The Elusive Bride (2 page)

September 10, 1822
The Governor’s Residence, Bombay

Emily frowned at the Indian houseboy standing in the patch of sunlight slanting across the silk rug in her aunt’s parlor. “He’s leaving?”

The boy, Chandra, nodded. “Yes, miss. It is said he and his other friends have all resigned their commissions because they are so cast down by the death of their friend the captain.”

She resisted the urge to drop her head in her hands and tug at her braids. What the devil was Hamilton about? How could he be her “one” if he was so cowardly as to run home to England? What about honor and avenging a friend—a comrade and fellow officer killed in the most ghastly and gruesome manner?

A vision of the four men as they’d stood around the table in the officers’ bar swam across her mind. Her frown deepened. “All of them—all four—have resigned?”

When Chandra nodded, she specified, “And they’re all heading back to England?”

“That’s what everyone says. I have spoken with some who know their servants—they are all excited about seeing England.”

Emily sat back in the chair behind her aunt’s desk, thought again of those four men, of all she’d sensed of them, remembered the packet she’d placed in Delborough’s hands, and inwardly shook her head. Any one of those four turning tail was hard enough to swallow, but all four of them? She wouldn’t lose faith in Hamilton just yet.

They were up to something.

She wondered what.

She was due to board ship on the eighteenth of the month, sailing via the Cape to Southampton. She needed to learn more about Hamilton, a lot more, before she left. Once she was convinced he was not as cowardly as his present actions painted him, as he was going home, she could—somehow would—arrange to meet him again there.

But first…

She refocused on Chandra. “I want you to concentrate on Major Hamilton. See what you can learn of his plans—not just from his household but from the barracks and anywhere else he goes. But whatever you do, don’t get caught.”

Chandra grinned, his big smile startlingly white in his mahogany face. “You can count on Chandra, miss.”

She smiled. “Yes, I know I can.” She’d caught him gaming, which was forbidden for those on the governor’s payroll, but on learning his need for rupees to pay for medicine for his mother, had arranged for him to have money advanced from his pay, and for his mother, who also worked in the governor’s mansion, to receive better care. Ever since, Chandra had been her willing slave. And as he was quick, observant, and all but invisible in Bombay’s busy streets, he’d proved extremely useful in following Hamilton and the other three.

“One thing—Hamilton has no other Anglo friends, just those three officers?”

“Yes, miss. They all came from Calcutta some months ago, and have kept to themselves.”

Which would explain why she’d learned nothing of Hamilton through the Bombay social grapevine. She nodded to Chandra. “Very well. Let me know what you learn.”

September 15, 1822
The Governor’s Residence, Bombay

“He’s
left
?” Emily stared at Chandra. “When? And how?”

“This morning, miss. He took the sloop to Aden.”

“He and his servants?”

“So I heard tell, miss—they were already gone when I got there.”

Mind racing, she asked, “The other three—have they gone, too?”

“I have only had the chance to check on the colonel, miss. Apparently he left on the company ship this morning. Everyone was surprised. No one knew they were leaving so soon.”

The company ship was a mammoth East Indiaman which went via the Cape to Southampton. She was due to board a sister ship in a few days.

“See what you can learn about the other two—the other major and the captain.” If all four had precipitously departed Bombay…

Chandra bowed and left.

Emily felt a headache coming on.

Gareth Hamilton—he who might be her “one”—had left Bombay via the diplomatic route. Why?

Regardless of his motives, his sudden departure left her with a very big unanswered question—and an even bigger decision to make. Was he her “one,” or not? She needed more time with him to tell. If she wanted to get that time, following him might—just—be possible. If she acted now.

Should she follow him, or let him go?

Closing her eyes, she revisited those moments in the officers’ bar, the only moments on which she could judge him. Surprisingly vividly, she recalled the sensation of his fingers closing around hers, felt again that odd leap of her pulse, the frisson that had set her nerves jangling.

Felt, remembered, relived.

On a sigh, she opened her eyes. One point was inescapable.

Of all the men she’d ever met, only Gareth Hamilton had affected her in the slightest.

Only he had set her heart racing.

