Page 119 of A Modest Independence

“She’s in the schoolroom.” Ahmad inclined his head to the native woman. She gave Jenny and Tom a wary look before departing down the hall. “We’re to follow her.”

Jenny took Tom’s arm as they trailed after her. She led them through a painted archway and into an open room with a matted floor. There was a table along the wall with food and drink arrayed upon it. A wizened elderly lady in a sari leaned over it, covering a dish of rice with a piece of cheesecloth.

The young woman approached her, speaking to her in hushed tones, and pointing in their direction.

The elderly lady turned to look at them. Her hair was liberally streaked with gray, her face adorned with a thick pair of spectacles.

“Mrs. Kumar?” Ahmad approached her, offering a greeting in Hindustani.

“I speak English well enough, young man,” she replied, her voice rising and falling in a musical lilt. “Bibha says you have come to ask me about a British soldier?”

“We have.” Ahmad withdrew the daguerreotype from his pocket and snapped open the case. “Miss Holloway is cousin to this man. His body was lost after the siege.”

Mrs. Kumar adjusted her spectacles before peering down at the portrait. “Ah. Him. He was a handsome gentleman. I remember.”

Jenny’s pulse pounded. But she wouldn’t hope. She daren’t. “You saw him?”

“I treated him,” Mrs. Kumar said. “Not here. This mission is newly built. We had another mission then, closer to the city. It was destroyed during the rebellion. For a time we housed the wounded there. Until the roof was caved in and then…” Her mouth tightened. “So much death and destruction. A terrible tragedy.” She looked up at Jenny. “Was he an officer, then? He had no coat when he was brought to me. No insignia. I sent word to the depot hospital, but no one came to claim him.”

“Yes, he…he was a captain. He was also the Earl of Castleton, a gentleman of some importance.”

“We are all important in God’s eyes.”

“Yes, of course, but he—” Jenny broke off. “You said no one claimed him. Do you mean…no one claimed his body?”

“He wasn’t dead, Miss Holloway. Not when I attended him.” Mrs. Kumar crossed the room to a wooden desk. She proceeded to shuffle through a pile of papers, as if she hadn’t just knocked Jenny’s entire world on end. “He was in a terrible state. But worse was to come. We had an outbreak of cholera that spring. The men who had not yet been stricken were removed.”

“He was one of them?”

“He was unconscious. He had lost much blood. We did not expect him to last a week.” She shrugged. “I assume he died upon arrival. If not from his wounds, then from the cholera. God rest his soul.”

Jenny’s mouth went dry as ash. “Arrival where?”

Mrs. Kumar looked at her as if she were a simpleton. “To the hill stations. It is where many go to recover their health. The climate is cool and the air is fresh.”

Tom stood at Jenny’s side, his hand at her back. “Which of the hill stations?”

“Him? To Darjeeling, probably. At the time of the siege, I had an assistant—Zaina—whose parents worked at a tea plantation there. She escorted the wounded on their journey. A good girl. Smart. She never came back, more’s the pity.”

“But he was alive when you last saw him?” Jenny pressed. “He was alive and…you’re sure—absolutely sure—it was the man in the picture?”

“I am old, madam, as you see,” Mrs. Kumar said. “But there is nothing wrong with my memory. Yes, the man I treated after the siege was the man in this portrait of yours. And when I last saw him, he was very much alive.”

Tom leaned against the wall, arms folded, watching Jenny pace the confines of her room on the second floor of Mr. Bhat’s guest house. Since leaving the mission, she’d been too restless to be still for more than a few seconds at a time.

He should have known then that keeping his promise to come to her room was a bad idea. When he’d first broached the subject, he’d thought the search for Giles was near its end. He’d hoped they could finally have a serious discussion about their future. There was so much he’d wanted to tell her. So many things he’d planned to say in order to persuade her to come home.

Instead, from the time he’d discreetly entered Jenny’s room half an hour ago, the conversation between the two of them had revolved entirely around Giles.

“We must go to Darjeeling, obviously,” she said. “We’ve come too far to give up now.”

He raked a hand through his hair. Somewhere between meeting Ahmad outside the guest house and leaving the mission, he’d lost control of the situation. He was at a loss as to how he might get it back. “Let’s just… Let’s wait a moment. We need to properly think this through.”

“What’s there to think through? Mrs. Kumar recognized Giles from his portrait.”

“An unreliable identification at best. The woman must be pushing eighty. And did you see the lenses of her spectacles? They were an inch thick, at least.”

“What’s that to say to anything? She obviously wasn’t blind, else she wouldn’t be working at the mission.”