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‘I was merely attempting to act as one of your romantic heroes,’ he said. ‘I thought a young lady addicted to novels would expect such attentions. You appeared to enjoy it.’
‘I was shocked into momentary immobility.’ Only, her lips had moved against his, had parted, her tongue had touched his in a fleeting mutual caress … ‘And I am not addicted, as you put it. In fact, I think you are reading too many novels yourself, my lord,’ Dita retorted as she dropped the rein and turned away to where Pradeep stood holding Khan.
Alistair watched her walk, straight-backed, to her groom and spend a moment speaking to him, apparently in reassurance, while she rubbed the big gelding’s nose. For all the notice she took of Alistair he might as well not have been there, but he could sense her awareness of him, see it in the flush that touched her cheekbones. Momentary immobility, his foot! She had responded to his kiss whether she wanted to admit it or not.
The syce cupped his hands and she rose up and settled in the saddle with the lack of fuss of a born horsewoman. And a fit one, he thought, appreciating the moment when her habit clung and outlined her long legs.
In profile he could see that Claudia had been right. Her nose was too long and when she had looked up at him to ask about the mahout her face had been serious, emphasising the slight asymmetry that was not apparent when she was animated. And a critic who was not contemplating kissing it would agree that her mouth was too wide and her figure was unfashionably tall and slim. But the ugly duckling had grown into her face and, although it was not a beautiful one, it was vividly attractive.
And now he need not merely contemplate kissing her, he knew how she tasted and how it was to trace the curve of her upper lip with his tongue. The taste and feel of her had been oddly familiar.
He knew how she felt, her slight curves pressed to his chest, her weight on his body, and oddly it was as though he had always known that. It was remarkably effective in taking his mind off the bone-deep ache in his thigh and the sharp pain in his right hand. Alistair urged the bay alongside her horse as Dita used both hands to tuck up the strands of hair that had escaped from the net. The collar of her habit was open where the neckcloth was missing and his eyes followed the vee of pale skin into the shadows.
Last night her evening gown had revealed much more, but somehow it had not seemed so provocative. When he lifted his eyes she was gathering up the reins and he could tell from the way her lips tightened that she knew where he had been looking. If he had stayed in England, and watched the transformation from gawky child into provocatively attractive woman, would the impact when he looked at her be as great—or would she just be little Dita, grown up? Because there was no mistaking what he wanted when he looked at her now.
‘We are both to be passengers on the Bengal Queen,’ he said. It was a statement of the obvious, but he needed to keep her here for a few more moments, to see if he could provoke her into any more sharp-tongued remarks. He remembered last night how he had teased her with talk of chastisement and how unexpectedly stimulating that had been. The thought of wrestling between the sheets with a sharp-tongued, infuriated Lady Perdita who was trying to slap him was highly erotic. He might even let her get a few blows in before he …
‘Yes,’ she agreed, sounding wary. Doubtless some shadow of his thoughts was visible on his face. Alistair shifted in the saddle and got his unruly, and physically uncomfortable, imaginings under control. Better for now to remember the gawky tomboy-child who had always been somewhere in the background, solemn green eyes following his every move. ‘You will be anxious to get home, no doubt,’ she said with careful formality. ‘I was sorry to hear that Lord Iwerne is unwell.’
‘Thank you.’ He could think of nothing else to say that was neither a lie nor hypocritical. From the months’-old news he had received from Lyndonholt Castle there was a strong chance that he was already the marquis, and try as he might to summon up appropriate feelings of anxiety and sadness for his father, he could not. They had never been close and the circumstances of their parting had been bitter. And even if his father still lived, what would he make of the hardened, travelled, twenty-nine-year-old who returned in the place of the angry, naïve young man who had walked away from him?
And there was his stepmother, of course. What would Imogen be expecting of the stepson who had not even stayed to see her wed?
