Flocks of birds swirled around the curving
spires of ancient Hindu temples, under whose profusely carven gateways
worshipers in flower-bright robes bathed on the stone steps leading
down to the water. The noisy bazaar also hugged the misty riverside,
a tumult of haggling, jumbled stalls and tents offering everything
from Afghan carpets to aphrodisiacs made of rhinoceros horn.
Farther away from the crowded banks, the river bustled with all
the teeming commercial activity of the British capital of India.
Monopolies long held by the East India Company had just been lifted;
there were fortunes to be made, and now it was anyone’s game.
Merchants and traders all along the docks loaded square-rigged vessels
with their goods, bound for distant worlds.
Amid all of this chaos and exuberance, a low-slung schooner docked
quietly.
A tall, formidable Englishman stood leaning at the rails with his
hands planted wide, his chiseled jaw taut. His imposing size, hawk-eyed
stillness, and the gentlemanly reserve of his London attire distinguished
him from the commotion as the grubby, barefooted sailors raced around
behind him at their tasks, dropping anchor, taking in sails.
Dark-haired, with stern, patrician features, his gray-green eyes
gleamed with intelligence as he searched the quay-side panorama
in guarded watchfulness, taking it all in, and brooding on his mission
. . .
Each year, by the end of September, when the torrential rains of
monsoon tapered off and the skies cleared, and the churning flood-waters
receded, then came the season of blood: the season of war. Even
now, the drums beat; many miles away, the armies gathered. October
had come. The drying ground would soon harden enough for caisson
wheels and cavalry charges. Soon the killing would start.
Unless he could stop it.
Looking slowly over one broad shoulder, Ian Prescott, the Marquess
of Griffith, scanned the river boats nearby, well aware that he
was being followed.
Well, nothing new in that. He had not yet glimpsed his pursuer,
but in his line of work, a man developed a sixth sense about such
things or he didn’t last long.
No matter. He was harder to kill than the average courtier, a fact
that assassins in several foreign courts had learned, to their woe.
Concealed inside his impeccably tailored clothes, he carried a
discreet arsenal of weapons; besides, the rival colonial powers
in the region could not assassinate a diplomat of his rank without
causing an international incident.
Still, it would be nice to know who was tailing him.
French? he mused. Likeliest suspects, as ever, though he could not
rule out the Dutch, much aggrieved by the recent loss of Ceylon
to the British. The Portuguese maintained a strong presence at Goa.
No doubt all three had agents out trying to learn what the British
were up to.
If the spy had been sent by the Maharajah of Janpur, well, that
was another matter, and made for a bit more unpredictable affair.
But whoever it was, if they meant to kill him, he thought they would
have tried by now.
He’d simply have to watch his back and take it as it came.
As the gangplank banged down onto the stone ghats leading up from
the water, Ian beckoned to his trio of Indian servants, stole one
last, casual glance over his shoulder, and then went ashore.
His black boots struck the gangplank hard with his every brisk stride,
small spring-bolted blades hidden inside the leather soles. His
silver-handled walking stick contained a sword, and strapped beneath
his muted olive morning coat, he wore a loaded pistol snug against
his ribs.
He climbed the ghats with his servants in tow, but paused for a
second at the top of the stairs. Facing the thronged, seething cauldron
of the bazaar, he wished he’d had more time to prepare, to
educate himself in depth on the country as he normally would on
his assignments, but they had needed him right away.
Though he was a recognized expert in conducting the sort of delicate
negotiations soon to take place, he had never been to India before--he
had been on holiday in Ceylon when he had been summoned, stretched
out on a white-powder beach and trying very hard to escape a few
private demons of his own. Trying to reason his way through or perhaps
around the emptiness that had grown so deep over the past few years,
leaving him in this inward state of isolation, hollow and numb.
But with no more success than before in resolving his carefully
concealed pain, he had been all too happy to volunteer his services
to help sort out the unpleasantness with the Maratha Empire. Until
he got his bearings, however, developed more of a feel for this
place and its people, he would have to tread with extreme care and
meet all who crossed his path with meticulous courtesy.
The worst thing any diplomat could do was to unwittingly give offense.
