The Sandalwood Princess

She looked up. Miss Cavencourt’s method of composing her thoughts, he’d learned, was to discompose her coiffure. Over and over again, while she worked, her nervous fingers would rake back her hair, heedlessly loosening pins and steadily reducing her businesslike chignon to a wanton tangle of coffee-coloured tresses.

Her butler’s hands itched to make all tidy and efficient again, so that he might view her coolly as a professional problem. At present, unfortunately, she presented another sort of riddle – an old one, which lie was strongly tempted to solve in the time-honoured manner of his gender.

When he’d first arrived, seduction was the very last thing on his mind. In a matter of weeks, it had relentlessly thrust its way forward again. Occasionally, it did reach first place, whence he found it increasingly difficult to dislodge.

“I think it’s better this way,” she said. “The fire is too cozy and inviting, and the warmth would probably make me drowsy. I find it hard enough to concentrate as it is.”

Philip told himself he experienced not the least difficulty concentrating. If she appeared a lonely waif, sadly in want of someone to take her in hand, that was not his problem. He didn’t care if her aristocratic nose turned red and her fingers blue with cold. She could freeze if she liked. It was nothing to him.

He removed the tray from the small table by the fire and carried it to the large one where she worked. Finding no clear surface space available, Philip simply set the entire tray upon the manuscript page before her.

“Mr. Brentick, I was working on that!”

“Yes, miss,” he said. “I discerned no other method of persuading you to stop.”

Her amber eyes lit with annoyance. “Does this not strike you as a shade overbearing? To drop the entire tray under my nose?”

“You ate nothing at midday,” he said. “If I bring back another untouched tray, Padji will commence to weeping, and that inevitably throws Mrs. Swanslow into one of her spasms. Then Jane, in sympathy, will go off in one of her fits. We are of tender sensibilities belowstairs. When the mistress neglects her tea, we are inconsolable, and consequently, break out in violence. I realise your work has precedence over such mundane matters as rest and nourishment, miss. Regrettably, the rest of the staff lack my philosophical detachment. What are we two,” he concluded, sadly shaking his head, “against so many?”

“We two, indeed,” she said with a sniff as she watched him pour. “I can see whose side you are on.”

He handed her the cup. “As I understand it, a butler’s primary aim in life is the maintenance of domestic order and peace. It wants a firm hand to sustain the battle against chaos,” he said, with a meaningful glance at the disaster representing Miss Cavencourt’s literary masterpiece.

Ink-spattered pages lay strewn about in gay abandon. Upon table and floor scores of books – most with bits of paper sticking from their pages – stood in forlorn heaps.

She followed his gaze and flushed. “I am not very organised, I’m afraid,” she said.

She was not organised at all. Her working methods were as tumbled and disordered as her hair. Ink smudged her fingers. He observed a dark smudge between her fine eyebrows. He wanted to rub it away with his thumb. He wanted to repair her hair. Then she looked up, and the defensive embarrassment in her countenance made him want more than anything else to kiss her.

“Yours is a creative soul,” he said, manfully ignoring the patchouli scent teasing his nostrils. “Neatness and organisation want a more pedestrian intelligence.”

“I suppose that is a kind way of telling me I’m addled,” she muttered.

“No, miss. I was about to provide an unanswerable argument for your acquiring a secretary’s services.”

“Of course I need a secretary,” she said indignantly. “I’m not that addled, Mr. Brentick. Naturally, the idea occurred to me. But you forget that many of the works I consult are in Sanskrit, and the rani’s notes are all in Hindustani. I should have to scour the entire kingdom for the kind of secretary I need, though it’s far more likely he or she lives in India. Furthermore, by the time I did find this paragon, I might have already finished the book, even in my chaotic manner.”

He sighed and took up her copy of the Bbagavad-Gita.

“There never was a time when I was not,” he translated, “nor thou, nor these princes were not; there never will be a time when we shall cease to be.”

“Oh, dear,” she murmured.

He looked at her and grinned.

