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  As they chatted of approaching parties and a cricket match scheduled next month, Hamilton became aware of the glances Parrish directed toward her. Glances not of fatherly love, but of something else. Lust? But surely they were nothing as sinister as that. At times she seemed to return them. Hamilton shook his head, dismissing this notion as a product of jealousy and the heat.

  Turning toward him, August smiled, and it took his breath away; he felt as though a hand were squeezing his chest, and he was aware of his body's response to her. God, how he wanted her right now. In this very room. On the table. Her lips shone wetly, so red and lush, and he wanted to kiss them, wanted to touch her tongue with his, to feel her.

  "Lieutenant Hamilton," came the waspish voice.

  He blinked. "I'm sorry, sir, what were you saying?"

  Parrish glared at him. "I was talking about the chances for the cricket match."

  "Their team doesn't stand a ghost of a chance, sir."

  Parrish looked like he was going to argue the point, when August said, "Come, gentlemen, before you grow too involved in this discussion, let us retire."

  They nodded, following her into the study, where they found chairs that caught the errant breeze blowing through the opened windows. As always, the punkah fanned them.

  The native butler brought a silver tray laden with a cut-crystal decanter and matching goblets. He poured the port, then disappeared just as quietly.

  When they were alone, except for the punkah-wallah, Hamilton leaned forward. "I must speak with you both about an important matter."

  "Umm?" Parrish was more concerned with pouring himself another glass.

  "It's confidential. Does the wallah understand English?"

  Parrish shook his head. "Now, what is this confidential matter?"

  "I believe, sir, that there might be trouble."

  "Trouble? What do you mean by that, Hamilton?"

  "The sepoys seem restive, sir, and I sense trouble."

  "The native soldiers? What've they to do with this?"

  August, her dark eyes fixed on Hamilton's face, listened as he spoke. "There've been isolated incidents recently — incidents that give me increasing concern."

  "I haven't heard about them," Parrish said bluntly.

  "Of course not, sir, for they aren't publicized, but they do exist. This past January there was just such an incident at Dum-Dum. Too, it's rumored among them that we're trying to force them to break their caste with the new cartridges for the Enfield rifle."

  Parrish sat back, an astonished expression on his face. "That's absolute nonsense."

  "Of course, sir; you and I know that, as does any European, but these Indians are an ignorant lot. Too, several English ladies have encountered unpleasantness while traveling. Most unusual, for generally the Indians are courteous. And recently an Indian soldier in the Thirty-fourth Regiment went on the rampage with a loaded musket. He's been dealt with, but I worry."

  "I think you're imagining things," Parrish said.

  Hamilton shook his head. "No, sir, I'm not. I believe the Indians are growing tired of the British yoke."

  "British yoke! Fine words from one of the Queen's Dragoons!" Parrish grunted.

  "Sir, please," Hamilton said quietly. "I fear the Indians misunderstand what we are doing here, and due to this fear and distrust, an uprising could occur. It is, after all, not without precedent, sir. As distasteful for personal reasons as I find this, I would suggest that you and your daughter put your affairs in order at once and leave the country. For your own safety."

  August's red lips curved slightly, and his pulse quickened. "No one will force us to leave India. India is, after all, my home."

  "India is home to many, but that may not be sufficient to save them," Hamilton responded gloomily.

  "I think," she said as she reached out to brush his hand with her fingertips, "that you worry far too much, Lieutenant Hamilton."

  He was completely unaware of anything except her touch. His mouth had gone dry, and with effort he concentrated on his words. "If I hear further tales, then I recommend strongly that you leave." She simply smiled. "I'm concerned about your safety, but I don't wish to alarm you."

  "Well, you're certainly doing that!" Parrish exclaimed, his words slurred. He pressed his lips into a thin line and belched.

  A clock in another room chimed the late hour, and Hamilton pushed back his chair and rose with reluctance.

  "I fear I must leave now, Miss Parrish. I know you're tired and hot, and you must get your rest." He bowed over her hand. "Good evening, Mr. Parrish, and thank you for the dinner."

