Scandal in the Night (16 page)

“The compliment is all to you,
huzoor
. The mare has beautiful manners. Indeed, she is quite perfect.” She leaned forward to stroke the glossy beast’s neck. “More beautiful than the spring rains, more beautiful than a sunset, more beautiful than a snowflake, because like a sunset or a snowflake, she is absolutely and perfectly unique.”

She was smiling and talking in this exaggerated fashion for the entertainment of the children, but he was entertained as well. And he was a rogue, so he played his role to perfection, clapping his hand over his heart in a theatrical fashion. “This is praise, indeed.”

“Indeed it is. She is very fine, but you knew that.”

“As thou says. I had the raising of her up from a foal.”

“It shows that she has been so very well trained and looked after. We are getting to know each other quite well, indeed, she and I. She shows great steadiness of character. She hardly batted an eye at the lieutenant’s ham-fisted charge. Amidst all that to-do, she was as calm as Saint Margaret.” Catriona had stroked her hand down the glossy black animal’s neck in admiration.

“I am glad thou art pleased with her. And what name shalt thou give to this perfect, well-behaved snowflake of a mare?”

“Oh, do call her Snowflake, Cat,” Alice pleaded. “Do!”

“But she’s black, Alice,” Arthur pointed out. “That will never do. She needs a fierce, noble name, like Queen Bess or … I know—Boadicea. She was a fierce queen, too.”

Thomas had been amused and pleased that another should mirror his thoughts of Miss Rowan so exactly.

“Very good suggestions.” Catriona awarded her cousins with a warm smile. “But I think I shall call her Puithar.” She was still stroking the lucky animal’s neck, and smiling her small, secret smile that pressed dimples into the apricots of her cheeks.

“Peth-ar?” Alice tried the word out. “What does
that
mean?”

Catriona Rowan’s smile turned up at the corner of her soft, plush mouth. “It means she is special to me.”

But Thomas needed no further explanation. He had heard her say the word the first day, in her murmured seduction of the horse, and he knew from his years of linguistic study under the careful instruction of his father, the Earl Sanderson, that she had chosen the Scots Gaelic word for “sister.” “It sounds a most noble name, Memsahib Rowan. A noble name, indeed.”

They turned out of the manicured lanes of the botanical garden and onto the dirt street of the city, and she asked, “I’m glad you think so. Have you a destination in mind for us,
huzoor
? Or are we to wear out the paths of the Fara-hat Baksheesh?”

“
Farahat-Baksh
. Baksh.” He repeated the correct pronunciation for her, enchanted by the shape of her lips as she worked to get the pronunciation right. Ripe fruit waiting to be plucked. Enchanting.

But he must not ogle her like the callowest youth—like Birkstead.

Thankfully, she noticed no ogling. “Thank you. I have asked my lord Summers if he would find someone to instruct me in the languages, but he only looks at me, and asks why on earth I should want to do that, as if I had asked him if I may join a circus. And when I tell him, so I may speak and learn and understand the world, he laughs, and tells me that to do so is his job and not mine. But I cannot help but wonder if he is wrong. Because he doesn’t seem to speak any of the languages, either. There are languages, in the plural, are there not? Some people speak Hindi and others Urdu, and you,
huzoor,
I think, speak both and Punjabi as well. But I understand none of it.”

Thomas was losing himself in the lovely lyrical cadence of her Scots-accented words, and had to recall himself to attentiveness. “Art thou serious about undertaking a course of study?”

“Yes. Very.”

His satisfaction was a physical thing—a warm feeling that bound his ribs and held his desires tight. Yet he made himself speak cautiously. Circumspectly. “If thou wishes it, I will make inquiries on thy behalf.”

“Thank you, I would be most appreciative. I think speaking the language—or at least trying to speak the language, for I have no idea how I’ll get on—will greatly enhance my experience of India.”

“So how doest thou find India so far?”

“I find it with a map.” And now the smile was no longer a secret, but spread across the ripe fruit of her lips like jam. “I know that was a terrible joke,
huzoor
. I find India … extraordinary. I find it extravagant and miserly. I find it colorful and dull.” She laughed out loud, a merry, bright sound. “Actually, I find it a lot like Scotland.”

