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‘It is not. It is scandalous, but there is no need for anyone to know how you reached Calcutta,’ Nick said. There was something in his voice, or perhaps the sudden tension in the long body, that warned her that she was on dangerous ground, but she did not understand why.
‘Yes, but if they did know,’ Anusha pressed, ‘will they not think I am no longer a virgin and refuse to receive me?’
‘Are you suggesting that it would be assumed that I would have ravished you?’ Nick enquired, his tone so even that for a moment she missed the fury beneath it.
That was a way out of having to be turned into an English lady. ‘Well, there might be suspicions...’ Carelessly she had let the thought colour her voice and he picked up on it at once.
‘And you would blacken my name, impugn my honour so that you could wriggle out of whatever plans your father has for you?’
There was no mistaking it now—he might as well have hit her over the head with a brass cooking pot to express his anger. ‘I am sorry,’ she stammered. ‘It would be thought so very bad of you, then?’
‘It would bar me from decent society and jeopardise my position in the army, besides causing me deep personal shame,’ Nick said tightly. He was staring straight ahead between Pavan’s ears but the colour slashed across his cheekbones like a warning flag. He was looking, sounding, very angry, almost as if she had pricked his conscience. Which was absurd because he was behaving just as he ought.
‘Then I would never say anything about it,’ Anusha hastened to assure him. This angrezi honour was a very different thing. Any Indian nobleman who had such an opportunity would snatch at it without hesitation, use her as a bargaining counter to secure concessions and riches from her uncle in return for marrying her once she had been compromised and shamed. They would think Nick a fool. He, it seemed, would consider them wicked and unprincipled. ‘Only...someone must know we are together.’
‘There will be a handful of people who will know that this journey did not take place with a full escort from your uncle. They will be left under the impression that I had my groom with me and you had a palace eunuch and a maid with you.’ He appeared to be relaxing again a little.
‘Then perhaps it would be better if we pretend that I am your brother,’ she suggested. ‘I am dressed like a youth. If we practise that, then we can enter Calcutta unobtrusively.’ And it would make life much more comfortable. Nick made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a snort. ‘You do not think you can think of me that way?’ True, she could not imagine him as a brother, either. ‘Your sister, then?’
‘I have no sister, so I do not know how to behave to one, but I can assure you, I find it hard to think of you in that role.’ This time it was definitely a laugh, but one with an edge to it.
‘No sisters? Brothers?’
‘I am an only child, unless my father has remarried, although I doubt he would find anyone who would have him.’
‘So your mother is dead?’
‘Yes.’ From the set of his jaw he did not appear to want her sympathy on that. She could understand it—when people sympathised with her about Mata she was hard pressed not to cry, even now.
‘But then your father sent his only child away. Did he not desire to keep his heir by his side?’ Nick had said his father had bullied and beaten him to make him come to India and had then forced him on to the ship.
‘There was little to be heir to,’ Nick said. ‘My father is a second son so it was up to him to make his own way in the world. He could have gone into the army or the navy, the church or have made the small estate he inherited from an uncle into a larger one. He chose to marry a woman for her money and then to spend it on drink and gaming. She made the mistake of falling in love with him and spent the rest of her life breaking her heart over him.’
‘His father must have been angry,’ she ventured. It must have been dreadful growing up in such a household. It had been bad enough for Mata, but at least the break was final and she did not have to live with a man who abused her.
‘My grandfather disowned him.’
Nick said it lightly as though it were no great matter, but Anusha sensed that it was, that it was like a black cloud somewhere in Nick’s consciousness. ‘Then why did your father not want to keep you with him? I would have thought—’
‘I was no use to him and I criticised him,’ Nick said. ‘When my mother died I—’ He broke off as though he realised he was betraying more of his secrets than he had intended. ‘We quarrelled badly. I seem to have been a reproach to him whenever he looked at me. I took after my mother in looks, a little, and I was probably a sanctimonious brat.’