She was in for a shock if she thought he would indulge her or had any tender feelings left for her. She could take herself off to the Dower House with her widow’s portion and leave the Castle for the bride he fully intended to install there as soon as possible. And that bride would be a gentle, obedient, chaste young lady of good breeding. He would select her with care and she would provide him with heirs and be an excellent hostess. And she would leave his heart safely untouched—love was for idealists and romantics and he was neither. Not any more.
‘A rupee for your thoughts?’ Dita said, her wary expression replaced with amusement at his abstraction. It almost had him smiling back, seeing a shadow of the patient child in an unusual young lady who did not take offence at a man forgetting she was there. But then, she was probably relieved his attention was elsewhere. ‘Are you daydreaming of home?’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But the thought was hardly worth a rupee. Ma’am, it was a pleasure.’ He bowed his hatless head for a moment, turned his horse towards Government House and cantered off.
For a moment there he had been tempted to stay, to offer to escort her back to wherever she was living. He must have hit his head in that fall, Alistair thought, to contemplate such a thing. He was going to be close to Dita Brooke for three months in the narrow confines of the ship, and he had no intention of resuming the role of elder brother, or however she had seen him as a child. He was not going to spend his time getting her out of scrapes and frightening off importunate young men; it made him feel old just thinking about it. As for that impulsive kiss, she had dealt with it briskly enough, even if she had responded to it. She was sophisticated enough to take it at face value as part of the repertoire of a rake, so nothing to worry about there.
Alistair trotted into the stable yard of Government House and dismounted with some care. The Governor General was away, but he was interested in plant hunting, too, and had extended a vague invitation that Alistair had found useful to take up for the few weeks before the ship sailed.
Damn this leg. He supposed he had better go and show it to the Governor’s resident doctor and be lectured on his foolishness in riding so hard with it not properly healed. But the prospect of weeks without energetic exercise had driven him out to ride each day for as long as the cool of the morning lasted. No doubt Dita had been motivated by the same considerations.
Which led him to think of her again, and of violent exercise, and the combination of the two was uncomfortably vivid. No, his feelings were most definitely not brotherly, any more than those damnably persistent dreams about her were. ‘Bloody fool,’ he snapped at himself, startling the jemahdar at the front door.
Intelligent, headstrong, argumentative young women with a scandal in their past and a temper were not what he was looking for. A meek and biddable English rose who would give him no trouble and cause no scandal was what he wanted and Dita Brooke had never been a rosebud, let alone a rose. She was pure briar with thorns all the way.
Chapter Three
As Alistair limped up the staircase to the first floor he thought of Dita’s threat to apply a tourniquet around his neck and laughed out loud at the memory of her face as she said it. The two men coming out of an office stopped at the sound.
‘Hell’s teeth, Lyndon, what’s happened to you?’ It was one of the Chatterton twins, probably Daniel, who had been flirting with Perdita last night. ‘Found that tiger again?’
‘My horse fell on the maidan and I’ve opened up the wound in my thigh. I’d better get a stitch in it—have you seen Dr Evans?’ Stoicism was one thing, being careless with open wounds in this climate quite another.
‘No, no sign of him—but we only dropped in to leave some papers, we haven’t seen anyone. Let’s get you up to your room while they find Evans. Daktar ko bulaiye,’ one twin called down to the jemahdar.
That was Callum, Alistair thought, waving away the offer of an arm in support. The responsible brother, by all accounts. ‘I can manage, but come and have a chota peg while they find him. It’s early, but I could do with it.’
They followed him up to his suite and settled themselves while his sirdar went for brandy. ‘Horse put its foot in a hole?’ Daniel asked.
‘Nothing so ordinary. I damn nearly collided with Lady Perdita, who was riding as if she’d a fox in her sights. I reined in hard to stop a crash and the horse over balanced. She wasn’t hurt,’ he added as Callum opened his mouth. ‘Interesting coincidence, meeting her here. My family are neighbours to hers, but it is years since I have seen her.’
‘Did you quarrel in those days?’ Daniel asked, earning himself a sharp kick on the ankle from his brother.
