Royal Regard (57 page)

London, England –
1805

The first time Kali met her father, he was
screaming.

“I am shocked you would call me here!” the
Earl of Thornfield shouted at the target of his ire, as Kali stood
a few steps outside the door. “Bad enough to be summoned to a
brothel, but one like this?!”

The Masala Rajah Gentleman’s Retreat, Kali’s
home for the past two years, was known to a select, very wealthy,
few as a bordello catering to the most exotic sex
practices—floggings and canings and buggery, sapphists and dwarves
and men who dressed like women, choking and piercing and pissing on
clients who paid handsomely for the privilege. The madam, Kali’s
mother’s oldest friend, barred only acts with children.

“A note!” he barked. “You sent a note?! What
if it had been intercepted?!”

A different, larger, class of guests, of
which the earl could loosely be considered one, also knew the
Masala Rajah to be the training ground for the most accomplished
Indian courtesans to be had outside Punjab; women so extraordinary,
it was less expensive to take a wife than make a mistress of a
Masala Rajah girl.

“You have no discretion!”

To the uninitiated—most of London—it appeared
a traditional Indian
kotha.
Here, the aristocratic gentleman
could find the same privacy and indulgence he found at White’s or
Brooks’s, with the addition of beautiful women in revealing
saris
to serve his drinks, admire his wit, dance and sing
for his entertainment, and decorate his immediate landscape.

“It is unthinkable I might be associated with
your… your…
depravity
!” the earl bellowed.

In all fairness, such association
was
a disservice to Thornfield, since the earl never left the confines
of the
kotha
. When he visited, infrequently, he rarely
spoke, never encouraged flirtation, and always paid his bill in
gold sovereigns. He had never partaken of the offerings in the back
rooms, never suggested even an hour with a concubine. He only
smoked his pipe and watched the dancers and drank coconut
feni
, a spirit he had learned to enjoy during his military
years in India.

Today, however, his presence was rather more
disruptive. Mayuri Falodiya, the owner and procuress, had been
taking the brunt of the earl’s ire for the exactly twelve minutes
she trained all of her girls to keep any man waiting. Mayuri’s
scarred, leathery cheek was turned against his harangue, allowing
his anger to wash over her without reacting at all, another skill
she passed on to all of her pupils.

“You have no business calling me here! Anyone
might have—” His railing stopped the moment Kali entered the
room.

“My God!” he gasped, falling back three
steps. “You look just like—”

“Rohana Shaheen,” Mayuri finished, putting
paid to his tirade.

Thornfield’s head snapped back when he saw
Kali, and his rattled composure flew back and forth between the two
women as she curtsied deeply.

The Earl of Thornfield, or as Kali knew him,
the
Vikanta,
looked nothing like her imaginings. Her mother
had described hair like cinnamon, skin smooth as river clay, chest
broad as a water buffalo, arms like a baobab tree, thighs strong as
a bullock.

This man was tired and bent as a mangrove,
hair white as a Brahmin’s shawl, face furrowed like an elephant’s
hide, limbs spindly as a rattan palm. The only part that recalled
Rohana’s musings were his eyes: the deepest blue of a peacock’s
breast, fierce as a tiger stalking a gazelle.

Mayuri said nothing, just allowed the earl
and his daughter come to their own conclusions, and Kali followed
her instruction not to speak unless addressed directly. Kali
chanced glances from the depth of her bow, seeking some sign this
was the man her mother had loved to her last breath.

He motioned for her to rise, and Kali watched
his hard eyes soften as he looked at her, his frowning mouth
turning up into an even, narrowed line. He straightened his back,
recalling another of her mother’s descriptions: the manner and
bearing of a
maharajah
.

Kali had heard Rohana tell, ten thousand
times, how his heart had ached to leave them, and when her
cherished mother told her daughters stories of the love they had
shared, Kali and Kamala held their tongues, thinking Rohana
foolishly besotted with an
Angreezi
who had never cared for
her. It was more likely, the girls agreed outside Rohana’s hearing,
that he had been taken by the talents of an exceptional
tawaif
and would have said or done anything to convince her
to lie with him as often as she would allow it.

It was not a story difficult to believe. For
a
tawaif
was not a streetwalker who would futter for
pennies, but rather, a skilled dancer, musician, poet, and
practitioner of the erotic arts, trained from birth to meet a man’s
every desire. Before she met Thornfield, Kali’s mother had been one
of the most sought-after in Punjab, as her mother and grandmother
had been before her, and her daughters would be after.

“You look just like… you’re like a vision… I
never thought…”

Unlike most Englishmen of his ilk, the
Vikanta
had not treated Rohana like a disposable rag on
which to wipe his spent cock, but rather, had forged a relationship
if not based on love, at least mutual passion and esteem. Love was
not an emotion granted a woman of her caste, nor embraced with a
courtesan by a man of his. But while the
Vikanta
could have
turned Rohana out when she became pregnant, he instead allowed her
the child, then a second, honoring her request to keep some part of
him once he was forced to return to England to inherit.

Their illicit romance had lasted almost five
years, but eventually, The Vicious Viscount of Visnagar had ordered
more than fifteen hundred people slaughtered, from elders to babes
at the breast, reprisal for ten British soldiers killed with a
katar
blade in the dark of night. When the mobs came for the
blood of the
Vikanta Khotaa,
Sutcliff Birchbright, the
future Earl of Thornfield, boarded a brigantine to
England—alone.

