Jane Coverdale - The Jasmine Wife - A sweeping epic historical romance novel for women

A loving hand had placed the fragrant flowers around the halo of the child’s head and over the little body, before releasing it into the sea. An unwanted girl, perhaps, who’d died conveniently, but had clearly been loved by someone in her short life.

The child floated past, an image of unbearable loneliness at the beginning of her journey. Sara’s eyes followed the little voyager, smarting with painful tears till the yellow water turned deep blue again, and for a brief moment she was comforted by this.

Then her stomach lurched, and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick. She clutched the rail and squeezed her eyes till she saw stars, praying with a sudden fervent superstitious fear, to crush the image lingering in her mind.

She began to pace again, now with a more urgent step. It seemed they would never reach land and the shore was further away than ever.

Then, slowly, as she watched, the scene before her sprang to life. A tree swayed in the gentle breeze, and the thousands of coloured dots moving along the shore evolved into human beings.

Children began to play, running back and forth on childish missions. Thin wisps of grey smoke rose from the cooking fires where women sat, draped in vivid saris, their movements impossibly elegant for such humble everyday tasks.

Then the first sounds, laughter and shouting in Hindi, and Tamil, and music, a strange off-beat medley to western ears. There was a procession somewhere.

The handful of European passengers appeared on deck one by one. Already there was a distance between them, making it clear their relationships had been held together almost solely by the confines of the voyage.

Secretly, Sara intended to keep few of her promises of undying friendship if she could help it, though, much to her regret, with Cynthia Palmer there might be no choice.

Sara watched Cynthia with mixed emotions as she moved through the crowd on the deck, languid and unhurried, smiling her goodbyes, her white toy poodle, recently bought in an elegant pet shop on the Rue de la Paix, clutched in her small gloved hands, stopping now and then to speak to a friend, her voice hardly ever raised above a quiet murmur. Sara crushed a pang of rising irritation. If only she could believe in the value of such self-control it would have made her life so much easier.

A sweet young girl’s voice, heavily laced with the rounded vowels of the well brought up, called out her name, and Sara looked up with a start from her daydreaming.

“Cynthia, how fresh you look. How do you do it, in this heat? I’m melting already.” Her voice sounded false even to herself, and she wondered how Cynthia could not fail to notice it.

But then, Charles had made a point of how important it was for her to become friends with Lady Palmer and, even more so, her daughter Cynthia. She recalled his words in his letter: “I’m sure you’ll become as fond of them as I am for, as we often say in our little community, it’s impossible not to love Cynthia and her mamma.”

Sara was fairly sure she didn’t love either of them, and at times positively disliked Lady Palmer, though she was clearly outnumbered.

Cynthia was as pretty and fragile as a Dresden figurine, though it soon became clear her fragility was misleading, disguising an unbending core combined with a steely determination, at least when it came to having her own way. Though there was never any need to exert any pressure when it came to getting what she wanted; it seemed to happen naturally, as though it was always meant to be.

She had a habit of grasping the arm of the person she wished to beguile, holding them rigid, like a fox with her teeth on the neck of a rabbit, but, as a kind of compensation, she held them under the impression they were the only person in the world worth knowing. When she wished to move on, her small white hand would relax, releasing her captive, now limp with admiration, and left with a desire to be singled out by her again as soon as possible.

Though, when away from her mother and alone with Sara in her cabin, they could spend almost happy hours together as each girl talked of their hopes of the future with their respective husbands. Cynthia’s intended would join her in Madras in a few months’ time, where they’d be married before returning to Europe for their honeymoon and a new life in England. She’d met her fiancé William when he’d stayed with her parents in Madras and he’d fallen in love with her then. His health was precarious though, and more than a few months in India was dangerous for him. Cynthia’s face would take on an almost childlike radiance as she spoke of her husband’s country estate and her hopeful future away from the hell of India. It was at these times Sara could sympathise with the girl, knowing from personal experience how painful it was to be trapped and powerless, and at the mercy of another person’s demands.

Her mother, Lady Palmer, was a big woman with coarse sallow skin, large features and a passion for extravagant clothing, who seemed constantly astonished to have given birth to such a fair and dainty child. Her main concerns, apart from her daughter, in whose life she took an almost unnatural interest, were the comings and goings of Madras society and all who moved within it. She set the standards of behaviour and it was up to everyone else to observe and follow, and woe betide anyone who didn’t.

“I expected Charles would have married one of the girls at home …”

Lady Palmer had scrutinized Sara shamelessly through her lorgnette. “Personally, I saw no need to look further than our little community, and there were many girls I thought more than suitable for him to marry.” This was said with such an air of wounded outrage Sara had laughed aloud, then said, “Well, why didn’t he then if they were so suitable?” causing Lady Palmer to glare in return.

“It’s no laughing matter, my girl. Marriage is a serious business.

However,” she conceded, “I’m sure dear Charles had his reasons. Indeed, I do believe at one time he might have asked Cynthia. Charles always seemed to pay her such particular attention, and we are so very fond of him.” She frowned, as though recalling past times. “We’ll miss him to balance the table at dinner. He was always so useful as a single man.”

Sara could only laugh, knowing with a sure instinct nothing she could say would alter Lady Palmer’s behaviour. Her role was supposed to be to endure and smile, but so far she had only questioned and scowled.

Their relationship was bordering on disastrous but, just in time, a small voice in Sara’s head had cautioned her to be careful. All those years in an English boarding school had taught her it was vulgar to express what one really thought, and she would give Lady Palmer another chance, for Charles’s sake.

Sara sat in the longboat, waiting to be taken ashore. She’d been there for some time, wilting in the stifling glare of an unbearable heat with the muddy waves slapping with an uncomfortable violence against the sides of the boat. She was jammed between a fat matron holding a bird cage containing a fast wilting canary and, on her other side, a fretful seasick child, all due to a dispute as to whether Cynthia’s poodle should or should not be caged for the trip ashore. The purser was insistent it should be so, and Cynthia was equally insistent that it should not be. The other passengers were becoming increasingly irritable at the long delay, though Sara was almost thankful for the wasted time as it put off the inevitable a little longer.

She scanned the indistinct mass of faces on the distant shore, her stomach a tight knot of nausea, not knowing if her misery was due to anxiety or seasickness. Was Charles there amongst the crowd, staring out to sea, perhaps regretting his choice of bride or, worse, lying dead somewhere from an all-consuming tropical disease, as her uncle had often predicted? Was she abandoned before even beginning to be a wife? It was impossible to know. Charles was a poor correspondent and during the space of the fourteen months since she’d seen him last he’d written perhaps only half a dozen letters. In vain she’d scanned them for the passionate declarations of love she so longed for. But the contents of his notes were usually about the terrible state of the weather or graphic details of the outbreaks amongst the various castes. She wondered sometimes if he was trying to put her off coming at all, but at the bottom of the page there was his usual declaration, “Love Charles”. That one word kept her hopes for future happiness alive.