Forbidden Jewel of India (Harlequin Historical)

by Louise Allen

  ‘You will not.’ The youth stared at him anxiously. ‘I want water to wash, tea to drink—a lot of tea, with sugar,’ Nick ordered in Hindi. ‘Then I want my clothes.’

  ‘But—’ The servant shrugged and began to back out of the door. ‘Rowley memsahib will have much to say about it.’

  ‘Tell her I threatened to come downstairs in the sheet if you did not obey me,’ Nick suggested. It was tempting to lie down to wait, but he fought the dizziness and made himself stay where he was.

  When the door banged open it was neither his outraged hostess nor the servant with hot water. ‘What are you doing from your bed already?’ Anusha demanded. In English, he noted. Her plait swung lose over the shoulder of her coat and a shaft of desire lanced through him at the memory of that moment in his dream when she had leaned forwards and it had fallen on to his bare skin.

  She looked furious, and flushed, and she was eyeing him in a way that was new. ‘Why are you so angry?’ he asked, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach warning him that it was not simply the fact he was sitting up.

  ‘Because you do not listen to the doctor and so you will make yourself ill and you will be here in bed being a nuisance and not taking me down to Calcutta as you should.’

  ‘Thank you for your concern,’ he said drily.

  ‘I am not concerned about you. You do not deserve any concern.’

  ‘Why not? You were concerned yesterday, Anusha. What has happened to change that?’

  She blushed, an angry darkening of the honey-coloured skin. ‘You can ask? Mrs Rowley warned me how it would be and I thought her foolish.’

  ‘So I did kiss you last night?’ Nick ventured, with, he realised the moment he said it, a crashing lack of tact.

  ‘If you can call that a kiss,’ Anusha snapped, reverting to Hindi. ‘It was not very interesting—perhaps that is why you forgot about it.’

  ‘I am extremely sorry. It was a mistake.’ And so was saying that. Anusha’s nostrils flared and he found himself glad she did not have her knife about her. ‘I mean, I should not have kissed you—I thought I was dreaming.’

  That seemed to please her rather more. ‘You mean you dream of kissing me?’ she enquired with a purely feminine curiosity that would have made him smile under any other circumstances.

  ‘No.’ He had to put a stop to this right here and now. ‘I mean I was not myself, I was on the edge of consciousness and I am afraid that if a man finds himself pressed up against an attractive woman, in a bed, when he hasn’t his wits about him, then instinct is apt to take over.’

  ‘So you would have kissed anyone?’ He nodded. ‘Mrs Rowley?’

  ‘I said attractive, Anusha.’

  She bit her lip, but he could tell she was on the verge of laughing. With any luck he had reduced that massive mistake to an embarrassing slip in her eyes. Which just left him mentally flagellating himself for such a betrayal of trust. ‘What did Mrs Rowley say about me?’

  ‘Only that it was shocking that we were travelling together and that men could not be trusted. But I told her we had spoken of such things and that you were a gentleman and were shocked that anyone might think you would ravish me.’

  Oh hell. And I got on my high horse, too. Damned hypocrite. The moment my guard was down…

  ‘Major Herriard!’ Mrs Rowley stood in the doorway, elbows akimbo, the servant peering past her.

  His first thought was relief that they had not been speaking English. Then Nick realised that he was wearing a bandage, a roughly draped sheet and nothing else. His chest was bare, his legs were bare from mid-thigh. He did not dare glance down to make sure the sheet was covering his groin adequately. ‘I was looking for my clothes and unfortunately I did not hear Miss Laurens knock.’

  ‘Tsk! Miss Laurens, you must leave at once.’ Eyes averted, she bustled Anusha out leaving the servant to bring in the water ewer. His expression said quite clearly in any language, I told you so.

  ‘And my clothes?’

  ‘I will get them from the dhobi wallah, sahib. He says the blood has come out and the darji has mended the coat. Your breakfast is coming, sahib.’

