Scandal in the Night (7 page)

Lord Summers was happy to walk under the shade of the colorful canvas awning, but he was ill at home on the low cushions. He settled precariously on the edge of a large tufted pillow. “This mare, I have heard, is special.”

“Ah.” Thomas gave Lord Summers a quiet smile but said nothing more while he occupied himself in pouring small glasses of thick, aromatic Arabic coffee. Birkstead chose not to sit, but to remain standing behind Lord Summers, in what the young officer no doubt thought was a manly, intimidating fashion.

Lord Summers smiled back at Thomas, content in thinking Tanvir Singh surprised. “I have my sources, you see. I hear everything.”

Everything Thomas had intended for him to hear, at least. He inclined his head in a small nod of acknowledgment to Summers. “I have heard some things also. It is said in the marketplace that the lord sahib is a great admirer of a fine horse. Wilt thou take some refreshment?”

“Is it said? I thank you.” Summers was polite, or politic enough to take the small glass and sip at it, even though it was clearly not to his taste. Yet Lord Summers could not hide the small flush of pride that rose from under his chin, though he waved the purported compliment aside. “Well, I daresay bazaar gossip is cheaply come by.”

“As thou sayest,” Thomas continued in his unruffled, easy way. “But no one in the bazaar, nor even in all the district of Saharanpur, has such an animal as I, Excellency.”

“You think so, do you?” When Thomas again made no answer but a small inclination of his head, Summers politely changed tack. “I suppose I’d be very much obliged if you would let me have a look at her.”

Thomas had to give the man credit. While the new resident wasn’t a Colonel Balfour, and had none of that man’s knowledge and affinity of Hindustan, Lord Summers was perhaps not solely the pompous, belligerent caricature Thomas would have made him out to be. The lieutenant, on the other hand, looked decidedly perturbed by the resident commissioner’s deigning to use his good manners on a native.

Thomas decided to be tolerant. The honeybee came only to the sweet flowers, and Thomas wanted honey. “As thou wishes, sahib.” He motioned to the
sa’is
to bring the mare forward.

Like a princess who knows exactly what to do with the weight of curious eyes upon her, the animal pricked up her ears and picked her regal way across the grass, seeming to look down her long, elegant nose directly at Lord Summers with her large, intelligent eyes.

Thomas said no more, and simply let Summers look. Tanvir Singh had long ago learned better than to bait his trap too heavily.

“Mmm. Very nice.” Lord Summers made a low murmur of admiration as the
sa’is
set the mare working on a long lunge line. “Is she broken?”

“Trained for the saddle with excellent gaits for riding. Very, very fine. I fear she is much too fine for regimental use, Excellency. I have an esteemed client in Gwalior who will find such a mare to be a fitting gift for his favorite wife.”

The resident watched silently for a long time while the groom slowly worked the mare through her paces, before he commented. “I see what you mean by her fineness. Which is ideal. I’ve an idea of her being for a young lady—my Lady Summers’s niece.”

Thomas felt both elation and a perverse disappointment at so easily steering the powerful Englishman to his purpose. To this easily manipulated man, he was to entrust his intelligence of what he was sure was a coming war in the Punjab? The thought did not comfort.

“Your niece?” Behind the new resident commissioner’s shoulder, Lieutenant Birkstead was frowning in a way that told Thomas the lieutenant thought he had missed something—some chance to profit by this new information.

“Oh, didn’t you know?” the resident answered casually. “We’ve a new addition to the household, Birkstead. Lady Summers’s late sister’s girl. Scots-Irish, you know, but surprisingly lovely and very, very obliging. Been with us a few weeks or so now. Been a godsend—she’s wonderful with the children, and I admit to being quite taken with her, as well. Manages everything just so, to spare her aunt the difficulty and trouble. The climate, you understand, does not agree with Lady Summers.”

Thomas’s well-trained ear was trying to parse the exact amount of affection the resident commissioner had conceived for his new niece-in-law, while his inquisitive eye caught something more than a smirk in the expression on the lieutenant’s face, revealed only to him behind the commissioner’s back. Something sharp and cold, and much more calculating.

