Soul of Fire (42 page)

“If you’ll wash your face and hands, miss, I’ll have
your supper ready when you come out,” Lalita said. Sofie nodded and said nothing in response.

She was sure that her surmise about Lalita had been right. The place they’d stopped for the night proved it. Somehow in the middle of nowhere Lalita had managed to commandeer a bungalow with all possible comfort. She’d told Sofie it was just a place that some friends of hers worked, and that, the owners being absent, it was free for them to occupy. But Sofie didn’t believe it. For one, in India, places were rarely left completely empty and without even a servant to care for them. And yet, she and Lalita and the two men were the only occupants of this spacious bungalow.

Sofie didn’t know if they’d broken into the place, or if Lalita had somehow commandeered it. Lalita was someone or something of great importance.
Princess.

And why would a princess engage in this charade and pretend to be Sofie’s loyal servant unless she intended on doing something to take advantage of the situation?

As she stood before the small basin set atop a dresser of elegant English design, and washed her face and hands with a bar of soap that smelled of lavender, Sofie thought to herself that in her place, St. Maur would have sliced them to bits till they confessed what they wished to do. A rueful smile flitted across her face because she knew it to be true, and she felt despicable for wishing he were here to do it for her, to save her from having to find a way out of this situation.

Lalita came in to check on her, and asked her down to the kitchen to share their meal. Sofie ate a little of the circular, flat bread, the kind cooked over a spirit lamp, and less of what appeared to be some native soup heavy on spices.

While she ate, she observed her companions. They were all very subdued—even Hanuman, who was normally quite garrulous. After eating, Sofie pleaded tiredness and went to bed. But she wasn’t tired. She was oddly excited and full of certainty. She had decided what to do.

She was going to steal the ruby, and then she was going to find St. Maur. While it occurred to her that he might be very far away indeed—on the other side of the continent or the other side of the world—something in her whispered that he wasn’t. Something in her was as sure as she was of her own name, or of being alive, that he wouldn’t go very far. Not until he was sure—absolutely sure—the whole situation was safe for her. She’d heard the worry in his voice when he’d spoken to Lalita.

And that concern had made Sofie decide he would be the safest possible guard for herself and the ruby. He would not hurt her. In fact, she realized, with a small shock, he was more likely to die defending her than to kill her.

A wave of longing for him flooded her, but the desire alone wasn’t going to save her. She was sure she knew where the ruby was. Whether dressed, half-dressed or completely naked, Hanuman always kept a pouch around his middle. It was securely tied to him so that it wouldn’t fall off. And it was never opened. Ever.

Sofie was certain the ruby was there, but the question was, how to get it without alarming him. Hanuman seemed strangely alert. All of them did. And they were certainly more on their element than she was. And then an idea occurred to her, as she fretfully washed her hands once more and thought of going to bed.

This bungalow, however procured, was clearly the habitation of an English family. The lavender soap, the embroidered hand towels, the clothes hanging in the heavy wardrobe in her bedroom—surmounted by a porcelain statuette of an elephant rearing—all of it proclaimed this the inhabitation of an English Family. And where the English were, they brought with them such modern conveniences of life as were common in England.

She thought of how, in England, she’d heard young ladies or matrons say they’d take a spoonful of laudanum for their headache or to conquer a sleepless night. So many of the young wives exiled to India had trouble sleeping: the strangeness of the land, the oppressiveness of the climate, the fear of the natives, all of it conspired to make them feel that they could not possibly sleep a wink. Of course, thee were also strong army wives and women who’d been raised in India and to whom all of the inconveniences others mentioned were no more than attractive features of the place. Sofie hoped that the lady of this house hadn’t been one of the annoyingly sturdy types. She very much hoped that.

Carefully, methodically, opening and closing doors and drawers as quietly as possible to avoid Lalita’s overhearing her, Sofie searched for laudanum. She found it at the back bottom of the wardrobe, under a mound of starched pillowcases. In earlier years, laudanum had been considered a blameless vice, but now it had come to be frowned upon. Obviously, whoever the lady of this house was, she was ashamed of her need. But fortunately, the need existed. Sofie slipped the small bottle filled with thick yellowish liquid into her apron pocket. She knew that Lalita took her tea full of sugar, so full that Sofie used to tease her about maybe desiring a little tea with her sugar. She didn’t know about the men, but she hoped they would fall for her trick.

She bustled past a small parlor and down the stairs to the kitchen, where the three of them were sitting around the table. They’d been talking quietly, but they stopped at her entrance.

“Anything I can do for you, miss?” Lalita asked, looking faintly alarmed.

Sofie shook her head. “I’m not as tired as I thought I was,” she said. “Perhaps it is the strange bed or . . . you know, the tigers pursuing us. I thought what I’d really like is a good cup of tea and to talk. Will you have a cup with me?”