September 16, 1822
The Governor’s Residence, Bombay

“Good evening, Uncle.” Emily swept into the dining room and took her seat on her uncle’s right. They were the only two at dinner. Her aunt was still in Poona—which was a very good thing. Flicking out her napkin, she smiled at the butler, waited for him to serve her and step back before she said, “I have an announcement of sorts to make.”

“Oh?” Her uncle Ralph rolled a wary eye her way.

She smiled. She and Ralph had always got on well. “Don’t worry—it’s only a minor change in my plans. As you know, I was scheduled to depart on the company ship two days hence, but after speaking with others I’ve decided that, as I came by that route, I should instead go home by the direct and more scenic way.” She waved her fork. “See Egypt and the pyramids—and as it is the diplomatic route, there’s unlikely to be any serious danger, and plenty of embassies and consulates to call on for help if luck says otherwise.”

Ralph chewed, frowned. “Your father won’t like the idea, but then he won’t know—not until you’re standing in front of him again.”

Emily grinned. “I knew I could trust you to see the salient point. There’s really no reason I shouldn’t go home that way.”

“Assuming you can find passage at short notice. Your parents are expecting you back in four months—going via Cairo you’ll be able to surprise them, if you can find a berth—” Seeing the light in her face, Ralph broke off. “You’ve found one, I take it.”

Emily nodded. “And yes, it’s on one of the sloops the company regularly uses, so the captain and crew are vouched for.”

Ralph considered, then nodded. “Well, you’re the most sensible young lady I’ve ever known, and you’ll have Watson and Mullins with you, so I trust you’ll be all right.” He cocked a brow at her. “So, when do you leave?”

October 2, 1822
Aden

W
hat the…?” Gareth Hamilton stood in the bow of the
Egret
and stared incredulously at the pale pink parasol bobbing through the crowd on the wharf alongside.

They’d followed another of the company sloops into the
harbor, and had had to wait for that vessel, the
Mary Alice
, to be unloaded first.

His bags, along with the minimal luggage carried by his small but efficient household—his batman, Bister, his houseman, Mooktu, an ex-sepoy, and Mooktu’s wife, Arnia—were being stacked that very minute on the wooden wharf, but that wasn’t the cause of the consternation—to put it mildly—that had seized him.

He’d noticed the parasol bobbing down the gangway of the
Mary Alice
, tied up almost at the end of the long wharf. He’d watched the bearer, a lady in matching pale pink skirts, tack and weave through the crowd. She and the contingent of staff following at her heels, with one heavily muscled man clearing a path through the noisy, jostling throng ahead of her, had to pass along the wharf beside the
Egret
in order to enter the town.

Until a moment ago, he hadn’t been able to see the parasol holder’s face. But passing the
Egret
, she’d tipped the parasol aside and glanced up—and he’d glimpsed…a face he hadn’t expected to see again.

A face that, for the last few weeks, had haunted his dreams.

Yet all but immediately, the damn parasol had come up and re-obscured his view.

“
Damn!
” One part of his mind was telling him, calmly, that it couldn’t possibly be she, that he was seeing things he wanted to see…Some other part, a more visceral part, was already sure.

He hesitated, waiting to see again—to know for sure.

Movement in the crowd behind the parasol caught his eye.

Cultists.

His blood literally ran cold. He’d known they’d be waiting for him—he and his people were expecting a welcome.

But Emily Ensworth and her people weren’t.

He’d vaulted the railing on the thought. He landed on the wharf, his gaze locked on her.

He came up from his crouch with considerable momen
tum, cleaving his way bodily through the crowd. He came up with her just in time to grab her and haul her away from the blade a cultist thrust at her.

Her gasp was drowned beneath a cacophony of sound—exclamations, shrieks, shouts. Others had seen the menacing sword, but even as the crowd turned and garrulously searched, the cultists melted away. Taller than most, Gareth saw them pull back. Over the heads, one cultist—an older, black-bearded man—met his eye. Even across the distance, Gareth felt the malevolence in the man’s gaze. Then the man turned and was swallowed by the crowd.

Mooktu appeared by Gareth’s shoulder. “Should we follow?”

