Scandal in the Night (33 page)

She rolled onto his chest to look into the depths of his warm green eyes, to be sure that she understood him, and he understood her. “Do you mean it, truly?” she asked. But then she didn’t bother to wait for the answer. “Yes. I’ll go with you wherever you want.”

His answering smile was a gift. “Wherever
we
want.”

“Yes.” She said it again and laughed out loud, because she was so deliriously, monstrously happy, and it felt good to say it again. “Yes. Yes.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and punctuated her assents with kisses along his collarbone to the hollow at the base of his throat where she could feel his heart beating steadily under her lips.

“Thank God.” His relief was audible. “You don’t know what I was prepared to do if you said no.”

She had never before remembered hearing him speak so informally, so colloquially, using the familiar form of address. But if the intimacy they had just shared was not grounds for some greater informality, Catriona did not know what would be. “You don’t know what
I
was prepared to do if you had not asked.” It was remarkable—providential even—that they should be in such accord.

He was frowning over his smile, unsure if she was teasing him. “Were you?”

“Yes. I have brought my little bag, you see.”

“I see. And I am glad of your forethought. Because now we may be gone from Saharanpur as soon as we rise.”

“But we do not yet have to rise.”

“No, we don’t.”

She kissed him again, a slow, leisurely exploration of his taut lips, too full of love and gratitude and happiness to speak. In another moment she was swept up in the heady pleasure of his mouth upon hers, until she could think of nothing but the tide of want riding within her.

“Catriona.” He said her name on a sigh of such satisfied sweetness, as if she were a holy place he had chanced upon in a storm. “You have no idea the pleasure your name gives me. The pleasure I take in being able to say it freely. I don’t think I will ever tire of saying it.”

“You can say it all the way into the mountains.”

“I will. And beyond. And I will tell you other things as well.”

“Let us go then.” She pushed herself off his chest. “Let us get away before someone tries to stop us. Before one of the household spies tells on me—everyone, you know, seems to be in someone else’s employ for the purpose of spilling secrets.”

Tanvir’s dark head came up sharply at that, and she felt the weight of his gaze press upon her through the moonlit dark. And for the first time, it made her nervous.

“I mean no disrespect,” she tried to explain. “I just imagine I was simply too naive to see that it is the way of the world before.”

“Yes,” he said easily enough. “It is the way of this world. Hind is rife with opportunities to earn baksheesh. And you are right to want us to get away before we have to spend any more.”

And like a warning omen from her reawakened fate, a low voice came from the other side of the canvas walls.
“Huzoor.”

Tanvir went to the door flap, and he answered in a language Catriona did not understand. Then he frowned at her. “Your servant is here and insists on seeing you.”

“Namita?” Oh, Lord. Catriona felt the first faint stirring of unease. She had no idea that her
ayah
would brave the terrors of the night to come find her unless she had been sent. “I never thought she’d come after me.”

“How did she know where to find you?” Tanvir’s tone was careful.

“I told her.” Catriona was suddenly regretting her bravado. “But I thought she would be too frightened of the dark to follow me.” And Catriona had also hoped Birkstead was too afraid of Tanvir Singh to interfere.

She began to hastily retrieve her clothes from the floor, fumbling with her petticoats, twisting them around her waist to tie them up, so she didn’t completely understand the long moment of livid silence that was punctured by a vile-sounding Punjabi oath. “We will have to take her with us. Who else knows you are here?”

“I don’t know.” She was lying—or at least thinking very wishfully. She tried to step closer, to see him and read his expression in the dark. So she could see him and gauge how much he understood. “Lieutenant Birkstead has spies in the house who have been reporting to him about every ride and every swim.”

“Swim? The jackal has spies in the old palace, as well?” He bit off another oath. “Why did you not tell me this before?”

“I don’t know.” Catriona suddenly felt more than foolish or naïve. She felt genuine fear. “I didn’t realize it before. I meant to tell you—it—he—was one of the reasons I came here tonight—Birkstead. I’m sorry I forgot.”

“Mem!” Namita had heard Catriona’s voice, and called from directly outside the tent. “You must come at once.”

