The Untamed Bride Plus Black Cobra 02-03 and Special Excerpt (3 page)

On the verandah of the barracks, Del sat in a low-slung wooden chair, feet up on the extendable arms, glass in hand as, with Gareth similarly at ease beside him, he waited for the others to join them. Logan and Rafe had been due to return from their most recent sorties today, and James was expected back from Poona. It was time to take stock again, to decide what next to try.

Logan had ridden in with his troop half an hour ago. Covered in dust, he’d reported to the fort commander, then crossed to the barracks. Climbing the shallow steps to the verandah, he’d shaken his head grimly before Del or Gareth could ask how he’d fared, then gone into the barracks to wash and change.

Del watched the sepoys drilling tirelessly on the parade ground, and felt the weight of failure drag. The others, he knew, felt the same. They’d been pressing relentlessly—in Rafe’s case, increasingly recklessly—trying to pry loose the vital evidence they needed, but nothing they’d learned had been sufficient to meet Wolverstone’s criteria.

What they had learned had confirmed that Ferrar and no other was the Black Cobra. Both Rafe and Logan had found ex-cultists who once had been high in the organization, but had grown jaded with the Cobra’s vicious rule and had successfully fled the Cobra’s territory; they’d verified that the Black Cobra was an “anglo”—an Englishman—moreover one who spoke with the refined and distinctive accents of the upper class.

Combined with their previous grounds for suspicion, as well as the documents and guarded comments Del and Gareth had managed to tease from various Maratha princelings, there was absolutely no doubt that they had the right man.

Yet they still had to prove it.

A heavy bootstep heralded Logan. He slumped in a chair alongside them, let his head fall back and closed his eyes.

“No luck?” Gareth asked, although the answer was obvious.

“Worse.” Logan didn’t open his eyes. “Every village we rode into, the people were cowering. They didn’t even want to be seen talking to us. The Black Cobra has them in its coils and they’re frightened—and from all we saw, with good reason.” Logan paused, then continued, voice lower, eyes still closed, “There were examples of the Black Cobra’s vengeance impaled outside most villages—women and children, as well as men.”

He drew a shaky breath, then sat up and scrubbed both hands over his face. “It was…beyond ghastly.” After a moment, he glanced at the other two. “We have to stop this madman.”

Del grimaced. “Did you see Rafe?”

“Only early on. He headed further east, up into the hills. He was hoping to find the edges of the Cobra’s territory, to see if any village was resisting in the hope they’d trade information for assistance.”

Gareth humphed. “Searching for a fight, as always.” It was said without rancor.

Logan looked out across the maidan. “Aren’t we all?”

Del followed his gaze to where, far beyond the open fort gates, a dust cloud drew steadily nearer.

By the time the cloud had passed through the distant gates, it had resolved into Rafe at the head of the troop of sowars he’d commandeered for his mission.

Just one look at Rafe’s face as he drew rein some yards away to spare them the inevitable dust was enough to answer their most urgent question. He hadn’t fared any better than Logan in gaining evidence of the Black Cobra’s identity.

Handing his reins to the sergeant, Rafe walked to the verandah, weariness—nay, exhaustion—in every line of his long frame. Eschewing the steps, he came to the railing beyond which they sat, crossed his forearms upon it and
laid his tousled and dusty blond head on his arms. His voice reached them, muffled, strangely hoarse. “Please tell me that one of you found something—
anything
—we can use to stop this fiend.”

None of them replied.

Rafe’s shoulders slumped as he sighed, then he lifted his head and they saw his face clearly. Something more than dejection haunted his eyes.

Logan shifted forward. “You found something.”

Rafe dragged in a breath, glanced back to where his troop were dispersing, nodded. “At one village where the elders had already bowed to the Black Cobra’s demands—did you know he’s taking half—
half!
—of what they scratch and eke out of their fields? He’s literally taking food from the mouths of babes!”

After a moment, he went on, “There was nothing for us there, but one of the younger men lay in wait for us as we were riding on—he told us of a village further east that was resisting the fiend’s demands. We rode there as fast as we could.”

