“So tell me.” At last he sounded more than marginally alert, Thankfully Anna sat up, drawing her legs beneath her and leaning toward him as she recounted the events of the past hour.
“Let me see it.”
He was frowning. Anna reached to retrieve the flower from the bedside table and passed it to him. Turning it over, he examined it closely, then looked at her again, handing the flower back, Anna, hardly able to touch it without shuddering, replaced the hateful thing on the table as quickly as she could.
“It’s just a flower.”
“I know, but whoever brought it has no business in Chelsea’s room, much less while she’s in there herself, sleeping. And Kirti says it’s a warning.”
“Chelsea says that some coolie—with spears in his cheeks—shook this over her bed, then dropped it?” He sounded faintly skeptical.
“I know it sounds incredible, but yes.”
Julian’s lips compressed. He studied the flower again, his expression thoughtful.
“What about the ayah?”
“Kirti was sleeping. Chelsea says she couldn’t wake her up.”
“I meant do you trust her. Would she be a party to a stunt like this? Perhaps to scare the child into behaving, or something?”
“Oh, no, I’m sure she wouldn’t. Kirti loves Chelsea, and she was so horrified—I’m sure she wouldn’t.”
“All right, then.” He swung his legs off the bed and got to his feet, clearly not one whit concerned by his nakedness in her presence. Anna permitted herself a moment’s silent admiration as he stood there without moving, one hand pressed against the wall to aid his balance. A stray sunray glittered through the open curtains to strike his eyes, and he grimaced. Wincing, he lifted a hand to shield his face.
“Christ, I’ve got the mother and father of a headache.”
“Serves you right. You shouldn’t drink so much.”
“That makes me feel better.”
“It’s nothing but the truth.”
Julian grunted. Then, taking a few toddling steps to where the washstand stood in the near corner, he bent over the bowl and poured the entire contents of the pitcher over his head. Anna gaped to see him dunk his head in the filled bowl, then shake it as if he were a wet dog. Water droplets went flying everywhere, but when, moments later, he emerged from behind the linen towel he did look marginally better. At least the grimace was gone.
This time, Anna got the impression that he was really seeing her. She colored a little at the sheer intimacy of her position, sitting in the middle of his bed while he stood, casually naked, rubbing his head with a towel as he eyed her. It would take a little time to get over the newness of Julian as her lover, she supposed.
“What are you going to do?” She hurried into speech to cover her sudden embarrassment.
“Have a talk with Raja Singha. He knows everything that goes on, in the house and out of it. I want to find out what he has to say about this.”
“Kirti said we should watch Chelsea.” Fear tinged Anna’s voice.
“Don’t worry, nothing is going to happen to Chelsea. If necessary, Jim and I will take turns watching over her twenty-four hours a day. But first let’s find out what Raja Singha has to say.”
He emerged from his dressing room scant moments after entering it, breeches in place, tugging on a shirt, which he proceeded to button as she watched.
“Why don’t you go back and stay with Chelsea? If she wakes, she’s bound to be frightened not to have you there. As soon as I find out anything I’ll come tell you.”
“All right.” This course of action made sense, although Anna was conscious of a sudden intense reluctance to part from him. But Chelsea’s well-being had to come before her own intoxication with Julian. Reluctantly she clambered off the bed and headed toward the door even as he was stamping his feet into his boots.
“Anna.”
She had nearly reached the door when his voice stopped her. Turning inquiringly, she saw that he had his boots on now and was coming toward her.
When he reached her side one hand came up to cup her chin and turn her face up for his kiss.
“You’re beautiful in the morning,” he told her softly when he lifted his head at last. When Anna, dreamy-eyed, would have swayed against him, wanting more, he put her away from him and sent her on about her business with a smart smack on her behind.
“Go along with you now. There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” he told her with a glinting half-smile.
Anna, rosy, returned to her room as he headed purposefully toward the stairs. She would stand guard over her daughter—and pass the time dreaming of Julian.
As it happened, she no sooner walked into her bedroom than Chelsea woke up, yawning.
“Mama?”
“I’m right here, chicken.”
“Did I have another bad dream?”