  Hamilton was shown from the house by the butler, while the father and daughter remained seated in the study. Parrish sipped his port, slopping a little on his hand.

  "He's head over heels in love with you," he said roughly.

  "Is that such a terrible thing?" she asked lightly.

  "Yes, damnit!"

  She laughed, a chilling sound. "We shall see, Father. There is time yet."

  Pretending he did not hear her, he busied himself with pouring more liquor, which he drank in one swallow.

  They continued to sit, without speaking, and the only sounds in the room came from the sweeping back and forth of the punkah and the buzzing of the insects around the flames of the candles.

  The deaths of native children and youths continued, now counting some two or three a week, and within the European community in Delhi the fear grew that they would be next. They cared little that the Indians died, only that death might not always prove so discriminating.

  Hamilton found the topic discussed wherever he went in the European suburb, as well as in the Delhi and Meerut cantonments. It even surfaced in the Parrish house a week after he'd first dined there. He and the Parrishes had just finished a sumptuous meal of curried chicken, raisins and almonds with rice, and were lingering in the study over brandy. Candlelight gleamed on several brass urns in the corners and on the dark bindings of the books. The tatties had been raised to allow the evening breeze to drift into the room. Far off in the distance an elephant trumpeted. And somehow the subject of the recent deaths was introduced.

  "Our serving boy Chand says there are demons loose," Hamilton said. "What do you think, Miss Parrish?"

  She smiled languorously, and once more Hamilton felt his pulse quickening. "I fear I must agree with the Indians. There is something loose in the night air."

  " He saw the humor in her dark eyes and laughed. Parrish glared, downed a glass of brandy, then abruptly stood.

  "Excuse me," the older man said curtly. He left the room without a backward glance.

  Hamilton was surprised at Parrish's reaction. Had he inadvertently said something to offend her father?

  "Forgive my father, please, Lieutenant, for he is not well."

  "Of course, Miss Parrish."

  She rose and spoke quietly to the punkah-wallah. Hamilton couldn't follow what she was saying because he knew few words of the local dialect, but the old servant stilled the cloth fan almost immediately, bowed, and left.

  Hamilton and August were completely alone for the first time since he had met her.

  An errant breeze wafted into the room, ruffling the pages of an open book, caressing his face. Excitement surged through his body, ebbing and eddying, tantalizing him. He pushed back his chair and took a few steps forward until they were no more than a few inches apart. He raised his arms, and taking her into them, he kissed her.

  Her kisses were ice-cold, burning-hot, and flamed the smouldering fires within him, fanned them until he thought he would explode. His body ached and tingled, and he was more aware of it than ever before. He knew where the blood flowed and pulsed, what grew rigid and engorged, what beat rhythmically inside him, demanding release. His hands skimmed along the velvet-soft skin of her arms. His trembling fingers lingered at her full breasts. He rubbed them with his palms and watched as the nipples thrust against the tight material of her gown.

  She guided his hand as he unbutt
oned her dress. Pushing the material off her shoulders, he kissed her milky skin, so cool against his fevered lips. Her hand slipped into his tunic to tug at the hair on his chest. Quickly he stepped away, and her dress slipped with a whisper to the floor. She wore nothing underneath it. And now — as in his dreams, he thought wildly — she stood nude before him, and she was just as beautiful, just as desirable as he had imagined. He pressed his fingers against the nipples which stiffened at his touch, traced the curving line of her hips, trembled at the soft hair below. His blood was on fire; he was in agony.

  She pressed herself against him, grinding her hips against his, and his knees nearly buckled under him. Impatiently she tugged at his pants, and he unfastened them, shrugged out of his shirt as she kissed his chest, shoulders, lips. She studied his nude body.

  "You are so handsome," she whispered. It was the first time she had spoken.

  "You're so beautiful, August." He was almost sobbing, for her beauty burned him, making his insides twist with pain and desire, and he had never wanted a woman more than he wanted her. He was already aroused, already ready for her, and she clasped his throbbing penis in both hands, raking her nails lightly down the shaft. He gasped in pain, and pleasure, too. No longer able to contain his passion, he grabbed her by both arms, nearly throwing her down upon the floor. She rested upon her elbows, and as she gazed up at him, she laughed.

