The Karma of Love (Bantam Series No. 14) (2 page)

‘It is extraordinary,’ she thought to herself as she did so,
“h
ow things turn out for the best!’

She had thought that the maid’s habit of stealing
was a nuisance when she had to add a pocket to every dress she possessed.

As she made her own clothes it had not been a very difficult thing to do, and now it had proved to be a blessing in disguise, for it would have been even more difficult to arrive at Charles’s lodgings and have no money with which to pay the cab.

The horse came to a standstill, Orissa alighted and asked the fare.

She gave the cabman what he required and a tip, for which he touched his hat, then she ran up the steps of the house in front of her.

The door was open and she found in a small hall there was a soldier in uniform seated at what appeared to be a land of Reception desk.

He looked at her in surprise and she realised that he thought it strange that anyone should come in out of a cold night in January without a wrap of any sort.

“I want to see Viscount Dillingham,” Orissa said.

“Second floor, Ma’am. Name’s on the door,” the soldier answered with a military briskness.

“Thank you,” Orissa said and started up the stairs.

They were steep and as Orissa turned onto the first landing a man came out of one of the rooms and she almost bumped into him.

He was tall and was wearing a blue Mess jacket with a red braided waist coat. He not only appeared surprised at her presence, but stared at her in a manner which in other circumstances she would have thought offensive.

In some embarrassment she quickly turned her head away and hurried up the next flight of stairs. But not before she had realised that the man’s grey eyes in a thin, sun-burnt face were uncomfortably penetrating.

She had the feeling without looking back that he was standing watching her until she was out of sight.

This forced her to hurry so that she was breathless by the time she reached the second floor and saw a
card pinned on one of the doors on the landing
—
“Captain Viscount Dillingham.”

She knocked and, because she felt that the man who had watched her up the stairs was perhaps listening, she made it a very tentative sound.

There was no answer and after a moment she knocked again and then realising there was a handle on the door, she turned it
.

The door opened.

She found herself in a small narrow passage with two doors at the other end of it
.

“Charles!”

It was hardly a call because by now she was shaking.

"Who is it?” her brother's voice replied.

A door was opened and she saw Charles wearing only a shirt and trousers.

“Good God, Orissa!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“I had to come, Charles,” Orissa answered. “She turned me out and I cannot get back into the house tonight.”

There was no need for her to explain who “She” was.

“Dammit!” Charles ejaculated. “This is too much! Why do you put up with it?”

“What else can I do?”

He saw she was shivering.

“Come and sit by the fire,” he suggested. "You ought not to have come here.”

“I have nowhere else to go,” Orissa answered simply.

She crossed the bed-room as she spoke and sat down on the hearth-rug in front of the fire holding out her cold hands to the warm flames.

“Do you mean ‘She’ really threw you out of the house?” Charles asked almost incredulously as he followed her across the room.

“With some violence,” Orissa replied. “If my hair was not so thick I should have bruises on my head.”

As she spoke there was a little smile on her lips. It was such a relief to be here with her brother that now everything which had happened seemed almost amusing rather than tragic.

“Oh, God!” Charles exclaimed. “Why did the old man ever get himself mixed up with a woman like that?”

“I have been asking myself the same question for eight years,” Orissa said. “When I think how lovely and gentle Mama was
...”

She stopped in the middle of the sentence.

After all this time it was still difficult to speak of her mother without feeling near to tears.

“I know,” Charles said sympathetically, sitting down in an arm-chair beside the fire, “but you cannot go on like this.”

“Next time it happens you may not be here,” Orissa replied.

“You ought not to be here now,” Charles said. ‘
I
hope no-one saw you arrive.”

Orissa hesitated.

She did not wish to tell him the truth because it might upset him. At the same time she never lied to her brother.

“As a matter of fact there was ... someone on the ... first floor,” she answered, “a tall man with grey eyes.”

“Hell!”

Orissa looked at him and he said:

“It could not be worse
!
That must have been Meredith.”

“I am ... sorry,” Orissa faltered. “Does it matter ... very much?”

“It will not help things,” Charles answered.

“Why not? Who is he?”

“He is Major the Honourable Myron Meredith,” Charles informed her, “and I am in his black books already.”

“Why?” Orissa enquired. “And even if he is a Major, why has he got such authority over you?”

“Because he is not an ordinary Major,” Charles answered. “He has a land of roving commission. If you ask me, he is Secret Intelligence or something of the sort. Anyway, he is quite a big-wig in India.”

“And why should you be in his black books?” Orissa enquired with an almost fierce note in her voice.

“I have been in a spot of trouble already,” Charles admitted.

“What sort of trouble?”

“You are too inquisitive,” he replied, “but I do not mind telling you she was very pretty!”

“Oh, a woman!”

“Is it not always a woman?” Charles demanded.

“Why should that concern Major Meredith?”

“Only because she happened to be a brother Officers wife! He spoke at some length on ‘the Honour of the Regiment,’ our prestige in India and all that sort of thing!”

“But is Major Meredith in our Regiment?” Orissa asked.

