Her Only Desire (7 page)

“That verminous Londoner—lied to me!” she exclaimed as she wrenched off her yoga clothes and fought her way into the first decent walking dress that her hand seized. She pulled it on over her head. “Well, maybe not lied,” she amended, angrily fluffing the ruffled skirts, “but he certainly didn't tell me the truth. He told me what I wanted to hear—so he could get rid of me. Very tricky, Marquess. Very tricky!” she railed at the air. “What additional measures was he talking about, anyway?” she asked rhetorically, eager to get to the hotel to make him explain the cryptic statement.

She did not like the sound of that one bit.

“Um, Gigi, are you decent? I—I think you had better come and see this,” Lakshmi called uneasily. She had drifted over to the window and now pointed downward, sending Georgie an anxious glance over her shoulder.

“What is it? Has he come?” she demanded, adjusting the neckline of her gown to a more respectable situation. “Oh, I hope he's found the nerve to show his face. There are so many things I'd love to say to him right now!”

“No, it's not the marquess. Look,” Lakshmi said, as Georgie marched over and joined her by the window. “There are soldiers posted all around your house!”

Her jaw dropped. It was true.

“Gigi?”

She heard Lakshmi's worried inquiry as though it traveled to her through a great, watery distance. Her heart was pounding in her ears.

“I don't believe it,” she said faintly. “He's put me under house arrest!” She straightened up, her mind reeling.

He had taken additional measures, all right, but not to protect her—to prevent her from following him to Janpur! With that, all of her worst suspicions about his true nature came rushing back.

“That
snake
!” she cried as a furious flush filled her cheeks. Suddenly animated out of her daze, she rushed off to peer out through various other windows around her house. Sure enough, soldiers from Fort William were stationed at each of the four corners. Lakshmi hurried to keep up with Georgie as she went to check out the back.

“How dare he? Does he think I'm a child? A pet to be kept in a cage?”
Wedlock is a padlock
—but they weren't even married!

“Dearest, perhaps you had better calm down—”

“Calm down?” Georgie shouted. “I'm not going to stand for this! Who does he think he is? He has no right to confine me here against my will! He's made me a prisoner in my own home!”

“He's put you in purdah,” Lakshmi agreed barely audibly.

Georgie turned to her, wide-eyed, sobered. “You're right.”

Over my dead body.

Horrid man!

“What are we going to do?” Lakshmi asked in distress. “Now we won't be able to see Meena.”

“Oh, yes, we will,” Georgie vowed. “That man has no power over me, and never will.”

“But how will we escape?”

“Well—I haven't quite figured that out yet,” she admitted, staring out the window that overlooked her home's northwest corner. “But don't worry, Lakshmi. I'll think of something.”

Just then, the soldier on duty below strolled into view, glancing right and left as he prowled around patrolling with a dead-serious expression. But as Georgie squinted for a closer study of the clean-shaven face beneath the shadowed brim of his shako, a smile spread across her lips; she recognized him as one of her admirers.

Tommy Gray.

Perhaps the young sergeant sensed her gaze, for he glanced up at the window where she stood. Georgie summoned up all her feminine wiles and lifted her hand languidly, wriggling her fingers at Tommy with a coquettish wave.

He swept off his shako and waved it in a wide arc, back and forth, grinning up at her from ear to ear.

Sweet boy.

Fool.
Just like all silly, power-mongering males. What good were they, anyway?

“Don't you worry, Lakshmi,” she assured her friend, holding her sweet smile as she set her chin on her palm and pretended to admire Tommy from the window. “You think I'm going to let some arrogant marquess stand in my way? I promise you, my father raised me better than that.”

         

Late that night, Ameer Firoz Khilji slipped off his shoes and walked with a stealthy, gliding gait into the torch-lit Kali temple. It had rained softly throughout the evening, the lingering remnants of the monsoon leaving the darkness damp and full of whispering secrets.

