Лорен Уиллиг - The Betrayal of the Blood Lily

“Yes, do stay,” contributed Fiske, his guppy mouth conducting its own fishy orgy of innuendo. “I promise to personally see to your entertainment. I’m sure Freddy won’t mind, will you, old bean?”

“You needn’t trouble yourself,” said Lady Frederick, with an inscrutable look in the direction of her husband. “I had enough of society in London.”

She might think so now, but Alex doubted she would be of that opinion three months from now. He had never known a less appealing cluster of people than the handful of English ladies washed up with their husbands in Hyderabad, bitter with boredom and universally discontented with their lots. Of all the Residency ladies, only Mrs. Ure, the physician’s wife, appeared content, and that was because her one passion was food, a passion that she satisfied daily to the extreme detriment of both the Residency larder and her figure.

It was true that Begum Johnson had lived for some time away from English society, but she was different; she had been born in India, grown up in India, knew it and loved it as he did. They didn’t make women like her anymore.

Alex’s thoughts turned to his two sisters, Kat and Lizzy, sent home to Kat’s maternal grandmother in England to learn to become proper English gentlewomen. He knew it was necessary; he knew that Lizzy, born of his father’s extended liaison with a Rajput lady, would have a better life in England, where prejudice towards half-castes was less pronounced than among the increasingly insular British community in India; but he still hated to think of them turning their backs on their early upbringing, taking on the senseless airs and graces so prized by lady visitors to Calcutta, becoming foreign to him. Becoming, in fact, like Lady Frederick.

It only took one look at her to know that Lady Frederick Staines was entirely unfit to undertake the trip to Hyderabad. Her muslin dress looked as if it might rip if anyone so much breathed on it. There were pearls twined in her flaming red hair along with white flowers fresh from the Governor General’s own gardens. They were fragile blossoms, English flowers of the sort that flourished in India only in the English areas, with fussing and watering and careful handling. In the candlelight, her skin, liberally displayed by the scooped neck and short sleeves of her gown, appeared to be nearly the same color as the petals and possessed of the same haunting scent.

And would, Alex reminded himself, bruise just as quickly as those petals. That skin of hers wouldn’t last two minutes in the sun. The first part of the journey could be accomplished by boat, but how would she fare on the grueling seven-day trek from the coast to the British Residency in Hyderabad? Once there — if Mrs. Dalrymple and her cronies complained of boredom, it could be worse for a London lady. On top of the boredom, there would be the hundred small irritations born of an unfamiliar climate, the intestinal disorders, the sunstroke, the prickly heat, and boils that would mar that impossible skin. Lady Frederick was a thing of mother-of-pearl and moonlight, designed for costly drawing rooms in a cold climate. Not for India and certainly not for Hyderabad.

She might, thought Alex callously, do well enough in Calcutta. The cold season was almost upon them and there would be balls and entertainments enough even for a spoiled daughter of the aristocracy. There would be plenty to fawn over her for the sake of her husband’s title.

“I don’t think you realize quite how dull a provincial residency can be,” Alex warned. “We have none of the amenities to which you are accustomed. There are no concerts, no balls, no — ” He struggled to recall the complaints he had heard from the Englishwomen resident in Hyderabad.

“No milliners,” finished the Colonel for him. “Nor dressmakers, either.”

Lord Frederick appeared entirely unconcerned about his wife’s haberdashery. “As long as the shooting is good, I’m sure we’ll jog along all right. Right, old thing?” Without waiting for his wife’s response, he looked to Alex. “We leave tomorrow.”

Alex wondered just why he was so anxious to go. Was it Wellesley prodding him? Or something else?

“With all due respect, there are arrangements to be made. It’s not exactly the same as traveling from London to Surrey.” Alex couldn’t quite manage to keep the asperity out of his voice.

“I don’t see why not,” said Lord Frederick. “It’s always bally raining there, too.”

Fiske hee-hawed and Cleave contrived a restrained chuckle. Alex managed not to bang his head against the wall. “Yes,” he said mildly, “but there are fewer elephants in Surrey.”

“What the lad means,” intervened his father, with the glibness for which he was known throughout the cantonments of India, “is that it takes time to arrange a fitting entourage for a personage of your stature. You wouldn’t want the Hyderabadis to think you were a person of no account, now, would you?”

That appeared to resonate with their young lordling. He nodded in a thoughtful way, his lips pursing. “A week Tuesday, then.” Reaching into his waistcoat pocket, he flipped a gold coin in Alex’s direction. “See that you hire a few extra elephants.”

Well, they already had an ass.

Alex’s father slipped the guinea from Alex’s nerveless fingers and handed it back to Lord Frederick. “You can settle accounts with the Governor General,” he said.

Alex didn’t need his father’s warning look to tell him that departure was the better part of valor. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said in a voice like granite, “I’ll go see to those arrangements. Lord Frederick, Lady Frederick. Cleave. Fiske.”

“Good man.” Lord Frederick favored him with a perfunctory nod before turning back to Fiske. “Now about that filly . . .” Alex heard him saying as he walked away.

Alex concentrated on putting one foot in front of another and breathing deeply through his nose. The Begum’s house was as familiar to Alex as his own quarters. He turned to the left, pushing open the door to the deserted book room. Behind him, he could hear the slap and shuffle of his father’s boots against the marble floor.

“Easy, my lad, easy,” warned his father, peering down the corridor and pushing the door shut behind them. “Keep a rein on that temper of yours.”

Alex regarded his father sourly. His father had many virtues, but restraint of any kind was not known to be one of them. Otherwise, Alex would never have had quite so many half-siblings.

Besides, he had no temper. He was a remarkably even-tempered man. Except in the face of sheer stupidity. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a good deal of that going around Calcutta.

“That,” Alex said pointedly, jerking his head towards the room they had just vacated, “is a disaster waiting to happen.”

“Just so long as you don’t allow it to happen to you,” returned his father equably. Beneath their wrinkled lids, his faded blue eyes were surprisingly shrewd. Self-indulgent he might be, but no one had ever called him stupid. “I’m within an ace of wrangling that district commissionership for you. So don’t go fouling it up out of some high-minded notion.”

At the moment, Alex was feeling more bloody-minded than high-minded. It was all very well for his father to counsel prudence, but as far as Alex could see, he was damned either way.

“Fine,” said Alex. “Let’s say I hold my tongue and cart Lord and Lady Freddy meekly off to Hyderabad a week Tuesday. What happens when that idiot sparks off a civil war? I doubt I’ll receive commendations when Mir Alam’s lads kick us out of Hyderabad, lock, stock, and barrel. With matters the way they stand, Wellesley’s new pet could undo in a moment what Kirkpatrick took six years to accomplish.”