Free What a Lady Craves by Ashlyn Macnamara

inhaled slowly, his belly expanding gradually as he filled his lungs.
    Alexander was accustomed enough to the man’s rituals that he knew to wait. Presently, Satya opened his eyes.
    “And where did you come by incense?” Alexander asked.
    “In the village.” Satya maintained his position—his pose as likely to break a man’s hip joints as to relax him.
    “They’ve incense in the village now?”
    “That man you sent me to—Tilly.” As much as the spicy scent that filled the room soothed Alexander, so, too, did Satya’s warmly accented English. “He had some. Gave it to me, saying you had left a deposit.”
    Alexander studied a crack in the plaster. The devil take it. Of all the things he might have retrieved from his cargo. “I don’t suppose he came by anything more valuable.”
    “No, indeed. He said you may as well have this, for he has come across nothing else.”
    Alexander inhaled to a slow count of ten. There was still a chance. He had to keep believing. “And what of the other news? Did you go to the pub and ask after the crew?”
    A shadow flitted across Satya’s face, so fleeting Alexander wasn’t certain what he’d seen. In the next instant, Satya’s features settled into a mask of stoicism.
    “I was not welcome in the pub,
sahib.
” His tone was carefully neutral, measured.
    “No.” Alexander drummed his fingers against his thigh. He ought to have guessed, but he’d lived in India for so long, he hadn’t stopped to consider how his more rustic countrymen would react to the sudden appearance of a dark-skinned foreigner. For that matter, a more sophisticated Englishman wouldn’t have been any more accepting—he’d only protest in politer terms. Even Alexander’s fellows back in Calcutta freely displayed their superior attitude toward the locals.
    “No apology is necessary,” Satya said in that even tone that betrayed nothing, before Alexander could even formulate the words.
    He suppressed the urge to object. Experience had taught him argument led nowhere. When he took it into his head, Satya could be implacably stubborn. Never insubordinate, but the man had a talent for holding firm, like a boulder standing in the midst of a river. The water flowed on either side of him but never over, and he never budged. And if, with the passing of the years, the water might eat away at him, the effects never showed.
    He was nothing so soft as limestone or sandstone. Satya was granite, hard and immovable.
    “And the letter to the Company?” Alexander asked instead.
    “That I posted.”
    “I’ll have another for you today. You’ll take it directly to Viscount Lindenhurst. He lives …” Alexander closed his eyes for a moment, searching his memory. He’d been away too long if he had to stop to recall the location of an old friend’s estate.
    If indeed Lind lived in his manor house these days. In the past eight years, their contact had dwindled to an occasional report, one Alexander sent Lind to keep the man informed of his investment, one that of late went unanswered. But Lind, too, had left England—to fight Napoleon, in his case.
    No matter. If Lind was not in residence, his servants would know where to find him. But he couldn’t very well send a man whose knowledge of the local terrain was as detailed as Alexander’s familiarity with the streets of Calcutta when he’d first disembarked.
    “He lives half a day’s ride from here,” Alexander said. “I’d best send one of my aunt’s servants with the message.”
    A pity his ribs still plagued him, or he’d have gone himself—all the better to escape a certain Miss Upperton and that damnable kiss he’d been unable to resist bestowing on her. He shook the thought away for a much less pleasant prospect, that of informing an old friend he was out a sizeable investment. Not just one friend, either. Rowan Battencliffe must also learn the news. Better, perhaps, not to explain it all in a letter. No, better to summon them and deliver