Flowers For the God of Love Read online

  “Use them sparingly,” he advised, “but they will keep you going until you reach safety.”

  He looked round the compartment and saw on the dressing table a small silver bowl, which contained pot-pourri.

  He emptied it and held it out to E 17.

  “Your begging bowl!”

  The man smiled.

  “I knew if I could reach you, sir, you’d save me.”

  “‘Never assume the journey is over until one has reached home’,” Rex replied, quoting an old Indian proverb.

  E 17 looked at Quenella.

  “Thank you, ma’am. I hope I didn’t frighten you, but, when you looked out of that window, I knew it was my only chance.”

  “I am so glad I could help,” Quenella replied.

  They were the first words she had spoken since she had awakened Rex.

  “You had better go!” Rex told E 17.

  He raised the blind and latched the door that he had entered the compartment through.

  Then he leant out casually, as if he was taking the air.

  After staring up at the sky for a moment, he looked to the right and the left and then opened the door.

  “God bless you!” E 17 said as he passed Quenella.

  He let himself down very carefully onto the railway track, as if he was afraid of starting his wound bleeding and then he moved in the darkness across the lines to climb up onto the opposite platform.

  For a moment he seemed to hesitate and then, as they watched him, he lowered himself down beside two or three of the sleepers.

  “That was intelligent of him,” Rex whispered.

  “But why does he not get away at once?” Quenella asked.

  Rex shut the window and pulled down the blind.

  “Because,” he replied, “those who are searching for him are watching the exits and for the next few hours will scrutinise anybody who leaves the Station.”

  “Of course. I understand!” Quenella exclaimed.

  She looked up at Rex standing beside her and quizzed him,

  “What will you do with the message he gave you? How will you get it to the man in Delhi?”

  “What message – and what man?” Rex asked.

  He spoke teasingly, but she understood that he was telling her without words to forget everything that had happened here.

  He started to pick up the black hair from the floor, the dirty clothes that E 17 had worn and some blood-stained pieces of cotton wool he had used and rolled them all up together.

  Then he looked ruefully at the stains of blood on the pale carpet.

  “I will remove those,” Quenella suggested.

  “How?” he asked.

  “With cold water,” she answered.

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “But I will do it for you.”

  He took one of the towels and scrubbed vigorously.

  The bloodstains disappeared, but the towel looked even worse than it had before.

  As if Quenella had asked him the question, he stated.

  “Don’t worry. When we are a long way further North. I will dispose of the towels as well as the other things.”

  He looked round as if to see if there was any more evidence left of their visitor.

  “I wish that we could have given him something more substantial to eat,” Quenella said.

  “He will manage now that he has money,” Rex answered. “Opium takes away hunger and besides one can always obtain merit by feeding a Holy Man.”

  “It was very clever of you to disguise him, and I cannot believe that anyone, even his own mother, would recognise him. Is he English?”

  “Whom are we talking about?” Rex enquired.

  Quenella gave a little sigh.

  “You are being very unkind. I did let him in and I did not scream.”

  “You behaved admirably,” Rex told her in a different tone of voice, “and it was exactly what I would have expected of you.”

  “Are you saying that to please me or because I really did well?”

  Quenella was like a child asking for his approval.

  “You have done very well and, because you are my wife, this might happen again. Tomorrow when we have time I will tell you one or two of the things you are bursting with curiosity to know.”

  “I admit that is true.” Quenella smiled.

  Her eyes met his and for the first time she was conscious that she was wearing nothing but a transparent nightgown and that he was naked to the waist.

  She had been so intent on what was happening and wanted so desperately to save the man who had been wounded that she had been completely unaware of herself or of her husband as a man.

  Now, as the colour rose in her cheeks, he said quickly,

  “Thank you, Quenella. You were magnificent! Go to sleep now and remember only that you saved the life of a man who was prepared to lose it for India.”

  As he spoke, he left her compartment, closing the door behind him.

  Quenella sat down on the edge of her bed.

  Had it really all happened? Had what seemed a wild adventure out of some lurid novel really occurred to her?

  She had expected many things of her marriage and of India, but not this and she told herself that the things she had always sensed rather than heard about her uncle should have prepared her.

  It was not surprising that he had always spoken of Rex Daviot with a note in his voice that Quenella knew was one of admiration.

  Vaguely she remembered hearing that the British had a wonderful counter-espionage system that enabled them to cope with the Russians.

  It was obvious to her now that her husband like the man whose life he had saved, was deeply involved in what was called The Great Game.

  Because what had happened had been so exciting while at the same time Rex had behaved in such a practical and calm manner, she was not afraid that it might happen again in the future, but only interested and thrilled to be a part of such an adventure.

  She knew, when the man, E 17, had fallen at her feet and she had thought he was dead that she had been struck with a fear that was quite different from the fear she had felt when she had been attacked by the Prince.

