Ryman, Rebecca (81 page)

Light-hearted
once more, Olivia coasted happily through her day at the Agency, humming as she
worked. On the way home she called again at the Templewood home. Whether or not
her uncle was fit enough, courtesy demanded that he be informed of the upcoming
occasion. Estelle was out visiting and Ransome had not yet returned from his
office. As always, she found her uncle in the study at his desk. As she
entered, he gave a start and hastily concealed something beneath a square of
blue velvet. "Don't you believe in knocking before you come in?" he
grumbled as Olivia bent down to kiss him in greeting.

She
smiled at his bad temper, murmured a hasty apology and
proceeded to
give him the news of the forthcoming event. He made no response except to grunt
and wave aside the information without the slightest indication of interest.
Olivia peered at him with a frown. Today his eyes were far from vacant;
instead, they seemed unusually alert, even shrewd. "What is it that you're
hiding under there, Uncle Josh? May I see it?"

"Certainly.
If you insist—not that it's anyone's business." Apart from his
irritability, he showed no other reaction to her request. He pulled aside the
cloth to reveal a pair of brand-new American Colts, no doubt part of his
extensive collection of firearms mounted on handsome mahogany racks in the
billiards room. He had obviously been polishing the revolvers, for they were
both burnished to a rare shine. Ignoring her, he persisted with his labours.

Olivia
sat down to watch as his fingers flew over the weapons with confident,
practiced expertise. Yes, there
was
something quite different about him
today! His shoulders, for instance, were squared back, the stoop forgotten; the
eyes that peered into the barrels were clear, steady. There was no tremble in
his fingers. And the voice with which she had been reproved had been strong and
authoritative. Something sharp caught in Olivia's throat. "Why are you
cleaning these weapons?"

"For
the same reason that anyone cleans weapons. To have them in perfect firing
condition."

"Why
should you suddenly want them in perfect firing condition?"

"Because
I wish to fire them." He laid down the Colt he held and subjected her to a
stern stare. "Now, do you have any more silly questions, or can I be left
in peace to get on with my work?"

As
he again reached for the Colt, Olivia caught his hand and stopped it.
"Whom do you wish to fire them at, Uncle Josh?" Her voice was level
but the catch in it made her sound breathless.

"Ah!"
He sat back, his hand still in Olivia's grip.

She
shook his hand hard.
"Tell
me, Uncle Josh! Whom do you plan to kill
with these weapons?"

He
swung forward again, released his fingers one by one and resumed his labours.
"I plan to kill Jai Raventhorne."

She
was convinced that his mind, already teetering at the brink, had finally
snapped. "But Jai Raventhorne isn't
here,
Uncle Josh!" Olivia
cried. "You know that as well as everyone."

"He
will be. Soon."

"Soon?
What do you mean,
soon?"
She could barely speak. "Who's
been telling
you all these lies? Tell me,
who . . .?"
In her panic she gripped
his hands again and held them fast, shaking them back and forth with punitive
force.

Carefully,
almost delicately, he pried her fingers apart, released his hands and returned
to what he was doing. "They are not lies. The
Ganga
has been
sighted in the Palk Straits west of Ceylon. She was heading north."

Olivia
regained consciousness to the feel of her own bed at home and the sight of Dr.
Humphries's face bending over hers with some seriousness. Behind him, trying
hard to minimise her presence but also anxious, stood Estelle. Olivia struggled
up on an elbow, dazed. "What happened . . .?"

"You
don't remember?" Dr. Humphries inquired. Olivia shook her head, lay back
again and closed her eyes. "Apparently you fainted, but with enough good
sense to wait until you reached your own threshold. The servants went to fetch
me and I sent for your cousin." Putting a hand behind her head he raised
it and poured a dose of foul-smelling liquid down her throat. Olivia retched.
"Tsk, tsk! No nonsense now, my girl! Drink it all up. You'll be right as
rain in the morning."

Memory
returned in a cascade and Olivia fell back to bury her face in her pillow.
"I'm as right as rain now. There's nothing wrong with me."

"Temper,
temper!" he reproved cheerfully. "I never said there was anything
wrong
with you. In fact, quite the contrary." He snapped his black bag shut
and beamed. "I'll be sending you a mixture that will steady your tum.
Three times a day before meals. Estelle will see that you rest and behave
yourself, won't you, you saucy little monkey?" He pinched Estelle fondly
on a cheek.

"I
don't have
time
to rest," Olivia cried, praying that Estelle would
just go away. She wanted to be alone—God, how she wanted to be alone! "I
have
thousands
of things to do before I leave."

"All
in good time, all in good time." Using the indulgent tone all doctors used
with their patients invariably assumed to be half-witted, he laughed.
"Well, seeing as you are an old customer and entitled to your little
tantrums, I'll give you the good news
anyway." He patted her hand and
held it. "Then you must sleep. I forbid you to wake up before morning. My
dear, you are going to be a mother again."

Without
assimilating the momentous information, Olivia sank into sleep.

Her
sedated slumber was long, restful and reviving. She awoke, just as dawn
filtered through the bedroom drapes, to the sound of bird song. In a corner
with her hands crossed in her lap, Estelle sat on a chair dozing. Hearing the
rustle of bed-clothes she sat up with a start. For an instant she looked
flustered, as if caught doing something she shouldn't. "I'll go down and
ask for some tea, shall I?"

"Have
you been here all night?" Olivia spoke with her eyes closed.

"Yes.
I thought you might need something."