Mr. Brentick assumed the role of secretary in the same quietly efficient manner he’d assumed every other responsibility connected with his employer. The following morning, he accompanied her to the library, where he devised a system for organising her notes. Then he collected the reference works she’d need that day, placed markers in the appropriate pages, and arranged them neatly within easy reach.

He remained with her until noon, reviewing what she’d written previously, and making notes. He stood by patiently to answer every question, fetch book or papers, mend quills, and clean up ink spills. In that curious way he had, he made himself invisible, for the most part, though he became visible the instant she needed him. Every morning thereafter he spent in the same fashion.

Mrs. Gales joined them at the outset. Invisibility, she soon found, was not nearly so much to her liking as it was to the butler’s, and the mornings passed slowly indeed, though she had her needlework to keep her busy.

One morning, after a week of this quiet chaperonage, Mrs. Gales rose from her usual seat by the fire and, quite unnoticed, left the room, rubbing her aching head. She met up with Bella in the hallway, and frowned.

Bella nodded in quick understanding, and led the widow to the servants’ hall, which at this hour was deserted.

Over a pot of tea, Mrs. Gales expressed her disquiet.

“Sometimes,’’ she said, “a body can be too perfect, Bella.”

“Well, I don’t like ‘em quite so skinny myself,” said Bella, “but I’d say his face is perfect enough.”

Mrs. Gales raised her eyebrows. “I referred to his behaviour. He has made himself indispensable to an alarming extent.”

“He do have a way about him, don’t he? Not a one of us but does exactly what Mr. Brentick wants—and he don’t have to say a word, do he? Only has to look at you and, I declare, whatever he’s got in mind, why, it gets right into yours, too – and sticks there pretty tight.”

“Indeed.” Mrs. Gales refilled her cup. “The question is, what is he putting into her mind?”

Bella considered. “Just them heathen gods, I expect,” she said. “They don’t talk about nothing else, do they?”

“No. That wicked Krishna it was today, and his legion of females. Small wonder she can’t keep track of the wives and mistresses. Other men’s wives, no less,” Mrs. Gales added disapprovingly. “Yet they discuss it in so scholarly a fashion, one feels a fool to intrude.”

“It’s only for the book, ma’am.”

“Yes. I suppose these so-called gods’ doings are quite tame compared to the Rani Simhi’s biography. Still, he will never hint that Amanda ought know nothing of these matters, let alone write of them. All he ever corrects is her syntax. Really,” the widow added in vexation, “the man is a deal too much an enigma for my tastes. And I am not at all easy about the way he looks at her.” She rubbed her head again. “Bella, I do fear... yet he is so very attentive…” she said helplessly. “So kind, so considerate. He makes her laugh. He makes her—”

“Happy,” Bella finished for her. “There’s the nub of it, ma’am. Maybe there’s more in it and maybe not, and maybe it ain’t the properest sort of doings. But all I can think is how things was before. She had to grow up too fast – and Lord knows nobody ever laughed much here.”

Mrs. Gales sighed. “Yes, I imagine it must have been so. Her mother was ill many years, was she not?”

“She weren’t never right, ma’am. Not since Miss Amanda was a babe. Leastways, that’s what my ma told me. I was

hardly more than a babe myself then, so I never knew her ladyship when she wasn’t... sick.”

The hesitation in the maid’s tones made Mrs. Gales look at her sharply. “What ailed her, Bella? Amanda seldom mentions her mama, and I never met the lady.”

“I weren’t no lady’s maid then, ma’am, and folks wasn’t like to tell me everything, now, was they?” came the evasive answer.

Loyalty Mrs. Gales respected. If Bella disliked to gossip about the family’s past, the widow possessed sufficient loyalty herself to refrain from pressing.

Chapter Fourteen

The library was still, but for the scratching of Miss Cavencourt’s pen and the hiss of coals in the grate. Philip stood at the window, his white-gloved hands clasped behind him, his attention fixed upon the wooded slope that rose at the garden’s edge. Yesterday’s dark blanket of sky had lightened this morning to pearl grey. Here and there faint rays of light struggled through to drop fitful sparkles upon the pond. Trees and shrubs trembled in the wind, and dry leaves danced feebly upon water and ground.