His gaze on the maidan, Rafe paused. His voice was lower, gruffer, when he went on, “We were too late. The village had been razed. And there were bodies…men, women, and children, raped and mutilated, tortured and burned.” After a moment he continued, voice still lower, “It was hell on earth. There was nothing we could do. We burned the bodies, and turned back.”

None of the others said anything; there was nothing they could say to take the haunting vision, the knowledge, away.

Eventually Rafe drew a massive breath and turned to face them. “So what’s happened here?”

“I returned empty-handed,” Logan volunteered.

Del glanced at Gareth, then offered, “We’ve learned more—been told much more—but it’s all hearsay. Nothing we can put before a court—nothing good enough to take home.”

“That’s the positive side,” Gareth said. “On the negative,
Ferrar now knows beyond doubt that we’re watching him. Investigating him.”

Logan shrugged. “That was inevitable. He couldn’t be oh-so-clever and yet miss the fact we’re here, on Hastings’s direct orders, and with no mission we’ve seen fit to divulge.”

Rafe nodded. “At this point, it can hardly hurt. Perhaps knowing we’re after him will make him careless.”

Del humphed. “So far he’s been unbelievably shrewd in keeping everything unincriminating. We’ve turned up even more of those documents, more or less contracts he’s enacted with various princelings, but the cheeky sod always uses his special Black Cobra seal on the correspondence, and he signs with a mark, not a signature.”

“And his writing is English-grammar-school-standard,” Gareth added. “It could be any of ours.”

Another moment of glum resignation passed, then Rafe asked, “Where’s James?”

“Not in yet, apparently,” Del replied. “He’s expected today—I thought he’d be in earlier, but he must have been held up.”

“Probably the lady didn’t approve of riding above a sedate canter.” Rafe managed a weak smile, then turned back to the maidan.

“There’s a troop coming in,” Logan said.

The comment focused all eyes on the group approaching the gates. It wasn’t a full troop, more a mounted escort riding alongside a wagon. It was the slow, steady pace the small cavalcade held to, as much as the somber deliberateness of the sowars, that told them this wasn’t good news.

A minute ticked past as the cavalcade drew nearer, cleared the gates.

“Oh, no.” Rafe pushed away from the railing and started across the maidan.

Narrowed eyes locked on the cavalcade, Del, Gareth and Logan slowly came to their feet, then Del swore and the three vaulted over the railing and headed after Rafe.

He waved the cavalcade to a halt. As he strode down the wagon’s side, he demanded to be told what had happened.

The head sowar, a sergeant, dismounted and quickly followed. “We are very sorry, Captain-sahib—there was nothing we could do.”

Rafe reached the tail of the wagon first and halted. Face paling under his tan, he stared at what lay in the bed.

Del came up beside him, saw the three bodies—carefully laid out, but nothing could disguise the mutilation, the torture, the agony that had preceded death.

Distantly conscious of Logan, then Gareth, ranging behind him, Del looked down on James MacFarlane’s body.

It took a moment to register that beside him lay his lieutenant and the troop’s corporal.

It was Rafe—who of them all had seen more of the Black Cobra’s lethal handiwork than any one man should ever have to bear—who turned away with a vicious oath.

Del seized his arm. Simply said, “Let me.”

He had to drag in a breath, physically drag his gaze from the bodies before he could raise his head and look at the waiting sowar. “What happened?”

Even to him, his voice sounded deadly.

The sowar wasn’t a coward. With creditable composure, he lifted his chin and came to attention. “We were more than halfway back on the road from Poona, when the Captain-sahib realized there were horsemen chasing us. We rode on quickly, but then the Captain-sahib stopped at a place where the road narrows, and sent us all on. The lieutenant stayed with him, along with three others. The Captain-sahib sent the rest of us all pell-mell on with the memsahib.”

Del glanced at the wagon bed. “When was this?”

“Earlier today, Colonel-sahib.”

“Who sent you back?”

The sowar shifted. “When we came within sight of Bombay, the memsahib insisted we go back. The Captain-sahib had ordered us to stay with her all the way to the fort,
but she was very agitated. She allowed only two of us to go with her to the governor’s house. The rest of us went back to see if we could help the Captain-sahib and the lieutenant.” The sowar paused, then went on more quietly, “But there were only these bodies left when we reached the place.”

“They took two of your troop?”

