Scandal in the Night (8 page)

Damn him for a jackal. He was acting as if he had inhaled too much of the heady hashish smoke that wafted from the tombs near where his caravan had camped on the outskirts of the town. He must be hallucinating to turn a simple girl into a swan goddess. And a man like Tanvir Singh wasn’t supposed to even know about Norse or Celtic gods.

Lord Summer took her outstretched hand. “Catriona, my dear.”

Catriona.
Thomas repeated the name in the quiet of his mind, swirling the taste of it around in his mouth like a tart pomegranate seed.

“I have a surprise for you.” Lord Summers gestured to the mare like a magician, as if he, and not Thomas, had conjured the animal out of desert heat and mountain mist for her pleasure alone. “What do you think of her?”

Catriona Rowan went quietly to the mare’s head with the same graceful directness with which she had come down the stairs, but less of the speed. She alighted like a hawk in front of the mare, quiet and watchful, offering herself to the animal for inspection while she whispered calm nothings in her ears. Next to the glossy dark of the mare, this Catriona appeared even more colorful, more bright and vivid, more alive in the dappled shade of her uncle’s courtyard than she had in the pressing heat of the bazaar. And like any fire, he could feel her heat the closer she got.

“Oh, but she is not a surprise, my lord. For we already know each other, don’t we, my beauty?” She spoke to the animal, as much as to answer Lord Summers. “We met in the bazaar.”

There was a faint, musical lilt to her voice that matched the symphony of color created by her hair and eyes. Scots-Irish, her uncle had said. The source of her translucent flame.

She was gazing at the mare in a direct, almost reverent way, and did not see the tinge of surprise creep its way across her uncle-in-law’s full cheeks.

“Do you mean to say you were in the cantonment bazaar, or out in the city? My dear, I should caution you to be careful of going adventuring about the city. Your aunt should have warned you against that, for your safety.” Lord Summers shook his head in admonishment. “Not at all the thing to wander the native bazaar alone. There is no reason for you to go amongst them. If there is anything you require, you have merely to send a servant to do your bidding in your stead.”

Thomas turned aside his own reaction to the implied insult, and let it slide off his back like so much dirty water, because he happened to agree with Lord Summers. Unescorted young women of any creed or race should not be going adventuring without an able escort. The kind of escort he would be more than happy to provide.

But Miss Catriona Rowan, she of the flaming hair and perhaps equally colorful temper, was not so easy with her uncle’s gentle command. Her cheeks flushed the color of a sweet blood orange at the rebuke, however mild it had been, and her solemn mouth narrowed ever so slightly. And instead of casting her eyes down and demurring to her uncle’s advice like any good, obedient English girl, she astonished Thomas by an almost imperceptible straightening of her spine before she turned to regard him directly, her gray eyes as keen and true as a knife blade, even as she spoke to Lord Summers, behind her.

“I beg your pardon, Uncle. But I’m afraid it’s too late to avoid the acquaintance, as I have already met both the
sawar
Tanvir Singh and his horse. How do you do today,
huzoor
?” She copied his gesture of salaam, and then she put out her hand for him to shake.

For all the world as if he were an Englishman. As if they were two gentlemen together, bargaining over a horse at Tattersall’s, and not a fey swan of a girl and a browned Sikh horse trader who ought to be nothing but a servant to her. And why was he thinking of something so ridiculous and far off as Tattersall’s? It was entirely out of character, not to mention dangerous. Tanvir Singh should not know, or even care, that Tattersall’s existed.

Yet, despite his years of training, and despite Lord Summers’s astonishment, Thomas’s hand seemed to swing toward her of its own volition, without consulting his head as to the propriety of shaking the hand of an unmarried
angrezi
girl, or the advisability of antagonizing the new resident commissioner with such familiarity. If he chose, Lord Summers could have even as useful a man as Tanvir Singh shot, or at the very least horsewhipped within an inch of his life, for daring to so much as look at his niece, before Thomas might have a chance to prove his true identity.

But all his mind and body wanted was to indulge in the pleasure that would come from touching her, however briefly. Just a touch. Just once.

