by Лорен Уиллиг
“Hyderabad,” said Freddy, dealing with the problem of wine splashing over the rim of his glass by the simple expedient of draining it in one long swallow. “I’m to be joining the Residency there.”
He chose his phrasing carefully to avoid any mention of his subordinate role. It was such a silly sort of snobbery, thought Penelope impatiently. What did he care what a ship captain he was never going to see again thought of his role in the Residency? The man was clearly flustered enough at having a titled gentleman on his ship, even if it was only a courtesy title.
“Lord Frederick is to be a sort of messenger to the Court at Hyderabad,” Penelope specified helpfully. “Aren’t you, darling?”
“I am a Special Envoy.” Freddy gave her a look over his wineglass that promised retribution later. It was an empty promise. By bedtime, he would be far enough in his cups — or deep enough into a game of cards — that he would have entirely forgotten.
“Who is the current Resident at Hyderabad?” asked young Wheeley or Weatherly or whatever his name was. Something beginning with W , at any event. His fair face flushed as he admitted, “I’m new to this part of the world, you see, so I don’t know as much as I ought yet.”
“Kirk-something,” said Freddy offhandedly, toying with his turbot.
“Kirkpatrick,” supplied Captain Reid, the hard consonants sounding like gunshots. “James Kirkpatrick. He has devoted a decade of his life to serving British interests in Hyderabad.”
“You admire him, then?” asked Penelope, watching Reid closely.
“I think he has done admirable work,” said Reid simply. “But for Kirkpatrick, Hyderabad might well have gone over to the French in 1798. There were more than fourteen thousand soldiers under French command in Hyderabad. Kirkpatrick got the Nizam on his side and engineered a bloodless coup. It was a brilliant piece of maneuvering, and one that saved our government in Calcutta a great deal of bother.”
He might not have come right out and charged the Governor General with ingratitude, but the meaning was clear.
Freddy looked down his nose at Reid, exuding aristocratic hau teur. “What about the rumors of a native wife?” challenged Freddy. “From what I’ve heard, Kirkpatrick has conducted himself most irregularly.”
Captain Reid smiled a tight social smile. “I believe a man’s private life is his own.”
Freddy crossed his arms over his chest and kicked back in his chair, nearly oversetting Wheeley’s glass in the process. The young captain made a hasty grab for his wine before it could land in his lap. “Even when he’s meant to be serving the Crown?”
Captain Reid raised one brow. “I fail to see how the two are connected. Would you contract your marriage to suit the wishes of your superiors?”
The words acted on Freddy like a match to tinder. Penelope could practically hear the flames crackling in the suddenly too-still air. Mandated marriages were a sensitive topic for Freddy at the moment.
Penelope broke the tension by saying languidly, “Lord Frederick doesn’t believe he has superiors.”
It came out somewhat more acidly than she had intended it, but it served the desired cause.
“Oh, but everyone has superiors,” broke in Captain Wheeley earnestly, delighted at having something to add and entirely immune to atmosphere. “There’s the King — and we shouldn’t forget the Lord Almighty, King of us all.”
“Unless you’re Hindu,” put in Captain Reid blandly. Under his blank façade, Penelope had the impression that he was still seething, although over what she wasn’t quite sure. Kirkpatrick’s native wife? Perhaps he had a local amour of his own, and resented the slur on such alliances. “They have gods and kings of their own.”
“But you can’t count them, surely?” said the young captain uncertainly. “Since they’re heathens.”
“From their viewpoint, we’re probably the heathens,” pointed out Penelope frivolously. “With our silly ceremonies and one measly divinity. It’s positively parsimonious of us. And not a human sacrifice to be had in all of the Anglican communion.”
Over the rim of his glass, Captain Reid eyed her assessingly. Unlike Freddy’s, his glass was still three quarters full. Candlelight reflected off the wine, casting a warm glow on his cheeks, like sunlight through a stained-glass window.
“That might depend on how one interpreted sacrifice,” he suggested, like a boy dangling a stick in front of a dog to see if he would jump.