  It took altogether too long to wash and shave and dress. Nick ate one-handed, tried to control his fork with a hand that shook and cursed dacoits, bullets and his own physical weakness and lack of will-power.

  The fact that he had been virtually delirious when he kissed her was no excuse, he told himself savagely. Damn it, George had trusted him with his daughter. The way he felt about George, the man who had given him everything a father should—even his life—practically made the chit his sister. He had told her to trust him himself. But the truth was, from the moment he first saw her, his common sense had gone south along with most of his blood.

  He threw down his napkin. I had better get a grip on my self-control again, because anything more than a fuddled kiss when I haven’t the strength to lift myself off the pillows is going to end up at the altar. He thought he could square it with his conscience not to confess last night’s idiocy to George, but anything more and the old man would be reaching for a shotgun, with good cause.

  The thought of another marriage made him shiver. Women wanted too much that he could not give and needed too much that it seemed he was unable to provide. He should never have married Miranda. He could not shake off the memory of his wife’s death. The image haunted him of her fragile body, swollen with the child he had planted in her, racked with fever in the steaming heat of a Calcutta summer, too weak to fight.

  He had no need of an heir, no title or estates to leave. What wealth he acquired he would leave to some charity or another, his body could moulder away in the English cemetery at South Park Street in Calcutta and the creepers and ferns would mask whatever inscription they put on it soon enough, with no one to shed dutiful tears over it.

  ‘Sahib? Some more tea, sahib?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ He was growing thoroughly morbid now. Nick gave himself a mental shake. He had a career, ambition and the world was full of willing women who did not need a ring on their finger. His place in any cemetery would wait for many years, if he had anything to say to it. It must certainly wait until he got Anusha Laurens down river to Calcutta and the new life that awaited her. Moving like an old man, and hating it, Nick hauled himself to his feet and made for the door.

  *

  ‘That was easy. I do not know what the fuss was about.’ Anusha sat cross-legged with her back to the mast of the little sailing boat and viewed the prospect of the river in front of them with satisfaction.

  ‘Easy?’ Nick grunted from the folding canvas chair beside her. ‘You call finding a boat that doesn’t leak, a crew that won’t murder us in our beds, buying sufficient provisions, sorting out the horses and extracting you from Mrs Rowley’s grasp, and me from the doctor’s, all in two days, easy? It was down to my superior logistical skills and force of character.’

  It took her a moment to translate that. They were speaking English most of the time now and she found it came back remarkably easily, for Mata had continued to speak it to her as much as she spoke Hindi. But many phrases were strange and needed working out.

  ‘You are just tired, which makes your mood distempered, so Mrs Rowley said. Does your shoulder give you much pain?’

  ‘A little.’

  She did not know what distemper was, but it seemed unpleasant. Nick had been decidedly short-tempered since he rose from his sick bed. ‘I have unpacked all our things in our cabins. There is not much room—why did you make them put in that wall? With the doors it takes up too much room.’

  ‘So we have a cabin each.’

  Ah, so we are back to that kiss. She could still taste him in her memory, that mixture of brandy and spice and man. Anusha ran her tongue tip over her lips as if she could recapture it.

  Nick had said nothing about it since that morning and at first she thought he must simply have dismissed it from his mind. Now she knew he had not, it was flattering to think that he did not trust
himself alone with her any more: it made her feel womanly and strangely powerful. On the other hand, if he did kiss her—and do the other things, the things she thought about every time she looked at that long, lean body and those big hands—then he would be even more short-tempered afterwards and if her father found out he would insist Nick married her.

  And she did not want to marry a man who, if he wanted her at all, only wanted one thing. She tried to imagine life as Nick’s wife. She would have to be whatever a European wife was. She would not be in a zanana,

  she knew that. She would have to wear those horrible clothes and learn to order a household like Mrs Rowley’s and be respectable in the angrezi manner, which seemed even more restricting than the rules of the women’s mahal.

  Nick would go off on adventures, or march about the country making war, while she sat at home and had babies in a world that she did not belong to. He would not love her, even if she was unwise enough to fall in love with him. And it would hurt, every day, like tiny knife cuts.

