CHAPTER THREE

India, January 1854

With each breath she took, her French stays pinched her ribs.

Lillian held herself stiff against the rails of the swaying boat, her spine as rigid as the mainland pilings receding behind her. Irritating curls of damp hair escaped her straw bonnet.

She squinted as the Indian sun broke through the clouds in a sudden rush of heat and glare. She ached for skies which she'd only read about. Anything would do, any sky other than India's. A gray mist on Yorkshire moors, or a crisp March blue above Paris housetops. Or snow, drifts and heaps of pure white ice flakes pouring down from clouds above the Alps. But the diffused tropical glare was inescapable.

A black-headed gull swooped across her line of vision. The bird's neat head turned this way and that as if its tiny brain weighed crucial ideas for consideration. Eat fish? Fly home? Head to sea? The bird suddenly folded its wings and plunged into the wavelets, compact and heavy as a plumb bob. It emerged in moments with a glint of fish in its beak.

Lillian envied its capacity for action and sudden choice. It flew, saw dinner, and dived for it. Would she ever be able to carry out such a decisive act? Her movements from one day to the next and across the seasons were governed by her father and stepmother in a way so constant that it took effort even to realize it. Her life felt like a stream of sweetly passive smiles, flowing imperceptibly into loveless old age and a hundred thousand cups of tea.

"Home soon, Bibi," said the oarsman. He balanced on the prow and pointed one oar at the peaked roof of the governor's house, jutting above the island's bananas and jacarandas.

"Thank you, Naga," said Lillian.

The boat scudded against the beach with a hiss. Pushpa, Lillian's maid, went on sleeping on the floor of the boat where she made a limp and colorful heap in her rumpled sari. Lillian had difficulty waking her. She seemed in a stupor, making Lillian wonder if she had taken some drug to endure the uncomfortable trip. Finally Pushpa shook her head and pushed herself upright, rubbing her eyes, smearing the black kohl. She looked around in a daze. In a tangle of skirts, Lillian clambered onto the dock, and then helped Pushpa, who seemed unsteady on her feet.

Lillian's father's house stood before her, unavoidable, as always, at the end of her journeys. Its enormous roof's barbed turrets cut into the sky like horns. Dog-faced fruit bats roosted in its sloping rafters. One of the winged beasts, bigger than the gull, now circled high over the clearing in its daytime search for insects.

A deep veranda surrounded both stories of the house, darkening its interiors with shadows cast by carved sandalwood screens.

The Governor's Palace was over 250 years old. It was built by Dutch traders before the British came. It was big enough to house fifty guests. The house had lasted so long only by a continual rebuilding of its thick but crumbling mudpack walls, and it stood shaky as a small craft during the periodic battering of typhoons.

Lying under the mosquito nets as a child, Lillian had felt unprotected by the walls, unsure of their strength, for she had assumed that the house held a fearful life and power of its own. Throughout her childhood she had waited for what felt like threats from the house itself to materialize into disaster.

But years ago, this fear had been replaced with more practical anxieties, such as cobras, malaria, and spinsterhood. Now, after her six-week absence, she felt only a familiar unease as she approached through the front courtyard and heard her family's voices raised in anger. What was Henry doing there? Her mouth went dry and she crossed her arms over her breasts, hunching her shoulders. She hadn't been prepared to see her stepbrother, especially after the tiring journey from her aunt's hill estate.

Henry's voice rose in a cadence of self-defense, and her father's answer came, unclear but angry. She knew instantly, as if someone whispered it in her ear, that Henry had somehow muddled his new regiment post. Probably he'd been kicked out. He shouted some accusation; the words were lost but the tone was unmistakable.

She hadn't known him as a boy but she could imagine the screaming matches he must have had with his nurse or governess over things he wanted. If she had heard that tone in his voice when they first met, in her eighteenth year, she never would have let things go as far with him. She would have fought him off, like a tiger, the very first time. But by now his childish fury was as familiar as the feel of her shoe. She sighed and tried to muster some strength against the scene she knew was ahead.

