by Olivia Drake
She blinked hard. With a twitch of his saffron robe, the priest melted into the shadows of the sanctuary. She released a breath. The fakir was dead; Damien had seen to that.
“What is it?” he asked.
Only then did she realize she was clutching his arm. She relaxed her hand and let it fall to the wooden seat. “Nothing.”
“Something frightened you,” he persisted. “What?”
He knew her so well. “A priest,” she admitted. “He was staring at us from the temple, that’s all.” She looked down at her dusty sari and walnut-stained arms. “Perhaps he saw through our disguises and hated us.”
“I doubt it, but anything’s possible. The natives have more reason than ever to hate the English.” Damien frowned at the rutted road. “It’s a damned shame the Indians failed to gain freedom from the foreign devils. They’d be better off without us.”
The dull clopping of hooves filled the silence. In their sympathy for the natives, at least, she and Damien found accord. “Maybe our book will make the English see the Indians as a sovereign people,” Sarah said.
“If it at least makes them think beyond their sanctimonious imperialism, we’ll have accomplished something.”
British soldiers drilled on the distant parade ground, where eighty-five native cavalrymen had once been sentenced. If only she’d spoken out... But she must accept her mistakes of the past and focus on her future.
The Union Jack fluttered from a flagpole, and sunlight glinted off the steeple of the Anglican church. The familiar sights bolstered Sarah’s spirits as much as the blackened ruins of bungalows and barracks saddened her. The destruction was greater here in the English sector of Meerut. She suddenly realized they were heading away from the officers’ homes along the Mall.
“Where are we going?”
“To regimental headquarters, to find your uncle. On our way back we’ll stop at the hospital and ask after Reginald.” Damien nodded at the small, whitewashed building they were nearing. “Unless you’d prefer to see about your fiancé first.”
Her pulse fluttered. His turban and tunic covered by a thin coating of dust, his jaw bristly with several weeks’ black growth, Damien looked as disreputable as a badmash, the antithesis of a girl’s romantic fancies. Yet longing ached in Sarah’s heart, and she renounced the futile feeling. He couldn’t give her the life and love she craved.
“I’ll see Reginald first,” she stated.
With a flick of his long switch, Damien signaled the bullock to halt. He turned to her, his expression guarded. “Sarah, you’d best prepare yourself. He suffered a grave injury to his leg. He might very well have died from the wound. What will you do then?”
Would you keep me with you?
She swallowed the errant question. “I’ll find my uncle. Or seek out friends.”
Resolutely she swung her gaze to the smoke-blackened walls of the hospital and the freshly thatched veranda encircling it. Orderlies and servants strolled through the open front doors. A mali worked a scraggly patch of garden near the entryway.
The notion of going inside jangled her nerves. Her arms tightened around Kit; he squirmed and babbled a protest.
A man walked out of the infirmary, his gait slow, his progress aided by the ivory-topped cane in his hand. Sunshine illuminated the refined features she knew so well and gleamed over his fair hair before he clapped on a topi.
“Reginald,” she breathed.
A great weight of fear lifted from her heart. In its place swirled a sea of relief and joy. And yet beneath the bright waters churned a dark undercurrent of apprehension and sorrow. She forced herself to look at Damien. “I can’t take Kit with me.”
He tucked the wriggling baby into the cradle of his arm. “There you go, son. Tell Sarah goodbye now. You’ll ride with me to the Central Hotel.”
Dismay flooded her. “Won’t you wait here?”
“No.” Damien aimed his stony gaze at the road. “You and Reggie have a lot to discuss. And I have to prepare for my voyage. I’ll start interviewing ayahs in the morning.”
“But...” The enormity of his words inundated her. He was leaving her. Kit was leaving her, too. Tears swam in her eyes, and she brushed a kiss over the infant’s velvety cheek. “I’ll come by as soon as I’ve spoken with Reginald. Kit will be wanting his bottle soon—”
“You needn’t trouble yourself. I can manage my son for one night.”
