Scandal in the Night (18 page)

He led his red-gold goddess across the wide lawn of the forecourt, and back to the private part of the compound, where the old inner palace and
zenana
were located. She was silent as the Scots mouse Birkstead had called her as Thomas escorted her up the wide steps. But she was all wide-eyed attention as they moved through the imposing front of the palace proper. Her head tipped back so far as she looked up at the intricate filigree of the screened balconies of the upper floors that she had to put a hand to her hat to keep it in place upon her head.

“All those little domes on the roof,” she explained when she caught him looking at her. “It makes the building look like it’s wearing a hat at each corner. A little domed helmet.”

He smiled at her fanciful description. “Those are the
chhattras
—the word means umbella—small, open-air pavilions from which the Begum and the colonel may take in the view of both the city and countryside. The begum especially enjoys being able to see the mosque in the city, the Jama Masjid, and hear the call to prayer from its tall towers.”

In another moment they were through the carved wooden door of the private palace and in the inner courtyard, where he led the way to a stair that rose upward to a curtained balcony. Catriona Rowan’s clear gray eyes were alight with curiosity and delight as she took in the sight, but her feet slowed as they reached the balcony and approached the low divan where the colonel, his begum, and his youngest daughter, Mina, sat reclining on bolsters and cushions.

Thomas made his salaam and turned to indicate his guest. “Nawab Nashaba Nissa Begum, I give thee Miss Catriona Rowan of Scotland.”

The Begum made a kind, nodding acknowledgment of Miss Rowan’s less than perfect, nervous salaam, but she was filled with delight when the girl sank into a deep, graceful curtsy worthy of King George of England. “How very pretty,” she said with a serene smile.

Catriona rose, and turned as he indicated the Balfours’ daughter. “Mina Begum.”

Mina smiled in her dazzling way and waved a rather jaunty salaam, and his Miss Rowan curtsied just a degree less low than she had for the begum. Whatever Lady Summers’s objections to her niece’s antecedents or upbringing, there was clearly nothing wrong with her manners. “I am honored to be asked to meet you.”

Mina bounded up with a rustle of silk and a tinkling jangle of her jewelry, which adorned her from the crown of her head down to her hennaed toes. Clearly she had meant to dazzle her visitor. She came and took Catriona’s hand. “My brother, what a treasure you have brought us.”

“You flatter me, Highness,” Catriona said. “But that is exactly what I said when I was introduced to
sawar
Tanvir Singh—that he had brought me a treasure.”

Mina waved away Catriona’s use of the honorific, just as Thomas had hoped she would. “Come, we are to be friends so let there be no titles between us. And I should very much enjoy saying your name—Catriona. It sounds like bells ringing.”

And it tasted like pomegranate.

The thought must have escaped into his expression, for Mina turned her sly smile on Thomas. “Do you not think so, my brother? Is it not most delightful?”

Thomas merely bowed to agree with Mina, and hopefully turn her attention, but she was not yet done with him.

“Catriona looks at us so, wondering why I call you brother. Tanvir Singh is not my brother in blood, but in spirit. I have known him since I was a girl, living here in the carefree days of my youth.”

Mina spoke English almost flawlessly, with only a small melodic intonation. It was the only indication that this beautiful, dark-skinned beauty was half English. More English by some people’s standards than Miss Catriona Rowan, with her depreciated Scots-Irish antecedents. And certainly more English than anyone could think Tanvir Singh, though his father was an earl.

“Thy days are carefree now, Mina,” he teased.

“This shows that you know nothing of the world of women, nothing of the intrigue of the
zenana
.”

“I must confess I know nothing of it myself,” Catriona admitted. “This is my first visit to such a place. And it is even more beautiful than I could have imagined.”

“Then we must make sure that this is the first of many more visits. For there is much more to see of my mother’s house than just this part of the palace. There are gardens and pools and fountains we have not yet explored.”

Miss Rowan colored at the mention of the gardens and fountains, and, perhaps remembering her incursion into the lady’s private space, she stole a worried glance at the begum. But that lady only smiled and said nothing of the trespass, while Mina chattered on.

