Shadow of the Moon (19 page)

‘If you unlaced her stays for her,' remarked Winter, ‘I shouldn't think she would ever forgive you.'

She had spoken without thinking; a thing that she had schooled herself not to do for a third of her short life; and the moment the words were out she would have given anything to recall them. She jerked herself away from Captain Randall's supporting arm, her hand to her mouth and a hot wave of colour dyeing her throat and white face. How could she have said such a thing! Underclothes were considered an unmentionable subject, and she had spoken of them to a man - and to a strange man at that. A man who had had the incredible effrontery to act as lady's-maid to her. Cousin Julia would have swooned with horror. Captain Randall, however, remained unmoved. The enormity of her observation appeared to have escaped him and he replied to it in all seriousness:

‘It wasn't necessary. She seemed to have managed it herself.'

His attitude, had she but known it, was entirely genuine, for owing to the nature of his work he had escaped to a large extent the corroding prudery of Victorian England that muffled and enshrouded almost every aspect of domestic life in layers of shibboleth and taboo. The fact that women wore undergarments did not seem to him a matter of any interest, let alone a subject for speculation and salaciousness. Nor did it strike him as outrageous that he should have taken it upon himself to remove this child's drenched outer garments and unwieldy crinoline: it appeared to him merely a matter of common sense. She was obviously incapable of doing it for herself, and he had removed them of necessity and without giving the matter a second thought. He could hardly be unaware of the practice of tight lacing, and as it happened the mechanics of the female corset were no mystery to him. It seemed to him a ridiculous and torturous garment, but possibly no more ridiculous than the close-fitting, high-stocked coat with its elaborate frogging and heavy epaulettes that he himself wore when in uniform, despite a temperature that frequently reached well over a hundred in the shade.

The sight of Winter's scarlet cheeks and wide horrified eyes brought home to him for the first time the fact that his proceedings might be considered shockingly unorthodox, and a muscle twitched at the corner of his
mouth. He said gravely: ‘May I give you a piece of advice, Condesa? Common sense will nearly always stand you in better stead than a slavish adherence to the conventions. If I had left you to spend the night in wet and uncomfortable clothing it might have saved you some temporary embarrassment, but it would have done no good at all to your health. And in the country to which you are going, health is an important thing. You cannot afford to be ill in India.'

The shamed colour faded from Winter's cheeks and the horror in her eyes was replaced by interest. That common sense was preferable to convention was a point of view so diametrically opposed to the teachings of Cousin Julia and the various governesses, nurses and under-nurses who had had charge of the education and upbringing of Sybella and herself, that for a moment it seemed almost to smack of heresy. Yet on consideration it was so obviously right that Winter was conscious of a sudden sense of release from bondage; as though some mental form of tight lacing had suddenly been unloosed.

She had never had a very high opinion of her Cousin Julia, but it had not occurred to her to question her authority and the Tightness of her views in matters of behaviour and etiquette. But Cousin Julia, she knew, would not only have looked upon Captain Randall's eminently sensible proceedings as entirely scandalous, but have regarded Winter, as the recipient of them, as next door to a fallen woman. Cousin Julia's inflexible code would have visualized no alternative for Captain Randall but to have abandoned Winter to be sick in decent seclusion, and that such a course of action might well have resulted in a severe chill, or even pneumonia, would have carried no weight at all when placed in the balance against the strict preservation of the social conventions.

Winter considered the matter and came to the conclusion that Captain Randall's point of view was infinitely more practical. A dimple broke the smooth curve of her grave young cheek and she smiled.

It was the first time that Alex had seen her smile, but he did not return it. He sat quite still, looking down at her and no longer seeing her as a forlorn child, but as a young woman. The heart-shaped face was unusually pale, and the shadows under the wide dark eyes made them appear even larger. The crumpled whiteness of petticoat and corset-cover served to turn her bare arms and shoulders to a warm shade of ivory, and the loosened hair that tumbled about her in rippling profusion glinted with blue lights in the cold greyness of the small cabin.

Alex had a sudden and disturbing vision of the moist, unsteady hands of the Commissioner of Lunjore twining themselves in that soft darkness and sliding over those smooth ivory shoulders, and the lines of his face hardened and set. He stood up abruptly, and retrieving the tray said brusquely: ‘The Captain appears to think that we shall run out of this bad weather by sunset. You had better stay where you are for today at least. I have this cabin to myself as far as Gibraltar.'

