be here, outside the women’s quarters. He should not be here, staring at her with all the blood in his brain heading south, his body poised for violence and a weapon in his hand.
‘You may put away your dagger,’ she said and it took him a moment to adjust and realise she was speaking in lightly accented English. ‘Tavi and I are unarmed. Except for teeth,’ she added, showing hers, white and regular between lips that curved into a smile of faint mockery. It masked, he was certain, shock. The mongoose twined between her bare, hennaed feet, still grumbling to itself. It wore a gem-studded collar.
Nick got a grip on himself, pushed the knife back into its sheath as he straightened and brought his hands together. ‘Namaste.’
‘Namaste.’ Over her own joined hands dark grey eyes studied him. The shock seemed to have turned to suspicion edged with hostility and she was making no effort to disguise either emotion.
Grey eyes? And skin like golden honey and hair that showed streaks of mahogany and deep brown as it fell down her back in a thick plait. His quarry, it seemed, had found him.
She did not appear disconcerted to be alone, unveiled, with a strange man, but stood there and contemplated him. Her full red skirts, weighted with heavy silver embroidery, hung just above her ankles, giving a glimpse of close-fitting trousers. Her tight choli revealed not only delightful curves and elegantly rounded arms decked in silver bangles, but also an unsettling band of smooth golden midriff.
‘I should go. Excuse me for disturbing you,’ Nick said in English and wondered if he was perhaps the more unsettled of the two of them.
‘You have not,’ she replied with crushing simplicity in the same language. She turned and walked through the opening she had appeared from. ‘Mere pichhe aye, Tavi,’ she called as the skirts of her lehenga whisked out of sight. The mongoose followed obediently, the faint click of its claws fading along with her light footsteps.
‘Hell,’ Nick said to the empty passageway. ‘That is quite definitely her father’s daughter.’ Suddenly a simple duty had become something else entirely. He squared his shoulders and strode off in the direction that led to his rooms. A man did not become a major with the British East India Company by being disconcerted by acid-tongued young women, however beautiful. He needed to clean himself up and seek an audience with the raja, her uncle. And after that, all he had to do was to transport Miss Anusha Laurens safely halfway across India, back to her father.
‘Paravi! Quickly!’
‘Speak Hindi,’ Paravi reproved as Anusha entered her room in a flurry of skirts and trailing scarf.
‘Maf kijiye,’ Anusha apologised. ‘I have just this moment been speaking to an Englishman and my head is still translating.’
‘Angrezi? How can you be speaking to any man, let alone an angrezi?’ Paravi, plump and indolent and her uncle’s third wife, raised one exquisitely plucked eyebrow, but she pushed aside the chessboard she had been studying and sat upright.
‘He was in the corridor when I chased Tavi just now. Very big with hair of pale gilt and in the red uniform of the Company’s soldiers. An officer, I think—he had much gold on his coat. Come and see him.’
‘Why so curious? Is he so handsome, this big angrezi?’
‘I do not know what he is,’ Anusha confessed. ‘I have not seen one so close since I left my father’s house.’ But she was curious. And there was something else, a tug of yearning, deep inside, at the memory of another male voice speaking English, of another big man, scooping her up in his arms, laughing with her, playing with her. The man who had rejected her and her mother, she reminded herself as the memory turned sour.
‘He is different from the men I am used to, so I cannot decide if he is handsome or not. His hair is so pale and tied back tightly and his eyes are green and he is tall.’ She waved her hands to illustrate. ‘He is big all over—broad shoulders, long legs.’
‘Is he very white? I have never seen an angrezi before except from a long way away.’ Paravi was becoming interested.
‘His face and his hands are golden.’ Like my father’s were. ‘But the skin of all the Europeans goes brown in the sun, you know. Perhaps the rest of him is white.’
Imagining all of the big Englishman produced a not-unpleasurable shiver which he did not merit. But any novelty was welcome in the restricted world of the zanana, even if this novelty brought with him unsettling reminders of the world outside the fort. The faint sensual tingle was lost in a wave of something close to apprehension. This man made her uneasy.
‘Where has he gone now?’ Paravi uncoiled herself from the heap of cushions she had been occupying. The mongoose immediately dived into the warm spot she had created and curled up. ‘I would like to look on a man who makes all those expressions chase across your face.’
‘To the visitors’ wing—where else should he go?’ Anusha tried not to snap. It was not flattering to be told her face betrayed her. ‘He was very dusty from the road, he will not be seeking audience with my uncle like that.’ She gave herself a little shake to chase away the foolish fancies. ‘Come with me to the Sunset Terrace.’
Anusha led the way through the familiar maze of passages, rooms and galleries that filled the western wing of the palace.
‘Your dupatta,’ her friend hissed as they left the women’s quarters to cross the wide terrace where the raja would sometimes sit to watch the sun sink over his kingdom. ‘There are no grilles here.’
Anusha clicked her tongue in irritation, but unwound the neglected length of cerise gauze from her neck and draped it so it covered her face to the chin. She leaned on the inner balustrade of the terrace and looked down into the courtyard below. ‘There he is,’ she whispered.
Below, on the edge of a garden threaded with rills of water in the Persian manner, the big angrezi was talking to a slender Indian she did not recognise. His body servant, no doubt. The man gestured towards a door.
‘He is telling him where the bath house is,’ Paravi whispered from behind her own dupatta of golden gauze. ‘There is your chance to see whether Englishmen are white all over.’
‘That is ridiculous. And immodest.’ She heard Paravi laugh softly and bristled. ‘Besides, I am not in the slightest bit interested.’ Just burningly, and inexplicably, curious. The two men had vanished into the guest rooms overlooking the garden. ‘But I suppose I had better see whether the water has been heated and someone is in attendance.’
Paravi leaned one rounded hip against the parapet and glanced up as a flock of green parakeets screeched overhead. ‘This man must be important, do you not think? He is from the East India Company and they are all-powerful in the whole land now, my lord says. Far more important than the Emperor in Delhi, even if they do put the Emperor’s head on their coins. I wonder if he is to be the Resident here. My lord said nothing about that last night.’
Anusha rested her elbows on the parapet and noted that her friend seemed to be in favour with her husband. ‘Why would we need a Resident? We do not do so very much trade with them.’ The intriguingly pale head appeared below as the man re-emerged from the door to the guest rooms. ‘I suppose we might be in a useful position for their expansion—that is what Mata used to say. Strategic.’ Her mother had much to say on most subjects, being both well read and greatly indulged by her brother the raja.
‘Your father is still a friend to my lord, even though he never comes here. They exchange letters. He is a great man in the Company: perhaps he thinks we are more important these days and deserving of a Resident.’
‘It must be a matter of great importance for him to bestir himself to think of us,’ Anusha said. Her father had not visited the state of Kalatwah since the day, twelve years ago, when he had sent his twelve-year-old daughter and her mother back, displaced from his home and his heart by the arrival of his English wife.
He sent money, but that was all. Her uncle added it to her dowry chest when she refused to spend it. He told her that she was foolish, that her father had no choice but to send her and her mother home and that Sir George was an honourable man and a good ally of Kalatwah. But that was the talk of men, of politics, not of the love that broke her mother’s heart, even while she agreed with her brother that there had been no other option.
Her father wrote to her uncle, she knew that, for he would tell her there were messages. There had been a note a year ago when her mother had died. She had not read it any more than she had read the others. The moment she saw her father’s name she had thrown it on the brazier and watched it burn to ash.
From the flash of dark eyes behind the veil Paravi was sending her sympathetic glances, which is not what she wanted. No one had any right to be sorry for her. Was she not, at twenty-two, the pampered niece of the Raja of Kalatwah? Was she not indulged with the right to turn down every approach that had been made for her hand in marriage? Was she not supplied lavishly with clothes and jewels and servants and all the luxury she wished for? Did she not possess everything that she could possibly want?
Except knowing where I belong, the nagging little voice in her head said, the voice that, for some reason, always spoke English. Except knowing who I am and why I am and what I am going to do with the rest of my life. Except for freedom.
‘The angrezi is going to the bath.’ Paravi drew back a pace from the parapet even as she craned to see. ‘That is a fine robe. His hair is long now it is loose,’ she added. ‘What a colour! It is like that stallion my lord sent to the Maharaja of Altaphur as a gift when the monsoon ended, the horse they called the Gilded One.’
‘He has probably got as high an opinion of himself as that animal had,’ Anusha said. ‘But at least he bathes. Do you know, many of them do not? They think it unhealthy! My father said that they do not have champo in Europe—they powder their hair instead. And just wash their hands and faces. They think hot water is bad for them.’
‘Ugh! Go and see and tell me about him.’ Paravi gave her a little push. ‘I am curious, but my lord would not be pleased if he thought I was looking upon an angrezi without his clothes.’
He would also have much to say if his niece was discovered doing just that, Anusha reflected as she ran down the narrow stairway and along the passage. She was not at all sure why she wanted to get closer to this stranger. It was not any desire to attract his attention, despite the shiver which was, of course, simply a normal female reaction to a man in his prime—far from it. She did not want those green eyes studying her—they seemed to see too much. There had been a flash of recognition in them when they had met. Recognition and something far more basic and male.