“Sort of.” Unwilling to tell her more until she knew more herself, Anna resorted to the age-old device of distracting her daughter. First she told how she had stepped on Moti’s tail in the middle of the night and been nearly pitched down the stairs as the mongoose had leapt forward, pulling his tail from beneath her feet. Then she told of getting locked in the privy the day before and having to stay there until she was rescued by Ruby. Both stories were totally false, but they made Chelsea giggle, and Chelsea’s delight infected Anna. Mother and daughter were seated in the middle of the bed, snickering helplessly together, when a quick knock sounded at the door.
“Anna?” It was Julian.
“Come in,” she called, relieved. For some reason the knock had made her nervous. Her imagination working overtime again, she supposed.
Julian stepped inside the room, where he stopped, surveying them with a smile. Chelsea, beaming, bounced up and down in excitement.
“Good morning, Uncle Julie!”
“Good morning, sprite. I hear you had quite an experience last night.”
Immediately Chelsea stopped bouncing and looked apprehensive. “Did Mama tell you?”
Julian nodded. Anna, frowning, shook her head at him behind Chelsea’s back. She didn’t think it was good to discuss the topic any further before the child. Least said, soonest forgotten, she had always believed.
But Julian apparently felt differently. Ignoring Anna’s silent attempts to shush him, he walked to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, close to Chelsea, who regarded him gravely.
“Your mama was worried, so she went to your room this morning and checked to see whether what you saw was a dream or not. She found a flower on the foot of your bed, a big, beautiful flower, but she didn’t like the idea of how it might have gotten there. So she asked me to find out for her. I’ve been talking to Raja Singha, and he talked to all the other servants, and we’ve gotten to the bottom of it. You know Oya, the cook?”
Chelsea nodded, her eyes big and solemn. Anna had to admit that, while she wouldn’t have addressed the issue so directly, such an approach did not seem to be having any adverse effects on Chelsea. Julian spoke to her as to an equal, and Chelsea, with the dignity of her nearly six years, listened in a surprisingly adult fashion. Maybe, Anna thought, she had a tendency to baby her daughter. Julian clearly had a care for the child, and would do her no harm. She must stay out of the way and allow them to forge their own relationship, independent of her interference.
“Oya has a son who lives in a village near Badulla. He is traveling to Kandy for the Festival of the Tooth, and two nights ago he stopped off to see his mother. He is something of a medicine man in his village, apparently, and when Oya told him about the nightmares you sometimes have he decided to help you get rid of them. According to Oya and Raja Singha, what you saw last night was Oya’s son casting a spell over you to ward off nightmares.”
“I told you it wasn’t a dream!” Chelsea crowed to her mother.
“You were right, darling.” The relief that should have flooded Anna at this perfectly obvious—for Ceylon—explanation for Chelsea’s midnight visitor failed to materialize. The Festival of the Tooth celebrated a most important holiday to the island’s Buddhists. In August of every year all those who could journeyed to Kandy, where the Buddha’s tooth was enshrined in a magnificent temple. The relic was paraded through the streets with much fanfare, and the celebration lasted for days.
It was kind of Oya and her son to be concerned about Chelsea’s nightmares. Still, whatever Oya’s son’s motivation, Anna did not like the idea of a stranger, any stranger, wandering about the house at night, much less entering her little girl’s room and scaring her half to death.
“If the medicine man’s spell works, I guess I won’t have any more nightmares,” Chelsea said thoughtfully.
Anna hugged her daughter. “I guess not.” She looked over the silky blond head at Julian. “I hope you told Raja Singha and Oya that, while we appreciate the thought, such an occurrence is not to be repeated?”
“Don’t worry.” Julian smiled blandly. “I told them. In future, at night the doors and windows are to be kept locked, and none of the servants—or their relatives—is to enter without permission.” He gave Anna a significant look. “Jim and I will see to it. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
“No.” Anna smiled, the relief she’d been missing filling her at last. It was so good to have someone else to depend on. And Julian, she knew, could be depended upon utterly. Without the slightest hesitation she would trust him with her own and Chelsea’s lives. “Thank you.”
“Surely you can do better than that.” His answering grin was wide and wicked. Then his gaze flickered down to Chelsea, who was attending to this exchange with wide-eyed interest. “Later,” he added, and stood up.
“Where are you going, Uncle Julie?”
“To shave, sprite. I’ll see you in the garden later, all right?”