‘Ah, you noticed a certain friction? When we were children I teased her, as boys will torment small and unprepossessing females who tag around after them. I was not aware she was in India.’
‘Oh, well, after the elopement,’ Daniel began. ‘Er … you did know about that?’
‘Of course,’ Alistair said. Well, he had heard about a scandal yesterday. That was near enough the truth, and he was damnably curious all of a sudden.
‘No harm in speaking of it then, especially as you know the family. My cousin wrote all about it. Lady P. ran off with some fellow, furious father found them on the road to Gretna, old Lady St George was on hand to observe and report on every salacious detail—all the usual stuff and a full-blown scandal as a result.’
‘No so very bad if Lord Wycombe caught them,’ Alistair said casually as the manservant came back, poured brandy and reported that the doctor had gone out, but was expected back soon.
‘Well, yes, normally even Lady St George could have been kept quiet, I expect. Only trouble was, they’d set out from London and Papa caught them halfway up Lancashire.’
‘Ah.’ One night, possibly two, alone with her lover. A scandal indeed. ‘Why didn’t she marry the fellow?’ Wycombe was rich enough and influential enough to force almost anyone, short of a royal duke, to the altar and to keep their mouths shut afterwards. A really unsuitable son-in-law could always be shipped off to a fatally unhealthy spot in the West Indies later.
‘She wouldn’t have him, apparently. Refused point blank. According to my cousin she said he snored, had the courage of a vole and the instincts of a weasel and while she was quite willing to admit she had made a serious mistake she had no intention of living with it. So her father packed her off here to stay with her aunt, Lady Webb.’
‘Daniel,’ Callum snapped, ‘you are gossiping about a lady of our acquaintance.’
‘Who is perfectly willing to mention it herself,’ his twin retorted. ‘I heard her only the other day at the picnic. Miss Eppingham said something snide about scandalous goings-on and Lady Perdita remarked that she was more than happy to pass on the benefits of her experience if it prevented Miss Eppingham making a cake of herself over Major Giddings, who, she could assure her, had the morals of a civet cat and was only after Miss E.’s dowry. I don’t know how I managed not to roar with laughter.’
That sounded like attack as a form of defence, Alistair thought as Daniel knocked back his brandy and Callum shook his head at him. Dita surely couldn’t be so brazen as not to care and he rather admired the courage it showed to acknowledge the facts and bite back. He also admired Wycombe’s masterly manner of dealing with the scandal. He had got his daughter out of London society and at the same time had placed her in a situation where it would be well known that she was not carrying a child. Three months’ passage on an East Indiaman gave no possibility of hiding such a thing.
But what the devil was Dita doing running off with a man she didn’t want to marry? Perhaps he was wrong and she really was the foolish romantic he had teased her with being. She certainly knew how to flirt—he had seen her working her wiles on Daniel Chatterton last night—but, strangely, she had not done so with him. Obviously he annoyed her too much.
But, whatever she thought of him, the more distance there was between them mentally, the better, because there was going to be virtually none physically on that ship and he was very aware of the reaction his body had to her. He wanted Perdita Brooke for all the wrong reasons; he just had to be careful that wanting was all it came to. Alistair leaned back and savoured the brandy. Taking care had never been his strong suit.
‘Perdita, look at you!’ Emma Webb stood in the midst of trunks and silver paper and frowned at her niece. ‘Your hair is half down and your neckcloth is missing. What on earth has occurred?’
‘There was an accident on the maidan.’ Dita came right into the room, stripped off her gloves and kissed her aunt on the cheek. ‘It is nothing to worry about, dearest. Lord Lyndon took a fall and he was bleeding, so my neckcloth seemed the best bandage.’ She kept going, into the dressing room, and smiled at the ayah who was pouring water for her bath from a brass jug.
‘Oh?’ Her aunt came to the door, a half-folded shawl in her hands. ‘Someone said you were arguing with him last night. Oh dear, I really am not the good chaperon my brother expected.’
