“Perhaps. The doctor is coming along, and we will make few stops. St. John is seeing to the arrangements now. There is something to be said for one’s husband having influence over a number of fast vessels.” Alethea’s gaze sobered. “You will not mind going home?”
Tavy stood and moved toward the window again, an odd restlessness slipping through her. She reached to her shoulder, and Lal curled his tail around her fingers, a comforting gesture. But she did not need comforting, she reminded herself firmly. She had always known she would someday go home.
“When Father allowed me to come to India, it was only to be for a year or two, living with Aunt Imene and Uncle George,” she said with forced lightness. “That I remained so much longer after you and St. John came astounds me as well as anyone.”
Alethea took up the letter Tavy had set down on the sofa. “I see Marcus Crispin has been awarded a title.”
“For his service in that Singapore affair.” Tavy told herself not to chew on her thumbnail then did so anyway, cringing when her sister’s gaze narrowed.
“He called upon Papa?”
“I shall have to marry him now.” Her shoulders jerked in a peculiar little spasm. The monkey grasped her ear for balance, clicking its tongue.
Alethea’s head came up. “Have to?”
Tavy pursed her lips. “It is one thing to be a spinster here in Madras, where my brother-in-law is the highest Company official for miles and miles and I can do whatever I like.”
“And quite another to be one back home,” Alethea supplied.
“A mere ‘miss,’ receiving an offer from a bona fide lord of the realm, a baron for heaven’s sake. I wonder if he truly means to wait for me to return, as he told Papa?” She lifted her brows but the effort cost her. A sliver of discomfort worked its way between her eyes to the base of her neck.
“But you do admire him, don’t you?”
“Marcus Crispin? Intelligent, handsome, successful? Oh, and charming.” Tavy waved an airy hand as though it did not concern her in the least, an affectation she had years ago intentionally adopted that now seemed as natural as breathing. “I certainly admire him. Who wouldn’t?” She stared out at the heat rising in the garden.
“You are not hoping for more than admiration?”
Tavy shot a sympathetic smile toward her sister, turning again to the window before Alethea saw it fade.
“Thea, your happiness with St. John is all I could wish for. But love matches are not for everyone.” Her gaze lingered upon the banyan tree at the back of the garden, its trunk enormous and branches spreading. She drew in a deep breath and turned away. “Marcus Crispin is a fine man. I believe I can be happy with him.”
No response met her for a time.
“We will sail for London in a month,” her sister finally said. “It should be a comfortable journey if all goes smoothly.”
The trip in the other direction years earlier still lingered in Tavy’s memory with all the delicious vibrancy of a girl’s fantastical memory, the months of shipboard adventure and pauses at ports along the way. With her young heart full of excitement, her dreams finally coming true, everything had sparkled.
She stroked the monkey’s tail curled around her palm and her gaze traveled across the chamber. The cloud cover parted briefly, and motes of dust wandered through the dappled sun sprinkling through the shutters. Palm branches brushed against the veranda outside, dark and dripping with moisture. The heat-filled air stealing from the kitchen wing was redolent of cardamom, citrus, and myriad other subtle aromas.
A shallow breath stole from her lungs.
“I will miss this. I will miss India.”
But deep in the pit of her belly a tingle of nerves stirred, hidden for so long and so thoroughly it should have by all rights vanished by now. A frisson of awareness best left buried but reawakened, as persistent as on each day the London journals arrived in Madras, months out of date, welcome nonetheless by the English residents hungry for on dits. Tavy searched those journals, her face slightly averted and eyes narrowed as though to fool herself into believing she was not searching at all. Merely glancing. Only curious of the old news that often seemed so irrelevant in this world apart from England.
Three times her searches had been rewarded. Three breath-stopping, painful times in nearly seven years.
Those instances had almost made her afraid to pretend not to search the next time the journals arrived. Almost. But each month she pretended again, and each month the announcement she awaited did not appear. Nor did she hear it gossiped amongst Madras society, English or natives.
He had not yet wed.
Now, however, the journals would print her own betrothal announcement. And when she became the baroness of Crispin, she would stop pretending not to search. It was far past time, and she was not the person she had once been. The girl who cared about that expected announcement no longer existed.
She lifted her gaze. Her sister’s thoughtful regard was trained on her, oddly sorrowful. Tavy’s throat thickened. She shook off the sensation. Too much rain made her maudlin too. In the morning she would walk to the bazaar to work out her fidgets and say goodbye to her friends there.
“I hope you will live with us in town instead of with Mama and Papa,” Alethea said. “St. John’s aunt, Lady Fitzwarren, can introduce you into society.”
“I would like that.” Tavy moved toward the parlor doors to the terrace. “In the meantime, I shall begin packing the house,” she said with purpose. “You mustn’t strain yourself. Leave it all to me.”
“Thank you, dearest. Octavia?”
She glanced back.
“Is this acceptable to you?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” She passed out onto the veranda.
A man sat against the wall beneath the broad awning, cap drawn over his dark face, his loose cotton trousers, shirt, and long tunic neat as a pin.
“You have no doubt heard the news already, Abha.” She curled into a chair. Lal leapt from her shoulder to the windowsill. Droplets of rain pattered from edge of the roof to the tiled floor.
Abha pushed the cap back on his bald pate. He was a large man, thickset and heavy-eyed, with an Oriental flatness to his cheeks and brow. When her uncle hired him on her eighteenth birthday, Tavy thought it excessive to keep a servant principally to attend her when she went about Madras. But Abha had remained even after Uncle George left for Bengal.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what do you thank me now, memsahib?” he rumbled.
“For putting up with me for so many years. In case I should forget to thank you later when everyone is busy getting ready to depart, I wanted to do so now. Or perhaps simply twice. Will you go now to work for my uncle in Calcutta?”
“I will go to London.”
Tavy sat up straight. “Has my brother-in-law asked you?”
Abha did not respond. He often did not when she asked questions to which the answers seemed obvious. To him, at least.
Tavy shook her head. “London is not like Madras. Englishwomen are not kidnapped and held for ransom there, and I am not royalty. Far from it. I can go to the shops or call upon my friends with only a maid.”
He put a thick palm on the ground and pushed himself up to stand, silent as jungle birds at the onset of a storm.
“Well, you won’t like it, I daresay,” she said. “It is horridly gray and cold. Sometimes, at least.”
He moved toward the kitchen entrance.