Scandal in the Night (21 page)

“Huzoor.”
She tried not to smile too widely when she greeted him, this friend of her heart. She tried not to ride or run to him as quickly as she could. She tried not to gravitate to his side as if he were the sun and she a helpless star, revolving around his orbit.

But when she was with him, her heart was happy and content. And she was free.

Free of both the cantonment’s and the bazaar’s insidious insistence on caste. Free of her aunt’s myriad little insults. Free of the chill that had lived in her soul for too long.

India had burned it away.

She had changed.

Tanvir Singh had changed a little, too—at least to her eyes. He appeared less and less the heedless rogue, and more and more the thoughtful, charming prince, with manners as smooth and polished as a maharajah’s jewels. He was very much at home in the colonel’s palace, where he would leave off his colorful surcoats, and wear only his less formal, though certainly pristine, white cotton tunics and turban. It made him look softer somehow, although the adjective was silly when applied to such a man. More approachable, perhaps. Much less the fierce
sawar
who had stared down Lieutenant Birkstead than the charming, witty friend ready to make her laugh and smile.

And he would walk her slowly across the wide courtyards to the
zenana,
stretching out the time, as if he had nothing better to do in the world than chat idly with her about the day, and what progress she was making with her study of the language, or what she had thought of the poetry that he had given her to read. But eventually he would bow and take his leave, leaving her to the begum and Mina.

God, how she missed Mina. How she wanted her forthright opinions and forceful optimism. How she wanted her advice. But Mina’s advice would be the same as it had been in Saharanpur—to trust Tanvir Singh. And to trust herself.

But that was the hardest thing of all. All her confidence, all her surety had been burned away in the fire.

Mina would have chided her for her loss of confidence. Mina had to have been one of the most confident, beautiful, and generous creatures Catriona had ever known. If Tanvir Singh had been a secret, disguised prince, Mina Begum had been every inch the secure, reigning princess. Every day she was sumptuously attired in a close-fitting
salwar kameez
tunic and trousers of shimmering silks and embroidered satins, and richly adorned in magnificent sets of jewels—earrings and hairpieces, bracelets and rings, anklets and necklaces. Confident in her femininity and beauty, for not even the richest jewels were as beautifully alive as she. Her skin was the color of wild honey, and her lightly veiled hair the rich hue of warm, dark chocolate, but her eyes were so light and translucent a green they took Catriona’s breath away, and made her want to draw near to assure herself they were real.

And for all of Mina’s assurances that Tanvir Singh was only her brother in spirit, to Catriona’s eyes Tanvir Singh and Mina looked enough alike in coloring and feature that they might have been related. Perhaps they were—perhaps Tanvir Singh was the natural son of Colonel Balfour. Perhaps he was even his heir—she had never heard of another son. Catriona was still trying to learn about the complicated ties of kinship, religion, and power in India. And she frankly had no idea at all about the different religions to which the family seemed to belong. The begum and especially Mina, as the wife of the Nawab of Ranpur’s eldest son, both abided by the law of Islam and kept themselves secluded and veiled, while Tanvir Singh had told her he was a monotheistic Sikh. And the colonel, whom Catriona assumed had at least been raised a Christian, seemed to profess no particular religion at all.

And Catriona felt it would have been disrespectful to ask. Any time she even mentioned the name of Tanvir Singh—told how they had ridden with the children out into the fruit orchards to the north of the city, or climbed into the hills, or related some observation he had made—Mina would pounce upon it like a playful but sharp-eyed cat.

“Do you not think Tanvir Singh most handsome, Catriona?” she had asked.

“Yes.” Catriona was sure a blush had warmed her cheeks, but there was no reason not to speak the truth among her friends. “Yes, of course. He is a most handsome gentleman.”

“Good. It is good that you should think so. I worry that he does not have admirers because he travels so much, back and forth and all across the world, from kingdom to kingdom. It is past time he settled down with a lover, if he cannot yet take a wife.”

“Surely you don’t mean—I am not Tanvir Singh’s lover!” she protested as heat rushed up her neck. Mina’s, and even the begum’s, frankness in all things marital and carnal had not yet ceased to amaze Catriona. “Nor do I have any ambition to be.”

