Her Only Desire

by Gaelen Foley

  King Johar slowly turned and pointed a jeweled finger at Derek and Gabriel. “Throw them in the dungeon,” he ground out.

  Georgie let out a frightened cry, but Gabriel sent her a stoic look.

  “You two.” The maharajah gestured at Ian and Georgie. “Come with me.”

  From a room in the harem’s labyrinth, down the hallway from where the surgeons tended Shahu, Queen Sujana in a state of ice-cold rage watched the drama in her husband’s private audience chamber unfold. Johar obviously had forgotten that the room contained a high peephole camouflaged amid the gilded frieze.

  While her boy’s breath turned to a death rattle in his throat, she tried to glean whatever information she could from their exchange.

  Hateful Meena had been summoned to comfort her cursed, meddling British friend, while the tall, sly diplomat argued for all he was worth to win back the forfeited lives of his two condemned men.

  Murderers.

  She had not dreamed the depths of betrayal her husband was capable of until she heard him finally give in to the diplomat’s demands, agreeing to let the Knight brothers be released into their old colonel’s custody until their execution, instead of remaining in the dungeon where they belonged.

  How could he give their son’s killers a chance to escape? Sujana swore she would be damned before she’d let the Knight brothers live.

  Johar ordered their brazen sister to get out of Janpur, and then Sujana was forced to witness the disgusting sight of the oh-so-touching good-bye between the diplomat and that horrid girl as they embraced near the doorway.

  Her husband used to hold her like that, ten or twenty wives ago. Bitterness curled her lip as she saw the tender kiss the tall Englishman pressed to the girl’s ivory forehead.

  By Kali’s sword, I want them dead. All of them.

  They could not be allowed to get away with this.

  Sujana knew by now that she was caught, for Shahu had recovered hazy consciousness long enough to warn her that the Knight girl had broken into her chamber and had discovered one of her letters to Baji Rao. She swore to herself she’d have revenge. All of these scheming English would learn the meaning of a queen’s wrath.

  After the girl had gone, Sujana heard Johar order one of his servants to make ready the upper room in the old tower.

  So. That was to be her fate, she thought cynically. But of course. Johar didn’t dare kill her, or Baji Rao would retaliate by unleashing the Pindari Hordes on Janpur.

  “Now you know who your real friends are,” Lord Griffith was saying to her husband in the room below, wasting no time in hammering away at him once more to get his damnable treaty signed.

  “Your Majesty!” One of the doctors hurried over to Sujana and whispered to her in urgent alarm: “You must come! It is time.”

  “No,” she breathed. Closing the peephole’s cover silently, she glided to her son’s bedside and sobbed for the death of all her hopes as Shahu breathed his last. “Leave me,” she ordered the doctors in a raw voice.

  They retreated, bowing out backward.

  She clutched her son’s bloodied silk finery in both her hands and wept until one of her loyal ladies-in-waiting spoke up in distress.

  “Oh, my queen, is there nothing I can do?”

  Absorbing the question for a long moment, Sujana remembered the fate that loomed ahead of her and slowly summoned the strength to put her tears aside.

  There would be time for weeping later.

  Any moment now, her husband’s men would come to throw her in the tower. She must act swiftly if she was indeed to have revenge. She forced herself to release Shahu’s robes from her fists.

  Taking a deep breath, she drew herself up and turned to her maid. “If you would serve me, go to the bedchamber assigned to Lord Griffith and leave a gift for him. You know what to do,” she added in a sinister tone.

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Search his room while you are there. Bring me anything that might be of use to me in destroying him. Go.”

  The woman bowed to her in namaste and then padded away silently to do her bidding.

  Next, Sujana summoned the top three captains of the palace guard’s regiment, who would no doubt be as eager as she to retaliate against the Knight brothers. Not only had they failed to protect their prince, but four of their own had been cut down in the fray.

