Daisy's Long Road Home Page 21

  He was watching her closely and when he spoke, his tone was conciliatory. ‘The room below might be disappointing but I do have something interesting to tell you.’ She could see he wanted to brush their disagreement to one side. ‘While you were asleep, I managed to get one of the servants to talk a little. He’s only a young boy and not working here willingly. I got enough from him to confirm what I thought—that the violence in this region has been emanating from the palace. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t get enough to know where Javinder might be. The boy clammed up immediately I mentioned him.’

  ‘That suggests Javinder was definitely here, doesn’t it?’

  ‘In the district, at least. I’ll need to slip away tomorrow before anyone stirs. Asking questions in the town won’t be easy, but if someone lets just one thing slip, it might be sufficient.’

  ‘We could have asked questions today, before we knocked at the palace gates.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Did you notice the car that was shadowing us?’

  She turned a shocked face to him. ‘No.’

  ‘It was there all right. A large black saloon. An expensive saloon, and it joined us a few miles before we got to the town. If I’d stopped, it would have stopped too. I doubt I’d have managed a sentence before some heavyweight was at my side.’

  The danger he’d talked of suddenly became very real. A cold hand clawed at her stomach and she turned to walk back through the open windows without a glance at the view that minutes earlier had entranced her.

  ‘Are you okay?’ He’d followed her back into the sitting room.

  ‘I’m sorry to be feeble,’ she apologised, ‘but it’s unnerving to think that someone has been following us from the moment we got here.’

  ‘It may be unnerving, but on the other hand, it tells us that our Rajah has most definitely got something to hide. And quite possibly that something is Javinder’s whereabouts.’

  If Talin Verghese was indeed complicit in Javinder’s disappearance, he was as malign as her mind had been painting. It would explain the tension she’d felt since they rolled through the first set of iron gates, explain her discomfort when the Rajah’s eyes rested on them. As though he knew exactly who they were and why they were here. A sinister puppet master. It was her experience at Amrita all over again, but more menacing still. She prayed hard that tomorrow Grayson would manage to elude the heavyweights, as he called them, and return to the palace before anyone realised he’d gone. If he didn’t, if he were caught, she would be alone in this place and a hostage. And that was an even more discomfiting notion.

  ‘We should get some sleep.’ Grayson had come close and brushed his finger down one side of her cheek. She’d been staring into space, she realised, while her mind lost itself in a web of distrust.

  She padded into the bathroom, allowing her one decent dress to fall into a heap. She was too abstracted to pick it up and walked into the shower in a daze. She cranked the handle and nothing happened. In the next-door bathroom she heard the water bouncing merrily against the tiled walls. Grayson was having no problems. She tried again, wrenching the handle first one way, then another, but without success. She began to shiver. The days might be burningly hot but the palace at night seemed to have its own refrigeration unit.

  ‘Grayson,’ she called out. ‘Can you hear me?’

  There was no answer and she called louder. The water came to a halt. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I can’t get this damn shower to work.’

  ‘Tut, tut, Daisy. And you a lady. I’ve never heard you swear before.’

  ‘I’m so tired, I think I’ll drop. What am I doing wrong?’

  ‘Probably nothing.’

  She jumped. Grayson’s voice was right behind her. He stood in the doorway, a towel wrapped around his waist. And she was utterly naked with nowhere to hide. He seemed not to notice, but strode up to the shower and gave the handle an almighty thump. Water cascaded down, the torrent almost knocking the breath from her body.

  He stood and laughed. ‘You wanted water and there it is.’

  ‘Not this much,’ she spluttered.

  ‘You are never satisfied, Miss Driscoll.’ He came back into the cubicle and gradually eased the flow.

  ‘Are you?’ he said in her ear. ‘Satisfied, I mean.’ He nibbled at the other ear.

  She felt his hands come round her waist and allowed herself to be pulled hard against his body. His fingers reached up and traced the outline of her breasts and his lips planted a kiss on the nape of her neck.

  ‘Come on,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We’re far too wet.’ He wrapped her in a large towel and before she could protest, had lifted her off her feet and carried her to the bed. ‘This is where we should be.’

  They landed in a heap, rumpling the sheets and sending the bedcover tumbling to the floor. She didn’t protest. Tiredness was forgotten and it seemed exactly where they should be. He put his arms around her again and drew her close. Her hair was still damp and spiralling wildly, but, with long, slow strokes, he smoothed the curls back from her face. She lay for some time, enjoying his touch, enjoying his warmth, but wanting more. Then his hands were on her body and she was tingling from the tips of her toes to the smallest hairs on her head. She put her arms around his neck and brought his mouth down on hers. There was the slightest taste of the sweet wine they had drunk. He kissed her open mouth, deeper and deeper, while her body softened beneath him. She reached out for him, but his lips weren’t yet satisfied. His mouth moved slowly downwards, caressing soft skin with small, moist kisses. Every last piece of her seemed marked by his mouth, his hands, his kisses. And it seemed the most natural thing in the world, to be loving him again.