Satisfied that the Englishman would remain in his hotel room for the rest of the night, Firoz had taken this fleeting opportunity to come and pay homage to the goddess he revered. With his stare fixed on her towering image at the end of the soaring, shadowed space, he moved deeper into the temple. The animal sacrifices had been over since twilight, but although he had missed the rites, he gave the priest who greeted him a weighty purse full of gold, the proceeds of his labors in her name. Firoz bowed his head as the old man touched his brow and gave him a blessing.

When the priest left to put his large donation in a safe place, Firoz prostrated himself before the massive idol, down on his knees and bowing low. But he peered upward slowly from below his lashes and searched her vicious form with a creeping horror that still raised the hairs on the back of his neck, even after all these years.

Monstrous.

Kali, the goddess of destruction.

She was absolute night, the Dark Mother, the end of time—nightmare. Death, fear, and pain. And to serve her, he had made himself into all of those things. To be worthy of worshiping her.

It was a hard and lonely path, but he was one of the few who grasped its importance. After all, without the horror of her and all she stood for, everything good and light in the world would be meaningless.

Kali's naked body was painted black, her long ebony hair wildly disheveled from her dance of death. She wore a necklace of human skulls and a skirt made from the severed arms of men. Her eyes bulged with bloodlust; her gold tongue thrust from her mouth, as though to devour the world. In her four arms, she held a bloody sword, a decapitated head, the power to vanquish fear, and the secret of bliss.

Firoz wondered how many more he'd have to kill before that secret was given to him.

It was true that he was favored by the goddess. Even his brethren in the Thuggee cult were jealous of him. Jealous and afraid. But none of them served her as ruthlessly or as skillfully as he.

So much did he enjoy her protection that the British authorities could not catch him, and though he had killed in the hundreds, he remained immune to Hindu law. She protected him by sending him constant communication through many signs and omens, and tonight, the cawing of the crow had signaled to him that it was time to go to her to pray at her great temple.

He crouched low as he praised her by her many names in a fervent whisper: Devi, Bhavani, and of course, Mother Kali, for whom Calcutta had been named.

Shiva's wild consort.

She was all he had, all he had known ever since the night long ago that his own parents were slain in her name. They, too, had been travelers on the road, overcome by a band of Thugs. He had been a small boy then, and the brotherhood refused to kill children, so he had been spared.

After his parents had been placed in the earth, the men who had sacrificed them took him in and raised him, and initiated him into her secret ways.

Through years of training, Firoz had risen to become the most revered killer in all the brotherhood. First he had served as a scout, mastering the skills of planning missions and gathering information without drawing attention to himself.

Next, he had been designated as one of the grave-diggers, disbursing the required rituals over their victims and learning how to dispose of the bodies so they would never be found. Dismemberment was grisly work, but even as a lad of barely sixteen, Firoz had never flinched.

Thus he had gained the approval of his guru, and had been promoted to
shumseea.
His job then was to lull and charm the wealthy travelers he met along the road and soothe away their fears so they suspected nothing, becoming easy prey for the highest rank within their organization: the stranglers.

Firoz had achieved the level of
bhurtote,
ritual killer, some ten years ago. Each month since then, unfailingly, he had sacrificed four lives to the goddess, one to place in each of her hands. He was as efficient as he was remorseless. Why mourn? Their souls lived on through reincarnation, and their deaths helped to maintain the balance of the universe, which the Dark Mother represented in her terrible dance. If there was life, there must be death; if there was light there must be darkness.

Her dance whirled now in his brain as he prayed. Sometimes in his mind, the two mysterious female powers that he served blurred into one, the terrible goddess and the dark queen.

For all he knew, the earthly lady behind her heavy veil might be an incarnation of the goddess herself, testing him, as the gods were wont to do with their favorites; therefore, the tasks
she
gave him carried an extraordinary weight. He did Her Majesty's bidding with an urgency no king or priest could ever have inspired in him.

Killing for the goddess was his dharma, but serving Queen Sujana of Janpur had long been his occupation: spy, assassin, whatever she required. He drew upon the same skills in both secret lines of endeavor.

On her orders, he had followed the English diplomat for many miles, ever since the Maharani had first heard through her palace spies that Lord Griffith was coming to Janpur.

