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‘You appear to be competent, so I imagine you will evade pursuit,’ she said. It seemed important to convince him of her courage, her ability to undertake this journey. ‘I look forward to being able to look around me, to see things openly and not through the screens of a travelling palanquin. I will deal with my destination when I get there. And as for you, Major Herriard, you are a—’ She searched for the equivalent in Hindi and resorted to English. ‘Gentleman, are you not, if you are an officer? And my mother said that English gentlemen must behave honourably to ladies.’
‘That is the theory,’ he agreed, his voice dry. And then he laughed and spurred his horse into a canter, leaving her to follow, her body tight with apprehension.
Chapter Four
‘Why are we stopping?’ Anusha demanded. The horses had dropped into a trot and then a walk as Major Herriard turned off the road. Beneath their hooves the ground was stony and uneven. ‘This is a terrible surface, we cannot canter on this.’
‘Are you going to question every decision I make?’ he asked without turning his head.
‘Yes.’ Now she did not have to concentrate on keeping her aching body in the saddle the desire to slide off and simply go to sleep was overwhelming. Perhaps when she woke it would all have been a bad dream.
‘The moon will be down very soon and then it will be hard to see where we are going. There are trees over there, cover. We will make a temporary camp and sleep until sunrise. I turned off here because the ground will not show tracks.’
‘Very well,’ Anusha agreed.
‘That is very gracious of you, Miss Laurens, but your approval is not required, merely your obedience.’ Herriard was a dark shape now as he sat motionless on the horse and studied the small group of trees and thorn bushes in what was left of the moonlight. He spoke absently, as though she was peripheral to his interest.
‘Major Herriard!’
‘Call me Nick. Stay here. Your voice has probably scared off anything dangerous lurking in there, but I will check first.’
Nick. What sort of name was that? She translated to take her mind off the fact that she was suddenly alone and things were rustling in the bushes. Quite large things. Was nick not something to do with a small cut? Well, that hardly suited him—the man had the subtlety and brutal force of a sabre slash.
‘There is a small shrine in there, a stone platform we can sleep on and some firewood. We can light a fire and it will be shielded by the walls,’ he said as he rode back to her side. ‘There are water jars for the horses, which is good fortune.’
‘You would plunder a shrine?’ Anusha demanded, more out of antagonism than outrage as she guided her horse after him. Taking water was hardly plunder.
‘We will do no damage. We can leave an offering if you wish.’ He swung down as he spoke and came to hold up a hand to her.
‘I can manage. And what is a Christian doing leaving an offering at a Hindu shrine?’ Her feet hit the ground rather harder than she had been expecting and her knees buckled. Nick’s hand under her elbow was infuriatingly necessary. ‘I said I can manage.’
He ignored her and held on until she had her balance. It felt very strange to be touched by a man, a virtual stranger. It felt safe and dangerous all at the same time. ‘It would cause no offence, I imagine. And after twelve years in this country I am not at all sure what I am. A pragmatist, perhaps. What are you?’
It was a good question. She supposed she had better decide before she reached Calcutta. Her mother had converted to Christianity after she had lived with Sir George for five years. For ten years Anusha had gone with her to church. And in Kalatwah she had lived as a Hindu. ‘What am I? I do not know. Does it matter, so long as one lives a good life?’
‘A sound philosophy. At least that is something we do not have to fight over.’ He did not unsaddle the horses but loosened the girths and then dumped their kit on the stone platform.
‘We do not have to fight at all, provided you treat me with respect,’ Anusha retorted. And stop watching me like a hawk. She found a twiggy branch and began to sweep an area clear of the leaf litter that might harbour insects or a small snake.
‘I will treat you with the respect that you earn, Miss Laurens.’ Herriard … Nick … hefted an urn over to the stone trough by the horses and poured out water. ‘You are a woman and your father’s daughter, which means I do not deal with you as I would a man. After that—’ he shrugged ‘—it is up to you.’
‘I do not wish to go to my father. I hate my father.’
‘You may wish what you will and you may think what you wish, but you will not abuse Sir George in my hearing. And you will obey me. Stay there.’ In the semi-darkness she could not read his face, but Anusha heard the anger. Again he showed that fierce, puzzling, loyalty to her father. He turned and walked away.
‘Wait! Where are you going?’ Surely he was not going to punish her by leaving her here in the dark?
