A Duke's Wicked Kiss (Entangled Select) (23 page)

“Did I?”

“You’ve no call to have me spied upon.”

“In case you have forgotten, I am your cousin and therefore, as part of the family, you are my responsibility.”

“Except for our grandmother, does
our
family know I even exist?”

There was a heavy pause, one that traveled through Suri’s bones and set the hair standing up on her arms. “At the moment…no. But that will soon change.”

There was no particular reason for Suri to read anything into Ravi-ji’s carefully chosen words, but nonetheless, the sharp hiss in his voice could’ve been the blade of a sword being drawn from its scabbard.

They reached the entrance of the women’s quarters where a guard stood at either side of the tall, double doors. Ravi-ji turned to her. In the low lamplight, he looked quite dashing in his pale blue sherwani and
churidars
, the jacket trimmed in white beading. This had been his fourth change of clothing for the day, as was hers. His carriage, his demeanor, his soft way of speaking, his carefully chosen words at all times—where once they had been exceedingly appealing—Suri now was convinced they cloaked something dangerous. What would it take to peel away the mask he wore?

“In the morning, then,” Ravi-ji said with a slight bow. And then he eased forward, so close his heat enveloped her, rank with a sour layer of sweat underlying the cloying fragrance clinging to him. Her throat thickened in rebellion. He lifted a hand as if to touch her and then hesitated, his fingers inches from her shoulder.

She stepped back.

He sent a quick glance over her shoulder at Munia and then dropped his hand. “I will take you to your next meeting after sunrise.”

Suri swept around in time to see Munia shift her dark gaze from Ravi-ji’s and bow her head.

Danger.

Ravi-ji smiled with a satisfied benevolence that set Suri’s skin crawling for reasons she couldn’t identify. Without returning the smile, she turned and swept indoors.

It had to be after midnight, and the quiet whispers within the women’s chambers were the same as during the day. So there were others still too excited to sleep?

Munia helped prepare Suri for bed. “I will be here at sunrise,” she said, and backed out of the quarters with her head down.

The maid could’ve been a turtle for the way she’d withdrawn into her shell since their arrival. No, since Suri had returned from her night with John. Once here, Munia refrained from eye contact, kept herself a further distance from Suri and was far more formal than she’d been at the Chathams’s.

Suri flopped onto the mattress. It was dark inside her room. Or was the space she occupied little more than a hole? Opulent as it was, and as flimsy a barricade as were the drapes securing her privacy, why did she feel like a prisoner? What she wouldn’t give to slip away and run to the safety of John’s arms.

Where was Tanush? He’d take her back to John. But she’d bet her life, if she slipped out of these women’s quarters to look for him, Ravi-ji or one of those two guards at the front door would haul her right back inside. Another thought seized her. Were those guards at the front doors there to keep people out or women in?

So she’d seen her grandmother, and to Suri’s surprise—and utter disappointment—there had been no connection, no emotion attached. Nothing. Empty. Years of anticipation and all she’d seen was a vile matriarch dressed in colorful silks. The woman could’ve been anyone.

Suri tossed and turned, but sleep evaded her. The whispers and rustling she could barely hear during the day sounded like a constant wind blowing through the corridors tonight.

What if she walked around to work off some of this restlessness? What if she went to the baths—would there still be lamps burning? Would there still be women soaking in the great scented pool? Could she slip into the smaller pool in the private room she’d had all to herself?

She threw on a wrap and slipped through the curtains. After a few carefully chosen steps, she overheard her name being spoken.

“Suri.”

Her name hovered in the breeze of whispers as though it held a volume all its own. She halted in front of the pulled drapes next to hers where the sound filtered through.

“
Abinit
,” she heard whispered from within. A frisson of shock pricked her skin.
A wanton?
Were they speaking of her? Perhaps they spoke of another Suri. Certainly, she wasn’t the only female around with that name.

“
Gharib,”
sounded next in her ears—
a foreigner, a stranger
.

“Apavitrata!”
The word
unclean
spiraled out of the cloud of whispers like a small storm and nearly struck her down.

They
were
speaking of her!