  ‘It was more fundamental and more intense,’ she analysed to herself.

  Then, as she climbed into bed, she mused,

  ‘Tomorrow Rex will tell me so much that I want to know.’

  As she fell asleep, she thought that nothing could be so wonderful as to know that new horizons that she had never dreamt of were opening up in front of her.

  Not only was India with its different religions, its people and its beauty tugging at her heart, but there was something else that was basically crucial.

  It was man pitting his brains against another and Rex was in the very thick of it.

  ‘I helped him tonight and I will try my best to help him again,’ Quenella promised herself.

  *

  In his own compartment Rex cut into small pieces the dirty clothes he had taken from E 17.

  It would be a great mistake to leave a bundle by the railway line because it might be traced to the passing of a particular train on a particular night.

  ‘Never take unnecessary chances,’ and ‘Never leave incriminating evidence anywhere’, were watchwords that had been beaten into the minds of those who worked in The Great Game.

  The pieces of hair were easy to dispose of. He pulled them apart and an hour later as the train gathered speed he opened his window and let them fly away slowly, not in big bunches but almost a hair or two at a time.

  The towel was easy too. He tore it, soaked it in water, rubbed the floor with it and threw it out as any lazy servant might have done when he thought that it was too much bother to wash it.

  Only when some of the things had been disposed of and the others were waiting until they had gone further afield did Rex draw the message from his waist.

  He read it carefully, burned it in an ashtray and then sat down on his bed and wrote out a telegram to a certain small shopkeeper in De
lhi,

  “Parcel slightly damaged in transit but received

  safely. Send further supplies as previously arranged.”

  He added no signature, but told himself that on the morning his valet would hand it to the Stationmaster at the next stop and order it to be despatched immediately.

  He then lay down on his bed and closed his eyes.

  He was, however, not thinking of E 17 sleeping peacefully on the platform nor of those who had been following him, searching feverishly in the crowds milling in and out of the Station for a man with a bleeding cheek and a knife wound in his side.

  Instead he thought of Quenella.

  She had done amazingly well in her first encounter with danger.

  Another woman, he thought, and certainly somebody like Kitty Barnstaple, would undoubtedly have screamed or fainted when a man she thought to be a native entered her compartment.

  Quenella’s behaviour was what he would have expected of Sir Terence’s niece.

  At the same time she had not lived with her uncle for long and she had certainly never in her sheltered luxurious life encountered anything more dangerous than a Princeling maddened by lust for her beauty.

  This was something very different, a man fighting for life itself, who could be saved or destroyed by a woman who screamed at the wrong moment.

  ‘I might have known she would be different,’ Rex told himself.

  CHAPTER SIX

  By the time they reached Lucknow, Rex knew that he was in love as he had never been in love before in his whole life.

  He had been aware of it first at the moment when, standing in Quenella’s compartment, she had suddenly realised that she was wearing only a transparent lawn nightgown and that he was naked to the waist.

  Like her Rex had been so intent on altering E 17’s Seventeen’s appearance and getting him away before the train started that he had not thought of Quenella except as an assistant to do his bidding.

  Then, when they were alone together and he saw by the expression on her face that she was shy of him as a man, he was vividly aware of her as a woman.

  An uncontrollable impulse swept over him to pull her into his arms and kiss her passionately.

  He could feel the blood throbbing in his temples and a rising desire swept through, him with a razor-like sharpness.

  He wanted her so violently at that moment that looking back he knew that he had been right when he had first compared her to a tiger lily.

  Beneath her flower-like purity there was a vivid fire that aroused a man to a point where it was impossible for him to think, but only, as the Prince had done, to act.

  But because Rex had spent his life controlling himself and hiding his feelings, he had forced a note of indifference into his voice as he said ‘goodnight’, which he knew left Quenella unafraid,

  Lying sleepless for the rest of the night, wanting her in a way that was the burning desire not only of his body but also of his mind, he realised that he was overwhelmingly in love.

  It came upon him suddenly, because in her wish to save the wounded man’s life, Quenella’s icy coolness and the barriers of indifference and hatred that she had surrounded herself had been forgotten.

  Instead she had been anxious sympathetic and compassionate and, of course, excited by the drama that had come upon her so unexpectedly.

  If he had thought of it, that was what Rex would have wanted in his wife, that she should be courageous, resourceful and at the same time all woman.

  It was as a woman that Quenella aroused him and both his body and his mind ached and yearned for her.

  The next day when they met in the morning in the sitting room between their two bedrooms, Rex had schooled himself to behave in exactly the same manner as he had before.

  He could not help thinking with a faint amusement that, of all the many parts he had played, this was going to be the most difficult.

  He had thought things out during the night and he had realised that if Quenella was ever to love him, and God knew he wanted her love, he would have to woo her as he had never wooed a woman before.