Bister was already further afield, scouting.

Gareth’s instincts screamed
follow
, to pursue and deal appropriately with any cultist he could find. But…he glanced down at the woman he still held, his hands locked about her upper arms.

With her parasol now askew, he looked down into wide, moss-hazel eyes. Into a face that was as perfect as he recalled, but pale. She was stunned.

At least she wasn’t screaming.

“No.” He glanced at Mooktu. “We have to get away from here—off the docks—quickly.”

Mooktu nodded. “I’ll get the others.”

He was gone on the word, leaving Gareth to set Miss Ensworth back on her feet.

Gently, as if she were porcelain and might shatter at any instant.

“Are you all right?”

As the warmth—the heat—of his hard hands fell from her, Emily managed to blink. “Y-yes.” This must be what shock felt like.

Indeed, she was amazed she hadn’t swooned. He’d seized her, dragged her from danger, then held her close, effectively plastered to the side of his body. His brick-wall-hard, excessively warm—not to say hot—body.

She didn’t think she’d ever be the same.

“Ah…” Where was a fan when one needed one? She glanced around, and noise suddenly assaulted her ears. Everyone was talking, in several different languages.

Hamilton hadn’t moved. He stood like a rock amid the sea of surging humanity. She wasn’t too proud to shelter in his lee.

She finally located Mullins—her grizzly ex-soldier guard—as he came stumping back through the crowd. Just before the attack, a wave of bodies had pushed him ahead and separated them—then her attacker had stepped between her and Watson, her courier-guide, who’d been following on her heels.

Her people were armed, but having lost her assailant in the melee, they gradually returned. Mullins recognized Hamilton as a solider even though he wasn’t in uniform, and raised a hand in an abbreviated salute. “Thanking you, sir—don’t know what we’d’ve done without you.”

Emily noted the way Hamilton’s lips tightened. She was grateful he didn’t state the obvious—if not for his intervention, she’d be dead.

The rest of her party gathered. Without prompting, she quickly put names and roles to their worried faces—Mullins, Watson, Jimmy, Watson’s young nephew, and Dorcas, her very English maid.

Hamilton acknowledged the information with a nod, then looked from her to Watson. “Where were you planning to stay?”

Hamilton and his people—a batman in his mid-twenties but with experience etched in his face, a fierce Pashtun warrior, and his equally fierce wife—escorted her party off the docks, then, with their combined luggage in a wooden cart, continued through the streets of Aden to the edge of the diplomatic quarter, and the quietly fashionable hotel her uncle had recommended.

Hamilton halted in the street outside, studied the build
ing, then simply said, “No.” He glanced at her, then past her to Mullins. “You can’t stay there. There’re too many entrances.”

Stunned anew—and she still hadn’t managed to marshal her senses enough to think through the implications of the cultists’ attack—she looked at Mullins to discover him nodding his grizzled head.

“You’re right,” Mullins allowed. “Death trap, that is.” He glanced at her and added, “In the circumstances.”

Before she could argue, Hamilton smoothly continued, “For the moment, at least, I’m afraid our parties will need to stay together.”

She looked at him.

He caught her eye. “We need to find somewhere a lot less…obvious.”

There was nothing the least obvious about the house in the Arab quarter Emily later found herself gracing. Not far from the docks, and in the opposite direction to the area inhabited by Europeans, she had to admit the private guesthouse was quite the last place anyone would think to look for her—the Governor of Bombay’s niece.

Nestled behind a high stone wall off a minor side street, the modest house was arranged around a central courtyard. The owners, an Arab family, lived in one wing, leaving the main living quarters and two other wings of bedchambers for guests.

At present their combined party were the only guests. From what she’d understood of the negotiations, Hamilton had hired the entire house for the duration of their stay.

He hadn’t consulted her, not even informed her of his intentions. He hadn’t told her anything at all—simply whisked her and her people up, and set them down there with his household.

Admittedly they were safe. Or at least as safe as they could be.

She’d been just a little distracted at the time as the impli
cations of the attack on the docks had finally impinged. Realizing she’d come within an inch of death had sobered and shaken her, but had also raised questions—ones she couldn’t answer.