Fortunately, he had a general grasp of the rules and a little of
the two main languages he’d need for the mission, Bengali
and Marathi, thanks to his trusty guide and interpreter, Ravi Bhim.
For now, the bazaar loomed ahead. There was no way to go but through
it; he moved on.
The moment Ian stepped into the main aisle designated as the spice
market, a wall of scent washed over him, pungent and intoxicating.
His eyes smarted at the sharp flavors hanging thickly in the humid
air: black pepper and cloves, turmeric, mustard seed, all sold atop
wide, woven platters by robed men willing to haggle. Ian waved his
hand, declining their bargains, and pressed on.
There were sacks of cardamoms, saffron and mace; fine nutmeg by
the pound, coriander, sultry cinnamon.
He glanced behind him again and saw one of his servants dawdling.
The wide-eyed coolie, balancing one of Ian’s traveling trunks
on his bare back, had stopped to watch a snake charmer coaxing a
deadly spectacled cobra from out of its basket, enchanting the serpent
with the winding melody from his reedy pipe. Another turbaned man
played a pair of deep-voiced drums.
Their song competed with the Muslim call to prayer now echoing down
from the minarets of all the mosques across the city.
The coolie saw Ian’s raised eyebrow and blanched, hurrying
after him. Soon they were in the thick of it--close heat, body odors,
a clamor of polyglot voices, the motion of the place whirling around
him like a dervish dance. His earnest attempt to absorb everything
dissolved into a dizzying overload of sight and smell and sound.
His senses throbbed as he walked down a narrow aisle lined with
a delirious array of Eastern treasures. Kanchipuram silk so fine
it would have made his fashionable mistress back in London moan
with pleasure. Gold and silver-thread brocade, printed cotton light
as feathers; gorgeous intricate carpets; bright beads and terra
cotta animals; leather sandals, dyes and powder paints, rare cypress
furniture, and gilded figurines of multi-armed goddesses and blue-skinned
gods.
Moving through the market, Ian and his servants were carelessly
jostled by people who were as varied as the goods they had gathered
to buy and sell. Hindu ladies, rainbow-dressed and silken-scarved,
bantered back and forth, their smiles beaming--the married ones
marked by the distinctive red dot, or bindi on their foreheads.
English officers in uniform rode past the perimeter astride prancing
horses worthy of Tattersall’s. Buddhist monks in saffron robes
strolled by with shaved heads, almond-shaped eyes, and radiant smiles
as though they hadn’t a care in the world.
Certainly the peace-loving monks had no idea that another war was
brewing.
A small group of Muslim ladies covered in black from head to toe
had stopped to browse at a jeweler’s stall, and one was leading
her child by the hand, a small boy.
The tot was eating a mango, and Ian smiled faintly, for the youngster
looked about five years old, the same age as his son.
Ignoring a vague pang in the region of his heart, he looked around
to find a trinket for his heir before his mission got underway in
earnest. This was a ritual he always observed no matter where in
the world his work took him. There might not be time later. He chose
an elephant of carved teakwood and approached the artisan.
“Koto?” Though he was never one to haggle unless the
fate of nations hung in the balance, not to protest the first stated
price would have practically been an insult to the trader.
And so Ian haggled to show his respect.
Ravi looked on in amusement. With the purchase finally made and
good-natured laughter all around at the English lord’s attempt
to speak Bengali, Ian handed off the toy to his servant, gave the
trader a namaste, and then led his small band onward through the
market.
At last they came out on the other side, where he sent Ravi off
to find a carriage to take him to the Akbar Grand Hotel, which Governor
Lord Hastings had recommended in his friendly letter accompanying
the communique explaining his assignment.
He dispatched one of the coolies to Government House to let Lord
Hastings know he had arrived and would call on him as soon as he
had procured lodgings. From there, he would be briefed, and would
finally get to meet the two distinguished cavalry officers whom
he had specifically requested for his diplomatic detail--Gabriel
and Derek Knight.
Though he had not yet met this transplanted branch of the Knight
clan, ties between their two powerful families ran deep.
Back in London, Ian’s closest friend since boyhood and strongest
political ally was the head of their clan--Robert Knight, the Duke
of Hawkscliffe, or “Hawk” to him.
