Duty Before Desire (4 page)

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir,” she replied.

“How cheering it is to have an English rose returned to her native soil—although you have certainly flourished in the …” His compliment trailed away as he finally took a good look at her, undoubtedly seeing her pale, sickly cast, perhaps even wondering at how she looked like an uncooked goat sausage.

When the landau lurched into motion again, Arcadia's stomach clenched alarmingly. She closed her eyes; watching the scenery just exacerbated her nausea.

As they rolled on, Lady Delafield leaned over. “On no account should you have anything to do with that scribbler. Pity you did not come six months ago,” her ladyship tutted. “Had you been here during the Season, we might have—no, we mightn't have,” she interrupted herself, pulling upright and sighing. “No good ever came of false regrets.” Arcadia cracked an eye to see her aunt glowering into the middle distance, her scythe of a nose looming over hollow cheeks. “Your father should have sent you to us when you were much younger, as dear Lucretia wished to do. You'd have been properly educated and groomed to catch a fine husband. With your dowry and connections, you could have had a lord. Now, we must set our sights much lower. Although not as low as a poet, I daresay.”

Lady Delafield had taken it into her head that her niece had come to London for the purpose of finding an English husband. Arcadia needn't have left India to accomplish that feat. The Raj teemed with eligible men in want of wives. Despite the remoteness of her father's post, Englishmen started visiting the station on specious claims of East India Company business soon after Arcadia's sixteenth birthday. By then, her mother was long dead, and her father, Sir Thaddeus Parks, had no mind to see his only child—his only remaining blood relative—removed to Delhi or Bombay by a husband. When other Company factors came to stay, Sir Thaddeus sent Arcadia to Poorvaja's family in a nearby village, summoning his daughter again only after the threat of courtship had gone.

The sky steadily dimmed as the team of four horses paraded them around Hyde Park in lonely splendor. The side-to-side rocking of the landau made Arcadia's insides slosh. Her head pounded; perspiration beaded on her temples.

“You can't imagine the great sea of people one meets in the park during the fashionable hour in the Season.” Lady Delafield sat a little straighter, warming to her subject. “Anyone worth knowing is here. One still meets friends this time of year, to be sure, but nothing like the crowds to be found in the spring. The air is positively thick with consequence!”

For a few fleeting seconds, Lady Delafield's stern features became animated, peeling years off her age. Her enthusiasm in describing the social hour reminded Arcadia so much of her mother, she felt a pang of grief she'd not experienced in many years. Her chest constricted painfully. Combined with the unease in her middle and the rhythmic aching of her head, she feared she really might be sick right here in Lady Delafield's fine landau.

“Aunt,” she said, wrapping the cord of her reticule around her gloved hand, “my stomach … I think I'm going to vomit.”

Her aunt's mouth popped open on a gasp. “Don't
say
such an indelicate thing,” she hissed. “And in public, too! Your father truly did let you go native, didn't he? Have you no refinement?” She leaned back in her seat, moisture welling in her eyes. The partridge on her turban eyed Arcadia dolefully. “I can't credit such a thing—my own niece! Oh, my poor sister must be turning in her grave.” Waving a hand, she called, “Coachman, stop!”

While Lady Delafield indulged in the third fit of the vapors she'd had since clapping eyes on her niece's “sun-spoiled” complexion yesterday, Arcadia half-fell from the carriage and staggered to a convenient knot of shrubbery a short distance away, where she fell to her knees and emptied the contents of her stomach.

In the aftermath, she felt lightheaded with exhaustion. A hand settled on her back. Blinking her bleary eyes, Arcadia saw the silhouette of a woman in a bonnet and startled.

“Hush, Jalanili,” said the familiar voice calling her by the familiar nickname. “It's only me.” Crouching beside her, Poorvaja produced a handkerchief from her apron pocket and patted Arcadia's mouth. Her berry-brown lips quirked. “I look as foolish in these ridiculous clothes as you do, eh?” She swept a hand down the front of her new English dress.