“We could see where they had dragged them away behind their horses, Colonel-sahib. We didn’t think following would do any good.”

Despite the calmness of the words, the outward stoicism of the native troops, Del knew every one of them would be railing inside.

As was he, Gareth, Logan, Rafe.

But there was nothing they could do.

He nodded, stepped back, drawing Rafe with him.

“We will be taking them to the infirmary, Colonel-sahib.”

“Yes.” He met the man’s eyes, nodded. “Thank you.”

Numbly, he turned. Releasing Rafe, Del led the way back to the barracks.

As they climbed the shallow steps, Rafe, as usual, put their tortured thoughts into words.

“For the love of God,
why
?”

Why?

The question rebounded again and again between them, refashioned and rephrased in countless ways. James might have been younger than the rest of them, but he’d been neither inexperienced nor a glory-hunter—and he wasn’t the one they called “Reckless.”

“So
why
in all hell did he make a stand, rather than at least
try
to escape? While they were moving, they had a chance—he had to have known that.” Rafe slumped in his usual chair at their table in the officers’ bar.

After a moment, Del answered, “He had a reason—that’s why.”

Logan sipped the arrack Del had ordered instead of their
usual beer. The bottle stood in the center of the table, already half empty. Eyes narrowed, he said, “It had to have been something about the governor’s niece.”

“Thought of that.” Gareth set down his empty glass and reached for the bottle. “I asked the sowars—they said she rode well, like the devil. She didn’t hold them up. And she tried to veto James’s plan to stay behind, but he pulled rank and ordered her on.”

“Humph.” Rafe drained his glass, then held out his hand for the bottle. “So what was it? James might be lying in the infirmary very dead, but damned if I’m going to accept that he stayed back on a whim—not him.”

“No,” Del said. “You’re right—not him.”

“Heads up,” Rafe said, his gaze going down the verandah. “Skirts on parade.”

The others turned their heads to look. The skirts in question were on a slender young lady—a very English lady with a pale, porcelain face and sleek brown hair secured in a knot at the back of her head. She stood just inside the bar and peered through the shadows, noting the groups of officers dotted here and there. Her gaze reached them in the corner, paused, but then the barboy came forward and she turned to him.

But at her query, the barboy pointed to them. The young lady looked their way, then straightened, thanked the boy and, head high, glided down the verandah toward them.

An Indian girl swathed in a sari hovered like a shadow behind her.

They all rose, slowly, as the young lady approached. She was of slightly less than average height; given their size, and that they were all looking as grim as they felt, they must have seemed intimidating, but she didn’t falter.

Before she reached them, she halted and spoke to her maid, instructing her in soft tones to wait a little way away.

Then she came on. As she neared, they could see her face was pale, set, features tightly, rigidly controlled. Her eyes were faintly red-rimmed, the tip of her small nose pink.

But her rounded chin was set in determined lines.

Her gaze scanned them as she came to the table, circling, not on their faces, but at shoulder-and-collar-level—reading their rank. When her gaze reached Del, it stopped. Halting, she lifted her eyes to his face. “Colonel Delborough?”

Del inclined his head. “Ma’am?”

“I’m Emily Ensworth, the governor’s niece. I…” She glanced briefly at the others. “If I could trouble you for a word in private, Colonel?”

Del hesitated, then said, “Every man about this table is an old friend and colleague of James MacFarlane. We were all working together. If your business with me has anything to do with James, I would ask that you speak before us all.”

She studied him for a moment, weighing his words, then she nodded. “Very well.”

Between Logan and Gareth sat James’s empty chair. None of them had had the heart to push it away. Gareth now held it for Miss Ensworth.

“Thank you.” She sat. Which left her looking directly at the three-quarters empty bottle of arrack.

With the others, Del resumed his seat.

Miss Ensworth glanced at him. “I realize it might be irregular, but if I could have a small glass of that…?”

Del met her hazel eyes. “It’s arrack.”

“I know.”

He signalled to the barboy to bring another glass. While he did, Miss Ensworth fiddled below the table’s edge with the reticule she’d been carrying. They hadn’t truly noticed it before; Miss Ensworth was neatly rounded, softly lush, and none of them had noticed much else.