Nick vanished into the scrub and she heard what sounded like boots kicking at the low branches. When he walked back he was doing something to the front of his trousers and she blushed in the gloom. ‘There is a nice thick bush there,’ he said, gesturing. ‘With no snakes.’
‘Thank you.’ With as much dignity as she could muster Anusha stalked down the three steps to the ground and over to the bush. The mundane implications of being alone like this with a man were beginning to dawn on her. There might be vast areas with hardly a bush. How was she supposed to manage then? The wretch seemed to have no shyness, no modesty about mentioning these things at all. Never, in the ten years until she had chased Tavi and found herself in that corridor with Nick, had she been all alone with a man, even her uncle or one of the eunuchs.
When she emerged his attention was, mercifully, on lighting a small fire in an angle of the wall. The flames made a pool of light on the platform, but would be hidden from anyone approaching from the direction they had come. A bed of blankets had been made up close to the fire.
In the shadows she could see the stumpy pillar of the Shiva lingam and the firelight glinted for a moment on something that trickled down its side. ‘People have been here recently.’ She went and looked at the pool of fresh oil on the head of the ancient stone phallus, the spray of flowering shrub that had been laid on the curve of the stylised female organ that it rose from.
‘I have,’ Herriard said as she joined her hands together in a brief reverence. It seemed that, whatever his beliefs, he knew how to show respect to the gods, if not to her. More in charity with him, she turned back and he gestured to food laid out on a large leaf beside the blankets. ‘Here. Eat and drink and then rest. Do not take anything off, not even your boots.’
‘I have no intention of removing anything!’
‘Then you are going to have a very uncomfortable few weeks, Miss Laurens. Oh, sit down, I am far too weary to ravish you tonight!’
That was a jest. She hoped. Warily Anusha sank down on to the blankets. ‘Eat and keep your strength up. Now we can only rest for a short while. Tomorrow night I hope we may take longer.’
‘Where are you going to sleep?’ She took a piece of naan, folded it around what looked like goat’s cheese and ate, surprised at how hungry she was.
‘I will not sleep. I will keep watch.’
‘You cannot do that every night,’ she pointed out.
‘No,’ Nick agreed. ‘I will rest when it is safer and where you can keep watch.’ He tore off a piece of the flat bread and ate it. She caught a glimpse of strong white teeth.
‘Me?’
‘Look around you, Miss Laurens. Who else is there? Sooner or later I must sleep. Or are you not capable of acting as a look-out?’
‘Of course. I am capable of anything. I am a—’
‘Rajput, I know. You are also your father’s daughter, which should mean that there is a brain in there somewhere, despite all evidence to the contrary.’
Anusha choked on a mouthful of water from the flask. ‘How dare you! You are used to this sort of thing, I am not. I have been dragged from my bed, forced to ride through the night with a man—I have never been alone with a man for ten years—I am worried about Kalatwah …’
‘True,’ Nick conceded. It was not much of an apology. ‘I will do my best to preserve your privacy and your modesty, but you must behave as much like a man as you can, for your own safety. Do you understand that?’
‘As you guessed, I do have a brain,’ she retorted. ‘Now I am going to sleep.’
‘Namaste,’ he said, so politely that he must be mocking her.
‘Namaste,’ she returned as she rolled herself into the blankets. She would just close her eyes, rest her aching body. But she would not sleep—she did not trust him.
Anusha woke, suddenly and completely alert, with that thought still in her mind. She had been foolish to fear, it seemed. Her rest had been undisturbed, her blankets were still tight around her. Herriard was moving about, attending to the horses.
From the light it was just past dawn and she must have slept for at least two hours. And he had slept not at all. Anusha watched from beneath half-closed lids as he checked the horses, led them to a patch of longer grass where they might snatch a few mouthfuls. Lack of sleep seemed to have simply made him more alert, the lines of his face tauter.
He was not at all like the men she had lived among for so many years, Anusha decided. Most of the Indian men were slender, lithe. There was an English word and she searched for it. Yes, sleek, that was it. Nick Herriard was not sleek, he was too big, too overtly physical. The high cheekbones, the big nose, the strong chin—all asserted power and will. Anusha remembered the feel of his muscles under her hands and shivered, just as he turned and found her watching him.
She thought that colour came up under the golden tan, then he gestured towards the fire. ‘There is water heating if you want to wash. I will go and scout the road.’
