“But it wasn’t like that?” She hardly needed to ask. His tone reeked of shattered illusions.
“No. I encountered a sophisticated, exotic world beyond my wildest imaginings.”
He’d told her he worked in native liaison, but that meant nothing to her. “So were you an administrator?”
Bleakness etched his expression. “Nothing so admirable, Charis. I was a spy.”
Shock pinned her in her chair. So many elements that perplexed her about him came together at last. His cleverness and confidence against Hubert and Felix. His handiness in a street brawl. His secretiveness. His shame.
When she didn’t speak, he went on, still in that calm voice so at odds with the torment in his black eyes. “I’m naturally swarthy, and my skin tans in the sun. I became Ahmal, a Muslim scribe. A scribe learns a kingdom’s secrets, and few question his movements.”
She clutched her hands together so tightly they hurt. It became near impossible to maintain her mask of composure. “It must have been difficult living a lie.”
“Dirty, lonely, difficult.” Still, he gazed at some far-off landscape she couldn’t see. “But I thought I worked for the greater good against forces of barbarism. At least at first. In the end, I believed my masters’ greed the greatest barbarism, far worse than anything I encountered among the natives.” He paused, and his hands flexed convulsively on the chair arms. “Then, along with two of my colleagues, I was betrayed.”
Finally, his unearthly self-command fragmented. The roughening of his voice told her he approached the worst part of his story. She tensed, and dread coalesced into a cold mass in her stomach. She already knew she’d loathe hearing what he told her.
“It was my last assignment.” With every word, his tone became more austere. “The Nawab of Rangapindhi plotted to invade a neighboring kingdom, whose ruler favored the British. My superiors were desperate to learn what happened in Rangapindhi. But the Nawab was cunning and on his guard—worse, he had spies in the Company.”
“This is a world I can hardly imagine,” Charis said softly, forcing the words past her apprehension.
“For most of my adult life, it was my world, familiar as my own face in the mirror.”
“But always dangerous.”
“If you forgot that, you were as good as dead.” Suddenly restless, he swung to his feet and crossed to stoke the fire with suppressed violence. The flames cast unforgiving light on the taut lines bracketing his mouth.
“I wasn’t supposed to go to Rangapindhi.” He set the poker down with exaggerated care, and his voice was flat with control. “I’d handed in my resignation and booked passage to England. But my masters wanted their best men, and I let myself be persuaded. Three of us—Charles Parsons, Robert Gerard, and I—went into Rangapindhi.” The silence was longer this time and charged with Gideon’s grief and anger. “Only I came out alive.”
“What happened?” His expression told her it had been terrible beyond description.
“Gerard was careless. He’d been in the field ten years. Too long. He was a good, courageous man. But even the best make mistakes when pressure goes on too long.”
She noted but didn’t comment that he was ready to forgive a failing in another that he refused to forgive in himself. He ran an unsteady hand through his hair, and his body sagged with what she read as defeat. He was tired and hurt, and she had no right to harangue him. But if she didn’t catch him now, when he was vulnerable, he’d retreat behind his formidable defenses.
He sighed heavily. “Damn it, I’ve had too much to drink.”
She rose on trembling legs, battling a dizzying mixture of fear and overwhelming love. “Gideon, for pity’s sake, tell me.”
Standing in the center of the shadowy room, his wife was as beautiful as a carved alabaster angel in a cathedral. And just as unrelenting.
Charis’s unwavering gaze held such trust, such love. Both pierced him with sorrow. Gideon couldn’t rely on the love, and he didn’t deserve the trust.
He shut his eyes and fought for strength to deny her. Everything between them would change once she knew what had happened in India. He couldn’t burden her with the horrors of his past. He couldn’t enmesh her in the chaos of his life.
But simmering guilt and too much liquor played hell with his principles.
Reluctantly, he opened his eyes and took a step closer. “The Nawab had us chained and dragged into his audience hall. I’d only seen him from a distance before. They called him the Elephant of Rajasthan. Fat rolled off him in monstrous folds. He wore ropes of pearls as big as pigeon eggs. They must have weighed a ton.”
“He knew you were British in spite of your disguise?”
The memory made the skin on the back of his neck crawl, and his hands fist a
t his sides. “He had us stripped in front of his court.”
He saw she didn’t understand. Sometimes he forgot how little his countrymen knew of the Subcontinent. “We posed as Muslims, but none of us were circumcised.”
Sweet pink flooded her cheeks, visible even in the flickering candlelight. “Oh.”