Part 7 (2/2)
They turned from the path and started across open country. One of his hands held the reins, the other rested on his thigh. His legs were long and muscular. ”It's the drilling that takes so much time,” he added, then turned to meet her eyes. ”I hope you will come again.”
Mariana pushed a curl under her riding hat. ”Only if you promise to describe all your preparations for the campaign.”
”I promise to shower you with every tedious detail.” He gave her his protective smile.
Her dreams fulfilled, Mariana beamed beneath her veil.
”War lasts longer than we think,” he said suddenly. ”Look.” He pointed to the horizon. ”This country was reduced to emptiness by pillage a hundred years before Ranjit Singh came to power. It has never recovered. I believe that violence can soak into the soil and become a part of a place. I feel it here.”
”You feel violence here here?” Mariana looked toward the placid scene where he pointed, with its distant mud villages and a single ragged man leading a black buffalo. The soothsayers had not mentioned violence, but they had mentioned courage. Of what future calamity had they tried to warn her?
They had reached a stand of feathery trees. Fitzgerald reined in his horse. ”Shall we stop for a moment in the shade? I do not believe,” he added, seeing her hesitate, ”that anyone knows we are here. Besides, it's only for a little while.”
Before she could make up her mind, he called to her grooms, ”Leave us. Return to the horse lines.”
”I am not sure you should ride alone with native menservants,” Fitzgerald added seriously as they watched her escort trot away toward the government camp. ”Men like those may not be safe.”
She dismounted. ”Men like my grooms?” she asked, as Fitzgerald tethered their horses. ”Are those those poor underfed creatures your idea of a pillaging horde?” She sat on a stone under the trees and swept a spider from her skirts. ”It would be worse to ride out with no escort at all,” she added, thinking of the mad fortune-teller. ”Besides, a senior groom has chosen them for me.” poor underfed creatures your idea of a pillaging horde?” She sat on a stone under the trees and swept a spider from her skirts. ”It would be worse to ride out with no escort at all,” she added, thinking of the mad fortune-teller. ”Besides, a senior groom has chosen them for me.”
”Still,” Fitzgerald said softly, as he came and sat beside her, ”they are are native men. You should be careful.” His voice sounded hoa.r.s.e, as if he needed something to drink. native men. You should be careful.” His voice sounded hoa.r.s.e, as if he needed something to drink.
His face neared hers. ”I wished to speak to you alone,” he said, dropping his eyes, ”because I must know ...”
Her hands were clasped together in her lap. Reaching out swiftly, he took them in his, his square fingers brus.h.i.+ng her thighs through the wool of her riding habit. ”I should not say this, Miss Givens,” he murmured, turning her fingers over in his, ”but since dinner, I have thought of nothing but you.”
As he spoke his eyes roamed over her face and the front of her body as they had two days ago. Unable to stop herself, she bent toward him, her eyelids drooping.
In an instant, he dropped her hands and raised the veil from her face. Gripping her shoulders, he pressed his mouth over hers.
He smelled of horses. The bite of his fingers into her shoulders and the moist pressure of his mouth swept her away from everything she knew. As she pressed toward him, one of his hands, then the other, slid behind her back. Heat rose from the center of her body and spread to her face.
”Oh, Mariana.” His cheek to hers, he rocked from side to side, breathing rapidly, as if he had run up a fiight of stairs.
He had called her by her name. She wanted to reach up and touch his lips with her fingers.
An artillery shot crashed in the distance. Shouts closer by signaled that someone was approaching.
She started backward. What had she done? They would be seen coming out from the trees alone, without even her grooms for propriety! Pus.h.i.+ng him away, she jumped to her feet.
He, too, rose. ”It's all right,” he a.s.sured her as he untied the horses. ”We can ride around the far side of these trees. No one will see us.”
Afterward, they hardly spoke, but as they parted, he studied her again, his eyes luminous in his square face.
”Mariana,” was all he said before he left her.
LATER, still rosy and breathless, she stood over her basin, splas.h.i.+ng water on her cheeks, remembering the exact moment when Fitzgerald's lips had met hers. Her riding habit lay in a black heap where she had dropped it when she changed into a fresh gown.
