Scandal in the Night (13 page)

Which she did. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful. I know I am supposed to be happy that they have given me a home, and taken an interest in me—that someone as important as Lord Summers should bother himself with something so unimportant as getting an impoverished niece a husband. I
am
grateful for the attention, and the intended kindness. I only wish I did not feel as if I were one of your mares, traded away and given to the highest bidder.”

“That is unfair to horse traders, mem. I am very particular to whom I sell my mares.”

She laughed, a sweet, easy, unforced expression of quick-witted humor, just as he had hoped she would. “I hope I may take that as a compliment. Thank you. It is very kind of you to try and cheer me up.”

“Kind” was not an adjective that was often applied to Thomas Jellicoe, and never to Tanvir Singh. Kind was soft and warm and good-hearted. Kind was dangerous.

Because her gentle praise made him want to be a better version of his English self. To be the kind of man her uncle would want for her husband. And for the first time in over a decade, he was tempted to become that kind of man. So he might spend more time with her. So he might truly have her.

Why? Why could he not stop thinking about her? What was it about her that was so different? So different he was tempted to abandon everything he had worked years and years to accomplish? It wasn’t as if she were the kind of jolly girl who would toss up her skirts, and give him the kind of uncomplicated, thorough rogering that might put paid to his absurd obsession. She was a lady, with powerful relations, who wanted her to marry well, and not dally in gardens with people who were pretending to be people they were not.

But Catriona Rowan was different, in a way that he could not fully articulate, but in a way that called to him. That called forth a yearning he could not control.

And she was looking around her now, with that appreciative curiosity he had seen in the Rani Bazaar, moving slowly, touching the plants with a sort of reverent wonder. “This is an astonishingly beautiful garden. Such a collection of exotic plants I’ve never seen before, but so very beautiful.” She tipped her long, elegant nose into the air. “I can’t quite place that lovely, warm scent.”

“Night-blooming jasmine, mem. It is a favorite of the begum.”

“Oh, it is sublime. The Begum? Who is the Begum?”

“Mrs. Balfour, as thou wouldst have it. The colonel’s wife.”

“Oh!” The pale, shining moon of her face swung back to his. “I had assumed he was a widower, since his wife was not at the party. How very ignorant of me. Is she ill, or frail then, that she would not attend?”

“She is not frail. She is not at the colonel’s party because she is a Mohammedan, and by tradition, she keeps herself secluded from strange men. This garden is attached to her
zenana,
the women’s part of the house.”

“Oh, I had no idea I was intruding upon her privacy. There is so much I don’t know!” In the midst of her very real distress at the thought of her trespass, she tried to level a sweet little scowl at him. “You should have told me.”

He could not stop smiling for her. “I am telling thee now.”

She smiled back, an open expression of almost impudent delight. “You should have told me before you picked the lock.”

“Ah.” He dismissed her worry with a wave of his hand. “That lock and I are old friends. But do not make thyself uneasy. The Begum will not mind us walking and talking in her garden.” Indeed the begum might even welcome this little intrusion into her world for the charming drama, for she was the one other person in the world besides her husband who knew Thomas’s secret. He could not have become Tanvir Singh without her help. “I daresay she and her ladies are listening right now.”

He pointed to the upper stories of the latticed buildings that surrounded the garden on three sides, and the answering acknowledgment of a gently chiding chuckle fell down on them from the screened balcony above.

“There. The begum and her ladies are our honored chaperones. We will make our salaam. Come.” Thomas indulged himself by putting his hand to the flare of her back and urging her around next to him, where he made a courtly, elegant salaam to the night air.

Catriona Rowan copied his gesture, but then looked up at the walls, and added an elegant, melting European curtsy, as deep and respectful as if she were meeting the queen. And she was in a way.

This was what was so different about her. She was wide awake to the world around her, alive to the possibilities that came with a different place, a different culture than her own. She had not yet been lulled by the company and its cloistered expatriate community into their indifferent slumber.