A pulse of headache jagged into Lillian's right temple, linked with a brief surge of nausea, which she tried to quell with a few deep breaths. Both passed. Seasickness, she thought. Or just another family argument. The thought of illness didn't occur to her. She was never ill.

With Pushpa silently trailing behind her, Lillian reached the veranda, and greeted Rajan, Pushpa's father. He bowed and opened the door for her into the subdued light of the drawing room, then murmured a few words to Pushpa in the local dialect. Lillian said to her, "Go upstairs and rest. I won't need you for an hour or two."  She stepped into the room.

Before Lillian"s eyes could adjust to the cooler shadows, her own father's words sprang into clarity.

"That post with the Bengal Lancers wasn't easy to get for you, Henry. No division will consider you now. Why can't you ever make more of an effort?"

She had a moment to observe the three of them before they saw her.

Lillian's stepbrother Henry stood by a window, his face toward her, his eyes shooting green light. He was as handsome as ever, godlike in the breadth of his shoulders and in the way he planted his feet on the ground. The bones of his face recalled the distant, controlled glance of some noble animal staring over its unquestioned domain -- a tiger, a prize racehorse, or even a cherished hunting dog.

Seeing him gave her the physical jolt of pleasure she had grown to expect ever since he'd come to live with them.

And yet, looking at him more carefully now, she saw that in recent months something had changed. His expression struck her as off balance, as if he'd stepped out of an asymmetrical portrait by a third-rate artist. He looked at her father with too much attention and too much focus in his green eyes, and at the same time he squinted as though it were hard for him to see the man clearly. His blinks came too often, with a barely noticeable twitch of his head.

And then she noticed, with a small nudge of tenderness, that his hair needed cutting. The red curls were almost touching his shoulders. She could imagine the exact sensation of snipping his curls, the dry squeak it would make, and the dull friction of the scissors against his freckled neck.

"This time you've let it go too far," continued her father, but broke off when he saw his daughter.

"Lillian," he called out, with forced pleasantry. "And a day early, too!"

Lillian stepped over and kissed her father's cheek. His familiar smell of tobacco and sandalwood enveloped her briefly before she bent for a peck at her stepmother's cool jowl, round as a teapot.

Mrs. Aynsworth's plump, ringed hand reached up and stroked dusty hair back from Lillian's face.

"How wonderful to have you back," continued her father. "Is your uncle with you?" And then she wondered if his greeting had been forced after all; he seemed to have forgotten his fury along with whatever argument he'd been having with Henry.

His quick shift from anger to delight struck Lillian as a sign of old age. Had his hair had grown so white in only six weeks? She strove for an image of him before Christmas, when he saw her off at the boat.

But all she could recall for comparison was a scene which suddenly came to her, of her father, then brown haired and taller, kneeling in a red jacket to show her a shiny war medal. His arm was around her. Could it have been her birthday?

Lately, memories like this had been springing out of nowhere; her father leading his horse guard regiment, sword raised high, in a Bombay military parade. Her father about to leave for an inland tiger shoot, standing tall among the hubbub of bearers, elephants, and gun cases, leaning over to kiss her good-bye. Her father, again with a protective arm over her shoulder, teaching her an alphabet rhyme from a small slate board. With this image came the smell of the chalk, even the feel of its dust on her fingers. Could he ever have been as young and strong as he seemed in these scenes?

Some of them she wondered if she was inventing, to compensate for a childhood she had largely forgotten and mainly remembered as lonely.  As her girlhood receded farther and farther behind her, she wondered if perhaps some inner voice was trying to hold onto a remnant of imagined happiness.

She cleared her throat, thick with dust. "Uncle George escorted me as far as the mainland docks and onto our boat. He had to stay in town to see about some cardamom sales. That's why I'm early."

She looked across at Henry, who had made no move to join the three of them, but was staring at his reflection in a tall mirror. "Hello, Henry. I hardly expected to see you here."

