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‘I tried to discuss it with Sarasa, but she refused to even listen. I could see no way out of it except for you both to go back to Kalatwah where I knew you would be safe and treated with respect. I would not dishonour both women by keeping one as a mistress behind my wife’s back.’
His voice caught and he stopped speaking. Anusha turned her head slowly, painfully, to look at him. There were tears running down his face although he made no sign that he realised.
Something turned over in her heart: his pain, as though it were hers, and the realisation that she had never tried to see anything but her own anger and betrayal. ‘Then you still loved us, Papa?’ Her face was wet, too, she found.
‘With all my heart. Never doubt it, Anusha. With all my heart.’ He reached out and she took his hand in hers.
‘So it was not because, with Nick, you had a son and did not want a daughter any longer?’ It was shameful to reveal her fears and jealousy, but she had to know.
‘No! He was the son for Mary that she could never have. For me, it took longer, for I was still mourning you and your mother, but I grew to love him like a son. Anusha—
love isn’t finite. I could love both of you, and I do.’
‘Oh.’ She held his hand and let herself feel at last. ‘Oh, Papa!’ And then she was in his arms and they were both weeping and nothing else mattered except that she was home again.
* * *
‘Good afternoon, Miss Laurens.’
Anusha looked up from the two miniatures her father had given her. One of her mother, the other of his wife, the woman who had saved Nick’s life all those years ago. She put them down carefully and watched him as he came and stood in front of her. ‘Where have you been all day, Nick?’
‘I thought you and your father needed time alone together. Are you all right now? Your eyes are red.’ He was still in uniform, his face cleanly shaven, his hair tied back. He looked formal and remote.
‘I have been crying,’ she said with dignity. ‘So has Papa. He is going to send a cow in calf to that village,’ she added, thinking suddenly of the way that Nick had looked up from the fireside, directly at her, and something had clicked into place in her heart. I fell in love with him then, I just did not know it.
Nick smiled and then, to her shock, went down on one knee.
‘What are you doing?’
‘This is the correct manner for making a proposal. I feel a trifle idiotic, but if you will forgive that... I hardly did it properly last night. Miss Laurens, will you do me the honour of accepting my hand in marriage?’ When she did not answer him, and continued to look at his clasped hands resting on his raised knee, he added, ‘I wanted to make sure you had not changed your mind.’
Does he want me to? Is he hoping that I have? Anusha
looked into the face so close to hers and knew that she should say no and knew that she simply did not have the strength.
‘I will do my best to look after you, to give you as much freedom as I can, to make you happy,’ Nick said as she was silent, not trusting herself to speak.
‘But you wish you did not have to.’
‘Make you happy? Of course I want to do that.’
Strange how she had never noticed that thin scar across his right knuckles, how the tendons stood out when his hands were tightly clasped. Perhaps he was as nervous as she was. She knew she was blushing and saw from his face that he could read her mind, a little.
‘There are more ways to make someone happy than sex,’ Nick said drily, ‘but at least that will be a good start, if we are going to be so frank.’
She swallowed. ‘What about your mistresses?’
‘Plural? I have never had more than one at a time and I do not have one at the moment. Anusha, look at me.’
She managed to lift her head. He was very serious, although his eyes were smiling. Perhaps this was going to be all right after all.
‘I told you last night. Anusha, for some time now there has been no other woman but you and there never will be, I swear. I will be faithful to you, always.’
What Nick promises, he does. And he would promise that for me? To be faithful even though he does not love me? Oh, Nick. I do love you. Anusha managed to smile and was rewarded by the way he looked at her. ‘I have not changed my mind. I will marry you.’
‘Thank you. I am honoured.’ He leaned forwards and kissed her lightly on the lips and she closed her eyes and let herself dream.
