The Betrayal of the Blood Lily by Lauren Willig Read Free Book Online Page A

foreign to him. Becoming, in fact, like Lady Frederick.
    It only took one look at her to know that Lady Frederick Staines was entirely unfit to undertake the trip to Hyderabad. Her muslin dress looked as if it might rip if anyone so much breathed on it. There were pearls twined in her flaming red hair along with white flowers fresh from the Governor General’s own gardens. They were fragile blossoms, English flowers of the sort that flourished in India only in the English areas, with fussing and watering and careful handling. In the candlelight, her skin, liberally displayed by the scooped neck and short sleeves of her gown, appeared to be nearly the same color as the petals and possessed of the same haunting scent.
    And would, Alex reminded himself, bruise just as quickly as those petals. That skin of hers wouldn’t last two minutes in the sun. The first part of the journey could be accomplished by boat, but how would she fare on the grueling seven-day trek from the coast to the British Residency in Hyderabad? Once there—if Mrs. Dalrymple and her cronies complained of boredom, it could be worse for a London lady. On top of the boredom, there would be the hundred small irritations born of an unfamiliar climate, the intestinal disorders, the sunstroke, the prickly heat, and boils that would mar that impossible skin. Lady Frederick was a thing of mother-of-pearl and moonlight, designed for costly drawing rooms in a cold climate. Not for India and certainly not for Hyderabad.
    She might, thought Alex callously, do well enough in Calcutta. The cold season was almost upon them and there would be balls and entertainments enough even for a spoiled daughter of the aristocracy. There would be plenty to fawn over her for the sake of her husband’s title.
    “I don’t think you realize quite how dull a provincial residency can be,” Alex warned. “We have none of the amenities to which you are accustomed. There are no concerts, no balls, no—” He struggled to recall the complaints he had heard from the Englishwomen resident in Hyderabad.
    “No milliners,” finished the Colonel for him. “Nor dressmakers, either.”
    Lord Frederick appeared entirely unconcerned about his wife’s haberdashery. “As long as the shooting is good, I’m sure we’ll jog along all right. Right, old thing?” Without waiting for his wife’s response, he looked to Alex. “We leave tomorrow.”
    Alex wondered just why he was so anxious to go. Was it Wellesley prodding him? Or something else?
    “With all due respect, there are arrangements to be made. It’s not exactly the same as traveling from London to Surrey.” Alex couldn’t quite manage to keep the asperity out of his voice.
    “I don’t see why not,” said Lord Frederick. “It’s always bally raining there, too.”
    Fiske hee-hawed and Cleave contrived a restrained chuckle. Alex managed not to bang his head against the wall. “Yes,” he said mildly, “but there are fewer elephants in Surrey.”
    “What the lad means,” intervened his father, with the glibness for which he was known throughout the cantonments of India, “is that it takes time to arrange a fitting entourage for a personage of your stature. You wouldn’t want the Hyderabadis to think you were a person of no account, now, would you?”
    That appeared to resonate with their young lordling. He nodded in a thoughtful way, his lips pursing. “A week Tuesday, then.” Reaching into his waistcoat pocket, he flipped a gold coin in Alex’s direction. “See that you hire a few extra elephants.”
    Well, they already had an ass.
    Alex’s father slipped the guinea from Alex’s nerveless fingers and handed it back to Lord Frederick. “You can settle accounts with the Governor General,” he said.
    Alex didn’t need his father’s warning look to tell him that departure was the better part of valor. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said in a voice like granite, “I’ll go see to those arrangements. Lord Frederick,