“Forgive me, precious one. I am mad with grief. I know not what I say.”
“Do you not?” Amanda responded. “Very well. I shall send to the rani for servants to guide you back, lest you lose your way in your confusion.”
Padji fell to his knees before her. “No, missy, no, I pray you. She will make me die a thousand times.”
“Then tell me what the Falcon wanted with me. He might have taken the jewels and silks easily enough. Why did he want only the Laughing Princess?”
“O beloved of my mistress, there are matters I do not understand. I have followed her since I was a child, slept in mud and eaten maggots when I must, yet even to me she does not reveal everything.”
“If he wanted the statue, it must be of great value,” Amanda said.
“Aye, so he must have believed.” He raised his head to gaze at her. “You told me you dropped the box of jewels and the silks, but you fought him for the Laughing Princess. So what must he think, but that this statue is of the greatest value of all?”
“Damn,” Amanda said softly. Padji was right, of course. A cleverer woman—the princess, for instance—would have instantly dropped the object she most valued and fought over trinkets. Amanda had lost her most treasured gift because she’d let emotion rule instead of reason. “It is not others who betray us,” the rani had once told her, “but we who betray ourselves.”
Amanda had lost only a wooden statue, perhaps a hundred years old, perhaps much less. As antiquities went—and India was thick with them—the Laughing Princess’s monetary value was slight. To her, though, it was a piece of legend, a piece of India. More important, it was a gift of sentiment, the only treasure the rani’s false lover had left her, the only physical reminder of one brief, intense passion … and betrayal. It was a gift to her “daughter,” she had said. That word was perhaps dearest of all.
Amanda’s own mother had existed briefly, a figure in a haze, a beautiful princess forever locked in the prison of her own fairy tale world. Smoke... and incense...
Amanda shook herself out of her reverie to find her two companions staring at her.
“What’s done is done,” she said. “Perhaps it will turn up. If the thief was the Falcon, and if he’s as clever as reputed, he’ll realise the figure’s worthless and discard it. You may even find it on your way home,” she told Padji. “If, that is, your knees haven’t frozen into that position. Will you get up?”
“But I go with you,” he said, gazing up at her with misty brown eyes.
Amanda stared back incredulously.
“You most certainly do not;” Mrs. Gales said. Then, as though recollecting he was a native, and therefore congenitally irrational, she patiently explained, “We could never arrange your passage at this late date, even if Lord Cavencourt permitted it, which I strongly doubt. The end of our long war with Napoleon has left a great many former soldiers in need of employment. Lord Cavencourt cannot in good conscience pay a foreigner for what an English servant can do.”
“Unless, of course, the foreigner is French,” Amanda put in dryly, “and an excellent chef.”
“My dear girl, you know I never meant—”
“I know, Leticia, but that argument won’t wash.”
“I can cook,” Padji cried, still gazing soulfully up at Amanda, his hands now folded in supplication. “I am an excellent cook, even the English food.” He launched into a staggering list of his gastronomic accomplishments, down to the art of soft-boiling eggs.
“I’m sorry,” Amanda said gently. “Truly—because I’ll miss you dreadfully. But even if we could arrange it—which I know we can’t—to take you would be most unwise, and not fair to you at all. This is your country. You’d hate England. It’s cold and damp, and many people will treat you unkindly because you’re a foreigner and your skin is dark.”
“I will be despised,” he said. “I will live as an untouchable, a leper. But I will serve you faithfully. And my mistress will not fill my mouth with scorpions and—”
“Lud, but you have the most ghastly imagination, Padji. Oh, will you get up? What are you thinking of, to be grovelling in this way, a great strong man like you?”
Padji rose. “Then you will take me with you?”
Amanda sighed. “The ship sails tomorrow. To arrange passage at the last minute requires a great deal of money and influence. That means my brother must arrange it, and I assure you he won’t.”
“But if it can be arranged, you will let me serve you?”
“It can’t be,” she answered, her gaze flickering from the huge Indian to Mrs. Gales. “Roderick would never permit it, let alone help.”
“Never fear, mistress, O beautiful and compassionate one, whose eyes burn with golden flames and—”
“Padji, you must- “
“Tomorrow. I will arrange it all, and tomorrow I will commence a new life, as your adoring slave.”