"Hello, Lillian." Henry turned briefly from his own image but otherwise didn't stir. She searched his face, as well as she could at that distance across the dim room, for some indication of gladness on seeing her. She caught nothing. It had been months since they last met, the July monsoons at least. What is it to me if he's glad or not, she thought.

But that one small touch of resentment brought the memories back and even as she tried to push them away they grew more vivid. Henry, night after night in this very room lit by moonlight or starlight, or with monsoon rains so loud that they could hardly hear each other's whispers. The one single time she had let him finally have his way, her pleasure and her terror of discovery formed a mingled sensation which she could recall as clearly as the smell of the old, mildewed sofa.

From his first, furtive kisses until the final seduction weeks later, it had never occurred to her to protest. Her reaction at the first hesitant caress was an absurd sense that in the dark he had made a mistake and confused her with someone else. In quiet afternoons alone in her room, feeling both guilty and delighted at her thoughts, she had dreamed of Henry touching her. Her daydreams never included any resistance on her part.

Besides, she feared any hostility would help him realize it was not the first time for her, though it seemed that he noticed nothing.

Suddenly Henry's eyes left the mirror to look at her again. He smiled this time, lowering his chin, and she was sure he could read her thoughts. Remembering the way desire had once flooded her, she blushed and looked away.

Her stepmother still held one of Lillian's hands and was stroking it lightly. As always, she looked not into Lillian's eyes but at her cuffs, her cheeks, her linen collar, the brooch on her dress. It was as if she wanted to examine Lillian as closely as possible to see how she looked so well put together. Despite an hour with her maid every morning, Olympia usually had a ribbon untied, some rouge smeared across her earlobe, or a wisp of hair floating free.

"And how are your joints, Olympia?" Lillian gently pulled her hand away and sat across from Mrs. Aynsworth on the sofa, which still released evocative whiffs of mildew. A lizard scuttled out from one of the cushions. Lillian swatted at the spot and made a face. "Your last letter said the pain had been bad. Aunt Flora gave me a tonic for you to try, something new."

Mrs. Aynsworth paid no attention to the lizard. She reclined on a love seat left from Napoleon's day, made for some lost romantic interlude. (It, too, had been there eight years ago, but had been too small for Henry and Lillian.) Even on this hot morning she wore heavy velvet of dark purple. Her face glowed above this somber background, with lips still full and tender and cheeks as fresh as Lillian's had been at eighteen. Though her white collar was ringed with face powder, she still held her head like that of a beautiful woman, with a slightly raised chin and a mild smile stretched over her teeth.

Olympia began a nervous munching of candied violets from a cut-glass dish. One violet slipped through her fingers and she furtively searched for it through the folds of velvet.

"'I'm so glad you're back," she sighed between bites. "It's been dull this winter. My rheumatism is gone now, but there's this new pain..." She held her ribs in demonstration, then looked across at Lillian, apparently remembering the ongoing quarrel. "Have you heard what's happened?" She lifted the dish of violets again and offered it to Lillian.

"No thank you, Olympia. I'll wait for tea." Lillian shifted on the sofa, trying to ease a spot of prickly heat across her back. She glanced at Henry, who seemed to be paying no attention. "If you mean Henry's gambling debts, Uncle George told me. I can't see why you're both so upset." She looked around at the three of them, waiting to see if she was right about his post. "It's not as if it's the first time. And this was less than before. Only five hundred pounds, Uncle said."

Her father coughed lightly. "It isn't the debts. Henry's been asked to leave his regiment." The words sounded flat and of less interest to him than weather, or tides. "We just found out this morning. A messenger rowed over from the mainland."

And how many days has Henry been here, Lillian thought, not telling them a thing? She looked over at him with anger and fought to keep it as he smiled at her. That smile made all crimes allowable. Henry's smile was like the shade beneath big-leafed palms, or a glimpse of a flock of bright parrots. She could feel the old effect it had on her, draining her anger, as if he had turned some small tap in her throat.

