‘Honour! Pah!’
Herriard went very still. ‘You never, in my hearing, defame the honour of Sir George Laurens, do you understand?’
‘Or?’ Her neck muscles were so tense it was painful.
‘Or you will find it a matter for regret. If you will not leave because your father commands it, then do it for his Highness, your uncle. Or are your grudges so deep that you would hamper the defence of his state, the safety of the family, to indulge them?’
Grudges? He can calmly dismiss feelings about the betrayal of love, the rejection of a family, as a grudge? The marble floor seemed to quiver like sand beneath her feet. Anusha choked back the furious retort and looked at her uncle. ‘Do you want me to go, my lord?’
‘It is best,’ Kirat Jaswan said. He was everything to her: ruler, uncle, surrogate father. She owed him her total obedience. ‘You … complicate matters, Anusha. I would have you safe where you belong.’
So I do not belong here? No matter how she had been feeling these past months, this was too sudden, too abrupt. Her uncle had cast her out too, as her father had. Now she truly was adrift with nowhere to call home. To protest, would be futile, and beneath her. She was a Rajput princess by training, even if her blood was mixed. ‘I do not belong with my father. I never did, he made that clear as crystal. But because you, my lord and uncle, ask it, I shall go.’
And she would not weep, not in front of that arrogant angrezi who had got what he came for, it seemed: her surrender. She was of a princely house and she had her pride and she would do what her ruler commanded and not show fear. If he had commanded her to ride into battle to her death with his troops she would have done. Somehow that felt less frightening than this. ‘When must I go?’
The Englishman Herriard answered. It was as though her uncle had already washed his hands of her and had given her over to the other man. ‘You leave as soon as the vehicles and animals can be gathered and the journey provisioned. It is a long way and will take us many weeks.’
‘I remember,’ Anusha said. Weeks of blank discomfort and misery, clinging to her mother who was too proud to weep. Sent away because the big, loving, bear of a man who had hugged her and spoiled her, who had been the centre of her world and her mother’s universe, had cast them out. Because love, it seemed, was not for ever. Expediency conquered love. It was a lesson that had been well learned.
Then what Herriard had said penetrated. ‘Us? You will take me?’
‘Of course. I am your escort, Miss Laurens.’
‘I am so very sorry,’ she said, baring her teeth in a false smile. She would make every league a misery for him, if she could, the insensitive brute. ‘You obviously do not wish for this duty.’
‘I would walk the entire way in my bare feet if Sir George asked it,’ Major Herriard said. The cold green eyes looked back at her without liking or anger, as hard as the emeralds in his ears. ‘He is as a father to me and what he wants, Miss Laurens, I will ensure that he gets.’
A father? Just who was this man whose devotion went so far beyond a soldier’s obedience? ‘Fine words,’ Anusha said as she turned to leave. ‘I do hope you will not have cause to eat them.’
Chapter Three
‘If that man sends one more message about what I must and must not take I will scream.’ Anusha stood in the midst of harried, scurrying maids and searched for a word to describe Nicholas Herriard. With a phrase quivering on her tongue she caught Paravi’s amused gaze and compromised. ‘Budmash.’
‘Major Herriard is not a villain or a knave,’ the rani said, her tone of reproof in conflict with the curve of her lips. ‘And he will hear you—he is only on the other side of the jali. It is a long journey. He is right to make certain you will have everything you need, yet not too much.’
‘What is he doing there?’ Anusha demanded, raising her voice. If the wretched man was listening behind the pierced screen wall then he deserved to hear her opinion. The men who ruled her life had left her two choices: she could weep and give up or she could lose her temper. Her pride would not allow the first, so the major must bear the brunt of the other. ‘This is the women’s mahal.’
‘There is a eunuch with him and curtains have been hung around the room,’ Paravi hissed. ‘He is checking everything as it is packed.’
‘Hah! My uncle says I may have twenty elephants, forty camels, forty bullock carts, horses …’
‘And I say it is too much,’ said a deep voice from behind the far wall of pierced stone. Anusha jumped and stubbed her toe on a studded chest. ‘Anyone would think you are going to marry the Emperor, Miss Laurens. And besides, your father will want you to wear Western clothes and jewels in Calcutta.’
‘Mata told me about those clothes.’ Anusha marched across a stack of carpets until she was next to the jali. A large shadow on the silk hangings was all she could see of him through the screen. ‘Corsets! Stockings! Garters! She said they were instruments of torture.’
There was a snort from the other side. ‘They are not things a lady mentions in the presence of a man,’ Herriard said, laughter quivering in his voice.
‘Then go away. I do not require your presence here. I do not require your presence at all, anywhere, gloating because you are getting your way. If you listen from hiding like a spy, then you must endure whatever I say.’ There was a faint moan from the rani behind her. ‘Go away, Major Herriard. Twenty elephants are no slower than ten.’
‘Twenty elephants eat twice as much as ten,’ he retorted. ‘We leave the day after tomorrow. Anything that is not ready, or will not go on half the transport you have listed, will be left behind. And whilst I feel the greatest satisfaction in following your father’s wishes, I am not gloating.’
Anusha opened her mouth to retort, but the sound of footsteps leaving the other room silenced her. It was intolerable to be prevented from arguing because the man had the ill manners to remove himself.
‘Find me a dagger,’ she said, narrowing her eyes at the nearest maid, who was apparently rooted to the spot. ‘That at least I will take—I can imagine a nice broad target for it.’ And she would take all her jewels because when she was in Calcutta and Major Herriard was no longer her jailer she would need them to pay for her escape from her prison. From her father’s house.
Her dagger was in her hand and she would use it because the wretched angrezi was shouting at her and shaking her and drums were beating the alarm and there was danger all around.
‘Ah! Ra—’ Anusha’s shriek of rape was choked in her throat as a large hand clamped over her mouth. She had been asleep, dreaming, but now—
‘Quiet,’ Nicholas Herriard hissed in her ear. ‘We must leave, at once, in secret. When I take my hand away you will whisper or I’ll clip you on the jaw and carry you out. Do you understand?’
Furious, frightened—do not let him see that—Anusha nodded and he removed his hand. ‘Where are my maids?’ He jerked his head towards the corner and she opened her mouth to scream as she saw the two crumpled bodies lit by the flickering light of one ghee lamp. The hand came back, none too gently. The skin bore the calluses of a rider and chafed her lips. He tasted of leather.
‘Drugged,’ he murmured in her ear, pressing his palm tight over her mouth to foil her attempt to bite. ‘There are spies, I cannot risk it. Listen.’ He freed her mouth again.
Now she was awake she realised that the drums that had been echoing through her dream were real, their sound vibrating through the palace. She