  She’d discounted the night they had spent on the mountain as simply an interlude, an aberration from the neutral friendship they’d agreed upon. But it seemed that it hadn’t been such an aberration. They had fallen back in love, she thought with amazement. Or maybe they had never stopped loving each other. They’d given up too easily. She’d given up. It had been too difficult and she’d taken the easy way out. She’d run and locked herself away in solitude. But not any longer. The unexpected had happened. She hadn’t wanted it but it was here: she was being loved and she was loving it.

  ‘Why did you leave me?’ he asked drowsily, as some timelater they lay side by side, their hands clasped, their faces turned to each other. ‘What was the real reason?’

  ‘You know why. I was scared.’

  ‘Scared of loving me?’

  ‘Scared of taking the next step.’

  ‘And I didn’t help, did I?’ he said ruefully. ‘I tried to badger you into marriage.’

  She nuzzled his cheek, wanting to reassure him. ‘It was reasonable for you to expect I’d say yes.’

  ‘And now? Is it still reasonable?’

  She took a little time to answer. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then I’d better hope that “think” turns into a definite “yes”.’ He kissed her hair, then closed his eyes.

  She hoped it would too, but she knew that in her mind, in her heart, it was difficult for her to make the commitment Grayson wanted. She wished she understood why she felt this way. It had to do with discovering her true identity, that was clear. But what was keeping her chained to a solitary life was more than this. The hurdle she couldn’t jump was higher, tougher. It had to do with India itself, with what had happened here ten years ago. It had to do with Anish and losing him, though why she couldn’t imagine. He had plotted against her and been willing to see her die at the hands of his confederates, yet since his end in the mud and water of the monsoon, she had felt incomplete. If her world were a jigsaw, the pieces were at odds, jumbled and misshapen, and she was missing the most important, the piece that was key, the one at the very centre of the picture. She should rejoice that Anish had met his comeuppance, but she couldn’t, no matter how often she took herself to task for romanticising his memory.

  She looked across at Grayson. He was still lying stretched out
beside her but had fallen into a deep sleep. She snuggled into him, ready to follow suit, wondering what the servants would make of finding that only one bed had been slept in. But she was too happy to be worried by the likely gossip. No doubt it would be duly reported to the Rajah, and no doubt confirm his every bad opinion of his former masters.

  She must have slept for several hours and woke only because Grayson had flung himself horizontally across the bed, and was pinning her arm beneath the weight of his body. Pins and needles raced up and down her trapped limb. Very carefully, she slid herself free. The light from an enormous moon flooded through the room, touching their faces, etching their profiles. She lay for some time looking at him, not quite believing that at last it might be coming right for them. He was a good-looking man, she thought. He always had been. Even when she was married to Gerald, she’d been unable to stop herself from being attracted. But if a handsome face and figure were his sum total, she wouldn’t be lying here. He was far more: interesting, courageous, loving. Above all, an honest man in his loving. Another woman would have delighted in his constancy. Instead, she had distanced herself from him; the more he’d wished to spend his life with her, the more distant she had grown. It was perverse.

  Yet it had a kind of logic. A logic that held, even if she were able to put aside her confusion over Anish. How could she be a good wife when she carried with her the miseries of a wretched marriage? How be a good mother, when she’d known only rejection as a child? She’d all but come to terms with her disastrous marriage, but her abandonment as an infant was something quite different. She could not forget that. She would never forget. Her mother had done what she could for her small daughter, Daisy was sure, but what did it amount to? A single woman with a fatherless baby was an outcast in society. And sure enough, Lily Driscoll had been cast out—to a pauper’s grave. And, all the time, in the background, there must have been a man, the man who was her father. Why had he not done the decent thing and married Lily? Where had he been when her mother died? Far away was the answer, no doubt in body as well as in spirit. But he could have returned to save his daughter from the wretchedness of an orphan’s life. He could have, but he hadn’t. If he was still in this world, she had to confront him. If he was in India, she had to meet him. She had to know why he’d abandoned her.

  Grayson flung himself to the other side of the bed. He was having an energetic dream. She smiled to herself, wondering a little wickedly just what that might entail. She lay looking up at the carved ceiling, an intricate pattern of interlocking geometric shapes, and the image of another room floated into her mind. The room below. The office she’d seen when the dog had sent the tray of sweetmeats flying. It had tempted her then, but there had been no opportunity to explore. Was it possible she might find something there? The jumble of books and papers and photographs had suggested it was a private space, not an administrative office for palace business. If the room were used by the Rajah, there was the possibility that she might find something personal, something that had belonged to his son. If Karan Verghese had left notes, letters, a diary perhaps, there was the smallest glimmer of hope that he might have mentioned her mother in one or other of them. Said aloud, it sounded hopeless, but it was all she had. Mr Bahndari had mentioned that Parvati refused to accept any of her errant husband’s possessions when news of his death arrived, so where would they have gone but to his estranged father? The Rajah might simply have burned them, as Ramesh Suri had done his sister’s, but she didn’t think so. Even though Karan had proved a sad disappointment, the old man must have retained some feeling for him. He hankered for a son, else why the adopted boy, Adeep? She was almost certain he would have kept Karan’s few belongings but locked them away, not wishing to remember. So why not lock them away in a private room?

