Not Quite a Husband (24 page)

The sowar would be
hors de combat
for a while. But provided that his wound did not become infected—she assured Captain North that all antiseptic measures had been taken—she did not foresee any long-term consequences.

Captain North shook hands with her. “Thank you, ma’am.”

As he was about to leave the surgery, she could not suppress her curiosity any longer. “Captain, if you don’t mind, why are you and your men all soaked?”

“We had to ford the Swat River, ma’am.”

“Ford the Swat River? Why?”

“To get here, ma’am. We rode over from Malakand.”

“Oh, that is wonderful!” She could jump for joy. The cavalry had come. The fort at Chakdarra was being rescued even as they spoke. “I assume you are the vanguard of the relief column?”

The captain shook his head grimly. “Unfortunately we
are
the relief column—forty sowars, another officer, and myself. The camp at Malakand was nearly overrun last night. The Pathans made off with almost all of the ammunition from one of our storehouses. It was decided this morning that we should still send some men to aid Chakdarra because we feared that it was badly surrounded. Could have been a fool’s mission—the hills between Malakand and the river are packed full of more men than I’ve ever seen in my life. We barely made it through.”

Bryony’s heart sank. “So we can expect no more help from Malakand?”

“Not until Malakand itself is relieved by mobilization from Nowshera. And Nowshera is probably empty just now—the regiments sent on punitive expeditions to Tochi Valley haven’t returned yet.”

“I see,” she said weakly.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I suppose I should have said something more reassuring. I’m not accustomed to discussing such situations with ladies.”

“It’s quite all right, Captain,” she said. “I assure you ladies prefer the truth to being kept in the dark.”

Or perhaps not.

As long as help was just around the corner, she could pretend that her stupid mistake hadn’t actually cost anyone anything. But now that Malakand itself was under siege, and no help was possible—

When I’m a wizened old professor at Cambridge, and can barely climb up to the podium to lecture, I will think back to the frontiers of India—and life’s strange paths that had led me here—and remember that this was where the wanderings of my youth ended
.

He would never become that wizened old professor at Cambridge. He would never leave the frontiers of India. And the wandering of his youth—his youth altogether—would end here when the fort fell.

Because she had no sense. Because she put her need to get away from him above their safety. Because she’d been so stupid as to believe that a
week of heartache in peace and security would be worse than actual death.

It was all her fault.

They were infinitely removed from the safety of the plains of India, but not so much geographically that the men on the rampart didn’t swelter all day. The Pathans kept up their attacks on the fort. They seemed to have an endless supply of men and an endless supply of courage; their compatriots falling like dominoes at the base of the fort served only to harden their resolve. And any lull in the fighting was taken up with raising the height of the walls to provide better cover against the snipers in the hills.

At nine o’clock that night Captain Bartlett found Leo. “I’ve a message for you from Mrs. Marsden. She has informed me that if you, sir, do not go down to get your dressing changed and sleep a few hours, she will refuse to extract any more bullets from my men.”

Leo shook his head. “Women and their wiles.”

“My thoughts exactly, sir. I can’t afford to be short a sawbones now, so you’d best do as she says.”

But before he went to the surgery, Leo went to their quarters to wash: He didn’t want to go to her grimy and malodorous. With his uninjured arm, he
made unstinting use of Surgeon-Captain Gibbs’s soap and probably squandered more water than he needed to rinse, just because it felt good to pour cool water over himself, after an entire day perspiring in both heat and fear.

She was waiting for him when he came out of the bathroom. They stood a moment, staring at each other. She looked pale and shaken, much the same as she’d looked after their first encounter with hostile Pathans. Except now he too was equally shaken, equally terrified of what might come to pass.

“Bryony,” he said softly.

“You made your dressings wet,” she said. “Good thing we are changing them.”

She washed her hands, leaned him against the edge of the desk, and took off his bandaging. On one knee, she pushed aside the towel he’d wrapped around himself and cleaned the wound on his leg. He sucked in a breath at the stinging coolness of the carbolic acid solution.

He was tired—he hadn’t slept in more than forty hours. The stitches, once the local anesthesia wore off, had hurt as if a rabid dog had sunk its teeth into him. And his head pounded from too much coffee and too little food. But as she knelt before him, her fingers brushing his upper thigh, the tiny little air fluffs of her breaths mercilessly teasing his skin,
everything else faded into a dull ache against the increasing sharpness of his awareness
of her
.

Her white-streaked hair, smoothly coiled and obedient. The pretty lobe of her ear. The collar of her shirt, quite crumpled from the heat.

She rose to her feet, to work on the cut on his side. Her head tilted to the side to get a better look; the light from the lamp limned her slender neck, or what little of it that was exposed with her shirt buttoned resolutely to the edge of her chin. He wanted to open a few of those buttons, if only for humanitarian reasons—it had grown stuffy inside the quarters, with the shutters closed against ricocheting bullets, and the walls still releasing their embedded heat.