  “Johar is deliberately giving the English officers a chance to escape,” she informed the still-seething palace guards. “The moment they are in the old colonel’s custody they will surely flee. I do not know what route they’ll take away from Janpur, but find them—kill them. Do this, and I promise you my brother Baji Rao will see that you are richly rewarded for your service.”

  “Yes, my queen,” they murmured. They bowed low to her and then went to round up whatever number of their fellows would join them in their brash quest.

  Lastly, she called for her most deadly and trusted servant, the assassin, Firoz.

  Even Sujana was a little scared of him. She half believed that he could walk through walls. Like some macabre specter, he came at once, as though he had anticipated the summons.

  Firoz stood motionless, silent as ever on the other side of the wooden screen. The light from behind him glimmered over his sinewy shoulders and the wild curls of his beard as he waited, head down. “My queen, how may I serve you?”

  He excited her. It was like having her very own, terrible jinni from out of the bottle.

  The question was, how best to use him now?

  She paced on her side of the screen, her gown flowing out behind her, swirling with every pivot inside her cage. “If they put me in the tower, can you get me out?”

  “Yes, my queen.”

  “I want the Knights dead. The woman, too. The royal guards may fail. They did so once.”

  “I understand.”

  He started to turn away to join the soldiers, melting into the darkness as he often did, but she stopped him.

  “Wait!” she ordered him, for just then, her lady-in-waiting returned from her clandestine assignment. “What did you find?”

  “This, my lady.” She handed Sujana a small round object.

  “You bring me his watch?” she snapped with an impatient glance at the silver fob.

  “No, Your Majesty—look inside!”

  Noting the shrewd glint in her lady’s eyes, Sujana opened the fob, and it was then that she discovered the portrait of a child.

  A beautiful little boy with brown, serious eyes.

  Tears immediately flooded her eyes as she recalled Shahu at that age. Such high hopes—all dashed.

  She trembled, unable to stop staring at that round, cherubic face through the mist of her tears.

  “It is Lord Griffith’s son, Your Majesty,” her attendant told her. “See the inscription?”

  “Yes…”

  Matthew Prescott, 16th Earl of Aylesworth.

  “Well, well…”

  Slowly, daringly, knowing that there was no need to go on pretending that she was a follower of rules, Sujana walked around the great wooden screen that divided her audience box and placed the little portrait in Firoz’s palm.

  He looked at her in awe as she closed his deadly fingers around it; he had served her since she was eighteen, but it was the first time they had ever touched.

  “Never mind killing the others. Bring me this child,” she whispered to him intensely. “Alive. I’ll make the boy my slave.”

  “My queen?” Firoz studied her uncertainly, but Sujana shook her head.

  “I want you to journey to England, Firoz. Pluck this boy from his home and bring him here to me. You are the only one who can accomplish this. You speak the English tongue well. You have been to distant lands before. You know how to move amongst men of different nations. Will you serve me, as you served my father?”

  “Always,” he whispered.

  “Good.” Her eyes narrowed in cruel satisfaction. “If I cannot have my son by my side, then neither can Lord Griffith.”
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  Georgie and her brothers were already on their way even before the gray half-light of dawn had broken, trekking on horseback through rugged tiger country, with her band of sepoys in attendance, as well as Major MacDonald and some of his braw Highlanders.

  They were not going back to Calcutta to collect their things. Colonel Montrose had ordered her brothers to drizzly England on a special assignment to report to Parliament about the urgent need for more funds for the army in India ahead of the looming war.

  England! Georgie was in shock.

  When she had set out for Janpur a few days ago, she had had no intention of ever leaving her beloved India, but now she didn’t have much choice.

  By releasing Gabriel and Derek into Colonel Montrose’s custody, King Johar had spared their lives, deliberately giving them a head start in their escape; but technically, her brothers were now fugitives from Hindu law, and it wouldn’t be long before the maharajah’s forces would be on their trail. If they were recaptured, Johar wouldn’t be able to help them again. He would be forced to order their execution. After all, no king worth his throne could randomly break his own laws just because it was convenient. The facts were stark: Gabriel had killed the crown prince; Derek had helped; and according to Maratha dictates, they both had to pay by suffering some sort of horrible death. Some criminals were killed by being squashed under an elephant’s foot. Others were fed to the royal tigers. But the likeliest fate was beheading in front of a bloodthirsty mob.

