Her Master's Touch (3 page)

Lord Ravencroft looked at her in
contemplation for a few moments, then said, "I have no need for a
ladies maid as I have no lady. But Cook can use another kitchen
maid."

Eliza pursed her lips. Work in the steamy
bowels of the kitchen? What chance would she have finding the
Kalki-Avatar
if confined there? No. To carry out her
mission, it was vital she work as an upper servant. "As a ladies
maid I did not learn to cook," she said.

A glint of amusement came into his eyes. "And
when you wander with your tribe, am I to assume that you take your
own cook?"

She bit back a snide retort. "I have never
been required to prepare food," she said. "My job in the
kumpania
is tattooing."

He looked at her, dubiously. "What kind of
tattoos?"

"Whatever a person wants. Birds, reptiles,
monkeys."

"Well, I'm not in need of a tattoo artist,"
he said, "so I'll turn you over to my housekeeper for placement.
Mrs. Throckmorton rules a well-disciplined domain. She also keeps a
hawk-like vigilance over her staff."

Eliza pondered that. His housekeeper might be
sharp-eyed and autocratic, but the woman couldn't be on guard every
minute of the day. Or night. And one skill she’d learned while
living with gypsies was the ability to creep on silent feet. She'd
bide her time while carrying out her duties, but at night, while
everyone was asleep, she'd methodically search the house until she
found the opal. Then she’d quietly slip away with it.

Looking at her new master, she said, in as
convincing a tone as she could muster, "You may not believe it
right now, my lord, but I feel duty-bound to make amends to you
since it was not my idea to sell you the horse. I was acting on
orders. But, I assure you, I’ll carry out my duties in a manner
with which even Mrs. Throckmorton will find no fault."

"I sincerely hope that will be the case," he
said. "If not, I'll turn you over to the constable."

From his unflinching gaze, Eliza knew he was
no pushover. Recouping the opal would be more of a challenge than
she'd anticipated. And it would take all the skills she'd learned
from the Kuraver to do it. But she
would
do it.

After returning the horses to their owners,
they went to the encampment where Eliza's wagon stood parked. While
she changed into a plain brown dress and fetched her bag with her
few belongings, Lord Ravencroft stood outside. She looked out of
the window at him. His excessive height and broad-shouldered frame
gave him a commanding presence. Clad in a white shirt that lay open
at his throat, and wearing breeches that defined powerful thighs,
he was not the typical blue-blood. This one was strong-willed,
self-assured... And dangerous.

And while catching his attention at the horse
fair, she’d all but promised her favors in bed, which he wasn’t apt
to let pass.

As she stepped outside, she glanced at the
large, ornamented wagon on the fringes of the encampment and saw
Januz Kazinczy watching. A week ago she'd waited outside that wagon
while the tribal council decided her fate.

When the
Kris Romani
had been ready to
receive her, Januz opened the door and pinned her with baleful
eyes. "You come,
posh-rat
," he'd spat the derogatory name
for a British half-blood. To Januz and many others in the
kumpania
, she was, and always would be a pariah among
pariahs, unless she could shed her
gorgio
ways and take on a
true gypsy countenance. And if there was one sole mortal flaw in
her being, it was that she desperately wanted to be accepted by
these people, be the
rawnie
old Zelda would have had her be.
Even after Zelda's death, Eliza wanted to make the woman who'd
taken her in proud. Perhaps this was her chance. The Kris Romani
had called her for a reason.

Istvan Czinka,
primas
for the
assemblage, got right to the point. "We know where is
Kalki-Avatar
," he'd said. "It your job to get it back,"

She'd looked at Istvan with a start. Zelda
had held the talisman for the Kuraver for over forty years, but
when they prepared her body for the funeral pyre, the opal was
missing. Many pointed fingers at Eliza, claiming it was because of
a
gorgio's
presence among them that the luck of the tribe
had changed.

"
Anglez gorgio
named Lord Damon
Ravencroft have opal now," Istavan continued. "He live in great
manor house where you once live."

"
Shanti Bhavan
?" Eliza's heart
quickened. She hadn't lived there since she was a child, before her
father sent her away to England.