“I never thought I would see her face again.
I can’t… It’s like she… It’s uncanny…”

If the
Vikanta
had remained in India,
Rohana always said, she and her daughters would never have fallen
so far, but Kali knew that was a lie. If he had stayed, he would
have fallen along with them. Her mother had been shunned by
tawaifs
for her inexplicable love for the Vicious Viscount,
shunned by the English like every person of dark skin. The papers
the
Vikanta
had left to endure their protection had been
worthless as his words of devotion. If not for the enormous sum of
money he had given Rohana for the care of his children, they would
easily have starved.

Twelve years after their parting, when Kali
was fifteen, Kamala two years younger, Rohana’s broken heart had
stopped beating, so her daughters had come to England to seek out
their mother’s oldest friend. The stigma of being half-black
daughters of a nameless
tawaif
in London infinitely
preferable to being half-white daughters of the Vicious Viscount in
Visnagar.

Once Thornfield accepted that the apparition
in front of him was not Rohana, silence reigned until, after
gulping several large breaths and closing his eyes against any
memories that might be filling them, he said, “So, this is…” His
eyes opened but looked past her. “Which one are you?”

Kali’s voice was nearly imperceptible,
shaking and unusually squeaky. “Kali, my lord. Kali Shaheen.”

His face softened momentarily. “And your
mother? Is your mother…”

Mayuri answered, “Rohana died three years
ago. To be clear, my lord, should you choose to leave, there will
be no mention of this to anyone. You need not involve yourself. It
is only I believed you should know.”

They all knew there was no limit to the
punishment Thornfield could rain down on an Indian abbess trying
for blackmail or coercion. At best, the closing of the Masala
Rajah, and at worst, execution or transportation to a penal colony.
Kali had been trained from childhood to never speak her father’s
name, only to call him the
Vikanta
, a misnomer since just
after he had returned to England, when he traded a courtesy
viscount’s title for his father’s earldom.

Thornfield’s eyes became suspiciously bright,
and he turned away, eventually speaking to fill the silence, “I
thank you for the consideration, Mayuri. I have often wondered
what…” He trailed off before turning to his daughter. “I cared
about your mother a great deal, Kali… I… I wish you to know that.
She was… well, she was important to me.” He straightened his spine
and asked, “Your sister?” He choked, “Is Kamala…?”

“Kali and Kamala are under my protection, my
lord. Kamala is attending her lessons presently, as I hoped not to
overwhelm Your Lordship. I can call her in, should you choose.”

“In a moment. I wish to better understand the
situation first, if you please.”

Mayuri’s hands twisted in her lap, the first
time Kali had ever seen her the least bit nervous, but she could
not possibly be as anxious as Kali. Only years of training in
grace, poise, and self-possession kept her from wrinkling her skirt
in her fists. Her mother had taught her when she was six, about to
play the three-stringed
sarangi
for a woman who might take
her on as a student: grasshoppers in the belly need only make you
tremble on the inside. She remained perfectly motionless as she
waited for Mayuri to speak.

“The girls have been in London almost two
years, my lord, finishing their education with me, but it is time
for Kali to… to make her own way. Kamala is just fifteen, so will
not be ready to take her place among the
tawaif
for some
time.”

“So you must be…” Thornfield’s eyes seemed to
be following numbers in his head while he continued to appraise his
daughter, making it more and more difficult for her to stay still.
“Seventeen? Eighteen on the fourth of August, unless I
misremember.”

Kali stepped back, surprised that he recalled
her birth at all, much less the date. “Yes, my lord.”

He tipped her chin up to take in her face,
clearing his throat, smiling with a certain softness in the corners
of his lips.

“You needn’t call me ‘Lord’ while we are
meeting privately, my dear; you are my daughter, after all. Of
course, you mustn’t ever call me Papa, and should we meet publicly,
you must treat me as a gentleman of the nobility whom you’ve not
met, but I doubt we shall see each other outside this room.
Vikanta
will do, I think. Not strictly true, as I am an earl
now, but you will call me
Vikanta
, as your mother did.”

She swallowed her confusion as Mayuri looked
on, smiling like a leopard sighting fatted prey. Kali agreed, voice
squeaking yet again, “As you wish,
Vikanta
.”

“Lovely,” he murmured to himself, then
addressed her. “You are very beautiful, Kali—perhaps even more so
than Rohana. Your skin is much lighter, of course; you could almost
pass for Spanish. And your English is quite good. Virtually no
accent at all.” He motioned Kali and Mayuri to a seat as he settled
into a tambour-worked armchair, as though he owned the room.

Kali hadn’t looked away when he stepped back,
and when he frowned just slightly at her boldness, she dropped her
eyes, only glancing at him through her dark lashes as she took a
seat in a tapestry-covered shepherdess chair. He nodded to
acknowledge her submission to male displeasure, but Kali couldn’t
determine if he were actually displeased or only testing her
decorous behavior.

“I have studied English and French,
my—
Vikanta
.”

“Hindi and Persian?” She nodded as he added,
“And the usual education for a
tawaif
?”

“Yes,
Vikanta
. I sing and dance and
play
tabla
drums and the
yaal
harp and
sarangi
. I write poetry as well, but have little talent with
chalk or brushes.”

“We cannot all be talented in everything, my
dear.” He turned to Mayuri. “She is fully trained?”

“Yes, my lord. In Western arts as well as
Eastern. Rohana insisted, knowing she would seek an English
protector.”

Kali spoke up then, making a concerted effort
to regain the throaty, sultry voice Rohana had taught her before
she was ten. “I have been told I am a very good dancer.”

Mayuri nodded, “This is true, my lord. I have
never known a girl so graceful. She sets a fine example for the
younger girls.”