Not Quite a Husband

by Sherry Thomas

  At dusk the defile gave onto the wide alluvial plains of the Chitral Valley. The town of Ayun, draped in paddy fields, lay before them, its architecture strikingly different from the openness Bryony had become used to among the Kalasha. Here the houses all had high mud walls to protect their female inhabitants from the eyes of strangers. Only boys and men walked abroad.

  “I left the other coolies waiting for us on the outskirts,” said Leo. “We have no need to go into town.”

  She was relieved and irked at the same time. “You’ve planned this well, haven’t you?”

  “It never hurts to be prepared,” he answered smoothly.

  He’d sent ahead their guide, a leathery man named Imran, to inform the coolies of their arrival. By the time they rode into camp, an ayah had a hot towel on hand for Bryony to wipe away the dust of travel from her face. As she took her tea, buckets of steaming water were poured into the tub already set up in the bathing tent. And when she’d washed and dressed, she was given a plate of hot pakoras, vegetables dipped in gram flour batter and deep fried, to snack on while Leo bathed and the cooks prepared dinner.

  They sat down to dinner at almost the exact time she would have sat down to dine with the Braeburns. Mrs. Braeburn enjoyed this time of the day, the wisps of wood smoke rising in the cooling air, the streaks of twilight in the sky, the first pinpricks of fireflies.

  Dinner was mulligatawny soup, chicken cutlet, and curried lamb over rice. Bryony ate with her eyes on her food, cutting a trench around herself with her demeanor. But he did not take the hint.

  “What were you thinking?” he asked, in the same dulcet tone he’d used to compare her to a summer’s day. Thou art more lovely and more temperate. “Leaving Leh without a word to your family? And why were you in Leh to begin with—is nobody in need of doctors anymore in all of Delhi?”

  She considered simply ignoring him. “Delhi was too hot,” she said finally.

  The heat had indeed been traumatic. Mere heat, however, she could have endured. But with Leo’s brother in town, everyone seemed to know not only who she was but that her marriage had ended badly. She had not traveled thousands of miles to have a duplicate of London society thrust upon her.

  “When the Moravian missionaries in Leh called for a temporary replacement for their resident doctor on home leave, I thought the climate would suit me better.”

  And the solitude.

  Leh was the capital of Ladakh, a high, arid plateau to the east of Kashmir, otherwise known as Little Tibet. Bryony had thought Leh would be a sleepy hamlet long past its days of glory. Instead, Leh was still a bustling city, playing host to caravans from as far as Chinese Turkestan. Within sight of the abandoned palace from whose rafters still fluttered long strings of prayer flags, merchants from Yarkand and Srinagar traded with their counterparts from Lahore and Amritsar.

  It was the Moravian mission house, as humble as a cowshed, that had been quiet and somnolent. There a handful of brave, naïve Christian do-gooders converted perhaps one Ladaki a year and slowly forgot their homelands.

  Bryony had not planned to stay at the mission beyond the return of the resident doctor. She also had not looked forward to returning to Delhi. When a team of German alpinists coming back from a climb had passed through Leh on their way to Rawal Pindi, she’d bought a tent from them for no reason other than that the tent, a symbol of nomadic life, had appealed to the restlessness inside her. A week later, the Braeburns stopped by the dispensary. And when they told her they’d be most glad of the company of a physician on their westward journey, she’d said yes without another thought, ready to move again, her new tent in tow.

  “But the climate of Leh didn’t suit you any better, did it? And once you had enough of Leh, you bribed the missionaries to not reveal your destination to anyone.”

  She shrugged. “Don’t you ever get tired of letters from Callista?”

  Callista had missed her calling as a novelist. Her letters, when it came to Leo, were full of cheerful fabrications, little asides on his illnesses, disappointments, and courtships that were certain to upend Bryony with concern, helplessness, and jealousy.