Fear of being caught listening, fear of what she was hearing, froze her in place. And then she distinctly heard two alarming words strung together—
Maurya
and
figan
. Maurya was in charge of an overthrowing!

A giggle and then her name was uttered again, this time with another word attached—
“ghurkana.”
Someone intended to terrify her.

Oh, God, she had to get out of here.

Find Tanush!

She turned to run.

Munia stood not ten feet away, a knife in hand. Behind her stood two other women.

Suri took an involuntary step backward, her eyes fixed on the weapon. Terror set off her own private earthquake, shaking her insides to the core. Her throat constricted. She wouldn’t have been able to scream had anyone been there to help her.

She whipped around to sprint in the opposite direction and stumbled. Three women blocked her way.

“You must come with me, memsahib.” At Munia’s soft but steel-hard words, the wind of whispers ceased to blow. The drapes to her right parted a bare inch. She could hear blood pounding in her ears, the space had grown so deathly quiet.

“What is this?” she managed to whisper.

“You must rest,” Munia said. “It is my duty to see you are ready for Ravi-ji when he comes for you. There are few hours to spare. Come.”

Suri glanced at the knife in Munia’s hand. “What is that for?”

Munia’s lips twitched. “I was cleaning fish.”

So, Suri was a prisoner. But why?

Oh, dear Lord, someone help me.

There was little she could do surrounded on all sides, so she followed Munia, aware that most of the drapes on both sides of the corridor had parted by scant degrees. Some dared to hiss at her as she passed, but the women following behind her swatted at the curtains, and silence ensued.

Once back in her quarters, Suri turned to Munia and raised her chin in defiance. She would not allow Munia to smell her fear, not if she could help it. “When did you come to be employed in the Chatham household?”

No longer did Munia hold her head bowed. No longer did her eyes shift from Suri’s to the floor. Munia’s lip curled and she folded her arms over her chest in as bold a fashion as a peer. “A month before your arrival…memsahib.” She uttered the last word as though some bitter tonic crossed her tongue. No longer did Munia use the speech of a low-caste servant. Instead, her inflections and dialect were that of a highborn.

Oh, dear Lord!

“How long have you worked for Ravi Maurya?”

“Work for Ravi-ji?” Her lips flattened in a crude grimace. “I am not employed by him. I am his sister.”

Sister?
Despite the sweat crawling down her spine, Suri chilled. “But…what is going on? What do you mean to do with me?”

Munia uncrossed her arms and, with the tips of her fingers, played with the edge of her knife. “What am I going to do with you?” She shrugged. “Nothing, memsahib. My job was to look after you, to see that you were well cared for. To listen in and learn all I could. I did my work well, did I not? What is to be done with you is Ravi-ji’s concern, not mine.”

“But why? What have I done?”

“Why?” Anger flashed through Munia’s dark eyes and then vanished, reminding Suri of the same expression she’d caught in Ravi-ji’s emerald eyes. “You are an untouchable and you disgrace our family with every beat of your heart.” Munia spit her words out, as if their very utterance contained poison. “You were sent to your death twenty-seven years ago, yet you still walk among us. How dare you blight our family name?”

Had she been a man, Munia probably would’ve spat at Suri’s feet.

“What…what now?”

“You will rest until morning and then Ravi-ji will come for you.”

“To do what?” Did she really want to know?

Munia shrugged. “I do not know. I will not be present.” She turned to leave. “Do not attempt to vacate your quarters. The women occupying the rooms on either side of you are guards. You will also see others when I exit. They will spend the night standing in front of these drapes.”

She tapped the silk fabric with her knife. “It would be a shame to have you in less than respectable condition when Ravi-ji arrives.”

Like a cloak in a storm, Suri gathered as much of her senses around her as she could. “You and your brother have gone to a great deal of trouble. If you wanted to be rid of me, why didn’t you do so the moment I stepped off the ship?”

Munia shrugged. “Ravi-ji does odd things at times. Had he not made sport of you, he’d have quickly proven your existence to our grandmother and then done you in.”

An enigmatic smile floated across Munia’s mouth. She stepped through the curtains, tall and straight as any royal, paused with her fingers on the drape and glanced back over her shoulder. “Sleep well,
cousin
.”

