Danger at Dahlkari (9 page)

Reggie grinned, taking to her immediately. “Spirit!” he cried. “I do love a lass with spirit. Can't stand these mealymouthed maidens always jumping at their own shadows and havin' the vapors.”

“There's been a spot of trouble, sir,” Lieutenant Stephens said quietly. “It seems the young ladies were traveling with a native caravan and it was attacked by Thugs. Everyone else was slaughtered.”

“What? What's this? You were supposed to travel with Lieutenant Parks. It was all arranged. I send him and his men to Delhi especially to meet you, and you were traveling with a band of
natives
?”

“Lieutenant Parks got the measles,” I said calmly. “It would have been several days before we could leave and I wanted to get here as soon as possible. Yasmin Singh was leaving with his caravan, so—”

“Measles? Measles did you say? He's almost
thirty
! And he let you leave like that? He didn't try to stop you? I'll have his hide, that's what I'll do!”

“Everyone in Delhi tried to stop us,” I replied, and my voice had begun to tremble now. “I—I was so impatient and Yasmin Singh agreed to let us accompany him and—and—”

I couldn't go on. The tears came in spite of all my efforts to hold them back. Reggie looked horrified, then embarrassed, and then he hurried around the desk and folded me into his arms.

“There now,” he crooned, “there. Don't you cry, darlin'. You've been through a terrible ordeal, but it's over now. Everything's all right. Buck up now, you hear? Do. Here, take this handkerchief.”

“Bully!” Sally hissed.

I dabbed at my eyes, humiliated to have given way like that, particularly in front of a stranger. The tall, handsome lieutenant looked awkward and embarrassed, clearly at a loss. Reggie released me and gave Sally a thunderous look and told her she'd better show some respect. Sally gazed at him haughtily, not deigning to reply.

“Well now,” Reggie said, moving back behind his desk.

“I suspect we'd better get all the details, sir,” Lieutenant Stephens said. “We'll want to send some men—”

“Think I don't know my job, Stephens! I was putting down rebellious natives while you were still spitting out your baby food! These Thugs are a bothersome lot, but we'll soon see the last of 'em! Damn that Gordon! I wonder where
he
was? Uppity young ruffian! Imagine them sending him to Dahlkari, putting
him
in charge of rounding up the Thugs. Lot of good he's done, I must say. Fellow's never even
around
!”

“I believe he's on another of his secret missions, sir,” Lieutenant Stephens said. “He left a week or so ago.”

“I don't like it. I don't like it at all! Fellow's sent here with a set of official papers giving him complete authority—he doesn't have to take orders from anyone, but he can give 'em to
every
one. The papers don't even give the bounder's
rank
.”

I wondered who this mysterious Gordon might be. Just thinking about him was plainly causing Reggie to work himself into another rage. Lieutenant Stephen cleared his throat and drew himself up, looking very official and grave.

“The young ladies are exhausted, sir. Perhaps if you intend to question them—”

Reggie glared at his aide with flashing eyes, his leathery cheeks beginning to flush. Lieutenant Stephens was utterly unperturbed in the face of his superior's obvious wrath. Stephens, I suspected, knew exactly how to handle him. After a moment Reggie gave a deep sigh and shook his head, a martyr, terribly misused and put-upon.

“Perhaps you'd better tell me all about it, Lauren,” he said quietly. “We'll want to get after those villains as soon as possible. Just relax and start at the beginning.”

I tried to give him a calm, detailed account of all that had happened, but Sally kept interrupting with highly dramatic, colorful embellishments. Both Reggie and the lieutenant looked alarmed when we told them about the native who had come to our rescue, asking for a full description, asking why he hadn't brought us on in to Dahlkari. It was clear they both considered him almost as menacing as the Thugs. Lieutenant Stephens took careful notes on everything we told them, and when we were finished he asked me to draw a map of the campsite where the attack had taken place. I had hardly begun when the door burst open and Dollie flew into the room, plump cheeks flushed, black ringlets bobbing.

