The Maharani's Pearls by Charles Todd Page A

through the crowded marketplace, and caught my arm before I could pause to watch the
     man climbing a rope to nowhere.
    “I could have asked,” I said, “but I knew very well you’d have said no. So I came on my own.”
    Exasperated, he said, “Bess, you aren’t safe wandering about a village by yourself.
     You’re an English girl, your father is an officer. You could be abducted, held for
     ransom. Worse.”
    “In the last village where we lived, yes, I know. But here everyone is friendly. I’m
     not in any danger. Someone would come to my rescue. Besides, I brought my syce.” My
     native groom was holding our horses on the outskirts of the village.
    Simon shook his head in disgust. “Much good he would be.”
    I looked up at my companion. He was tall, and my mother said he was still growing.
     He’d come to us a recalcitrant, stubborn boy, having lied about his age to join the
     British Army, and nearly found himself in a cell before he’d been here six months.
     My father, seeing more in the rebellious boy than others had, made him his servant
     and set about taming him. Simon, he soon discovered, had come from a very good family
     and had been well educated. What had sent him haring off to become a soldier I didn’t
     know, but I’d grown so accustomed to having him underfoot and keeping an eye on me
     when my father was busy that he was now almost a member of the family. In fact I could
     barely remember a time when he wasn’t there. Sometimes I saw my father treating Simon
     as the son he’d never had. I wanted to be jealous, but I liked Simon too much to feel
     anything but relief that he hadn’t been court-­martialed and shot before my father
     took an interest in him. He’d saved me from countless escapades that might have incurred
     the wrath of my mother and he sometimes had been my co-­conspirator in mischief as
     well.
    But not today.
    Simon had left his own mount with my syce, and as he gave me a foot up to my saddle,
     he told the groom what he thought of him for allowing me to come to the village without
     a proper escort.
    The syce listened soberly, but when Simon’s back was turned, gave me a sheepish smile
     that said he forgave me for getting him into trouble.
    We trotted back to the cantonment, Simon smuggled me in through the kitchen, and my ayah , my nurse, was waiting, scolding me as she led me to my room. My clothes were laid
     out on the bed, and I bathed my face and hands, put them on quickly, and stood still
     while the ayah brushed out my long hair, bringing out the red-­gold strands that kept it from being
     a mousy light brown.
    She stood back to take a long look at me. “You’ll do,” she told me in Hindi. “Now
     quickly before the governess woman comes to find you.”
    I hurried down the passage, took a deep breath at the door to what would have been
     called a small drawing room in England, and tapped lightly before opening it.
    “There you are,” my mother said brightly, and I knew then she’d had to send Simon
     to find me—­he hadn’t come on his own.
    The Maharani smiled at me as I curtsied. “Come and embrace me, child. Are you feverish?
     Your cheeks are pink.”
    I’d been hurrying, but I couldn’t tell her that. “A touch of sun. I went riding this
     morning.”
    “Without your bonnet? My dear, you must remember you aren’t used to this sun.”
    She was an old friend of my father’s, her husband one of the strongest supporters
     of the British presence in his state. Forward thinking and intelligent, the Maharajah
     had tried to modernize his lands and introduce prosperity to his ­people, measures
     not always popular with his fellow princes or some members of his own family.
    Tea was brought in and the conversation became general. But I could sense that before
     I’d arrived, the Maharani and my mother had been talking about something they didn’t
     wish me to overhear. There was a tension in both women that was unusual.
    I’d always thought