She left her sandals in the doorway and peeped around the corner of the bathhouse. The Englishman was already naked and face down on a linen sheet draped over the marble slab, his body gleaming with water. He rested his forehead on his linked hands as one of the girls, Maya, worked the mixture of basun powder, lime juice and egg yolks into his hair. Savita was bent over his feet, oiling and massaging. Between head and heels there was a great deal of man to be seen in an interesting shading of colours.
Anusha walked in with a warning nod to the two girls to stay silent and keep working. His neck was the colour that his face and hands, both hidden by his wet hair, had been. His shoulders, back and arms were a paler gold. His legs were lighter still and the skin behind his knees was almost white, a pinkish shade. The line where his belt must habitually lie was very clear, for his buttocks were as pale as the backs of his knees.
His legs and arms were dusted with brown hair, she noticed. It was wiry and much darker than his flaxen head. Was his chest like that, too? She had heard that some Englishmen were so hairy that their backs were covered with a pelt of it. They must be like bears. She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the thought, then found she was standing right next to the slab. How did his skin feel?
Anusha reached for the jar of oil, poured a little into her palms and placed them flat, one on each shoulder blade. Under her hands she felt his muscles tighten, the skin twitch with the contact of the cool liquid. Then he relaxed again and she brought her hands sliding down slowly until they rested at his waist.
The pale skin felt just like any other skin, she decided. The muscles though, those were … shocking. Not that she had any basis for comparison, of course. She had never touched a man’s naked flesh in her life.
Maya began to rinse his hair, pouring water from a brass ewer and catching it in a bowl. Savita had moved up to his calves and was kneading the long muscles. Anusha found she was stuck, unwilling, for some mysterious reason, to lift her hands, too disconcerted by the feel of a man’s body to venture any further.
Then he spoke, the vibration of his deep voice reaching her through her palms. ‘Am I to hope that you will all be joining me in my room after this?’
Nick felt the stir in the air, the faint pad of bare feet on the marble. Another girl—he was being treated as an honoured guest, which boded well for his mission. The strong, skilled fingers massaging his scalp made him want to purr, the muscles of his feet and ankles were relaxing into something approaching bliss. The new arrival brought with her a faint suggestion of jasmine to mingle with the sandalwood of the oil and the lime in the champo. He had smelt that earlier, somewhere.
Hands, coated with oil that had not been allowed to warm, settled on his back and hesitated. In comparison to the other two, this attendant was either unskilled or nervous. Then his brain placed the scent as the hands slid downwards to his waist and stopped again.
‘Am I to hope that you will all be joining me in my room after this?’ Nick said, in English. As he expected the sure hands at his head and on his calves did not pause in their smooth rhythm, but the fingers at his waist tightened into claws. ‘All three of you at once should be most pleasurable,’ he added with deliberate provocation, his voice sultry with suggestion as he teased her. ‘I shall ask for the bed chains to be fixed to the ceiling hooks to make a swing.’
There was a sharp indrawn breath and the claws tightened in a fleeting pain before she lifted her hands away. ‘How interesting that even the bathhouse attendants here speak good English,’ he added. It was only sporting to let her know he had realised she was there and had spoken deliberately. The faintest hiss of indrawn breath, the silken whisper of her clothing, the brush of air on his skin and she was gone.
Nick found he was breathing hard and made himself relax. If he was feeling aroused it was because he was stark naked while his body was massaged by highly skilled hands. George’s daughter had nothing to do with it. The little witch had doubtless thought it would be amusing to play a trick on him—she would not make the same mistake again. He made his mind blank and gave himself up to the sensations surrounding him.
‘Well?’ Paravi clapped her hands for the maids. ‘We will drink pomegranate juice while you tell me all about him.’ She cocked her head on one side and her nose ring swung with the movement, its tiny gold discs jingling.
‘He is a pig.’ Anusha plumped down on the pile of cushions opposite and disentangled her scarf with an impatient tug. ‘He knew it was me, even though he had his eyes closed, and he deliberately provoked me with indecent suggestions. The man must have eyes in the back of his head, or he uses witchcraft.’
‘So he had his back to you?’ Paravi appeared to find this disappointing.
‘He was lying face down on the slab being massaged and having his hair washed.’
‘So how did he know it was you?’
‘I have no idea. But he spoke in English to trap me.’ Paravi clicked her tongue. Anusha took a deep breath and attempted to report dispassionately. ‘He is not white, but the parts of him that have not been in the sun are pinkish. Like the muzzle of a grey cow is. Only paler.’
‘So.’ Paravi stretched. ‘He uses witchcraft, he is the colour of a cow’s nose and he is not a fool. Is he a good lover, I wonder?’
‘He is too big,’ Anusha said with the absolute confidence of a woman who had studied all the texts on the subject and had looked at a very wide range of detailed pictures while she was at it.
A wife was expected to have considerable theoretical knowledge of how to please her husband and Mata had made sure that her education in that area had not been neglected. Anusha sometimes wondered if knowing so much was not responsible for her reluctance to agree to any of the marriages that had been proposed for her.
If one had the luxury of choice it did make you look at the man concerned very carefully while you considered the matter. And then you tried to imagine doing those things with him and … and, so far, those mental pictures had been quite enough to make her reject every one of the suitors offered to her.
‘Too big?’ Paravi was still dwelling on her description of the scene in the bathhouse. Her eyes were wide with an amused surprise that Anusha was not certain she quite understood.
‘How could someone so large be supple and sensual?’ she added in explanation, with what she felt was crushing logic. ‘He would be a lump. A log of wood.’ He had certainly felt like teak under her hands. A contrary memory flickered through her mind of him twisting, fast as a snake, the knife in his hand. But that had simply been trained violence, not the subtle magic of the sensual arts.
‘A lump,’ her uncle’s wife echoed, her lips curling into a wicked smile. ‘I must see this human log more closely.’ She gestured to the maid. ‘Find out at what hour my lord holds audience with the angrezi and in which diwan.’ Paravi turned to Anusha, suddenly every inch a rani. ‘You will join me in my gallery.’
Chapter Two
Nick changed, choosing his clothing with some care—the message from the raja had stipulated no uniform. When the escort came he walked, relaxed, between the four heavily armed members of the royal bodyguard. He had not expected to be received with anything but warmth, but it was good to have that confirmed. If Kirat Jaswan had decided his interests lay elsewhere than with the East India Company now that his sister was dead, then Nick’s mission would have become both dangerous and exceedingly difficult.
He supposed, if diplomacy failed, it was possible to remove an unwilling, intelligent and able-bodied princess from a heavily fortified palace in the middle of her uncle’s kingdom and get her back across hundreds of miles to Delhi with an angry raja’s troops at his heels, but he would prefer not to have to try. Or to start a small war in the process.
As it was, he felt good. He was clean, he was relaxed by the bath and the massage and the amusement of teasing the infuriating female he had to escort out of here.
Now, with her mother dead, and her father’s own wife gone, there was no one to hurt by George removing his daughter from the raja’s court and turning her into an English lady. And there were a number of very good political reasons for bringing her to Calcutta into the bargain.
Nick strode into the Diwan-i-Khas, the Hall of Private Audience. In his peripheral vision he was aware of marble pillars, the men in the robes and the ornate safa turbans of the elite on either side, of guards, their weapons drawn in ceremonial salute.
He kept his eyes on the slight figure in a gold embroidered chauga seated amidst piled cushions on the silver-embossed throne on the dais before him. As he reached two sword-lengths from the steps he made the first obeisance, aware of the flutter of silks, the drift of perfume, from behind the stone grillework of the gallery. The ladies of the court were there, watching and listening. Those in favour would have access to the raja, would give him their opinion of his guest. Was Miss Laurens there? He was certain that curiosity would have brought her.
‘Your Highness,’ he said in English. ‘Major Nicholas Herriard, at your service. I bring salutations from the Governor of the Calcutta Presidency with most grateful thanks for the honour of my reception.’
The white-clad munshi looked up from his writing desk at the raja’s feet and spoke in rapid Hindi. Raja Kirat Jaswan replied in the same language while Nick kept his face studiously blank.
‘His Highness, Lord of Kalatwah, Defender of the Sacred Places, Prince of the Emerald Lake, Favoured of the Lord Shiva …’ Nick stood frozen in place while the munshi reeled off the titles in English. ‘… commands you to approach.’
He stepped forwards and met the shrewd dark brown eyes that were regarding him from beneath the jewelled and plumed brocade of the turban. Overhead the ropes of the punkah fan creaked faintly.
The raja spoke. ‘It gives me pleasure to welcome the friend of my friend, Laurens,’ the secretary translated. ‘You left him in good health?’
‘I did, your Highness, although low in spirits from the death of his wife. And … another loss. He sends letters and gifts by my hand as does the Governor.’
The secretary translated. ‘I was sorry to hear of his wife and that his heart is still in grief, as mine is for the death of my sister last year. I know he will have shared my feelings. There is much to discuss.’ He waved a hand at the munshi. ‘We have no need of a translator, I think,’ the raja added in perfect English. ‘You will join me and we will relax, Major Herriard.’
It was a command, a great favour and exactly what Nick was hoping for. ‘My lord, you do me honour.’