Gabriel and Derek were Hawk’s first cousins; quality was in
the blood. Born and raised in India, moreover, the brothers knew
the ground and the people better than he did.
His show of preferment by selecting them for this mission, in turn,
would help to advance their already stellar military careers. For
his part, if he had to go into a hostile foreign court, he wanted
men around him he could trust.
Feeling eyes upon him again, and increasingly certain that someone
was watching his every move, Ian glanced casually behind him, hoping
to spot the spy, but instead, he went motionless at the awesome
sight of a great Bengal tiger being carried through the market in
a cage.
Suspended on long poles, the cage rested on the sun-browned shoulders
of no less than eight porters. The creature must have weighed five
hundred pounds.
As they carried it toward the river to be shipped, no doubt, to
some European nobleman's menagerie, the beast let out a roar, terrifying
its crowd of turbaned handlers, and trying to slash at them through
the wooden bars of its cage.
The coolies cried out and nearly dropped the cage in their rush
to clear the area. But when their overseer verified that the wooden
cage would indeed hold and waved them back to work, the men let
out nervous laughter and returned with all due caution, warily lifting
the poles up onto their shoulders again.
Ian watched, riveted by the wild animal, and somehow wounded by
its fate.
Of course, if it were free, it would have destroyed everything in
its path.
Some beasts were better off caged.
Didn’t he know it, too.
“Sahib!”
He turned as Ravi came hurrying back bringing another Indian fellow
with him--a footman of the aristocracy, in white wig and lavender
livery. Ravi gestured to a luxurious black coach with four snow-white
horses waiting across the street. A groom in matching livery held
the leader’s head.
“Sahib, this man says he was given orders to pick you up when
you arrived.”
Ian eyed the footman cautiously. “You are the Governor’s
man?”
“No, my lord.” He bowed. “I was sent from the
home of Lord Arthur Knight.”
“Lord Arthur?” he exclaimed. Derek and Gabriel’s
father.
“Yes, sir. I have been ordered here every day for a fortnight
to greet you. I was told to give you this.” Reaching into
his showy waistcoat, the footman withdrew a folded piece of creamy
linen paper, which he presented to him.
It seemed that Ian’s suspicious reaction had already been
anticipated, for the note had been sealed with a red wax wafer firmly
stamped with the family crest of the house of the Dukes of Hawkscliffe.
The moment he saw the authentic Hawkscliffe insignia, he nearly
grinned. He knew this coat of arms as well as he knew his own. He
might be a stranger in a strange land here, but the familiar sight
went a long way toward making him feel at home.
Lord Arthur was Hawk’s uncle, younger brother to the previous
Duke. A bit of a carousing rake in his youth, as younger sons of
the nobility tended to be, Lord Arthur had been a great favorite
with all the lads before he had set out some thirty years ago to
make his fortune with the East India Company.
Ian had promised to deliver salutations from the London branch of
the Knight family to the scion that had taken root here, but he
had not expected to make a social call until he had gotten settled
in at the hotel and had taken care of preparations ahead of his
mission.
In any case, short of Lord Arthur coming to greet him in person,
the authentic Hawkscliffe crest was the best proof he could ask
for to ensure that the footman’s story was genuine and not
the cunning trap of some enemy agent.
With that, he cracked the seal and read.
Well, well, well, he mused. Georgiana. Lord Arthur’s daughter.
He had been trying hard not to think about her.
It wasn’t easy, considering he had been hearing intriguing
stories about the young lady from as far away as the Bay of Bengal--not
just of her beauty, but of her good deeds.
Though she was a leading belle of British society in Calcutta, with
innumerable friends and more suitors than she could count, the bulk
of her considerable energy, it seemed, went into her charitable
work for the good of the Indian people.
Rumors of an orphanage she had endowed with the proceeds of her
father’s East India Company fortune were just the beginning.
There was also an alms-house for old ladies, an animal hospital
in the Jain tradition, a shrine she had prevented from being destroyed
to make way for a new British road, and, of course, she was a major
patroness of the Orientalist Society, funding the livelihoods of
scholars who were dedicated to the study of ancient Sanskrit texts
and all branches of Eastern thought and art.
