Shadow of the Moon Read online

  Winter lay still, remembering the details of yesterday’s deplorable collapse with horrified dismay. How could she have behaved so? Instead of insisting on decent privacy she had done nothing to prevent Captain Randall from remaining in the cabin and rendering aid, but, if she remembered rightly, had actually welcomed his assistance! She had a distinct recollection of him holding her head over a basin when she no longer retained the strength to perform that necessary office for herself. He had laid her back on the pillows and washed her face in cold water, removed her spray-sodden cloak and bonnet and forced brandy down her throat with a matter-of-fact competence and a total lack of embarrassment that surprised her.

  Winter did not realize that the life of a political officer in the India of that day called for a far greater degree of proficiency in dealing with the unexpected than was required of the average man. Alex Randall had in his time been called upon to perform a variety of actions in excess of his official duties, including amputating the leg of a man who had been mauled by a wounded tiger, hanging a murderer, housing and feeding thirty-seven small children ranging in age from one month to approximately eight years in a year of plague and famine, acting as midwife to a woman in childbirth and dragging another one screaming from the pyre that consumed her husband’s corpse, and on which she had intended, following the custom of her people and in defiance of the Company’s new law, to immolate herself.

  In the circumstances it was hardly surprising that he had behaved as though dealing with a young woman in the throes of sea-sickness was nothing so unusual. Winter could only be surprised that he had not also thought fit to remove her dress. She moved cautiously, aware that her head was aching badly, and discovered that he had in fact done so. The voluminous folds of her black batiste travelling-dress and the whalebone hoops of her crinoline were flung over a chair-back, and the blankets that had been drawn up over her concealed only petticoats and pantalettes. Further investigation revealed the horrifying fact that Captain Randall had also unlaced her stays.

  The indignity of this discovery impelled her to sit upright, but it proved an unwise move. The cabin swam unpleasantly before her eyes and she was forced to lean her aching head against the polished wooden boards that formed the wall of the berth.

  Someone rapped on the panels of the door and after a momentary pause it opened to disclose Captain Randall himself, looking, thought Winter resentfully, almost offensively well. He encountered her hostile gaze and smiled.

  It was a disconcertingly pleasant smile, and the fact that even through a haze of acute physical misery and social embarrassment she could recognize it as such, increased rather than diminished her hostility.

  ‘I’ve brought you some food,’ said Captain Randall. ‘May I come in?’

  ‘It’s your cabin,’ said Winter bitterly, ‘so I cannot prevent you coming in. But at least you might have sufficient consideration to avoid any mention of food.’

  Alex laughed, and entering the cabin closed the door behind him and set down a small tray. ‘You’ll feel a great deal better when you have had something to eat,’ he assured her. ‘It’s only hot soup and biscuits.’

  Winter glanced at it and shuddered. The small cabin dipped and rose, tilted, sank and steadied again in an endless sickening rhythm, and the soup in the thick china mug slopped over the rim onto the tray. ‘Go away!’ said Winter in a gasping whisper. ‘Take it away and go away.’

  Alex sat down on the edge of the berth beside her. ‘If you intend to go on being sea-sick, you will find it far better to have something to be sick with,’ he remarked prosaically. And then, she did not quite know how it happened, he was holding her against his shoulder and feeding her with soup and dry biscuits as if she had been a sick child - and with much the same manner that old Nurse or Mrs Flecker the housekeeper might have employed in similar circumstances.

  The soup was hot and sustaining and, unlikely though it had seemed, she managed to swallow a fair proportion of the biscuits he had brought, and felt considerably better for having done so. Captain Randall’s shoulder was strangely comforting to lean an aching head against, and she tried to remind herself that this man was an enemy; a traitor to Conway. That she had once cut him across the face with her riding-whip - and deservedly. But it did not seem to matter any longer. She was conscious only of an unfamiliar and inexplicable feeling of being safe: a feeling she had been a stranger to ever since the day when a small, weeping and bewildered child had been torn from the comforting arms of Juanita and Aziza Begum and the safe familiar walls of the Gulab Mahal. She did not know why the presence and the touch of this man who was Conway’s enemy - and therefore, surely, hers? - should give her this warm feeling of safety, and she was too physically exhausted to puzzle it out. It was enough to feel relaxed and protected. The uneasy motion of the ship seemed to be lessening, or perhaps it was true that the food had benefited her. She felt infinitely better, but strangely disinclined to move.

  Alex put down the empty cup and said: ‘It is just as well that your chaperon and every other woman on board is prostrated with sea-sickness, or I am afraid that I should have damaged your reputation beyond repair. As it is, the ladies have no attention to spare for anything but their own sufferings, so for the moment I think that you can safely stay here.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ said Winter drowsily. ‘I must go back to my own cabin.’

  ‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ said Alex. ‘Your cabin-companion is showing no signs of recovery yet, and ten minutes in there will undo any good that a night’s sleep and a meal have done you.’

  ‘How do you know?’ inquired Winter, interested. ‘Have you been looking after them too?’

  ‘I have,’ admitted Alex with the ghost of a laugh. ‘I must admit that had I realized earlier that the duties of escort would include those of sick-nurse, I might have declined the office. The stewards are doing their best, but they are only possessed of one pair of hands apiece, and as your chaperon and her daughters are also technically in my charge, I felt obliged to offer assistance. I have no doubt that when she is feeling better Mrs Abuthnot will find it hard to forgive me for it, but at present she is tolerably grateful.’

  ‘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.