  CHAPTER 19

  That decided her. Grayson had been adamant she must say nothing that could precipitate the danger he feared. But she wouldn’t be saying anything. She wouldn’t be involved in any confrontation. In the strictest sense, she wouldn’t be going against his wishes. If she crept to the room while the palace slept, no one need ever know. She could make a brief search and return before anyone was awake.

  She slipped noiselessly out of bed and dressed in the clothes she’d worn the previous day. Grayson was still sleeping soundly when she let herself out of the suite and tiptoed into the corridor. Despite the brave words to herself, her fingers were tightly crossed that she could find her way back to the study and without meeting a fellow night wanderer. It turned out to be a more difficult journey than she’d anticipated. On several occasions, she turned in the wrong direction and found herself looking at a blank wall or down an unfamiliar corridor, and all the time her heart was in her mouth at every creak of a wooden door or sigh of the palace walls. But eventually she stood outside the room she sought. Its door was no longer ajar and that halted her. She could have no idea what, or even who, was behind its blank facade. She breathed deep and gathered her courage. She needed all of it to turn the door handle.

  There was nobody. For a moment, she was overwhelmed with relief and had to grasp the back of the nearest chair to steady herself. She waited until her breathing had settled before she gave the room a swift scan. She must be quick, she couldn’t afford to linger. Grayson would be awake in less than an hour and ready to leave on his own adventure. She made for the desk. It was the most obvious place to look, but a cursory glance at the papers strewn across its surface, made plain there was little to interest her here. She bent down to the drawers on one side of the desk, methodically flicking through their contents and making sure she replaced everything as she found it. One side completed, but again nothing of interest. On to the drawers on the far side. She found them locked and her pulse beat a little quicker. This could be it. Inside could be the letters she sought, the diary, the journal, anything that Karan had written in his time in Brighton. She tugged at each of the three compartments in turn, hoping the locks were too old to withstand an assault, and forgetting in her furious concentration that she’d intended to leave no trace of her visit. The drawers remained obstinately shut. Frustration made her careless and she shuffled the papers here and there on the desktop, looking for anything that might be strong enough to break the locks. A tray of pens, a sheaf of blotting paper and a paper knife, were all she found. Nothing she could use.

  But perhaps, after all, it wasn’t the desk she should focus on. The bookcases that lined every wall might hold what she wanted. She walked slowly from one set of shelves to another, searching first the lower tiers and making sure she felt behind each row of books, then when that proved unsuccessful, dragging a chair to each bookcase in turn and clambering to the very top shelves. Still nothing.

  It had to be the desk. She bounced back across the room. There was a madness in her now; the more frustrated she became, the more she believed there was something in this room, something locked in this desk, something that Talin Verghese did not want to be seen. If so, it had to concern his dead son, and she had to get those drawers open. She went back to the desk and picked up the paper knife. It looked a feeble tool, but it was the only thing possible. She bent over the top drawer and had begun prodding and poking the lock with the knife, when a voice from the doorway made her heart jump in fright.

  ‘Are you quite mad?’

  It was Grayson. Thank heaven for that at least. ‘I have to get these last three drawers open,’ was her sole explanation.

  ‘What are you thinking of? This is a private office, and if I’m not mistaken the Rajah’s personal domain. And you’re burgling it?’

  ‘It looks bad, I know.

  ‘Looks bad!’ Grayson’s expression was explosive. ‘It looks bloody lethal—for us. Now come back to the room, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I can’t. I have to open these drawers.’ Her whole life, it seemed, depended on opening them. It was stupid, but if she had been drowning and the drawers were weighing her to the ocean floor, she would have clung to them still.


  Grayson took only an instant to decide. He strode over to the desk and took the paper knife from her hand. In three swift clicks, he’d opened three drawers.

  She gaped at him.

  ‘What did you expect?’ His anger hadn’t abated. ‘That I couldn’t open locked drawers? Now get on with it.’

  She scrambled through their contents as quickly as she could, but finished desolate. ‘There’s nothing.’

  ‘How surprising. Now let’s get the hell out of this place.’

  ‘Excuse, sahib, memsahib.’ A servant had slipped from behind one of the pillars lining the corridor and was watching them from the open door.

  Grayson slammed the drawers shut, his face the picture of chagrin. ‘We couldn’t sleep,’ he lied blatantly, ‘and decided to explore a little and then became lost.’

  ‘Of course, sahib. Please to come with me. I will escort you to your suite.’

  In single file, they trooped back to the apartment, their feet as heavy as their hearts. As soon as the door had closed on their escort, Grayson turned to her in a fury. ‘You realize what you’ve done, don’t you? Compromised the whole expedition. How could you?’

  Despite his anger, she stood her ground. ‘I had to get into that room and this was my only chance. I can’t speak to Verghese. I can’t speak to his advisers or his servants. You’ve laid the law down on that. So how else can I get to what I need?’

  ‘What I need,’ he mimicked. ‘It’s always what you need, isn’t it? Everyone and everything else can go to hell.’

  ‘That’s not true. How can you, of all people, say that?’ She turned away from him and walked to the closed windows, her arms folded across her chest as though to keep the hurt she felt enclosed within.