The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) by Norah Lofts Read Free Book Online Page A

before he intended to comply with this command, and so long as he confined his curses to English Linda had made no protest; but when he changed, with that astonishing facility of his, and began a tirade in the native language of the grave-faced servant who stood awaiting an answer she said, 'Richard, please. Ask the man to wait outside, I have thought of something--'He did as she asked, not because he was amenable to her wishes but because he had a well-founded respect for her quick-wittedness; many a time during their wandering exiled years she had found a way to turn an uncompromising situation to their advantage.
    As soon as they were alone she said: 'No one could expect you to go. But perhaps I should. He rather likes me, you know. He might give me something.'
    Something more like a snarl than a grin crossed Richard's face.
    'I've noticed His Highness's partiality! If I'd had any sense I should have let you negotiate. Still, it is a notion. Being impotent as a mule, he can't give you what he would like to--so you may come back with one of the bright buttons with which he decorates his fat belly!'
    She gave a little laugh--one of the tinkling, mirthless, brittle laughs which she learned long ago to be the best way of parrying the thrusts which aimed to hurt.
    'One of the emerald set! Well, that would be very acceptable.'
    'Go then, and get away with all you can. All I ask is that you make no civil excuses for me. Tell him I didn't come because I couldn't trust myself not to kick his teeth in.'
    As often before, having won her point, she was ashamed of the duplicity which had gained her the victory. But to have spoken truthfully, to have said, 'One of us should go; Surunda has been very kind to us; and though he decided against making the concessions he never led you to expect anything else'--that would merely have led to Richard ordering her not to go.
    A half-remembered Biblical phrase drifted through her mind, something about being wily as a serpent and harmless as a dove; it brought with it the memory of English Sunday evenings, with the scent of hay and honeysuckle drifting in at the open door, of sunset brightening the stained glass of the windows and her father's voice thrown back from the sounding-board of the high pulpit. But these were things better forgotten; the days of the dove were over, it had been sacrificed long ago--even the serpent had found survival difficult enough of late.
    She dressed for the visit with scrupulous care utterly divorced from vanity. She had never been very pretty, just young and fresh and lively-looking, and five years in India had ruined what looks she ever had; the smooth pink-tinted oval cheeks were bleached to the yellowish ivory of elderflower, and there were hollows in them, and at the temples and about the eyes. Her hair, once the prettiest thing about her, shining golden and very curly, had also bleached and faded to a dullish primrose colour and was almost as straight as an Indian woman's. And she was so thin that her neck was stringy. Cousin Maud had been right when she had warned her that India was no place for a white woman. 'In a year you'll be a scarecrow and in two you'll be dead,' she had said. Well, it was jive years and a few months, and tomorrow she would be on her way back to Fort St George; and within a fortnight, with any luck, on her way back to England. The assignment to Kilapore had been Richard's last chance; the Company had finished with him now. And though there were white men--quite a number of them--who had come out to work for the Company and then been dismissed, or had left it to launch out on their own, and, many of them, made a living and, some of them, a fortune, Richard was not of their stamp. It took energy and enterprise and industry and ruthlessness to make a way in India, and of all these qualities Richard possessed only ruthlessness.
    She put on the lavender-coloured silk dress which, earlier in the day, as soon as the servant had gone off with