Page 96 of A Modest Independence

“Why?”

“I don’t know. This entire arrangement feels indecent. Sleeping in the same compartment.”

“We slept in the same compartment on the train to Marseilles. And again on the train to Suez.”

“Yes, but…we weren’t in beds.” She paused before adding, “I know that must sound silly, but—”

“It doesn’t.”

“No?”

“It makes perfect sense to me, unfortunately.” The train rattled and shook as it hurtled through the darkness. Tom put a hand on the wall to brace them. “We’d better sit.”

Jenny sank down on the lower berth. Without its padded back, it was much deeper and far less comfortable than in its normal state.

Tom sat down beside her, leaving enough room between them to have easily accommodated another person. Was he trying to maintain some measure of distance? Or were his actions merely inspired by the cloying heat?

She turned to face him, wishing she could see his expression more clearly in the darkness. “Will you be too warm if I move a little closer?”

“Probably.” He extended his arm to her. “Come here.”

Jenny didn’t require an engraved invitation. In an instant, she was snuggled against his chest, his arm holding her close. He was warm. Deliciously so. She felt as if she were surrounded by him. His strength and his scent. Her nerves ceased their jangling. At last, her body seemed to say. At last.

“Is this better?” he rumbled.

“Mmm.” She slid her arm around his waist, feeling her eyes drift close as sleep finally beckoned.

The last thing she was aware of was the feeling of Tom’s cheek on her hair as she drifted off, his breath a soft whisper against her temple.

“Five days,” he murmured. “That’s how long it took before you were back in my arms.”

There was nothing like a long journey in the sweltering heat to promote intimacy between the inhabitants of a railway carriage. Tom had seen gentlemen in various stages of undress rushing onto station platforms to get their breakfast and ladies swathed in shawls and colorfully patterned dressing gowns hurrying into the first-class carriage washroom only to emerge minutes later looking as neatly garbed and coiffed as they might in any British drawing room.

His own lady—such that Jenny was—took a bit of convincing before she would admit to any level of comfort for herself. It was only on their second night on the train that she properly dressed for bed. She returned from the washroom in a prim flannel robe, her hair disposed in a long auburn plait over her shoulder. Her face was freshly scrubbed, her cheeks rosy.

“After all,” she said, “you are my brother.”

Tom didn’t know whether to grin or to grumble. He settled for helping her up into her berth, trying not to notice how soft she was without her usual underlayers of whalebone and crinoline.

After their first night on the train, they’d managed to resist the temptation to sleep in each other’s arms. It had been disconcerting enough to do it once, awakening as they had to Ahmad and Mira bustling about.

Tom had felt like the veriest cad. It was one thing to indulge his affection for Jenny when the two of them were alone, but to do so in front of others was worse than ungentlemanly. It was the sort of thing a fellow did if he held a woman cheaply. If he didn’t respect her. That they’d both been fully clothed hadn’t mattered one jot.

What must Ahmad think of him? What must Mira? The pair of them hadn’t said anything, but he didn’t expect that they viewed his conduct in a very good light. Especially not after having worked so long at Mrs. Pritchard’s establishment.

Fortunately, the sheer length of the journey made many such concerns secondary to one’s comfort. Both he and Ahmad spent a great deal of their time in the compartment coatless, with loosened neckcloths, opened shirt collars, and uncovered heads. Jenny and Mira were no less willing to forego their bonnets and gloves in the ever-increasing heat.

When the train at last stopped for twelve hours in Allahabad, they stepped out onto the busy platform in various stages of exhaustion. The famous city, with its Moorish arches and grand structures of white marble, was situated at the junction of the Ganges, Jumna, and Sarasvati rivers and, therefore, of particular religious meaning to those of the Hindu faith. Many pilgrims had come to bathe in the sacred waters. Among the crowds Tom saw very few Europeans, save for a British soldier or two on horseback.

He shepherded Jenny through the station, their progress intermittently delayed as she stopped to purchase sweetmeats from peddlers or to clasp the hands of the curious children who dogged their every step.

They put up at a native hotel for the day, too tired from their journey to summon any desire to explore the famous fort or the botanical gardens. Instead, he and Jenny dined on curried meat, rice, and ale with some of the other passengers in the hotel’s small dining room.

Among the British travelers making their way to Delhi, the talk was solely of the mutiny.

“The railway station was burned,” said Mrs. Goodwin, a widow traveling with her son and daughter-in-law. “And the tracks torn right out of the ground. The natives would have burned the trains as well had they not been frightened of them.”

“Were you here at the time, ma’am?” Jenny asked.