“You must come into our world and see it for yourself, as Tanvir Singh cannot.”

“Cannot? How can he be here now, if he is not allowed?”

“He may visit at my esteemed mother’s invitation, but the
zenana
is a private place for women only, where men cannot come with their loud talk and dirt from the street.”

“I know when I am no longer wanted.” Thomas pressed his hands together and bowed, but he smiled all the while, a smile that he hoped told Catriona he left only because he had been asked to go, and not because he wanted to. “Thou hast only to send to me when thou art done with thy visit, Miss Rowan, and I will escort thee back to the residency.”

A lovely blush warmed her cheeks. “Thank you,
huzoor
.”

“In the meantime.” The colonel cleared his throat to recapture Thomas’s attention. “I hope you will join me in
my
part of the house, Tanvir Singh, where the ladies may make no rules for me.” And with a kiss for both the begum and his daughter, his mentor led the way out of the house.

While Thomas’s mind was occupied with not thinking about whatever it was that Miss Catriona Rowan was doing with Mina and the begum, he joined the colonel back in his favorite spot, on the shaded divan near the fountain.

This time the colonel spoke in French. “Now that I have your attention again for a time, I will tell you that I had a conversation of great interest with the resident this past night.”

“I hope he was listening to your advice?”

“Patience, Tanvir Singh.” Colonel Balfour looked up to the pale blue sky through the curtain of the leafy shade trees as though it were an infinite source of unhurried calm. “He was deploring the inefficiency of this station, and more pointedly, my former administration of it.”

“The hell you say.” Thomas spoke in English, so immediately incensed for his friend was he.

Balfour made a gesture of caution. “He was trying to determine, he told me, which of Saharanpur’s administrative functions might be relocated to an even more remote hill station during the hot weather. I hadn’t the heart to tell him that this is just the beginning of the hot weather.” Balfour chuckled. “But more to the point— ‘Here,’ he said to me in all seriousness, ‘is a man on my books I have never met, and who, it seems, has not done any work for the station in years.’”

“Let me guess.”

“‘The Honorable Thomas Jellicoe,’ says he. ‘Drawing pay into an account, and doing absolutely nothing, as far as I can tell. A man I have never even met. The man could be dead for all I know.’”

Thomas laughed, but Colonel Balfour was not so easy. “You will joke, and say the new resident is as great an ass as can be, but you need to speak to him as soon as may be, or the Honorable Thomas Jellicoe will disappear—struck off the books. You need to clearly make him understand the way things are.” He leaned in and lowered his voice to speak. “It may be called the Great Game, my boy, but it is played in deadly earnest.”

“All the more reason to keep my knowledge to myself.”

“You owe the resident commissioner—the current resident commissioner, whoever that may be—your allegiance and your truth.”

“There is only one man I trust with the truth, and he is no longer the resident commissioner.”

“And I am honored, Tanvir. But if you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for me. I’m getting to be an old man, Tanvir Singh. I have already been set aside from the company, and am slowly but very surely losing what little influence I once had. They are different, Tanvir. More like jackals than men, with their predatory ways. They will not be satisfied until they have pushed the likes of us out. In such circumstances, I
cannot
be the only man who knows Thomas Jellicoe’s secret. If you are to secure your future in the country, you’ll have to learn to trust someone else.”

Chapter Eleven

But Thomas never told anyone. He had kept his secret close—closer than he had kept Catriona Rowan. He never told her.

It had been a mistake. A grave mistake. Because now she sat not ten feet from him in the nursery at Wimbourne, looking at him as if he were as strange and unwelcome a sight as a leprous fakir begging in her doorway. Resenting his intrusion into her orderly, starched life. Distrusting him—she had learned not to trust anybody. And planning even now to get away.

“I pray you will excuse me, my lady.” Catriona rose, and gripped the back of her chair. “It has been a trying morning, your ladyship, and I should like to see the children and then perhaps take a small rest.”

But Thomas could not allow her any respite—it already felt too late. Too much useless effort had already been wasted. Too much time had already passed. Outside the windows, the blindingly bright morning had already begun to fade into the long, gray English afternoon he remembered from his boyhood. Darkening clouds had started to pile upon the horizon in a thick line of gray. A storm was moving in.