‘We have not seen each other since I was sixteen, Aunt Emma,’ Dita said, stepping out of her habit. ‘And we simply picked up the same squabble about a frog that we parted on. He is just as infuriating now as he was then.’
And even more impossibly attractive, unfortunately. In the past, when she had told herself that the adult Alistair Lyndon would be nothing like the young man she had known and adored eight years ago, she had never envisaged the possibility that he would be even more desirable. It was only physical, of course. She was a grown woman, she understood these things now. She had given him her virginity: it was no wonder, with no lover since then, that she reacted to him.
It was a pity he did not have a squint or a skin condition or a double chin or a braying laugh. It was much easier to be irritated by someone if one was not also fighting a most improper desire to …
Dita put a firm lid on her imagination and sat down in eight inches of tepid water, an effective counter to torrid thoughts. It was most peculiar. She had convinced herself that she wanted to marry Stephen Doyle until he had tried to make love to her; then she had been equally convinced that she must escape the moment she could lay her hands on his wallet and her own money that was in it.
She was equally convinced now that Alistair Lyndon was the most provoking man of her acquaintance as well as being an insensitive rake—and yet she wanted to kiss him again until they were both dizzy, which probably meant something, if only that she was prone to the most shocking desires and was incapable of learning from the past.
‘I think everything is packed now,’ Emma said with satisfaction from the bedchamber. ‘And the trunks have gone off to the ship, which just leaves what you need on the voyage to be checked. Twelve weeks is a long time if we forget anything.’ She reappeared as Dita stepped out of the bath and was wrapped in a vast linen sheet. ‘I do hope Mrs Bastable proves as reliable as she appears. But she seems very happy to look after you and Miss Heydon.’
Averil was going to England for the first time since she was a toddler in order to marry Viscount Bradon, a man she had never met. Perhaps I should let Papa choose me a husband, Dita thought. He couldn’t do much worse than I have so far. And her father was unlikely to pick on a pale imitation of Alistair Lyndon as she had done so unwittingly, it seemed. ‘It isn’t often that we see brides going in that direction,’ Lady Webb added.
‘Do you think me a failure?’ Dita asked, half-serious, as her maid combed out her hair. ‘After all, I came over with the Fishing Fleet and I haven’t caught so much as a sprat.’ And do I want to marry anyway? Men are so fortunate, they can take a lover, no one thinks any the worse of them. I will have money of my own next year when I am twenty five …
‘Oh, don’t call it that,’ her aunt scolded. ‘There are lots of reasons for young ladies to come India, not just to catch husbands.’
‘I can’t think of any,’ Dita said. ‘Other than escaping a scandal, of course. I am certain Papa was hoping I would catch an up-and-coming star in the East India Company firmament, just like you did.’
‘Yes, I did, didn’t I?’ Lady Webb said happily. ‘Darling George is a treasure. But not everyone wants to have to deal with the climate, or face years of separation for the sake of the children’s health.’ She picked up a list and conned it. ‘And you will be going home with that silly business all behind you and just in time for the Season, too.’
That silly business. Three words to dismiss disillusion and self-recrimination and the most terrible family rows. Papa had been utterly and completely correct about Stephen Doyle, which meant that her own judgement of men must be utterly and completely at fault. On that basis Alistair Lyndon was a model of perfection and virtue. Dita smiled to herself—no, she was right about him, at least: the man was a rake.
10th December 1808
‘Two weeks to Christmas,’ Dita said as she hugged her aunt on the steps of the ghat. ‘It seems hard to imagine in this climate. But I have left presents for you and Uncle on the dressing table in my room, and something for all the servants.’ She was babbling, she knew it, but it was hard to say goodbye when you had no idea if you would ever see the person again.
‘And I have put something in your bag,’ Emma said with a watery smile. ‘Goodness knows what happens about Christmas celebrations on board. Now, are you sure you have everything?’