The Royal Chiltern
s had been the family Regiment of the Fanes and the Hobarts for generations. Son had followed father and grandfather until they all spoke of it with a possessive affection.

“No—thank goodness!” Charles replied. “He is attached to the Bengal Lancers, but is always at Staff Headquarters. I wish he would stay there! If he had not been so blasted snoopy, neither he nor anyone else would have found out about my little escapade.”

“What was that?”

“Oh, a trip to the Hills when I thought we had covered our tracks very successfully! But trust Meredith to be everywhere he is not wanted!”

Thinking of those searching, grey eyes she had encountered on the stairs, Orissa could believe this to be true.

“As a matter of fact I hate him,” Charles went on. “It is, I am confident, entirely due to him that Gerald Dewar shot himself!”

Orissa turned her head sharply.

“Shot himself?” she repeated. “But why?”

“That is what I would like to know,” Charles replied almost savagely. “Gerald was my best friend. A nicer chap you could not imagine. But he got mixed up with a woman when he was on leave in Simla. Damned attractive she was, too!”

“But why should Major Meredith interfere?” Orissa asked.

“That is a question I wanted to ask him myself,” Charles replied, “but I could not pluck up courage. Anyway, Gerald shot himself and we were all told it was a regrettable accident. Not that I—for one—believed that!”

“What can Major Meredith do about my ... coming here?” Orissa asked in a low voice.

“Only make trouble because I have more or less promised to behave myself with regard to the fair sex,” Charles replied.

He paused and added with a smile:

“Only ‘more or less’! But that certainly does not permit me to entertain a woman in Army lodgings.”

“Surely you can tell him I am your sister,” Orissa suggested.

“Do you think that will make it any better?” Charles asked. “I should then have to explain that my sister had been thrown out of her home in the middle of the night and had nowhere to go.”

His voice was angry as he went on:

“I am damned if I will let anyone know the sort of condition my father is in now! He was greatly respected by everyone when he commanded the Regiment
.
You know that as well as I do.”

“I remember how proud Mama always was of him,” Orissa said softly.

“That is why Meredith can think what he likes,” Charles said firmly. “After all I am not the only officer who likes the company of the female sex. And if they run after me, even to the extent of coming here, how can I stop them?”

“I am sure you would not!” Orissa exclaimed and they both laughed.

Charles had always been gay and irresponsible, she thought, and it would be impossible for anyone—even Major Meredith—to expect him to live a monastic life however much he might preach propriety to him.

As they sat laughing together, a stranger would have been unable to find any resemblance between brother and sister.

The Fanes all through the centuries—and it was a very ancient family—had always been either very fair or very dark.

The dark Fanes had first come into the family in the reign of Charles II when an ancestor had brought home from Cadiz a black-haired, magnolia-skinned Senorita, and their children had taken after her.

Charles was a fair Fane with blue eyes and fair curly hair which, combined with handsome features, made him irresistible to women.

Orissa on the other hand resembled her Spanish ancestress.

She had long dark hair with blue lights in it which grew in a small widow’s peak on her oval forehead. Her eyes, were enormous and seemed at times, when she was worried or angry, almost purple in their depths. Her skin was like a magnolia blossom. She was also small-boned and had a grace that was almost indescribable.

Anything that Orissa wore seemed to mould itself to her exquisite figure and to achieve an elegance which made other women in her company appear clumsy and overdressed.

Now looking at her seated on the hearth-rug, her small head shining in the light from the flames and her skin almost dazzlingly white against the red of her gown, her brother said:

“I have to do something about you, Orissa.”

“I am waiting to hear your suggestions,” she answered.

“We must have some relations.”

“Not many,” Orissa replied, “and those there are, Papa—or rather ‘She’—has quarrelled with. They never come near us now.”

“If only Mama’s parents were not dead.”

“Or if Uncle Henry were in England!” Orissa sighed.

“Uncle Henry!” Charles exclaimed. “That of course is the solution
!
”

“What do you mean?”

“You must go to him. After all he is a bachelor. You could make yourself useful and I believe he would like to have you with him.”

“Do you mean in India?” Orissa asked incredulously.

“Of course,” Charles replied.

He saw the sudden light which seemed to illuminate her whole face.

“Oh, Charles, if only I could!”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Do you really think that Uncle Henry would let me live with him?”

“I have only just thought of it this moment,” Charles admitted, “but I see no reason why not. He has always been fond of you. He always asks if I have heard from you, and now you are grown up it would be quite different from saddling him with a child.”

“To be in India again would be Heaven,” Orissa said almost beneath her breath. “I dream of it every night!”

“Does it really mean so much to you?” Charles asked curiously.

“It is the only home I have ever known,” Orissa answered, “and I was happy ... unbelievably happy until Mama died.”

“Then somehow we must get you to Uncle Henry. Let me see—he was in Delhi when I left and the Regiment is likely to be there for another month or so.”

Orissa’s eyes were shining as she said:

“But I will have to write to him. It w
i
ll take some time to get a reply. What shall I do in the meantime?”