Her mind still muddled, Arcadia peered at the woman who had been her wet nurse as an infant, then the nurse and governess of her childhood, and now her lady's maid and companion. Poorvaja's dear face featured in her earliest memories, and although the Indian woman was only fourteen years her senior, the ayah had, in many ways, been more of a mother to Arcadia than Lucretia Parks. Suddenly swamped with emotion, Arcadia threw her arms around Poorvaja and burst into tears. “I want to go home,” she cried.

Poorvaja let out a little
oof
when Arcadia hit her, thumping down on her backside. Then her strong arms wrapped about Arcadia's shoulders. “There, there, Jalanili. We've only just arrived! This is your country, your people.”

Arcadia shook her head in the crook of her ayah's neck, feeling once more like a child in need of comforting. “Not my country.
India
is my country. That's where I belong. I don't know why I agreed to come here.”

With a long sigh, Poorvaja helped Arcadia to her feet and led her away from the carriage at a stroll. “You had no choice,” she reminded Arcadia as they rounded a little bend in the path. A thick grove of bushes and trees flanked them on either side, cutting Lady Delafield's carriage from their line of sight. Arcadia was grateful for the brief reprieve from her aunt.

Poorvaja's arm around the younger woman's waist gave a little squeeze. “The
sahib
left instructions for you to come here after his death.”

Grimacing, Arcadia shrugged out of Poorvaja's grasp. “In six months, I'll reach my majority,” she said, picking up her pace in spite of her aching body's protests.

The unfamiliar confines of the corset prevented her from drawing adequate breath. Even the fabrics of her clothes draped differently than the saris to which she was accustomed, making her walk differently.

Arcadia wanted to scream. The clothes, the weather, the country—none of it fit properly. None of it was home. Lifting her skirts a little, she tried to force her legs into their customary gait. “I could have devised a way to stay until my birthday, then no one could have told me what I had to do.”

Behind her, Poorvaja snorted. “Child, you were just nineteen when the
sahib
passed. Where would you have hidden for two years?”

Not for the first time, Arcadia felt the injustice of time and distance. It had taken months to arrange her voyage from Bombay to London after Sir Thaddeus had succumbed to his final illness, and she'd had no say about the seven long months she'd spent at sea. While she might have been just nineteen when her life was thrown into turmoil, Arcadia was now almost her own woman, according to the law, and it seemed downright unfair that she be expected to follow plans made on her behalf when she was still but a child.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw she'd put a fair bit of distance between herself and Poorvaja. “I could have gone anywhere!” she called in Hindustani, defiantly raising the fist clutching her reticule and struggling to repress another wave of nausea rising from her gut. “That Mughal prince, Suri Shah, would have given me a place in his
zanana
.”

Her friend tossed back her head and laughed before replying in the same language. “If you think to tell me you'd consent to being that pompous oaf's thirty-third wife—or his seventy-second concubine—then you're the fool here, Jalanili, not I.”

A sharp retort formed on Arcadia's tongue. Then she walked into something solid and a hand clamped on her shoulder, causing her words to die in her throat. Startled, she glanced up at the stranger. A dusty scarf concealed the lower portion of his face, while a hat pulled low shadowed his eyes. In the failing light, it was nigh impossible to distinguish any features.

Powerful fingers dug into her upper arm. Arcadia gasped. He spoke, but she couldn't understand his unfamiliar accent. She shook her head. The bandit repeated himself impatiently, shaking her. Sluggishly, she made sense of the words.

“Don't want no trouble, I said.” From somewhere, he produced a short knife. The dull blade was nicked and rusty, but Arcadia didn't doubt its ability to cause injury. “Give me the bag, nice and easy now, and we all go home to our suppers.”

“Bag?” she echoed dumbly, not comprehending his meaning.

She heard a sound like a bellowing bull elephant from somewhere in the distance. Behind her, Poorvaja let out an angry stream of Hindustani curses.

The man glanced over Arcadia's shoulder at the irate Indian woman. He gave a warning jab to her stomach with his knife. Arcadia felt the threads of her too-tight dress part. A cold wash of fear doused her from tip to toe, paralyzing her. Had she sailed across oceans, traversed half the globe, simply to die at the hands of a common footpad?

“Gimme the bloody reticule.”