Anusha waited until he had walked out of sight, his musket in one hand, then disentangled herself from the blankets. She used the convenient bush, then washed as best she could. He came back, whistling tactfully, as she was rolling up the blankets.
‘All right?’ He did not wait for her answer, but squatted by the fire and began to make tea, throwing leaves into the boiling water from a pouch that lay amongst the food he had set out. It was the same as last night and the bread would be dry. And she supposed from the brisk manner with which he was preparing it that she should have done this while he was away. She had never been without servants before, either.
‘Eat,’ Nick said, pushing the food towards her and pouring tea into a horn beaker. ‘There is no one in sight, we should get on.’
‘When will we be able to get more food?’ Anusha chewed on the dry bread and wondered if the cheese had been this pungent the night before.
‘When we come across someone who can sell us some.’
‘The next big village is—’
‘We are not going through villages, big or small. Do you want to leave flags to mark our route?’
‘But surely they will give up? We could be anywhere by now.’
Nick washed the stale naan down with tea that was too hot and contemplated the haughty, exquisite face of the young woman opposite him. It was a reasonable question and she was sorely in need of reassurance and comfort, despite the mask she was putting on.
But what Anusha was going to get was a bracing dose of reality and he was going to allow his irritation with this entire situation to ride him. It was the only way he was going to be able to ignore the tension in his groin and the heat that seemed to wash through him whenever he looked at her. Or when she looked at him. He was still recovering from the impact of those grey eyes studying him as he dealt with the horses. It was odd that she should affect him so—Miss Lauren’s spiky personality was hardly alluring.
‘How many armed men do you think it would need to take me?’ he asked. When she just shook her head, he answered himself. ‘Eight, ten perhaps. I have three muskets, but we have lost our other marksman and besides, muskets take time to load. I am good, Miss Laurens, and lucky—I would not be alive today if I was not—but I am just one man. And the maharaja’s spies will have told him that. It will be a blow to his pride that you have escaped him, so he can easily spare a dozen riders to come after us. And they’ll know we’ll be heading east, that is the logical direction to go in.’
He expected fear, possibly tears. Instead she looked at him down the straight little nose that she had definitely not inherited from her father and said, ‘Then teach me to load a musket and go somewhere that is not logical.’
So, he had not been wrong—she had her father’s intelligence after all and her late mother had the reputation for both learning and political cunning. He could have his hands full with her. Even as he thought it he winced at his choice of words—he wanted very much to have his hands full of Anusha Laurens.
‘All right, I’ll teach you to load, that makes sense.’ At least, it would if she could manage it. He had short India Pattern muskets with him, not the British army Land Pattern version, but even so she would be wrestling with a weapon almost forty inches long. ‘And I can aim directly at the Jumna River to find a boat and not head further south-east to Allahabad. But I must do it by the sun and stars—there were no detailed maps of this area and any deviation will add time.’
‘I do not wish to be with you, Major Herriard, but I would like even less to be with that man. Take however long is necessary.’
‘Then we will go more to the east than the road to Allahabad,’ Nick said, getting to his feet and recalculating. The map that he had studied before he had set out was fixed in his memory, but it was sketchy to put it mildly.
‘The muskets?’ she demanded, rising from the dusty stone with the trained grace of a court lady.
The wish that he could see her dance came into his head, irrelevant and unwelcome. A well-bred lady would only dance with her female friends, or for her husband. To do otherwise was to lower herself to the level of a courtesan. Nick found himself pursuing the thought and frowned at her, earning a frigid stare in response. She was not used to being alone with men, and it was a long time since he had been alone with a respectable young woman for any length of time. How the devil was he supposed to treat her? What did he talk to her about?
‘Muskets?’ Anusha repeated, impatience etched in every line of her figure. She was slender, small—the top of her head came up to his ear. He would have to stoop to kiss her … Nick caught himself, appalled, and slammed the door on his thoughts, remembering another slender woman in his arms, of how fragile she had been, how clumsy she had made him feel. But Miranda had been frail as well as fragile—this girl had steel at her core.
‘When we stop to rest at noon.’ He was equally impatient now. The more distance they had between themselves and the fort, the happier he would be. He strapped the blanket rolls on the bay horse and led Rajat, Ajit’s black gelding, forwards for her. In a crisis he could let the bay go and leave her with a horse as highly trained as his own Pavan.