The rani’s position in the women’s gallery around the audience hall was the very best position for observing and listening. Anusha had settled comfortably against the piled pillows next to Paravi as maids placed low tables covered in little dishes around them.
‘We should hear well,’ said the rani as they waited for the raja to arrive. The acoustics had been carefully designed in all the rooms: in some to baffle sound, in others to enable eavesdropping with ease. Here, in circumstances where the raja would consult with his favourite after a meeting, a conversation in a normal tone would reach easily to the pierced screens.
‘Savita tells me that your log of wood is as supple as a young sapling,’ Paravi added mischievously. ‘Such muscles …’
Anusha dropped the almonds she had just picked up. Rummaging in the cushions to retrieve them at least gave her the chance to compose her face and suppress her unruly imagination. ‘Truly? You amaze me.’
‘I wonder if he has read all the classical texts,’ Paravi continued. ‘He would be so strong, and most vigorous.’
Anusha took an incautious mouthful of nuts and coughed. Vigorous …
‘And he has very large … feet.’
There was no answer to that, especially as she was not sure what Paravi meant and suspected she was being teased. Anusha feigned interest in the arrival below of the male courtiers as they poured in to fill up the hall in a noisy, jostling, colourful mass. As the servants went from niche to niche, lighting the ghee lamps, the mirror fragments and gems in the walls and ceilings began to reflect back the light in scintillating patterns like constellations in the darker sky of shadows.
Faintly, there was the sound of the musicians tuning their instruments in the courtyard. It was beautiful and familiar and yet Anusha felt an ache of something she was beginning to recognise as loneliness.
How was it possible to feel lonely when she was never alone? To feel she was not part of this world when it had been her life for ten years, when she was surrounded by her mother’s family?
Her uncle walked through the crowd and took his place, gestured for the courtiers to be seated, then beckoned.
A tall figure in a sherwani of gold-and-green brocade over green pajama trousers walked through the seated men to the steps of the throne. For a moment Anusha could not place him until the pale gold of his hair, falling on his shoulders, caught the light. He bowed his head, his cupped right hand lifting to his heart in the graceful gesture of obeisance. As he straightened she saw the green fire of an emerald in his earlobe.
‘Look,’ she whispered to Paravi. ‘Just look at him!’ In the costume of the court the major should have looked more ordinary, but he did not. The brocade and the silks, the severe lines of the long coat and the glitter of gems, made the pale hair and the broad shoulders and the golden skin seem more exotic, more strange.
‘I am doing so!’
The raja motioned impatiently to the servants and they lifted the cushions from the foot of the dais and arranged them on the right side of the throne where the munshi’s desk had stood. ‘You will join me,’ Kirat Jaswan said.
‘My lord. You do me honour.’ The Hindi was accurate, perfectly accented. The big Englishman sank down and crossed his legs beneath him with the ease of an Indian. The raja dropped his hand to his shoulder and leaned over to speak.
‘I cannot hear,’ Paravi complained. ‘But here is the food, they cannot both whisper and eat.’
Indeed, as a succession of small dishes were presented to the raja, and he offered them in turn to the angrezi, the two men straightened up and most of what they said could be heard. But, to Anusha’s frustration, it was all the most innocuous conversation.
She ate absently, her eyes on the fair hair beneath, the glimpses of the Englishman’s profile as he turned his head to answer her uncle. His voice held the easy rhythms of a man who had not only been taught Hindi well, but who used it, day in, day out. What had he said his name was? Herriard? A strange name—she tried it out silently.
Then the food was finally cleared away, the scented water and cloths presented for the washing of hands and the great silver hookah was brought, with an extra mouthpiece for the guest. Both men appeared to relax as the music began.
‘They are discussing something of importance now,’ Paravi said. ‘See how they use the mouthpieces to shield their lips so that no one can read them.’
‘Why should they be so concerned? It is only the court around us.’
‘There are spies,’ the rani said after a swift glance. She lifted her hand with apparent casualness to shield her own mouth. ‘The Maharaja of Altaphur will have men in the court and agents here amongst the servants.’
‘Altaphur is an enemy?’ Surprised, Anusha twisted to face her. ‘But my uncle considered his request to wed me and sent him a fine horse when I refused. He said nothing then about any enmity.’
‘It is safer to pretend to be friends with the tiger who lives at the bottom of one’s garden than to let him see you know about his teeth. My lord would not have allowed the match even if you had agreed, but he made it seem the refusal was a woman’s whim, not a ruler’s snub.’
‘But why is he an enemy?’
‘This is a small but rich state—there is much to covet here. And, as you said earlier, we are in a position that interests the East India Company so they will make concessions to whoever rules, perhaps.’ Paravi spoke as though she was just working this out, but Anusha sensed a deeper knowledge behind the words. She caught an edge of fear in the other woman’s voice. Much had been hidden from her, she realised. Even her friend had been wearing a mask. No one had trusted her with the truth. Or perhaps they just thought her not important enough: the niece with the English blood in her veins.
‘There will be war?’ The state had been at peace for almost seventy years. But the court poets and musicians told the stories of past battles and of terrible defeats as well as glorious victories, of the men riding out, dressed in their ochre funerary robes, knowing they were going to their deaths, and the women filing down to the great burning pyres to commit jauhar, ritual suicide, rather than fall into the hands of the conqueror. Anusha shuddered. She would choose to ride out to die in battle, not go to the pyre.
‘No, of course not,’ the rani said with a confidence that Anusha did not believe. ‘The Company will protect us if we are their allies.’
‘Yes.’ It was best to agree. Anusha looked down at the golden head, bent listening. Then the Englishman looked up to meet the raja’s eyes and she caught the intensity in his face as he spoke with sudden passion, his hand slashing out in a gesture she could not interpret.
The court was moving back to clear space for a nautch. The dancers entered amidst the music of the bells on the silver chains around their ankles. Then they began to move, perfectly together, their wide, vivid skirts swinging out like exploding fireworks. But the two men did not spare them a glance and Anusha felt a cold finger of apprehension trail down her spine.
She went to her bedchamber unsettled and restless, her mind churning with her anxieties over the threat from across the border and the humiliation of the bathhouse.
‘Anusha.’ Paravi came in, her face serious.
‘What is it?’ Anusha dropped the book she was thumbing through and pushed back the loose hair that spilled over her shoulders.
‘My lord wishes to speak with you privately, without his councillors. Come to my chamber.’
Anusha realised that there were no maids present—neither her own, nor any with the rani. She stood up from the low couch, slid her feet into sandals and followed Paravi while her mind whirled with speculation.
Her uncle was unattended, his face starkly under-lit by the little lamps flickering on a low table by his side. Anusha made her reverence and waited, wondering why Paravi had pulled her veil over her face.
‘Major Herriard here has come from your father,’ Kirat Jaswan said without preamble. ‘He is concerned for you.’
Her father? Her pulse jolted with something close to fear. What could he want with her? Then the raja’s wording struck her. ‘Here?’
The big man stepped out of the shadows and bowed, unsmiling. He was still in Indian dress. The lamplight caught the gleam of the emeralds in his ear lobes, the silver embroidery and buttons of his coat. He looked both exotic and utterly comfortable, as at home in this guise as he seemed in the scarlet uniform.
‘I thought you were from the Company,’ Anusha challenged him in Hindi. ‘Not my father’s servant.’
The raja hissed a word of reproof, but the Englishman answered her in the same language, his green eyes meeting hers with a bold, assessing stare. No man should look at an unveiled woman not of his family like that. ‘I come from both. The Company is concerned about the intentions of the Maharaja of Altaphur towards this state. And so is your father.’
‘I understand why they should be concerned about a threat to Kalatwah. But why is my father thinking about me after all these years?’ Her uncle did not reprove her for not veiling herself. It was as though he was suddenly treating her as an Englishwoman, she thought with a shiver of alarm. The rani had slipped back into the shadows.
‘Your father has never ceased to concern himself with your welfare,’ the man Herriard said. He sounded irritated with her and when she shook her head in instinctive denial he frowned. ‘He saw the offer of marriage from Altaphur as a threat, a way of pressuring the Company through you.’
Her father knew about that? Kept such a close watch over her? It took her a moment for the meaning to force its way through resentment and the unsettling atmosphere of conspiracy. ‘I would have been a hostage?’
‘Exactly.’
‘How dreadful, that I might inconvenience the Company and my father in that way.’
‘Anusha!’ The raja slapped his palm down on the table.
‘Miss Laurens—’
‘Do not call me that.’ Her knees were shaking, but no one could see beneath the long skirts of her robe.
‘It is your name.’ Presumably the man spoke to his troops in this manner. She was not one of his troops. Anusha’s chin went up—that stopped it trembling as well.
‘Your father and I agree it would be better for you to return to his house,’ her uncle said. His quiet voice with its expectation of instant obedience cut across their hostility.
‘Go back to Calcutta? Go back to my father after he threw us out? He does not want me, only to stop me interfering with his political schemes. I hate him. And I cannot leave you and Kalatwah when there is danger, my lord. I will not run away—never!’ In her mind the crackle of flames and the clash of steel mingled with the sound of a big man’s belly-laugh and her mother’s stifled sobs.