  He knew that in breaking down the first barrier that existed between them he had only revealed a number of others.

  The first step must be for her to trust him and, he hoped, for her to be intrigued because he was different from any other man she had ever met.

  But there was still a very long way to go and he was aware that one hasty word or one uncontrollable gesture would bring the fear back into her eyes and once again she would withdraw into herself.

  He wondered as she came into the central compartment wearing a thin white muslin gown how he had ever imagined for a moment that she did not attract him.

  Now he knew that it was because she had contrived to disguise her inner self as he had often done when he deceived a thousand savage tribesmen into thinking he was a fakir, whom they instinctively revered.

  He had closed the door to his real self just as Quenella had been able to do.

  Now he knew that she was different from any other woman he had ever known and he would fight to win her if it took him a whole lifetime.

  Never before had Rex Daviot needed to pursue a woman.

  Always they had pursued him and fallen into his arms almost before he was ready to reciprocate.

  The mere fact that winning Quenella was going to be as difficult as any part he had ever played in The Great Game was a fascination he was frank enough to admit.

  Equally he knew that, although she was unaware of it, already something spiritual existed between them and it would be his task to convince her that in their Karmas they belonged to each other.

  As she sat down at her usual seat beside the window, he saw that there was a light in her eyes and a smile on her lips.

  They were alone and, after she had glanced over her shoulder, she said in a very low voice,

  “I have been praying that he got away, but shall we ever hear the end of the story?”

  Rex shook his head.

  “I am sure he has got away, but it is never wise to ask questions.”

  She gave a little sigh.

  “It was all so incredible and now I shall always be afraid for you.”

  “For me?”

  “I might have been foolish enough not to open the door when he asked me to do so.”

  Rex understood what she was trying to say and after a moment he said,

  “Let me reassure you by saying that for the moment I have a very different task on my hands as a Lieutenant-Governor. In fact after what happened last night you may find it rather dull and humdrum.”

  “I don’t think that any life in India could be ,” Quenella answered, “but I would like to help and would like also to be part of The Great Game.”

  Rex smiled at her before he replied,

  “I am afraid that would be impossible for a woman in your position. Yet sometimes they are able to help, as you did last night.”

  “Tell me about The Great Game,” she said. “I know, now that I have seen how dangerous it is, that it is a typically British name for what it means.”

  “That is true,” Rex nodded.

  In a low voice he told her of the Anglo-Russian Central Asian rivalry and the web of espionage that had developed in consequence.

  He did not actually tell Quenella anything more than was known by most Senior Officers in the Army and unfortunately by a number of outsiders as well.

  But her imagination made her aware that the men who were recruited, trained and initiated into taking their lives in their hands were essential to the protection of India and to the peace of the Eastern world.

  Rex had found when he first served on the North-West Frontier that The Great Game had a network which extended all over India and which involved not only Europeans but a great number of Indians as well.

  In a locked book in the Indian Survey Department there was a list of numbers that covered a variety of men and secrets, with which the Russians or other enemies of the country were ofte
n rendered powerless or exposed when they least expected it.

  It was usual for R 32 to have no idea of the identity of M 14 with whom he was in communication, nor did D 7 have a glimmer of information about G 12.

  But sometimes, as last night, in moments of desperate danger there would be somebody to help them, somebody to whom they could appeal as a very last resort.

  Rex had no idea how E 17 was aware of his identity. As far as he knew, he had never seen the man before and was unlikely ever to come in contact with him again.

  But the fact that he had enlisted his help made him know that in the future he must be more careful than he had been in the past.

  Sir Terence had been entirely right to persuade him for the moment to leave the North-West Frontier and other places where he had operated so successfully.

  Rex talked until it was luncheon time and a servant brought in their meal, which had been supplied at a Station where they had halted and where the usual hubbub of noise and commotion took place.

  Quenella had risen to walk over to the other side of the compartment and raise the Venetian blinds.

  She looked out and he knew that she was searching the crowds with a new interest, a new curiosity.

  How many of the pushing shouting people loaded with baggage or crying children were involved in a desperate intrigue that might leave an unknown body dead by the roadside or a man tortured to death for secrets that he would not tell?

  She stood half-sideways to him, looking out.

  As he saw the soft curves of her breasts, the smallness of her waist and her perfect almost Grecian face silhouetted against the kaleidoscope of colour and movement, he felt again the blood rushing to his head and his heart beating frantically in his breast.

  Deliberately he forced himself to look out the window beside him and wondered as he did so how long he would be able to go on acting.

  How could he pretend an indifference and an impersonal politeness that he knew he could never feel for her again?

  ‘If I am strong enough to defeat the Russian ambitions and confound their cleverest schemes,’ he reflected, ‘surely I can persuade a young woman to love me?’

  But Quenella was not an ordinary young woman!