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Almost immediately the door opened and a servant peered round the edge. ‘Sahib! You are awake, but you must not get up.’ He flapped his hands as though to shoo Nick back into the bed. ‘The Doctor sahib will be angry. Go back to bed, Herriard sahib, and I will call him to you.’
‘You will not.’ The youth stared at him anxiously. ‘I want water to wash, tea to drink—a lot of tea, with sugar,’ Nick ordered in Hindi. ‘Then I want my clothes.’
‘But—’ The servant shrugged and began to back out of the door. ‘Rowley memsahib will have much to say about it.’
‘Tell her I threatened to come downstairs in the sheet if you did not obey me,’ Nick suggested. It was tempting to lie down to wait, but he fought the dizziness and made himself stay where he was.
When the door banged open it was neither his outraged hostess nor the servant with hot water. ‘What are you doing from your bed already?’ Anusha demanded. In English, he noted. Her plait swung lose over the shoulder of her coat and a shaft of desire lanced through him at the memory of that moment in his dream when she had leaned forwards and it had fallen on to his bare skin.
She looked furious, and flushed, and she was eyeing him in a way that was new. ‘Why are you so angry?’ he asked, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach warning him that it was not simply the fact he was sitting up.
‘Because you do not listen to the doctor and so you will make yourself ill and you will be here in bed being a nuisance and not taking me down to Calcutta as you should.’
‘Thank you for your concern,’ he said drily.
‘I am not concerned about you. You do not deserve any concern.’
‘Why not? You were concerned yesterday, Anusha. What has happened to change that?’
She blushed, an angry darkening of the honey-coloured skin. ‘You can ask? Mrs Rowley warned me how it would be and I thought her foolish.’
‘So I did kiss you last night?’ Nick ventured, with, he realised the moment he said it, a crashing lack of tact.
‘If you can call that a kiss,’ Anusha snapped, reverting to Hindi. ‘It was not very interesting—perhaps that is why you forgot about it.’
‘I am extremely sorry. It was a mistake.’ And so was saying that. Anusha’s nostrils flared and he found himself glad she did not have her knife about her. ‘I mean, I should not have kissed you—I thought I was dreaming.’
That seemed to please her rather more. ‘You mean you dream of kissing me?’ she enquired with a purely feminine curiosity that would have made him smile under any other circumstances.
‘No.’ He had to put a stop to this right here and now. ‘I mean I was not myself, I was on the edge of consciousness and I am afraid that if a man finds himself pressed up against an attractive woman, in a bed, when he hasn’t his wits about him, then instinct is apt to take over.’
‘So you would have kissed anyone?’ He nodded. ‘Mrs Rowley?’
‘I said attractive, Anusha.’
She bit her lip, but he could tell she was on the verge of laughing. With any luck he had reduced that massive mistake to an embarrassing slip in her eyes. Which just left him mentally flagellating himself for such a betrayal of trust. ‘What did Mrs Rowley say about me?’
‘Only that it was shocking that we were travelling together and that men could not be trusted. But I told her we had spoken of such things and that you were a gentleman and were shocked that anyone might think you would ravish me.’
Oh hell. And I got on my high horse, too. Damned hypocrite. The moment my guard was down...
‘Major Herriard!’ Mrs Rowley stood in the doorway, elbows akimbo, the servant peering past her.
His first thought was relief that they had not been speaking English. Then Nick realised that he was wearing a bandage, a roughly draped sheet and nothing else. His chest was bare, his legs were bare from mid-thigh. He did not dare glance down to make sure the sheet was covering his groin adequately. ‘I was looking for my clothes and unfortunately I did not hear Miss Laurens knock.’
‘Tsk! Miss Laurens, you must leave at once.’ Eyes averted, she bustled Anusha out leaving the servant to bring in the water ewer. His expression said quite clearly in any language, I told you so.
‘And my clothes?’
‘I will get them from the dhobi wallah, sahib. He says the blood has come out and the darji has mended the coat. Your breakfast is coming, sahib.’
It took altogether too long to wash and shave and dress. Nick ate one-handed, tried to control his fork with a hand that shook and cursed dacoits, bullets and his own physical weakness and lack of will-power.