‘Such drama,’ Herriard drawled, blowing the swirling images away like a draught of cold air. She itched to slap his well-defined jaw. ‘Ten years ago your father was in an impossible position and did the only honourable thing open to him to ensure the well-being of yourself and your mother.’
‘Honour! Pah!’
Herriard went very still. ‘You never, in my hearing, defame the honour of Sir George Laurens, do you understand?’
‘Or?’ Her neck muscles were so tense it was painful.
‘Or you will find it a matter for regret. If you will not leave because your father commands it, then do it for his Highness, your uncle. Or are your grudges so deep that you would hamper the defence of his state, the safety of the family, to indulge them?’
Grudges? He can calmly dismiss feelings about the betrayal of love, the rejection of a family, as a grudge? The marble floor seemed to quiver like sand beneath her feet. Anusha choked back the furious retort and looked at her uncle. ‘Do you want me to go, my lord?’
‘It is best,’ Kirat Jaswan said. He was everything to her: ruler, uncle, surrogate father. She owed him her total obedience. ‘You … complicate matters, Anusha. I would have you safe where you belong.’
So I do not belong here? No matter how she had been feeling these past months, this was too sudden, too abrupt. Her uncle had cast her out too, as her father had. Now she truly was adrift with nowhere to call home. To protest, would be futile, and beneath her. She was a Rajput princess by training, even if her blood was mixed. ‘I do not belong with my father. I never did, he made that clear as crystal. But because you, my lord and uncle, ask it, I shall go.’
And she would not weep, not in front of that arrogant angrezi who had got what he came for, it seemed: her surrender. She was of a princely house and she had her pride and she would do what her ruler commanded and not show fear. If he had commanded her to ride into battle to her death with his troops she would have done. Somehow that felt less frightening than this. ‘When must I go?’
The Englishman Herriard answered. It was as though her uncle had already washed his hands of her and had given her over to the other man. ‘You leave as soon as the vehicles and animals can be gathered and the journey provisioned. It is a long way and will take us many weeks.’
‘I remember,’ Anusha said. Weeks of blank discomfort and misery, clinging to her mother who was too proud to weep. Sent away because the big, loving, bear of a man who had hugged her and spoiled her, who had been the centre of her world and her mother’s universe, had cast them out. Because love, it seemed, was not for ever. Expediency conquered love. It was a lesson that had been well learned.
Then what Herriard had said penetrated. ‘Us? You will take me?’
‘Of course. I am your escort, Miss Laurens.’
‘I am so very sorry,’ she said, baring her teeth in a false smile. She would make every league a misery for him, if she could, the insensitive brute. ‘You obviously do not wish for this duty.’
‘I would walk the entire way in my bare feet if Sir George asked it,’ Major Herriard said. The cold green eyes looked back at her without liking or anger, as hard as the emeralds in his ears. ‘He is as a father to me and what he wants, Miss Laurens, I will ensure that he gets.’
A father? Just who was this man whose devotion went so far beyond a soldier’s obedience? ‘Fine words,’ Anusha said as she turned to leave. ‘I do hope you will not have cause to eat them.’
Chapter Three
‘If that man sends one more message about what I must and must not take I will scream.’ Anusha stood in the midst of harried, scurrying maids and searched for a word to describe Nicholas Herriard. With a phrase quivering on her tongue she caught Paravi’s amused gaze and compromised. ‘Budmash.’
‘Major Herriard is not a villain or a knave,’ the rani said, her tone of reproof in conflict with the curve of her lips. ‘And he will hear you—he is only on the other side of the jali. It is a long journey. He is right to make certain you will have everything you need, yet not too much.’
‘What is he doing there?’ Anusha demanded, raising her voice. If the wretched man was listening behind the pierced screen wall then he deserved to hear her opinion. The men who ruled her life had left her two choices: she could weep and give up or she could lose her temper. Her pride would not allow the first, so the major must bear the brunt of the other. ‘This is the women’s mahal.’
‘There is a eunuch with him and curtains have been hung around the room,’ Paravi hissed. ‘He is checking everything as it is packed.’
‘Hah! My uncle says I may have twenty elephants, forty camels, forty bullock carts, horses …’
‘And I say it is too much,’ said a deep voice from behind the far wall of pierced stone. Anusha jumped and stubbed her toe on a studded chest. ‘Anyone would think you are going to marry the Emperor, Miss Laurens. And besides, your father will want you to wear Western clothes and jewels in Calcutta.’
‘Mata told me about those clothes.’ Anusha marched across a stack of carpets until she was next to the jali. A large shadow on the silk hangings was all she could see of him through the screen. ‘Corsets! Stockings! Garters! She said they were instruments of torture.’
There was a snort from the other side. ‘They are not things a lady mentions in the presence of a man,’ Herriard said, laughter quivering in his voice.
‘Then go away. I do not require your presence here. I do not require your presence at all, anywhere, gloating because you are getting your way. If you listen from hiding like a spy, then you must endure whatever I say.’ There was a faint moan from the rani behind her. ‘Go away, Major Herriard. Twenty elephants are no slower than ten.’
‘Twenty elephants eat twice as much as ten,’ he retorted. ‘We leave the day after tomorrow. Anything that is not ready, or will not go on half the transport you have listed, will be left behind. And whilst I feel the greatest satisfaction in following your father’s wishes, I am not gloating.’
Anusha opened her mouth to retort, but the sound of footsteps leaving the other room silenced her. It was intolerable to be prevented from arguing because the man had the ill manners to remove himself.
‘Find me a dagger,’ she said, narrowing her eyes at the nearest maid, who was apparently rooted to the spot. ‘That at least I will take—I can imagine a nice broad target for it.’ And she would take all her jewels because when she was in Calcutta and Major Herriard was no longer her jailer she would need them to pay for her escape from her prison. From her father’s house.
Her dagger was in her hand and she would use it because the wretched angrezi was shouting at her and shaking her and drums were beating the alarm and there was danger all around.
‘Ah! Ra—’ Anusha’s shriek of rape was choked in her throat as a large hand clamped over her mouth. She had been asleep, dreaming, but now—
‘Quiet,’ Nicholas Herriard hissed in her ear. ‘We must leave, at once, in secret. When I take my hand away you will whisper or I’ll clip you on the jaw and carry you out. Do you understand?’
Furious, frightened—do not let him see that—Anusha nodded and he removed his hand. ‘Where are my maids?’ He jerked his head towards the corner and she opened her mouth to scream as she saw the two crumpled bodies lit by the flickering light of one ghee lamp. The hand came back, none too gently. The skin bore the calluses of a rider and chafed her lips. He tasted of leather.
‘Drugged,’ he murmured in her ear, pressing his palm tight over her mouth to foil her attempt to bite. ‘There are spies, I cannot risk it. Listen.’ He freed her mouth again.
Now she was awake she realised that the drums that had been echoing through her dream were real, their sound vibrating through the palace. She had never heard them like this, at night, so urgent. ‘An attack?’
‘The Maharaja of Altaphur has moved fast. There are war elephants and cavalry not four hours distant.’
‘He discovered you are here? That you had come for me?’ Anusha sat up, dragged the covers around her as Herriard sank back on his heels beside the low bed. He was wearing Indian dress again, but now it was plain riding gear with boots and a tight, dark turban to cover the betraying shimmer of pale hair.
‘He was already mobilising his troops—he must have been to get so close so fast. Then his spies told him that someone from the Company was here, perhaps that I intended to take you away, perhaps that I was negotiating. My guess is that he decided on a pre-emptive strike to seize the state before your uncle made an alliance with the Company.’
‘My uncle will not surrender to him!’ The floor was cold under her bare feet as she scrambled out of bed, the night air chill through the thin cotton of her shift.
‘No, he will stand firm. The raja has already despatched riders to his allies in Agra and Gwalior and to Delhi. The Company will send troops as soon as it receives the news and then I suspect Altaphur will back down without further fighting. Your uncle only has to withstand a siege for a matter of weeks.’
Was he attempting to soothe her with easy lies? Anusha tried to read his face in the gloom and control her churning stomach. ‘You will stay here and fight?’ Why one more soldier would make any difference, she did not know, but somehow the thought of this man at her uncle’s right shoulder made her feel better. He was arrogant, aggravating and foreign, but she had no doubt that Major Herriard was a warrior.
‘No. You and I are leaving. Now.’
‘I am not going to leave my uncle and run away! What do you take me for? A coward?’ His eyes flickered over her and she was suddenly aware of how thin her garment was, of how her nipples had peaked in the cool air. Anusha swept the bedcovers around her like a robe and glared at him as he got to his feet. ‘Lecher!’
‘I rather hoped I could take you for a sensible woman,’ he said with a sigh. He added something under his breath in English and she pounced on it.
‘What is this? A tutty-hooded female?’
‘Totty-headed. Foolish,’ he translated. ‘No, clawing my eyes out is not going to help.’ He caught her wrists with contemptuous ease. ‘Listen to me. Do you think it will help your uncle to have to worry about you on top of everything else? And if the worst happens, what are you going to do? Lead the women to the pyres or become a hostage?’
