Free Scandal in the Night by Elizabeth Essex

and vivid, more alive in the dappled shade of her uncle’s courtyard than she had in the pressing heat of the bazaar. And like any fire, he could feel her heat the closer she got.
    “Oh, but she is not a surprise, my lord. For we already know each other, don’t we, my beauty?” She spoke to the animal, as much as to answer Lord Summers. “We met in the bazaar.”
    There was a faint, musical lilt to her voice that matched the symphony of color created by her hair and eyes. Scots-Irish, her uncle had said. The source of her translucent flame.
    She was gazing at the mare in a direct, almost reverent way, and did not see the tinge of surprise creep its way across her uncle-in-law’s full cheeks.
    “Do you mean to say you were in the cantonment bazaar, or out in the city? My dear, I should caution you to be careful of going adventuring about the city. Your aunt should have warned you against that, for your safety.” Lord Summers shook his head in admonishment. “Not at all the thing to wander the native bazaar alone. There is no reason for you to go amongst them. If there is anything you require, you have merely to send a servant to do your bidding in your stead.”
    Thomas turned aside his own reaction to the implied insult, and let it slide off his back like so much dirty water, because he happened to agree with Lord Summers. Unescorted young women of any creed or race should not be going adventuring without an able escort. The kind of escort he would be more than happy to provide.
    But Miss Catriona Rowan, she of the flaming hair and perhaps equally colorful temper, was not so easy with her uncle’s gentle command. Her cheeks flushed the color of a sweet blood orange at the rebuke, however mild it had been, and her solemn mouth narrowed ever so slightly. And instead of casting her eyes down and demurring to her uncle’s advice like any good, obedient English girl, she astonished Thomas by an almost imperceptible straightening of her spine before she turned to regard him directly, her gray eyes as keen and true as a knife blade, even as she spoke to Lord Summers, behind her.
    “I beg your pardon, Uncle. But I’m afraid it’s too late to avoid the acquaintance, as I have already met both the sawar Tanvir Singh and his horse. How do you do today, huzoor ?” She copied his gesture of salaam, and then she put out her hand for him to shake.
    For all the world as if he were an Englishman. As if they were two gentlemen together, bargaining over a horse at Tattersall’s, and not a fey swan of a girl and a browned Sikh horse trader who ought to be nothing but a servant to her. And why was he thinking of something so ridiculous and far off as Tattersall’s? It was entirely out of character, not to mention dangerous. Tanvir Singh should not know, or even care, that Tattersall’s existed.
    Yet, despite his years of training, and despite Lord Summers’s astonishment, Thomas’s hand seemed to swing toward her of its own volition, without consulting his head as to the propriety of shaking the hand of an unmarried angrezi girl, or the advisability of antagonizing the new resident commissioner with such familiarity. If he chose, Lord Summers could have even as useful a man as Tanvir Singh shot, or at the very least horsewhipped within an inch of his life, for daring to so much as look at his niece, before Thomas might have a chance to prove his true identity.
    But all his mind and body wanted was to indulge in the pleasure that would come from touching her, however briefly. Just a touch. Just once.
    And he was not disappointed. She shook his hand with a single, firm grip that was far, far removed from the soft, boneless fish of a handshake most women offered up to a man. Within his own large, callused hand, hers was small but strong, her grip sure.
    One firm shake, and then it was done. She let go.
    But it was as if he had touched icy fire. His hand was the opposite of numb—it was nothing but feeling, as if every sensation