  When Bryony left Leh, she’d decided to do herself a favor and sever all contact with Callista for a year. To that end, she’d scribbled enough short, uninformative letters for the good missionaries to post weekly and requested that they not give out her whereabouts to anyone—even Christian do-gooders could be tempted by the promise of five hundred pounds to keep a few harmless secrets.

  “Letters are written on paper. You could have thrown them into the fire.”

  “I did.”

  But each time she burned a letter from Callista unread, it was a fresh reminder that she still cared—and cared too much. A far worse feeling than if she never received those letters in the first place.

  He pulled out a silver flask from his coat pocket, took a swallow—Mr. Braeburn had insisted that Leo help himself to some of his special whiskey—and said nothing.

  She was uncomfortably reminded that he was here because of her ruse. A coolie cleared away their dinner plates and set down a slice of mulberry tart before her. She poked at it. “I hope you didn’t come all the way to India just because Callista asked you to find me.”

  “No, in fact, I was already in Gilgit.”

  “What were you doing in Gilgit?” She was astonished. Of all the places in the world he could be when Callista needed someone to find her, Gilgit, in the foothills of the Korakoram, somewhere halfway between Leh and Chitral, could not be a more convenient departing point.

  “A friend of mine organized a ballooning expedition to reconnoiter the upper slopes of the Nanga Parbat. They decided on Gilgit as their base camp. Since Charlie had been the political officer at Gilgit before he went on to greener pastures in New Delhi, my friend invited me along to expedite matters, so to speak.”

  She tried to contemplate the mind-boggling coincidence of it and gave up.

  “And how did you find me in the end?”

  “You mean how did I pry your current location out of the missionaries?”

  “No. I mean—did you show them the photograph too?”

  It would have been the biggest scandal at the drowsy mission in years—the widowed physician’s husband materializing out of nowhere. She did not care if people thought of her as cold or unapproachable, but she did not want to be remembered as deceitful.

  He rolled his eyes. “I wish I could have. The photograph arrived in Gilgit only after I’d left to look for you in Leh.”

  She frowned. “Then how did you get the missionaries to tell you where I was? They were supposed to keep it a secret.”

  He took another swallow from the flask. She realized that he had not eaten much at all, had waved away the mulberry tart untouched.

  “I pretended to be your very angry brother and threatened to burn down the place,” he said.

  “You did not.”

  He screwed the cap on the flask and pocketed it. “I did pretend to be one of your stepbrothers; I didn’t have to pretend to be very angry. And no, I didn’t threaten violence. I merely pointed out, very reasonably, that it would be terrible for it to be known that an English lady of means had disappeared from the mission—people would instantly construe that she’d been done in for her money. That prospect frightened our missionaries quite a bit, though by that time they’d hemmed and hawed for so long that I was more than half ready for arson.”

  She chewed slowly on a forkful of tart, then patted the corners of her lips with a napkin. “It was not my intention to inconvenience you. I only wanted to get away.”

  He did not ask her from what she was trying to get away. She’d left England as soon as the annulment was granted, spent the rest of ’94 in Germany, most of ’95 in America, and arrived in India early in ’96. But the past, it seemed, had a way of catching up no matter how far she traveled.

  “Get some rest,” he said. “Tomorrow we start south.”

  He was the one who needed rest. The m
ore she looked at him, the more he looked not just abruptly lean, but malnourished.

  “How long have you been on the road?”

  His brows furrowed. “I’ve lost track. Six and a half weeks. Seven. Something like that.”

  From Gilgit east to Leh, then from Leh back through Gilgit to Chitral and the Kalash Valleys: It must be close to a thousand miles. A thousand miles over a roadless land that was full of teeth and serrated spine, where even the flat stretches were fragmented and disjointed. She did not know it was possible to make this trek in under fifty days.

  And he would have had to be minimally equipped, with probably only a guide to show him the way, for it was definitely not possible to achieve such speed with coolies, cooks, tents, and beds.