That was the answer to his question. Catriona Rowan called forth his admiration as well as his infatuation. And something more. Something dangerously close to obsession. Because his time in the garden with Miss Catriona Rowan had only fueled the fires banked deep within. And blinded him to things he should have seen.

Yes, she had looked so much like a confection of spun sugar, but there had been granite beneath. And he had been impressed by her. So impressed, he had never thought to wonder how she had come to be that way.

Chapter Eight

There had been days when Catriona felt she must have dreamt it all—the warmth and the colors and the heady excitement of falling in love. But she had fallen slowly, inexorably, irreversibly in love. She had not dreamt it. Nor had she dreamt the malice that had followed her all the way to Wimbourne Manor. That was all too real. And too lasting. She had not dreamt the bullets that had embedded themselves in the lawn. And she had not in a thousand and one years dreamt up the tall Englishman filling the doorway.

There was no other choice. Catriona rooted herself more firmly in the unpleasant present, and faced Lady Jeffrey. “I thank you for your kind concern, my lady, but as you can see, I’m quite fine. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go see to the children now.” And take herself as far as possible from Mr. Thomas Jellicoe’s vigilant presence.

“My dear Miss Cates.” Lady Jeffrey reached over to clasp Catriona’s hand once more. “What would we do without you? You are our rock. You’re quite the bravest girl. I should still be shaking in my boots, but you think nothing of your own safety, and only of the children. I daresay you were not even afraid.”

Safety was a relative, mutable thing—another luxury she could not afford. If she were to ensure the safety of the viscountess’s children she could not stay—to do so would be to invite the danger within the manor walls. And if she were to survive her present trial, and elude her determined pursuers, including Mr. Thomas Jellicoe, she would have to use her very real fear to compel her to leave the relative safety of Wimbourne. Quietly. Stealthily.

But the truth was that she was not in the least bit brave. She was deeply, deeply afraid. If she had had any courage, any bravery at all, she never would have left India—she never would have left Scotland. She would have faced her fears, and faced her accusers. But she had not. And so the fear had grown inside her until it was a weight pressing relentlessly against her soul. An ache she could never manage to put aside.

She was deeply afraid of being taken up by the Honorable Thomas Jellicoe, and sent back to India. Of being tried for a crime she did not commit. Of dying in the most public way, of being demeaned and abased the way her father had been.

She was deeply afraid of the gunman roaming free outside the walls. And deeply, deeply afraid of the malice he held toward her.

She didn’t have time to try and explain the complicated tangle of circumstance and unjust accusations to Lady Jeffrey. She couldn’t take the chance that her mistress might feel compelled to turn her over to her brother-in-law immediately if she knew Catriona faced a charge of murder. “I must go, my lady.”

“And go where?” Thomas Jellicoe had to duck his head to step under the lintel of the nursery sitting room door. “Running away won’t help, Miss Anne Cates.”

Catriona didn’t know if he said her assumed name in an effort to remind himself of who she was supposed to be, or to remind
her
that he was the one who held her secrets and her fate in the palm of his hand.

But it was not she who bristled like an angry hedgehog at his entrance, but his own sister-in-law, Cassandra, the Viscountess Jeffrey. “I am sure politeness dictates that I ought to welcome you back, Thomas, but I do so
only
for the sake of politeness.”

The lady surprised Catriona. Perhaps gratitude was at least as thick as blood. Her mistress’s tone was stiff and unyielding, and the viscountess rose out of her chair to confront her brother-in-law, as if she might physically bar him from approaching her Miss Cates any nearer.

The thought was laughable. Her ladyship might still think of her brother-in-law as the schoolboy he had been the last time she had seen him, but Thomas Jellicoe was now a towering man in his prime, as tall and capable and hardened by experience as an axe, and the viscountess was a fine china teacup of a woman. Not even the wide, petticoated skirts and full sleeves of her rich blue silk day gown could increase her stature sufficiently to make her seem anything but a beautiful, exquisite doll compared to the rough giant that was Thomas Jellicoe.

But Lady Jeffrey
had
stopped him from coming any nearer. Perhaps it was the force of her character that made Mr. Jellicoe step back, herded into the doorway like some great bull held at bay by a sleek, little collie. Lady Jeffrey might look insignificant, but she had bite.