Anusha drew in a deep breath. He is right, may all the demons take him. She knew where her duty lay and she was not a child to refuse out of spite. She would go, not because this man told her to, but because her raja willed it. And because this was no longer her home. ‘No, if my uncle tells me to go, then I will go.
How?’
‘You can ride a horse?’
‘Of course I can ride a horse! I am a Rajput.’
‘Then dress for riding—hard riding. Dress as a man and wear tough cloth and good boots, wrap your hair in a turban. Bring a roll of blankets, the nights are cold outside, but only pack what you must have. Can you do that? I will meet you in the court below. Jaldi.’
‘I may be totty-headed, Major Herriard, but I am not a fool. And, yes, I understand the need to hurry.’
‘Can you dress without help?’ He paused on the threshold, a broad shadow against the pale marble.
Beyond words, Anusha threw a sandal at him and its ivory toe-post broke against the door jamb. He melted away into the darkness, leaving her shivering, the drumbeats vibrating through her very bones. For a moment she stood there, forcing herself to think clearly of what she must do, then she ran to the two maids. Under her groping fingers the blood beat strongly below their jawbones. Spies or not, they were alive.
She lifted the nightlight and took it round the room, touching it to the wicks of the lamps in every niche until there was enough light to see by. The mirrored fragments in the walls reflected her image in a myriad of jagged shards as she pulled out the last of the trunks, the one containing clothes for use on the journey. She dressed in plain trousers, tight in the calf, wide at the thigh, then layers above, topped by a long, dark brown split-sided coat. Her soft riding boots were there and she pulled them on, slid a dagger into the top of the right one and another, a tiny curved knife, into her belt.
It was quick to twist her hair into a tight plait to pile on the crown of her head and she wrapped and tied a turban out of dark brown cloth, fumbling as she did so. Sometimes she secured her hair like this when riding, but her maids had always tied it.
Money. How much money did Herriard have? Anusha pulled the long cloth free, rummaged in the trunk again and found the jewels she had intended to wear as they arrived in Calcutta, chosen to emphasise her status and her independence. She stuffed the finest into a bag, coiled her hair around it and rewrapped the turban.
Two blankets rolled around a change of linen, toilet articles, a bag containing hairpins and comb, tinder box. What else? She rubbed her temples—the drums stopped her thinking properly, invaded her head. Soon someone would come to check on her, fuss over her, shepherd her to the inner fastness of the palace where she really wanted to be. Where it was her duty not to go.
Anusha found her little box of medicines, added that, rolled up the blankets, tied them with leather straps and caught up the bundle in her arms. The walls were honeycombed with passages and stairs and she took one of the narrowest and least-used ways down, tiptoeing as she reached the doorway.
But Herriard had seen her. He stepped away from the wall, his eyes glinting in the reflected torchlight, and reached for the bundle.
‘I can manage. No, not that way, I must say goodbye to my uncle, to the Lady Paravi—’
‘And risk being seen? They know what we are doing and they have other things to think about just now. Come on.’ He pushed her in front of him through the door, back into the palace. He seemed to know the way as well as she, pulled her into alcoves as servants ran past, knew when to stop and slide into the shadows to avoid a distracted sentry, his attention on someone shouting on the battlements.
A slender figure stepped out right in front of them and she stopped so abruptly that Herriard ran into her and gripped both her arms above the elbow to steady himself. His body was hard and immovable against her back and his voice was a soft rumble. Suddenly she was glad of his size. When he released her it was as though a bulwark had been removed.
‘Ajit, are the horses ready?’
‘Yes, sahib,’ the man said and she recognised the major’s servant. He must have run up the steep road from the base court for he was panting. ‘Pavan and Rajat and a good mare for the lady. The lower gate is still open for soldiers taking up positions outside the walls, but we must hurry or we will be noticed.’
They ran, skidding on the black stones worn smooth by the passage of elephants and horses and men over hundreds of years, hugged the walls that loomed over them, slowed at every one of the gates where the road changed direction, all the better to confuse attackers if they got within the outer defences.
One more gate, Anusha thought, as she bounced painfully off a ring set in the wall. There was a cry ahead, a thud and Herriard stopped, bent over Ajit’s sprawled figure.
‘Collarbone, sahib,’ the man gasped. ‘Broken. I am sorry.’ He sat up and she saw his right shoulder sloped down at an unnatural angle. In the torchlight his face was grey.
‘You must stay.’ Herriard helped him to his feet and propped him up against the wall. ‘Go back up and see the court physician. He is to be trusted. Tell him to let his Highness know we are safe away.’
‘Sahib, take my bundle, too—there are weapons.’
‘I will. You take care, Ajit, my friend, I will see you in Calcutta.’
Herriard picked up the fallen bundle, took Anusha’s arm and dragged her on. ‘How good a rider are you?’ he demanded as they slowed for the final gate before the lower court. He stopped, watchful, the shadows of the vicious spikes set at the height of an elephant’s forehead lying in bars across his face.
‘Excellent. Of course.’ She looked up at the rows of handprints at the side of the gate, left by the women who had gone through it to become sati on their husbands’ funeral pyres. She shuddered and the Englishman felt it and followed her gaze.
‘Another good reason for not marrying a maharaja twice your age,’ he observed as he took her elbow and steered her into the courtyard.
‘Do not touch me!’
He ignored her until they were past the bustle of the elephant lines and into the straw-strewn stables, virtually empty now the cavalry had ridden out. Then he stopped, jerking her against him. He would say it was so he could keep his voice low, but she knew it was a show of dominance.
‘Listen to me, Miss Laurens. Hard as it may be for you to believe, your beauty does not inflame me with lust and, even if it did, I am not fool enough to waste time dallying with you when a small war is about to break out around our heads.’
He released her and began to strap the blanket rolls behind the saddles of the three horses that still stood in the stalls: a handsome, raking grey, a smaller, well-muscled black and a bay with the brand of her uncle’s stud. ‘Take this.’ He thrust the bay’s reins into her hand. ‘When I need to touch you, I will touch you, and when I do you had better be prepared to obey me because it will be an emergency. I promised your father I would get you back to him, but I did not promise him not to tan your backside in the process.’
‘You … swine,’ Anusha hissed.
Herriard shrugged. ‘If I am, then I am the swine who is going to keep you alive. And, while we are on the subject of touching, I should point out that you are the one who sneaked into the bathhouse and touched me when I was naked. Your hands were cold and your technique could do with some work.’ He led out the other two horses and tied the black’s reins on its neck—the blanket rolls were strapped to its back. ‘Here, I’ll give you a leg up.’
‘I do not need your help.’ Anusha jammed her foot in the stirrup and swung into the saddle. ‘And I only wanted to see—’ She shut her mouth in confusion at where her temper had led her.
‘See what?’ He was up on the grey now. In the torchlight his lean features showed nothing but amused curiosity.
‘What colour you were,’ Anusha snapped.
‘And your curiosity was satisfied?’ Herriard clicked his tongue and the grey and the black moved out into the yard. Anusha dug in her heels and sent her horse after them.
‘Yes. Where you are not touched by the sun you are pink. Not white at all.’ She would not be shamed or embarrassed by him.
‘I suspect that after many days with you I will be turning white on a regular basis,’ he said. ‘Now, be quiet and cover yourself.’ He pulled the tail of his turban round and tucked it in to veil the lower part of his face. Seething, Anusha followed his example and the three horses passed out of the main gate and down the road towards the town without challenge.
She twisted in the saddle for a last look at the great walls towering above her, the fort that contained a palace, the palace that had been her home. Now she was simply a fugitive, neither Anusha, the raja’s pampered niece, nor Miss Laurens, the rejected daughter of an Englishman. The thought was frightening and strangely liberating. She did not have to think about where she was going or how she would get there—for days she would be floating on the stream of fate.
At the pressure of her heels the bay drew alongside Herriard’s big grey. ‘Where do we go?’ she asked in English. She had best practise it, she supposed.
‘Allahabad to start with. Speak Hindi.’
‘So we do not attract attention?’ Anusha tucked the end of the cloth more snugly into the turban as he nodded. ‘You do that without a word spoken. You are too big and too pale.’ She would die rather than admit that she found the sheer size of him comforting.
‘With my hair covered I can be taken for a Pathan,’ Herriard said.
‘They are tall and light-skinned and they have grey eyes, some of the men from the north, I have seen them,’ she agreed. ‘But your eyes are green.’
The town was seething like a disturbed ant heap with the news of the maharaja’s approaching army. The bay snorted and sidled at the press of bullock carts, the running figures and the trains of camels. Herriard reached for her rein, then withdrew his hand when she hissed at him. She had her mount back under control within seconds.
‘I am flattered that you noticed my eyes.’ He skirted round a cow that lay in the middle of the road chewing the cud as it ignored all around it with complete indifference.
‘You should not be. Of course I noticed—you are different. Strange,’ she added to make certain he did not think it a compliment. ‘It is a long time since I saw someone like you.’
He did not answer her, but guided his horse around a spitting, grumbling knot of camels and out over the rickety bridge that spanned the river. So, he was either not easy to goad or he simply dismissed her as unimportant. The moon was up, noticeable now they were away from the torches and the fires, and the angrezi stood in his stirrups to survey the road in front of them.
