‘I’m not.’ Her voice was muffled and shaky.
‘Liar.’ Somehow she was locked tight against him now and his mouth was in her hair.
After a few minutes she sighed and wriggled. Nick opened his arms and she sat back, scrubbing her fingers across her eyes. ‘Here.’ He found a handkerchief and she blew her nose with a defiant lack of elegance that made something twist inside him. This was genuine misery, not a fit of the vapours or tears to be interesting.
‘I am sorry.’ She had her voice under control again, almost. ‘Thank you for looking after me.’
‘Better now?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I do not think it will get any better. I will have to marry someone, I suppose, and try to be a proper English wife. He will not love me and he will have mistresses, I suppose.’ She squared her shoulders, a little gesture that clutched even deeper at his heart. ‘It is my fate, so I must not be a coward.’
‘I want to help you. How can I help you, Anusha?’ He would fight anything for her—tigers, rakehells, a pit full of cobras—but this blank, brave misery defeated him.
‘Find me someone to marry who will not break my heart,’ she said with a bitter twist of a smile.
Who? A suitable husband would either break her until she was just another dutiful wife or goad her into rebellion and scandal. What man is going to understand her heritage, her pride, her fears as I do? As I do. The words seemed to echo in his head. He would make a poor excuse of a husband for any of the conventional little misses dancing downstairs, but for this woman perhaps he might be better than the alternatives.
Nick sat back on his heels and tried to think with his head and not with his protective instincts. He was well born, which mattered to society, if not to her. He could afford a wife, even if he could not keep her in luxury. He would be faithful to her and that, at least, would be no hardship. And she clearly found him physically attractive enough to want his lovemaking—in that, at least, this should not be a repeat of his marriage to Miranda.
‘There is one man I could think of,’ he suggested, before his brain could catch up with whatever was doing the thinking for him at the moment. ‘One who would do his best to look after you and understand you, give you freedom.’
She understood him immediately, he saw it in the widening of the grey eyes, still shimmering with tears. ‘You?’
‘You’re not looking for love, I understand that,’ he said. ‘You needn’t worry that I’d be expecting it either. And I will be away a lot, but you’ll not miss me.’
‘I won’t?’
‘And I will be faithful, so you have no need for concern about mistresses. All I ask is that you don’t take any lovers,’ he finished.
‘I...wouldn’t. Nick, you don’t want to get married again, to anyone. You told me.’
‘I wouldn’t mind being married to you.’ As he said it he realised it was true. She would be wonderful in bed, stimulating out of it. Probably reckless enough to get into any number of scrapes but, he felt deep down, honourable enough to keep her promises to him. ‘I am not a rich man,’ he added. ‘But I can afford children if you want them. Only if you want them.’
There was an ache inside now. He could almost think it was anxiety that she might refuse. What was the matter with him? This was a practical solution to her problems that would not cost him much except some money. And George would be happy that at last she was settled, if not brilliantly. But if she said no, then he would try to think of something else, it was not as though his heart was involved.
‘I would be such a trouble to you.’
She was wavering. The unexpected relief made him speak roughly. ‘You have been trouble since the moment I saw you, you and your damned mongoose.’
‘It is Paravi’s mongoose—’
‘Do you never stop arguing?’ He kissed her, dragging her tight against him. He wanted her, was all he could think as he plundered her mouth, felt her response, tasted the sweet, sensual tang that was uniquely Anusha.
And this way he could have her and she could have what she needed.
When he let her go she did none of the things he expected. She did not smile, or slap his face or even weep. Anusha buried her face in her hands for a long moment, then lowered them and met his gaze with eyes that held the same resolution that he had seen in them when they left the palace.
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice steady. ‘I will marry you, Nick.’