“But—”
“Look, don’t worry about us. We’ll manage just fine.”
He held the baby with the ease of paternal love and tenderness. Pride and privation wrenched her. She’d taught Damien to be a father. He really didn’t need her anymore.
She glanced toward the hospital. A syce guided a horse-drawn palka-ghari toward Reginald. Afraid to miss him, she grasped the bundle of her belongings and climbed down from the cart.
“I have to go.” She paused. Damien’s mouth was set in a strict line. Swallowing hard, she turned away.
“Sarah.”
She spun back, her gaze flying to his disreputably handsome face. “Yes?”
“Did you remember the bank draft?”
“Yes. It’s right here.” She patted her waist, where the paper was secured in a pouch, and then hesitated. “Good-bye, Damien.”
“Goodbye,” he said gruffly.
If only he would change his mind and call her back. If only he could love her. Tears burned behind her eyes. She swung away before he could spy the moisture.
“Sarah?”
She whirled again. “What is it?”
“Give my regards to Reggie. He’s a good man. But I guess I don’t have to tell you that.”
He snapped the switch, and the bullock plodded away. Her heart beating in her throat, she stood by the road. Her tears made his image glimmer in the sunlight like an archangel etched in gold.
Absurd, she thought. Damien could never be mistaken for an angel.
Reginald moved to the carriage and placed his black satchel on the floorboard.
She hurried down the path, the olive-green silk of her sari fluttering. For so many days her mind had shied away from this moment, the moment she would settle her future. The moment she would once again see the man who could make her dreams come true.
“Wait!” she called. “Don’t go.”
Reginald flicked a glance at her. One sandy brow arched in genteel dismissal. Then he braced his hand on his cane and, with the other, grasped the side handle of the carriage in preparation to climb inside.
Suddenly Sarah saw herself through his eyes, a nondescript Hindu woman with a veil draping her black hair, her skin as brown as a walnut and her garb gritty with travel dust. She halted a few yards from him. She was conscious of the dirt smooth and warm beneath her bare feet, as warm as the twinge of resentment within her.
“Reginald, don’t you recognize me?”
He pivoted sharply, using the cane for balance. His widened blue eyes swept her from head to toe. “Sarah?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“Sarah, my pet,” he breathed. “I can scarcely believe...”
He limped quickly forward. Anticipating his embrace, she met him halfway. But he merely grasped her hand. “Thank heaven, you’re alive! After so many months, I feared the worst.” Warm and fervid, his gaze studied her. “It’s no wonder I failed to recognize my proper English Sarah inside this outlandish attire.”
“It was too dangerous to travel as an Englishwoman.” His affectionate regard assuaged her bruised spirits. “Oh, how I’ve missed you.”
She pressed her cheek to his shoulder. His heart thrummed against her breasts. His scent of bay rum enveloped her, so gentlemanly compared to Damien’s bold male essence.
“Hold me,” she murmured. “Hold me close and kiss me.”
She anticipated the rise of passion, but Reginald stepped back. To her surprise, his fair features bore a flush of embarrassment. He glanced around at the groom, who stood impassively by the carriage, and then at the hospita
l, where people filed in and out.
“I missed you, too, darling,” he said in a hushed tone. “But we can hardly hold a reunion here. A public place isn’t the appropriate setting for displays of affection.”
Irritation squelched her elation. “It’s a reunion neither of us believed would happen,” she pointed out. “Surely people will overlook a lapse in decorum.”
“Here, now, my pet.” A grin lent a boyish handsomeness to his face. “Let’s not spoil our reunion with a quarrel. Come, sit in my carriage. A lady shouldn’t stand in the burning sun.”
She started to say that she no longer felt like a lady, that her sun-browned complexion hardly required protection. But he was only being considerate. “Thank you,” she murmured.
She took his proffered arm and let him lead her to the palka-ghari. His painstaking pace tugged at her sympathy. At the carriage, she stopped and set her bundle on the floorboard. “Let me give you a hand in,” she said.
