“You make it sound as though you’re unhappy.”
He didn’t answer her.
She stared up at him, brows knit, wanting so much to understand. To learn who he was and why he was. All those secret hidden pieces of himself that manifested in the beauty of his designs. “Are you unhappy?”
* * *
Outside the brougham, the unruly noise of the docks drifted away, replaced by the sounds of respectable traffic—the clip-clop of hooves and the rattle of hansom cabs and carriages. Soon, they’d be back in Bloomsbury, and thence to Russell Square. Ahmad would deposit Evelyn at the garden gate and take his leave. And then . . .
And then, with luck, she’d forget any of this had ever happened.
He looked at her in the shadows, remembering the taste of her mouth. The feel of her lips, soft and voluptuous, half-parted beneath his. It stirred a helpless ache within him. An ache that only deepened as he recalled her words, spoken with such earnest intensity.
“There must be a way for us to be together.”
His heart echoed the words back in frustrated silence.
Damn and blast it all to hell.
He’d known something like this might happen. It had been the risk of coming with her tonight. What he hadn’t reckoned on was how deeply it would affect him. How difficult it would be for them to return to any semblance of normalcy.
Good lord.
They’d done more than breach the wall, they’d knocked it down completely. There would be no rebuilding it now.
“Are you?” she asked again. Her gloved hand lay on the seat between them, perilously close to his.
He couldn’t help but take it. “I’m not unhappy.”
“Yet you assume I would be, if we were together.”
“The difference being that I’m accustomed to living life on the outside of society. But for a woman . . . for a lady . . .” He paused. “You don’t know what it’s like. How it affects people. My mother—” He stopped himself.
“What about your mother?”
He was quiet for several seconds. “Not long after I was born, she walked into the river and drowned herself.”
Her hand tightened on his. “Oh, Ahmad. How dreadful.”
It was dreadful, albeit something far outside the reaches of his memory. One of the benefits to losing her in the first days of his life. He couldn’t remember the pain of it. She’d always been gone. Almost as though she never existed, except as some manner of morality play.
“Why did she do it?” Evelyn asked.
“Shame,” he said.
She waited for him to explain.
“How much do you know about the British occupation in India?” he asked.
“Nothing at all, I’m afraid. Except what I read in the papers about the uprising. We’ve been there a long while, I gather.”
We.
He could have done without the reminder.
But there was no avoiding it. They both were who they were. There could be no accepting it without first acknowledging it.
“A very long while,” he said. “The British soldiers often take native women to wife. They have children. Entire families. Nowadays, the soldiers are encouraged to make such marriages legal, but in decades past, the arrangements were nothing more than unlawful conveniences, contrived for the man’s comfort. When the soldiers returned to England, they frequently left their Indian families behind.”
Understanding registered in her eyes. Compassion swiftly followed. “Is that what happened to you and your mother?”
He nodded. “She believed herself wed to a soldier, but when the opportunity arose for him to return home, the truth of their arrangement was revealed. They weren’t married at all. Not legally. He left her behind, alone and with child. She couldn’t return to her family. She’d been dishonored. She had nowhere to go. No one who was willing to help her except her younger sister.”
Indeed, it was from his aunt that Ahmad had first heard the story. As a boy, it had been so much folklore to him.
“Many people believed it an accident, but my aunt knew the truth. My mother went into the water on purpose. Fortunately for me, she waited until after I was born to do it. My aunt claimed that my mother didn’t wish to compound her sin. Who knows if that’s true?”
“I’m sorry,” Evelyn said. “I had no idea.”
“It was a long time ago. Long before I can remember.”
“She was still your mother.”
“My aunt was the only mother I knew.” His thumb moved absently over the curve of her palm. “She fell under the spell of a British soldier, too. It was difficult not to, the way we lived.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “How did you live?”
“On the outskirts,” he said. “On the fringes of colonial society. My aunt was stuck there, raising me in the same village where many people lived who were of mixed Indian and English blood. It was a dubious privilege. We mimicked the British—their speech and customs. Their religion. But that’s all it was. Mimicry. A bastardization of British life.” He failed to keep the rough edge from his words. “No doubt my aunt thought she was delivering Mira and me our birthright. But we were never English, no more than we were Indian. We were nothing.”
Evelyn’s hand gripped his even tighter. So small and slender, yet strong enough to hold a stallion at bay. It was an unmistakable reproof. “You shouldn’t say such things.”
“I say them for your benefit. So you’ll know what it’s like to live that way. What it does to a person after a time. It’s not for the faint of heart, Evie. Never fully belonging anywhere. Never having an identity that’s your own. For a lady, it’s an equation that rarely leads to happiness. Can you not understand that?”
“I do understand. But there’s an error in your equation.” Her chin lifted a notch. “You’ve mistaken me for a lady who’s faint of heart.”
His chest clenched on a rush of affection for her that was almost painful. Good God, she was right. He had the sudden, bitter urge to laugh. She was right, and it didn’t make one whit of difference.
“No, you’re not, are you.” His voice deepened. “You’d gallop headlong through any obstacle, no matter the cost. But I’m telling you, this time the cost is too great.”
“You’re wrong,” she said. “None of this is a headlong gallop. I’m not reckless like my sister. You should know that by now. I wouldn’t give everything up, not even for someone I—” She stopped herself. “Someone I care about.”