He still hadn’t come.
She flopped toward the shuttered window.
A sizable group of boisterous men beyond the shutters drunkenly bellowed out an off-key harmony. “Come, come let us driiiink. Let us driiiink! Let us driiiink, let us driiiink, ’tis in vaaaaain to think like fooools on grief or saaadness. Let our money flyyyyyy and our sorrows diiiie! All worldly caaaare is maaadness. But wine, wine, wine, wine, wine, wiiiine and good cheeeeer, will spite our feeeear…”
She grudgingly got up, adjusting the silk robe over her nude body that was sweltering in the stagnant heat of the night.
Damn the gods and the regiment and Ridley.
“Come, come let us driiiink. Let us driiiink! Let us driiiink, let us driiiink!”
She trudged over past the dark shapes of the room and found the massive window whose shutters were outlined by the moon and torchlights beyond it.
Pushing aside the shutters and the insect netting, she tightened her robe around her waist and was about to yell toward the drunken crowd gathered around torches to cork it, when…
She paused, her breath hitching.
Ridley was with them.
She recognized his large, muscled frame garbed in all black that was highlighted by the torches that illuminated the sheen of the fabric. His dark hair was heavily windblown and his black cravat had been removed and hanging around his exposed throat, as if announcing he belonged to no one.
Hidden in the darkness of her room, Jemdanee watched him.
Ridley swigged from what appeared to be a third bottle of champagne, talking loudly over the drunken singing of the others gathered.
Oyo, yes. Drink. You will need it.
He paused and jerked toward the direction of the massive gate behind them. He held out a rigid hand to the men around him, cutting it through the night air to command momentary silence.
Their voices all faded as they scrambled to their booted feet.
Jemdanee quickly pushed herself up against the sill to better see past the darkness of the terrace.
A half-naked woman lingered at the terrace gate, rattling the gates and calling and calling to them in Hindi.
The officers snorted.
One of them sat. “Christ. Every last one of these dots only ever want to get fucked. If I had that much money, I damn well wouldn’t be an officer!”
The men roared with laughter.
Turning, Ridley whipped the bottle at one of them, shattering glass. “The only whores I see are the ones laughing.” Thudding the head of the officer hard with a hand, Ridley adjusted his leather belt holding his pistol and turned. He limped over to the woman in the far distance, staggering against his weight and what appeared to be the drink.
Jemdanee’s throat tightened knowing the justice seeker in him was in trouble.
The officers all leaned over and hooted in the darkness in between swigging brandy. “Why settle for one Hindu cunt, Ridley? Stick it into more!”
Jemdanee almost gasped as she watched Ridley pass through the gate. He removed his coat and draped it over the woman’s nudity whom he tugged up against himself.
He led the woman in his coat into the moonlit darkness.
She knew Ridley was the only gentleman left in India.
It riled her.
Shoving her bare feet into slippers, and not caring that she had nothing beneath her robe (this was India for vine sake!), she grabbed a leather satchel full of rupees for the girl. She eyed the machete Ridley had propped against the wall of her room a day earlier.
He was about to meet the girl who grew up on the streets.
Whirling it up, she swiveled off the ledge of the window, gauging the first floor fall. Easy. She tossed the machete, letting it clang onto the terrace and using the trellis, climbed down onto the ground floor of the terrace, landing with a thud.
The officers all paused and stared.
She tightened the belt on her robe ensuring her breasts weren’t falling out past the fabric, snatched up her machete and stared down every officer as if she were the Field Marshal himself. “The only gentleman in India has clearly left. Therefore my Hindu cunt will join him.” She pointed the machete at each head. “You may all claim to be officers, but the only rank or right you wear are the ones you have yet to push out of your puckered arses.”
They said nothing.
Positioning the machete, she bustled past them and across the expanse of the terrace toward the gate Ridley had disappeared past.
She worried that the woman was leading him to trouble.
Bengali gangs sent prostitutes to find white men all the time.
She tightened her hold on the machete, its weight reminding her all too much of its power, and quickly tucked the satchel of rupees into her robe pocket.
Jogging her way past the gate of the hotel, she paused, seeing Ridley and the woman disappear around a corner past the Government House. Her heart pounded to keep up, her breaths as uneven as her running steps that echoed through the darkness of the night.
When she finally did catch up, she soundlessly followed at a distance through narrow dirt pathway that wound them into the surrounding city of Calcutta. The stench of urine and the putrid rot of fruit from abandoned carts overtook her nostrils.
It was nothing compared to the fetor she’d known when she had been at the scene of that murder in London. A scene she could now easily barrel back into in the name of saving Ridley.
Eventually setting herself against the farthest darkened mud wall, Jemdanee watched as Ridley guided the half-naked woman toward her lantern-lit hovel.
The woman shoved him into a wall and frantically hitched up her sari above her waist, exposing herself completely to him despite his coat.
Jemdanee’s throat tightened.
Ridley rattled the woman’s grabbing hands, forcing her to release her uplifted sari, which he tugged downward. Digging into his inner waistcoat pocket, he placed a sizable amount of bank note rupees into those outstretched hands and squeezed them, offering in fluent Hindi, “You owe me nothing.”