But before she could ask anything, a sudden dimming of the light made them all look out through the carved screens. A huge gray shape loomed slowly past the hibiscus, blocking the sun.

"Rajan, surely that's the elephant from the village out there?" The colonel's voice betrayed relief at one more interruption of the family argument.

"Oh, certainly, sahib. Elephant. He being present in garden at sunrise." Rajan went on setting out the tea table, smoothing over the white cloth with concentration.

"Well, what's he doing there? Why haven't I been told? He can't very well wander in our garden all day."

Rajan gave a short nasal sigh. "Sir, he is most truly no problem. Cook's cousin say he come from last night's Matapundi Festival on island's north side. He escaping festival. Matapundi persons most probably all asleep. I myself know this elephant. He is most genuine pukka goods holy, sacred to Shiva. Because of temple ornaments, I for one may not disturb this elephant."  He returned to setting out the teapot and cups. Obviously for him the matter was settled.  He mixed a glass of watered whisky and offered it to the colonel on a small tray. Lillian noticed that the tray shook.

"He'll step on my new White Sensation from Bombay," said Olympia. 

Olympia's roses. Lillian was sick to death of them. Once a week her stepmother would haul herself out to the garden with a basket and scissors, Lillian at her side. She would cut a few flowers and talk to Lillian endlessly about roses men had sent her, poems they'd written comparing her to a rose, rose-filled scenes from her childhood in England. Then she'd hand her clippings to Pushpa to arrange in a vase.

As far as Lillian was concerned the elephant could trample every rose in the garden.

"Roses quite tip-top, Bibi. None of this worry trouble is necessary for you." As Rajan spoke, there was a tearing crunch of vegetation. The elephant had just pulled up a hibiscus bush, a tree really, in full flower, and bits of earth from the roots spattered against the screen. Some of the earth fell into the room with a dusty rattle.

Colonel Aynsworth pulled out a handkerchief and rubbed a speck of dirt from his cheek. "They should know better than to let him wander like that. Find someone who is allowed to disturb him, Rajan, and have him returned to Matapundi. Until then, chain him somewhere, quickly."

Rajan set down the teapot loudly. He bent his head, hunched his shoulders, and padded from the room on bare feet.  

Henry walked over to the window, closer to Olympia, apparently fascinated by the elephant. Henry's face resembled his mother's only in a pleasant softness around his mouth. Even at forty, and with such a heavy build, Olympia's face was lovely, but it was a different look that Henry had. His red hair and fair skin must have been his father's.

Points of yellow light reflected into Henry's eyes from the elephant, who had moved into the sun where its brass ornaments caught the glare.

With a gesture of exhaustion and boredom, Lillian pulled the pins from her hair and let it fall over her shoulders in a tangled heap. She leaned her head back against the sofa cushions and gazed at the high ceiling, where two more lizards clung just above her. From under half-closed eyes, she took a long look at her stepbrother.

"What did you do to get booted?" she asked, trying to sound casual. "They don't do it for gambling debts."  By the slight increase in her stepmother's alertness, Lillian knew he hadn't told them yet. Had they even asked? She sometimes felt their complaisance would drive her mad.

Henry turned from the window. The elephant was now more active, and seemed irritated by the two servants who pranced nervously between his feet with a rope and chain. The chain looked too light to hold a pony, let alone an elephant. 

"A gambling debt is more important than what did happen," he said. "That's an affair between gentlemen, whereas this . .   He stopped and creased his perfect eyebrows.

Lillian resisted her urge to back away from the questions, to step lightly near this intrusion into the world of men's ethics.

"You'd better tell it and get it over with, Henry," she said.

Her instinct to avoid the violets broke down, and she bit into one. She had forgotten how awful they tasted. The sickly perfume wafted up the back of her throat.

Olympia poured sherry into her teacup and took a sip. "You don't have to tell us, dear, if it makes you uncomfortable. I'm sure they--"

"No. I want to know." Lillian stared at Henry and almost forced him to look at her.