  He knelt before her, between her legs, and rubbed the satiny skin of her inner thigh, and his fingers trembled as he approached her sex. Provocatively she arched her back so that her hips were raised slightly, and he saw a tiny drop of moisture glistening in the dark strands. Lowering his head, he buried his face within the glorious juncture, and the musky perfume overwhelmed him. He lapped at her, tonguing and flicking, savoring her sweetness, and she twisted her hips, moving constantly, so that sometimes she was tantalizingly close, sometimes inches away, and it only served to further inflame him. She lifted her legs easily and clasped him behind the neck, forcing his face into the dark and dewy silkiness, where he breathed deeply of her womanly fragrance and kissed the half-hidden lips.

  His hands continued stroking her legs, her stomach, her breasts, and beneath them he felt the pulsing of her blood. Her hands reached out to grab his shoulders, and her long nails sank like talons into his skin, drawing blood. The pain mixed with desire, exciting him even more, and he could wait no longer. He had to have her, now, no matter what he had vowed to himself.

  Hamilton flung himself upon her, smothering her face, neck, breasts with frenzied biting kisses. He gazed into her beautiful eyes, so dark, so dizzyingly deep, and found himself diving and losing himself in those depths. He reached down, touched her hand as she guided him into her. He bit back a cry of pleasure as he thrust deeply.

  Suddenly something grasped him by both shoulders, ripped him away from her, flung him across the room. He crashed into a table, then looked around, his body shuddering in its denial.

  A shadow fell across him: August's father.

  "Get out!" Parrish yelled, shaking as though he were suffering from apoplexy. His face was deep red with fury. "Get out of my house! I won't allow you to touch her! Do you hear? I won't! Get out or else!"

  Hamilton grabbed his clothing, tried to look back at August, but Parrish had stepped in front of her, blocking his view, and then he was hopping first into one leg, then the other of his pants. By the time he reached the verandah he was fully dressed.

  From inside the house he could hear Parrish's voice shouting with anger. "How could you, you slut? In our house? How would that look?"

  The words of an outraged father, Hamilton thought as he tucked his shirt in. Almost. Except that something more underlay those words; something he didn't understand. As he hurried down the steps he listened for her reaction. He waited for tears, for entreaty, for something. Instead, silence followed.

  Puzzled, he looked back at the house. Had Parrish somehow hurt her? Slapped her? Knocked her senseless? No, even he wasn't that brutal a man. Then Hamilton heard it slowly rising ... the reaction.

  Instead of weeping, he heard laughter. A cold and chilling laughter that made the hair on the back of his neck rise.

  Hamilton mounted his horse quickly and kicked the animal into a fast trot so that he could escape from the horrible sound, the wild laughter that followed him through the streets of Delhi.

  *

  On Saturday, May 9, in Meerut, under a dark sky that promised a storm, the Third Light Cavalry, the Sixth Dragoon Guards, the first battalion of the Sixtieth Rifles, the Eleventh and Twentieth Native Infantry, a troop of horse artillery, a light field battery, and a company of foot artillery assembled on the infantry parade-ground into three sides of a square. The seventeen hundred European troops, numbering fewer than the native troops present, were armed, their guns and rifles loaded.

  Through the fourth side came eighty sepoys. In April these men had been ordered to learn the new firing drill for the Enfield rifle, which had been issued in Meerut at the beginning of January. The Indian soldiers had thought they would have to bite the cartridges, as was the case with the old ones. As the new cartridges were rumored to be greased with beef and pork fat, the former anathema to Hindus, the latter to Moslems, the sepoys refused to attend the drill, seeing this as one more attempt by the British to destroy the caste system and their religious customs.

  Hamilton and his friends watched silently as sentence against the eighty was read and as they were stripped of their uniforms. Shackles were hammered onto their legs, and they were led to the New Gaol.