The villagers a hundred miles away had spoken Georgiana’s
name in a reverent hush, as though invoking some divine or sainted
being. But having known all about the shocking exploits of the first
Georgiana, Hawk’s mother, for whom she had been named, Ian
had his doubts.
Knight women were pure trouble, born and bred for scandal.
And yet somehow he could hardly wait to have a look at her.
There had been talk for generations, after all, of a desire to unite
their two powerful clans, the Hawkscliffe dukes and the Griffith
marquesses. But it did not signify. His interest was academic only:
The grand alliance would have to wait for a new generation. Perhaps
one day his boy, Matthew, could marry Hawk and Bel’s new baby
daughter. Himself, his married days were over.
He had been married once. Once had been enough.
The footman looked at him expectantly, but Ian hesitated. If he
was being watched by foreign powers, he did not want to bring danger
to his friends. On the other hand, with two military officers in
the house besides himself--Gabriel and Derek, waiting to join him
on his mission--any spy would think twice about coming too close.
Besides, old Lord Arthur might have something useful to tell him
about the renowned Maharajah of Janpur.
His mind made up, Ian tucked the note into his breast pocket, nodding
to the footman. “Thank you. I will come.”
“This way, my lord.” But as the servant began to show
him over to the carriage, a slight shift in the wind suddenly carried
the strong scent of smoke to his nostrils.
Something was burning.
He turned to look and saw a change in the crowd’s shifting
currents; the people in the market were surging toward the west.
“What’s happened?” he asked quickly, fearing a
fire had broken out somewhere in the cluttered bazaar.
His instant reaction was to begin looking for a way to stop pandemonium
from breaking out, fearing people would get trampled if there was
not a swift and orderly evacuation of the old tinderbox of a market.
Ravi halted a passerby and asked what was happening, then turned
back to Ian in relief. “It is only a funeral, sahib. Some
local dignitary has died and is being cremated. His ashes will be
scattered on the river.”
“Ah.” Relief washed through him, and he gave his servant
a cautious nod.
“Very well, then. Let us be on our--” His words broke
off abruptly, for at that moment, without warning, a rider came
barreling into the market.
Astride a magnificent white Arabian mare, she came tearing through
the bazaar, careening nimbly through the crowded zigzag aisles,
and leaving a tenfold chaos in her wake.
Chickens went flying, vendors cursed, a tower of handwoven baskets
crashed down knocking over a fruit stand, and people flung themselves
out of her way.
Ian stared.
In a cloud of weightless silk swathed exotically around her lithe
figure, the woman leaned low to murmur in her horse’s ear.
Above the diaphanous veil that concealed the lower half of her face,
her cobalt eyes were fierce.
Blue.
Blue eyes?
As he watched in disbelief, she leaped her white horse over a passing
oxcart--and then she was gone, racing off in the direction of the
fire.
Ravi and he exchanged a baffled look.
He and Ravi and both coolies, along with the Knight family’s
footman stared after the girl for a moment in dumbfounded shock.
There was only one sort of woman he knew who could cause that much
chaos that quickly.
Aye, in an instant, somehow, deep in his bones, Ian knew exactly
who she was.
The footman had turned pale and now started forward in recognition,
but Ian stopped him with a sardonic murmur.
“I’ll handle this.” With a cautionary nod at Ravi,
he walked away from the servants, and followed irresistibly in the
direction the young hellion had gone.
#
Georgiana Knight urged her fleet-footed mare onward, dodging rickshaws,
pedestrians, and sacred cows that loitered in the road until, at
last, she reached the riverside, where a gathering of some fifty
people surrounded the funeral pyre.
Towering flames licked at the azure sky.
The sickening, charred-meat smell made her stomach turn, but she
would not be deterred. A young girl’s life depended on this
rescue--more than that, a dear friend.
The relatives of old, dead Balaram now noticed Georgie’s approach.
Most of them still milled about the funeral pyre, sending up all
the spectacle of mourning for the respected town elder, wailing
and waving their hands, but a few watched her uneasily as she arrived
at the edge of the crowd.
They knew the British detested this holy rite, and she quite expected
that at least a few of them would try to stop her.
