Sebastian drew in a slow breath. “We’re here.”
He stepped down and offered his hand, but I hesitated before taking it. The air was so thick—stagnant with the smell of damp jute mingling with an acrid scent.
“Indigo,” Sebastian informed me when I wrinkled my nose.
Men moved in and out of the open doors, shouting in Bengali as they hauled crates and tall stacks of wrapped bundles.
“This warehouse belongs to my grandfather,” he said. “I used to wander this street ... before.” His voice drifted.
“Before Hugh died here.”
He nodded once, and his grip on my hand tightened before he released it. He did not escort me inside for a tour.
Instead, we stood side by side as the foreman—a man with a weathered face and a white turban stained with sweat—approached. He noddedto Sebastian, hesitating when he saw me, and then switched to halting English.
“Mr. Sinclair. You come for inspection?”
“No,” Sebastian said. “Just a word.”
They moved a few paces away, their voices low, switching back to a language I did not recognize.
I waited, watching laborers move like ants through the heat. My gaze drifted to a stack of crates waiting within a wagon for transport, yet not one revealed the stamp of a tiger as Edward had discovered at Limehouse.
When Sebastian returned, I saw the storm in his expression before he spoke.
“Blasted brother of mine. The foreman says the rations have been cut again over ledgers not matching. As the junior factor, I shall have to spend my days going over the accounts to discover the problem. If I don’t, someone will pay, and I will not see anyone else come to harm beneath Julien’s temper.”
He glanced at me with a rueful expression. “I’m sorry, Kitty. This is not what I envisioned for our first few months in India. I fear my work shall consume me until I sort this mess out and rectify what my brother has done.”
Nor had I, truthfully, envisioned such a start to a marriage.
When he reached to steady me and helped me back into the carriage, my resentment softened. He was proving, once more, to be a man of action—securing a cottage, sending inquiries to the resident, taking care to shield me where he could. A man who showed up when it mattered.
Kind. Attentive. Reliable.
As the carriage rumbled forward and I settled into the worn leather seat beside him, I stared out the window at the blur of foreign streets and felt the ache of a question I could not voice.
My parents had risked everything—perhaps even their lives—for an impossible love. An Englishman defying the East India Company andEngland to marry a Muslim princess. I wanted no different. But they had lost each other. I had lost them.
And though Sebastian had claimed me—touched me—looked after me in every way that mattered, proving he did belong to me, I felt a nameless dread.
What if I lost him as others so dear to me?
I turned my head toward him, catching his profile in the filtered afternoon light. I could not bear such a thought.
32:Kitty
My greatest desire is that I may perceive the God whom I find everywhere in the external world, in like manner also within and inside myself.
JOHANNES KEPLER
By March 1816, a month after our arrival in Calcutta, Sebastian had secured for us a small bungalow on the edge of the European Quarter. Modest and secluded, it stood in contrast to the grand mansions of the Company’s elite. The single-story house had wide eaves and a tiled roof designed to weather the monsoon rains. A deep veranda wrapped around the front, looking out on a garden where jasmine and hibiscus struggled back to life. A low stone wall ringed the property, more frame than barrier, and the blossoms spilled over it with heady sweetness.
Within, the high ceilings and latticed windows kept the rooms airy. Broad punkahs hung from the beams to stir the lingering heat, and the polished teak floors gleamed in the morning light. The furnishings were sparse but sufficient—a dining table, a handful of wicker chairs, and a sideboard. It was neither London nor Hyderabad, yet it was ours.
The cottage lay a short ride from the Company’s main quarter and Lord Sinclair’s residence—close enough for visits, yet far enough toafford a sense of independence. In the mornings, I could hear the clang of a blacksmith’s hammer from the road and the calls of vendors selling earthenware pots and bundles of herbs. Bullock carts creaked past, laden with goods for the market, their wheels grinding over the packed earth beneath the tamarind and neem trees.
Sebastian had written soon after our arrival to the resident at Hyderabad, inquiring into my father’s affairs. A reply would be unlikely for several more weeks, yet patience was demanded of me—and patience I did not possess.