‘Why this one?’
Must she question everything? But he almost welcomed the irritation, it distracted him from fantasies and memories. ‘He knows what to do. His name is Rajat; let him have his head.’
Anusha shrugged and mounted. Nick tied the end of the bay’s long leading rein around his pommel and led them away from the shrine, not back to the track but out across the undulating grasslands, following the line he had mentally drawn on the map in his head.
‘This is deserted,’ Anusha observed after half a league.
‘Yes. Except for the tigers.’
‘We will starve or be eaten. You are supposed to be looking after me.’ She did not sound petulant, merely critical of an inefficient servant.
Nick breathed in hard through his nose and controlled his temper. ‘We have plenty of water. The streams are still running. The horses will sense tigers.’ I hope. ‘Food we can do without for a day or two if necessary. I am, as I promised your father and your uncle, keeping you safe. I never made any promises about comfort.’
She was silent. Then, ‘Why do you dislike me, Major Herriard?’
Pavan pecked, unused to a jerk on his rein. ‘What? I do not know you. And I am not used to young ladies.’
There was a snort and he glanced across at her. The little witch was grinning. ‘That is not what I heard.’
‘Respectable young ladies,’ he said repressively.
‘No?’ She was still laughing, he could hear it, although she was managing to keep her face straight. ‘Is your wife not respectable?’
‘I do not have a wife.’ Not any longer. Nick gritted his teeth and concentrated on scanning the undulating plain before them, plotting a route away from the stands of trees that might harbour a striped death.
‘But why do you not have a wife? You are very old not to have a wife.’
‘I am twenty-nine,’ he snapped. ‘I had a wife. Miranda. She died.’
‘I am sorry.’ She sounded it; the mocking edge had gone from her voice. ‘How many children do you have? Will you marry again soon?’
‘I have no children and, no, I have no intention of marrying again.’ He tried to remind himself that this intense curiosity about family was simply the normal Indian polite interest in a stranger. He was inured to it, surely, by now?
‘Oh, so you were very much in love with her, like Shah Jehan and Mumtaz Mahal. How sad.’ When she was not being imperious or snappy her voice was lovely, soft and melodious with something deeply female in it that went straight to the base of his spine.
‘No, I was not—’ Nick snapped off the sentence. ‘I married too young. I thought it was expected of me as a career officer. I married a girl I thought was suitable, a sweet little dab of a thing with no more strength to cope with India than a new-born lamb.’
‘What was she doing here, then?’ Anusha brought her horse alongside.
‘She was newly arrived in India as part of the Fishing Fleet.’ She murmured a query and he explained. ‘The shiploads of young ladies that come out from England. They are supposed to be visiting relatives, but actually they are on the catch for a husband.
‘I should have taken one look at Miranda Knight and realised that the country would ruin her health within the year. And it did. If I had not married her she would have gone back to England, wed a stout country squire and be the mother of a happy family by now.’
‘She must have loved you to marry you and risk staying here,’ Anusha suggested.
‘Do not turn this into a love story. She wanted a suitable husband and what did I know about marriage and how to make a wife happy with my background?’
‘What background?’
He glanced at Anusha, saw her read his mood in his face and close her lips tightly. After a moment she said, ‘I beg your pardon,’ in careful English. ‘I forgot that the Europeans do not like personal questions.’
He was going to be alone with her for days, weeks probably. It was foolish to make a mystery out of himself. Best to get the questions over and done with now. ‘My parents made a suitable, loveless match. It turned very rapidly into boredom on my father’s part, then anger when my mother persisted in wanting … more. I am not certain I would know what a happy marriage looks like.’
How simple it sounded put like that. All those years of distress and unhappiness, not just for his mother but for the little boy in the middle, aching for the love that both parents were too busy tearing each other apart to give. He was not a little boy now, and he knew better than to expect love. Or to need it.
‘Oh.’ She rode in silence for a while. Then, ‘So you have many mistresses now? Until you marry again?’
‘Anusha, you should not be discussing such things.’ She regarded him quizzically. Of course, she was used to an entirely different model of marriage and sexual relationships. ‘There is no reason for me to marry again. I do not live like a holy man—a sadhu. But neither do I have more than one mistress at a time, and none at the moment.’
‘And did you have a mistress while you were married? No, do not say Anusha like that. I want to understand.’