How extraordinary. And how interesting of her to try to find similarities inherent in contradiction. “But Scotland is the other end of the wide world, mem. How can that be?”

“There are obvious differences between the two countries.” Her brow pleated with seriousness even as she smiled. “But a city smells like a city, no matter which side of the world it falls upon—of masses of sweating, laboring, unwashed bodies, of gutters running with refuse, of the air full of smoke, and of streets full of animal waste. In Glasgow the air was filled with the pungent, earthy smoke of peat fires. The only difference is that in Saharanpur the fires are fueled by dried dung. India
is
remarkably similar to Scotland, if one only substitutes an overlay of overwhelming dust and heat in place of cold and raw damp.”

“Thou art missing thy homeland.” This he knew without a doubt. Because he suddenly recognized the same wistful emptiness in himself.

“Ah.” She made a little moue of acknowledgement. “Perhaps a little. A very little. And you are very perceptive, Tanvir Singh. But I love being with my cousins, and I am enjoying India in general, and Saharanpur in particular, more and more. Do you visit the city often?”

“Several times a year, as the trade takes me. When the sahibs of the East India Company are buying horses, then I like to be the one selling the horses.”

“But the company is not your only customer?”

“Alas, no, mem. But now that Saharanpur has added greater attraction for me, perhaps I will visit more often.”

She turned aside his implied compliment without any hint of consciousness. She truly wasn’t used to flirting. “You seem on very friendly terms with Colonel Balfour?”

“He and I are very old friends. Indeed, he is much like a father to me. I hold him in as much honor as my own esteemed father.”

“And where is your esteemed father?”

“Far, far away to the north is my family.” He didn’t want to lie to her. He wanted to be able to tell her the truth, or at least as much of the truth as was possible. “And thy family? Why have they sent thee to Hind? To marry a rich man of the company—a nabob as the English call them?”

“No. They did not send me. I came alone.” She looked away, out across the fields and orchards as the city gave way to farmland. “They have all passed away, my family. That is why I came to India, to my aunt. Because I had nowhere else to go.”

Thomas was surprised. He had thought her solemn when he first saw her, but he had never suspected her to be burdened with grief. “I am very sorry for thy loss, mem. I collect it has been some time?”

“No. Not really. But I thank you.” She took another deep breath, and again he had the impression that she was consciously making a decision to put the thought behind her. “You are very kind.”

Oh, he really was going to have to work on giving her another adjective for him. Interesting. Compelling. Attractive. Anything but kind. She was killing him with her own sweet kindness. “I am not known in Saharanpur for my kindness, mem.”

“Why not? Oh. I hope I have given no offense,
huzoor
. I meant my words only as a compliment. You certainly have been very kind to me. You could have sold my lovely mare to any number of other people, but I am very, very glad you sold her to me.”

“Thou hast given no offense. And if I have been kind to thee, it is because it is easy to be kind to those who treat others with respect and kindness themselves.”

“Oh. I suppose it is.” Her smile was a little bittersweet—just a softening of the corners of her mouth and eyes. “On this we are very much in accord.” She paused for a moment, and then turned to him fully. “There doesn’t seem to be much of what you call mutual respect between the cantonment and the city. Or the country as a whole, for that matter.”

“Ah. Thou hast the tact of a great vizier, mem. Or a maharajah’s wife”—he tried teasing her—“if thou wert ambitious.”

Again she let his compliment slide like a bead of water off a green leaf. “Now that is too kind of you. I would have thought a maharajah would marry much like an English prince, to cement alliances and amalgamate power. But unlike our English princes, who are held to just one wife, I understand a maharajah may take as many wives as he pleases, as often as he needs to shore up his allies.”

“This is true.”

“And what of you? Do you have any wives,
huzoor
?”

Was there something more than simple curiosity in her voice? “Alas, I keep no wives, for where would I put them when I am upon the road with my caravans. But I am not like the maharajahs or the nawabs, mem. I am neither a Mohammedan nor a Hindu. I am a Sikh.” He held out his wrist to show her his ceremonial bracelet, one of the visible emblems of his accustomed faith. “Our scriptures teach that women have the same souls as men, and have the same right to spiritual teaching and experience. And when we take a wife, we take only one, and we take her forever.”

