The Betrayal of the Blood Lily

Chapter Two

“Right,” said Lord Frederick, with an obvious lack of interest. “Wellesley mentioned he would be sending someone.”

From the moment Captain Alex Reid set eyes on the new Special Envoy to the Court of Hyderabad, he had that sinking sensation in his gut that attends a slow tumble off a steep cliff.

He had been, to put it mildly, less than pleased when Wellesley had summarily summoned him to Calcutta, expecting him to drop all his duties in Hyderabad and spend more than a week in travel for an hour’s interview. He had been even less pleased when the Governor General had informed him that he was to play nursemaid to the new envoy, a special envoy the Resident had never requested and certainly didn’t need. Wellesley had not been amused when he pointed that out.

But all that was as nothing compared to the reality of Lord Frederick and his wife. Maybe, if he were very, very lucky, he would wake up in his own bed and find that this had all been a bad dream. One could always hope.

The bad dream, alarmingly corporeal in his London-tailored evening clothes, waved a languid hand at the two men standing beside him. “Do you know . . . ?”

Alex did know them. Daniel Cleave had been in school with him in England. Like him, Cleave had been the son of an officer in the Madras Native Cavalry, sent back to Britain for schooling. Unlike him, Cleave’s father had died in action, and he remained for some years in Tunbridge Wells with his widowed mother before returning to take up a post on the political side of the service. He was, as he had been in school, thorough, conscientious, and entirely incapable of seeing the larger picture. It was that very myopia that had elevated him to the post of Wellesley’s private secretary; the Governor General, thought Alex bitterly, being afflicted with exactly that same shortness of sight.

The other man he knew largely by reputation. Lieutenant Sir Leamington Fiske had been up to his obviously plucked eyebrows in a sordid secret society run by one Arthur Wrothan, pandering to the perversions and prejudices of recent English expatriates. There had been one incident that had trickled even to Alex’s ears, one involving the Anglo-Indian daughter of an officer in the Bengal Light Cavalry. Fiske and his cronies had gotten off with a rap on the knuckles. The girl had died.

Had Lord Frederick Staines been one of that crew?

Alex rather thought he might. It was not a cheering thought. If Lord Frederick pulled a trick like that in Hyderabad, he might well find himself missing key parts of his anatomy. Wellesley, who had caused this whole mess by dumping Lord Frederick on them, would find himself missing a key ally. That was all it would take to make the Nizam of Hyderabad drop what his ministers were already vociferously telling him was an increasingly unattractive association.

Disaster didn’t cover the half of it.

“Cleave.” Alex nodded to his old schoolfellow. His voice hardened as he turned to the other man. “Fiske.”

Fiske blinked at him in a manner meant to convey that he had no interest in ascertaining Alex’s identity. Fiske fixed his gaze on Lady Frederick, conducting a leisurely examination of her physical attributes. His insolent inspection had no effect at all upon the lady’s husband, but prompted Alex’s father to take a protective step forward, an attenuated Don Quixote bustling to the defense of his Dulcinea.

“You must be Freddy’s wife,” declared Fiske. There was an arch lilt to his voice that was just short of being effeminate. The man looked like an elongated codfish in uniform, thought Alex dispassionately. His mouth opened and closed like the fish’s as he spoke. “I heard about your marriage.”

For a perfectly conventional remark, it had a rather odd effect. Lord Frederick looked as though he had just swallowed something rotten.

Lady Frederick maintained her expression of fashionable boredom, but her shoulder blades were as taut as bowstrings as she said,

“I imagine you did. We had a notice put in the Morning Post . I assume you do get that here?”

“Eventually,” said Fiske, looking like the guppy that got the seaweed. “All the news from home arrives in Calcutta eventually.”

“How very unfortunate for you,” shot back Lady Frederick, “to be always so far behind.”