”Memsahib!” Dittoo cried, rus.h.i.+ng inside, shattering her reverie, ”your clothes! If they lie on the fioor, a snake or a scorpion might get inside!”
What did she care for snakes and scorpions? Mariana groped blindly for her towel as Dittoo s.n.a.t.c.hed up her riding coat and shook it vigorously, thickening the air with dust.
”A snake, even a small one, can kill you with one bite, Memsahib,” he prattled on, now shaking her skirt. ”It can come into this tent through the tiniest hole. As for a scorpion, its sting can make the strongest man scream. That is why the other memsahib did not come with us to translate for the Governor Sahib's ladies. She was bitten by a scorpion that got inside her clothes.”
Was she not to be allowed a moment's peace? Mariana fiung her towel onto the chair and pointed to the doorway. ”Take those clothes outside, Dittoo!” she snapped.
Unperturbed, Dittoo gathered up her habit, then waved a careless hand. ”You should be getting ready, Memsahib,” he told her. ”Your muns.h.i.+ sahib is coming this way.”
If Muns.h.i.+ Sahib had been ill, he was now recovered. Her lesson! How could she have forgotten the poem he had given her, so full of feelings that mirrored her own? Mariana turned a softer eye on Dittoo.
”Ask him to wait a moment, until I am ready to receive him,” she ordered.
She returned to her table, opened her writing box and took out the paper on which he had written the poem in Persian ten days ago, and the larger piece on which she had copied her translation. She smoothed them carefully out on the table.
”Are you quite well now, Muns.h.i.+ Sahib?” she inquired moments later, searching her teacher's face, noticing that he looked a little wan. Careful of the formality between them, she did not mention his new lamb's wool hat.
”I am quite well, Bibi,” he replied, nodding gravely. ”And now, let us see how you have translated our poem.”
Mariana had worked on the poem until late the previous night, her lamp fiickering beside her, dreaming of Harry Fitzgerald as she chose her words. Now he had kissed her. Her voice trembling a little, she began to read.
”I, the candle, burn myself awayFor thee, the blazing morn, my heart's desire.Consumed by heat of longing for thy face,At thy first glance I perish in thy fire.Far distant yet close by, I die for thee,Whose radiant being lights my funeral pyre.”
She looked up, delighted with her accomplishment.
For a time her muns.h.i.+ rocked silently on his heels, his eyes moving over the walls of her tent.
”Bibi,” he said at last, poking a long finger at the paper in her hand, ”you have taken words from the page I gave you and written your own poem. You have not translated that that poem,” he added, gesturing toward the paper on the table. poem,” he added, gesturing toward the paper on the table.
Mariana picked up the page decorated with his delicate Persian writing. ”But Muns.h.i.+ Sahib, I have have translated it. There it is-' translated it. There it is-'Main shama jan gudazan-'”
”No, Bibi.” He shook his head firmly. ”The poem I gave you is about a candle and about the morning light, that is true, but it does not contain the sentiments you have expressed.”
”Sentiments? But Muns.h.i.+ Sahib-”
”Moreover, fire does not appear in the original poem, and there is most a.s.suredly no mention of a funeral or a funeral pyre. I regret, Bibi, having given you this poem when you were not in a frame of mind to do a proper translation. It is my mistake. Do not concern yourself. We will not mention your poem again.”
Her poem. poem. Her Her frame of mind. Suddenly hot, she looked away. frame of mind. Suddenly hot, she looked away.
What had she revealed? What had he guessed?
”I will now give you a better translation,” he went on in a businesslike tone. ”This one is not in poetic form, but it is, nonetheless, better.”
His hands clasped behind him, he recited in his curiously accented English: ”I am the self-consuming candle.Thou art the brilliant morn that draws the heart.I burn with desire to see thee,Yet I perish before thy glory.I am both close to thee and immeasurably far away.Separation from thee is like dying,Yet in thy presence I cannot survive.”
Scarcely hearing him, Mariana stared at her hands. He knew. He read her so easily. He was worse than Miss Emily. ”Oh, Muns.h.i.+ Sahib,” she said, ”I do not think I-”
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