refuge of my childhood, my exhalations hanging in the atmosphere like malevolent ghosts.
The Sikh grooms stared at me in astonishment. There might have been some trouble over procuring a mount; but as it happened, Sahjara’s new mare was still saddled, having just returned, so I swung myself up onto Harbax, tearing out of the stable as if Satan were at my heels. For the first five minutes of my pursuit, I despaired of catching up to them before we reached the village, for Nalin was the fastest steed in Mr. Thornfield’s stables, and young Harbax the most unpractised.
Gift of God. Sahjara named you that, and Mr. Singh supposed it important, though Mr. Thornfield joked about the meaning. Please, please prove to be a gift of God.
I caught sight of them—a silhouette, really, just an outline in the gathering crystalline fog. Recalling with a thrill of hope that Nalin was the least tractable of her species I had ever encountered, I urged the more docile Harbax onward, feeling the mare surge as she sensed my distress.
Garima Kaur heard her pursuer and craned her head to glance behind, her emaciated form looking dangerously fragile atop such a powerful beast. Nothing of Sahjara could be seen save her rhythmically swinging feet; but reader, I loved her then, for she was the victim of blighted hopes and blind circumstance, as so many are, as I am, and Garima Kaur did not have a knife any longer, and I would return Sahjara to the people who quietly, carefully cherished her if it cost me my own right hand—or worse.
Abruptly enough that I feared snapped necks would result, Garima Kaur reined Nalin, and the mare emitted a wild, wary sound; she turned the horse with difficulty, and then it was that I saw Sahjara’s lovely face—uncomprehending and panicked.
“Miss Stone!” she gasped. “Where is Charles? Mrs. Kaur says we are to escape to London, that there are Company soldiers making for Highgate House.”
“Mrs. Kaur,” I cried through the mist, “there is no one more sympathetic to your situation than I. I beg you, however—”
“You will ruin more lives, but you will not ruin mine entirely,” Garima Kaur snarled. Nalin’s nostrils flared, her hooves agitatedly stamping the ground.
“I seek to ruin no one, I swear to you upon any holy book you like.” Harbax, conversely, was an island once halted, perfectly quiet. “Only let me take Sahjara home.”
“Sahjara is mine!” she cried with the cracking voice of a breaking woman.
At times disaster visits us when we least expect it; and at others, we see the fraying rope and know that the hour of peril is nigh. I did not know what form disaster would take, but I knew then that Garima Kaur would not be returning to Highgate House, knew it with every fibre of my being.
I should have loved to stop the inevitable, but there was nothing whatsoever I could do.
Nalin reared—triumphant, angry, frightened. One never quite knows what a horse is thinking, but I like to imagine that horses are able to sense what people are thinking.
My frantic cry as Garima Kaur was tossed like a flour sack from the fractious horse was not so loud as the hammering of my heart when I saw Sahjara begin to slide after her kidnapper. Dismounting to catch her was impossible, and riding to meet her would cause Nalin to career off until she found the horizon.
Helpless, I flung out an arm.
Falling, Sahjara did the same.
Except she did not mirror me, not quite; she hooked her arms round Nalin’s neck, swung a leg over, and tumbled almost gracefully, a pendulum swinging within a clock. When she dangled from the mare’s neck, dropping to the ground a few seconds later, I could have wept for relief; she had Nalin by the reins immediately, thanks only to instinct. Then she viewed the tragically contorted body of Garima Kaur and began to cry.
How long I held her there in the road after dismounting Harbax, I cannot say; how long Garima Kaur took to die I can, however, for she was stone still by the time I had reached Sahjara. Not wanting to leave any erstwhile friend of Sardar’s crushed and discarded, I instructed Sahjara to mind both horses and not look at me as I hid the sickeningly light shell of a body under a holly tree.
When I emerged again, I was a wreck and Sahjara similarly blasted. We embraced for a long while, each supporting the other, until I realised that