Rory’s call pulled her back from tramping toward the outbuildings. The smile stamped on his face eased her fears that she’d overstepped her bounds. “I have strict orders from Ada to look after you. She says you’re one of the finest nurses she’s worked with. So come this way. There’s plenty of time tomorrow to show you everything.”
While clutching two of her cases, he ushered her toward the house. About to follow him, the words stenciled above the door stopped her. “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” She knew the Bible verse only too well, having memorized it during Sunday school. Mild consternation filled her. She’d had plenty of experience with white-washed teetotalers in her childhood.
Rory looked back at her as she stepped into the house. Its mud-brick walls, a foot and a half thick, would keep the place cool during the heat of the day. A ceiling cloth kept insects and other unpleasant visitors from dropping down on them from the thatched roof. Chintz-covered sofas and chairs were placed around a selection of teak tables. With the descent of night, a servant in a white dhoti and his hair oiled flat hurried to light paraffin lamps. Outside, the evening grew noisy with crickets and frogs.
Instantly, she felt at home. She had stayed away too long, and she shook off the odd sense of déjà vu she’d felt the last mile in the cart. It had to be the humid winds that unsettled her. The promise of the monsoons ran in her bloodstream, like the tide coming in wave by wave. With the promise of rain came a line of poetry from one of Adam’s old letters. “And how am I to face the odds/ Of man’s bedevilment and God’s?”
Rory nodded her through the house, past a dining room and a gleaming mahogany table that sat empty, where alas no dinner was laid to the dismay of her rumbling tummy.
After lighting the lamps, the young servant bowed over his hands to her. “Praise the Lord.”
“Meet Devaram.” Rory pronounced over the small Tamil servant.
Devaram reached for her bags and in broken English added, “Welcome to Lavinia.”
“Lavinia?” Laine spouted. “You named this place after a woman in Roman mythology.”
A petite woman of about fifty, and shadowed by Rory’s towering frame, strode toward Laine with a smile to match her brother’s. “Lavinia is most definitely not our choosing. We’re far too down to earth for Virgil. I’m Bella, by the way. If left to Rory and me, we’d probably have named the place Great Expectations.”
As she spoke, Bella led them through to the back of the house. “Let’s get you settled.”
The bedroom, like the rest of the bungalow, was white-washed inside and out. Teak beams supported the ceiling, and a punkah hung from it, hardly moving the sluggish air. Mosquito netting draped over a bed with a rosewood headboard and a white cover.
Bella shooed Rory and Devaram out and turned to her. “I can’t tell you how glad I am you’re here. We’ve needed a nurse in these parts for so long, but I’m positively over-the-moon to have another woman to talk to.” She gave a minute tug to the cover on the bed, readjusted a pillow. “I’m sure you’d like a bath. If I’d known you were coming today, I’d have arranged to have the water heated. As it is you’ll have to do with cold.”
“That will be lovely.” Laine ran a hand along the smoothness of the rosewood headboard.
Bella hesitated only slightly. “Thing is, we expected you days ago and hadn’t prepared dinner, not knowing you would turn up today precisely. As we are invited to the big house tonight, Devaram can whip up something if you’d rather not attend. You must be tired. All the same we’d love you to come.”
Laine sighed with relief. So that’s all it was, a bit of concern over dinner arrangements, and not that Bella didn’t want her here. “The big house?”
“The patron of this little medical compound. He’s been doing marvelous things with his plantation. A forward thinking man in many ways. It was during a bad cholera epidemic a year ago that he brought Rory and me out here.”
“But I’d love to join you for dinner. I’m absolutely starving. Can you give me a few minutes to wash and change?” She ran a hand through her dust-covered hair.” I’m sure I look like I’ve had a henna rinse...all over.”
Bella clapped her hands. “I was hoping you’d say that because frankly the work here is too hard for a fainting daisy.”
“Have I passed the first test then?”
Bella’s eyes held a gleam of mischief. “I believe you have. Dinner isn’t until eight, so you’ve half an hour.”
The bath didn’t disappoint. Though it was the typical galvanized tub, Bella seemed to consider scented soaps from England a luxury she could not live without. Laine lathered her hair with shampoo perfumed by peony flowers and sank below the water to rinse it. Her hair would dry in no time, probably by the time she got to the big house.
She couldn’t help deepening her voice at what Bella called the plantation owner’s residence. “The big house indeed.”
In her room she found that Devaram had ironed the navy skirt and cream chiffon blouse she had shaken out before going into the bathroom. She dressed and sat on the bed ready to put her feet into her walking brogues, and let out a sniff of disdain. It was so humid. Might she not wear something lighter? Perhaps that pair of shoes with a delicate heel and straps that crisscrossed the top of her foot.
A feeling of weightlessness came over her when she stood. Her hips actually undulated. Like a woman’s. First time in months she’d dressed to the nines, and she was out in the jungle with only a couple of middle-aged siblings to see her, and some grizzly plantation owner who likely soaked himself in whiskey each night. One of those Dutchmen of the old order, a remnant of Holland’s colonies in India before the British Raj took over.
Rory and Bella waited for her outside, and Rory assisted Laine into the cart. He jumped up beside Bella and took the reins to the single pony as the moon made a poor attempt to break through the gathering clouds. But the densely matted groves blocked out what little light the moon did shed.
As the cart lumbered along the track, night-blooming flowers released their perfumes. It almost seemed as if their scents were drawing them deeper into the coconut, banana, and mango plantation. With the fragrances came a feeling of intense sadness.
She shook her head of the foolish notion. It was probably the coming of the rains she felt in her bones. More likely, she was in the need of a good meal.
A mile or so away, lights beckoned through the thick belt of trees, outlining an extensive home and outbuildings. The roar of a large cat shook the jungle, silencing the other grunts and snuffles of the surrounding forests. Incongruously, Rachmaninoff’s Second concerto from a gramophone filtered out with its all-too-familiar composition. It wasn’t the prowling predator stalking nearby that set her teeth on edge. The warm evening heavy with moisture altered the notes of the concerto, so that they echoed discordantly in her ears. That, and the unwanted memories the music dredged up.
A lemon grove surrounded the buildings that included a smattering of thatched huts. Rory stopped the cart and left the reins to a barefooted servant in a white fastened coat and trousers. Bella and Rory moved toward the house, and Laine strolled behind them to the sprawling two-story building, its deep veranda supported by thick white columns.
A dissonant series of bass notes from the piano jarred
