Chandra looked at him in sheer astonishment.
She knew he referred to ‘The Masters’ who were so advanced in the spiritual world that they elected to return to earth to help those who sought the truth but needed a teacher.
She would never have imagined that there was anybody except her father with whom she could discuss such things.
Yet, because of her work on the Buddhist manuscripts, she believed that there were such Gurus if only one could find them.
After a moment she asked,
“You have practised Yoga?”
Lord Frome nodded his head.
“When?”
She did not know why she was so anxious to know.
“A long time ago,” he replied. “Something happened in my life which started me on my search for manuscripts and at the first Monastery I visited, which was in Tibet, I was allowed to stay with them for two years.”
As he finished speaking, he rose to his feet and called for the servants to pack up what remained of their luncheon.
As they rode on, Chandra found herself putting what he had told her into place in her mind as though she had found another piece of the puzzle that was Lord Frome.
It must have been, she told herself, after his heart had been broken that he had gone away, perhaps on a world tour as men have done since the beginning of time and found his way to Tibet.
He must have been guided there and the Yoga he had practised would have helped him to forget and aroused instead an insatiable desire to study precious manuscripts which in many Monasteries were neglected or forgotten.
She had never suspected before that there had been any ulterior reason behind Lord Frome’s travels except that he collected manuscripts as other rich men collected pictures or objets d’art.
Now it struck her he had another and very vital reason, the desire to help those who were still deaf to the great truths which were known to many in the East, but to which the West had sadly turned a deaf ear.
‘I want to talk to him, and I want to know a great deal more,’ Chandra told herself.
Then she felt despairingly that she might not get the opportunity even though they would be alone at dinner in the primitive Dak bungalow where they had stayed before.
They had climbed higher and now they were entirely encircled by the clouds.
Moving through the soft moist air gave Chandra a strange feeling as if she was in a dream.
She could only just see Lord Frome ahead and the trail of ponies behind were out of sight and yet, when they reached the Dak, it looked just as squalid and dirty and the children who ran up and greeted them were in the same tattered rags.
Chandra herself, however, felt different from the way she had before. Then she had been utterly and completely exhausted by the ride – now she was hardly tired at all.
Also, having ridden to the Monastery every day, she was no longer stiff from being so many hours in the saddle.
She went to the room where she had slept before to change and saw that the keeper of the bungalow had not even brushed the floor since she had last used it.
But she was not really interested in anything except that she had been conscious all the afternoon of what lay between her breasts.
She pulled off her hat and jacket and then, before she undressed any further, she drew out the bag and opened it.
She sat down on the bed on which Mehan Lall had arranged her quilt and blanket and tipped what the bag contained onto the pillow.
Then she gave a little gasp.
It was as if something alive lay against the white linen.
Never had she seen a larger emerald or one with such depth.
It was oval in shape to represent the third eye in the Buddha’s forehead and, without being in the least knowledgeable about gems, she knew that it was a unique stone in its brilliance and because it was unflawed.
It was not surprising that Nana Sahib, being a connoisseur of jewels, had wanted to possess it.
Chandra looked at the emerald for a long time, then she put it back in the small bag knowing that she carried a great fortune, if one could value anything so sacred in terms of money, and not for one second must it leave her possession.
She took it with her when she went to the sluice to wash away the dust from the journey.
When she went back to her bedroom to put on the plain gown she had worn the first night she had dined with Lord Frome, she placed it once again between her breasts.
She would have liked to wear one of her beautiful saris, if only because it was the last time Lord Frome would see her in one.
But she had packed them very carefully in her trunk and she would not have them creased in the bag in which she carried the things she needed just for the two nights on the road.
She did, however, hesitate for a moment as to whether she would add her topaz necklace to the dress with its demure puritan collar.
Then she thought it would look out of place and ridiculous and Lord Frome would not understand that she was still trying to thank him for giving her anything so lovely.
She therefore went into dinner looking very different from the way she had the night before, but she told herself it was unlikely that Lord Frome would notice her one way or another.
It was just being conceited even to think he might.
As she entered the small dining room, he said,
“I have a better choice of drinks for you tonight. There is a little wine which I thought we might drink at dinner and I also have some Nepalese brandy which is not unlike a good sherry. I think you would like that as an appetiser.”
She accepted the glass from him and found that the brandy was quite pleasant.
Then dinner was ready and it was almost identical to what they had eaten at the first Dak bungalow they had stayed in.
“I knew it would be hot soup and chicken!” Chandra exclaimed and they both laughed as if at some private joke.
They talked about Nepalese customs during the dinner and Chandra found what Lord Frome told her about them so interesting that she wished she had thought to question him when they were in Kathmandu.