“Being forced to sit in a drafty church on cold Sundays, you mean?” said Penelope. “Quite. Especially when the sermon is a long one.”
“Lady Frederick is joking,” interjected Freddy repressively. “She frequently does.”
“I believe that life is one large jest,” agreed Penelope, baring her teeth at her spouse. “Usually on us.”
In that, at least, she and Freddy were perfectly in accord. Their marriage was little more than a massive joke. On them.
Young Wheeley looked uneasily from Penelope to Freddy and back again, as though he feared that sentiment might be theologically unsound, but didn’t dare to contradict a lady, especially not a lady who had already expressed an interest in taking up human sacrifice as a hobby.
Penelope tossed down her napkin and pushed her seat back from the table. The men rose as well, the unfortunate young captain cracking his head on the sloping ceiling in the process.
Penelope favored them with a sultry glance all around. “Enjoy your port, gentlemen.”
She processed to the door in queenly fashion, head held high, well aware of the way that candlelight played against the fine muslin of her dress, offering the illusion of transparency that had entrapped more than one male fancy in the past. She held the pose until the door had closed behind her, giving the gentlemen time to recover from her presence and get back to suffering one another’s company. Then, with a quick look to either side, she slipped light-footed down the passage.
It wasn’t merely tact that had prompted her to withdraw. She had another mission in mind, one best accomplished while Captain Reid was fully occupied. It would be rude for him to excuse himself without the ritual glass of port. There would be toasts to be drunk, rude stories to be told, all the usual sort of things men did once the women had demurely retreated to the drawing room.
Penelope had a different room in mind, and there was nothing demure about it.
Instead of stopping at the cabin she shared with Freddy, she fumbled her way to the next door down, pushing the portal open with one swift, decisive movement. A movement on the far wall caused her a moment’s alarm, but it was only the shadow cast by the lantern swaying on its hook. Cast in relief on the opposite wall, it looked like a condemned man swaying in a gibbet. Ugh. Penelope pushed the macabre thought aside. After all, it wasn’t thievery she was engaged in, just a spot of . . . inspection. That was it. A nice clean word for a somewhat dubious activity.
Slipping into the room, Penelope eased the door shut behind her and took stock of her surroundings. Captain Reid’s quarters were smaller than the cabin she shared with Freddy, a narrow rectangle with space for little more than the basic amenities. The room already displayed all the obvious signs of masculine occupation. A shirt was tossed carelessly across the narrow berth and the Captain’s shaving kit jostled for space with a set of battered, wood-backed brushes on the narrow washstand. There was a book left open on the bed, something to do with irrigation and agricultural improvements. After shaking it vigorously to check for hidden letters, Penelope left it alone.
There were more books in a narrow bookcase, which had been bolted to the floor, a motley collection of works, apparently abandoned by a series of occupants over time, unless they were overflow from young Captain Wheeley’s own library. He did seem the sort to wallow in Lyrical Ballads in his spare time. Penelope didn’t waste any time on them. She had found what she was looking for.
On the warped table by the bookshelf, a portable writing desk lay open, several pages distributed across its surface, as though the writer had left
them to dry before going off to dinner. They were closely written, in a tidy hand.
They were also completely illegible.
The hand might be tidy, but it was a script that Penelope had never seen before, all dots and curlicues like eyelashes scattered across the page. It was a letter to be sure — there was something that looked like a salutation at the top — but about what? And to whom? It felt like a cruel joke. On her.
There were other pages beneath, though, pages that looked as though they might be written in English. Penelope had only managed to wiggle the first one free, one that began with the salutation, “Dear Lizzy” — a woman’s name, but not exactly a loverly beginning — when a horrible sound made her freeze like a rabbit in a hedgerow.
Someone was turning the doorknob.
His servant, Penelope prayed, shoving the page back beneath the others and springing away from the desk. Please let it be his servant. It would still be embarrassing, but she could make up a silly excuse about having lost her way or felt faint or some other nonsense.