  Georgie would have given her life to save her brothers from this fate, especially since they had slain Shahu only to save her. She knew she couldn’t stay behind in India because she, too, had just made too many enemies. She could not allow herself to be captured and used as a hostage to lure her brothers back to face so-called justice for Prince Shahu’s death.

  Nor did any of the siblings wish to be separated. So it seemed that all three would soon be boarding a ship bound for the land of their parents’ birth.

  In their final farewell, Ian had told Georgie to explain to her brothers that they must not try to stay and fight. Given the fact that Gabriel and Derek were wildly popular among the rank and file of the army, their unjust deaths for the sake of honor, protecting their sister from attack, would cause a riot among Lord Hastings’ troops amassed at nearby Cawnpur.

  A fresh source of hostility between the British and the Marathas was the last thing anyone needed in this already precarious situation, so it was agreed that the Knights should leave for England from the much closer port town of Bombay.

  There, one of their cousin Jack’s merchant ships could get them out of India. Unfortunately, there were many miles to traverse, much of it through none other than Baji Rao’s territory; and, if their little band crossed paths with the Pindari Hordes, then clearly they were done for.

  Nobody was happy about any of this. Georgie was sick over the fact that they had had to leave Ian behind to sort everything out. He had urged them to go, and quickly. He said he would fix the situation. In her view, he already had. He had saved their lives. But he still had to persuade King Johar to sign his treaty, and then he had to get out of there alive.

  By mid-morning, they all were irritable with the heat and the incessant buzzing insects that were continually biting sweaty humans and horses alike. The mounting sun had turned the thick teakwood forest through which the road snaked into a steaming, sweltering greenhouse. Removing layers of clothing to escape the heat only left more skin bared for the flies and mosquitoes to chomp upon.

  With a wide-brimmed straw hat shielding her face from the sun and a pelisse thrown about her shoulders since it would be chilly once they put out to sea, Georgie had donned Indian-style silk pyjama leggings underneath her English-style walking dress so that she could ride astride. The terrain was too rough to chance using a ladies’ sidesaddle. Finishing off her costume with riding boots and kid gloves, she supposed she looked rather ridiculous, but after the events of the past twenty-four hours, she knew she had best be ready for anything. They weren’t in the clear yet.

  Riding along, trying to soothe her vexed horse, she faced a weary mental review of the highlights: she had uncovered an assassination plot against one of India’s most important maharajahs; had nearly gotten skewered by Maratha spears; had found the possible man of her dreams to boot; and had probably ruined her brothers’ glorious military careers and nearly wrecked his mission.

  She still couldn’t believe what Colonel Montrose had asked of Derek and Gabriel. Eavesdropping while she waited to leave, she had overheard the whole thing.

  “But, Colonel, what about our men?”

  “They’ll be assigned to someone else. You should be glad I’m not demanding your resignations!”

  “Sir, prince or not, that vermin tried to murder our sister!”

  “Your sister shouldn’t even be here! Now, you both listen up! You’ve got all those powerful cousins in the House of Lords, don’t you? Well, go make use of ’em! Don’t argue with me, boy, I’ve been fighting wars since you were born! You get your arses off to London and make them damned cheese-paring windbags at India House and the Parliament understand that war’s expensive! If we’re to give ’em the victories they clamor for, we must have the funds they’ve promised us. Our men need horses—better arms—ammunition! Damn it, we’re all but bankrupt here—and you see the kind of wealth these maharajahs have! They can afford to fight indefinitely. They’ve even got French generals on the payroll helping train their troops. That’s not going to make our job any easier.”

  “But, sir, we’re soldiers! We’re not cut out to act as lobbyists,” Derek had practically groaned, sounding as though he would half prefer the dungeon.