‘I went out yesterday,’ her uncle assured her, patting his wife on the shoulder and obviously worried that she would burst into tears. ‘You’ve got a nice compartment in the roundhouse below the poop deck, just as I was promised. That will be much quieter and the odours and noise will be less than in the Great Cabin below. It is all ladies in there as well, and you will be dining at the captain’s table in the cuddy with the select passengers.’
‘But those wretched canvas partitions,’ his wife protested. ‘I would feel happier if she was in a cabin with bulkheads.’
It had been a subject for discussion and worry for weeks. ‘The partitions give better ventilation,’ Dita said. ‘I felt perfectly secure on the outward passage, but that was in a compartment forward of the Great Cabin and it was so very stuffy.’ And revoltingly smelly by the time they had been at sea for a month.
‘And all your furniture is in place and secured,’ her uncle continued. All made it sound as though she was occupying a suite. The box bed that was bolted to the deck was a fixture, but passengers were expected to supply anything else they needed for their comfort in the little square of space they could call their own. Dita had a new coir mattress and feather pillow, her bed linen and towels, an ingenious dressing chest that could support a washbasin or her writing slope and an upright chair. Her trunk would have to act as both wardrobe and table and her smaller bags must be squashed under the bunk.
‘And there are necessaries for the passengers’ and officers’ use on this ship,’ Lord Webb added. Which was a mercy and an improvement on a slop bucket or the horrors of the heads—essentially holes giving on to the sea below—that had been the only options on the outward passage.
‘I shall be wonderfully comfortable,’ Dita assured them. ‘Look, they want us to go down to the boats now.’
Plunging into the scrimmage of passengers, porters, beggars, sailors and screaming children was better than dragging out this parting any longer, even if her stomach was in knots at the thought of getting into the boat that was ferrying passengers to the ship. It hurt to part with two people who had been understanding and kindly beyond her expectations or deserts, and she feared she would cling and weep and upset her aunt in a moment.
‘I love you both. I’ve written, it is with the Christmas presents. I must go.’ Her uncle took her arm and made sure the porter was with them, then, leaving her aunt sniffing into her handkerchief, he shouldered his way to the uneven steps leading down into the fast-running brown water.
‘Hold tight to me! Mind how you go, my dear.’ The jostling was worse on the steps, her foot slipped on slime and she clutched wildly for support as the narrow boat swung away and the water yawned before her.
‘Lady Perdita! Your hand, ma’am.’ It was Alistair, standing on the thwarts. ‘I have her, sir.’ He caught her hand, steadied her, then handed her back to one of the Chatterton twins who was standing behind him.
‘Sit here, Lady Perdita.’ This twin was Callum, she decided, smiling thanks at him and trying to catch her breath while her uncle and Alistair organised her few items of hand baggage and saw them stowed under the plank she was perched on. ‘An unpleasant scrum up there, is it not?’
‘Yes.’ She swallowed hard, nodded, managed a smile and a wave for her uncle as the boat was pushed off. Alistair came and sat opposite her. ‘Thank you. I am the most terrible coward about water. The big ship is all right. It is just when I am close to it like this.’ She was gabbling, she could hear herself.
‘What gave you a fear of it?’ Alistair asked. He held her gaze and she realised he was trying to distract her from the fact that they were in an open boat very low in the water. ‘I imagine it must have been quite a fright to alarm someone of your spirit.’
‘Why, thank you.’ Goodness, he was being positively kind to her. Dita smiled and felt the panic subside a little.
‘Presumably you got into some ridiculous scrape,’ he added and the smile froze as the old guilt washed through her.
Without meaning, to she gabbled the whole story. ‘I was walking on the beach with my governess when I was eight and a big wave caught me, rolled me out over the pebbles and down, deep.’ She could still close her eyes and see the underneath of the wave, the green tunnel-shape above her, trapping her with no air, beating her down on to the stones and the rocks. ‘Miss Richards went in after me and she managed to drag me to the beach. Then the next wave took her. She nearly drowned and I couldn’t help her—my leg was broken. The poor woman caught pneumonia and almost died.’