Alex rocked impatiently back on his heels. Whatever was going on, it was none of his business, and he wished they would deal with it on their own time. Preferably after he had left Calcutta. Alone.

He was just about to excuse himself and leave them to their aristocratic sniping, when Lord Frederick turned abruptly to Alex. “When do we leave for Hyderabad?”

Never, if Alex had his way about it.

“That is, of course, up to you.” Doing his best to sound more diplomatic than he felt, Alex said, “It might, however, be prudent to take some time in Calcutta to consult with the Governor General’s staff about conditions in Hyderabad before proceeding to the territory itself. And,” he added, with a bow in Lady Frederick’s direction, “I am sure your wife would enjoy the entertainments afforded by the capital.”

If he could just have some time, a few months — a few weeks, even — for Kirkpatrick to get the situation under control, then, he told himself, he could endure Lord Frederick with equanimity. As for Lady Frederick, she scarcely figured into it, he told himself. Except as a potential hostage for the anti-English faction should events take an unfortunate turn. That would certainly do wonders for Alex’s career.

Lord Frederick was unimpressed. “I don’t see why I should waste time with Wellesley’s subordinates when I’ve already seen the man himself. A bit backwards, don’t you think?”

Lord Frederick’s expression was a study in arrogance. Alex knew what he was about to say was probably the equivalent of howling into a gorge, but duty was duty. He had to try.

“As I was about to explain to your wife” — Alex bared his teeth at Lady Frederick in a simulacrum of a smile — “the situation in Hyderabad is not all that could be desired. The province is, at present, somewhat unsettled.”

“Wellesley never mentioned anything of the kind,” said Lord Frederick carelessly, as though that were the last word in the matter.

Alex glanced sideways at Cleave, choosing his words as though he were walking a rope bridge across a gorge. “Lord Wellesley has other concerns on his mind. The war with Holcar, for one.” At least, he ought to have. The latest reports from the north had been distinctly sobering.

“Holcar?” asked Lady Frederick.

“Nothing for you to worry about, Lady Frederick,” Cleave hastened to assure her, like the good little lackey he was. To be fair, he did have a widowed mother to support. But even so. “A local warlord got a bit out of hand, but Lord Lake is dealing with him. We had a similar unpleasantness with some of the other Mahratta chieftains last year, but it’s all been dealt with now.”

That wasn’t quite the way Alex would have explained it. It was true that the crushing victory at Assaye, followed by a series of similar successes, had forced the leaders of the Mahratta Confederacy into signing a series of treaties with the English. But with Holcar making a fool of Lord Lake in the north, Alex had no illusions as to how long those treaties would hold. It was only the myth of British military invincibility that kept the defeated Mahratta leaders in line. Explode that legend, as Holcar was rather effectively managing to do, and they were all in very hot water indeed.

“This Holcar, I take it, is not actually in Hyderabad?” Lady Frederick was asking Cleave.

Good God. At least it wasn’t her husband asking the question, though from the studiedly blank expression on his face, Alex suspected he didn’t know either. A monkey, thought Alex. A monkey would be a better choice as envoy to the Nizam. What in the hell was Wellesley thinking?

Unfortunately, he knew what Wellesley was thinking. The same thing he had been thinking three years ago when he set up a special commission to investigate Kirkpatrick, with special attention to the Resident’s marriage to a Hyderabadi lady of quality. The Governor General had a bee in his bonnet about Kirkpatrick’s chosen way of life, as though a man’s loyalties could be measured by the clothes he chose to wear or the woman with whom he chose to share his bed. The Governor General’s probing had been irksome enough three years ago. But three years ago, the old Nizam had still been alive. Three years ago, there had been a pro-British First Minister. Three years ago, the whole province hadn’t been in danger of going up like a powder keg in dry weather.

“No,” said Alex shortly. “Holcar is based in the north. Hyderabad is more southerly.”

Lady Frederick smiled beatifically up at him, but her amber eyes glinted with a hint of hellfire. “If the war is in the north and Hyderabad is in the south . . .”

