Read the book: «The Jasmine Wife: A sweeping epic historical romance novel for women»

Chapter 1

Sara could hardly believe they were there at last. She had been on deck since dawn, not being able to endure the agony of waiting any longer.

At first she was unmoved by her earliest glimpse of India, except for a deep sense of relief at having survived the journey, and the curious feeling of being inside a picture book.

She stood transfixed, as parched of life as a dried flower pressed between the pages, till, all at once the breeze shifted, and carried towards her the elusive tang of the distant shore.

Her past returned with an almost magical clarity, and memories, long forgotten, crept out of the shadows to taunt and provoke her.

She remembered the sickly-sweet smell of flowers turning brown in the sun, trampled offerings, scattered and rotting on the steps of forbidding temples dedicated to fantastic and unlikely gods. The stench of open drains fused with the heady and seductive scents of sandalwood and patchouli. Patchouli! She mouthed the word almost with reverence as she breathed in a hint of the musky, ancient fragrance. There was no other perfume that spoke the essence of India with as much power. She could almost feel the touch of a thin dry hand, grasping her own, as she followed behind the hurrying figure, tottering along on her little legs, her starched muslin skirts rustling through laneways crowded with stalls and people, her eyes fixed on the bright sari as it swayed ahead of her. Her mouth watered with the memory of forgotten tastes. Mango, thick, creamy yoghurt and freshly ground nutmeg, sweet sticky rice on a banana leaf, a dish made as a special treat by her ayah, Malika.

Sara hadn’t thought about Malika for years; now all at once she was flooded with sensations threatening to unbalance her, and unravel her tightly held self-control.

Malika! Sara strained to remember her face but could recall nothing of her features, only her cool touch, deft and reassuring, her fine wrists and arms encircled with a hundred shivering and tinkling bangles, and when she walked a cloud of patchouli followed in her wake.

Malika! Who had slept at the foot of her bed, and had wailed inconsolably in her grief when she had been taken away, tearing at her thick black hair and rubbing the oil from it onto Sara’s bright curls, as though giving something of herself: a talisman, to protect her.

Sara reached for her handkerchief but could not stop the tears. All those years in England and she hadn’t cried. But the tears came fast now, choking her with deep silent sobs. Soon they subsided into a sniffle and then, with a flush of shame, she remembered where she was. She looked around and was relieved no one had seen her outburst except a dusty seagull with one leg taking a rest on the ship’s rail.

A new smell separated itself from the others, but this time Sara pressed her handkerchief, now a damp and salty rag, to her nose, though it was not possible to stifle the horror. There was the stench of death nearby.

She shaded her eyes against the rising sun and, there on the hills in the distance, she could see the skeletal outline of the Towers of Silence, tall sticks of rotting bamboo where the Parsee dead lay, on beds open to the elements and to the mercy of the scavenging birds. Against the white sky, the ragged shapes of vultures floated on the air current, too lazy and well fed to hunt for live prey.

She closed her eyes, and relived again the peculiar sensation of being inside a child’s skin and chattering to her dolls in the garden of her childhood home in Madras.

Everything there had been cool, lush and fragrant. The only sound birdsong and the soft laughter of the servants as they moved on silent feet over the marble floors of the faded mansion sheltering amongst the trees.

Within the compound of her old home, the giant figs and magnolias had hung like canopies, protecting the delicate English flowers from the burning sun. At times, even roses and lavender were coaxed into bloom and, for a moment, it was possible to imagine it was England after all.

She recalled looking up, shading her eyes against the hazy sky, distracted by the sound of fighting vultures above her head. Then, as wild as the imaginings of a nightmare, the remains of a human arm had dropped with a sickening soft thud on the ground near her feet.

They should have known it wasn’t possible to keep India out, despite the high walls surrounding the house.

Sometimes, homeless widows who had banded together for protection, or cast off wives bearing scars left by cruel husbands, came to the gates to beg for food, knowing they would never be turned away without a decent meal or a moment’s comfort from their brutal and pitiable lives. Or an emaciated holy man, exhausted from constant travel but lit with a strange inner fire that seemed to sustain him through every human trial, would beg sanctuary in the cool garden in return for blessings on the household.

Then, again, they would be reminded that, outside their ordered and tranquil oasis, there was India: the real India, desperate, hungry and passionate.

Her mother’s face rose before her, the features hazy but idealised to perfection, an image fixed forever in her mind, as no picture of her survived to tell the truth of her loveliness.

She recalled the sensation of being lifted to sit on her mother’s lap, the rustling of silk, the fleeting fragrance of Attar of Roses rising from her clothes at her every movement, her high gay laugh, childlike still, as she ran barefoot across the lawn to join her little daughter in play.

To Sara she seemed to have always been a wraith, a fairy, with no more substance to her than a dream. Her father was a stronger memory, as she wore a miniature of his likeness in a locket around her neck.

The shape of his face was like her own, the full mouth and thick chestnut hair, but more real to her than his image was the faint memory of a pleasant aroma of sandalwood and tobacco, and how he had read his newspaper to her, and encouraged her to read books well above her age. It was he who’d encouraged her to speak Hindi, and to play with the village children so she could learn their ways.

He was kind to everyone, especially the servants, and spoke to her often, even as a tiny child, on the need to remember that all humans were created equal, at least in his home. And, even from the distance of time, she could recall a hint of bitterness in his voice as he spoke those words.

It was a message that had stayed with her throughout her life, and she had clung to it, as a gift he had left her, even though she was often reprimanded by her aunt for being too familiar with the servants.