But a storm could work in his favor. Rain dampened powder and drove hunters—and other bloody miscreants with guns—indoors in search of shelter. And heavy rain might keep her from bolting as well. Might. She was frightened, but determined—a powerful combination.

At the moment she was still, as pale and colorless as the sky—the perfect cipher of a servant. It bothered him, the speed with which she was willing to erase all the force of her character. She was not meant for this menial, self-effacing existence. She was meant for color and vibrancy. She was meant to be full of movement and life. She was not meant to bury herself alive in nothing but English gray.

“Of course.” Cassandra was all gracious concern in acceding to Cat’s request. “It
has
been a most trying day. We will leave you to take your rest, but I thank you for wanting to see to the children first, before you retire, so they might know for themselves that you are all right.”

“Oh, yes, my lady. I’d like to go straightaway.”

Her obvious concern for his brother’s children was very real and deeply heartfelt. Another family of children substituted for her own.

“Then we will leave you.” Cassandra stood, but then impulsively reached for Cat and pressed a hasty kiss on her forehead. “You are very precious to us, Miss Cates. Pray don’t forget that.”

“Thank you, my lady.” Some fragile glint of emotion lit the corners of Cat’s eyes, but was quickly hidden by a calm smile.

“Thomas?” Cassandra turned the focus of her attention to him. “Let me show you to your room. I’m sure you need some rest after your travels and the … surprises of the day. You’ll want to wash and refresh yourself.”

It was a reasonable assumption, but Thomas was done with reasonable. He didn’t move from the doorway. He kept his eyes on Cat. Trying to see behind the façade. Wanting to understand her fear and desperate, foolish resolution. Looking for …

What? Some sign that under all the prim buttons and starched, correct behavior, and unreasoning fear, she still loved him?

He had been so sure of it, her love. He had been so sure that despite everything, despite the loss and the dangers, she had loved him. It had been the thing that kept him going through the years of searching and frustrated, bitter longing. She had loved him, and he had loved her.

But she had refused him once before. He kept managing to forget that inconvenient fact, because forgetfulness was his last bulwark against the doubts that came in the night, and stole around the unguarded corners of his soul. The doubts that whispered his deepest fears into flame—what if he was completely and entirely wrong?

What if she had not chosen him? What if she had been ambitious all along, playing him off against the bastard Birkstead? What if she never meant to come back to him, or let herself be found?

What if she pushed him away, and said, “Don’t touch me,” and meant it?

“Thomas?” His sister-in-law tried again. “We’ve all had more than enough turmoil for one day. Let us leave Miss Cates in peace.”

But Thomas was not about to make a peaceful, polite, or civilized exit. He was done with civilized. Instead, he took another step into the room. “I should like a quiet word with Miss Cates, if you don’t mind.”

“But I do mind,” Cassandra protested. “And Miss Cates has clearly said that she minds.” His surprisingly steely sister-in-law was both incredulous at his cheek, and adamant in her stance, planting herself in front of him as if she could bar his way with the strength of her refined contempt. “Surely you are too old to need lessons on how a gentleman conducts himself with a young lady?”

But Thomas closed his ears to his sister-in-law’s pointed set-down. “Cat.” He spoke as if they were alone, and he let his low voice fill with all the years of empty regret. “I’d like to speak to you. Please.” It was a concession, that little piece of politeness. An indication that he meant to be civil, if not civilized.

Cat looked stubborn and nearly mutinous for a moment, as if she would rather do
anything
in the world than talk to him, but perhaps she heard the plea, as well as the resolve in his voice, because she finally bowed graciously to the inevitable. “It’s all right, my lady. I’ll speak to Mr. Jellicoe.”

“All right, then.” Cassandra resumed her seat, determined to play the careful chaperone.

“Alone.” Thomas tried to keep the combativeness from his tone, but it was nearly impossible. He was running dangerously low on patience. The truth was that he meant to have it out with Cat one way or another, and the thought of potential failure frightened the patience out of him.