“Nonsense. I’m not an invalid.”
She dared not trample his dignity, although appearances seemed absurd when she was more able-bodied than he. She grasped his hand, accepted the polite fiction of his help, and climbed inside. There, she forced herself to sit still in the shade of the wicker hood while he struggled to follow. Sweat dewed his brow, but he managed to swing himself onto the leather seat. Breathing hard, he propped his stiff leg before him.
The syce moved toward the driver’s seat, but Reginald motioned the servant away. “We’ve the privacy to talk now,” he told her. “I should like to hear everything that’s happened to you.”
She hesitated. How could she relate the events of the past months without mentioning the rapture she’d found in Damien’s arms? “First tell me about you. What happened to your leg?”
Reginald frowned. “That was a dreadful night. I tried to keep the mutineers from taking the magazine. But I had an ill-timed encounter with the sword of a badmash.”
“You’re a hero, then.”
He chuckled. “Better you should call Damien Coleridge the hero. Had it not been for his lordship, I wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale.”
“Pardon?”
“When I fell, he came to my rescue. He saved me from a pack of rebels who surely would have cut my throat.”
Astonished, Sarah looked quickly toward the road, but the cart had vanished. Passionate pride glowed in her. How like Damien not to tell her the part of the tale that would make her see him in a favorable light.
“I never knew,” she murmured.
“And I never properly thanked him,” Reginald said. “For all his reputation as a bounder, the chap has his own brand of honor.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “That I know.”
Reginald gave her a curious frown. “Tell me how you escaped Meerut.”
The awful memories poured over her. Swallowing hard, she related her drive past the bazaar, the death of her aunt, and her own ill-fated rush to save Shivina. “Damien took Kit and me to his hut in the hills. That’s where we spent the summer months.”
“You...had no chaperon?”
She gazed down at her hands in her lap. Against her will, she recalled a vivid image of her fingers caressing Damien’s naked body. “How could I? There were no English people for miles.”
A crow cawed from a plumbago bush near the hospital veranda. Reginald put his hand on her forearm. “Praise God you survived when so many women were killed. I spent several nerve-racking days trapped in a hospital bed and fearing you’d met the same fate as your poor aunt Violet.”
Sarah tipped her head toward him. “But I sent a message to Patel.”
“So I learned. As soon as I was able, I sent for him, and he showed me the note.”
“And Uncle John? Did he come, too?”
“No.” His expression somber, Reginald stroked her wrist. “Some of his sepoys turned on him that first night. He died valiantly.”
Although she’d braced herself for the news, a well of sadness opened inside her. “How I’ll miss them both,” she said on a sigh. “Pompous Uncle John and silly Aunt Violet.”
Reginald stared keenly at her. “It isn’t like you to speak ill of the dead.”
“Please don’t think I’m belittling my aunt and uncle,” Sarah hastened to explain. “They were both so very dear to me. And yet they were the epitome of English society, forever imposing their own strict values on the natives and believing themselves superior to the people whose country they were guests in.”
“You’ve changed,” Reginald said, his sandy eyebrows lifting. “I never knew you to be quite so eccentric with your opinions.”
“There’s a lot you didn’t know about me.” Taking a shaky breath, she knew she could speak nothing less than the truth. “I have a confession. For the past year, I’ve been writing essays under the name of I. M. Vexed.”
His jaw dropped. As if thunderstruck, he sat back. “You? Impossible!”
“Writing anonymously was the only way I thought I could express my opinions.”
“But everyone believed the editorials were written by a man.” He looked her up and down, as if trying to reconcile himself to her new image. “We discussed one at your uncle’s dinner party before the mutiny. You never let on that you’d ever read the piece.”
“I was afraid to speak out. But I was wrong. I ought to have told you...and everyone. For that I’m sorry.”
Reginald shook his head. “I can’t say that I’m pleased to hear this about my fiancée.”
I would have cheered you on. Damien’s respect for her work gave Sarah the courage to hold her head high. “Gender needn’t stop a person from asserting her beliefs.”