‘But - what about you?' asked Winter hesitantly.

‘I can manage,' said Captain Randall briefly.

The cabin door closed behind him and Winter did not see him again for some considerable time. It was a steward who knocked at her door with a tray of food at mid-day, and towards the late afternoon she felt sufficiently recovered to resume her discarded dress and find her way to her own cabin. But it proved to be an unwise move. In the peace and privacy of Captain Randall's cabin she had succeeded in throwing off the worst effects produced by the boisterous seas, but ten minutes in the company of Lottie Abuthnot sufficed to bring on a renewal of nausea. The cabin reeked of sickness and resounded with Lottie's lamentations, and Winter took to her berth where she remained for the next few days.

The Captain's optimistic assertion as to the weather proved incorrect, but a Mrs Martha Holly, who had recovered her sea-legs after a temporary setback of twenty-four hours, had come to the rescue of the Abuthnot party.

Mrs Holly was stout, brisk and motherly, and had once been a nursemaid. She had borne and lost several children in India, but sorrow and adversity did not appear to have damped her invincible spirits, and after a year spent in England, to which she had returned in the capacity of nurse to an invalid wife and two small sons of a Colonel of Native Foot, she was returning to rejoin her husband.

‘Not that I can stand the place, miss,' she confided. ‘The ‘eat kills me, and I don't ‘old with foreigners - bein' British. But ‘Olly's bin' a good ‘usband to me and ‘e's lost without me. Those blacks ‘ave no idea ‘ow to darn a man's socks and iron ‘is nightshirt right. Like as not they'd use starch—I'd put nothin' beyond 'em! Yes, I've bin sixteen years in India. It's a long time. I suppose it ‘as its points, but give me Islington any day. Now, Miss Lottie, just you swaller down that soup while I go and see to your poor ma. If you don't keep nothing down you'll keep on bringing nothing up, an' that's uncomfortable as well I knows. I made meself eat ship's biscuit, and in less than no time I was up and about again.'

Her energetic ministrations had the desired effect, and when four days later the
Sirius
finally ran out of bad weather and into sunshine and blue seas, even Mrs Abuthnot was able to appear on deck.

Their fellow-passengers included several other ladies, among them a Mrs Gardener-Smith and her daughter Delia who were also bound for Lunjore, in addition to two Generals and a Judge, a number of officers of all ranks - the majority of them returning from leave - and a sprinkling of civilians. There were also two persons who were well known to Captain Randall: a Colonel Moulson, who commanded one of the regiments of Bengal Infantry stationed at Lunjore and was a bosom friend of Mr Barton's, and a slim, pleasant-mannered Hindu who spoke excellent English and was accompanied by several Indian servants. That same Kishan Prasad whom Alex had last seen outside Sebastopol.

Kishan Prasad and his retinue had attracted Winter's immediate attention, for the sight of the brown-skinned faces and the sound of the swift familiar speech revived memories of her childhood and of Zobeida's dear dark face, and reminded her not of a foreign land, but of home.

Kishan Prasad had spoken to her one evening while she had been standing under the awning on the poop deck, watching the sun sink into the Atlantic while Cape Finisterre showed like a violet shadow on the horizon behind her. The evening breeze had tugged unexpectedly at the light shawl she wore and tangled its long silk fringe inextricably about a stanchion, and Kishan Prasad, who had been passing, had come to her assistance. She had thanked him prettily, and he had been about to turn away when his gaze had fallen upon her left hand. She had been wearing Conway's ring; the great carved emerald in the curiously wrought setting that Alex Randall had brought with him from Lunjore, and Kishan Prasad had checked at the sight of it. The pupils of his eyes had narrowed like a cat's in the light, and he said in his soft voice whose faintly sing-song intonation alone betrayed the fact that it was not an Englishman who spoke: ‘That is a very unusual ring you are wearing. May I be permitted to ask where it came from? It looks as though it were a jewel from my own country - from Rohilkhand.'

‘Perhaps it is,' said Winter holding it out for him to see. ‘It was sent to me by the man I am going to marry. Mr Conway Barton.'

