Free Tales: Short Stories Featuring Ian Rutledge and Bess Crawford by Charles Todd

didn’t wish me to overhear. There was a tension in both women that was unusual.
    I’d always thought the Maharani was beautiful. Slim and attractive, her dark eyes lined with kohl to make them even more exotic, she wore silks woven with gold and silver threads, and the ends of her saris were almost stiff with heavy, shimmering embroidery. The pearls she wore were legendary—long ropes that must weigh on her neck, and the most perfect I’d ever seen in size and quality. On her fingers were huge stones set in gold. Burmese rubies caught the light, along with first water diamonds, sapphires, and even a large square-cut emerald. But she wasn’t at all stuffy. She sat in my mother’s parlor as comfortably as if she were on the silk and jewel-encrusted cushions in a room three times this size.
    As I took my place beside her, I realized she’d dismissed her servants—they were probably having their own tea in my mother’s sitting room—and that was another sign that the two women had been holding a very private conversation.
    My father came in soon afterward. Tall and handsome in his uniform, he bent over the Maharani’s hand and kissed her fingertips. She laughed up at him, and patted the seat on the other side of her. “Come and tell me what you have been doing.”
    My father, a major at this stage in his career, entertained her with humorous stories, and she laughed and clapped her hands in delight.
    “Richard, you make soldiering seem so amusing. And all the while I know you are lying to me in the politest possible way.”
    He laughed as well, and then with a glance toward me, sitting quietly as I turned the pages of the new book she’d brought me, gave her his view of what was happening politically. None of us ever forgot the dreadful Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, even though it was decades in the past. We never took our safety or the loyalty of the men who served in the army or worked in our houses for granted. I’d been trained from childhood to obey instantly if there was the least sign of trouble. The irrefutable fact was, the British were outnumbered thousands to one, and we could as easily be murdered in our beds as not, if anything went wrong.
    It was one of the many reasons parents sent their children to England and safety, to be educated and brought up far away from India. My parents, wiser than most, had kept me with them.
    The Maharani listened intently to what he was saying, and then suggested that my father might like to accompany her on a walk in the gardens to see the roses. My mother understood that this wasn’t an idle flirtation—it was their only chance to speak freely without being overheard.
    When my father had escorted her through the double doors giving onto the verandah, my mother said to me in a low voice, “It’s as well you know, my dear. That cousin of the Maharajah’s has been causing a great deal of trouble again over some of the reforms being put into place. His Highness has sent his wife to visit us as an opportunity to tell Richard what’s happening. He’ll know how best to advise Colonel Haldane and consider what we can do to help.”
    “Will they be all right?” I asked anxiously. For I was very fond of the Maharani and I liked her husband as well. He’d been educated in Britain, and his friends there had called him Harry. His son, my age, and his daughter, a year or so older, had been my playmates since I was in leading strings.
    “I’m sure they’ll be fine,” my mother told me, but there was a tiny echo of doubt in her voice.
    I said, “Is there anything that Father can do? Or the colonel? To support the Maharajah?” But that I knew could be a double-edged sword, giving his enemies cause to claim he lived in the pocket of the British. It had been difficult, persuading many of the Indian princes to give up their feudal power for the greater good, relinquishing so much authority to the British Crown. The Maharajah’s son, like his father, was to be educated at Eton,