The self-immolation of a virtuous and beautiful widow not only pleased
the gods, but brought great honor to her family and that of her
husband. Burning herself alive in a ritual suicide just to honor
her husband’s name!
There could be no more perfect illustration, Georgie thought, of
everything that was wrong with the whole institution of marriage--in
both their cultures. It gave all the power to the man. And, good
heavens, the way females were treated in the East was enough to
put any sane woman off marriage entirely.
A cheeky aphorism from the writings of her famous aunt, Georgiana
Knight, the Duchess of Hawkscliffe, for whom she had been named,
trailed through her mind: Wedlock is a padlock. Well, today, she
would not allow it to become a death sentence, too.
Then she spotted dear, gentle Lakshmi standing before the blaze
in her red silk wedding robes, heavily encrusted with gold and pearls.
The raven-haired beauty was staring at the fire as though contemplating
what agony she would know before oblivion.
Absorbed in her thoughts and no doubt lightly drugged with betel,
the dead man’s bride was not yet aware of her British friend’s
arrival.
Angered by the smoke, the white mare reared up a bit on her hind
legs as Georgie pulled her mount to a halt at the fringe of the
funeral crowd; she gave her horse a firm command to stay and leaped
down from the saddle.
Murmurs rippled around her as she stalked through the gathering,
her sandals landing firmly in the dust with each long, limber stride.
The tiny silver bells on her anklet tinkled eerily in the hush.
Everyone knew the two girls had played together since childhood,
so perhaps the relatives thought she had merely come to say her
last goodbyes. Lakshmi’s family were wealthy Hindus of the
Brahmin caste, on a par with the aristocratic rank of Georgie’s
clan in their respective cultures.
They let her pass.
Behind her, she now heard Adley’s rather noisy arrival at
the edge of the crowd, tumbling along after her, as always, but
Balaram’s relatives did not let the foppish young nabob any
closer. She could hear him sputtering with indignation.
“I say! This will not do! Miss Knight! I am here--should you
need me!”
She did not look back, focused on the dire scene before her.
The massive bonfire had already turned old Balaram’s bones
to dust when Lakshmi looked up from the inferno and saw Georgie
marching toward her.
Her friend faltered slightly at Georgie’s infuriated stare.
Reaching Lakshmi’s side, Georgie gripped her shoulders with
a no-nonsense look and turned her friend away from the flames. “You
are out of your mind if you think I’m going to let you go
through with this--ridiculous superstition!” she scolded in
a hushed tone. “It’s savage and cruel!”
“What choice do I have?” Lakshmi’s delicate voice
quavered. “I cannot dishonor my family.”
“You most certainly can! It was bad enough they made you marry
the old goat, but to die for him, as well? It is obscene!”
she whispered furiously.
“But it isn’t dying, really,” Lakshmi insisted
half-heartedly. “I’ll go straight to heaven, and w-when
the people pray to me, I’ll grant their wishes.”
“Oh, Lakshmi. What have they done to you?” Had the three
years her friend had spent living in the strict marital seclusion
of purdah robbed her of all common sense? “We both know you
know better than this!”
“Oh, Georgie--my life will be too awful if I live!”
she choked out, her big brown eyes filling with tears. “You
know how it is for widows. I’ll be an outcast! People will
flee me and say I’m bad luck! I’ll be a burden on my
family, a-and I’ll have to shave off all my hair,” she
added woefully, for Lakshmi’s night-black hair was her crowning
glory, hanging all the way to her waist. “What’s the
point?” she said in utter misery. “My life is over.
It’s forbidden that I should ever remarry. All my childhood
happiness came to an end the day of my wedding, and it will not
return, so I might as well be dead.”
“You don’t know that. No one knows the future. My dear,
you mustn’t give up.” Georgie hugged her for a second
with angry tears in her eyes, too.
“Look,” she resumed in as soothing a tone as possible,
“don’t try to think about the whole rest of your life
right now. Just think about this moment, and the next.”
Georgie coughed a little from the smoke, but willed away the pain
that flared up in her chest, and ignored the fear as the smoke began
snaking through her lungs, agitating her old ailment.
“Think of all the reasons left to live,” she continued,
“all the fun we have? Throwing powder paints on people at
the Holi festival? Playing pranks on Adley? If you die, who will
finish teaching me the Odissi dances? If you die, oh, my dearest,
you can never dance again.”
