Page 104 of A Modest Independence

Ahmad’s brows lifted. “Now?”

“Yes, now. In her room. If you’ll take Mira away awhile, for a cup of tea or a—”

“Mira isn’t there,” Ahmad said. “She’s gone on an errand.”

“What?” Tom shot him a look. “By herself?”

Ahmad shrugged. “She knows the city better than a gharry-wallah.”

“Nonsense. She was a child when she left Delhi.”

“One doesn’t forget the streets where one was born. Mira hasn’t.” Ahmad paused. “I haven’t.”

“Then you must go and find her.”

“And leave you here, alone with Miss Holloway?”

“Miss Holloway will be safe enough with me.”

Ahmad didn’t look convinced. Though he’d been acting as Tom’s valet for the better part of their journey, he clearly hadn’t forgotten to whom he owed his allegiance. “What about gossip? You might be observed going into her room.”

“I won’t be,” Tom promised.

For once, the fates seemed to be on his side. The hall that led between his room and Jenny’s was empty. There were no nosy guests peeking out of their rooms and no busy servants trotting up the marble corridor with trays of food and drinks.

He rapped softly on Jenny’s door.

She didn’t answer. Not immediately. It was only some moments later, after Tom knocked again, that he heard the sound of starched petticoats swishing as she made her way to the door.

The bolt was unlatched and the door slowly cracked open to reveal Jenny’s tear-streaked face.

Tom’s breath stopped in his chest. Every instinct urged him to reach out to her, to take her in his arms and offer his shoulder to cry on. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. At the sight of her tears for the late Earl of Castleton, something within him froze.

She didn’t invite him in, merely turned and walked back into the confines of her hotel room.

He slowly followed after her, shutting the door behind him and drawing the latch back into place. At the scrape of the bolt, she stopped to face him, a question trembling at her lips.

The draperies were closed against the midday heat. It was dim and cool, the net curtains over her bed drawn open to reveal a rumpled coverlet and linens. As if she’d lain there, only seconds before, sobbing into her pillow.

“‘Such events loom large in the life of a young woman,’” he said.

She blinked up at him, her eyes swollen from weeping. “What?”

“That’s what you told me about Giles’s final letter. The one in which he wrote that his kissing you meant nothing. In which he told you he didn’t wish to marry you. That’s how you explained crumpling it up and throwing it into the coal scuttle. ‘Such events loom large in the life of a young woman.’” Tom stared down at her, his voice steady even as his heart fractured. “You loved him, didn’t you?”

Jenny thought she must be hearing things. It wouldn’t surprise her. From the instant Colonel Anstruther had concluded his gruesome tale, she’d felt an odd detachment. It had all been far too much to take in—not only the indisputable fact that Giles was dead, but what that fact meant to her and her own future. Her own happiness. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s why we’re here. Why you wanted so badly to find him. It’s because you loved him.” Tom was still and solemn as he looked at her. He was also more controlled than Jenny had ever seen him. As if he were holding himself together by sheer force of will. “Do you deny it?”

“You make it sound as though I’m on trial.”

“Do you?”

She wiped at her face with her hands. “Of course I deny it. I didn’t love Giles. Not in the way I think you mean.”

“You’re weeping over the loss of him.”

“You idiot.” Or, at least, it’s what she’d meant to say. It came out in a choked sob on another flood of tears. “I’m not weeping for Giles. Not entirely. I’m weeping because it’s over. You’ll go home now. Back to England. And I’ll n-never see you again.”