Oblivious to her half-hearted and Mrs. Gale’s emphatic protests, Padji commenced a speech on the thousand ways he’d serve his new mistress. He’d just begun soaring to improbable heights of self-sacrifice—the eating of flies being deemed somehow necessary to satisfactory service — when the Cavencourt carriage was heard at the gate. Padji promptly crawled out a window and escaped through the garden.
Chapter Three
Roderick accompanied his sister, her companion, and her maid on board ship, dutifully saw their belongings properly arranged, repeated for the hundredth time what Amanda must do upon reaching England, checked for the fiftieth time the papers entrusted to her, gave her a peck on the cheek, and departed.
Not ten minutes after he’d gone, one of the mates appeared, requesting Miss Cavencourt’s appearance in wardroom. The captain wished to speak with her.
“Miss Cavencourt has scarcely had time to catch her breath,” Mrs. Gales said reprovingly, with a glance at the weary, unhappy Amanda. “Is the matter so urgent it cannot wait?”
The man apologised, but declared they could not weigh anchor until the problem was resolved.
Alarmed and puzzled, Amanda went with him, Mrs. Gales following with stiff disapproval.
As soon as Amanda entered the wardroom, her heart sank. Beside Captain Blayton, Padji stood at proud attention.
“We have a problem, Miss Cavencourt,” said the captain after a brief, apologetic preamble. “In fact, we have had any number of problems in the last twelve hours,” he added irritably.
“I do hope Padji has not created difficulties for you, sir,” said Amanda.
Captain Blayton’s stern countenance relaxed slightly. “Ah, so you do know him. When he claimed to be your cook, I must admit I was—well, that is neither here nor there. The case is this: my own cook failing to report for duty last night, I ordered a search. Just before dawn, this fellow—Padji, as you say—appeared, and led us to a certain tea shop, where we found Saunders in a state of delirium.”
“Terrible fever,” Padji said gravely. “I heard his cries. I have heard that terrible sound before.”
Amanda threw Mrs. Gales a glance. The widow must have grasped
the situation just as quickly, for she glared at Padji.
Sublimely oblivious to Mrs. Gales’s sulphurous expression, Padji bent his own innocent gaze upon Amanda.
“I tell the great ship’s master I have no more heart to cook for the family when my gracious mistress is gone,” he said sadly. “My heart breaks because she leaves forever. In the night, I run away to see the ship that will bear her away across the world. I weep many tears into the waters, to send a part of me with her. It was Fate led me to the place, mistress, that I might find the poor man, my brother cook, in time to save his life. I carry him, gentle as one holds a baby, to the shop of a good friend. This friend recognises the man, Saunders. And so myself, I seek out the wise captain, and myself do his bidding and find the doctor. With my own hands, I make a healing broth, which the doctor himself tastes.”
“Yes, well, there’s no question you were helpful,” the captain interjected. “But we ought to get to the point, oughtn’t we?” Turning to Amanda, he said, “The doctor has pronounced Saunders unfit to travel.”
“To move him from his bed would be death,” Padji solemnly agreed. “I see at once the hand of Fate. The gods lead me to this man. Why? Inscrutable are the ways of the Eternal, yet this riddle is soon unlocked. The man is a cook. What is Padji? A cook. It is plain I am summoned in order to take his place, and continue near my beloved mistress.”
“The point is,” the captain said impatiently, “this fellow proposes to cook for us in exchange for passage to England. It is true I need a cook. On the other hand, I cannot possibly harbour runaway native servants. I considered speaking to Lord Cavencourt himself, but—well, I was reluctant to get your cook into difficulties, after he’d made himself so useful. He seemed exceedingly alarmed at the prospect of confronting your brother.”
“Dear me,” said Mrs. Gales sympathetically. “How awkward for you.”
Amanda found her own sympathy inclining to Padji. He had done a terrible thing, but he was obviously desperate. She could not abandon him.
“How I wish I’d known sooner,” she told Captain Blayton. “Had you spoken to Lord Cavencourt, you would have learned he’d have no objections. Padji has simply spared my brother the unhappy task of discharging him. You see,” she quickly explained, before the captain could wonder what horrendous crime the Indian had committed, “the rest of us had grown accustomed to Padji’s hearty style of cooking. Unfortunately, Lady Cavencourt found it too robust for her delicate palate.”