And he was not disappointed. She shook his hand with a single, firm grip that was far, far removed from the soft, boneless fish of a handshake most women offered up to a man. Within his own large, callused hand, hers was small but strong, her grip sure.

One firm shake, and then it was done. She let go.

But it was as if he had touched icy fire. His hand was the opposite of numb—it was nothing but feeling, as if every sensation in his body had migrated to his palm and left it vibrating.

Oh, yes. He was smitten.

As intoxicated by her regard as if he
had
smoked hashish. But to save them both a horsewhipping, he bowed respectfully, pressing his hands together in front of his chest in
namaste.
“Thou hast done me a great honor, Memsahib Rowan.”

“As do you,
huzoor
.” She nodded solemnly and copied his gesture before she turned back to the mare, who pivoted and swished her tail daintily, preening for Catriona Rowan. “You know very well what a treasure you’ve brought to my Lord Summers.”

The mare’s flirtatious caprices had them turning, shielding them from Lord Summers’s direct view, and Thomas could not keep himself from confiding in a low voice meant only for Catriona Rowan’s ears, “I did not bring her for my Lord Summers, memsahib. In fact, I did not bring her at all—
she
hast brought me to find thee for her mistress. She has chosen
thee.
”

For the briefest moment, her serious, composed face was surprised into astonishment. A deep flood of color stained her cheeks—clearly, she was not used to even so mild a flirtation. But she rallied, rising to the challenge. Thomas thought he could see the beginnings of pleasure warm the corners of her gray eyes, and she was almost smiling when she turned back to the mare, an almost imperceptible, secret curving of marmalade lips.

“Oh, you are
very
good,
huzoor.
And does she do all your bargaining for you as well, clever girl that she is?”

He wanted to throw back his head and laugh, until she laughed as well. He wanted to charm the smile full across her face, until her lips parted with mirth and—

“My dear?” Lord Summers interjected himself back into the conversation before Thomas could do any of the unpardonable things he was thinking of doing with Catriona Rowan’s mouth. “What do you think, my dear? Will she do for you?”

“She’s absolutely marvelous, and she knows her own worth. Don’t you, you gorgeous, proud creature?”

The mare rubbed her nose agreeably against the girl’s hand, as if in confirmation of this obvious fact.

“What do you say to giving her a trial? If you don’t find her gaits to your liking,” the lord commissioner mused aloud, “then perhaps I might see if Lady Summers would like the animal for a carriage—if she’s docile enough. Or perhaps we could sell her on to one of the Fielding chits. What are their names?”

“Oh, no, no.” Catriona Rowan protested before her uncle could find his answer. “No. She shan’t be put to a carriage. She is very much to my liking. Now that I’ve been lucky enough to be offered such an animal as this, I shall never consent to be parted from her.”

It was strangely dramatic—the heartfelt insistence of her oath—but it was exactly what Thomas wanted to hear. And her uncle as well.

“Well, then, my dear.” Lord Summers was all beaming indulgence, pleased that his gift had met with such approval. “You shall have her.”

Thomas was rewarded by the sight of her smile, as small as it was genuine, like a single shaft of light, illuminating her gravity with quiet joy—an arrow silently piercing the armor of his assumed identity.

Yet, Catriona Rowan was serenely oblivious to the havoc she was creating within him. “Thank you, Uncle. You are most kind. I will treasure her.”

But then she astonished them all again by turning back to Tanvir Singh, spitting in her palm, and holding it out to him. Just as if they were two men, not at Tattersall’s but in a Scottish village square, confirming their deal in time-honored, masculine fashion.

Oh, but there was nothing, nothing masculine about her. They were more than a world away from Scotland, and she was everything fey and delicate and female, and everything forbidden to Tanvir Singh.

But he could no more resist the chance to touch her again than he could carry her away across the wide desert, or ride with her into the cool mountains, or dance with her at a London ball. So he did her the honor of spitting into his own hand, and once more grasping hers in his own, sealing their pact.

And with it, sealing his fate.

Chapter Six

Catriona took the narrow, twisting steps of Wimbourne Manor’s servants’ stair two at a time. She had to make haste. She had to move now, while the household was still at sixes and sevens. While she was alone and free to go. Before anyone could stop her. Or kill her.

