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“Rowena! How can you talk that way? Women are meant to be married, to have children, to make their husbands happy. And not only in my country, but yours as well. Don’t you like me at all?”
“If I didn’t like you I wouldn’t be here. I enjoy talking to you Shiv, and you understand horses…”
“Horses!” He clapped a hand to his brow and groaned dramatically. “I talk of marriage, of love, and you speak of horses! I’ve had my fill of horsy English misses. None of them interested me, even when I was in England. You’re the first truly intelligent woman I have ever met—the only one I could talk to. And…” his voice dropped meaningfully as he gave her a long melting look from his brown eyes, “you are also very beautiful, even if you try to hide it. You’re the only Englishwoman I’ve seen who could wear a sari as gracefully as an Indian woman, and your skin has turned to gold under our Indian sun. When your hair is loose, as it was the day beside the lotus pool, and you wear gold ornaments at your ears and around your bare ankles…”
“Shiv, stop it! You had no right to come barging in that day! I dressed up that way only to please your—your wives, and then you had to come striding in and stare like an idiot!”
He burst out laughing. “But, little lotus blossom, why should I not visit the women of my household when I have just returned from a long trip? I shall never forget how I made you blush—the color turning your cheeks to dusky rose. It was then that the thought came to me like lightning, ‘This is the woman who must be my true wife! I would like to clasp the gold marriage thali around her neck and make her mine forever!’”
“You should have been a poet instead of a prince,” Rowena said drily. “Don’t remind me of my embarrassment, please! And I wish you would stop talking of marriage between us, for I can tell you again that it is completely out of the question!”
His face darkened. “Is it because I am Indian and you are a member of the British nobility?”
“You should know me better than that!” Blue eyes
so dark that they appeared violet flashed into his, and in spite of his hurt and disappointment the young man could not keep his eyes from lingering on her wistfully. How lovely she was, even if she herself did not fully comprehend it, and often called herself plain. She looked like a young goddess, wild and untamed, with her mane of black hair and her slim body, hard-muscled from constant riding. She rode free and untrammeled as a goddess, too, her tiny waist owing nothing to corsets. Her eyes, even when they flashed angrily as they did now, were her most beautiful feature, large and widely spaced, fringed with thick lashes. And her face—it would have been oval, if not for the small, squared-off chin that somehow added character to it. When she smiled her mouth was full and generous, a sensual, woman’s mouth.
He had been studying her slowly and almost caressingly, but Rowena’s irritated voice brought him back to earth.
“Shiv! What on earth is the matter with you? Surely you aren’t going to sulk because I won’t marry you? You really ought to feel relieved that you’ve had a lucky escape, for I would never make any man a dutiful, obedient wife, I fear!”
“You have not been awakened yet. In some ways, you are still so young! Perhaps, someday, I’ll be able to make you fall in love with me, and then you will never leave India. I will make you realize that you belong here, and you will belong to me.”
“I’ll belong to no man, Shiv Jhanpur!” Rowena’s voice merely took on an inflexible tone as her straight black brows drew together. “Never! And if you want to remain my friend, you had better remember that.”
“We’ll see!” he said teasingly, and then in a persuasive voice, “But I want to be your friend, of course. Who else can I talk to around here? My father is of an older generation and talks of nothing but duty. The Englishmen I meet are all such bores, and so conscious of the superiority their white skins confer, even though they try to hide it. But your grandfather is different, of course, just as you are different.” He seized her hands for a moment and said passionately, “My family goes back as far as yours does—perhaps farther. Jhanpur is small, but its maharajahs come from a long line of kings and princes. Rowena, if you should change your mind, I feel sure that your grandfather, at least, will place no objections in our way. Please think about it.”
The young crown prince of Jhanpur was a handsome, arrogant young man in his impeccably cut riding clothes that had been tailored in Savile Row. The girl who now stood facing him, shaking her head stubbornly, was just as arrogant in her way, even though she might have been taken for a gypsy in her shabby, old-fashioned riding habit. A distant ancestor of hers had run off with a gypsy girl once and made her his countess. Rowena had heard the story countless times.
But she was not thinking at this moment of her appearance. She seldom did. She shook her head at Shiv because he annoyed her with his persistence, but without her knowing it, or him knowing it, he had nevertheless planted a tiny seed in her mind—the beginning of consciousness that she was a woman.
“We had better go now,” Rowena said quietly, and this time he made no objection, not wishing to frighten her off.
Later, he thought to himself, as he helped her to mount the big black stallion she had named Devil. I spoke too soon, of course. Like all Englishwomen of her age and background she is still a shy, half-wild creature. Yes, in spite of all her book learning and her intellect, she is still virginal, and afraid of men. But the time will come when she is ready….
Rowena, feeling oddly relieved that Shiv had reverted to the role of her friend again, kicked her heels against Devil’s sides as she urged the big stallion into a gallop.
“Both walls, and then the old fence!” she called to Shiv over her shoulder, the sound of her clear young voice almost drowned by the drumming of racing hoofbeats. “I’ll race you as far as the palace and see myself home!”
ii
London—1873
“Edgar! How can you act so unconcerned? Read this—here!” Lady Fanny Cardon’s voice, normally slightly querulous, had risen to a wail. “It was bad enough to hear that Melchester is dead, and Guy, of all people, if he’s still alive, is the new earl. But now, to cap it off that wretched child has—has disappeared!”
Lady Fanny, still in her pink silk negligee, sat before her mirrored dressing table holding a lacy square of cambric dramatically to her eyes as she held out several sheets of closely written pages to her husband.
“Well, then, if she’s vanished, that ends all our troubles, doesn’t it? Gad, Fan! Why fuss so? Didn’t want a daughter foisted on you at this late stage, did you?”
“Edgar!” Lady Fanny’s voice cracked with approaching hysteria, and her husband, shrugging, took the letter from her hand.
“Oh, very well! Just to oblige you, m’dear, but I don’t see…”
“You will understand when you read it! Good heavens—the scandal with Guy was bad enough, but people have started to forget it. And then this! Guy always doted on Rowena—he wanted a child, not I, and it almost killed me, as you very well know. Why must I have her? And why couldn’t she be like any other well-brought-up child? Running away—all by herself, in that wild, savage country. Just read what Mrs. Leacock has to say!”
“I will, if you’ll just stop talking, my love.”
Sir Edgar, a heavy-featured, robust-looking man who affected the muttonchop whiskers so fashionable in England, stood with his back to the fireplace, his hard gray eyes contradicting the mildness of his voice as he raised them to his wife’s distraught face.