  Hamilton and Grant exchanged glances at this further humiliation of the sepoys, but they did not speak. No one was allowed to protest. When they were dismissed, the four officers returned to their quarters to discuss the sentence against the sepoys, all of whom had served the British faithfully, some of them for upward of forty years. Grant and Hamilton thought the sentence of imprisonment with hard labor for ten years unreasonable, while Rutherford and Flaxley thought it would simply teach the natives their place.

  Sunday, May 10, dawned hot in Meerut. The monsoon season was still some weeks away, and the air remained listless, suffocating. Hamilton and Grant attended church together, greeting H.H. Greathed, the Commissioner of Meerut, and his wife. They returned to find that the evening church-parade, usually held at six-thirty, had been postponed until seven because of the stifling heat, and for that they were relieved.

  Hamilton wrote a note to August, explaining he would be otherwise engaged for the next week or so, but as soon as possible he'd call upon her — if still permitted. He tried not to think of what had happened after the dinner Friday night, and most of the time he was successful. At night, though, when he couldn't sleep because of the heat, he remembered, remembered how good she had felt beneath him, how troubled he had been by her laughter afterward.

  They were just beginning to dress for the parade when they heard the pounding of a horse's hooves outside. Chand ran into the room.

  "Lieutenant-sahib! Lieutenant-sahib!" he screamed, running to Flaxley.

  "What is it, Chand?" Flaxley demanded of his servant.

  Grant had gone to the window. "My God, there're fires out there!"

  From outside came a rattle of musketry fire as Flaxley tried to calm the Indian so he could speak.

  "The Native Infantry lines are on fire, Lieutenant-sahib!" Chand managed to say at last. "It is the sepoys, Lieutenant-sahib. It is mutiny!"

  Quickly the four officers pulled on their uniforms, grabbed their weapons, and dashed outside to see beyond the palms and sugar cane clouds of smoke billowing up from the burning bungalows, while Chand followed, explaining what had happened.

  The other sepoys, resenting the treatment of the eighty, had suspected the European troops were planning to disarm them. They had gathered outside the regimental magazine, and then, when the English Colonel of the Eleventh Native Infantry rode up, his horse was shot out from under him; then he had been shot as well. Within minutes his re
giment rose up, ransacking the arms and shooting every European they saw.

  By now the four men could distinguish wild shouting and cries over the sound of continued gunfire. Even as they watched, native soldiers ran back and forth through the streets, brandishing torches which they applied to the thatched roofs of the mud huts. Smoke and flames hurled upward into the sky.

  "You must leave, sahibs," Chand pleaded. "At once, or they will kill you! I have seen what they are doing to the sahibs and the memsahibs."

  "Not bloody likely," Rutherford said. He leveled his rifle, drew a sight, and fired. A running Indian soldier fell.

  "My God, Richard!" Grant knocked the other man's rifle down. "He might have been one of ours."

  Rutherford's teeth gleamed in the flickering light of the fires. "There aren't any of them on our side now, Malcolm. You'd best realize that before it's too late. I'm going off to kill some of these bloody wogs before they kill me. Are any of you joining me?"

  "I'll go," Flaxley said grimly.

  "We'll stay together," Grant replied, nodding to Hamilton.

  Hamilton nodded as he stared at the nightmarish scene. Rapidly Chand told them what he had seen: A pregnant Englishwoman, wife of the Adjutant of the Eleventh, had been murdered and mutilated by a Muslim butcher; a dead European woman was repeatedly stabbed as she lay propped in a covered wagon; the Surgeon-Major had been shot; many other English had been wounded, killed, were being hunted down. The mutineers, Chand explained hoarsely, planned to free the eighty imprisoned sepoys, as well as the hundreds of other prisoners in the old jail, then raze Meerut, killing every English man, woman, and child they could find; then they would march on Delhi to do the same.

  Delhi. August was there. Grant looked over to his friend, sensing his thoughts. A chill went through Hamilton, and he handled his rifle with numb fingers. He had to warn her somehow. The telegraph! He could send a telegram to Delhi, warning her to leave.