It wasn’t a servant.
Captain Reid stood in the doorway, regarding her with an expression that could only have been described as nonplussed. Penelope would have enjoyed seeing him so had she not been showing to even worse advantage. It sapped all the pleasure from it.
“Lady Frederick?”
The very title came out as a question. Well, Penelope couldn’t begrudge him that. One did tend to question the status of women who showed up unannounced in one’s bedchamber.
Penelope would have given anything to flee. Unfortunately, Captain Reid stood between her and the door, and there was nothing outside the window but water. Water and crocodiles. Penelope couldn’t see the crocodiles, but she deemed it safer to presume their existence.
There was nothing to do but brazen it out. Fortunately, she had had a good deal of experience at being brazen.
Tossing Captain Reid an arch look, Penelope fluttered her fingers at the closely written pages on the writing desk. “Love letters, Captain Reid?” she said. “The lady is fortunate, indeed.”
If he was perturbed at finding her pawing through his belongings, he hid it well. “Did you want something, Lady Frederick?”
“Yes.” It was the curved script on the letter that gave her the idea. Penelope shook back her hair and smiled up at him with the assurance of one well practiced in wiggling out of sticky situations. “I was looking for an Indian grammar. I had thought you might have one.”
“An Indian grammar,” Captain Reid repeated.
“Yes,” repeated Penelope, daring him to challenge her. “Is it really so odd that one would wish to learn the language of the place one intends to occupy? One wouldn’t live in England without learning English.” Of course, one was born in England, so one never had to bother with learning it, but that was quite another matter. “If I were to live in Italy, I would learn Italian. If I were to live in France — ”
“I believe I have the general idea,” said Captain Reid, cutting Penelope off in the midst of her continental tour. Had he believed her excuse? She couldn’t tell. The angle of the light was in his favor, falling from behind him so that his face remained in shadow, while hers was lit like a sinner’s conscience at the call of the last trump. “You may find it more difficult than you anticipated.”
“I’ve always been rather quick at learning a language.” It was true enough. It had driven Henrietta mad that Penelope had managed to master the rudiments of Italian while Henrietta was still struggling with basic pronunciation. Penelope was lazy, but she was quick — at least, that was what her sorely tried governesses had reported to her mother.
“Languages,” Captain Reid corrected. “I’m afraid you’ll find not one Indian language but many. Hindustani is the most common, but by no means universal.”
“What do they speak in Hyderabad?”
“Deccani. It’s an offshoot of Urdu.” That might have helped had she had any idea what Urdu was. One thing was clear, it wasn’t Italian, French, or German. “My advice is to hire a munshi once we arrive. A tutor,” he translated. “Although I doubt you’ll have much use for it.”
“Why?” Penelope took a step towards him, bringing them only a hand’s breadth apart in the tiny cabin. The lantern on its peg in the corner swayed with the movement of the ship, creating a ripping river of gold on the scarred wood floor between them. “Because you think I’ll leave?”
With a wry smile, Captain Reid shook his head. “No. Because the English community tends to keep to itself. And I imagine your husband will follow them in that.”
“There’s nothing to say that I need to follow my husband.”
“You said it yourself. Whither he goest . . .”
“That was purely a matter of geography, not the mind.”
“Freethinking, Lady Frederick?”
She hated that name. It was like a shackle around her neck, engraved with the name of her master. She took a step back, her face openly mutinous in the light of the single lamp. “I don’t like being told what to do.”
Captain Reid quirked an eyebrow. “I shall remember that.”
Unexpectedly, Penelope grinned. “No, I don’t expect you will. But I shall keep reminding you.” Turning her back on him quite deliberately, she scanned the books scattered across the shelves. “Do you have that Hindustani grammar for me?”
