The Betrayal of the Blood Lily (36 page)

The only one of those qualifications Penelope fit was that she was female.

Yet, there it was. And, for all his good resolutions, he had hurt her last night and he didn’t know how to put it right.

“That was a damned fine shot last night,” he said awkwardly, trotting along beside her. Compliments, his father always swore. A sure way to any woman’s bed. Not that her bed was his goal, of course. “Taking down that cobra.”

If Penelope was softened, she didn’t show it. “It took you long enough to acknowledge it.”

That was truer than she knew.

“You were too busy complimenting yourself to let me get a word in,” said Alex bracingly.

“If I don’t, who will?” She had meant it to be flippant, but didn’t quite carry it off. Penelope looked away, gesturing at random at the passing fields. “This landscape reminds me of the Highlands, all craggy, with those bursts of green.”

“The Highlands?” Alex, having never been, looked skeptically around them. It still looked like Hyderabad to him. “I shouldn’t think they have many mangos there. Or banyan trees.”

“Haven’t you been? I thought your father was Scottish.”

“At a remove,” said Alex. He grinned reminiscently. “Although he can muster a fairly convincing brogue when he’s in his cups. And he does insist on singing the most appalling collection of sentimental Scottish ballads at the slightest provocation.”

“I shall remember that,” said Penelope, and Alex turned his mind away from the thought that it was highly unlikely his father and Penelope should ever cross paths again.

Why should they, after all? he asked himself harshly. No matter how he might feel about her—and he very carefully shied away from naming that feeling—they were from different worlds, he and Penelope, and they would return to them.

Eventually.

But that eventually would come no matter how far away it might feel now, in the no-man’s-land of the back roads of the Deccan. Penelope came from title, wealth, privilege. He came from a long line of charming scoundrels, outlaws in all but name. There were Reids dot-ting the English-speaking world, adventurers, wanderers, gamblers. Dreamers. In Alex, that had all been tempered by the stern strain on his mother’s side.

At least, so he had thought. Perhaps he wasn’t quite so immune from the flighty fancies of his father’s family as he had imagined, lusting after the impossible and spinning tales designed to make it true.

“My grandparents fled Scotland after the ’45,” said Alex abruptly. “They were Jacobites. Traitors, as your side would have it.”

“Oh, so it’s my side now?” mocked Penelope. “I’ll have you know that my very own uncle was court-martialed for his part in the rising in Dublin in ’98. It was quite embarrassing for my mother. She tried to pretend she wasn’t related to him.”

Penelope’s lips curved with a malicious satisfaction that gave Alex a fair inkling as to the nature of her relationship with her mother.

“How embarrassing for your mother,” Alex said dryly. Nice to know that there were other people with treasonous siblings out there.

Jack. Another matter he didn’t want to think about. They were piling up, like sandbags at a siege.

Penelope raised an eyebrow, every inch the debutante. “Of course, Lord Edward Fitzgerald was involved in the rising, too, so there was at least
some
social cachet to it.”

Alex choked on a laugh. “Indeed?”

Penelope nodded serenely. “A grandson of the Duke of Richmond and Lennox, no less. It was the only saving grace as far as Mother was concerned.”

“She wasn’t at all concerned for her brother?”

Penelope shrugged. “As far as my mother was concerned, once her surname changed, so did her family. I never met my uncle, nor any of my cousins, for that matter. I gather there are a number of them.”

Alex had never met his cousins either—there were scads of them back in Charleston, uncles and aunts and cousins and so forth—but there had always been letters, scores of letters back and forth between his father and his father’s siblings, marking marriages, births, deaths, feuds, reconciliations, fortunes lost and won. The letters were frequently torn, crumpled, months, even years late, but still they came; just as George wrote dutifully to Lizzy, and Kat sent scathing commentary and embroidered handkerchiefs to him.

The only one left out was Jack, and that was of his own accord, not for want of attempts to drag him body and soul back into the warmth of the family circle.

“Did your family mind?” Alex asked curiously. “Your coming here?”

Penelope clearly found the question an odd one. “Why should they? My brothers scarcely noticed me when I was home. And my mother was primarily concerned that I use the opportunity to strike up an acquaintance with Lady Clive.”

It had been a wrench for his father to send his Lizzy and Kat to England two years before and just as much of a wrench to go and join them and leave Alex and George behind. He had fussed over all of their departures like a mother hen, clucking and brooding. Penelope’s picture of complete indifference was as alien to him as—well, as the rest of her London world.

It was impossible for him to imagine a world without the solid foundation of a family’s affection. No matter how far any of them roamed, that was home in the end, one another, even when they drove one another mad.

No wonder Penelope clung even to the unreliable attentions of a Lord Frederick Staines if that was all she had left behind. So much for the so-called civilized world. The thought of the household Penelope described, the emptiness of it, chilled Alex to the bone, despite the sun that was already making its presence felt as dawn gave way to morning.

Alex chose his words carefully, keeping his tone light. “I take it you’re to embroil yourself only in aristocratic treasons?”

Penelope smiled narrowly. “Precisely.”

It was definitely time to change the subject. “Have you eaten anything this morning?”

She squinted against the sun. “Not that I recall.”

Alex nodded, back on solid ground again. “We should stop now anyway, give the horses a rest.”

“And ourselves, too?” said Penelope delicately, as though trying to tease out of him an admission of weakness.

Alex grinned at her. “Yes. I don’t know about you, but I could use a soft stretch of ground and a long drink of water. It’s too damn hot to stay this long in the saddle without a break.”