The dark-skinned woman paused at seeing the money being gifted, and glancing up at him, kissed his hands, then his chest, bowing to him repeatedly.
He put more money into her hands.
The woman peered up at him, startled.
She attempted to remove his coat to return it to him.
“Keep it.” He buttoned the Indian woman back into it and propped up the collar on it, still speaking to her in Hindi.
The woman lingered, clinging to his coat.
He turned her and her shoulders toward the hovel. “Go.”
The prostitute glanced back at him and after lingering, disappeared inside.
Jemdanee swallowed in a reverence she knew she would always be cursed to feel.
Ridley, save us from the only thing that will ever hurt us: you.
Her slippered foot shifted, causing a rock to tumble toward him. She scrambled back further into the shadows.
He swung toward her, his own features hidden in the shadows which the lantern from the hovel no longer reached. His hand jumped to his leather belt as he snapped out his pistol and pointed it, the metal click announcing all that was left was the pull of a trigger. “Announce yourself.” He said it in Hindi.
She gripped the machete hard and almost dropped the leather satchel of rupees, her breaths panicked. “Ridley! ‘Tis me Jemdanee.” She said it in English in case he couldn’t understand her accent. “Kumar!”
He slowly lowered his pistol, uncocking it and shoved it into the holster of his belt.
Yanking the curtain leading into the hovel firmly shut, he limped toward her in the darkness and then towered, his Parisian cologne penetrating the night air. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She held out the satchel toward him. “This is for her.”
Ridley took the satchel, weighing it. He eyed her and disappeared to deliver it into the hovel.
Reappearing, he propped himself against the wall b
eside her in the shadows, lingering close. He leaned down and flicked the lapel of her robe. “You don’t appear to be…wearing anything beneath that,” he slurred with a champagne tinged breath.
Her heart pounded as she gripped his wrist. “I waited for you but apparently you were too busy being productive and getting soused.”
“Getting soused is a far better alternative than engaging in other forms of reckless behavior,” he breathed. “Too many evils came to mind given you riled me and I opted for…the lesser one.”
She rolled her eyes.
He cornered her to the stone wall that was barely lit by the moon and surrounding hovels. He shifted the machete intentionally against her hand, tilting the blade toward himself. “Were you going to defend her or…me with this?”
“I would have used it.”
“I’m fucking Ridley. You don’t save me, I save you.”
May the world save itself. “And that is why you have a limp. Kali forbid you admit that I can swing a machete whilst you watch.”
He nudged her with his knee. “Did you…leave Chunmun alone at the hotel?”
She paused. “Haan. Why?”
“What sort of mother are you?” he slurred. “Leaving an unattended wild animal for any period of time is not fucking advisable and I will most likely be…paying for damages.”
She heaved out a breath. “He is soundly sleeping in his room of choice and has your overlord rope to keep him from thinking he has to destroy anything.”
He gave her a withering look. “How is it everyone is playing with my rope but us?”
If she didn’t guide this conversation, nothing would. “Why are you going to London? You did not tell me.”
He staggered closer and draped his arm against the wall, surveying her. “Some prick wants to play with my blood. It comes with the territory of my field.”
She swallowed. “Had I not found you in that building, you would have died. You need more than yourself to get you through this.”
He leaned in and dragged his champagne tinted tongue across her cheek. “It’s inarguably late. Come.” He grabbed her arm hard, startling her, and directed her with the strength of his body back through the streets, turning corners.
She glanced up at him in between the harried steps he forced them to take. She jogged to keep up with his long-legged steps, letting him hold onto her without any resistance, despite the severe grip of his fingers digging into her arm and robe, pinching her skin beneath. “Might you loosen your hold? I find it a bit tight. I think of shackles and London.”
He glanced toward her, his features wavering.
Loosening his hold, he released her. Turning toward her, he tossed the machete she was holding, letting it clatter against the cobblestone. “Come to me, mon ange.”
Leaning toward her, he tossed her up hard, draping her in his muscled arms. “I may have a limp but I won’t ever abide by it.”
The warm night air seemed unbearably hotter as he adjusted her rigidly in his arms.
Her hands jumped to cling to his shoulders, her intake of breaths making it impossible for her to think. “What are you doing?”
“Ensuring you get home safely.” He moved faster, his hold tightening.
She searched his face, trying to deliberately shut out any awareness of him. An awareness that wanted him more than she was prepared to admit. Her fingers gripped the buried rope that bound his bicep beneath his linen shirt.
He said nothing. His features were strained as if every step were walking through fire.
She used his earlier words against him and drawled, “Ridley, think of what we could do for London.”
“Let me be the rickshaw and you the passenger. I’m driving.”
She only let him carry her because she knew his pride meant more to him than the pain.
They entered through the terrace gates of the hotel, her still in his arms, as he strode back into the vast candlelit marble corridors of Spence’s, his heavy booted steps echoing.
He never once glanced at her or said a word.
She peered up at him as he went up the stairs and eventually turned the corner toward their vast row of quarters.