“This one.” He reached from behind her to tip a book out of the row. His sleeve brushed her shoulder in passing. It was a coarser weave than Freddy favored, which must have been why it seemed to leave such a trail across her bare skin. She could smell the clean scent of shaving soap on his jaw and port on his breath, almost overwhelming the small space, as though not being able to see him somehow made him larger than he was, blowing his presence out of proportion in the brush of fabric against her back, the whisper of breath against her hair.
Penelope twisted around, so that the bookshelf pressed into her back, pinning her between the writing desk on one side and Captain Reid’s extended arm on the other. She tipped her head back to look him in the eye, the ribbons in her hair snagging against the shelf.
Captain Reid made no move to remove his arm. They were face-to-face, chest-to-chest, close enough to kiss. But for the fact that they weren’t on a balcony, and there was no champagne in evidence, it might have been a dozen other encounters in Penelope’s existence, a dozen dangerous preludes to a kiss. But this wasn’t a ballroom, and this man wasn’t any of the spoiled society boys she had known in London. He studied her face in the strange, shifting light, as the ship rocked back and forth and they rocked with it, pinned in place, frozen in tableau, his own face dark and unreadable in the half-light.
One might, thought Penelope hazily, her eyes dropping to his lips, attempt to seduce information out of him. From what she had heard, it was a far-from-uncommon technique. One needn’t go too far, after all. A sultry glance, a subtle caress . . . a kiss. It was all for a good cause — and it could be so easy.
Or maybe not.
Captain Reid was no Freddy. Stepping abruptly back, he favored her with a stiff, social smile, the sort one would give a maiden aunt who was being tedious at a party, but to whom one was bound to be polite.
With a brusque motion, he thrust the red-bound book into her hands, gesturing her, with unmistakable finality, towards the door. “Here is your grammar, Lady Frederick. I wish you . . . an instructive time with it.”
“Oh, yes,” said Penelope, with more bravado than she felt. “It has certainly been most instructive.”
Chapter Four
The scent of Lady Frederick’s perfume lingered behind her, as pungent as crushed frangipani petals, in the confined cabin. Shaking his head to clear it, like a sleepwalker slapping himself into wakefulness, Alex forced his attention to his writing desk, where the letter he had been writing to George appeared to have dried. It was, he thought, rather a good thing he had written in Urdu. The description he had provided of Lord and Lady Frederick had not been a fla
ttering one.
Why in the devil had she suddenly felt the burning need for a Hindi grammar? And why come to his room to find it? It would have been just as easy to have made the request at dinner.
Shuffling the pages together, Alex snaked a glance over at the bookshelf. She hadn’t been trying to . . . No. Too absurd. Alex shook his head and went on shuffling. He rooted about with one hand, feeling for the sealing wax. And yet. There had been that odd moment, by the bookshelf, where a letter opener could scarcely have sliced through the space between them. Admittedly, there wasn’t that much space in the cabin to begin with, but . . . Opening the glass door of the lantern, Alex abstractedly thrust the wick of the wax at the small flame.
She hadn’t been trying to seduce him, had she?
Crimson dots spattered across the worn wood floor like freshly shed blood.
Alex flapped his hand up and down, cursing vehemently in three languages. He had just dripped hot wax all down his hand and it bloody well stung.
Served him right.
Scowling, Alex picked up the fallen wafer and finished the job with brutal efficiency, stamping the wax with far more force than the act required. A burnt hand was no more than he deserved. Lady Frederick wasn’t trying to seduce him; she simply flirted as naturally as she breathed. Like his father. They were two of a kind, masters of the meaningless flirtation. Look at the state to which she had reduced that poor, calf-eyed dolt of a captain.
Even if she did have a bit of dalliance in mind — and it was purely a hypothetical situation, Alex assured himself, slamming the lid of his writing case — there wasn’t anything the least bit flattering about it. It didn’t take more than ordinary intelligence to notice that something wasn’t quite right between her and her titled goop of a husband. Alex had no desire to play the pawn in a civil war between husband and wife. Being assaulted by a jealous husband — or doing the assaulting oneself — would do little to enhance his bid for a district commissionership. Even his father would have to agree with that.
