look at you!’ Emma Webb stood in the midst of trunks and silver paper and frowned at her niece. ‘Your hair is half down and your neckcloth is missing. What on earth has occurred?’
‘There was an accident on the maidan.’ Dita came right into the room, stripped off her gloves and kissed her aunt on the cheek. ‘It is nothing to worry about, dearest. Lord Lyndon took a fall and he was bleeding, so my neckcloth seemed the best bandage.’ She kept going, into the dressing room, and smiled at the ayah who was pouring water for her bath from a brass jug.
‘Oh?’ Her aunt came to the door, a half-folded shawl in her hands. ‘Someone said you were arguing with him last night. Oh dear, I really am not the good chaperon my brother expected.’
‘We have not seen each other since I was sixteen, Aunt Emma,’ Dita said, stepping out of her habit. ‘And we simply picked up the same squabble about a frog that we parted on. He is just as infuriating now as he was then.’
And even more impossibly attractive, unfortunately. In the past, when she had told herself that the adult Alistair Lyndon would be nothing like the young man she had known and adored eight years ago, she had never envisaged the possibility that he would be even more desirable. It was only physical, of course. She was a grown woman, she understood these things now. She had given him her virginity: it was no wonder, with no lover since then, that she reacted to him.
It was a pity he did not have a squint or a skin condition or a double chin or a braying laugh. It was much easier to be irritated by someone if one was not also fighting a most improper desire to …
Dita put a firm lid on her imagination and sat down in eight inches of tepid water, an effective counter to torrid thoughts. It was most peculiar. She had convinced herself that she wanted to marry Stephen Doyle until he had tried to make love to her; then she had been equally convinced that she must escape the moment she could lay her hands on his wallet and her own money that was in it.
She was equally convinced now that Alistair Lyndon was the most provoking man of her acquaintance as well as being an insensitive rake—and yet she wanted to kiss him again until they were both dizzy, which probably meant something, if only that she was prone to the most shocking desires and was incapable of learning from the past.
‘I think everything is packed now,’ Emma said with satisfaction from the bedchamber. ‘And the trunks have gone off to the ship, which just leaves what you need on the voyage to be checked. Twelve weeks is a long time if we forget anything.’ She reappeared as Dita stepped out of the bath and was wrapped in a vast linen sheet. ‘I do hope Mrs Bastable proves as reliable as she appears. But she seems very happy to look after you and Miss Heydon.’
Averil was going to England for the first time since she was a toddler in order to marry Viscount Bradon, a man she had never met. Perhaps I should let Papa choose me a husband, Dita thought. He couldn’t do much worse than I have so far. And her father was unlikely to pick on a pale imitation of Alistair Lyndon as she had done so unwittingly, it seemed. ‘It isn’t often that we see brides going in that direction,’ Lady Webb added.
‘Do you think me a failure?’ Dita asked, half-serious, as her maid combed out her hair. ‘After all, I came over with the Fishing Fleet and I haven’t caught so much as a sprat.’ And do I want to marry anyway? Men are so fortunate, they can take a lover, no one thinks any the worse of them. I will have money of my own next year when I am twenty five …
‘Oh, don’t call it that,’ her aunt scolded. ‘There are lots of reasons for young ladies to come India, not just to catch husbands.’
‘I can’t think of any,’ Dita said. ‘Other than escaping a scandal, of course. I am certain Papa was hoping I would catch an up-and-coming star in the East India Company firmament, just like you did.’
‘Yes, I did, didn’t I?’ Lady Webb said happily. ‘Darling George is a treasure. But not everyone wants to have to deal with the climate, or face years of separation for the sake of the children’s health.’ She picked up a list and conned it. ‘And you will be going home with that silly business all behind you and just in time for the Season, too.’
That silly business. Three words to dismiss disillusion and self-recrimination and the most terrible family rows. Papa had been utterly and completely correct about Stephen Doyle, which meant that her own judgement of men must be utterly and completely at fault. On that basis Alistair Lyndon was a model of perfection and virtue. Dita smiled to herself—no, she was right about him, at least: the man was a rake.
10th December 1808
‘Two weeks to Christmas,’ Dita said as she hugged her aunt on the steps of the ghat. ‘It seems hard to imagine in this climate. But I have left presents for you and Uncle on the dressing table in my room, and something for all the servants.’ She was babbling, she knew it, but it was hard to say goodbye when you had no idea if you would ever see the person again.
‘And I have put something in your bag,’ Emma said with a watery smile. ‘Goodness knows what happens about Christmas celebrations on board. Now, are you sure you have everything?’
‘I went out yesterday,’ her uncle assured her, patting his wife on the shoulder and obviously worried that she would burst into tears. ‘You’ve got a nice compartment in the roundhouse below the poop deck, just as I was promised. That will be much quieter and the odours and noise will be less than in the Great Cabin below. It is all ladies in there as well, and you will be dining at the captain’s table in the cuddy with the select passengers.’
‘But those wretched canvas partitions,’ his wife protested. ‘I would feel happier if she was in a cabin with bulkheads.’
It had been a subject for discussion and worry for weeks. ‘The partitions give better ventilation,’ Dita said. ‘I felt perfectly secure on the outward passage, but that was in a compartment forward of the Great Cabin and it was so very stuffy.’ And revoltingly smelly by the time they had been at sea for a month.
‘And all your furniture is in place and secured,’ her uncle continued. All made it sound as though she was occupying a suite. The box bed that was bolted to the deck was a fixture, but passengers were expected to supply anything else they needed for their comfort in the little square of space they could call their own. Dita had a new coir mattress and feather pillow, her bed linen and towels, an ingenious dressing chest that could support a washbasin or her writing slope and an upright chair. Her trunk would have to act as both wardrobe and table and her smaller bags must be squashed under the bunk.
‘And there are necessaries for the passengers’ and officers’ use on this ship,’ Lord Webb added. Which was a mercy and an improvement on a slop bucket or the horrors of the heads—essentially holes giving on to the sea below—that had been the only options on the outward passage.
‘I shall be wonderfully comfortable,’ Dita assured them. ‘Look, they want us to go down to the boats now.’
Plunging into the scrimmage of passengers, porters, beggars, sailors and screaming children was better than dragging out this parting any longer, even if her stomach was in knots at the thought of getting into the boat that was ferrying passengers to the ship. It hurt to part with two people who had been understanding and kindly beyond her expectations or deserts, and she feared she would cling and weep and upset her aunt in a moment.
‘I love you both. I’ve written, it is with the Christmas presents. I must go.’ Her uncle took her arm and made sure the porter was with them, then, leaving her aunt sniffing