"You work for
Anglez Gorgio
, find
Kalki-Avatar
and return it to Kuraver. Lord Ravencroft
looking to buy black horse at fair. You sell him black and find way
into great manor house. This you do, Eliza Shirazi, and you be one
of us."

She'd made the mistake of letting her buoyant
gaze fall on Januz Kazinczy, who'd looked at her with frigid and
said, "But if you fail,
posh-rat
, you banished..."

"Come with me," Lord Ravencroft said, taking
her arm.

Clutching her carpet bag, Eliza walked with
him to his coach—a dark-blue brougham hitched to a pair of dapple
grays. A turbaned footman, wearing an embroidered waistcoat and
ankle-length trousers, waited beside the horses.

Before stepping inside, Eliza glanced around
and saw Januz staring at her with contempt. He hoped to see her
fail so she'd be banished from the tribe. But she wouldn’t give him
that satisfaction. In spite of Januz, she
would
recover the
opal and return it to the clan, and prove to them that the luck of
the tribe had not changed because of her presence among them. She
also wanted to return to
Shanti Bhavan
. Perhaps there she
would tap into buried memories and at last learn the reason behind
her mother's disappearance and her father's deception.

She stepped into the coach. Once inside, she
settled against blue morocco cushions and breathed in the fragrance
of fine, soft leather. The vehicle dipped under Lord Ravencroft's
weight as he stepped up. He sat in the middle of the seat, so his
arm brushed Eliza's, and his thigh pressed against her leg. He
looked down at her, a feral gleam in his cobalt gaze. Trapped
against the coach door, she could either open it and climb out, or
endure his silent advances. And there was no question, he was
making overtures.

The coachman gave the command and the coach
rolled forward, rocking gently on its leather straps. Their arms
rubbing with the motion, Lord Ravencroft gazed down at her and
said, "I believe I shall enjoy having you in my employ,
Miss...?"

"Shirazi," Eliza said, using her mother's
family name, not wanting to reveal her identity, especially not to
the man who now occupied her father's former home.

"Miss Shirazi. Yes, I'm certain I will."

Eliza averted her gaze. She'd not missed the
innuendo in his tone. At the horse fair she'd been eager to cast
him a come-hither glance and turn a bare ankle to his view and dip
low, displaying her breasts to his gaze—a brazen move that appalled
her now as she considered the ramification. She’d worn nothing
beneath her blouse, so determined she'd been to catch Lord
Ravencroft's notice and make her way into his employ. But if she
didn’t present a different demeanor, he’d take with a clear
conscience what she’d offered to him at the fair.

Holding that thought, she edged away from him
and said, "I am certain that your Mrs. Throckmorton will be pleased
with my work."

Lord Ravencroft inched his way over, until
their arms again met. "If she isn't, we both know another way for
you to repay your debt," he said, his warm breath tickling her
temple, "something more suitable for a woman of your... spirited
nature."

Raising her chin a notch, she said, "I may
have a spirited nature, my lord, but that does not diminish my
ability to follow orders. I assure you, I will not disappoint your
Mrs. Throckmorton. Nor, is what you suggest an alternative."

"And what, exactly, do you think I suggested,
Miss Shirazi?" A hint of wry amusement crossed his face.

Which made Eliza's heart thump. Disregarding
the unwanted feeling, she said, "It was obvious what you suggested.
Just because I am a gypsy does not mean I am obtuse."

"I'll try to keep that in mind," he said,
pinpoints of light dancing in his eyes.

Unsettled by the man's gaze, Eliza turned and
looked out the window at the jute fields, her apprehension growing
as the coach carried her ever closer to the house where she'd been
born, a house that held its own dark secret. She could not
visualize it now—all memory faded with the rest. Yet, she
envisioned the house pink. A
peaceful
pink like its
namesake,
Shanti Bhavan
. House of Peace. How ironic, she
thought. There had been no peace there. After the disappearance of
her mother, her father packed her off to boarding school in England
and told her that her mother was dead. Yet, she remembered nothing
about her mother dying. No illness. No tears. No preparing her body
for the funeral pyre. One day her mother was simply gone.

