Page 128 of A Modest Independence

Tom jumped out of the cart to assist her down. He looked at Ahmad. “Tell him to wait for us.”

Ahmad relayed the request to the driver before leaping down himself.

Jenny dusted her skirts off as she peered ahead through the mist. “It’s not very far, is it?”

“It’s far enough.” Tom offered her his arm. She took it, her gloved hand tightening on his sleeve. “Be careful where you step. You could easily twist an ankle.”

The three of them proceeded down the road, picking their way carefully around the potholes and mud puddles.

“Do you suppose this is where Zaina Chatterjee’s parents worked two years ago?” Jenny asked.

“I think it may be,” Tom said.

“Perhaps one of them is still here? As a caretaker or something?”

Tom didn’t like to see her get her hopes up. What he’d observed so far of the old Serracold estate seemed to indicate that it had been abandoned a long time ago. There was not a patch of green in the fields to indicate healthy tea growth. Only the smoke from the chimney gave evidence of life. “Anything’s possible.”

As they drew closer, the mist gradually began to dissipate. The verandah of the bungalow came into better view. There was a native gentleman seated there, his features shaded by a flat-brimmed straw hat. At the sight of them, he rose, very slowly, to his feet.

The midday sun cast a glare on Tom’s spectacles. He couldn’t see entirely clearly. But it seemed to him that there was something odd about the man. Something vaguely off-kilter.

“Thank goodness,” Jenny said. “There is a caretaker.”

Ahmad called out a greeting in Bengali, but the gentleman didn’t answer.

The hair on the back of Tom’s neck lifted in warning. And then—

And then realization struck him like a lightning bolt.

The gentleman was no native.

And he was missing an arm.

He gazed down the drive at them, standing stock-still beside one of the pillars of the verandah. “Jenny Holloway,” he said at last, in accents straight out of a fashionable London drawing room, “I might have known it would be you.”

Jenny’s hand fell, nerveless, from Tom’s arm at the sound of the man’s voice. The next thing she knew, her heavy skirts were clutched in her hands and she was running, full out, the remainder of the distance up the road. All thoughts of propriety—every scrap of caution and good sense—disintegrated the instant she recognized him.

“Giles! Giles!” She reached him in seconds, flinging her arms about his neck and bursting into tears. “It’s you. You’re alive.”

His arm came around her in a tentative embrace. “There now. Let’s not make a fuss over it.”

“We thought you were dead.”

“It wasn’t a great loss, I imagine.” He drew back from her. “What are you’re doing here, Jenny? I distinctly remember commanding you to look after my sister. Don’t say you’ve brought Helena to India?”

Jenny stared up at him. He was still breathtakingly handsome, his dark blond hair streaked with gold and his face as perfectly sculpted as a Greek God. But he was so painfully thin now. Thin and browned by the sun, the linen shirt sleeve of what would have been his right arm pinned, empty, to his chest.

She dashed the tears from her eyes. “I didn’t bring Helena. She’s home in England with her husband.”

His hand spasmed on her arm, almost hurting her. “Helena’s married?”

“Oh, Giles, don’t you know anything? Haven’t you read the papers?”

“I’m lucky to see a newspaper every three months. Time moves more slowly here.” Giles looked over her head. “Who are these fellows, then? Your guides?”

Jenny turned as Tom and Ahmad came to join them. She thought Tom would be as astonished to find Giles as she was. She expected some expression of shock or amazement. But Tom’s face was completely void of emotion. He looked cold and businesslike. As if he were meeting an adversary rather than finding the object of their months-long quest.

Giles stiffened. “You.” He moved Jenny aside with his hand, taking a step forward to face Tom. “I know you.”