‘We can take that track there.’ Anusha pointed. ‘It cuts through the fields and it will be deserted now. We will make better time and no one will see us.’
‘And we will leave the tracks of three horses plain on soil that is trodden only by bare feet and oxen. Here, on the road, we will be less easy to track.’
At least he explains, Anusha conceded, then the implication hit home. ‘We will be followed?’
‘Of course. Once it is realised that you are no longer in the palace the maharaja’s spies will pass the word out. I am counting on half a day’s start, that is all.’
Anusha’s stomach tightened. Suddenly the Englishman’s frankness was no longer so welcome. ‘It is more dangerous out here than in the fort. Why did we not stay there until help came?’
He shot her a glance, the silvery light catching his eyes, making them unreal, like the greenish pearl of the inside of a shell. ‘Because your uncle could not be certain that he could protect you within the palace. Your father makes you a very tempting prize for a man who wishes for nothing but his own power and to keep the Company at bay.’
‘I was in danger within the palace?’
‘I think so. I removed you easily enough, did I not?’
‘Yes.’ She took a deep breath. Treachery, spies, danger, lies. And she had thought her life had been so tranquil, so … boring. I could have been kidnapped at any time.
‘Frightened?’
‘Of what?’ she demanded. ‘There is much to choose from.’
That surprised a laugh from him. ‘Of the pursuers, of the journey, of where you are going. Of me.’
‘No,’ Anusha lied. She was afraid of all of those things, but she was not going to admit it. His faint snort of derision showed what he thought of that.
‘You appear to be competent, so I imagine you will evade pursuit,’ she said. It seemed important to convince him of her courage, her ability to undertake this journey. ‘I look forward to being able to look around me, to see things openly and not through the screens of a travelling palanquin. I will deal with my destination when I get there. And as for you, Major Herriard, you are a—’ She searched for the equivalent in Hindi and resorted to English. ‘Gentleman, are you not, if you are an officer? And my mother said that English gentlemen must behave honourably to ladies.’
‘That is the theory,’ he agreed, his voice dry. And then he laughed and spurred his horse into a canter, leaving her to follow, her body tight with apprehension.
Chapter Four
‘Why are we stopping?’ Anusha demanded. The horses had dropped into a trot and then a walk as Major Herriard turned off the road. Beneath their hooves the ground was stony and uneven. ‘This is a terrible surface, we cannot canter on this.’
‘Are you going to question every decision I make?’ he asked without turning his head.
‘Yes.’ Now she did not have to concentrate on keeping her aching body in the saddle the desire to slide off and simply go to sleep was overwhelming. Perhaps when she woke it would all have been a bad dream.
‘The moon will be down very soon and then it will be hard to see where we are going. There are trees over there, cover. We will make a temporary camp and sleep until sunrise. I turned off here because the ground will not show tracks.’
‘Very well,’ Anusha agreed.
‘That is very gracious of you, Miss Laurens, but your approval is not required, merely your obedience.’ Herriard was a dark shape now as he sat motionless on the horse and studied the small group of trees and thorn bushes in what was left of the moonlight. He spoke absently, as though she was peripheral to his interest.
‘Major Herriard!’
‘Call me Nick. Stay here. Your voice has probably scared off anything dangerous lurking in there, but I will check first.’
Nick. What sort of name was that? She translated to take her mind off the fact that she was suddenly alone and things were rustling in the bushes. Quite large things. Was nick not something to do with a small cut? Well, that hardly suited him—the man had the subtlety and brutal force of a sabre slash.
‘There is a small shrine in there, a stone platform we can sleep on and some firewood. We can light a fire and it will be shielded by the walls,’ he said as he rode back to her side. ‘There are water jars for the horses, which is good fortune.’
‘You would plunder a shrine?’ Anusha demanded, more out of antagonism than outrage as she guided her horse after him. Taking water was hardly plunder.
‘We will do no damage. We can leave an offering if you wish.’ He swung down as he spoke and came to hold up a hand to her.
‘I can manage. And what is a Christian doing leaving an offering at a Hindu shrine?’ Her feet hit the ground rather harder than she had been expecting and her knees buckled. Nick’s hand under her elbow was infuriatingly necessary. ‘I said I can manage.’
He ignored her and held on until she had her balance. It felt very strange to be touched by a man, a virtual stranger. It felt safe and dangerous all at the same time. ‘It would cause no offence, I imagine. And after twelve years in this country I am not at all sure what I am. A pragmatist, perhaps. What are you?’
It was a good question. She supposed she had better decide before she reached Calcutta. Her mother had converted to Christianity after she had lived with Sir George for five years. For ten years Anusha had gone with her to church. And in Kalatwah she had lived as a Hindu. ‘What am I? I do not know. Does it matter, so long as one lives a good life?’
‘A sound philosophy. At least that is something we do not have to fight over.’ He did not unsaddle the horses but loosened the girths and then dumped their kit on the stone platform.
‘We do not have to fight at all, provided you treat me with respect,’ Anusha retorted. And stop watching me like a hawk. She found a twiggy branch and began to sweep an area clear of the leaf litter that might harbour insects or a small snake.
‘I will treat you with the respect that you earn, Miss Laurens.’ Herriard … Nick … hefted an urn over to the stone trough by the horses and poured out water. ‘You are a woman and your father’s daughter, which means I do not deal with you as I would a man. After that—’ he shrugged ‘—it is up to you.’
‘I do not wish to go to my father. I hate my father.’
‘You may wish what you will and you may think what you wish, but you will not abuse Sir George in my hearing. And you will obey me. Stay there.’ In the semi-darkness she could not read his face, but Anusha heard the anger. Again he showed that fierce, puzzling, loyalty to her father. He turned and walked away.
‘Wait! Where are you going?’ Surely he was not going to punish her by leaving her here in the dark?
Nick vanished into the scrub and she heard what sounded like boots kicking at the low branches. When he walked back he was doing something to the front of his trousers and she blushed in the gloom. ‘There is a nice thick bush there,’ he said, gesturing. ‘With no snakes.’
‘Thank you.’ With as much dignity as she could muster Anusha stalked down the three steps to the ground and over to the bush. The mundane implications of being alone like this with a man were beginning to dawn on her. There might be vast areas with hardly a bush. How was she supposed to manage then? The wretch seemed to have no shyness, no modesty about mentioning these things at all. Never, in the ten years until she had chased Tavi and found herself in that corridor with Nick, had she been all alone with a man, even her uncle or one of the eunuchs.
When she emerged his attention was, mercifully, on lighting a small fire in an angle of the wall. The flames made a pool of light on the platform, but would be hidden from anyone approaching from the direction they had come. A bed of blankets had been made up close to the fire.
In the shadows she could see the stumpy pillar of the Shiva lingam and the firelight glinted for a moment on something that trickled down its side. ‘People have been here recently.’ She went and looked at the pool of fresh oil on the head of the ancient stone phallus, the spray of flowering shrub that had been laid on the curve of the stylised female organ that it rose from.
‘I have,’ Herriard said as she joined her hands together in a brief reverence. It seemed that, whatever his beliefs, he knew how to show respect to the gods, if not to her. More in charity with him, she turned back and he gestured to food laid out on a large leaf beside the blankets. ‘Here. Eat and drink and then rest. Do not take anything off, not even your boots.’
‘I have no intention of removing anything!’
‘Then you are going to have a very uncomfortable few weeks, Miss Laurens. Oh, sit down, I am far too weary to ravish you tonight!’
That was a jest. She hoped. Warily Anusha sank down on to the blankets. ‘Eat and keep your strength up. Now we can only rest for a short while. Tomorrow night I hope we may take longer.’
‘Where are you going to sleep?’ She took a piece of naan, folded it around what looked like goat’s cheese and ate, surprised at how hungry she was.
‘I will not sleep. I will keep watch.’
‘You cannot do that every night,’ she pointed out.
‘No,’ Nick agreed. ‘I will rest when it is safer and where you can keep watch.’ He tore off a piece of the flat bread and ate it. She caught a glimpse of strong white teeth.
‘Me?’
‘Look around you, Miss Laurens. Who else is there? Sooner or later I must sleep. Or are you not capable of acting as a look-out?’
‘Of course. I am capable of anything. I am a—’
‘Rajput, I know. You are also your father’s daughter, which should mean that there is a brain in there somewhere, despite all evidence to the contrary.’
Anusha choked on a mouthful of water from the flask. ‘How dare you! You are used to this sort of thing, I am not. I have been dragged from my bed, forced to ride through the night with a man—I have never been alone with a man for ten years—I am worried about Kalatwah …’
‘True,’ Nick conceded. It was not much of an apology. ‘I will do my best to preserve your privacy and your modesty, but you must behave as much like a man as you can, for your own safety. Do you understand that?’
‘As you guessed, I do have a brain,’ she retorted. ‘Now I am going to sleep.’
‘Namaste,’ he said, so politely that he must be mocking her.
‘Namaste,’ she returned as she rolled herself into the blankets. She would just close her eyes, rest her aching body. But she would not sleep—she did not trust him.
Anusha woke, suddenly and completely alert, with that thought still in her mind. She had been foolish to fear, it seemed. Her rest had been undisturbed, her blankets were still tight around her. Herriard was moving about, attending to the horses.