She was fairly sure Hamilton could. As soon as she’d seen her people settled, and had washed off the dust of the streets, she made her way to the salon that served as drawing room-cum-parlor.

Hamilton was there, alone, seated on one of the long cushion-covered divans. He looked up, saw her, and came to his feet.

With an easy smile, she went forward, and sat on the divan to his left. Opposite, wide doors stood open to the courtyard, with its small central pool and shading tree.

He resumed his seat. “I…er, hope you have everything you need.”

“The accommodations are adequate, thank you.” They were not what she was accustomed to, but they were clean and comfortable enough—they would do. “However”—she fixed her gaze on his face—“I have a number of questions, Major, that I hope you’ll be able to answer. I only caught the briefest glimpse of my attacker, but I saw enough to know he was a Black Cobra cultist. What I don’t understand is why he would attack me, or why a cultist should be here, in Aden, at all.”

When he didn’t leap into reassuring speech, she went on, “The only contact I’ve had with the Black Cobra cult is through the incident with poor Captain MacFarlane and the packet I delivered for him to your friend, Colonel Delborough. I presume the attack today was connected with that?”

Gareth studied her face—her determined expression, the directness of her gaze—and regretfully jettisoned his preferred option of revealing nothing at all. If she’d been a typical miss with not a great deal of wit…but there was intelligence, willfulness, and a definite—potentially dangerous—curiosity lurking behind her lovely eyes…“I
suspect the cultists are here to intercept me, and yes, that’s linked to the packet you brought to Bombay. The only reasons they would have for attacking you is if they recognized you, and either thought you might still have the packet, or simply wanted to punish you for your part in the packet’s loss.”

“What’s in the packet the Black Cobra wants so desperately?”

As he’d thought—far too quick-witted. He’d hoped to gloss over his mission, conceal the major aspects, but…her moss-hazel gaze was too acute, too intent. And many—she, certainly—would argue she had a right to know, now more than ever given the cult had just demonstrated that it wasn’t inclined to overlook her part in the affair. He inwardly sighed. “I assume you’d prefer I start at the beginning?”

“Indeed.”

“Five of us—Delborough, me, Major Logan Monteith, Captains Rafe Carstairs and James MacFarlane—were sent to Bombay by Governor-General Hastings with specific orders to do whatever was needed to bring the Black Cobra to justice.” He sank back against the cushions, his gaze fixing, unseeing, on the wall opposite. “That was in March. Within a few months, we’d identified the Black Cobra, but the evidence was circumstantial, and given our suspect, our case needed to be beyond question.”

“Who is the Black Cobra?”

He turned his head and regarded her. If he told her…but the cult had just demonstrated it didn’t care if she knew or not, and now she was with him, had been seen with him…“The Black Cobra is Roderick Ferrar.”

“Ferrar? Great heavens! I’ve met him, of course.”

“What did you think of him?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Not a nice man.”

“Indeed not. So we knew it was him, but had no way to prove it conclusively. We kept searching…then, while James was at Poona fetching you, he stumbled on a letter from the Black Cobra to one of the princelings. We’d found similar missives,
but this one was different. It was signed by the Black Cobra, but sealed with Ferrar’s personal seal—the ring seal he wears on his little finger and can’t take off. Once you’d brought that letter to us, we had what we needed, and we’d already consulted others back in England, so we knew what we had to do.”

He saw her shut her lips on an eager prompt, but she’d guessed at least part of it. “We have to get that letter—the original—to the Duke of Wolverstone in England. Ferrar, of course, will do everything in his considerable power to stop us. Our instructions from Wolverstone—he’s the key planner in this—were to make four copies, and each bring one home, all traveling by widely different routes.”

“To make it harder for the Cobra to stop you.”

He nodded. “With James gone, there are four of us, now all on our way back to England. Only one of us has the original, but the Cobra doesn’t know which one, so he has to try to intercept each of us.”

Head tilting, she studied him. “Are you…” She paused, eyes on his, then went on, “I suspect you’re carrying one of the copies—a decoy, as it were.”