While she spoke, she set a teakettle on the stove. The stove was a rarity in India—a true, cast-iron English stove. She wondered if the nervy housewife who took laudanum had insisted on it, and she puzzled over how she managed to keep it in fuel. The landscape of India was such that wood and coal were often at a premium. And besides, the coal stove would be ridiculously hot during the summer. Most of the cooking in India was done on spirit lamps or piles of cow dung. But Sofie was glad the lady of the house had a stove, and that someone—probably Lalita, who was as ignorant of the Indian ways of living as Sofie herself, at least when it came to the practice of them—had stoked a fire in it. The embers were still going and the surface of the stove was still hot. The kettle was half-filled, and Sophie looked through the cupboard on the far end of the kitchen till she found tea.

Once the tea was made, Sofie insisted on serving it. Lalita had a puzzled expression on her face as she watched Sofie do so, but she said nothing, probably thinking that what Sofie was doing was a way to calm her nerves. Which it was. It would calm her nerves very much to get hold of the ruby and be on her way to St. Maur.

She served the tea, spooning sugar into each cup and, in the middle of her bright chatter, dropping in laudanum from the bottle she’d concealed in her sleeve. She’d read in some book that Lucrezia Borgia had used that method herself—at least, when she wasn’t messing about with powder in rings.

Lalita watched Sofie with a bemused expression, as though she were trying to figure something out. The men acted completely oblivious to the idea that she might even plan something. After all, in their world, she supposed, women existed to serve men. Which made it all the stranger how much respect they showed Lalita, and that they called her princess. Unless she
was
a princess.

Sofie made herself a cup of tea, without laudanum. She hadn’t known what dosage to apply for the three, but she’d used the five drops some woman had told her were ideal to send one to sleep.

It must have worked, because by the time she had finished her own tea, their heads were on the table, and they were snoring softly.

Sofie set down her cup. It was a nice cup—a really fine Sevres porcelain. She hoped it escaped unscathed the natives’ surprise at finding themselves duped.

She forced herself to wait, and counted to fifty in her mind, to make sure they were asleep—and deeply, too—before she bent down, and with trembling fingers pulled out the pouch that Hanuman wore under his tunic. Then, just as carefully, she unfastened the bit of ribbon that tied it shut.

He didn’t move. If it weren’t for the slight movement of his chest, she’d have wondered if he was dead. But he was definitely breathing, so she pulled the flap of the pouch aside to reveal . . .

The ruby, in all its faulty glory. It flared as Sofie reached for it and held it in her hand. It was a wild light, reddish and faltering, but Sofie interpreted it as a flash of recognition.

“Shhh,” she told the ruby, as though it was a living thing. It felt like a living thing, warm and pulsing in her hand.

She grabbed a sharp little silver-handled knife from the drawer—a knife that smelled like it mainly had been used to cut lemons. But it was sharp, and she felt better with it in her hand. If she was going out alone, she wouldn’t go defenseless, she thought as she stepped out of the house and into the night outside, looking at the sky, hoping for the sound of wings.

A GENERAL’S MORNING ROUTINE; WHERE THE WHOLE STORY IS BETTER THAN PART; ENTIRELY THE WRONG DECISION

William was admitted to the general’s chambers while
the general was shaving. Most men of that rank had barbers do it for them, but the general—in his voluminous red silk robe—shaved himself in front of a small mirror in an elaborate frame atop the dresser. He’d just covered his face in white froth with a ratty looking brush, and now he was wielding an ivory-handled straight razor with gusto.

“What is wrong, my boy?” he asked William. “You look like you’ve been dragged through hell backwards.”

William
felt
like he’d been dragged through hell backwards. His certainty that he could control himself and his desires had just been proved a lie. He didn’t want to think of what he’d done. He didn’t know how he could ever face Bhishma again. He didn’t know how he could face himself again. He shut the images and feelings of his recent actions out of his mind and concentrated, instead, on the problem of the tigers and what would happen if they chose to mutiny.

“I’ve been . . .” He amended the sentence mentally before he could say
I’ve been out in the forest with one of the sepoys.
True and probably not incriminating, as far as that went, but he couldn’t imagine saying it without blushing and stammering. “That is, one of the sepoys showed me to a place that the natives say is the kingdom of the were-tigers.”

He half expected the general to poo-poo his evidence, and General Paitel might have, had he not at the moment been doing his moustache line, his lips pursed to one side and firmly closed.

“I know, sir, you said it was my imagination, but I believe I must tell you . . .” He swallowed as he realized what he would have to tell, how much he would have to explain—and how carefully he would have to avoid telling a good part of it. And not just the last few hours’ occurrences. He thought it would be best if he didn’t denounce St. Maur. The man had done nothing to him—even if he had, accidentally, revealed a flaw in William’s makeup. “I must tell you that while I was in London, I was approached by members of the . . . of the magical secret service, sir.”

The general lowered the razor. His eyes met William’s in the mirror. His eyebrows rose.

“Oh, I wasn’t quite recruited. Nothing as fancy as that, sir. But you see, I had recently become friendly with a young lady, Miss Sofie Warington. I was offered a sum to marry her, on the condition I would use my marriage to her to acquire a jewel that had been passed down through inheritance in her family.”