From the light it was just past dawn and she must have slept for at least two hours. And he had slept not at all. Anusha watched from beneath half-closed lids as he checked the horses, led them to a patch of longer grass where they might snatch a few mouthfuls. Lack of sleep seemed to have simply made him more alert, the lines of his face tauter.
He was not at all like the men she had lived among for so many years, Anusha decided. Most of the Indian men were slender, lithe. There was an English word and she searched for it. Yes, sleek, that was it. Nick Herriard was not sleek, he was too big, too overtly physical. The high cheekbones, the big nose, the strong chin—all asserted power and will. Anusha remembered the feel of his muscles under her hands and shivered, just as he turned and found her watching him.
She thought that colour came up under the golden tan, then he gestured towards the fire. ‘There is water heating if you want to wash. I will go and scout the road.’
Anusha waited until he had walked out of sight, his musket in one hand, then disentangled herself from the blankets. She used the convenient bush, then washed as best she could. He came back, whistling tactfully, as she was rolling up the blankets.
‘All right?’ He did not wait for her answer, but squatted by the fire and began to make tea, throwing leaves into the boiling water from a pouch that lay amongst the food he had set out. It was the same as last night and the bread would be dry. And she supposed from the brisk manner with which he was preparing it that she should have done this while he was away. She had never been without servants before, either.
‘Eat,’ Nick said, pushing the food towards her and pouring tea into a horn beaker. ‘There is no one in sight, we should get on.’
‘When will we be able to get more food?’ Anusha chewed on the dry bread and wondered if the cheese had been this pungent the night before.
‘When we come across someone who can sell us some.’
‘The next big village is—’
‘We are not going through villages, big or small. Do you want to leave flags to mark our route?’
‘But surely they will give up? We could be anywhere by now.’
Nick washed the stale naan down with tea that was too hot and contemplated the haughty, exquisite face of the young woman opposite him. It was a reasonable question and she was sorely in need of reassurance and comfort, despite the mask she was putting on.
But what Anusha was going to get was a bracing dose of reality and he was going to allow his irritation with this entire situation to ride him. It was the only way he was going to be able to ignore the tension in his groin and the heat that seemed to wash through him whenever he looked at her. Or when she looked at him. He was still recovering from the impact of those grey eyes studying him as he dealt with the horses. It was odd that she should affect him so—Miss Lauren’s spiky personality was hardly alluring.
‘How many armed men do you think it would need to take me?’ he asked. When she just shook her head, he answered himself. ‘Eight, ten perhaps. I have three muskets, but we have lost our other marksman and besides, muskets take time to load. I am good, Miss Laurens, and lucky—I would not be alive today if I was not—but I am just one man. And the maharaja’s spies will have told him that. It will be a blow to his pride that you have escaped him, so he can easily spare a dozen riders to come after us. And they’ll know we’ll be heading east, that is the logical direction to go in.’
He expected fear, possibly tears. Instead she looked at him down the straight little nose that she had definitely not inherited from her father and said, ‘Then teach me to load a musket and go somewhere that is not logical.’
So, he had not been wrong—she had her father’s intelligence after all and her late mother had the reputation for both learning and political cunning. He could have his hands full with her. Even as he thought it he winced at his choice of words—he wanted very much to have his hands full of Anusha Laurens.
‘All right, I’ll teach you to load, that makes sense.’ At least, it would if she could manage it. He had short India Pattern muskets with him, not the British army Land Pattern version, but even so she would be wrestling with a weapon almost forty inches long. ‘And I can aim directly at the Jumna River to find a boat and not head further south-east to Allahabad. But I must do it by the sun and stars—there were no detailed maps of this area and any deviation will add time.’
‘I do not wish to be with you, Major Herriard, but I would like even less to be with that man. Take however long is necessary.’
‘Then we will go more to the east than the road to Allahabad,’ Nick said, getting to his feet and recalculating. The map that he had studied before he had set out was fixed in his memory, but it was sketchy to put it mildly.
‘The muskets?’ she demanded, rising from the dusty stone with the trained grace of a court lady.
The wish that he could see her dance came into his head, irrelevant and unwelcome. A well-bred lady would only dance with her female friends, or for her husband. To do otherwise was to lower herself to the level of a courtesan. Nick found himself pursuing the thought and frowned at her, earning a frigid stare in response. She was not used to being alone with men, and it was a long time since he had been alone with a respectable young woman for any length of time. How the devil was he supposed to treat her? What did he talk to her about?
‘Muskets?’ Anusha repeated, impatience etched in every line of her figure. She was slender, small—the top of her head came up to his ear. He would have to stoop to kiss her … Nick caught himself, appalled, and slammed the door on his thoughts, remembering another slender woman in his arms, of how fragile she had been, how clumsy she had made him feel. But Miranda had been frail as well as fragile—this girl had steel at her core.
‘When we stop to rest at noon.’ He was equally impatient now. The more distance they had between themselves and the fort, the happier he would be. He strapped the blanket rolls on the bay horse and led Rajat, Ajit’s black gelding, forwards for her. In a crisis he could let the bay go and leave her with a horse as highly trained as his own Pavan.
‘Why this one?’
Must she question everything? But he almost welcomed the irritation, it distracted him from fantasies and memories. ‘He knows what to do. His name is Rajat; let him have his head.’
Anusha shrugged and mounted. Nick tied the end of the bay’s long leading rein around his pommel and led them away from the shrine, not back to the track but out across the undulating grasslands, following the line he had mentally drawn on the map in his head.
‘This is deserted,’ Anusha observed after half a league.
‘Yes. Except for the tigers.’
‘We will starve or be eaten. You are supposed to be looking after me.’ She did not sound petulant, merely critical of an inefficient servant.
Nick breathed in hard through his nose and controlled his temper. ‘We have plenty of water. The streams are still running. The horses will sense tigers.’ I hope. ‘Food we can do without for a day or two if necessary. I am, as I promised your father and your uncle, keeping you safe. I never made any promises about comfort.’
She was silent. Then, ‘Why do you dislike me, Major Herriard?’
Pavan pecked, unused to a jerk on his rein. ‘What? I do not know you. And I am not used to young ladies.’
There was a snort and he glanced across at her. The little witch was grinning. ‘That is not what I heard.’
‘Respectable young ladies,’ he said repressively.
‘No?’ She was still laughing, he could hear it, although she was managing to keep her face straight. ‘Is your wife not respectable?’
‘I do not have a wife.’ Not any longer. Nick gritted his teeth and concentrated on scanning the undulating plain before them, plotting a route away from the stands of trees that might harbour a striped death.
‘But why do you not have a wife? You are very old not to have a wife.’
‘I am twenty-nine,’ he snapped. ‘I had a wife. Miranda. She died.’
‘I am sorry.’ She sounded it; the mocking edge had gone from her voice. ‘How many children do you have? Will you marry again soon?’
‘I have no children and, no, I have no intention of marrying again.’ He tried to remind himself that this intense curiosity about family was simply the normal Indian polite interest in a stranger. He was inured to it, surely, by now?
‘Oh, so you were very much in love with her, like Shah Jehan and Mumtaz Mahal. How sad.’ When she was not being imperious or snappy her voice was lovely, soft and melodious with something deeply female in it that went straight to the base of his spine.
‘No, I was not—’ Nick snapped off the sentence. ‘I married too young. I thought it was expected of me as a career officer. I married a girl I thought was suitable, a sweet little dab of a thing with no more strength to cope with India than a new-born lamb.’
‘What was she doing here, then?’ Anusha brought her horse alongside.
‘She was newly arrived in India as part of the Fishing Fleet.’ She murmured a query and he explained. ‘The shiploads of young ladies that come out from England. They are supposed to be visiting relatives, but actually they are on the catch for a husband.
‘I should have taken one look at Miranda Knight and realised that the country would ruin her health within the year. And it did. If I had not married her she would have gone back to England, wed a stout country squire and be the mother of a happy family by now.’
‘She must have loved you to marry you and risk staying here,’ Anusha suggested.
‘Do not turn this into a love story. She wanted a suitable husband and what did I know about marriage and how to make a wife happy with my background?’
‘What background?’
He glanced at Anusha, saw her read his mood in his face and close her lips tightly. After a moment she said, ‘I beg your pardon,’ in careful English. ‘I forgot that the Europeans do not like personal questions.’
He was going to be alone with her for days, weeks probably. It was foolish to make a mystery out of himself. Best to get the questions over and done with now. ‘My parents made a suitable, loveless match. It turned very rapidly into boredom on my father’s part, then anger when my mother persisted in wanting … more. I am not certain I would know what a happy marriage looks like.’
How simple it sounded put like that. All those years of distress and unhappiness, not just for his mother but for the little boy in the middle, aching for the love that both parents were too busy tearing each other apart to give. He was not a little boy now, and he knew better than to expect love. Or to need it.
‘Oh.’ She rode in silence for a while. Then, ‘So you have many mistresses now? Until you marry again?’
‘Anusha, you should not be discussing such things.’ She regarded him quizzically. Of course, she was used to an entirely different model of marriage and sexual relationships. ‘There is no reason for me to marry again. I do not live like a holy man—a sadhu. But neither do I have more than one mistress at a time, and none at the moment.’