‘We wasted so much time fighting,’ she told herself, ‘when I should have been pleading with him to tell me about the country and its people.’
She could not put back the clock, but she plied Lord Frome with questions and was thrilled by some of the legends which seemed now so very real because she had seen the people of Nepal and the way they lived.
She felt that she could understand how so many of their beliefs had arisen in that happy valley.
When they had finished dinner, she was sure that Lord Frome was conscious of the time and, knowing what was expected of her, she said,
“I think, as we will be leaving early, my Lord, I should retire.”
“We must certainly try to get some sleep tonight,” he answered, “for it will be a long day tomorrow. As you know, we have to pass quickly through the valley where it is dangerous to linger because of the risk of catching malaria.”
“I was told that when we came through it before and, rather than have malaria, I am prepared to gallop all the way!”
Lord Frome smiled.
“I doubt if your pony will let you do that, but we will certainly start early and I hope you don’t get too tired this time.”
There was a considerate note in his voice which that her feel shy.
She said goodnight and went to her room.
It was cold enough for her to appreciate the quilt which she folded in two. She lay on one half of it and covered herself with the other.
She also was glad to have the blanket over her as well.
When she had taken off her dress, she hesitated as to what to do with the emerald, then finding a long piece of ribbon among her things, she hung the bag from it and tied the ribbon round her neck.
‘It will be safe there,’ she thought, slipping it under her lawn nightgown.
In bed Chandra closed her eyes and started to think of the intere
sting stories Lord Frome had told her at dinner.
It was not only what he said, she thought, it was because he sounded so attractive when he spoke in his deep voice which now, because they had become friends, was no longer harsh and hard as it had been when they first met.
‘I could learn so – much from him!’ she thought drowsily and fell asleep.
*
Chandra awoke feeling as if someone had spoken to her and then realised that everything was very quiet. There was no sound in her small room, nor was there any sound from outside where her window looked out onto the courtyard.
And yet she was awake – wide awake!
Then quite clearly, although she knew that he was not speaking except in her mind, she heard the Lama Teshoo.
“There is danger, my daughter!” he said to her. “Danger! Rise and go to the Lord Sahib!”
It was as real as if he was actually in the room speaking to her and Chandra felt she could almost see him – his eyes looking into hers as they had done when she sat at his feet and he told her what was required of her.
“Danger!” the Lama repeated. “Do as I tell you! Go at once to the Lord Sahib!”
It was a command which Chandra knew she must obey.
Without thinking, without stopping to consider what she was doing, she pulled herself out of bed and moved in the darkness towards the door.
She had heard the sounds of Lord Frome going to bed because there was only a thin wooden partition between their bedrooms.
She stepped into the passage which was in darkness and felt her way to the next door.
She opened it and only as she stepped inside the room did she wonder vaguely far away at the back of her mind what Lord Frome would think and if he would understand.
“Who is there?”
She heard Lord Frome’s voice and for a moment found it difficult to answer him and then she replied,
“It is I – Chandra.”
“Chandra? What is the matter?”
He sat up in bed and she heard him groping on the table beside him for a match to light the candle.
The light seemed to flood over the small room and Lord Frome, leaning on his elbow, saw Chandra standing just inside the open door, her eyes wide in her pale face, her hair falling over her white nightgown.
“What has upset you?” he asked.
“There is – danger,” she said, “I know – there is danger – and I am afraid!”
Lord Frome did not ask any questions. He quickly jumped out of bed, picked up his robe which lay on the end of his quilt and put it on.
Then he took something from beside the candle and Chandra saw that it was a pistol.
She did not say anything and merely moved to one side as, lighting up the candle in his left hand, he passed her and went out into the passage.
She was still left with enough light to see that the only chair in the room was covered with his clothes and she moved in her bare feet towards the bed and sat down on the end of it.
As she did so, she thought that she had made a fool of herself and there would be no one in her room, no sign of any intruder.
Lord Frome would think she was an hysterical woman and despise her for it.
She could not bear to arouse again the contempt he had once felt for her and yet she told herself it had been impossible to disobey the Lama.
She had known that he was speaking to her, known that she was in danger, because of what she carried against her breast.
As she thought of it, she put her hand over the little bag, feeling somehow it could help her and perhaps make Lord Frome understand that she was not just being foolish and imaginative.
He seemed to be away a long time. She knew he was still in her room, for there was still just a flicker of light from the candle he carried shining in the passageway.
How could it take him so long, she wondered, to find that there was nothing unusual in the room she had just left?
And yet the Lama had told her there was danger and the Lama would not have been mistaken.
Chandra wondered frantically what she would do if Lord Frome said she had to return to her room and she had no viable excuse for not doing so.
