Chapter Ten

Eliza watched with bemusement as the Duke of Wessex beat a hasty retreat, taking her basket with him. Drat the man. What was she to do now with the apple she had just picked? She took a bite. It made a satisfying crunch, only slightly less satisfying than the thunk it would have made had she thrown it against his very hard skull.

Thank goodness Eliza harbored no illusions regarding Wessex’s character or lack thereof. If a woman looked into those dark eyes, rich and sinful as chocolate, and believed him to have the soul of a poet, well, the sooner she was disabused of that notion, the better. The duke’s soul was not the ocean. It was a puddle.

Only… Her heart had beat a little faster when he had looked to Riya for guidance. It had seemed to matter to him whether she would be harmed—not only physically, but emotionally, as well—by this stranger’s unexpected appearance. Shall I allow him to stay or ensure that he leaves? he had asked. He hadn’t even requested an explanation; one word from Riya had been enough to satisfy him. Eliza had found herself wondering if, after all, the duke understood that a woman might have her own secrets deserving of protection.

Alas, it had been a mirage.

And she was disappointed, somehow. Despite that she knew better than to expect more of him, she nevertheless persisted in believing in the possibility. Far worse than her own disappointment was the memory of his parting words—that it was not too much to ask, but it was too much to ask of him. Why did he think so ill of himself? Did he truly believe his own heart was a useless lump of rock? No man was made of stone. Not even the Duke of Wessex.

She tossed the apple aside. Her thoughts were better spent on a less infuriating subject, and besides, it was time to change for dinner. But first she must see how Riya fared with her long-lost friend.

Eliza found Riya in her room, perched on the edge of the bed, her spine as straight as a fire poker and her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She stared unseeingly at middle distance, as though deep in thought, and the slight pucker of her brows and purse of her lips implied that those thoughts were not entirely pleasant. It was the look of a woman wrestling with herself and losing badly.

“Shall we plan a midnight escape?” Eliza asked, half seriously. “We can be in France before Mr. Vidyasagar realizes you are gone.”

Riya brightened momentarily before her shoulders slumped with a sigh. “Having survived the Cape of Good Hope, I hardly think the Channel will pose much of a challenge for him. He will find me.”

“To what end?”

Riya tilted her head quizzically, as though the question had not yet occurred to her. “Pardon?”

“To what end does he follow you to the farthest corners of the Earth?” Eliza sat next to her friend and clasped one of her hands in her own. “What does he want from you?”

“To bring me home, of course.”

“Yes, but why?” Eliza persisted. “It is no small thing to cross the ocean. He must have left a great deal behind, not to mention the cost. Did your brother ask him to fetch you home? Do you have a dowry so rich that it makes the risk of life and limb a worthwhile endeavor? Why does he pursue you so ardently? There must be a reason, and once we understand the reason, we can persuade Mr. Vidyasagar that there are better uses of his time.”

“Oh.” She blinked rapidly. “Why did he come here? Do you know, I haven’t the faintest idea. He is one of my oldest and dearest friends. We grew up together in Bengal. It was always my mother’s wish that we would marry, but we had our own ideas about that. We often plotted together how we would avoid our families making the match.” She laughed softly and shook her head.

“And then you fell in love with another man,” Eliza prodded gently.

Riya nodded. “My family did not approve, of course. He was not of our caste. But I persuaded him to run away with me. We agreed to meet at midnight, but he was not there. My brother was there instead. They had offered him money to leave without me, and he… He took it.” Her voice shook with emotion—hurt, and not a small amount of rage. “My brother took me home and I was not to leave our house for a month. That might have been the end of it, had we not been seen. But we were, and soon everyone knew that I had tried to run away with a man. My brother told me I must marry Ramtanyu, for no one else would have me and I would be cast out.”

Eliza squeezed her hand in sympathy. “Would that have been so very terrible, dear? He was your friend, at least.”

“He would not have been a terrible husband,” Riya admitted, “but you don’t understand. His mother knew what had happened. She hated me. I can only imagine what my brother must have paid to convince her to agree to the match. I would have been treated like a dirty dog—made to scrub the floors and sometimes kicked. And poor Ram… I couldn’t do that to him. I wouldn’t do that to him. So I begged Deb to take me with him to Egypt. And now, here we are.”

“Here we are,” Eliza echoed. “And so is Mr. Vidyasagar.”

“I cannot imagine why! He should have been relieved when I ran away. To have such a wife, who had tried to elope with another man, would have ruined him. Why is he here, when to bring me home would be to his detriment? I simply cannot fathom.”

Eliza looked at her beautiful friend with great amusement. “Can you not? You are lovely and kind, not to mention witty and brilliant with numbers. Why would he not pursue you?”

Something akin to fear flashed in Riya’s eyes before she blinked it away with a laugh. “He does not love me, Eliza. He cares for me a great deal, as is only natural for an old friend. Yes, that must be it. He must have agreed to the marriage to spare my family the shame I had brought on them. And now he wants to see that I am alive and safe. Now that he has ascertained this for himself, he will go home.”

Eliza hesitated. “I suppose that is possible.”

Possible, but not probable. Surely, a man would not cross an ocean merely to see if a woman is alive and well. Surely, he would want…something more.

“I will speak to him,” Riya said cheerfully. “He will return to Bengal, assure my brother of my safety, and I will continue my life here.”

“Is that what you want? To remain in England?” Eliza tried not to let a note of panic creep into her voice. She had gotten attached to her own dream of the future, where she and Riya resided together comfortably at Hyacinth Cottage. Without Riya, it would be a trifle lonely. She had other friends, and her brother—but they all had families of their own now, and less time for her.

“I miss my home,” Riya admitted. “But happiness does not await me there. It is better for me to put all that behind me, and live my life now as it is, and not wait for what I wish it were.”

“That is a very good stance to take,” Eliza said, relieved. “To accept what we have and allow ourselves to find happiness there instead of pining for what can never be.”

Riya raised her brows. “Do you pine, Eliza?” she teased.

“Oh, certainly not!” Eliza laughed. “I have everything I could possibly desire, or I will very soon. For what should I pine?”

“I believe the question is not for what, but for whom,” Riya said.

“I have myself,” Eliza said simply. “I am enough.”

Riya studied her for a long moment. “Do you think you will always feel so? Will you never regret not having a family of your own?”

The words brought a small prick of pain, like a needle that had gone too far through the cloth and found one’s finger. “No one can be so fortunate as to never feel a moment of regret for a path not journeyed. I cannot seem to reconcile the two: the life I would live as a wife and mother, and the life I would live as simply me. To have a family, I must lose myself, I fear—very possibly even my very life. There are many paths to happiness, and I have chosen mine.”

Riya touched her head to Eliza’s. “How fortunate we are that our chosen paths intertwine.”

“Yes, we are very fortunate.”

Eliza’s life would be her own.

And that was enough.