“Reggie McAllister!” she cried. “How
dare
you not inform me that the girls had arrived! I don't believe it! I happened to pass Kulloo in the hall upstairs and happened, just happened to ask him if someone had
come
. I said I thought I'd heard someone come in and he said, yes, Missy, the tall lieutenant and two English girls. Two
English
girls! And you've kept them in this office all this time and—”

“Steady, luv,” he said patiently. “No need to get in an uproar.”

“Don't you try to humor me! It's inexcusable. Inex
cu
sable! Lauren, oh, you dear child, at last—and this is Sally, isn't it? We weren't expecting you for—” Noticing our tattered condition for the first time, she gasped, taking a step backward, hand clutched dramatically to her breast. “My word! What's happened? You both look like you've been in a brawl!”

“We were attacked by Thugs,” Sally said calmly.

“Thugs!”

“They wiped out the whole caravan. Miss Lauren and I were the only two survivors, and we probably would have died of thirst if this fierce-looking native hadn't come along and—”

Dollie listened with horrified fascination as Sally gave her a rousing account of our ordeal, and when she had finished Dollie patted her girlish black ringlets and frowned and said it was horrible, just horrible, much too horrible to dwell on. She gave both of us a hug and said we were wonderfully brave, genuine heroines, and it must have been dreadful, dreadful, but we were here now and now we must forget it all and have larks and laughter and captivate every man in sight.

“You will, too,” she promised. “I have such
plans
. Do you realize there are over two hundred bachelors at the garrison? And not a single unmarried girl around—oh dear, I forgot Prunella Dobson. I'm
al
ways forgetting Prunella. She's Captain Dobson's girl—thin as a maypole and just as stiff. Prays a lot, poor thing. Wears spectacles. You two girls are going to start a
riot
.”

Dollie was just as I remembered her, small, plump, fussy, wearing an outlandish pink taffeta dress festooned with ruffles and much too young for her. With her preposterous black ringlets, her bright brown eyes and pouting cherry-red lips, she looked like a rotund, animated doll, a flighty creature no one would dream of taking seriously. Aflutter with gaiety and gossip, she seemed to breeze through life on wings of frivolity, but I knew full well that her frivolity concealed a deep reservoir of strength and wisdom. It was Dollie who was responsible for her husband's success, Dollie who kept her head during any kind of crisis and calmly took over while others panicked. A veteran of over thirty years of rugged military life under primitive and frequently dangerous conditions, she had seen her share of crises and had come through them all with merriment undiminished.

“You're both about to drop, poor dears. Interrogating them like that! Have you no sense of decency? Sometimes I wonder about you, Reggie, and you, too, Michael Stephens! Food, that's what they need. Hot food, and hot
baths
, too, as soon as possible. You men go ahead and file your reports and round up your suspects or do whatever you
do
. We're going upstairs now. High time, too!”

“There are—uh—one or two more questions—” Reggie began, but his wife rounded on him like a hen whose chicks have been threatened.

“Not another word from you, Reggie McAllister! The very idea of treating these poor girls this way. I'll have something more to say about that later on, Sir, you can count on it! Come, girls. Your trunks arrived days ago. Everything's all unpacked, your rooms prepared. Thank goodness for
that
. I must say, Lauren, you brought enough books! I do hope, dear, you don't plan to
read
them. A girl your age? All those deep, dreary things? It can't be healthy. I never
was
happy about sending you off to that wretched school.…”

It was after one o'clock in the afternoon when the timid young Indian girl tapped on my door and came in with a tray. The comfortable, undeniably English room was a nest of blue-gray shadows, heavy furniture barely visible, large mirror a murky silver blur, and then the girl opened the shutters and dazzling silvery-yellow rays streamed in, gleaming on dark mahogany, making pools on the worn gray carpet with its pink and blue patterns. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Dark, lovely, extremely shy, the girl smiled and indicated the tray she had placed on the bedside table, and then she slipped quietly out of the room, her apricot silk sari rustling softly.