Then she heard his footsteps returning and the light came nearer as he moved down the passageway.
As he came into the bedroom, Chandra tried to see by the expression on his face what he was thinking.
Because she was nervous and afraid, she rose to her feet feeling like a schoolgirl about to be reprimanded for making an unnecessary scene.
Lord Frome put first the candle, then the pistol he carried back on the table beside the bed, then he turned round.
He had his back to the light and, as Chandra lifted her face to his in a desperate effort to see the expression in his eyes, he stood for a moment gazing at her.
Then, as she wanted to speak, wanted to ask him if he had found anything, he put out his arms and pulled her roughly against him.
She was so surprised, so astonished, that she felt as if in that one movement, he took all the breath from her body.
Then, before she could even murmur, his lips came down on hers and held her captive.
CHAPTER SEVEN
For a moment his lips only hurt Chandra so that she was conscious that his kiss was almost a pain.
Then suddenly she felt a wild rapture that was inexpressible rising up through her body from her breast into her lips.
She knew then, although she had not realised it, that this was what she wanted, this was what she had longed for and it was somehow linked with the wonder of the Lotus Manuscript and the beauty of Nepal.
His lips grew softer and yet more insistent, more demanding, and she felt as he held her closer and still closer in his arms, that he drew her very heart from between her lips and made it his.
‘This is love!’ she thought. ‘Love as I always knew it would be if I could ever find it.’
At last, after what might have been a century of time, Lord Frome raised his head.
“My darling!” he exclaimed in a voice she did not recognise, “I might have lost you!”
She looked up at him enquiringly, so bemused, so bewildered by what had occurred that it was difficult to think.
Then he said,
“When I went into your room there was a kukri stuck in the centre of the bed. It must have been meant for me.”
It took Chandra a moment to realise what he was talking about.
Then she exclaimed,
“No – no! It was for – me! I must – tell you – why.”
Even as she spoke, she thought of the wide-bladed curved knife the Nepalese men wore at their waists and knew that the Lama had been right in telling her there was danger.
She shivered and Lord Frome said,
“You are cold, my precious. Get into bed and then we will talk.”
His arms loosened as he spoke. At the same time, as if he could not bear to let her go, he moved his lips against her forehead and she felt herself quiver with a strange sensation she had never known before.
She was too ecstatic at the moment to feel cold and yet she knew that high as they were in the clouds, it was bitterly cold outside the bungalow.
She sat down on the bed and then found that Lord Frome’s quilt was different from her own. His was made in such a way that it was possible to slip right inside it, so that it was like a large sleeping bag.
Because she wanted to obey him and also she was afraid that he might send her back to her own room, she climbed inside the thickly quilted, warm cover and as she did so he went to the door.
He locked it and placed the chair on which were his clothes against it. Then he came back and looked at her in the candlelight.
“You – will be – cold,” she stammered a little incoherently, conscious that the expression on his face made her feel shy, and yet at the same time, wildly excited.
He smiled.
“Fortunately I travel ready for every emergency,” he replied, “even for such as this.
”
He went to a corner of the bedroom where some of his luggage was piled and drew from the top of a case, another quilt like the one which covered Chandra and also a thick woollen blanket.
He brought them back to the bed and, having wrapped the quilt round him, he lay beside Chandra and covered them both with the blanket.
He put his arm round her shoulders and pulled her close to him.
“Now we can talk,” he said, “and at the same time not catch pneumonia!”
There was something so gentle and considerate in his tone that Chandra felt she wanted to reach out her arms towards him and tell him how much she loved him.
But because she still felt shy, she put her head against his shoulder and tried to believe that this was really happening and was not part of a dream.
As if he understood what she was thinking, Lord Frome said very quietly,
“I love you! I have loved you for a long time, Chandra! But I have been fighting frantically against admitting it – even to myself.”
“Do you – really love me?”
“I love you as I never thought I would ever love anybody,” he answered, “and when just now I saw that kukri in the centre of your bed, I knew that you meant everything in the world to me and I could no longer go on pretending to myself that I could live without you.”
Chandra made a little sound of happiness and then she asked,
“When – did you fall in – love with me?”
Lord Frome’s arms drew her a little closer.
“I know now it was when I picked you up off the floor in this very bungalow and knew how brave and valiant you had been in riding for two exhausting days without complaining and without even asking me to go slower.”
“I was so – ashamed that I – collapsed at the end,” Chandra murmured.
“I was a brute to ask so much of you,” Lord Frome replied. “It is something I will never do again.”
As if he wanted to apologise but not in words, he put his hand under her chin and turned her face up to his.
“I love you!” he sighed, “and I will take much more care of you, my darling, than I have done so far.”
Love in the Clouds Page 15