“I’m afraid it’s not so simple as that,” Alex said stiffly.

“No, nothing ever is, is it,” agreed Lady Frederick. “I generally prefer to see for myself.”

“You might,” said Alex, striving for cordiality, “prefer to see for yourself after the monsoon. The trip is not a pleasant one during the rains.”

He looked pointedly at his father.

With an abrupt cough, his father belatedly picked up his cue. The Colonel beamed at Lady Frederick with all the force of his considerable charm. “You wouldn’t want to be missing the Calcutta season, Lady Frederick. We have routs and balls and theatrical entertainments. You couldn’t be so cruel as to deprive us of your company, could you, now?”

“Yes, do stay,” contributed Fiske, his guppy mouth conducting its own fishy orgy of innuendo. “I promise to personally see to your entertainment. I’m sure Freddy won’t mind, will you, old bean?”

“You needn’t trouble yourself,” said Lady Frederick, with an inscrutable look in the direction of her husband. “I had enough of society in London.”

She might think so now, but Alex doubted she would be of that opinion three months from now. He had never known a less appealing cluster of people than the handful of English ladies washed up with their husbands in Hyderabad, bitter with boredom and universally discontented with their lots. Of all the Residency ladies, only Mrs. Ure, the physician’s wife, appeared content, and that was because her one passion was food, a passion that she satisfied daily to the extreme detriment of both the Residency larder and her figure.

It was true that Begum Johnson had lived for some time away from English society, but she was different; she had been born in India, grown up in India, knew it and loved it as he did. They didn’t make women like her anymore.

Alex’s thoughts turned to his two sisters, Kat and Lizzy, sent home to Kat’s maternal grandmother in England to learn to become proper English gentlewomen. He knew it was necessary; he knew that Lizzy, born of his father’s extended liaison with a Rajput lady, would have a better life in England, where prejudice towards half-castes was less pronounced than among the increasingly insular British community in India; but he still hated to think of them turning their backs on their early upbringing, taking on the senseless airs and graces so prized by lady visitors to Calcutta, becoming foreign to him. Becoming, in fact, like Lady Frederick.

It only took one look at her to know that Lady Frederick Staines was entirely unfit to undertake the trip to Hyderabad. Her muslin dress looked as if it might rip if anyone so much breathed on it. There were pearls twined in her flaming red hair along with white flowers fresh from the Governor General’s own gardens. They were fragile blossoms, English flowers of the sort that flourished in India only in the English areas, with fussing and watering and careful handling. In the candlelight, her skin, liberally displayed by the scooped neck and short sleeves of her gown, appeared to be nearly the same color as the petals and possessed of the same haunting scent.

And would, Alex reminded himself, bruise just as quickly as those petals. That skin of hers wouldn’t last two minutes in the sun. The first part of the journey could be accomplished by boat, but how would she fare on the grueling seven-day trek from the coast to the British Residency in Hyderabad? Once there — if Mrs. Dalrymple and her cronies complained of boredom, it could be worse for a London lady. On top of the boredom, there would be the hundred small irritations born of an unfamiliar climate, the intestinal disorders, the sunstroke, the prickly heat, and boils that would mar that impossible skin. Lady Frederick was a thing of mother-of-pearl and moonlight, designed for costly drawing rooms in a cold climate. Not for India and certainly not for Hyderabad.

She might, thought Alex callously, do well enough in Calcutta. The cold season was almost upon them and there would be balls and entertainments enough even for a spoiled daughter of the aristocracy. There would be plenty to fawn over her for the sake of her husband’s title.

“I don’t think you realize quite how dull a provincial residency can be,” Alex warned. “We have none of the amenities to which you are accustomed. There are no concerts, no balls, no — ” He struggled to recall the complaints he had heard from the Englishwomen resident in Hyderabad.

