Forbidden Jewel of India

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‘No, I did not. Some men do. I do not think it right.’ And his resolve had been sorely tried after a few weeks of Miranda’s vapours. However careful he was, however gentle, she had decided that sex was crude, unpleasant and for one purpose only. Her relief at becoming pregnant and having a good reason to bar him from her bed had been all too obvious. The familiar guilt came back like an aching bruise: he should have had the self-control to stay out of her bed until she had grown acclimatised to India, talked to her. Not got her with child.

Women before and since had assured him they found bliss in his arms. It seemed he was an acceptable lover and a failure as a husband.

‘I am sorry if I should not have asked these things. Thank you for explaining,’ Anusha said in English, sounding not at all contrite.

‘Don’t mention it,’ he replied in the same language. She was demanding, both emotionally at some level he was not used to, as well as practically. And she was distracting him, taking him away from the present and into the past, and that was dangerous.

The hairs were prickling on the back of his neck—he had learned to listen to his instincts. Nick wheeled Pavan. The grass was still long and lush although the ground was dry. The light wind was already blurring the marks of their passage so it would be hard to see how many horses had just passed.

Anusha had turned with him. ‘There is no one behind us,’ she said. ‘Is there?’

The prickling unease was still under his skin. Nick stood in his stirrups and shaded his eyes. There, in the distance, was a small puff of dust kicked up by a group of riders coming at the gallop. ‘There is. See?’

Chapter Five

‘There is no cover, not for three horses.’ Anusha was proud of how calm she sounded. She could not see the pursuers, but if Nick said they were coming, then she believed him. She loosened the little dagger in her sash.

‘Follow me, exactly,’ he said and turned to ride over a hard-pan of dry baked mud where the rains had once made a large pool. At the middle he swung down from the grey, took the bundles from the back of the bay horse and flung them over Pavan’s saddle. ‘Stay here.’ He swung up on the bay and left the hard ground. As soon as he was on the softer earth he kicked it into a gallop, then lashed it across the flanks, swung down and rolled clear as it careered off into the distance.

‘Take Pavan.’ He tossed her the reins when he got back to her. ‘Walk slowly towards that bush.’

Puzzled, but obedient, her heart thudding uncomfortably high in her throat, Anusha did as she was told. Behind her Nick walked backwards, sweeping a branch over their tracks. She realised as she reached the bush that it was on a very slight swell in the ground, but even so, it was too thin and too low to hide a donkey behind, let alone two horses.

‘Are you going to shoot the horses?’ She slid to the ground as he backed behind the thorn bush next to her.

‘No need.’ He removed both saddles, then whistled, two clear notes, and the horses folded their legs, sank to the ground and rolled on to their sides, necks stretched out. ‘Get down.’

Anusha lay behind the swell of Pavan’s belly as Nick spread the dun-coloured blankets over both animals, then propped the two muskets up on Rajat’s flank and began to check over his hand guns. He laid everything out in order—ammunition, guns, sabre—loosened the knife in his boot and then glanced across at her. ‘Army horses, both of them,’ he explained, then glanced down at her hand. ‘What the devil have you got there?’

‘A knife, of course.’ She would keep the one in her boot hidden until it was absolutely necessary and she had to kill someone. Or herself. A dark excitement was surging through her, as strong as the fear. She wanted to hurt the people who were attacking Kalatwah, her family, her kingdom. For the first time she understood what had taken those warriors out to fight to certain death, understood the spirit of the women who had gone to the flames rather than face slavery and shame.

‘You are not going to need it.’

‘But there will be a fight, a battle.’ She could hear them coming now, the faint drum of hoofbeats. The maharaja’s men had picked up their tracks.

‘Not unless I have made a mistake.’ Nick was rubbing handfuls of dust over the musket barrels to mask their shine. ‘They should ride past, find the bay, conclude it was a ruse to send them off the road.’

‘But we must kill them!’

‘Bloodthirsty little wild cat,’ Nick said, low-voiced. She sensed amusement in him. He had a strange sense of humour if he found this funny. ‘If they do not come back, then the maharaja knows they have found us and will send more men. If they go back without seeing us, he will conclude we have gone another way.’

‘Oh. Strategy.’

‘Tactics, to be exact. Now, be quiet.’