‘Ah! - Mr Barton. That is very interesting. He is the Commissioner of Lunjore, is he not?'

‘Yes. Do you know him?'

‘I have some slight acquaintance with Mr Barton. I own land in Lunjore District.'

Kishan Prasad was an agreeable man and an entertaining conversationalist, and he was soon on good terms with the majority of his fellow-passengers. Even Mrs Gardener-Smith, who did not consider that it was at all the thing for an Indian gentleman to converse freely with young ladies of European birth, pronounced him to be a very pleasant-mannered man. ‘Who is he?' she inquired of the ship's Captain.

‘No one of any special importance, ma'am. He is merely a wealthy Indian who has been visiting Europe. Doing a Grand Tour of the Continent, I imagine.'

‘One wonders what he made of it,' remarked Mrs Abuthnot. ‘The contrast between our great cities and the squalor of the East must cause such visitors the greatest amazement. Lottie dear, pray move under the awning. The sun is so strong, and freckles are
so
unbecoming.'

‘Yes, Mama,' murmured Lottie dutifully, her eyes under their soft lashes busy with a party of gay young officers who were lounging on the rail at the far side of the deck. Freckles might be considered unbecoming in a young lady, thought Lottie, but on a man they could be strangely endearing.

Lieutenant Edward English was a large young man who possessed a
generous supply of freckles, red hair and charm. He also possessed a pair of deeply blue and openly admiring eyes, and Lottie's fairness and fragility had made an instant impression upon his susceptible heart. He had lost no time in making her acquaintance, but her mama did not mean to allow any young man to fix his interest with her daughter at such an early stage of the voyage, and she had contrived to keep Mr English at a safe distance. Mrs Abuthnot had every intention of marrying her sweet Lottie to the first really suitable
parti
who offered for her; marriage being in her opinion a woman's sole purpose in life. But was Edward English suitable? She would have to find out. Meanwhile there was plenty of time - and plenty of other men on board.

There were also, of course, several other young ladies. Notably Miss Delia Gardener-Smith. Miss Gardener-Smith possessed sufficient pretensions to beauty to cause some slight anxiety in the breast of any mother of other marriageable maidens, being tall, blue-eyed, and inclined to plumpness, and endowed with a spectacular wealth of chestnut curls. ‘I have been told that even the Empress Eugénie has not such beautiful hair,' confided her mother complacently to Mrs Abuthnot.

Mrs Gardener-Smith, who was distantly related to a peer, had an inflated opinion of her own consequence; but on hearing that Mrs Abuthnot was acting as chaperon to a young lady of title, a cousin of the Earl of Ware and the affianced wife of the Commissioner of Lunjore, she had hastened to make her acquaintance. She pronounced Lottie to be a sweet girl and Sophie a charming child, but she had not known what to make of the young Condesa de los Aguilares, and like others before her, Mrs Gardener-Smith could see little to admire in the girl's unusual beauty.

‘Her father was a Spaniard, you say? It is a pity that she should be so sallow - and have such
very
black hair. And those eyes! I fear such colouring will be misunderstood in the East. It is almost oriental, is it not? She looks to be very reserved.'

‘I think she is shy,' said kindly Mrs Abuthnot. ‘The poor little thing is an orphan, you know. But she is a dear child, and does not push herself forward at all. In my opinion Mr Barton is a singularly fortunate man.'

There were others who were of the same opinion, but they were exclusively male. Winter's unusual style of beauty might not appeal to Mrs Gardener-Smith, but it was very much to the taste of the male passengers on board the steamship
Sirius
, and in particular to Colonel Moulson.

Colonel Moulson was a bachelor and a lover of women, and he fancied himself as a connoisseur of female charms. He had been a rake in his youth, and had managed in later years to purchase what he could no longer obtain by his own merits - a fact that his vanity would not allow him to admit. Advancing years had given him a taste for youth, and no young girl was safe from his ogling gaze and the sly pattings and pressures of his sinewy hands. Lottie and Sophie, who were too shy and inexperienced to know how to avoid
his amorously-avuncular advances, were terrified of him. But Winter's cool dark eyes had a way of looking through him that he found more than a little disconcerting, though as the affianced wife of one of his greatest friends he felt, he informed her, a special responsibility towards her.