Page 55 of A Modest Independence

“No.”

“What do you want?”

“To get off this ship. I didn’t come all the way to wherever it is we are to endure a battalion of British mamas and their hopeful daughters. This isn’t at all what I—”

“Somewhere off the coast of Egypt,” he said.

She blinked up at him. “What?”

“That’s where we are. Somewhere in the Mediterranean, closer to Alexandria than to Malta by this point.”

“Not close enough.” She folded her arms at her waist. Some of the tension left her face, leaving in its wake a vague expression of desolation. “Is this all a fool’s errand, Tom? Do you think Giles died at the siege just like Colonel Anstruther said?”

“I don’t know.” It was the only answer he had and one he knew was wholly inadequate. “Fetch your shawl, Jenny.”

“Why?”

“Just because I won’t come into your cabin, doesn’t mean we can’t talk. Come with me for a walk on the upper deck. We can have a little privacy there.”

“What about the risk of stirring up a scandal?”

“I think I can manage to resist you for the space of a walk.” He added dryly, “Providing it’s a short one.”

As they strolled along the deck of the Indus, Jenny had to wonder if Tom had accounted for the moonlight. Or the stars. Or the way the cool evening breeze whispered over them from atop the rippling, deep blue waves of the Mediterranean. It was dreadfully romantic. Like something out of a lady’s novel. The sort of scene inhabited by beautiful, raven-haired young heroines with melting voices and alabaster brows.

It was definitely not the setting for a hardened spinster of eight and twenty. Not one with auburn hair that, in some lights, could pass for red—a thoroughly unfortunate shade. And certainly not one with a short temper and a streak of stubbornness as wide as the Thames.

She tilted her head back to gaze at the stars. There were fashionable fortune-tellers in London who claimed that a lady’s future was written there. Either there or in tea leaves or among the lines in the palm of her hand. At the moment, Jenny would have paid a great deal to know what her future held.

Despite the more than two thousand miles they’d already traveled, she still had the sense that she was on the cusp of an adventure. That it hadn’t quite started yet. Indeed, with each stage of their journey, it receded farther beyond the horizon, shimmering there just out of her grasp. On the train to Marseilles, Tom had called it a mirage. What if it was? A terrible thought. Because then she would be forced to admit that the dissatisfaction she had with her life had little to do with the setting of it and everything to do with herself.

She refused to believe it. If she was dissatisfied with her adventure it was only because of her bout of seasickness. And because of the dratted Fishing Fleet. All those mamas and daughters, so very British and proper—and so very interested in the marital status of one Tom Finchley.

“Do you think Mrs. Plank is telling the truth?” she asked. “Is India the same as an English village, with everyone knowing one another’s business?”

“In some places, I expect. Thornhill says the colonials have created British life in miniature. They keep themselves set apart, fraternizing with each other at their clubs, having dinners and dances and tea parties. It’s quite the social whirlwind, apparently.”

“What of the Indians?”

“He says there’s more prejudice against them in India than at home. Even more so after the uprising.”

“It was a great tragedy.”

“For all concerned—the oppressed and the oppressors.”

Jenny gave him a curious look. “You share Mr. Thornhill’s opinions?”

“On British rule in India? I tend to agree with him, yes. Does that surprise you?”

“Why should it? I’ve never been to India. I have no views on the subject one way or the other.”

“None at all?”

She ignored the smile in his voice. She wouldn’t apologize for being opinionated. “What do you wish me to say? That I abhor cruelty and unfairness, wherever it manifests itself? That I’d no more judge an Indian for rebelling than I would an Englishwoman? That we all of us have our God-given rights, even if the law doesn’t see fit to grant them to us?”

“The Mrs. Planks of the world would disagree.”

“I’ll wager you already know how I feel about the Mrs. Planks of the world.”