‘Of course you couldn’t have helped,’ Callum said firmly. ‘You were a child and injured.’
‘But Lord Lyndon is correct—I had disobeyed her and was walking too close to the water. It was my fault.’ No one had beaten her for her bad behaviour, for Miss Richards had told no one. But the guilt over her childish defiance had never gone away and the fear of the sea at close quarters had never left her.
‘It has not prevented you from taking risks,’ Alistair said dispassionately.
‘Lyndon.’ Chatterton’s tone held a warning.
Alistair raised one eyebrow, unintimidated. ‘Lady Perdita prizes frankness, I think.’
‘It is certainly better than hypocrisy,’ she snapped. ‘And, no, it did not stop me taking risks, only, after that, I tried to be certain they were my risks alone.’
‘My leg is much better.’ Alistair delivered the apparent non sequitur in a conversational tone.
‘I cannot allow for persons equally as reckless as I am,’ Dita said sweetly. ‘I am so glad you are suffering no serious consequences for your dangerous riding.’
‘We’re here,’ Chatterton said with the air of a man who wished he was anywhere rather than in the middle of a polite aristocratic squabble.
‘And they are lowering a bo’sun’s chair for the ladies,’ said Alistair, getting to his feet. ‘Here! You! This lady first.’
‘What? No! I mean I can wait!’ Dita found herself ruthlessly bundled into the box-like seat on the end of a rope and then she was swung up in the air, dangled sickeningly over the water and landed with a thump on the deck.
‘Oh! The wretched—’
‘Ma’am? Fast is the best way to come up, in my opinion, no time to think about it.’ A polite young man was at her elbow. ‘Lady Perdita? I’m Tompkins, one of the lieutenants. Lord Webb asked me to look out for you. We met at the reception, ma’am.’
‘Mr Tompkins.’ Dita swallowed and her stomach returned to its normal position. ‘Of course, I remember you.’
‘Shall I show you to your cabin, ma’am?’
‘Just a moment. I wish to thank the gentleman who assisted me just now.’
The ladies and children continued to be hoisted on board with the chair. Most of them screamed all the way up. At least I did not scream, she thought, catching at the shreds of her dignity. What had she been thinking of, to blurt out that childhood nightmare to the men? Surely she had more control than that? But the tossing open boat had frightened her, fretting at nerves already raw with the sadness of departure and the apprehension of what was to come in England. And so her courage had failed her.
Dita gritted her teeth and waited until the men began to come up the rope ladder that had been lowered over the side, then she walked across to Alistair where he stood with Callum Chatterton.
‘Thank you very much for your help, gentlemen,’ she said with a warm smile for Callum. ‘Lord Lyndon, you are so masterful I fear you will have to exercise great discretion on the voyage. You were observed by a number of most susceptible young ladies who will all now think you the very model of a man of action and will be seeking every opportunity to be rescued by you. I will do my best to warn them off, but, of course, they will think me merely jealous.’
She batted her eyelashes at him and walked back to Lieutenant Tompkins. Behind her she heard a snort of laugher from Mr Chatterton and a resounding silence from Alistair. This time she had had the last word.
Chapter Four
Dita sat in her cabin space and tried to make herself get up and go outside. Through the salt-stained window that was one of the great luxuries of the roundhouse accommodation she could see that they were under way down the Hooghly.
Every excuse she could think of to stay where she was had been exhausted. She had arranged her possessions as neatly as possible; thrown a colourful shawl over the bed; hung family miniatures on nails on the bulkhead; wedged books—all of them novels—into a makeshift shelf; refused the offer of assistance from Mrs Bastable’s maid on the grounds that there was barely room for one person, let alone two, in the space available; washed her face and hands, tidied her hair. Now there was no reason to stay there, other than a completely irrational desire to avoid Alistair Lyndon.
‘Perdita? We’ll be sailing in a moment—aren’t you coming on deck?’ Averil called from the next compartment, just the other side of one canvas wall.