"All right. It doesn't matter, really. He was only a bloody bearer and he acted like the pigs they all are."

"Henry," Lillian whispered. She moved her chin toward Rajan, just returning.

Henry ignored her and continued. "Not especially useful, nor even amusing, as a dog can be. I shot my dog last season because he soiled my bed, and no one objected, so why should this have

bothered them?"

Henry picked up one of the room's dozens of crocheted doilies from a tabletop, and absently fingered it as he talked, stretching out the knotted patterns and gradually pulling it to pieces. Shreds of twisted string began to litter the floor as he paced.

"Stop that," said Lillian, more as a routine protest than in real annoyance. "Those things take hours to make."  How many afternoons had she sat there with those cruel-looking hooks, turning out useless doilies? And then his words sank in.  "Are you saying you shot a servant?"

"Not exactly that. Well, yes. I did shoot at him. It was only an accident. I'm not sure if I even hit him. Never know now, of course." Henry absently stuffed the remains of the doily in his pocket.

"It wasn't my gunshot that killed him, you see. He fell into the Bhima River. We were all standing on the dock and he was loading up my kit to go downriver and join the rest of the regiment. It was myself and a few of the other fellows. I was ready to go, and hot. He'd been insufferably slow all morning, as if he just weren't thinking. So we were finally packed up tight and ready to push off, when this dog's bloody wife comes running up. He got out of the boat and actually held it there so I couldn't leave! He started talking to her, and had the cheek to turn around and ask me to wait.

Henry stopped talking, his hands still in his pockets. By now he must have known his storytelling gift was at its best. He paused long enough to make them all restless.

Even Rajan stopped what he was doing, the tea tray in midair.

"You never did learn how to handle your servants," said Olympia. "What did the woman want?"

"Oh, nothing much. One of their brats was dead, or sick, or something. She looked sick herself. The man wouldn't let go of the boat, but kept talking to her, even when I shouted at him. So I shot at his foot just to scare him; that was all I meant, really.  And he fell in the river. A crocodile nipped over in a moment and had him. It got a good grip on the leg and he was pulled under. Never surfaced again. I hope it was quick, for his sake. Bloody monsters."

Henry glanced around for some other hand-sized toy, and grabbed a small clay monkey the cook's boy had left on a table. He started rolling it between his palms.

"At any rate, something about this man's face as he fell, and all the ridiculous fuss after, I don't know. You had to be there, I suppose. Well, it set me off laughing. The fellows with me, they didn't like it. The laughing. Bad attitude, they said. So when we got downriver they had a quick trial and kicked me out. Sods."

By now, he had somehow cracked the monkey in two. He looked down at the pieces in surprise and returned them to the table, then walked over to sit next to Lillian.

He smiled. "So you see, it really wasn't my fault at all."

Lillian couldn't decide if his expression was earnest or skillfully sarcastic. Above her own travel staleness, she inhaled his nervous sweat.

He playfully picked up a curl of her hair and pulled it, hard enough to hurt, then wound it around his hand.

"Don't, Henry," said Lillian. She pulled her hair free and moved a few inches away on the sofa, not meeting his eyes.

Then he, grasped her wrist, as if trying to take her pulse, and with one finger began to draw on the inner curve of her elbow a heart with an arrow through it.

The action froze her. It was an old game they had played on the long hot afternoons when they wanted to touch but had to observe propriety until night when the rest of the house was asleep.

They had used the game to signal each other for a late-night meeting, but also as an acceptable adult parlor game, with the two of them spelling words or drawing simple pictures on the arm of a closed-eyed partner. Each would seriously try to guess the other's intent with a clumsy house, a palm tree, a buffalo, or a short poetic phrase. Sometimes the colonel or Olympia would even play along.

For Lillian it had always been difficult to guess the figures; aside from the distraction of the occasional meeting-signal from Henry, so many letters were indistinguishable through her silk or heavy cotton sleeves. On the hottest days, when she wore short sleeves and he worked on her bare skin, she succeeded. Henry, however, had been an expert at deciphering all Lillian and everyone else wrote or drew.