“No milliners,” finished the Colonel for him. “Nor dressmakers, either.”

Lord Frederick appeared entirely unconcerned about his wife’s haberdashery. “As long as the shooting is good, I’m sure we’ll jog along all right. Right, old thing?” Without waiting for his wife’s response, he looked to Alex. “We leave tomorrow.”

Alex wondered just why he was so anxious to go. Was it Wellesley prodding him? Or something else?

“With all due respect, there are arrangements to be made. It’s not exactly the same as traveling from London to Surrey.” Alex couldn’t quite manage to keep the asperity out of his voice.

“I don’t see why not,” said Lord Frederick. “It’s always bally raining there, too.”

Fiske hee-hawed and Cleave contrived a restrained chuckle. Alex managed not to bang his head against the wall. “Yes,” he said mildly, “but there are fewer elephants in Surrey.”

“What the lad means,” intervened his father, with the glibness for which he was known throughout the cantonments of India, “is that it takes time to arrange a fitting entourage for a personage of your stature. You wouldn’t want the Hyderabadis to think you were a person of no account, now, would you?”

That appeared to resonate with their young lordling. He nodded in a thoughtful way, his lips pursing. “A week Tuesday, then.” Reaching into his waistcoat pocket, he flipped a gold coin in Alex’s direction. “See that you hire a few extra elephants.”

Well, they already had an ass.

Alex’s father slipped the guinea from Alex’s nerveless fingers and handed it back to Lord Frederick. “You can settle accounts with the Governor General,” he said.

Alex didn’t need his father’s warning look to tell him that departure was the better part of valor. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said in a voice like granite, “I’ll go see to those arrangements. Lord Frederick, Lady Frederick. Cleave. Fiske.”

“Good man.” Lord Frederick favored him with a perfunctory nod before turning back to Fiske. “Now about that filly . . .” Alex heard him saying as he walked away.

Alex concentrated on putting one foot in front of another and breathing deeply through his nose. The Begum’s house was as familiar to Alex as his own quarters. He turned to the left, pushing open the door to the deserted book room. Behind him, he could hear the slap and shuffle of his father’s boots against the marble floor.

“Easy, my lad, easy,” warned his father, peering down the corridor and pushing the door shut behind them. “Keep a rein on that temper of yours.”

Alex regarded his father sourly. His father had many virtues, but restraint of any kind was not known to be one of them. Otherwise, Alex would never have had quite so many half-siblings.

Besides, he had no temper. He was a remarkably even-tempered man. Except in the face of sheer stupidity. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a good deal of that going around Calcutta.

“That,” Alex said pointedly, jerking his head towards the room they had just vacated, “is a disaster waiting to happen.”

“Just so long as you don’t allow it to happen to you,” returned his father equably. Beneath their wrinkled lids, his faded blue eyes were surprisingly shrewd. Self-indulgent he might be, but no one had ever called him stupid. “I’m within an ace of wrangling that district commissionership for you. So don’t go fouling it up out of some high-minded notion.”

At the moment, Alex was feeling more bloody-minded than high-minded. It was all very well for his father to counsel prudence, but as far as Alex could see, he was damned either way.

“Fine,” said Alex. “Let’s say I hold my tongue and cart Lord and Lady Freddy meekly off to Hyderabad a week Tuesday. What happens when that idiot sparks off a civil war? I doubt I’ll receive commendations when Mir Alam’s lads kick us out of Hyderabad, lock, stock, and barrel. With matters the way they stand, Wellesley’s new pet could undo in a moment what Kirkpatrick took six years to accomplish.”

His father regarded him patiently. “It’s not all on your shoulders, Alex.”

“Then whose?” Alex demanded, frustration ringing through his voice. “Wellesley doesn’t trust Kirkpatrick to piss without someone writing a secret report on it; Russell isn’t a bad sort, but he’s untried — ”

“ — and a bit too much in love with himself,” the Colonel humored him by adding.