"You
shouldn't have sat up. Salim would have prepared a bed for you in one of the
guest-rooms."

He
is on his way back!

Olivia
could think of nothing else as she hid her waves of crashing panic from Estelle
behind tightly shut eyelids. Did Estelle know? But of course she must! Who else
would conspire to devise his premature return but her shameless cousin? And
what about Amos . . .? With a cry, Olivia leapt out of bed, forgetting even
Estelle. She had to write to Kinjal immediately; Amos must not return before
she was absolutely ready to sail! If Raventhorne were to hear of her child . .
. oh, sweet Lord, she had to get rid of Estelle! To even have her in the same
room now seemed an abomination.

"You
must rest, Olivia," Estelle was pleading. "Dr. Humphries has insisted
on it. You must avoid over-strain for the sake of the baby."

The
baby . . .?

Olivia's
memory flickered;
the baby!
Dr. Humphries had said she was to be a
mother again! She was going to have another baby, Freddie's baby. A
Birkhurst
baby. Her mind, still foggy with panic, could not yet absorb the total
significance of so unexpected a happening. Still in a daze, she crawled back
into bed and lay again with her eyes closed. The sheer force of her colliding
emotions drained away her strength and, perhaps, she slept. When she eventually
surfaced Estelle was no longer in the room.

Later,
much later, Olivia steeled herself to think again of Jai Raventhorne's imminent
return, and of his renewed physical presence in the city. But that too was a
reality that her brain could
not yet fully accept. She had lived with the fear
for so long, had watched it weave in and out of her nightmares with such
persistent regularity, that now it eluded her comprehension. Incoherently, she
sensed his presence everywhere; like a wraith, sinuous and elusive, he was
still all pervasive—as if he had never gone away at all! She knew that her mind
was playing tricks, but as her carefully erected mental barricades crumbled one
by one, she felt defenceless, exposed. At the same time she recognised that
now, at this crucial juncture in her bizarre life, more than ever she needed to
retain her equilibrium. She had to sustain her sense of perspective; she must
not let go of her most valuable defence against Jai Raventhorne—the
determination that he would never touch her life again.

"Is
it true?" It was the first question Olivia asked Arthur Ransome when he
called to inquire after her well-being that evening.

"Yes,
it is true." Instinct told him to what she referred.

Olivia
quelled her resurgent alarm at the unambiguous confirmation; she had to know
more. "How did Uncle Josh happen to hear the news before any of us did?"

Ransome
gave an indulgent laugh. "Oh, Josh is a crafty old fox not yet gone to
earth, as he sometimes pretends. He still has his sources, especially where
information about Raventhorne is concerned. In any case," he sat back,
brow furrowed in thought, "rumour also has it that Raventhorne will travel
directly up to Assam."

Olivia's
heart leapt as a faint spark of hope rekindled. "And this rumour is
accurate, you think?"

He
spread his hands. "As accurate as any rumour about Raventhorne."

With
that, for the moment, she had to be satisfied. "The alleged intention to
kill Raventhorne," Olivia asked now, "is Uncle Josh serious about it?
I can hardly believe that he is!"

"He
appears to be serious."

"But
Raventhorne will kill
him!
Surely Uncle Josh realises he will be a
sitting duck for Raventhorne if he forces this ludicrous confrontation?"

"He
feels he must, Olivia. He believes he has a moral debt to discharge to
Bridget."

"And
you will do nothing to prevent this . . . murder?" It astonished her that
this eminently balanced man could approve of such foolhardiness.

"My
own reactions are immaterial," Ransome hedged. "But I
have long
accepted that a confrontation is inevitable. Sooner or later it will come and
one of them will be eliminated. There is neither space on earth nor air in the
heavens for both."

Olivia
opened her mouth to indignantly dispute his limp acceptance of what to her
would be an act of suicide, but then she shut it again.
It
is
not as
it seems,
Ransome had said once in another context. Now she got the feeling
that it was what he was saying to her again. And who was she to argue, or to
air secrets not her own? If she had been unable to divert the course of her own
fate, it was unlikely that she could that of another.

After
Ransome had left Olivia forced her scattered faculties to regroup and sat down
to recapitulate logically. John Sturges planned to depart for Cawnpore with
Estelle, his parents and Sir Joshua on the afternoon of next Sunday, the day
after her reception for the newly-weds. No more than a week later the
Lulubelle,
already in port and being provisioned, would sail for the Pacific. Even if
the
Ganga
were to dock in the interim, bazaar gossip— often gratifyingly
accurate—had it that Raventhorne would not linger in station. The probability
of any confrontation, either with Sir Joshua or herself, simply did not exist.

God
willing, it would all work out, it
must.
She would yet beat Jai
Raventhorne to the draw!

Whether
or not Olivia paid any heed to the social snobberies of Calcutta, the wife of a
newly titled baron— and rich, too—was of consuming interest to the community.
In the aristocratic pecking order a barony was not as elevated as, say, a
dukedom, and titles were by no means exceptional in the general administration,
but it was the combination that the new Lady Birkhurst presented that was
irresistible. She was young, uncommonly easy to look at, wealthy in her own
right and possessed an unusually hard head for business that put to shame many
of the foppish popinjays who masqueraded around Tank Square in the guise of
merchants. That she was also American had long ago been condoned; after all,
nobody was perfect! It was a matter of universal regret, that the baroness no
longer gave or attended
burra khanas
in the absence of her husband but,
on the other hand, that very exclusivity set her apart and made her even more
socially desirable.