“Have you slept at all since we got here?”

“Nobody has, so I don’t feel deprived. What about you? Were you able to sleep last night?”

Abruptly, the walls shook with the boom of the war drums. Gunfire, a minute ago desultory, intensified into the roar of a hailstorm. Shouts erupted as the Pathans charged the fort, always the shouts, single-minded and feral.

She stopped, listened for a while, then pressed on with her task, her teeth clenched. When she was done, she busied herself gathering the soiled bandaging. Only then did he see her hands shake, almost imperceptibly, but shaking nevertheless.

He took her hands in his, her fear a dagger in his heart. “Bryony.”

“Sleep,” she said, not looking at him. “You need your sleep.”

He pulled her closer to him. “Bryony, listen to me. We are hardly at the end of our rope. The fort has plenty of store and ammunition. Our men are superior in discipline and musketry. We’ll hold out until relief comes.”

If only his words didn’t sound so flaccid to his own ears.

He wasn’t lying, but he’d certainly narrated only the most encouraging aspects of the situation. Not the sea of Pathans he’d seen in the morning, not the fatigue that was beginning to weary the defenders, and most certainly not the almost trancelike resolve on the faces of those who rushed at the front of the attacks. The Swatis and their neighbors wanted the British gone, and they were quite glad to die for it.

Her eyelashes lifted, her eyes moss green and wild. “If you want to put me at ease, it’s really quite simple. Let me apologize. Let me grovel and rend my hair. Let me be abjectly, miserably sorry. Please. And let me do it now, before it’s—before it’s too late.”

“All right,” he said. “Go ahead.”

She looked at him uncertainly. “Go ahead?”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was completely childish and irresponsible. Forgive me.”

He kissed her lightly on her ear. “Forgiven.”

A more beautiful word did not exist in the English language. She cupped his face and rained kisses upon his cheeks, his jaw, and his lips. Finally her mouth settled against his and she kissed him tenderly. He tasted of the roasted fennel seeds Indians chewed after meals to freshen breath. She wanted to savor him slowly, a connoisseur before the finest vintage of the century; she wanted to devour him, a drunk trembling for that first swallow of the day.

Her hands wandered down his arms. His skin was cool from the bath and smooth to the touch. The whole of him was tightly built, his musculature strong and spare. And he smelled, rather wonderfully, of Surgeon-Captain Gibbs’s Pears soap.

She pulled back. “Let me put you to bed. You’ve only a few hours to sleep.”

She put her arm about his middle, acted as his crutch as he crossed the room, and helped lower him to the edge of the bed. But as she straightened, he gripped the front of her shirt. She went utterly
still. Outside the battle continued to escalate, but inside she could only hear her own tattered breaths and the hard thumps of her heart.

He kissed her on the tip of her chin, the tip of her nose, the corners of her eyes. Then, his teeth grazed the edge of her earlobe. She shuddered.

He released her. “Want more?”

She nodded.

He scooted back on the bed until his back was against the wall. “Then come here.”

“What about your stitches?”

“We won’t do anything to worry the stitches.”

She sat down next to him, her back to the wall. He chuckled, put his uninjured arm about her waist, and swung her toward him. She squeaked, terrified that her weight would land the wrong way and pull on the stitches. But she came down on her knees, braced to either side of him.

She put her mouth to his again and kissed him, in ways that seemed rather pushy and improper. But he did not seem to mind. The soft sounds he made in his throat were those of pleasure and arousal. His hand skimmed along her arm, then along the outside of her thigh. He dragged her skirt and petticoat free from underneath her knee and lifted them out of the way. Underneath she had her combination.
Slowly, slowly, his hand ascended toward the open seam between her legs.

She whimpered. He stroked her there, almost-harmless little touches interspersed with the most unchaste caresses possible. The pleasure came like monsoon rain, hot and thick. She wanted to cling to him, to meld into him, but she dared only push her palms against the gritty surface of the wall, her fingers spread, seeking desperately to hold on to something. Anything.

The pleasure stretched her taut. It plucked and thrummed her. It made her thighs quake with the strain of holding herself upright.

All the while he kissed her, as if she were air, water, fire, everything he couldn’t do without. As if she were as sweet on the tongue as the first snow melt high in the Himalayas. As if he’d meant to kiss her for years and years and must make up for the eternity of waiting.

And he kissed her as she gasped with the spikes of her climax. As she moaned and hissed with the intensity of it. As she called his name, again and again, a prayer for things beyond hope.

“May I do that for you also?” she asked, her breaths not at all even.

He shivered. “Well, one of us would have to.”

She shifted her person so that she was next to him, rather than straddling him. Looping her left arm about his neck, she kissed him on the shoulder. The little drop-kisses turned into moist nibbles. And then, openmouthed worship of his skin and flesh.