“Do you not? Then why do you seek his company if you do not want to taste the delights of his body?” the wide-eyed beauty had asked. “You do not think just to tease and play with him?”

“Heavens, no.” The heat was insinuating itself under her skin, curling lower into her belly. “I would never do such a thing. I like him very much. He is my friend.” Catriona struggled to explain her wonderful, comfortable friendship with the tall trader even as her thoughts raised the less comfortable but strangely compelling feelings she had tried to stifle. “We both share a love of horses.”

Mina had raised one perfectly arched brow, and pursed her lips skeptically. “And do you talk always of the horses?”

“No, we talk of many things. But certainly not of being lovers.”

“And why not? I have seen the way he looks at you. And this is not the look of a friend.” Mina had sat back on her cushions with a knowing laugh. “I have shocked you with my frank talk, but my brother has been alone for far too long. And you are the first woman of any race or creed that he has ever introduced me to.”

“Am I? Surely he has many friends?” The whole world seemed to be Tanvir Singh’s friend.

“Of course. He is a man of the world. Everyone between Kabul and Calcutta knows the name of Tanvir Singh. He does have many friends, but very few that he would invite into my father’s home. And certainly none before you that he has asked to introduce to my esteemed mother.”

Catriona had felt all the responsibility of the honor. “My dear princess, you cannot know how greatly I esteem your friendship. And you, Nashaba Nissa Begum.” Catriona had turned to include the dignified lady in her appeal. “I hope you do not think I am unworthy to be a friend to Tanvir Singh.”

“No, no,” Mina had cried. “Never unworthy, for you are as generous and truly good-hearted a person as can be. But you are
unprepared
for the ways of the world. If you value my friendship, then you must value my advice. Especially my advice about Tanvir Singh.”

“You are alone in the world,” the begum agreed. “Without a mother to teach you and take care of you.”

Clearly the two women had been talking about her. “My aunt has been very kind.”

The begum shook her head. “But does she teach you the arts of being a woman? Does she get you a husband?”

“Well, not exactly.” Catriona had no desire to discuss the messy situation with Aunt Lettice and Lieutenant Birkstead, and Lord Summers—how Lord Summers kept practically throwing her at the lieutenant—with the inhabitants of the
zenana,
even though they probably already knew. Though they were closed off from the world, it seemed the world and his wife, as the saying went, came to them. “Let us just say that their efforts have unfortunately come to naught.”

“Then we must do what we can to help you,” the begum asserted.

“We must,” Mina decreed. “We will make you beautiful. For only when you feel beautiful, and feel the strength and power of your unique pale British beauty, will your eyes be opened. As will his. And you will understand how it is, and how it is meant to be between you two.”

“I’m not sure—” She hadn’t been sure. But she had been aware. And Mina could tell.

“Look at him when next you see him,” Mina urged, “and think on my words, dear sister. Look at the strength of his hands and the breadth of his shoulders, and ask yourself if it is only friendship that you seek. Ask yourself if it is friendship that makes your breath come fast beneath your breasts, and makes your body feel new underneath your skin. Ask yourself.”

And Catriona had.

It had taken only that gentle urging to give way to the thoughts and feelings that had lain dormant within her. To the enticing heat that curled deep in her belly when she looked at him. So she had asked. And she had seen.

And she was seduced by the possibilities Mina had so cleverly suggested. Seduced by the idea of being beautiful and enticing and powerful. Seduced into submitting to the sensual pampering of the
zenana.
She was massaged and brushed and threaded and anointed until she glowed. Until she felt beautiful and new beneath her skin.

And Tanvir Singh had most definitely noticed.

*   *   *

Thomas leaned his forearm against the stout barrier of the door to Cat’s chamber. He could hear her on the other side of the panel, hear her shallow breathing. And he knew that she remembered.

“You looked beautiful,” he said as he crouched down on his haunches so his low voice would carry under the door. “I’ll never forget how you looked that day. Did you know that Mina had invited me to come and sit with you, and listen to music? And I came at the appointed time, only to find you were not sitting in the pavilion listening to music. You were dancing.”