  “Don’t you complain to me, you hotheaded blackguard!” the old war-horse had bellowed at him. “Nobody ordered you to draw your weapons under the maharajah’s roof! You brought this on yourselves, the pair o’ you! Now, work on those high-and-mighty cousins o’ yours and demand that Parliament release the funds they’ve promised to the army! I don’t care what that slick-talking diplomat says. You kill an enemy with bullets, not damned empty words!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Georgie felt just terrible. She wished she had never come to Janpur and been so blindly self-assured.

  Her brothers were furious. Her heroes, wanted men! And as for Ian, by now he must think she was some kind of walking catastrophe.

  Gabriel was silent as they rode along, but Derek had never been shy about letting his feelings be known. “So, now we are to go money-begging in London,” he drawled. “Thank you, Georgiana. You’ve gotten us reduced to bloody beggars. How long is this going to take, anyway?”

  “Don’t know,” Gabriel answered, his brooding stare fixed down the road. “Takes as long as it takes.”

  “I guess you’re right. We can do this, eh? We’ve faced a hell of a lot worse than a bunch of scheming, overfed bureaucrats.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Very well, so we’ll squeeze that bloody gold out of Parliament’s coffers, then we’ll come back here, head up our troops again, and everything will go back to normal. I hope we make it back in time for the war.”

  “You say it like you’re going to a ball,” she mumbled.

  “It’s a lot more important than a ball, Georgie,” he retorted, the heat and the tense situation tempting them all to fall back into childish sibling squabbles. “But you wouldn’t understand that, now, would you, with all your pretty Jain philosophies? Must be nice to spout nonviolence when others will do your dirty work for you.”

  “Leave her alone, Derek.”

  “She’s not a baby! I don’t know why you always treat her like one. She’s got to see her views make her nothing but a hypocrite!”

  “I’m sorry!” she cried.

  “What are we going to tell Father, anyway?” he demanded. “We got kicked out of India? He is not going to be happy about this.”

  “I don’t imagine he would be very happy if we let our sister get killed, eit
her, now would he? For God’s sake, stop talking,” Gabriel muttered. “You never shut up!”

  “Fine!” Derek clamped his mouth shut, gave his horse a light kick, and galloped off ahead of them.

  Georgie glanced at her eldest brother.

  Gabriel still stared straight ahead.

  She lowered her gaze and slowed her horse’s pace slightly, letting him pull ahead of her, too. Gabriel might not be as vocal in his disgust with her as Derek was, but he was probably thinking the same things, just keeping them to himself.

  Swatting a fat, ugly fly away from her horse, she turned her reflections to Meena’s promise to make sure her servants and her hired elephant got back to Calcutta safely. Georgie couldn’t even think about leaving her ayah behind or she would certainly break down in tears again. Purnima was too old and the path before them too uncertain and fraught with danger to have risked bringing her along for the simple sake of chaperonage. Georgie hadn’t even had a chance to say good-bye to Lakshmi, but the person who most preoccupied her thoughts, of course, was Ian.

  She kept thinking about how he had rushed into the fray to calm the situation. He had saved their lives, and she doubted any of them could ever repay him properly.

  Unlike Derek, he had not said one word of reproach to her. Not a single “I told you so.” In fact, he had been entirely kind, patient, and steady, his concern for her visible in his eyes.

  When they had said good-bye, she had buried her face remorsefully against his chest, hating the knowledge that he would be left behind with much-reduced forces to help him if the situation turned ugly again after they had gone.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he had whispered, lifting her chin with his warm fingertips until her gaze had met his. He had stared soberly into her eyes. “I will see you in England, all right?”

  Georgie had stared at him, longing to kiss him good-bye, but with King Johar and Meena both in the room, it would have been unseemly. Instead, she had nodded.

  “Good. Run along now. Chin up, my girl,” he had ordered her softly. “And, mind you, save a dance for me at Almack’s.”