“I’ll send her away,” she said to Tanvir. “I don’t care about Birkstead, or Lord Summers. I’ve made my choice. I’ll send her away, and we can go, just as you said.” Catriona finished buttoning her bodice, and pushed through the gauzy curtain separating the interior from the tent’s porch. “You should not have come.” She kept her voice low, and pulled Namita aside, away from the
sa’is
who eyed them speculatively. “What on earth is the matter?”

“Thou must come home, mem. The house is all aroar.”

“It’s impossible, Namita. I told you. Who sent you?”

“Arthur, mem. Thou must come.”

“Arthur?” Of all people, Catriona had not expected Namita to mention her quiet cousin. It must be a trick, some ploy of Birkstead’s to bring her back. She wanted to give the persistent old woman a hard shake and send her on her way. “I don’t believe you.”

“I told him, mem, but this is the truth of it, I swear to you. The lord sahib has found the
Badmash
in the house, and it is all terrible—such shouting and breaking of things. Thou must come.”

Oh, sweet Saint Margaret. She had done this. She had told Lord Summers too much, and put the proverbial cat among the pigeons. Or more accurately she had set a jackal against the pigeons. And now everyone would suffer.

Tanvir Singh stepped through the tent flap with a lantern that illuminated the tight set of his handsome face. His hair was still loose and unbound, rippling over his lean shoulders. His tawny, honey-toned skin all but glowed in the lamplight. He looked sleek and animalistic. He looked dark and dangerous. Catriona had never, ever seen a man so perilously beautiful.

And she had to leave him. She had to go and make it right even though she wanted to be with him. And she did not want to go back. “I have to go back to the residency.”

Namita was pulling at her arm in agreement. “Yes, yes. Make haste, mem. Make haste.”

“I have to go,” Catriona said again. “But I’ll be back, I promise. I’ll find you here at dawn.” Her voice sounded small and inadequate, but he was looking at her through the dark fall of his hair, with something very like pain in his green eyes, as if he were no longer sure of her. As if he thought she was lying. As if everything they had just said and been to each other had never happened.

She had to make him believe her. “I’ll be back. I swear it. I promise. And you promise me you’ll be here, waiting for me. Promise it.”

“I swear.” His voice was low and quiet, but no more reassuring.

“I swear it as well.” Her voice grew tight with heat. “I swear on my family’s grave I’ll come back. I will.” Her throat ached with the effort not to cry. “Tell me you believe me.”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he kissed her—a hard, hungry stamp of his possession and need—before he let her go. “Go if you must. But make haste, my
kaur.
Make haste.”

“I will, I promise.”

Catriona cast one last look at the man she loved, and let Namita pull her along to where the
sa’is
held Puithar. “It is terrible, mem, terrible. Such fighting.”

“You never should have told them I’d gone, Namita, then they couldn’t fight over me.”

“No, no, mem. It is not thee that they fight about. It is the lord sahib and the lady memsahib. And the
Badmash
Sahib. Such screeching and fighting. Such anger. The children are afraid and crying.”

The tight heat in her throat hardened into fear. “About Birkstead and my aunt?”

“Yes, yes. I knew nothing good could come of thee going away.” Namita was nearly panting in the effort to keep up as Cat vaulted up onto the horse’s back. “Such shouting and noises. Talk of honor and death. Arthur Sahib bid me find thee, and bring thee back right away. Oh, I knew how it would be.”

Oh, why, oh, why had she not kept her mouth shut? Why had she voiced her suspicions to her uncle-in-law? Why could she not leave well enough alone?

Namita shook her head, in both confirmation and denial. “It is bad, bad, mem. I knew that there would be murder in this night. I told thee.” She tugged on Catriona’s skirt and pointed across the river. “I told thee. Look. The air is already thick with it.”

Catriona followed the
ayah
’s gaze to the southern horizon, where a dark plume seemed to be congregating into a darker thunderhead. Smoke. And below, the first faint traces of flames began to lick the night sky. “Oh, Holy Saint Margaret.” The children.

Catriona abandoned Namita to the care of the
sa’is
and rode for everything she was worth, leaving the
ayah
and the grooms, and Tanvir Singh far behind while the world began to burn down around her.