This nocturnal prayer time was for Kali, but soon, he knew, he should report back to his worldly duty.

A short while later, Firoz rose from his prayers and walked closer, his stealth-trained footfalls silent in the temple's gloom. He lit some incense at the giant feet of her statue, and waved the smoke up gently to her.

Like Kali, he was terrible; like every victim he had slain, he was alone.

         

Sunlight streamed through the scalloped arches, illuminating colorful mosaics and bright gilding everywhere. A humid breeze smelling faintly of sandalwood rustled through the potted palms, but with their two empires on the brink of war, the air nearly crackled with distrust as Ian rose to address the royal court.

A week had passed, and Ian was now knee-deep in negotiations in the Maharajah of Janpur's sumptuous Throne Room.

Exuding calm power and cool determination, he swept the gathering with a steely glance. Not for an instant did he forget that countless lives hung in the balance.

They always did, in his line of work.

Well aware that this was his final chance to avert the looming war—or at least to curtail it before the first shot was fired—he chose his words with meticulous care.

“Loyalty.” His firm, cultured voice echoed under the ceiling dome. “This, Your Majesty, is what lies at the heart of the controversy.”

The robed and turbaned viziers stopped their murmurings to heed him. Though interpreters stood at the ready, the British had been in India long enough by now that most of the nobles spoke English.

Ahead, meanwhile, seated on his cushioned stool-throne, the formidable Hindu king, Johar, Maharajah of Janpur, sat stroking his black beard and listening intently.

Dressed in Eastern splendor, the maharajah wore a loose, sleeveless, knee-length coat of rich brocade over a white, belted tunic with long sleeves, and leggings of white silk. A sapphire the size of an egg secured his turban, which was also adorned with an aigrette of peacock feathers—a royal prerogative.

Behind him, various dark-clad attendants and fierce palace guards were arrayed in crescent formation, one holding the fringed
chatri,
or ceremonial umbrella, while others slowly waved huge peacock-feather fans to keep His Majesty cool.

By his side, his son, Crown Prince Shahu, lounged on his lesser throne, looking bored and malcontent, as if he'd rather be out hunting in the dense surrounding forests with his royal falcons and his entourage of toadies.

“For hundreds of years,” Ian said, walking out from behind the long teakwood table where the hand-picked members of his delegation were seated, “the six royal houses of the Maratha Empire have held off invaders by your sacred blood-oath of mutual defense. Far and wide it is known that if any one of your kingdoms is attacked, all the others shall rouse their armies and come to the besieged one's aid. It is enviable in this world to have such stalwart friends.”

He had brought friends of his own to this fight. Gabriel and Derek Knight sat at the table with the other members of his team, the big braw Scotsman, Major MacDonald, and the old battle-ax, Colonel Montrose, the ranking military member of his party. All four men watched Ian pace slowly across the white marble floor as his speech now took a new twist.

“But what if one of your brother-kings abuses the great loyalty of the Marathas?” he posed the question. “Makes a grievous error in judgment? Picks a fight where none is warranted, for reasons known only to himself? Is it fair for him to prevail on all of you to come to his rescue, when he alone has acted irresponsibly?”

Halting at one end of the space, he pivoted and looked at the whole court matter-of-factly. “Are your people to suffer the privations of war, your soldiers to bleed, all for the vain delusions of your great ally, Baji Rao?”

“Delusions?” The crown prince leaped to his feet. “How dare you speak of my uncle with such disrespect, you English—”

“Sit down!” Johar barked at his son. The king fairly rolled his eyes with impatience at his son's impassioned outburst. “We crave your patience with our son, Lord Griffith. He has much to learn of state-craft.”

Ian bowed, far from ruffled, in truth, hiding a smile of worldly amusement. Through diplomatic eyes, such temper was a sign of weakness.

Prince Shahu clamped his mouth shut and obeyed his father with a simmering look. His long, gold earrings flashing, he swept his garish robe around him and prowled back to his seat in his curl-toed shoes, the Oriental version of a London dandy.