“Be that as it may, I trust you’ll be too busy in the future being my wife to continue your unladylike hobby.”
She sat up straight. “Why should I give up my writing?”
Smiling, Reginald took her hand in his. “Here, my pet, don’t get your dander up. We’ve more important things to settle. Now that your aunt and uncle are gone, we needn’t wait to wed. You’ll need a place to live and a man to take care of you.”
The proposal shook her. Yet wasn’t this what she wanted, the summit of her dreams? Gazing at him, she felt only exasperated affection, for the rapport they’d once shared had vanished like a flame snuffed by the wind. She’d grown away from him.
With the suddenness of shutters opening to admit light into a darkened room, she knew that more than her appearance had changed. Reginald no longer recognized the woman inside, the woman who could care for a baby as well as kill a mutineer, the woman who could strive against injustice as well as surrender to the fires of physical love.
He had never really known her. Because she had never acknowledged her own strengths.
Through Damien, she had freed a great passion in herself, the passion to openly embrace causes, the passion to give all of herself to the man she loved. And with the painful joy of her awakening, she knew she could never accept any less.
She gently squeezed Reginald’s hand, then released it. “You suggest the impossible. I’m afraid I can’t marry you.”
He pursed his lips. “I realize you’ve been gone for months with a scoundrel. People might whisper, but I trust you, Sarah. I won’t even ask any more questions of you. If we behave as if nothing untoward happened, eventually everyone else will, too.”
He knew. Ever the gentleman, he would pretend not to see the stark reality. Tenderness softened her heart. She ached for an easy way to say what must be said. Yet misleading him seemed even more cruel. “Darling Reginald.” She paused, her throat dry with the knowledge that she could never turn back. Taking a breath, she said, “Damien and I have been lovers.”
Reginald’s spine went as straight as his cane. His blue eyes revealed the starkness of shock. “I see.”
“Not for the world would I deliberately hurt you, but I can’t act as if nothing has changed. And I won’t give Damien up.” Saying it aloud filled her with elation.
“
So why hasn’t the bastard married you?”
The sharp question pierced the bubble of her high spirits. “We don’t need a legal document to prove our love for each other.”
“Balderdash,” he snapped. “The knave is using you. I should think a woman with your backbone wouldn’t stand for that.”
Trembling with pain, she bit her lip. “Thank you for your concern, but that’s between Damien and me.” She reached up and removed the locket, laying it on the seat between them. “This is yours.”
He stared down at the piece for a moment, then picked it up and dropped it in his pocket. He motioned to the syce, who clambered into the driver’s seat.
“Where may I take you?” Reginald said.
His return to polite gentility, even in the face of extreme distress, bathed her in sorrow for what might have been. She was refusing the security he offered. She was renouncing public acceptance. She was rejecting the conventional role of a wife. Because now she had an unconventional love, a love too luminous to be dimmed by censure or public opinion.
A deep yearning pulled at her. She must make Damien see that they shared a love too precious to abandon.
“To the Central Hotel,” she said in a firm, clear voice.
The short ride seemed interminable. Offering no conversation, Reginald gazed stolidly ahead, and Sarah decided she had said enough. At last the two-story, thatch-roofed building loomed into view. To her surprise, he leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I wish you the best, Sarah. If ever you need me...”
“Thank you.” She held his warm hand for a moment, looked into the dear features of a friend, and fought against tears. “Goodbye.”
Bundle in hand, she slipped down from the palka-ghari and went into the hotel. The foyer was shabby, with peeling pea-green wallpaper and threadbare floor mats. In the center of the room two natives squatted, talking in low tones. Near the stairs lay a sleeping man, undisturbed by the fly crawling along his stubbly jaw. The vagrant looked as broad of build as Damien.
But not nearly as handsome. Her stomach fluttered with anticipation. She went to the front desk and rang the tiny bell. A Eurasian clerk smelling of jasmine hair tonic sauntered from a back room. “Mr. Damien Coleridge’s room, please.”
