The Duke of Shadows (14 page)

Why would the soldiers burn and murder their own? This had to be the work of the British. A breath caught in her throat. Yes. The British marching through, on their way to Delhi.

She should be relieved at this evidence that she was near her own countrymen, but instead she felt an equal terror, one that made her cling to her beleaguered horse's neck and weep soft, senseless tears. They were all the same, British and Indian alike, those men who could commit such horrible acts of violence against the innocent. She wanted none of it, none of them. She battled a brief, powerful urge to slow her horse, to drop to the soft, beckoning sand and wrap herself in its warmth. To lie there until a decision was made for her—the ultimate and most final way to avoid the bloodshed enveloping the world. But Kavita had told her to ride.

When she finally sighted a band of horses, and realized through her blurred, gritty vision that they were not British but native, she felt nothing. Relief, perhaps. She had done as told. Now it would be finished.

She pulled her horse to a walk as she approached them. For some reason the urge took her to pull herself straight, to tilt her chin up proudly. It was not in her nature to be weak, even now. That, at least, was something to be proud of.

She had laughed at them. She had laughed at Anne Marie and Mrs. Kiddell, seconds before they died.

She choked on her sob, gritting her teeth as the sepoys rode up to surround her.

"Memsahib," one of them said, so respectfully that her nerveless fingers twitched in astonishment. "Memsahib, where are you coming from?"

"Sap—Sapnagar," she stammered. Their grave demeanors, their stillness as they flanked her, made no sense. "They—they killed—"

"Memsahib," the man sighed, reaching out for her reins. She flinched, waiting for him to draw his sword, but he patted her mount's nose, lifting prematurely aged eyes to meet hers. "Do not fear. My regiment has not turned. We will escort you to the British camp."

In a daze, she let him pull her mount around and lead her into the sunset.

She felt eyes on her as she passed, whole groups of men falling silent to follow her progress down the makeshift lane. Perhaps they were staring because of her native dress. Or perhaps it was her hair, its abbreviated length perfectly evened by Kavita's maid. Likely it was simply more of the same speculation she had overheard while waiting for the sergeant. Was she a fallen woman? Had the mutineers ravished her?

She did not care what they believed. A reputation seemed the most ludicrous concept to her now. Good, bad, tarnished, destroyed—what did it matter? She was alive. So many were not.

"Hey there, miss."

She turned slowly to face the man who had addressed her. His cheeks reddened under her inspection.

"What is it?" she asked quietly.

"I'm dreadful sorry to say this, miss, I can see you've been through something or other nasty. But this here is the officer's section of the encampment, strictly no civilians allowed. Maybe I can escort you to the ladies' quarters?"

She glanced over his shoulder, pondering the tents behind him. "Who are the officers in charge?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, are you here to see one of them, ma'am?"

She hesitated as an unlikely possibility occurred to her. "Colonel Lindley wouldn't be here, would he?"

"Why, yes, he is, ma'am, that's actually his tent right in front of you there. But he's just been called out unexpectedly to make a survey of the neighboring villages. We're trying to keep law and order around Kurnaul, you see, ma'am, and we heard rumors there was trouble brewing up north. He's gone to crush it."

"How admirable," she said flatly. Was the destruction she had witnessed Marcus's work? Did that fit his definition of law and order?

"Lieutenant Ripley!" someone bellowed from nearby. "Do you want to be debriefed or not?"

The lieutenant grimaced. "Wait here just a moment, ma'am, and I'll find someone to show you back." He disappeared into one of the tents, and Emma stood there in momentary indecision. But the thought of confronting a flock of proper British memsahibs nauseated her. Shoving her doubts aside, she splashed across the muddy street and ducked inside Marcus's tent.

The flap swung shut behind her, and she held her breath, waiting to see whether someone was going to raise a hue and cry. When the squelches and muttering outside continued unabated, she backed up into the blessed stillness of the tent. Alone. And, for the time being, safe.

A small laugh escaped her. Safe.
Oh, Julian, you were wrong.

The interior of the tent was bleak. Portable desk. Chair. Inkwell. A pile of rolled maps in the corner. The bed was neatly made; Marcus always had been immaculate. She debated the merits of a short nap. But she did not want to lie on his bed, and anyway her mind was too full; it felt swollen to bursting with the things she had seen, horrors etched on her brain in the colors of scalding sunlight and blood. Her fingers clenched. Yes, drawing would keep her sane, would keep these terrors at bay.

She crossed to the desk, picking up a pen and pulling her sketchbook from the depths of her pocket. Dirt crumbled off the cover, and she stuck her hand back in her skirts to turn the pocket inside out. Assorted bits of filth and sand rained onto the floor.

She sat on the chair, pushing aside a letter written in that thin, flowing script the natives called Urdu. The script was soothing. Gentle, sloping curves, to contrast the jagged edges of her thoughts. She found herself tracing the words with her fingertips. What delight she had felt when she had first set eyes on the language, that day in the bazaar in Delhi. How long ago that seemed. Even today felt as though it had lasted an eon. Perhaps by tomorrow her hair would have turned white, and she would have lines around her eyes. Anything was possible in this country.