Turning his horse off the road, they picked their way carefully across the uneven ground, stopping in a quiet grove shaded by mango and banyan trees. At the center of the grove sat the remains of a shrine, with Gothic arches in a cinquefoil pattern. The roof had fallen in on one side and tree branches poked through the ruined masonry, but it filled its purpose. It was quiet and shady and there was grass for the horses.

Penelope levered herself off her horse with a distinct sigh of relief.

“Sore?” asked Alex, reaching up to help her down.

“Not at all,” lied Penelope, shaking her head so briskly that she caught him a blow with the brim of her high-crowned hat. “Just hungry.”

“If you explore my saddlebags, you’ll find tiffin,” Alex suggested. His voice was hoarse from the dust of the road. He cleared it self-consciously. “And water.”

“Brilliant,” said Penelope, flashing him a smile to match. While he set their mounts to grazing, tethering them to the remains of a Gothic-looking arch, she rooted about in the bag he had tossed her. “I’m surprised you trust me to go through your things,” she said conversationally, her head bent over the bag.

“We are a team, aren’t we?” said Alex in a rallying tone. “Comrades in arms. Partners in adventure.”

Penelope shook back her hair, holding aloft one of the metal tiffin containers. “Messmates, even.”

Mate had been an unfortunate choice of words. But, then, comrade in arms wasn’t much better.

“Toss that over here,” Alex said heartily. Too heartily. Next thing, he would be pounding her on the back and calling her “matey.”

Food. That was what he needed. A nice, filling meal and then a long, uninterrupted sleep. Alone, he specified, before his unregenerate imagination could get any unfortunate ideas.

Too late.

Penelope tossed, perfectly gauging the trajectory and distance. Alex gave a brief, instinctive nod of appreciation as he caught the tin neatly between his hands.

Penelope ducked her head back over the saddlebag, and began industriously piling up a small stack of metal containers on the blanket Alex had spread out across the ground. “What are you feeding us?” she demanded.

Alex passed her the opened tin. Penelope stuck her index finger in, conveying a whopping fingerful to her mouth.

“Mmm, goo,” she said, making enthusiastic sucking noises.

“Aubergines,” Alex corrected, shifting uncomfortably. Utensils. He ought to have thought of utensils. Who knew that the omission would cause such pain? “There should be spoons at the bottom of the saddlebag.”

He sounded, he thought with disgust, like someone’s governess, prim and starchy. Although as far as he knew, it would be anatomically impossible for any governess worthy of the name to be suffering the precise problem he was suffering at this moment.

Fortunately, Penelope chose that moment to dig back into the saddlebag, giving Alex a much-needed moment to compose himself, before triumphantly producing two somewhat battered spoons and one fork. She tossed them onto the blanket before peering back into the saddlebag. “Am I to take out all of this, or must we husband our resources?”

“We should be able to buy our food going forward,” said Alex, busying himself opening a second container. He managed a tired grin. “Failing that, you can shoot it.”

“I hope you like the taste of cobra,” said Penelope blandly. “It’s my specialty.”

“If you shoot it,” Alex promised extravagantly, “I can cook it.”

They dug into their food with more hunger than ceremony. It was pleasant in the shade. Peaceful. The leaves of an overhanging banyan tree cast restful shadows across the blanket. Around the side of the shrine, Alex could hear the gentle whifflings and slurping noises as the horses grazed, taking their own nourishment as their owners ate theirs.

Cleaning off her spoon with a lick of her tongue, Penelope wiped it carelessly on the side of her habit before dropping it back in the saddlebag.

“How long, do you think, before we get to Berar?”

“We could get there fairly expeditiously,” said Alex, cleaning his own spoon far more meticulously with a clean square of cloth. “Traveling as we have.” Penelope preened at the implicit compliment. “I imagine your . . . Lord Frederick and his friends will be traveling far more slowly. The grooms told me they were going in a proper procession, elephants and all.”

“And stopping for leisurely meals, too, no doubt, knowing Freddy,” said Penelope, leaning back on her elbows to squint up at the shifting canopy of leaves overhead. “Afternoon naps, even.”

“I wouldn’t mind one of those,” admitted Alex ruefully, rubbing a hand against the new growth of his chin. There had been no time for sleeping or for shaving. The bristle of new beard was already beginning to shadow chin and jaw in physical demonstration of how long it had been since he had last woken up in his own bed, with his own shaving kit. He didn’t want to count the hours. It would only make him more tired.

Penelope put out a finger to lightly brush the bristles on his jaw.

“You must be exhausted,” she said, tracing her way up along the side of his lips.

Catching her hand, Alex lifted it to his lips, pressing a kiss against the palm.

Alex flushed, dropping her hand. “I’m sorry,” he said hastily. “I didn’t—”

Leaning forward, Penelope silenced him with a kiss. If he had any objections, he didn’t voice them. It would have been hard for him to do so. His mouth and hands were otherwise occupied. He tasted of stewed aubergine, with a slight hint of cloves. Mmm, tasty, thought Penelope, and enthusiastically gave herself up to osculation and aubergine.

Alex’s hands remained for just a moment too long on her elbows before he regretfully withdrew.

“Wait,” said Penelope laughingly, as he drew back, away from her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

He raised an eyebrow. “A safe distance away.”

His tone was light, but she could tell he meant it. Penelope sat up straighter, dragging her skirts close around her knees. “To stop me from attacking you, I wager,” she said acidly, feeling the sting of his words like lemon juice on an open cut. Poor, beleaguered man, pursued by the relentless advances of an amorous matron. She doubted anyone would feel sorry for him.

“Change the pronouns around and you’ll have it right,” he said wryly. “You can’t think, after all this time, that I don’t want you—”

“You give a convincing impression of it,” grumbled Penelope.