Alex glowered at his father. Just because he had said it before didn’t make it any less true or any less problematic. “Precisely. The new Nizam is a tin-pot Nero who gets his amusement using silk handkerchiefs to throttle his concubines. He’ll go wherever Mir Alam tells him to, just so long as Alam doesn’t cut off his supply of expensive hankies and cheap women. And Mir Alam is half rotted with leprosy and demented with the desire to be revenged upon the British, because he blames us for his bloody exile four years ago.”

“It is unfortunate, that,” admitted his father.

“ ‘ Unfortunate’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. It’s a bloody fiasco. And do you know what makes it even worse?”

“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me, lad,” said his father, patting him fondly on the shoulder.

Alex ought to have resented the pat, but he was too busy with his main rant to waste time on peripheral grievances. “It was Wellesley that bloody saddled us with Mir Alam! He met him years ago in Mysore and decided he was a good chap. But, no, he couldn’t be bothered to look into what might have happened in the interim! He’s too busy poking into Kirkpatrick’s bedchamber, like a bloody peeping Tom!”

“Whoa, there.” The Colonel’s hand tightened on his arm. “Keep your voice down. You don’t want to be losing your post for a moment’s ill-humor.”

“It’s more than a moment,” said Alex tiredly, feeling the rage wash out of him, leaving him feeling like a fish washed up on the beach. “It’s been months, ever since Wellesley pushed Mir Alam’s appointment as First Minister. And what’s the point of hanging on to my post if there’s nothing I can do with it? Except play lackey to a walking disaster,” he added bitterly. “It’s like being asked to play host to one’s own executioner.”

“Patience,” advised the Colonel.

“For what?” demanded Alex. “More of the same?”

Looking to the left and right, the Colonel tapped a finger against the side of his nose. “Word to the wise, my boy,” he said sotto voce. “It isn’t generally known yet, but the word is that Wellesley is on his way out. Apparently the folks back home on the Board of Control are none too happy with the Governor General’s expenditures.”

Alex looked at his father closely. “How ‘none too happy’?”

His father regarded him shrewdly. “Between the cost of the war with the Mahrattas and that grand Government House the Governor General has been building, they’re feeling the pinch in their purses, lad. You can guess how unhappy that makes them.”

Alex absorbed the information. “Is there any word on whom they might send to replace him?”

The Colonel shook his head. “It’s all just rumor, as yet. But if you get yourself disciplined before Wellesley goes, it won’t matter who the new man is.”

He would have to be right, wouldn’t he? Feeling like a small boy caught out in some petty carelessness, Alex inclined his head in the briefest of acknowledgments. “Point taken.”

His father clapped him on the shoulder, the reward after the scolding. “It will be all right, my boy, just you wait and see.”

“When do you sail?” Alex asked, deeming it wise to change the subject while he was still ahead.

Having served for four decades in the Madras Native Cavalry, his father had finally deemed it time to retire from active service. After a childhood in Charleston, a lifetime soldiering in India, and amours of various extractions, the Laughing Colonel, scourge of Madras, was retiring to Bath to be closer to his daughters. Alex’s Jacobite grandparents must be turning in their graves.

“That depends in part on you.” The Colonel paused to allow the impact of his words to sink in. Alex folded his arms across his chest, signaling to his father that he knew exactly what he was up to. Feigning obliviousness, the Colonel carried on innocently, “I shouldn’t like to go until I see you settled. Although it will be that glad I am to see Kat and Lizzy again.”

“Give them my love when you see them,” said Alex. It seemed a more manly way of saying good-bye than I’ll miss you .