The script blurred before her, dancing suddenly, like the nautch girls at Sapnagar. She blinked, and the lines shifted again. Now they suggested waves, the march of the ocean. How strange. Perhaps the script was the key to it, then. The key to everything.

Alarm touched her. Her thoughts were not making sense.

She exhaled shakily and shoved the letter away. Turning to a fresh page in her drawing pad, brushing off the sand and dirt, she put pen to page. The pen jerked; a bold line streaked off the parchment, jumping down to continue along her skirt.

She shook out her trembling hand and tried again. This time the pen obeyed. It rendered along the dirty page a line worthy of any language: the curve of Anne Marie's flawless cheek.

"You been sleepin' awhile," he drawled. He had papers in his hand, and he slapped them against his thigh. "I been watchin' you."

She swallowed hard. "I was waiting for Colonel Lindley to return."

"I'm sure you was."

"I am his betrothed," she said more sharply. "He is expecting me."

His smile was slow and ugly. "You done fooled me with that one once before—you and your blackie friend the Marquess. Now I know that ain't the truth." He took a step toward her, and as she recognized him from that day in the bazaar, she heard herself whimper. "I saw you ride in with them natives. I heard what happened to you. A terrible shame. I always thought that proper ladies'd die before they was dishonored. I expect you was hopin' to die, you just didn' have the strength to do it yourself."

"You are wrong," she said, as loudly as possible.

"And if you do not back away
this instant—"

She struggled to breathe, casting her hands back behind her for a weapon. Her fingers fumbled over the sketchbook, knocking it to the floor, and he pushed her down so hard her head cracked against the ground. She moaned, her hand slipping off the desk just as it closed over a letter opener.

"It won't take long," he promised her, his mouth wet on her ear. "Just one—"

She spiked the letter opener into his temple.

He gurgled low in his throat, his eyes rolling wildly. "What—the—" His voice wobbled into distortion, and then he toppled off her, his body spasming violently. She hugged herself as she watched him die, rocked as she felt her own mind tremble, her eyes seeing instead Mrs. Kiddell's panicked face, upturned in a plea. She heard her own high laughter as she called,
"It's all right! Those are the Maharajah's men!"

Dear God.

She lunged up and raced from the tent.

He'd already seen it before. In Delhi and Meerut. Lucknow, Jhansi, Benares, Agra. Also countless smaller towns, too inconsequential to remember. He had been looking for a very long time now, and everywhere he went, the sounds of vengeance had already arrived. The steady bark of cannon fire. The creak of the noose. The shrieks that from a distance sounded neither Indian nor British—only human.

Cawnpore was too far from Sapnagar. She could not have made it here. Knowing what had happened in this place, he might have been glad for it. But it had been too long now for any gladness. Months since he'd touched her, listened to her laugh. Since she had disappeared.

Kavita said she had told her to ride away from the sun. And so he had gone east, slowly, methodically searching. First British stations. And then, retracing his steps, small villages where she might have sheltered, where someone might have taken pity on a woman m need, a woman wearing a ring of the house of Rathore. Nothing. Vanished.

This place was his last hope.

She had asked him not to leave her, hadn't she? And as she'd spoken, there had been tears in her eyes that she refused to shed. And his voice, as he'd promised her safety—he could hear it so clearly, the unforgivable fucking arrogance as he'd promised her she had nothing to fear—

"Holdensmoor! A surprise indeed!"

He looked up. Lindley was striding toward him, jaunty, cheerful even. Julian put a finger to the corner of his own eye, and then to his mouth.

"Ah?" Lindley turned to the aide at his elbow, who nodded and produced a handkerchief. "Dirty work," he said, scrubbing the blood from his face. "What can I do for you, then?"

The courteous manner was unexpected. It bumped his pulse into a rapider speed. Perhaps… "I am looking for Emmaline Martin."

Lindley, turning to hand off the handkerchief, paused. Julian studied his back, looking for any sign.

The Colonel turned, frowning. "Here? In Cawnpore?"

"Yes."

Lindley studied him. "I see. Well, I know there is bad blood between us, cousin, but to taunt me about Emmaline—" He paused, as if suddenly struck by something. "But the bad blood is all yours, of course. Indeed, how it must chill you! To walk into a camp filled with good English soldiers, baying for native blood. Does that not make you slightly
nervous,
my cousin?" His head tipped to one side. "But no, you seem quite unmoved. Remarkable!"

The chatter was making him impatient. "You haven't seen her. Or heard anything of her."

"No, and I can't imagine why you think I might have done. That is, yes, we were contracted, but the last I knew, she was in the Residency, digging in her heels and refusing to come with me. I expect she must be dead now. A pity! She was to have inherited a good deal of cash, and I might have used it. Then again, after my services here, I expect I'll be set up nicely no matter whom I wed. Perhaps even a knighthood. Do you think?"

"Aim even higher," Julian said quietly. "Try for my circles. I will keep you very close by."

Lindley laughed. "Oh dear. Is that a threat? How unwise. I
am
commanding officer of this little station, Holdensmoor. Say, I heard rumor that you were in Delhi during the assault. Is that so? Manage to protect your
darker
kin, did you?"

Go, his grandmother had told him, as he had backed away from Deven's funeral pyre, torch in hand.
You have fulfilled your duty to this family.