Thomas could hear the gravity, the quiet conviction in his own voice, and for the first time, he understood that he had completely accepted and assimilated this tenet of faith. That he had changed more than the length of his hair and the color of his skin in the long years since he had first come to India.

And Catriona Rowan heard his gravity, too. “Oh.” Her response was very quiet, and she looked away from him, so he could not read the look on her face. “I see. I am sorry. You must think me very ignorant.”

“Thou art not ignorant, mem,” he disagreed gently. “Thou art only unlearned. But who amongst the people of Lord Summers sahib’s house would teach thee the many and different ways of this world?”

“No one. But I should very much like to learn the ways of all this world.”

He was warmed that she had unconsciously echoed his words, but the feeling of pleasure deep in his gut was also a warning—a reminder that he could not be the one to teach her the ways of his world. A reminder that his world and hers were not meant to cross.

But it also reminded him that his world—the life he lived and the role he played—were not even his own.

“The lieutenant sahib was wrong about a great many things, but he was right about one thing in particular.”

“Was he?” She retreated back into wariness. She did not want the lieutenant to be right about anything.

“Thou art in want of a friend.”

“Perhaps I was.” She turned to look at him, leveling him with the hopeful gravity in her gray eyes. “But not anymore.”

He made himself shake his head. He made himself say the required words, even though elation was sliding like a thief into his veins—like opium, heady, intoxicating, and deeply, dangerously addictive. “I am not a suitable person to be thy friend, mem. But I should like to introduce thee to another, better suited to the role. Colonel Balfour’s daughter Mina Begum has arrived at his home to visit her father and mother from her husband’s home in Ranpur. She is a very cultured lady who has only lately left her parents’ home to marry the heir of the Nawab of Ranpur. I know she will be delighted to make a new friend.”

Catriona’s full smile blossomed across her rosy apricot-smeared lips. “Married to the heir of the nawab? Then she is a princess. She is to be congratulated for having achieved the ambition of nearly every little girl the world over.”

“But not thee?”

“Oh, no. I was no different. I was as ambitious to be a princess as any little girl born into genteel poverty can be.”

“Surely not, mem. Thou art as different from the other memsahibs as—to use thy English expression—chalk is from cheese.”

“Pray, do not put me upon a pedestal,
huzoor
. I am as human and flawed and ambitious as any other girl under the sun, princess or no.” The clear light in her gray eyes darkened to steel. “Do not think me otherwise.”

Chapter Ten

It was an admonition Thomas should have heeded. A warning he should have understood. But he had not.

It was a measure of just how far gone he already was that he had put her upon that lofty pedestal, and then had not understood why she had climbed down.

He had invented her—his red-gold fantasy of a girl—as an answer to a question he had not even known he had asked. With her solemn smiles and her quiet steel, with her riding before the wind on the mare he had meant only for her, and her open, vivid face flushed with heat and pleasure, she had answered the longing he had buried deep in his most private heart.

He had wanted her to be a part of his life. No matter the cost.

Now, with the benefit of years of hindsight, he could see that he had been profoundly lonely. So lonely, he had been prepared to put aside his years of training and risk his career to indulge his newly acquired taste for one particular Scots-Irish girl. Many men came to the east and acquired a taste for opium or hashish the way he developed his addiction to her. He wanted to be with her so badly, he had damned the consequences. What had started out as a game had become a necessary obsession, as important to his existence as the air he breathed.

In the days that followed that first ride, he found excuses to stay in Saharanpur when he should have headed north into Kashmir to see which way the wind was blowing in the long valleys where Gulab Singh held the power for his maharajah in Lahore. On the strength of nothing more than a casual invitation—“Perhaps we might do this again, sometime?”—he rearranged his days to spend every available spare moment with Catriona Rowan and the Summers children, riding down the long length of the Doab Valley, or trekking higher into the hills. Riding and talking and laughing.