The snarled command snapped her back to her senses. “No!” Arcadia shouted, attempting to move her reticule out of his reach. The silk satchel contained her dearest treasure from India. “Please, don't—”

Still weak with illness, she was no match for the larger, stronger man. He snatched her wrist and twisted. Arcadia yelped in pain and released the silk cords. The pouch tumbled from her grasp; the thief nabbed it before it touched the ground. Then the miscreant sprang towards the tree line.

Arcadia stumbled, catching herself on her hands. “Stop,” she cried, pushing back upright and waving her arm. “Please, wait! That's mine!”

Poorvaja sprinted past her, arms pumping, shouting in Hindustani for the thieving son of a casteless whore to come back. Just as the ayah's extended fingertips brushed the thief's coat, the skirts of her new dress tangled around her ankles, and she went sprawling into a heap of leaves and shrubbery.

Arcadia screamed for her friend and lurched forward on legs that refused to cooperate. Moreover, her stomach contracted, hard. She bent double and retched again, this time right in the middle of the path. Shivers wracked her body.

“Good God!” called a masculine voice.

Then new hands were on her arms, gentler this time, pulling her upright and steadying her. An indistinct face swam in Arcadia's vision, with dark spots where eyes should be and a reddish smudge for the mouth.

“Are you all right, miss?” asked the man. This one held her non-threateningly, and even through the haze of her ailment, she found his warm, spicy scent appealing and the support of his arms comforting.

Blinking away tears, she pointed a shaky finger in the direction the thief had run. “He took my bag.”

“Are you all right?” the man repeated. From the woods, she heard the villain stomping his getaway through crunchy leaves.

Arcadia beat her fist against a solid chest. “Thief! Go, please!”

“Now, now,” the man said in patient, cultured tones. “There's nothing in your reticule you cannot replace. The important thing is that you are safe. Did the scoundrel harm you?”

Off to the side, Poorvaja shakily rose to her feet. “Help her,” Arcadia murmured, worried her friend may have been injured in her fall.

“Hush, my dear.” The man's voice was velvet against her ear. “Your maid is fine, I'm sure; it's you I'm worried about.”

Poorvaja muttered a dark invective, which the man seemed not to notice.

“Please get my bag,” Arcadia wailed, her voice tinny and distant in her own ears. The illness that had plagued her for months seemed to crash down upon her all at once.

The man muttered an oath Arcadia didn't understand. His outline started to fade. “I say, Norman,” he called. “Do you see a blighter with a reticule over there in the woods?”

His words only made superficial sense. Arcadia recognized the sounds, but meaning did not follow. The sickness was overwhelming her now, and she was slipping into the darkness.

Another shadow appeared beside the first. This one was enormous—monstrous, even—a giant who could crush her under his fist as easily as swatting a fly.

A choked sound worked its way from Arcadia's throat. Her rescuer said something she couldn't distinguish, but she paid him no heed. Instead, she ran headlong into the sanctuary of her mind.

• • •

Sheri watched in disbelief as the sweaty woman slithered through his hands and landed at his feet in a heap, her limp hand flopping into the muck of her own vomit.

“What the devil?” Norman exclaimed when he skidded to a halt beside him an instant later. “Why didn't you catch her?”

“I didn't think she meant it! In my defense, ladies feign swoons all the time for attention, or to get out of trouble with their husbands. I'm not sure I've ever actually seen a real one before.”

“Well, now you have.”

Sheri sent his friend a withering look. “Go after the scoundrel, would you? He threatened her with a knife.”

The two friends had been taking a ramble about the park while Sheri picked Norman's brain as to whether his brother could legally disown him over his marital status. Norman had been cheerfully explaining that Lothgard could bar Sheri from the family for any reason or none when the sounds of female distress had cut through the late afternoon. Without hesitation, Sheri had broken into a sprint. From a distance, he saw the masked fiend shake the woman and press a blade to her middle. Too far away to intervene, he'd bellowed in rage, hoping to scare the thief off. Woman and malefactor tussled briefly. For an instant, Sheri's blood ran cold, certain the lady would be stabbed to death before he could reach her.