Forbidden Jewel of India

He nodded. ‘But we cannot refuse hospitality and I cannot give them the money I need to get you home.’

Home? Hardly, she thought. But there were aspects of it she could exploit. ‘I will have my father send them a cow in calf.’

‘A what? How the devil do you expect Sir George to transport a pregnant cow halfway across Rajasthan?’

She shrugged and his big hands slid up and down her arms, trailing shivers in their wake. ‘Your wonderful East India Company can do anything. No doubt someone will work it out if the important Sir George Laurens commands it.’

His long fingers tightened, banding her upper arms. ‘What has put the vinegar on your tongue this morning, Anusha? I had hoped that female company, food, a good night’s sleep would put you in a better mood.’

‘Nothing is wrong with my mood. You had best look to your hair—it is dry and the wind is tangling it.’ As she spoke it blew across his face and he let go with one hand to swipe at it. ‘Oh, leave it to me.’ A strand had tangled in his eyelashes which were thick, and far too long, in her opinion. They hid his feelings all too well when he chose to lower them. ‘Stand still.’

Nick did as she asked, uncharacteristically obliging, while she reached up and brushed the hair from his face, caught the final strands between finger and thumb, then pushed it back to the sides of his face with her palms. ‘Where is the cord to tie it?’

‘In my pocket.’ He rummaged while she stood there and tried not to think about the strong bones of jaw and cheek, the way his hair felt like raw silk, the faint prickle of stubble on cheeks that had doubtless been shaved hurriedly in cold water. They were standing very close, her face tipped up to his so she could see what she was doing. If she slid her hands into his hair, took half a step closer and he bent his head...

‘Got it. You can let go now.’ There were traces of colour over his cheekbones when she lifted her hands and stepped back. Warmth from her skin—or was her closeness responsible for it? Surely not—Nick had managed to control any amorous instincts she might provoke with unflattering ease so far.

‘Say your goodbyes, we are going now.’ He turned on his heel with the precision of a soldier and strode off to the headman’s hut. Anusha glared after him, then caught Vahini’s sympathetic gaze. The other woman rolled her eyes and lifted her hands, palms up. The gesture needed no words. Men!

By the time she had made her farewells Nick was mounted, his hair hidden beneath a turban again. ‘Come on, we did not get up at dawn in order to linger here until the sun was hot.’

That was something she recalled from her days living in her father’s house—the European obsession with punctuality and time. There was one clock in the palace in Kalatwah, and a man who carefully wound it, but no one looked at it for the time, only enjoyed the wonderful whirling works and the chimes. What did a minute, or thirty, matter? The sun was guide enough to the routines of the day.

The boys ran with them for half a mile, the dogs barking at their heels, jaunty tails curled over their backs. When their followers fell back Nick raised a hand in salute and kicked Pavan into a canter. Anusha looked back, but they had been swallowed up by the rolling landscape and she and Nick were alone again.

* * *

‘You never showed me how to load a musket,’ Anusha

said when Nick brought down some hares for their supper the next day.

‘No more I did. We got distracted talking of my coming to India, if I recall.’

And about my father rejecting Mata and me and that woman he called his wife coming to take our place. Anusha schooled her face to show none of her thoughts. ‘That is so. You will show me now?’

‘Very well.’ He tied the hares to the saddle bow and rested all three muskets against a tree. ‘I will do this one, you follow what I am doing with one of the others. You take a cartridge, like so.’ She fished one out of the pouch. ‘And bite the end off.’ Anusha grimaced at the bitter taste of the black powder. ‘No, don’t swallow it, spit if you have to. Tip a little into the pan, like this. Lower the hammer—don’t bang it down!—then tip the rest down the barrel with the bullet and the wad and pull out the ramrod.’

He waited patiently while she struggled to pull out the long rod, her hands ending up over her head before she found she could stand on a rock for the extra height. ‘And ram down the charge. Take out the ramrod—unless you have run out of bullets and want to spear the enemy—put it back. There, you have loaded a musket.’