If Lord Jeffrey’s groundsmen were chasing tracks to the south, she would go north. There was a mail coach that came through the village at two o’clock every afternoon that would take her north to Windsor and from there east toward London and the docks. There was time enough to catch that.

Or if she missed it, she would simply find a farm cart going east toward the forest. Anywhere but south. If asked along the road, she would concoct some likely story about going on to London after leaving an imaginary sailor husband at Portsmouth.

It ought to shame her, the ease and willingness with which she thought up such lies. It really ought. But honesty was a luxury she could no longer afford. Not now, not really in India, and certainly not before that, in Scotland. Oh, no. Every year it had become even harder and more expensive to cleave to the truth.

Despite her normal state of fitness, bolstered by long walks and plenty of exuberant play with the children, Catriona was winded by the time she reached the sanctuary of the lovely, light-filled suite of rooms Lady Jeffrey had created for her charges at the top of the house. Or perhaps it was just the shock of seeing Tanvir Singh—who was really Thomas Jellicoe—that had her pausing to catch her breath in the doorway of the schoolroom.

The room was quiet now that it was empty of the children, almost serene. Oh, but she liked it better when it wasn’t serene, when they were having loud discussions, when the room hummed with young energy. Catriona was bitterly proud of all she had accomplished there. Of the work that covered the walls—the botanical specimens, the time line of English kings, and the map of the county hung with the flagged pins of all the places she and the children had visited and explored together—but most especially of the bonds she had created with the children. It was a terrible, bitter wrench to have to leave it. To have to leave them.

To leave another family.

Catriona had to dash some reprehensible wetness from her eyes—she refused to call it tears. Refused. Sentiment was another luxury she could ill afford.

“Miss?” Annie Farrier, one of the upstairs maids, hurried down the corridor. “Lady Jeffrey sent me to bring you to her rooms.”

Catriona turned away from the schoolroom and took a deep, steadying breath. And with it she drew on Miss Anne Cates’s cheerful composure as if it were a sensible, well-made cloak. “Of course, Annie. Thank you. Will you be so kind as to let her ladyship know I’ll be down to see her as soon as I have put myself to rights? I’m sure my face is smirched with dirt, and as for my hat—” She plucked at the knotted and mangled ribbons hanging from her throat. “I very much fear it’s ruined beyond all hope of restoration.”

“Oh, no, miss. Surely not.” Annie reached out and carefully dusted something off the brim. “Just a good brushing, a bit of steam, and new ribbon, and it’ll be right as rain. You’ll recover it yet.”

“Thank you. I hope you’re right. It would be a shocking waste, would it not, to lose a hat so fine?” It was not in actuality a fine hat. It was a merely ordinary hat. But it was her
only
hat. A hat she had purchased in Paris with the hush money the dowager Duchess Westing had left for her—just left it, the heavy purse, with the same casual accident with which the shrewd old woman had also left behind an expensive pair of gloves. Gloves which Catriona had also kept to cover her browned and blistered hands. She could ill afford not to. Pride was another luxury, as expensive as the truth.

And there was still enough of the thrifty, sharp-eyed Scotswoman Catriona Rowan under Miss Anne Cates’s erudite English accent to want to preserve the investment she had made in the tattered hat. And if she were going to buy passage on a ship to the Americas, she couldn’t be splashing her hard-earned wages about on anything so frivolous as a new hat.

But the hat was not her problem, really. Whether or not to obey Lady Jeffrey’s summons was. As was deciding what she might possibly say to her mistress. Which convenient half-truth she should select, like an arrow from her quiver of lies.

Every instinct Catriona possessed was jumping up and down for attention like one of her overexcited charges, clamoring for her to leave immediately. And over the past few years, she had learned to her detriment never to ignore her instincts. They had been all that had kept her alive. But there were things she must do first. Responsibilities to complete. Debts to repay.

“Thank you, Annie. Please tell her ladyship I’ll be along as soon as may be.” Her fingers worked at the tangled ribbons, but her hands had begun to shake so that she only tightened the knots.