I could hear a bird warbling throatily in the back garden and, in the distance, the sound of soldiers drilling. I yawned and stretched, feeling gloriously young and healthy and strong. It was like awakening after a bad dream, everything that had happened receding into a dream haze, barely recalled. I ate the breakfast, and it was delicious, and I performed my ablutions and sat at the dressing table brushing my long chestnut hair until it gleamed. What luxury to linger before the mirror, studying my reflection, noting the faint pink flush on my cheekbones, the lazy contentment in my blue eyes, and what luxury to open the door of the enormous mahogany wardrobe and find all the dresses I had purchased in Bath, to select one at leisure, a beige muslin with narrow bronze stripes, soft cloth clinging snugly to bosom and waist, full skirt billowing over ruffled petticoats. The square-cut neckline was modestly low, the puffed sleeves just off the shoulder.

In the mirror I saw a very attractive young girl in a very becoming frock, her long hair gleaming, a pensive smile on her soft pink lips, utterly unlike the tattered, begrimed creature who had arrived at the garrison the night before. I thought about the handsome blond lieutenant, and I was glad I was attractive, pleased that the frock was so becoming. Would I see him today? I felt a curious glow, a mild elation, and I realized it was anticipation.

Anticipation? What could it possibly matter whether I saw him or not? I had hardly noticed him last night. Well, yes, I had, too. I had noticed that cleft chin, that full, mobile mouth, the Roman nose and wide cheekbones and those deep blue eyes, dark brown brows arching above them. I had noticed the heavy wave of dark blond hair that kept spilling over his forehead. Tall, terribly tall, with the lean, muscular physique of an athlete, he was almost indecently good-looking and so very stern and impressive in his uniform. The girls back at school would have carried on like a flock of silly geese, tittering and pretending to swoon, but I was much too sensible. I wasn't at all interested, I told myself, and I promptly and forcibly put Lieutenant Michael Stephens out of my mind, irritated at myself for having thought about him in the first place.

The large rambling house was silent as I went downstairs. I wondered were Sally was. Her room had been empty when I had looked in. Reggie would be at his office at regimental headquarters, of course, but surely Dollie hadn't left the house. I heard no merry chatter, no tinkling laughter. I wandered through the friendly, cluttered rooms downstairs: heavy plush sofas and marble-topped tables, brass andirons and lace doilies and potted ferns. Cool, shadowy, mote-filled rays of sunlight stealing through the louvers of the closed shutters, it might have been a comfortable middle-class dwelling in the English suburbs, only an occasional Oriental ornament to indicate we were in India.

I met Kulloo, the houseboy-butler, in the front hall. Wearing a turban, a tailored yellow jacket and loose white trousers, he nodded gravely and, when I inquired about Dollie, informed me that she was in the back garden. He pointed to the door at the far end of the hall and then slipped quietly into the drawing room. As I reached the back of the house I could hear a noisy clatter from the kitchen and smell delicious, spicy smells as something cooked. A large, overweight Indian woman with steel gray hair and a belligerent expression opened the door to peer out at me, her blue cotton smock dusted with flour, a butcher knife clutched in her hand. For a moment I thought she was going to attack me with the knife, so fierce was her expression, but she merely jabbered something in her native dialect and then slammed the door with vicious force. All native servants obviously weren't calm and inscrutable, I reflected, smiling to myself as I stepped out onto the rear veranda.

The back lawn was spread with moving patterns of sunlight and shadow as the sun streamed through the leafy shade trees. The flower beds were decidedly untidy, tall purple hollyhocks vying with pink daisies and blue larkspurs. Several gigantic gray banyan trees grew at the foot of the property, their exposed roots like arthritic fingers. In wide-brimmed yellow straw hat, soiled white gloves and a lilac-colored dress adorned with purple frills, Dollie was on her knees, clipping at the grass edging one of the flowerbeds. Spying a weed, she gave a little cry, uprooted it violently and tossed it over her shoulder. I moved down the steps and, seeing me, she waved gaily and climbed to her feet.

“There you are!” she called, brushing at her skirt. “I was afraid you'd sleep all day, so I sent Blossom in with a tray. Sleep well? I must say you
look
it—you're a picture of blooming health, dear, and so well de
vel
oped! Oh, for a figure like that again, not that I ever
had
one.” Dollie's conversation was invariably scattered with excursions, scraps of light chatter sprinkled with apparently unrelated observations, “Of course it didn't really matter,” she continued. “I had
flair
, and that's so much more important.”