  “How?” she asked, in sheer puzzlement. And then, more important, “Why? Why did you do it?”

  “Why did I do it?” he echoed her question, as if surprised by it.

  “Yes. Why not tell Callista to go to the Devil?”

  He chortled, a sound that contained more scorn than mirth. “Callista knows how to pick her fools, apparently.”

  Their paths would never have crossed again had Bryony’s stepmother not invited Leo for dinner.

  After she graduated from medical school in Zurich, Bryony had obtained her practical and clinical training at the Royal Free Hospital and then accepted a resident post at the New Hospital for Women, both situated in London. For convenience, she lived at the Asquith town house with her father, sister, stepmother, and stepbrothers but she participated only minimally in either familial or social functions.

  On that particular day, she’d had half a mind to take her dinner in her room. She’d worked a long shift and she was never in the mood for company even on the best of days. But they’d have been thirteen at the table, so she’d reluctantly dressed and presented herself in the drawing room.

  And then he’d arrived and smiled at her. And she’d spent the evening in a haze, not knowing what she ate or said, aware only of him, the spark in his gray eyes when he spoke, the shape of his lips as he smiled.

  From that day hence she lived in search of him. She accepted invitations to anything that might include him. She went to his heavily attended lecture on Greenland at the Royal Geographical Society. She even braved many a surprised look to listen to him read a paper at the mathematical society, though beyond the first minute she understood not a thing.

  Curiously enough, she had no aspirations at all concerning him. A drunk did not expect the bottle to love him back; and she only wished to drink him in whenever she could.

  That was, until he kissed her.

  It was at the house of his eldest brother, the Earl of Wyden. Specifically, in the library, while a musical soiree raged in the drawing room. She had been quite dejected by his absence—she’d been sure he’d be there, since he was temporarily lodging with the Wydens. But she couldn’t leave yet, as Callista, who’d wanted no human contact as a child, had somehow developed as an adult a great fondness of large gatherings of Homo sapiens.

  So she’d sought solace in an encyclopedia. Incunabula. Indazoles. Indene. Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

  Abruptly she became aware that she was no longer alone in the library. He stood just inside, his back against the door.

  “Mr. Marsden!” How long had he been there, watching her?

  “Miss Asquith.”

  His regard was unsmiling. She was not used to this seriousness from him, he who was always in the merriest of moods. Then he did smile, one of his dazzling smiles that restored sight to the blind and instilled music in the deaf. But even that smile had an undercurrent to it that made her heart do medically worrisome things.

  “I wouldn’t read at that desk if I were you,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “Both Charlie and Will lost their virginity on that desk.”

  Her hand went to her bare throat. The pulse under her thumb hammered. “Goodness,” she managed. It was better than an outright squeak, but not by much.

  “Why don’t you come away?” he said with a deceptive gentleness.

  She would dearly love to, but for some reason, her legs were quite rubbery. “Surely, my virtue should be quite safe in this house.”

  He left the door, came to the edge of the desk, and smiled again, a smile beatific enough to bring about peace on Earth. “Has anyone ever made an effort to rid you of your virtue, Miss Asquith?”

  She couldn’t remember ever having such a startlingly inappropriate conversation. Yet she did not want him to stop. His words had a darkly pleasurable effect on her, like very fine liqueur mixed with very fine chocolate.

  “Nobody is interested in my virtue. Or the riddance of it.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “It is.”

  “All right, if you insist. But one can sin a great deal with a woman of intact virtue.”

  Good gracious. She swallowed. “I’m sure one can. But I assure you, sir, my sins, whatever they are, are not of the carnal variety.”

  “Mine are,” he murmured. “Whatever else they are, they are also of the carnal variety.”

  “Well, how very … diverting for you.”

  He moved even closer, next to the chair in which she sat. “I must confess, Miss Asquith, I feel an urgent need to make up for the attention the masculine species owes you.”