Chapter Nineteen

But Catriona had kept her promise. In the end she had gone back to him—fled from the damaging rumors and evil innuendo that had crept across the dark lawn as she and Alice had stumbled out of the burning house. She had gone to him with the firm and unshakable belief that he would help her.

She had taken the children in her arms and taken the sandy path along the river. She had hidden them in the dark shadows and kept them all from harm. And she had waited in the deserted encampment for what seemed like hours, fearful of moving and revealing herself, until it was clear he was the one who was not going to fulfill his promise.

It was only then, in the middle of that dark, sleepless night, that she had thought of going to the begum. And the begum had saved her. Saved them all.

And now Thomas Jellicoe told her that he would have helped her. That he had in fact gone to help her. And that fate alone had kept them apart.

But she was tired of letting fate have the upper hand.

Catriona straightened her spine and faced the Jellicoes assembled before her, in the nursery sitting room, waiting patiently—or in Thomas’s case, impatiently—for her answers. “It all comes down to Birkstead.”

“I knew it had to be him. I knew it.” Thomas looked at her, and she could see the conviction, the relief of being proved right in the set line of his mouth. “I knew it in Saharanpur when the bastard stumbled out of the residency, and I knew it again when the bloody jackal was so conveniently invalided out of India as soon as I revealed myself to the judicial committee as an Englishman and the son of the Earl Sanderson.”

“Thomas,” Viscount Jeffrey cautioned. “We need to listen to all of Miss Cates’s story before we draw any conclusions.”

Thomas looked to her. “Am I right?”

“Yes.” There was no point in denying it. “You are right.”

“Birkstead.” Thomas ground the man’s name between his teeth, as if he were learning to like the bitter taste of it. As if he’d disliked the man for years, but was finally glad of a reason to hate him.

“Yes.” Now that she had committed herself, the words came tumbling out of Catriona’s mouth as if she couldn’t spit them out fast enough. “It must be him. I can’t imagine who else it might be who would want to shoot at us. I can’t imagine that both of you should have found me purely by chance. He must have followed you.”

Thomas’s face narrowed. This was a possibility he clearly didn’t like to admit—that he might have brought the steaming plots and heated intrigues of Hind chasing after him across the cold, dark sea. “Has he never tried to—” He hesitated for the barest of moments, peering into the depth of her eyes to prepare her for what was to come. “Has he tried to kill you before?”

But she was no longer shocked. “No. Not here, in England.” Of this she was sure. She had waited and watched for Birkstead, worried and fearful that sooner or later, one way or another, he would not be able to resist playing the law’s mortal messenger.

But she had wanted it that way. She had wanted Birkstead to focus his attention—his hate and anger and fear of retribution—on her. She had promised to do so.

James seconded her assertion. “We’ve never had so much as a cross word directed against Miss Cates. That is, Miss Rowan. I do hate to think so, Thomas, but it did seem to start with your arrival.”

Thomas nodded at his brother grimly. “Agreed.”

“So what do you suggest we do now?”

“Now? We sit tight, and protect this family, while I find him, and I kill him.” He was adamant. The veneer of civilization given to him by his buttoned-up English clothes could no longer contain the savagery she had never seen in him in India. “No inquiries. No committees. No bringing to justice. Only retribution.”

“No.” Catriona could hear her horror ringing in her own voice. “You can’t mean that. You can’t mean to be just like him.”

Thomas would not relent. “I don’t mean to be just like him, Cat. I mean to see that justice is done. He has killed before, hasn’t he? You saw it in Saharanpur, otherwise he’d never still be after you.”

“No,” she said again, shaking her head. Indeed, her whole body was trembling. She wrapped her arms around her middle, as if the knowledge that she had tried to keep to herself—the knowledge she was still trying to deny—was shaking her apart. “I didn’t really see anything. It wasn’t me.”

Thomas took her in his arms. “But you did see something? You must have. Perhaps it’s something you don’t know you saw, but Birkstead thinks you did.”

“No.” She took a deep breath and let it out, firmer in her decision. “That’s not it at all. It’s that I promised. I swore an oath that I would never tell.”

“You promised Birkstead? Why in hell would you do that?”