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‘Tell him ten minutes, Ajit,’ Nick called back. He stooped and kissed Anusha on the mouth, taking his time, gently exploring, and she curled her arms around his neck and responded with an ardour that had him as hard as iron again in seconds. ‘I must go. Let me help you dress first.’
He watched as she walked to her clothes, not at all shy of his eyes on her nakedness. Why could she bring the heat to his cheeks whenever she looked at him with those gorgeous eyes heavy with desire or calculating feminine assessment? She was the one who should be bashful.
Then, as he stood over her helping with that confounded corset, he saw the colour in her cheeks and the way her eyes shifted a little, shy under his scrutiny, and something inside him twisted, almost painfully. ‘There,’ he said briskly. ‘That’s the last button.’
‘Will you be here for dinner?’
‘No, it is mess night at the fort. I’ll be rolling back in the early hours, drunk as a lord.’
‘Do lords get more drunk than anyone else? Why is that?’ She was on her knees finding hair pins.
‘Just an expression.’
‘Even so, I am glad you are not a lord!’
He was still chuckling when he tapped on George’s door and let himself into the study. The amusement vanished at the look on the other man’s face. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘A ship from England has just docked. There is post for you.’ He reached across the desk and dropped half-a-dozen letters in front of Nick. ‘It brought the newssheets, too. I glanced through the Deaths column first—a morbid habit. Nick, your uncle has died.’
‘Which uncle?’ His mother had three brothers, he seemed to recall, not that he could put a face to any of them.
‘Grenville. Viscount Clere.’
It took a moment. His first thought was that his father would not care: there had never been any love lost between the two brothers. Then he realised. ‘My father is heir to the marquisate. My God, losing Grenville and having to see my father in his shoes—it’ll kill the old man.’
‘By all accounts your grandfather is holding up remarkably well. The newssheets cover a month after the funeral and he was certainly alive and apparently in good health. What his state of mind is, one can only guess.’ George nodded towards the letters. ‘Those might be some guide, I would hazard.’
‘These?’ Nick lifted the topmost, its stained and dirty canvas cover bulging over the shape of a seal beneath. ‘Why?’
‘Are your wits wandering, Nicholas? You are now second in line to the marquisate of Eldonstone. Those will be from the lawyers and your grandfather. Possibly your father.’
To go back to England? To the grandfather who had washed his hands of him, the father who hated him, the stifling life of the English aristocracy, a mountain of responsibilities he did not want in a world that was alien to him now. He had made a new life for himself here, one he loved.
‘No.’ He found he was on his feet. Nick gave the stack of letters a push that scattered them across the desk top. ‘No. Be damned to that. I can’t...I cannot deal with this now. I have an engagement—mess dinner.’
He strode out, leaving the door swinging open. Behind him he heard George’s chair scrape back. In the hall, as he headed for his bedchamber, he saw Anusha, her eyes wide and questioning as he strode past her without a word. How the hell could Fate do this to him?
Chapter Twenty
‘Papa?’ Anusha slipped into the study through the open door. ‘What is the matter with Nick?’
‘Eavesdropping?’ He smiled, but his eyes were sombre.
‘I heard his voice in here, then I saw him in the hall. I have never seen him look like that, as though Kali were on his heels.’ Danger only made Nick more focused, more alive, but whatever this was had deadened something in him. She felt more fear than she had since he had taken her from the palace. ‘Tell me what is wrong.’
‘Most people would say there is nothing wrong at all,’ he father said with a grimace. ‘He’ll tell you himself when he is over the shock, but his father’s elder brother has died, which mean that Nicholas, God willing, will be the Marquis of Eldonstone one day.’
‘That is good for him, is it not?’ Even as she asked it Anusha felt the ground beneath her feet shift as realisation struck. A marquis was an aristocrat, a high-up one. Nick should be marrying a lady born and bred and trained for being a marquis’s wife. Her stomach swooped as she clutched the edge of the desk. Not me. Not the illegitimate, half-Indian daughter of a trader, however rich and powerful her father was here.