As much as he hated to admit it, he would miss the old reprobate. His father might have had eccentric notions of family life, but they had been affectionate ones, for all that. The Colonel had never repudiated any of his offspring, no matter how irregular the circumstances. Of five living siblings, only Alex and his sister Kat were technically legitimate, but the Colonel had always treated all of his children with exactly the same rambunctious affection, no matter which side of the blanket they had tumbled out of. He had seen to their schooling and found placement for Alex in his own cavalry unit. For George, who was barred from the East India Company’s army by virtue of being the offspring of an Indian woman, he had wrangled a command in the service of a native ruler, the Begum Sumroo.

As a young man eager to make his own mark on the world, Alex had often found his father’s constant oversight irksome. He had left the cavalry for the political service, left Madras for Hyderabad, done everything he could to make his own way in his own way, gritting his teeth at the invariable “Oh, Reid’s boy, are you? Splendid chap!” that greased his way even as it did damage to his molars. But over the years, he and his father had come to a comfortable sort of understanding.

There was a curious emptiness that came with the thought that henceforth the old rascal would be a full five months away. He would miss him.

“You’ll keep an eye on George for me, won’t you?” said the Colonel.

Alex raised both eyebrows. “You’ve asked George the same about me, haven’t you?”

The Colonel stretched his arms comfortably in front him. “I like to see you all looking out for one another,” he said placidly. “It’s what a family is for.”

“Except Jack,” said Alex.

His father didn’t like to talk about Jack.

The Colonel’s bland smile didn’t wobble, but there was nothing he could do to hide the slight trembling of his hands. “That Lord Frederick Staines is a piece of work and no mistaking,” he said, changing the subject as though that was what they had been talking about all along, “but his wife seems to have a head on her shoulders.”

“I hadn’t realized it was her head that interested you,” said Alex, letting the subject of Jack drop. It wasn’t particularly pleasant for any of them.

“Now, now. I appreciate a witty woman as well as the next man. She seems like a feisty lass, with no nonsense about her,” announced the Colonel. “I like her.”

This did not exactly come as a surprise. “Have you ever met a woman you haven’t liked?”

After giving the matter deep consideration, the Colonel said triumphantly, “There was your sister’s governess . . . Miss Furnival, as she was.”

“She didn’t like you,” corrected Alex. “That’s not the same thing.”

“Poor girl,” said the Colonel generously. “She had that unfortunate problem with spots. It would be enough to sour anybody. But your Lady Frederick is a different matter.”

“I should say she is,” said Alex. She was an irritant. A very attractive irritant, but an irritant nonetheless. A very attractive, very married irritant. “She’s Lord Frederick’s matter. And even if she weren’t,” he added, before the gleam in his father’s eye could translate into advice of which the resident religious authorities — of any denomination — would not approve, “I don’t have time to dabble in dalliance.”

The Colonel laughed that rolling laugh that had earned him the sobriquet the “Laughing Colonel.” “Nonsense!” he declared. “All it will take is the right woman to make you change your mind.”

“Or women?” Alex shot back. It was a cheap blow and he knew it.

Alex would have taken it back if he could, but it had already hit its mark. His father’s face seemed to sag around the edges.

“We can never undo what we’ve done,” said the Colonel, with none of his usual bluster. He looked his full age and more. “But I never meant ill by any of you. You know that.”

“I know,” said Alex roughly. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Until it does,” said the Colonel, looking at Alex far too acutely for Alex’s comfort. Alex hated when his father looked at him like that. If his father wanted to be philosophical in his old age, well and good, just so long as his father didn’t philosophize about him. “Don’t shut yourself off from all the pleasant things in life, lad.”

“Trust me,” said Alex dryly, “I enjoy a good day’s hunting as much as the next man.”

The Colonel looked at him closely, realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere, and gave up, with a philosophical shrug of his shoulders. “Humor an old man’s fancy and write me a letter to let me know how you get on once you get that lot to Hyderabad.”

There was a glint in the old rogue’s eyes that made Alex feel decidedly twitchy. “With any luck, there won’t be anything to tell.”

His father grinned at him, displaying a full set of yellowing teeth. “That depends on your definition of luck.”