  No, she must take her life into her own hands, create herself in a new world where she would not let anyone close enough to hurt her.

  ‘What is the matter?’

  She twisted round and saw Nick was watching her, a frown bringing his eyebrows together. Anusha almost confessed something of her fears of Calcutta, the vista of loneliness that she envisaged lying before her. But, no, she must not forget he was on her father’s side in this. He would see her safely delivered, even if he had to put her in a sack to do it. But she could afford to behave as he wished for now: he would get her safely to Calcutta and there she would gather the money and gems with which to escape. ‘The river is interesting, but I miss Rajat.’

  Nick seemed comfortable enough, his right arm hanging relaxed by his side, so close that if she leaned over, just a little, the back of his hand would brush her shoulder. It was tempting to move that tiny distance and see if his touch would wake those little thrills under her skin, the ache between her legs.

  It was sexual desire, which was very interesting. Men seemed to feel it for virtually any woman who was not actually repulsive, but did women, once they were aware of it, feel it for any man? What if she had agreed to a marriage with one of her suitors for whom she felt nothing—would she have felt desire for him? All those intriguing things that men and women did together seemed embarrassing and puzzling if there was no desire. What did it mean that she felt desire for Nick?

  ‘Why have you taken off the sling?’ she demanded. A battle would take her mind off wondering what it would be like if he made love to her.

  ‘Because it was a nuisance.’ He flexed his fingers on his knee. ‘And because I do not want to appear weakened to any onlookers.’

  ‘You think we are still in danger?’

  He nodded. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘You do not seem to wish to shield me from anxiety. Is that how you treat all English ladies? I thought they were protected and sheltered by gentlemen.’

  A shadow seemed to pass over his face, but he answered her robustly enough, ‘Do you want me to lie to you? Treat you as though you had no wits and no courage? I thought you boasted you were Rajput—a warrior.’

  ‘I am. And I do not wish you to—what is the word?—hide me in the dark.’

  ‘Keep you in the dark. Perhaps there is nothing to worry about from Altaphur’s men, but even if there is not, there are still those who steal from boats.’ He picked up the musket which lay on the deck at his side and propped it up more visibly against his chair. ‘Have you your knife still?’

  ‘I have one of them, you took the other.’

  ‘I will give it back to you. Sleep with them both to hand and do not go out of your cabin at night unless you know I am there.’ The banks were slipping past at speed now as the flow of the river carried them down and she realised that Nick’s gaze was on them, with only fleeting glances at her when she spoke. The jungle came down to the riverside in places, in others there were sandbanks, or rocky outcrops. There was a shout from the stern as the cook-boat, flat-bottomed and unwieldy on the end of its tow-rope, bumped into them.

  ‘Fool of a son of a camel,’ yelled the man at the tiller. ‘Use your poles to keep off us!’

  ‘We must moor at night and the men will sleep on the shore,’ Nick said. ‘They prefer to eat there in any case.’

  ‘But that means anyone could attack us, and we waste time.’

  ‘Look.’ He pointed a little ahead where a rounded black shape rose out of the water. ‘We will lose more than time if we hit one of those rocks.’

  ‘What will we do with ourselves, on this boat for so many days?’ she wondered aloud, then felt the heat rise up her neck at the thought of what they could be doing.

  ‘You wanted to travel—now is your chance to see one of the great rivers of the world. We will be joining the Ganges soon. It will make the Jumna look like a stream, so you will have constant entertainment just watching the banks.’

  And it will carry me down to a new world. Travel seemed less interesting now; she wanted, yet dreaded, her destination. ‘Tell me what it is like to be an English lady,’ Anusha asked.

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘You were married to one,’ she said tartly and saw his hand clench as though she had prodded his wounded shoulder. ‘Your mother was one, you live among them when you are in Calcutta. Tell me what I must do to be one of them.’

