Page 120 of A Modest Independence

“It isn’t only her age and eyesight that call her identification into question. The whole account she gave beggars belief.”

“It sounded perfectly reasonable to me.”

“You truly believe that, if Giles had been alive, even for a day, no one from his regiment would have come for him? She claims to have sent word to the depot hospital, and yet—”

“Perhaps, in all the chaos, her message went astray?”

Tom wasn’t convinced. He didn’t want to be convinced.

“Or perhaps,” Jenny continued, “it was Colonel Anstruther who received the message. He didn’t strike me as the kind of man who would have given Giles’s welfare priority. Not if he believed Giles was a threat to his marriage. Is it so difficult to imagine that he might have ignored Mrs. Kumar’s message? If Giles was expected to die regardless, he mightn’t have felt any urgency to retrieve him.”

“It’s possible.”

“Exactly. And a possibility is all we’ve ever had to go on. Not a probability. The entire idea that Giles might have survived the siege has never been more than the flimsiest hope.”

“It still is.”

“But less flimsy than it was two hours ago, surely. After speaking to Mrs. Kumar, we have more reason to hope than ever, not less.”

He exhaled a heavy sigh. “Were time and distance no concern, I’d agree with you. But we’ve already spent months on this adventure. Were we to travel to the hill stations—”

Jenny stopped pacing to look at him. A hammered-bronze oil lamp stood on the wooden table beside her bed, its low flame illuminating her face in shadows of rose and gold. “I don’t expect you to come with me.”

“Of course I’ll come with you.” His voice was harsh, almost angry. “Do you imagine I’d leave you here to make the journey alone?”

“You’ll have to leave me eventually. If not in Jhansi, then somewhere else.”

“Yes, eventually. But not yet. Not now, at any rate.”

“Tom—” She broke off, giving him a look. Such a look.

He crossed the room, reaching her in three strides.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“That I’m going with you? Yes.” He framed her face with his hands. The warmth in her eyes went straight to his heart. “About all the rest of it? No.”

She circled his wrists with her fingers. “I’d never ask it of you. I’d never expect—”

He bent his head and kissed her.

Jenny’s hands tightened on his wrists, even as her lips softened. They parted beneath his, sweet and warm and welcoming.

“I’ve been wanting to do that since Calcutta,” he murmured against her mouth.

“What stopped you?”

He stared down at her, moving his thumbs over the high curve of her cheekbones. “Honor. Decency. The usual sort of things.”

“Ah. Them.”

“Yes, them. All the noble concerns I’ve discarded since you came into my life.”

Her brows drew together in a disapproving line. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not, if it’s true?”

“Because I don’t like to think I’m responsible for you losing sight of who you are. That caring for me—if you do care—”