  “I’m—I’m quite certain that the masculine species owes me nothing.”

  He leaned forward and placed his hand on the armrest of the chair. “I disagree strongly.”

  She pushed her body against the back of the chair. “And how will you rectify things?”

  “Make love to you, of course, thoroughly and tirelessly.”

  So much of her melted that she was surprised she did not slide under the table. “Here?!”

  This time, it was a squeak, quivering and breathless.

  “Did I not warn you about this desk and the iniquity it inspires? You should have left when you could. It’s too late now.”

  He whispered those last words almost directly against her lips. Her heart slammed, like an unsecured shutter in a windstorm. Far away in the drawing room someone more ambitious than talented launched into the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Here in a corner of the library she understood for the first time that yes, it was exactly this that she sought from him, this proximity, this great disequilibrium.

  He laughed then, a burst of mirth, as if he’d been keeping a straight face a long time and finally could no more. “I’m sorry. You looked so studious when I came in, I couldn’t help myself.”

  It took her perhaps a dozen heartbeats to understand that he’d been teasing her. That none of it had meant anything.

  “Come.” He offered her his arm. “Your sister was looking for you. I told her I’d locate you and take you back.”

  She rose and pushed past him. “It was not funny.”

  “I apologize. I didn’t mean to take it as far as I did. But you were so delectably innocent—”

  “I am not. What’s making love but a penis penetrating a vagina, discharging semen in the process?”

  He was taken aback. Then he smiled lopsidedly. “That is most edifying. And here I thought it was all about valentines and sonnets.”

  “Well, I’m glad one of us is amused,” she said huffily.

  She made for the door, but he reached it before she did.

  “You are angry. Was I truly reprehensible?”

  “Yes, you were.” Here she was, following in the wake of this beautiful young man like a devoted dog, while for him she was but an elderly virgin—almost twenty-eight, oh the horror—and any thoughts of intimacy with her must begin and end in farce. “I will have you know I do not lack for masculine admiration. And I know exactly how to sin to keep my virtue intact. There is frottage. There is manual manipulation. There is oral stimulation. Not to mention good old bugg—”

  He kissed her. She had no idea how it happened. One moment she was in the middle of her ira
te speech and he had his back against the door. The next moment her back was against the door, he was kissing her, and she was frozen in shock.

  He pulled back slightly. “My God,” he murmured. “Did I just do that?”

  The door seemed to vibrate behind her back; the Gs and Fs and D flats from the drawing room sent hot little pings along her vertebrae. Leo Marsden kissed her. She didn’t know what it meant. Did young people kiss for amusement nowadays? Should she demand an apology? Did women still slap men for such unauthorized incursions?

  “You had me convinced for a moment …” His voice trailed off.

  Of course she meant to convince him. She wanted him to think that beneath her elderly virgin exterior was a Messalina who hosted wild orgies at dispensaries across the city. But what did that have to do with anything?

  “I might as well kiss you properly now,” he murmured.

  “I suppose you might as well,” she heard herself answer, still indignant.

  His lips came very close to hers. “What kind of soap do you use?”

  “I don’t know. The strongest.”

  “You don’t smell like any other woman I know.”

  “What do they smell like?”

  “Flowers. Spice. Musk, sometimes. You, on the other hand, make me think of industrial-strength solvents.”

  She stared at his mouth. “Do you like industrial-strength solvents?”

  His lips curved a little. And then he kissed her again, a curious but unhurried kiss, as light as a butterfly’s landing, as patient as the tides. A kiss almost innocent enough for public viewing—he touched her nowhere else, except for his fingers under her chin. A kiss that felt oddly like falling, and oddly like flying.

  So this was why people did it, she thought faintly, despite the act of kissing being one of the surest vectors of disease transmittal. How strangely pleasurable it was. And breathtaking. And electrifying—currents must have been generated by the locking of their lips, because every nerve in her sizzled, every cell sang.