  Nick hesitated and Anusha twisted round on the deck at his feet, her hand on his knee to shake it, as though to force an answer out of him. ‘You do not tell me—is it that I will never be one of them?’ Not that she cared for what those unknown women thought, but if she was to live in that world, make her escape into it, she had to understand.

  ‘You will always be different,’ he said slowly. ‘How can it be otherwise? The whole way you have been brought up is different.’

  ‘And I do not look like them,’ she pointed out, determined to face all the problems. ‘They will be pink like you and I am brown.’

  ‘You are golden,’ Nick said. ‘Like honey. And your eyes are like your father’s, grey, and your hair is brown, not black. You could be European—Italian or from the south of France perhaps. But that does not matter, they will not be prejudiced against you because of your mother.’ His mouth twisted into a rueful smile, ‘At least, they won’t once they know who your uncle is—deference to rank applies in society all over the world, I suppose.’

  ‘But they will know my father did not marry my mother.’ That would not matter at home in Kalatwah. The raja had three wives, four courtesans and numerous occasional lovers. Children were treated according to their merits in their father’s eyes and how skilful their mothers were in bringing those merits to his attention. Europeans only took one wife at a time, their courtesans were hidden and not spoken of.

  ‘That is true.’ Nick seemed to be pondering the problem. At least he seemed willing to discuss this honestly with her, which was a relief. She needed to understand what her position would be. ‘Your father has considerable standing and much respect. He is wealthy and of a good English family. There is no reason for you not to be accepted.’

  He was silent for a while as they passed a village, the naked children splashing in the water, the women crouched at their washing, a man casting his net, thigh deep in the swirling muddy river.

  ‘You will have teachers to show you how to dance and to perfect your English and your etiquette. Some of the married ladies will take your wardrobe in hand, I have no doubt, and fit you out with clothes and shoes, then you will attend balls and receptions and you will make friends.’

  It sounds terrible.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘What is the matter? You’ve curled up like a hedgehog.’ Whatever that was, Nick seemed to find it amusing.

  ‘What is a hedgehog?’ Had she curled up? Anusha straightened her back and unwrapped her arms from around her raised knees. Perhaps she had. She did not like the sound of this new world with its lessons,
its threats of the dreaded European clothing and its shocking behaviour. Dancing with men—her body had betrayed her agitation.

  ‘Sharo,’ he translated. ‘I’ve never seen one this far to the east. It is a small animal with its back covered in spines and when it is in danger it curls up into a ball and there is nothing for its enemies but a nose full of prickles.’

  ‘Like a porcupine—sayal?’ They were ugly creatures. It was not danger that had her curling in on herself; she would be brave enough to escape, she was certain. No, it was the prospect of so much embarrassment first.

  ‘They are much smaller than porcupines.’ He showed with his cupped hands. ‘Rather endearing, really. They snuffle, like little pigs.’

  ‘I do not snuffle.’

  ‘Not when you are awake, no,’ he said with a grin and stood up. ‘Don’t look so outraged, Princess, I did say endearing.’

  ‘Do not call me that,’ she muttered as Nick strolled away to speak to the steersman. If he saw how it annoyed her, he would tease her more. She was not truly a princess, even if she was the daughter of one, for her father was not of the royal blood. And she was not an English memsahib yet either, and she was not going to pretend to be one of those for a moment longer than it took to learn what she needed to survive in the world alone.

  The lush green of the banks blurred and Anusha blinked, angry with herself for the moment of weakness, and waved with determined cheeriness at some small boys leading the family buffalo down to the river for its evening bathe.

  I will watch, learn, collect up all the money and jewels I can, she told herself. Then I will find a ship and sail to England where no one knows me and I will be whatever I want. Only she did not know what she wanted, only to belong somewhere and to be wanted for herself. She found her eyes were fixed on Nick’s broad back. So strange, to have this ache inside and yet, somehow, to be happy.

  *

  There was silence from the compartment next to his. Either Anusha was not asleep yet, or she had taken to heart his teasing about her snuffling in her sleep. He had become used to the odd little wiffling noises she made sometimes—dreaming, he supposed—it had been unfair to call it snuffling.