A muscle ticked in his shaven jaw as he brought them to a halt before her darkened bedchamber. He thudded the door further open with his boot and angled her inside.
In the silence, he released her, purposefully letting her drag down the entire front of his body as he set her slippered feet down onto the marble floor. He held her gaze. “I am not in any condition to be engaging you. As such…I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven.”
Astounded that he was capable of being rational even when soused, it made her realize this man’s mind was beyond her own comprehension.
A knot rose in her throat. “I will not become your wife only to then be abandoned. If I marry you, it will be for the purpose of standing by your side. Is that not what marriage is?”
His gold-flecked eyes were hazy in the dim candlelight. Despite their haziness, there was still a lethal calmness, strength and a warning. “Opposing me is not advisable.” His voice turned to steel. “I would never forgive you if you force me to choose between us and your safety. Is that what you want? For me to choose?”
This was a war he was waging.
Only he was going into battle without any armor.
Holding his gaze, she did what any woman who sought to take back control: use what the gods gave her. She unraveled her silk robe and let it whisper down to her feet around them in the corridor, revealing her nudity. “Who says you will want to leave me once you have had me?”
Except for the dragging in of a breath that notably raised his broad chest, he only looked at her. Not at her nudity but her face. Her eyes. Her lips. Her nose.
Her heart jolted, feeling strangely more vulnerable that he was looking at her face. “There is far more below the chin,” she offered.
He squinted. “I drank a lot of champagne for a reason,” his voice held an ominous quality. “To ensure I didn’t engage you.”
Her breaths grew all the more uneven knowing she stood before him entirely naked and he hadn’t even looked once. “Men usually drink to release inhibitions, not contain them.”
His hazy eyes remained focused on her face. “Men usually don’t have my level of intelligence even whilst sober.”
“I will not argue with you on that based on the men you were drinking with.” She lifted the unraveled weight of her black locks and arranged it over her own breasts.
His rugged expression now bordered on barely checked tolerance.
Unfazed, she held his gaze. “I once watched you try to destroy yourself in the name of what you defined as justice and I will not watch you do it again. If you leave in two days, I will leave in three. Three is a very symbolic number frequently used by my people. Siva is the third in the Trinity. He has three eyes, a trident, has three braids of hair and is the knower of three things: the past, the present and the future. The past has already left us, Ridley. We cannot change it. Not even you can. The present is what I now give you and if you will it, the future with me standing alongside even in the darkest times awaits.” She gestured toward herself, skimming her fingers down her breasts toward her thighs and up again. “Consider this your farewell honorarium.”
He stared. “I am…intoxicated, Jemdanee. Whittled. Temulentious. Flagonal. Rummied.”
“Even rummied, you still appear to have a highly functioning use of the dictionary.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw.
She leaned in and tapped at his jaw. “Earlier, you accused me of being incapable of trusting you,” she countered. “I am offering you the ultimate trust. Me in your arms when you have no control. How is that for trust?”
Ridley nodded and skimmed her appearance intently. He nudged her hair back over her shoulders to expose her breasts. Still methodically perusing her nudity, he leaned back, staggering and slammed the door behind them as if to ensure Chunmun wouldn’t see anything.
She jumped but set her chin to ensure he knew she wasn’t intimidated.
The moonlight through the open window was the only thing illuminating the darkness.
Jerking her toward himself with digging fingers, he molded her nudity to himself. “Say it.”
She melted, gripping his muscled body in an attempt to savor every breath she was taking. She slid the cravat still hanging around his throat from his neck and let it slip from her fingers. “What would you like me to say?”
“That you love me.”
She dragged her fingers up over his broad shoulders. To say it would be to lose control over him. “Do I?”
A champagne-tinted breath escaped him. “Be there tomorrow,” he rasped. “Give me peace.”
She tightened her hold on his waistcoat. “Invite me to stand at your side and I will marry you, but not as a silent partner. I would never agree to that.”
He leaned down and set his nose to her nose, half-staggering to do it. “You’re not coming to London. You barely reach my fucking shoulder. It would be like putting a marble into the hand of a lunatic.”
“Marbles roll fast,” she assured him in between uneven breaths.
“Never fast enough. I have seen enough to know.” His hands dragged down her bare shoulders, digging into her skin and nudity, while holding her gaze. He stepped back, thudding the wall. “Put your hands against the wall. Face it.”
Her breath hitched. He was asking her to face the wall.
Like a criminal.
She swallowed hard, trying to remain calm knowing what he was asking of her.
“Trust,” he said. “Face the wall, mon dévot.”
Those words sent a tremor through her.
She edged around his towering frame, unable to breathe, and trusting him completely, she slowly, slowly set her hands against the roughness of the wall, flattening her palms to keep them from quaking.
What was she doing? Why was she doing this?
For his soul?
“Widen your stance,” he intoned.
Any normal woman in the nude would have fled the room by now.
She blamed the street urchin in her.
Edging her nude stance to a more widened position, she waited, demonstrating she was in his power. Demonstrating the wetness pulsing between her thighs was overtaking whatever common sense she had learned.
The Devil is French: A Whipping Society Novel Page 19