“All right.”
He grinned rather ruefully at Anna, tousled Chelsea’s hair to the child’s loudly expressed indignation, and took himself off. Anna had only a minute to stare longingly after him before Chelsea demanded her attention again.
It took all her willpower to persuade herself that the truly shameful things she was imagining would have to wait for the coming night.
Julian, on the other hand, was thinking about something other than sex. He had not wanted to worry his ladies—that expression, with all its possessive implications, was not lost on him—but something was definitely wrong at Srinagar.
For all their sakes he meant to find out what it was.
XLVII
T
he next three days were Anna’s idea of heaven on earth. She was happier than she had ever dreamed she could be. In the mornings she caught herself singing foolish songs about the house. In the afternoons she rode out with Julian, ostensibly to check on the progress the workers were making in clearing the fields but really to sneak away alone with him for a few precious hours. And at night, after supper, when the rest of the household was abed—suffice it to say that Anna got very little sleep. Not that she minded the lack.
During this time Julian was everything she had ever dreamed a man could be, and more. He was charming, funny, solicitous of her well-being—and so exciting a lover that a mere look from his midnight-blue eyes was enough to make her heart go pitty-pat. Under his tutelage, Anna became more fully a woman. And she fell ever deeper under his spell.
To please him, she even agreed to try to learn to swim. He insisted that everyone should know how, for his or her own safety, and vowed to teach Chelsea next. The swimming lessons weren’t spectacularly successful, but the lovemaking sessions that inevitably followed them were. For that reason, and to humor Julian, Anna was willing to tolerate being half-drowned once a day.
“It’s a mystery to me how a female as tiny as you are can sink to the bottom like a stone time after time,” Julian remarked in some exasperation in the midst of their fourth swimming lesson. They were halfway to the middle of the pool (from bitter experience, Anna refused to go out past her depth), and he, soaking wet and naked, looked like a pagan water god. The water came only halfway up his chest. The muscles of his shoulders rippled enticingly as he supported her with a hand wound in the back of her shift. His wet black hair shone like a seal’s in the filtered light, and his bronzed skin glistened with moisture. All in all, he was a picture to stop a woman’s breath—if swallowing half a pool of water hadn’t already done so. Next to him, Anna guessed that she looked like a drowned rat. She certainly felt like one.
“If the good Lord had wanted us to swim, he would have given us fins,” Anna responded, sweeping the soaking strands of hair from her eyes with one hand. It was already clear to Anna that she was not meant to be a water nymph, but Julian doggedly refused to give up on her. To humor him, she had vowed to try this one last time. But she already knew that she and deep water did not, and never would, mix.
“There is absolutely no reason why you cannot learn to swim.” If there was a trace of exasperation in his voice, it was not surprising. He was really being most patient with her, Anna knew, but she just could not seem to get the knack of staying afloat. Clad only in her soaking shift, she was doggedly kicking her feet and waving her hands back and forth as he had shown her. The object being, of course, to keep her head above the water. But she knew as well as he did that the minute he let go of her shift she would flounder and sink.
No mermaid, she.
Without warning Julian removed his hand from her shift. He did it stealthily, as if he hoped she wouldn’t notice. But of course she did. Her eyes widened, her muscles tensed—and she concentrated as hard as she could on moving her feet and hands in the proscribed rhythm. But it was no use. No matter how hard and fast she flailed, she went under. She barely had time to draw a quick breath before she sank.
Already her toes were scrabbling against the bottom as Julian’s hand in her shift hauled her up.
“Good God,” he said, disgusted, as she surfaced, spitting out what seemed to be oceans of water.
“Can’t we take a break?” Her voice, and her eyes, were unconsciously pleading. Julian looked at her, grimaced, and relented.
“All right. A short one. Come on.”
Catching her hand, he towed her from the water in his wake. Anna was too exhausted to do more than barely register how magnificent he looked, rising from the pool as nature had made him. Water streamed from them both as he dragged her ashore. Anna stumbled as far as the carpet of glossy leaves near the rock where they had left their clothes, and promptly collapsed, silently thanking God for the blessing of solid ground. Julian, grinning, dried off with one of the towels they had brought, wrapped it around his waist, and, carrying the other one, hunkered down beside her.