Although Thomas had never been introduced to Lady Summers, he had seen and taken note of her. Much was said of her in the bazaar, most of it unflattering. Lady Summers, it was said, was typical of that breed of
angrezi
memsahib laid low, or at least given excuse for her indolence, by the extremes of the climate. It was said, as freely in the cantonment as in the bazaar, that she didn’t give a farthing for the upbringing of her children, as she made sure her life intersected but rarely with theirs. It was said she saved all of her inconsiderable energies for pursuing her social life, with or without the company of her husband. It was also said the lieutenant sahib figured prominently in that social life.

Lord Summers appeared to be oblivious to such rumors. Perhaps he was more interested in “being taken” with the more subtle charms of his niece-in-law?

A haze of red heat spread upward from Thomas’s lungs until it filled his body with an unfamiliar rage—frustrated ire at the thought of that beautiful, pale, flaming goddess of a girl with such an unworthy man, an obtuse functionary who was old enough to be her father, and who ought to have been acting like one, instead of like a dirty old gaffer.

It was all Thomas could do to force his mind and his unwilling body into obedience, and back to the task at hand. “A
young
English lady? Excellency, surely thou canst see that this mare is too spirited an animal for a young person.”

“She is a very good rider, you may be assured. Very used to horses. Has a way about her. You needn’t be concerned. I’m thinking she will do well by your mare.” Lord Summers turned back to speak confidentially to Birkstead, though he did not lower his voice appreciably. “Now, you’ll tell me whatever price is correct for a transaction of this nature so this mountain devil doesn’t take advantage of me, won’t you, Lieutenant?”

“My dear sir,” the lieutenant promised. “I will most assuredly see to it that he gives you better than a fair price. But frankly, I don’t see why we should have to deal for these native
ponies
at all.” He said the word dismissively, as if the bloodlines of Tanvir Singh’s fine horses were not apparent to one and all. “We can very well send for animals with better bloodlines from the company stud at Ghazipur.”

Idiots, both of them. How could the lieutenant not know that it was Tanvir Singh who supplied breeding stock for the company stud as well? Like an unfortunate number of his countrymen, the lieutenant spoke as if he, Tanvir Singh, were not right there, no more than three feet away, sitting at his ease, sharing his hospitality with them. As if he were deaf, or just plain stupid, or incapable of understanding their language even as he spoke it. Such willful arrogance would one day very soon bring the Lieutenant Birksteads of the world, and their beloved East India Company, low. And they would deserve the end they got.

He could almost feel sorry for them. Almost.

“For a
fair price,
” Thomas used the same low, confidential tone, “I have also in my caravan twenty-three more horses, well trained, strong, and full of heart. All very fit for troop work in the mountains. Horses bred of the plains will not do well in the mountains. Their lungs are not accustomed to the air.”

“Twenty-three only? The regiment has many sepoys to mount.” Lord Summers looked up at Lieutenant Birkstead, as if he were seeking confirmation. As if he really did not know the exact number and strength and state of training of all the men under his ultimate command. Foolish man not to know such things. Foolish man to trust such things to the lieutenant.

And Thomas would show him why. “Alas, Excellency, I could not bring to Saharanpur any more. I found the majority of my war mares were needed in Lahore.” He paused to give weight to the place-name, to see if the new resident commissioner would understand the implications before they were explained to him. “The stables of His Majesty the Maharajah Ranjiit Singh needs must be filled first. And as the maharajah seems to have a very great need for strong mountain-bred horses at present, he is perhaps not as careful with his coin, in the way of the lord sahibs of the English cantonment.”

Lord Summers began to pleat his florid face into a frown. “Is he, now?”

“These fellows are all alike, my lord,” Birkstead warned. “They think they can squeeze a bit more from John Company’s fist.”

Thomas felt a curl of pleasure at the thought of illustrating for the lieutenant just what sort of fellow he really was beneath his suntanned skin. Rank always held an inordinate sway for men like Birkstead. But even without rank, Thomas had his ways. “The Lord Summers Sahib must know there are many other buyers for my excellent horses. Why should I want to travel all the way here, when there are buyers aplenty just now in the Kingdom of the Punjab? The word in the streets and stables of Lahore is that His Majesty the Maharajah Ranjiit Singh is gathering his armies against his upstart enemies in the north and east, and he and his generals will have need of many, many mountain-bred horses.”