The poor man had to settle for looming over his sister-in-law and scowling down into her face. “Surely you don’t think I’m going to hurt her? I am very sorry for my rough handling of her out on the lawn, but I assure you, I am not going to harm Miss Cates. I did what I did today to
protect
her. Tell her, C—” He recovered himself. “Cassandra, even Miss Cates will tell you that I have always sought to protect her. In India, I even went so far as to make enemies to protect her.”

Lady Jeffrey turned her guileless lavender eyes to Catriona. “Is that true?”

Catriona closed her hand around the arm of the chair to keep the room from shifting. She couldn’t seem to find her balance. Everything about the man seemed to knock her off her feet. “Yes,” she finally admitted. It was undoubtedly true. She had forgotten. He
had
made enemies for her. He had sought to protect her time after time, from that first evening on.

He had made an enemy out of Lieutenant Birkstead, to spare her the trouble of doing it alone. It had been something they shared, their enmity for the fair-haired boy of the regiment. Something that drew them together. Like their love of horses. Like the superb mare. Her memories of the awful turmoil of her last hours in Saharanpur had made her forgot how much he had once done for her.

What had he said to her that first night at Colonel Balfour’s to cheer her up? “I am glad that the lieutenant sahib has disappointed thee. Thou art worthy of a far, far better man. One who appreciates thy finer qualities.” But then his gravity had disappeared, and he began again to lavish her with his easy charm. “Now that we have our proper chaperone in the begum and her ladies, we may talk of better, more pleasant and interesting things than the lieutenant, who is not worth our breath. Let us talk of the mare.”

Catriona had been more than willing to talk of the marvelous animal that had been the means of introducing her to Tanvir Singh. “I have mounted her only briefly, within the grounds of the residency, as I did not yet have a saddle. But my uncle, Lord Summers, was kind enough to insist that I be measured for my own sidesaddle, which has been delivered to the residency this afternoon. But I still fear we won’t be allowed to range any farther afield.”

It had pleased her so much, and embarrassed her a little, that generous attention from her new uncle, but mostly pleased. Her uncle-in-law was a kindhearted man, if a little blind when it came to things he would rather not know.

But Tanvir Singh had heard what she had wanted him to hear. “I will also offer my services to thee, if thou shouldst care for accompaniment on thy rides. I confess I cannot rest easy until I am assured that thou art an accomplished horsewoman, and that my mare will not be able to play her tricks upon thee. I cannot have it said that Tanvir Singh sells dangerous horses to his Excellency, Lord Summers.”

“Oh, yes, please. I should like that of all things.” Catriona had been too happy to stop and examine the swarm of feelings fluttering about her insides. She had rushed headlong toward infatuation. “I have wanted to take my cousins out into the countryside on their ponies in the mornings, but I’ve been hesitant to let them out of the cantonment alone since I don’t know the area well yet.”

“I should like nothing more than to accompany you.”

Delight had warmed her inside out, chasing away the last of the chill of her aunt’s deception. She had absolutely no fears that the mare would prove too much for her, but she grasped on to the excuse to spend more time with her charming Punjabi rogue, her prince among gentlemen, her friend. “Thank you,
huzoor
.” She took a moment to school her smile back under more prudence, before she suggested, “I understand there is a fine botanical garden in the town. Perhaps that might be a good place to meet.” She had wanted somewhere away from the residency, away from the cantonment lines, and nosy cantonment ears and eyes.

“The Farahat-Baksh is a very fine place to meet, mem.” Was it a trick of the moonlight, or were his eyes twinkling with the same pleasure she knew must be warming her own?

“Perfect.” She held out her hand. “Until then.”

At her easy agreement, he had made her an elegant salaam, and then bowed low over her hand. “Until then, my friend.”

But then he had looked up at her from under the dark sweep of his lashes and touched his lips to the heretofore unremarkable skin on the back of her knuckles, and sent sensation sweeping up her arm, like the ripple of a wave crashing against her shore. Tipping her off center.