Suri tossed her braid behind her and straightened her spine. She’d be damned if Munia would hear any further pleading, nor would she get away with a grandiose exit. “You don’t have the green eyes of your brother…or me. Are
you
illegitimate?”

Munia turned, her face a sudden mask of sheer loathing. She reminded Suri of a snake slithering across the floor as she approached. Setting the flat blade of her knife beneath Suri’s chin, she lifted it and stared into Suri’s eyes with deadly menace. “We have different fathers.”

Daring to take a risk, she returned the venomous hatred with a small, cynical smile. “Best be careful with your knife,
half-
cousin. Your
half-
brother won’t be pleased should you damage his goods.”

…

John stalked through the dark streets toward home with Shahira ahead of him, tugging at the end of her chain, the cat’s lithe body slinking through the starless night, her ears pointed forward to night sounds, her golden eyes alert. Damn, he detested having to sit around feeling powerless while he waited out Suri’s rescue. But the plan he and the men had worked out was the most practical one, so he had to muster patience. There was no one better than Tanush to get Suri out of that snake pit…providing she was still alive.

No, don’t think that.

Even Maurya wouldn’t have done Suri in on the day of a royal’s wedding…at least they had to assume as much. When Tanush had slipped away from the celebration, he reported that Suri and Maurya were attending a small reception for the bride and groom while the masses celebrated on the grounds of Red Fort. No one, not even a madman, would spill blood on a celebration like this.
Would he?

Muttering a curse, John dug his heels in deeper and picked up speed, his body humming with rage. Suddenly, he’d never wanted anything so goddamn much in his sorry life as to get out of India and back to England. He was bloody well sick of this heat and of living with nothing to look forward to but finding his brother’s killer and trying to prevent a roaring mutiny.

His beloved Ravenswood Park cleaved a path through his mind so clear he could’ve flown there on a flying carpet. The stately granite house surrounded by gently rolling hills tugged at his heartstrings. Those hills he and his brothers used to romp all over from dawn to dusk would be a juicy spring green about now.

And dotted with mares and new foals.

Echoes of remembrance whirled through him. His already tight chest constricted even further. There was nothing like getting your hands on newborns so fresh their legs still wobbled—rubbing them down, whispering in their ears until you made them yours—until they trusted you with their lives. Damn, he missed that. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about home for a long while, but the memory of the peaceful countryside sliced through his mind in such sharp detail, he could practically smell the apple blossoms, lilacs, and new grass.

He wiped sweat from his brow again as he hiked along at a speed just below a trot. He’d have apple tarts this fall. Pluck the fruit right off the trees and deliver them to Cook just like he and his brothers used to do. Slip into the kitchen with his shirt hanging out, the front a makeshift apron weighted down with his bounty.

Cook would beam him a wide smile, her cheeks rosy from the kitchen’s heat. He could practically taste the little pies, still warm from the oven, their tops a bit crunchy from the sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on them.

An image materialized of Suri sitting at the table alongside him, her stomach round with child. They were eating fresh tarts, stealing from one another’s plates and laughing, her face aglow.

With a shake of his head, he dashed the picture from his mind. What the hell was he thinking? She’d rejected him in the same cold manner as had Lady Elizabeth. As had Laura before she died. Overseeing the rescue of Suri was one thing—it was his duty. Once done, he’d not lay eyes on her again.

Christ. She’d seen through to the core of him, had exposed the harsh truth that his high-handedness had set him up for round after round of betrayal and repudiation. Her blunt words had lodged an arrow deep in his underbelly. Moreover, she had no inkling how direct the hit.

A bull’s-eye.

Had he paid close attention to Lady Elizabeth’s innuendoes instead of arrogantly assuming she was all caught up in him, he’d have sensed the presence of another man, would have realized she was after more than a skilled lover. And had he listened to Laura, really
heard
her, she’d be alive today, back in England with their daughter and awaiting his arrival. Instead, her final words would likely haunt him the rest of his life. And then there was Suri herself. Much as it hurt, he respected her for having the
starch
to put him and his audacious offer out with the trash. Who was he to presume she’d gleefully oblige him?