Lakshmi let out a strangled sob, barely audible above the fire’s
roar.
“Now, you listen to me,” Georgie ordered softly. “You
won’t be a burden on your family, because--” A painful
spasm in her lungs halted her words all of a sudden. She clutched
her chest, alarmed. She hadn’t felt that harsh constriction
in her lungs since she was a child. It was worsening. She cleared
her throat but it was no use; she had begun to wheeze.
“What’s wrong?” Lakshmi searched her face.
“Nothing,” she lied impatiently, determined to save
Lakshmi or die trying. “You won’t be a burden on your
family,” she repeated, refusing to yield to panic, “because
you will come and live at my house. Papa won’t mind. He’s
never home anyway, and as for my brothers, well, Gabriel and Derek
will never forgive you if you go through with this--and they’ll
never forgive me if I fail to stop you.”
When she coughed again and then muttered a curse, Lakshmi realized
for certain what was wrong. “It’s your asthma, isn’t
it?”
“Don’t worry about me!” she retorted, but concern
for Georgie was now rousing Lakshmi out of her trance of despair.
“Gigi, you can hardly breathe,” she insisted, using
her childhood nickname.
“You have to get away from this fire!”
Georgie fixed her with a meaningful stare: “So do you,”
she replied in an urgent whisper. “Be brave, my dear. Be brave
enough to stand up to them, and live.”
“Miss Knight, you must let her go now,” Lakshmi’s
father interrupted. “It is time. Hurry, Lakshmi, while the
fire is still hot enough.”
A shower of sparks popped violently and flew toward Lakshmi in a
plume, as though old Balaram himself were reaching out from the
depths of the fire, trying to grab the poor girl and drag her down
with him to her doom. Lakshmi glanced from her sire back to Georgie,
sudden panic in her eyes. “Help me,” she whispered.
“Put more wood on the fire!” one of the kinsmen ordered
a nearby servant.
Georgie’s heart pounded. “Of course I will. That’s
why I’m here. Come. Link arms with me. Let’s get you
out of here.” Before your relatives make you go through with
it whether you want to or not. Pressuring her to brink of this ritual
suicide was one thing, but would they resort to murder?
She glanced around warily, knowing this danger was certainly possible.
“Everything’s going to be all right, I promise. Come,
now. Let’s go.” Holding onto her friend protectively,
Georgie drew her away from the inferno.
At once, the dead man’s relatives sent up a clamor of protest
all around them, yelling at the girls; in an instant, they were
surrounded by a sea of angry brown faces.
A few seized the girls’ arms, trying to separate them.
“Leave her alone!” Georgie shouted, shoving them away,
but in their eyes, this was completely unacceptable.
The brother of the dead man came over and gripped Lakshmi’s
other arm, rebuking her in Bengali, reminding her of her sacred
duty, and trying to drag her back toward the fire, as though he
would throw them both forcibly into the blaze before he would see
the late family patriarch dishonored.
“Let go of her!” Georgie pushed the man away with one
arm and held fast to Lakshmi with the other. “Stay back! I’m
not going to let you murder her!”
“Ungrateful daughter! Do not give in to this foreigner’s
meddling! How dare you shame our family?”
“Father, please!” Lakshmi wailed, struggling against
her kin, jarred this way and that in the tug of war over her, but
when the men began steadily pulling both girls back toward the fire,
terror came into her large brown eyes. Now instinct took over, and
the girl fought for her life.
Georgie was having trouble drawing a simple breath, but she held
onto her friend with both arms, sparing only a glance over her shoulder.
“Adley!”
“I am here, Miss Knight! Hold on, hold on!”
It was only a minute or two, but it felt like an eternity before
her faithful, flaxen-haired suitor came barging into their midst
astride his fine chestnut gelding, leading Georgie’s white
mare by the reins.
The tall stamping horses helped stave off the mob. Georgie pushed
Lakshmi up into the saddle behind Adley.
To her family’s fury, the Indian girl wrapped her arms around
the Englishman’s slim waist.