And Eliza was placed in the care of an
English woman she'd never met and they were put on a steamer bound
for England. Exiled to a colorless world of boarding schools devoid
of love, she'd been a strange hybrid there, her body in one
country, her heart in another, yet not belonging to either. But
slowly, inexorably, she forgot India, and
Shanti Bhavan
, and
her mother's face completely. Until she was fourteen…

"We're on my land," Lord Ravencroft said,
drawing her out of her musing.

Eliza gazed at rows of sod-roofed huts lining
pale-green fields of jute. Scores of turbaned,
dhoti
-clad
workers hunched down, weeding and thinning the young plants. Then
the coach turned into a lane that cut between an orderly layout of
hedge-bordered paths, sunken flower beds, carefully-tended lawn,
and a systematic arrangement of palms and banyans and magnolias.
And strutting about with an air of avian arrogance were several
blue-breasted peacocks, one spreading its tail like a great jeweled
fan, another perched on a stone fountain with gargoyles spurting
water...

A fountain with gargoyles spurting
water...

A feeling of dismay settled over Eliza. She
stared at the fountain, turning her head to hold it in view. What
was it about the gargoyles that made her feel despondent...

"I failed to ask, but who was your
employer?"

Having anticipated the question, Eliza
replied, "A District Officer in the Indian Civil Service." She was
reasonably certain that Lord Ravencroft, being a planter and at the
bottom of India's British social hierarchy, would know few, if any,
men in the Indian Civil Service, the reason she'd invented such an
employer.

"What was his name?"

"Lord Hall."

"Which Lord Hall?"

"Which Lord Hall?" Eliza repeated, unnerved
that there was apparently more than one Lord Hall in the Indian
Civil Service. She'd counted on there being none.

Lord Ravencroft eyed her with mistrust. "Yes,
Miss Shirazi. Which Lord Hall? Or is your Lord Hall part of a
fabricated background?"

"I have no reason to fabricate a background,
my lord," she said. "My employer was Lord... Edward Hall."

"Which district?"

She looked at him with mounting concern.
Picking a jurisdiction at random, she replied, "Ganjam. But that
was several years ago. He has since returned to England." She hoped
he’d be done probing into her background. She was running out of
excuses.

"I am not familiar with your Lord Edward
Hall," he said.

Anxious to focus on another subject, she
looked at the score of Brahmin gardeners painstakingly tending the
grounds, and said, "They all work for you?"

He nodded. "But I'll soon be selling the
plantation and returning to England."

Eliza looked at him with a start. "How
soon?"

"As soon as possible." Lord Ravencroft gave
her a slow, enigmatic smile. "India has served its purpose. Now I'm
ready to return to England."

Eliza looked at him, miffed. India had served
its purpose, just as it served her father's purpose. "Ah yes," she
clipped. "In typically British fashion you have raped the land and
exploited coolies on promise of wages that are never intended to be
paid in full. But, of course, you view it as doing your duty." Just
as her father explained in his letters to her while she was away at
school. But having lived with the Kuraver, she knew
differently.

"The British are not in India to make
friends," Lord Ravencroft said. "We're here to rule."

"Of course," Eliza countered, "part of the
great civilizing mission to dispense with too many pagan gods, too
many temples, too many people."

Lord Ravencroft eyed her curiously. "For a
ladies maid you're very outspoken," he said. "Didn't you learn that
you're to be seen and not heard, unless addressed?"

Eliza realized her gaffe. If she continued
her outspoken ways she'd not even get to
Shanti Bhavan
, much
less find her way inside. "I'm sorry, my lord," she said,
dutifully. "I didn't realize I had spoken out of order. It is a
problem I have, and I’ll say no more."

He nudged closer. "On the contrary," he said,
"I
want
you to continue. I find it amusing. I'm also curious
to learn what else you think of us British."

Heat from Lord Ravencroft's arm permeated
hers and she could do nothing but remain wedged between him and the
coach door. Refusing to look at him, she said, "I'd rather not say,
my lord. I fear I have said too much already."

"As your master, I insist." He raised a bent
knuckle and turned her face toward his.