‘And did you have a mistress while you were married? No, do not say Anusha like that. I want to understand.’
‘No, I did not. Some men do. I do not think it right.’ And his resolve had been sorely tried after a few weeks of Miranda’s vapours. However careful he was, however gentle, she had decided that sex was crude, unpleasant and for one purpose only. Her relief at becoming pregnant and having a good reason to bar him from her bed had been all too obvious. The familiar guilt came back like an aching bruise: he should have had the self-control to stay out of her bed until she had grown acclimatised to India, talked to her. Not got her with child.
Women before and since had assured him they found bliss in his arms. It seemed he was an acceptable lover and a failure as a husband.
‘I am sorry if I should not have asked these things. Thank you for explaining,’ Anusha said in English, sounding not at all contrite.
‘Don’t mention it,’ he replied in the same language. She was demanding, both emotionally at some level he was not used to, as well as practically. And she was distracting him, taking him away from the present and into the past, and that was dangerous.
The hairs were prickling on the back of his neck—he had learned to listen to his instincts. Nick wheeled Pavan. The grass was still long and lush although the ground was dry. The light wind was already blurring the marks of their passage so it would be hard to see how many horses had just passed.
Anusha had turned with him. ‘There is no one behind us,’ she said. ‘Is there?’
The prickling unease was still under his skin. Nick stood in his stirrups and shaded his eyes. There, in the distance, was a small puff of dust kicked up by a group of riders coming at the gallop. ‘There is. See?’
Chapter Five
‘There is no cover, not for three horses.’ Anusha was proud of how calm she sounded. She could not see the pursuers, but if Nick said they were coming, then she believed him. She loosened the little dagger in her sash.
‘Follow me, exactly,’ he said and turned to ride over a hard-pan of dry baked mud where the rains had once made a large pool. At the middle he swung down from the grey, took the bundles from the back of the bay horse and flung them over Pavan’s saddle. ‘Stay here.’ He swung up on the bay and left the hard ground. As soon as he was on the softer earth he kicked it into a gallop, then lashed it across the flanks, swung down and rolled clear as it careered off into the distance.
‘Take Pavan.’ He tossed her the reins when he got back to her. ‘Walk slowly towards that bush.’
Puzzled, but obedient, her heart thudding uncomfortably high in her throat, Anusha did as she was told. Behind her Nick walked backwards, sweeping a branch over their tracks. She realised as she reached the bush that it was on a very slight swell in the ground, but even so, it was too thin and too low to hide a donkey behind, let alone two horses.
‘Are you going to shoot the horses?’ She slid to the ground as he backed behind the thorn bush next to her.
‘No need.’ He removed both saddles, then whistled, two clear notes, and the horses folded their legs, sank to the ground and rolled on to their sides, necks stretched out. ‘Get down.’
Anusha lay behind the swell of Pavan’s belly as Nick spread the dun-coloured blankets over both animals, then propped the two muskets up on Rajat’s flank and began to check over his hand guns. He laid everything out in order—ammunition, guns, sabre—loosened the knife in his boot and then glanced across at her. ‘Army horses, both of them,’ he explained, then glanced down at her hand. ‘What the devil have you got there?’
‘A knife, of course.’ She would keep the one in her boot hidden until it was absolutely necessary and she had to kill someone. Or herself. A dark excitement was surging through her, as strong as the fear. She wanted to hurt the people who were attacking Kalatwah, her family, her kingdom. For the first time she understood what had taken those warriors out to fight to certain death, understood the spirit of the women who had gone to the flames rather than face slavery and shame.
‘You are not going to need it.’
‘But there will be a fight, a battle.’ She could hear them coming now, the faint drum of hoofbeats. The maharaja’s men had picked up their tracks.
‘Not unless I have made a mistake.’ Nick was rubbing handfuls of dust over the musket barrels to mask their shine. ‘They should ride past, find the bay, conclude it was a ruse to send them off the road.’
‘But we must kill them!’
‘Bloodthirsty little wild cat,’ Nick said, low-voiced. She sensed amusement in him. He had a strange sense of humour if he found this funny. ‘If they do not come back, then the maharaja knows they have found us and will send more men. If they go back without seeing us, he will conclude we have gone another way.’
‘Oh. Strategy.’
‘Tactics, to be exact. Now, be quiet.’
There were eight riders. They passed at the gallop, vanished. Anusha released her pent-up breath and slid a little closer to Nick.
Time stretched on. Her left leg was becoming numb. ‘They have gone.’
‘Wait.’
As Nick spoke she heard them returning more slowly, scanning the ground as they came, the bay on a leading rein. They rode past, then the only sound was the buzz of insects, the rumbling of Rajat’s stomach under her ear, the mew of a hawk high overhead.
‘Stay here.’ Nick began to ease away. ‘You can let go of my coat.’
‘Oh!’ Anusha’s fingers cramped as she released her death-grip. ‘I didn’t realise I was holding it.’ But Nick was already moving, a musket in each hand, pistol in his sash, keeping low over the ground as he dodged from bush to bush.
It was like trying to see a ghost—if she took her eyes from him he would vanish. She blinked and he was gone into the long grass. Even behind the bulk of the horses she felt incredibly exposed, utterly alone. She had not realised what a large emotional space he filled. An infuriating, man-shaped, protective space.
What would she do if she heard shooting? Anusha studied the weapons he had left behind. One musket, one pistol, the bag that contained the ammunition, his sabre. Now was not the time to learn how to reload, but she could take it all to him. She worked out the best way to carry the weapons, wondering if the horses would obey her and get to their feet.
A hand closed around her ankle.
Anusha twisted, her knife in her hand, her other lashing out, fingers bent, nails raking down.
Nick laughed and rolled to one side, releasing her foot. It was the laugh that made her temper snap, that and the long-held tension. Anusha dropped the knife and launched herself at him, intent on hurting his male pride, if nothing else.
The next moment she was flat on her back with her hands pinned above her head and the weight of one very large man on top of her. And he was still laughing. ‘Wild cat. I was right.’
‘You—’ Words, and breath, failed her. ‘Get off me.’
For a long unfathomable moment he stared down into her eyes and his own seemed to darken. Nick stopped laughing. For an instant she thought he had stopped breathing.
‘It is not seemly,’ she managed to say as her mind tried to assimilate all the new sensations of a hard male body pressed against her own softness. She liked them. All of them.
‘No, it is not.’ Nick rolled off her and got to his feet in one fluid movement. He is as supple as a young sapling, Paravi had said. Heat washed through her. ‘I am sorry, I could not resist it. You were quivering like a hound wanting to be let off the leash.’
‘I was listening for shots,’ Anusha said with as much dignity as she could muster, flat on her back and filled with what she was horribly afraid was sexual desire. ‘Have they gone?’
‘They have, no doubt thinking that only a fool would head into the wilds with only two horses and a princess.’
He meant to mock her when he called her princess, she knew that. ‘And are you a fool?’
Nick reached down a hand and hauled her to her feet. ‘No, but I am going to do it anyway.’ He pulled the blankets off the horses and brought them to their feet with a whistle, shaking like dogs to get rid of the dust. ‘We will ride on a league or so and when we are out of earshot I will bring down some game for dinner. Then the muskets will be empty. We will rest a while, drink and I will show you how to load.’ He picked up one of the guns and looked from it to her with a grin. ‘Although I think you will have to stand on a rock to do it, Miss Laurens.’
‘Do not call me that.’ It was intolerable that he should treat her so casually and yet address her with angrezi formality by the name she rejected.
‘Anusha, then?’
‘Anusha,’ she agreed warily. ‘Nick.’
They remounted and rode on in a silence that seemed somehow more companionable than it had yet done.
After two leagues Nick halted and left her with the horses while he took the guns and padded off into the scrub. ‘Drink,’ he said, ‘and get into the shade.’
‘Yes, Major,’ she muttered, but did as she was told, not that there was much shade to be had.
Anusha heard four gunshots and when he returned Nick had a sand grouse and a hare dangling from his hand. That was good shooting with a musket, she knew.
He hunkered down in the small patch of shade beside her and reached for the canteen of water. It spilled from the sides of his mouth and she watched it run through the stubble on his cheeks, saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.
‘You are a soldier, so this is taking you from the army,’ she said when he put down the water and ran the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Why did they not send a diplomat for me?’
‘Because there was always the chance that something like this might happen. And I am a diplomat, of sorts. I move between the army and the princely courts as the Company requires.’ It explained why his Hindi was so good.
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Louise Allen
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: TO OBEY HIS DUTY IS TO DENY HIS HEART Anusha Laurens is in danger. The daughter of an Indian princess and an English peer, she’s the perfect pawn in the opulent courts of Rajasthan. Even so, she will not return to the father who rejected her. Arrogant angrezi Major Nicholas Herriard is charged with bringing the alluring Princess safely to her new life in Calcutta.Nick’s mission is to protect, to serve – but under the searing Indian sun an initial attraction unfurls into a forbidden temptation. This beautiful, impossible Princess tests the very limits of his honour – especially when Nick is left with only one option to keep Anusha safe: marriage.But the fastflowing waters of the Ganges determine a different fate, and duty may separate them for ever…