“Take her to my house! Go!” Georgie urged them, but
Adley hesitated, eyeing the hostile crowd in doubt. “I’ll
be right behind you!” She slapped the gelding on the rump
to get them moving before the situation turned any uglier.
In the next moment, Georgie sprang up onto her horse’s back.
The white mare tossed her head, but one of Lakshmi’s kinsman
grabbed the bridle and would not let go, excoriating Georgie as
a meddler, a pagan, and a few even less savory epithets.
Well, the world had called her famous aunt worse, she thought in
defiance.
“Let go of my horse!”
They were closing in, rioting around her, and as her fear climbed,
her difficulty breathing increased.
“Would you like to go into the fire in her place?” the
infuriated brother-in-law yelled.
“Don’t--touch me!” As she fought them, she could
hear her heartbeat thundering in her ears, her breath rasping in
her throat, and remembered this, the long-forgotten, inward sound
of panic.
She had come to know it well as a child. Unable to gulp enough air
into her lungs, a wave of lightheadedness washed over her, terrifying
her with the fear of passing out and falling from her horse into
the irate crowd.
Suddenly, a towering Englishman exploded into their midst, driving
the dead man’s relatives back.
“Stand down!” he roared, thrusting one arm out to hold
the men at bay, and blocking the others from getting at her with
nothing more than a walking stick.
Georgie’s eyes widened.
The mob fell back before his furious commands for order, backing
away from him as though a tiger had gotten loose in the market.
As she regained her balance in the saddle, her stunned gaze flashed
over the magnificent interloper--all six-feet-plus of him--lingering
briefly on the sweeping breadth of his shoulders and the lean cut
of his waist. Moving with athletic elegance, he was crisp and formidable--lordly--from
his sleek Titus haircut to his gleaming black boots. In terms of
solid, unsmiling mass, the man was two of Adley, with none of the
foppish flamboyance.
In her heart, Georgie knew him at once--not because of his fine
London clothes, nor even because she had been expecting his arrival
any day now at the nearby docks.
She knew he was Lord Griffith because he did not draw a weapon on
these unarmed people.
A man like him didn’t have to.
The famed marquess wielded more force with his aura and his eyes
than other men commanded with a pistol.
It seemed her illustrious guest had finally arrived.
From the first second, she was more impressed than she liked to
admit.
Somehow, in short order, he had begun single-handedly bringing the
riot under control. Deliberately creating a distraction, he had
gallantly drawn the crowd’s fury away from her to himself,
so that, at last, she could take a few seconds to try to breathe.
But she knew they had to get out of here--both of them. At any moment,
the whole thing could erupt in violence.
When he threw her a piercing glance full of question--Are you all
right?--she suddenly forgot to exhale, never mind the asthma.
Good heavens, he was easy on the eyes!
Having proudly doted on her two darling brothers all her life, a
handsome face did not usually impress her. But in the midst of the
fray, the diplomat’s striking good looks made her blink.
Some of the local men now recovered their courage and moved toward
him again, yelling at him in various dialects with renewed pugnacity,
and wagging their fingers in his face. At any second now, it was
sure to come to blows.
His glower tamed them briefly when he looked back at them in warning,
but the angry Hindus were doing their best to shout down his ever-so-reasonably-toned
commands for calm.
Steadying her horse, Georgie finally managed to take a decent breath,
though it burned all the way down into her chest.
She edged her mare closer toward him. “Lord Griffith, I presume?”
she greeted him in a tone that strove for at least a show of levity.
Her newfound ally looked over at her with a strange mix of surprise
and exasperation--then he watched the crowd again distrustfully.
Rather in spite of himself, the stern line of his mouth crooked
in a saturnine half smile. “I got your note.”
“Care to make a timely egress?”
“Delighted.”
He turned his back on the mob just for a moment and swung up behind
her like a born horseman.
Large, lordly hands encased in tan kid gloves reached past her waist.
“Better let me take the reins.”
She snorted. Men! “It’s my horse, and you don’t
know the way. Hold on.” Shoving away one of Lakshmi’s
in-laws, Georgie finally managed to wheel her mare around.
At last, her powerful horse broke free of the crowd, and, with her
newfound ally riding behind her like a hard wall of warm, male muscle
at her back, they went racing homeward.
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