“Does he?” Lord Summers’s eyes flicked sharply to Thomas, narrowed with shrewd attention. Finally. “You begin to intrigue me, Tanvir Singh. And what else do you hear in the stables of the maharajah?”

“As thou begins to understand me, Excellency. Perhaps the lieutenant sahib would like to make a more careful inspection of the mare to assure himself that she is not a
pony
”—Thomas gave his pronunciation of the word an amused, foreign emphasis—“but every bit as fine as promised, while Excellency and I talk of warhorses and of information.”

A quiet quarter hour spent enjoying a plate of ripe fruit of the Doab while giving the commissioner detailed information about which of the maharajah’s generals were leading which troops of exactly what strength made Tanvir Singh a very tidy profit. And without the lieutenant’s sneering presence, Thomas could begin to appreciate some of the new resident commissioner’s finer points—his keen intelligence and ability to understand the meaning of the information brought to him, without Thomas having to explain it. And yet he had still found it prudent not to tell Lord Summers everything about Tanvir Singh. Not yet.

It was pride, he supposed, goading him on. Pride and something far more insecure, which had him wanting to find out more about the resident’s flame-gold niece from the safety of his disguised identity.

And then, having wrung more rupees from John Company’s coffers than the resident commissioner had originally been prepared to give, Thomas indulged himself for such excellent work with the reward of delivering the mare himself.

The residency stood at the western side of the cantonment, itself a large district laid out on the other side of the thin ribbon of river that meandered like a loose seam along the frayed edge of the town. The residency was a newish, large red-brick mansion surrounded by deep, arched verandas, built in the boxy Birmingham-looking style favored by the English company men, and furnished exclusively with furniture and appointments brought from England, so its inhabitants might attempt to re-create their leafy English way of life as closely as possible without any reference to the world beyond their gates.

Thomas judged that a visit to the rigidly precise avenues of the cantonment called for a much higher level of sartorial display than even the boisterous trip through the bazaar, and so he took the time to change into a clean set of clothes—a richly woven, immaculate white tunic, and a turban of two entwined silk fabrics more suited to the supposedly elevated station of those he visited. And a waist sash of the same silk, to show off his gleaming
kirpan,
the ceremonial dagger he was never without.

No matter his attention to the proprieties, he and his
sa’is
were left to cool their heels outside the gate of the residency by the
darwan,
while that wide-eyed porter fetched the haughty
sircar
who had charge of the house, and who in turn finally admitted them to the stable yard of Lord Summers.

But once Tanvir Singh was admitted to the premises, Lord Summers did him the courtesy of coming out to greet him personally as Thomas rode into the wide yard astride his own tall mare. “Tanvir Singh, you have come yourself, have you?”

“Lord Summers Sahib.” Thomas dismounted and gave him a salaam. “I worry that thou wilt find the mare too strong for thy young English lady, and ask me to take her back.”

“Ha, ha. We shall see. We shall see.” Lord Summers turned to the
sircar
hovering in the background. “Fetch memsab’s niece, Miss Rowan, down.”

The low heat of anticipation fired deep in his gut, and Thomas had to steel himself not to react when she came out not a moment later, blowing onto the veranda like a fresh breeze from the cool northern mountains.

“There you are, my dear.” Lord Summers was holding his hands out in greeting.

She flew down the wide steps toward them, moving swiftly from the darker shade of the veranda out into the dappled light of the yard with a falconlike directness and grace, a blur of bright, white movement.

Thomas made a small gesture of a salaam, his cupped hand rising to his chin, but he stilled at the sound of her long, liquid intake of breath. Even the mare turned her head toward the source, as transfixed as Thomas by the appearance of his flame-girl.

She was an even stranger creature close up—full of contradictions. She was full inches above Lord Summers, long and towering over him like an Amazon warrior—though she did not top Thomas’s shoulder—but with a delicate, oval face. The shape brought to mind the exquisite faces of the Tibetans, with their beautiful wide eyes. But the color was completely wrong—pale white and flaming orange, and gray-blue ocean, as if someone had set England, pale Albion, on fire. She was an elvish warrior princess, a long-limbed dream of the Tuatha De Danann, some goddesslike pairing of the old Norse gods and a swan.