The image that arose before Thomas’s eyes was shocking because it was so familiar—revisited night after night—and still so vivid. The sight that had greeted his eyes that afternoon had been straight out of his waking dreams—secret thoughts and images he had conjured for himself out of fantasy and lust.

Mina and her attendants were teaching Catriona Rowan to dance in the flowing northern style. And in order to set Miss Rowan free to comport her body into the sinuous twists and turns of the Rajasthani dance, they had persuaded her out of her tight-buttoned English clothes and long, concealing sleeves. Out of the confines of her stiff whalebone stays.

“You were dressed in a long, full-skirted version of
salwar kameez
in dark, lustrous sapphire silk so blue and so fine that it rustled and whispered secrets as you moved.” Thomas put words to the memory. “And your flame-colored hair was unbound, and fell in a plait like a bolt of apricot silk straight down the middle of your back. Do you remember? Mina had adorned you with a cascade of her heavy Mughal jewels that shimmered around your face like a waterfall of color whenever you moved.”

And how she had moved. Though the whirling rhythmic steps of the dance must have been new to her, she had taken to them with a natural grace, a cleanness of line, and a lightness of step and heart that brought joy and easy expression to every movement of her body, from her bare, hennaed feet, to the long, white line of her arms as she raised them above her head in a movement that made her body arch so that her sweet breasts pressed tantalizingly against the straining fabric.

He was struck as dumb and immovable as a fakir as he watched from the doorway, set aflame with lust, incinerated with the need that pounded through his veins with every beat of the tabla drum.

And then he heard her laugh. “You were laughing. And there was nothing delicate or light or coy about your laughter—it was open and wholehearted and it bubbled out of you, full of joy. As if you had just that moment learned what it was to be happy.”

Mina had been laughing, too, and calling direction and encouragement to her pupil as Catriona copied the movements of the other dancer, and stretched her body into the stylized poses.

And the sight of his goddess dancing loosened something within him. Something he could not call back under harness again. Ever again. It had broken free and it had risen through him with all the fury of a dust storm.

And his only thought was a ferocious accusation—how had she who seemed so innocent, so untainted by the sordid needs of the world, become so full of such physical knowledge? Such an awareness of her body? Such pride in the erotic tension of her flesh?

While his mind detailed the changes in her supple mobility, his body had gone rigid with shock, or dismay, or more properly—oh, yes, that was what it had been—seething jealousy, even as he knew that no other man had put such animal awareness beneath her skin.

And he knew in that moment, that he would do anything to be the man to do so.

The thought calmed him somewhat. Which was good, because at that moment one of the Begum’s ladies espied him in the dark of the archway and set up a high-pitched, giggling fuss.

And in less than a moment, the sapphire temptress was gone. “You blushed scarlet when you saw me.” He went on with his story, hoping she was listening on the other side of the door. “Though you pressed your hands together as Mina did, and bid me welcome, you seemed to find great interest in your bare feet.”

He had not taken pity on her. He had not let her escape. “I asked if you were quite well, because you were so flushed and quiet at seeing me. But Mina saved you from having to speak. ‘She is very well, as you can see, Tanvir. Have you not noticed the differences? No doubt you will be full of disapproval, with all your Sikh beliefs, but I think she looks lovely. So much more refined, don’t you think?’” Mina’s own face had been wreathed in a smile of sly triumph.

Thomas closed his eyes to conjure up the image of what he had seen. “And I had to look again, to see that the delicate arch of your eyebrows had been enhanced by the threader’s art. And I knew, Catriona, that there would be more displays of such art on your body. Much more. And much, much less. I knew that under the sapphire silk your skin would be completely bare.”

Thomas had had to force himself to act like Tanvir Singh, to be passive and not react when all he could think of, when all he could envision in his mind’s eye, was her pale, white, extraordinarily bare flesh. Lust stirred and rumbled, unbidden and uncontrolled, like gathering clouds within the landscape of his body. Most definitely Thomas’s body—Tanvir Singh should have felt only disapproval, or at the very least disappointment at such a disturbance to Miss Rowan’s godhead, for the Sikhs never cut their hair, nor shaved or threaded the hair from their bodies.