The game had ended after the rainy night when Henry forced their sofa meetings to their inevitable conclusion. The next day when he picked up her arm she gently pulled away and pretended not to know what he was doing.

She should have known better, though; he was good at reading her thoughts. After days of her evasion, an afternoon came when Henry confronted her. With the rest of the house resting, he grabbed at her wrist as if to play the game but instead forced her onto the sofa and began pulling up her skirts, smashing her mouth under his.

She fought him off more easily than she expected, though he kept a painful grip on her wrist while the two panted and glared at each other.

"We have to stop, Henry. You know that." Despite her panic and anger, she spoke gently, as if reasoning with a playmate.

'You think you're so pure." His voice almost broke. She felt his pain and also sensed something threatening she'd never seen in him before. "You think I never noticed, Miss Lily-White. I know what a virgin's supposed to feel like."

She yanked her wrist free and ran from the room. They never once spoke of what had happened, and the game was abandoned forever. Soon after that, Henry went off to Bombay to continue the law studies he'd begun in England. Even though he did poorly and quit in a year, he never returned to the palace to live.

Now, all these years later, he went into the old drawing gestures without even seeming to think about it, and shivers went up Lillian's arms. For one instant, obedience took hold and she began to think how she could keep herself awake until midnight, and if her best nightgown was clean enough to wear. Then she forced herself to pull her arm free.

Olympia stared at them with narrowed eyes as she went on munching violets. She suddenly stopped chewing.

"It won't do, Henry." Olympia's voice was almost too soft to hear, but it was firm, allowing for no interruption. "All that money for the law tutoring. The gambling."  Her hand groped for the dish, but stopped halfway. "And now this."

Lillian wasn't sure if Olympia meant the shooting or this finger play with her arm.

"They just don't appreciate me." Henry laughed at his stale joke.

"You'll have to go."

"Go? Where do you expect me to go?" For a moment his peevishness almost made him ugly.

"It doesn't matter. You can't stay here."

Henry glanced at the colonel, but Olympia raised a hand toward her husband before he could answer.

"It's not your stepfather's decision. I know he'd give you another chance. He's too kind."

Lillian watched, unconsciously holding her breath. The colonel took a long drink from his glass.

Olympia continued talking to Henry as if no one else were present. "I see what will happen if you stay. I know, you think I'm slow. But I do see. At every visit we become more used to your ways. Especially Lillian. Look at her."

On cue, the two men turned their eyes that way. Lillian lowered her head, embarrassed, only partly unsure of what Olympia meant.

"She heard your story without a blush, as if murder were part of the breakfast service. It's intolerable." The creamy voice stayed level but a sudden jerk of Olympia's knee sent the glass dish to the floor. She ignored it. 'And that's not all of it. You know what I mean."

"But, Mother, be a sport." said Henry. His smile was back. "What can a fellow like me do for a living? You know I'm useless. I have as much talent as one of your rose bushes. Crimson Sentinel, you know."

The colonel stepped forward, but again the hand came up to bar him.

"It's out of the question that my husband support you. Some of the funds from your father's estate were always left in case I had another child. That seems unlikely."  She smiled a short, dry smile.  "I'll sign it over to you. With careful habits you can do well on the income."

"What a joke. There's less than a thousand pounds in that account."

Olympia's eyebrows went up on hearing that he knew the sum, but she only said, "I want you to leave by the end of the week."

Henry started to exit the room, but turned at the door. "You're wrong if you think my going will have any effect on her."  He tossed his head at Lillian, but didn't take his eyes off his mother. "It's disgusting, the delicate way you treat her, a woman of close to thirty. She'll never marry, you know. I think you'll find the harm's been done; ask her some day."  He looked the colonel in the face. "Blame it on me if it suits you. But it won't change anything."

He shoved open the door and ran down the veranda steps.