There were eight riders. They passed at the gallop, vanished. Anusha released her pent-up breath and slid a little closer to Nick.

Time stretched on. Her left leg was becoming numb. ‘They have gone.’

‘Wait.’

As Nick spoke she heard them returning more slowly, scanning the ground as they came, the bay on a leading rein. They rode past, then the only sound was the buzz of insects, the rumbling of Rajat’s stomach under her ear, the mew of a hawk high overhead.

‘Stay here.’ Nick began to ease away. ‘You can let go of my coat.’

‘Oh!’ Anusha’s fingers cramped as she released her death-grip. ‘I didn’t realise I was holding it.’ But Nick was already moving, a musket in each hand, pistol in his sash, keeping low over the ground as he dodged from bush to bush.

It was like trying to see a ghost—if she took her eyes from him he would vanish. She blinked and he was gone into the long grass. Even behind the bulk of the horses she felt incredibly exposed, utterly alone. She had not realised what a large emotional space he filled. An infuriating, man-shaped, protective space.

What would she do if she heard shooting? Anusha studied the weapons he had left behind. One musket, one pistol, the bag that contained the ammunition, his sabre. Now was not the time to learn how to reload, but she could take it all to him. She worked out the best way to carry the weapons, wondering if the horses would obey her and get to their feet.

A hand closed around her ankle.

Anusha twisted, her knife in her hand, her other lashing out, fingers bent, nails raking down.

Nick laughed and rolled to one side, releasing her foot. It was the laugh that made her temper snap, that and the long-held tension. Anusha dropped the knife and launched herself at him, intent on hurting his male pride, if nothing else.

The next moment she was flat on her back with her hands pinned above her head and the weight of one very large man on top of her. And he was still laughing. ‘Wild cat. I was right.’

‘You—’ Words, and breath, failed her. ‘Get off me.’

For a long unfathomable moment he stared down into her eyes and his own seemed to darken. Nick stopped laughing. For an instant she thought he had stopped breathing.

‘It is not seemly,’ she managed to say as her mind tried to assimilate all the new sensations of a hard male body pressed against her own softness. She liked them. All of them.

‘No, it is not.’ Nick rolled off her and got to his feet in one fluid movement. He is as supple as a young sapling, Paravi had said. Heat washed through her. ‘I am sorry, I could not resist it. You were quivering like a hound wanting to be let off the leash.’

‘I was listening for shots,’ Anusha said with as much dignity as she could muster, flat on her back and filled with what she was horribly afraid was sexual desire. ‘Have they gone?’

‘They have, no doubt thinking that only a fool would head into the wilds with only two horses and a princess.’

He meant to mock her when he called her princess, she knew that. ‘And are you a fool?’

Nick reached down a hand and hauled her to her feet. ‘No, but I am going to do it anyway.’ He pulled the blankets off the horses and brought them to their feet with a whistle, shaking like dogs to get rid of the dust. ‘We will ride on a league or so and when we are out of earshot I will bring down some game for dinner. Then the muskets will be empty. We will rest a while, drink and I will show you how to load.’ He picked up one of the guns and looked from it to her with a grin. ‘Although I think you will have to stand on a rock to do it, Miss Laurens.’

‘Do not call me that.’ It was intolerable that he should treat her so casually and yet address her with angrezi formality by the name she rejected.

‘Anusha, then?’

‘Anusha,’ she agreed warily. ‘Nick.’

They remounted and rode on in a silence that seemed somehow more companionable than it had yet done.

After two leagues Nick halted and left her with the horses while he took the guns and padded off into the scrub. ‘Drink,’ he said, ‘and get into the shade.’

‘Yes, Major,’ she muttered, but did as she was told, not that there was much shade to be had.

Anusha heard four gunshots and when he returned Nick had a sand grouse and a hare dangling from his hand. That was good shooting with a musket, she knew.

He hunkered down in the small patch of shade beside her and reached for the canteen of water. It spilled from the sides of his mouth and she watched it run through the stubble on his cheeks, saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.

‘You are a soldier, so this is taking you from the army,’ she said when he put down the water and ran the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Why did they not send a diplomat for me?’

‘Because there was always the chance that something like this might happen. And I am a diplomat, of sorts. I move between the army and the princely courts as the Company requires.’ It explained why his Hindi was so good.