Then, without warning, there were dim shadows and pain, a blurred image of a crouching figure by her bed, forcing bitter liquid through her clenched teeth. The hallucination intensified with the sounds of strange indistinct chanting, a fierce brown face close to her own, rising and falling through the mist.

Then, later, only six years old and an orphan now, dazed and frail still, being led away from the prostrate and weeping Malika.

Then a long sea voyage to England with an unknown English nanny, who held her hand in a tight grip as she waited on the doorstep of her Aunt Maria’s home, till the door opened, and she was brought inside to be taken care of.

No one knew how painful it had been to be uprooted from everything she had loved, to be left to find her way in a cold country, in the cold house of indifferent people.

There was rarely any discussion about her dead parents or the home she had left behind. It seemed there was an unspoken decision to put the whole episode out of her mind, and all memories must die with her parents. She recalled her aunt’s words whenever she dared to broach the subject. “Your father had a wild side … somewhat like you at times …” she would say with a reproving sniff, “and it was hoped India would bring him to heel. But things went from bad to worse … We knew little of your mother, only that he said she had some Spanish blood, which would explain those eyebrows of yours, and your father was determined to have her.”

She didn’t say, ‘in spite of the objections of the family’, though it was clearly implied.

“He broke with us as you know, and the first we knew of you was a letter telling us both your parents were dead. They found you in the servants’ quarters with an Indian woman and some barbarian priest. That’s how you came to be here, and that’s all we know of the unfortunate episode.”

Even her name had been considered too pagan for this new world. She’d been christened Sarianna as an affectionate salute to the country of her birth and had known nothing else. When it was dropped in favour of Sara, “a respectable English name”, she had been too young to protest. She’d become Sara Archer, though somewhere in the back of her mind was a vague recollection of another name, a name she couldn’t remember.

It wasn’t Archer, she was certain of that, and her aunt had no intention of enlightening her.

The subject was dropped, and it was unwise to attempt to raise it again, but Sara could see she knew more than she was prepared to tell. She just wasn’t going to, and now that she’d died after her long illness the name had died with her.

The mystery of her parentage didn’t seem to matter compared to the enormity of her loss. As a child, numb with shock, she went through the motions of living; of attending boarding school; of strict rules and petty punishments; of eating lukewarm, tasteless food, and learning how to stifle any show of ill-bred passion.

It was hoped she had been well and truly immunised against the more fervent emotions, though they hadn’t been entirely successful.

Her small rebellions showed in the letters of complaint sometimes sent home to her aunt.

“Sara is at times sullen and unruly. She runs when she might walk and seems to have no interest in the feminine arts. She has also been found reading a book of a nature we find unsuitable for a girl of her years and written by a Frenchman no less! She has been duly reprimanded, and the book confiscated. Her most serious misdemeanour is of riding a horse bareback outside of the usual riding lessons. You know what irreparable damage that may do to a young girl. Perhaps even blight her chances of a respectable marriage. Need I say more …”

Sara Archer, a good plain name for a good plain girl, though with her unusual colouring and high cheekbones she should have been a beauty, but, after years of stodgy boarding school food, she was overweight and cursed with sallow, dull skin made worse by the long English winters.

Her aunt despaired of the girl’s appearance, using every remedy short of powder and rouge, though, even with the daily doses of castor oil and cream of tartar to whiten her complexion, her skin remained lacklustre and dull. Her hair though had always been admired. In a plait it was as thick as a man’s fist, and even her aunt admitted grudgingly the colour was lovely, despite being more red than brown, and too heavy to crimp successfully with curling irons.

Though the cold weather was her chief enemy to beauty, it seemed her nose was always pink and swollen, her eyes constantly watering and her body stiff and ungainly.

She felt she was almost always shivering, except for the few brief, warm luxurious moments spent in bed in the morning before hastily dressing in her icy room then rushing downstairs for breakfast, where she sat as close to the meagre fire as she could, her hands clutched around her teacup, desperately trying to warm her chilblained fingers.

Sometimes at night when she lay in bed rigid with cold, her life in India came back to her in strange little bursts of disconnected memory, flooding her with longing, and enveloping her with warmth.

In a candlelit room with dark wooden floors, she lay in a small white bed under a billowing tent of mosquito netting, while she listened, wide-eyed and sleepless, to the sounds of the night invading the room on a warm perfumed breeze.

Sometimes, she shivered at the sudden scream of a cornered animal, and the horror of the whimpering that came soon after, then an ominous lingering silence. Or, the most terrifying of all sounds, the haunting chant from a nearby temple, where the worshippers were known to practise the forbidden rites of the goddess Kali, who wore a belt of human skulls around her waist and brandished a bloody knife above a decapitated head.

She knew about Kali, all the children did, but, despite her terror, she relished the bloodthirsty image with a curious delight.

Then, a suspicious rustle in the bushes beneath her window: a bandit perhaps, come to rob the house, or a python, gliding its way across the terrace to eat one of the hens.

Though to chase away her fears, in the corner of the room came the peaceful breathing of a sleeping figure, ever present and comforting, her beloved ayah, Malika, and she would fall back to sleep at last.

Then, more happily with daylight, the screech of her pet peacock, who followed her everywhere. The feel of cool fabric on her warm face as she ran laughing through sheets of luminous silks as they hung floating from between two coconut palms; the sounds of laughter, and music; a band of musicians wearing brilliant blue turbans, the plaintive wail of a sitar, and food, always food, of every kind, aromatic and delicious, spread on a long table placed under a shady arbour, surrounded by people, their faces blurring into each other, but all of them, it seemed, were happy and caring. It felt too she was the centre of their care, and she felt safe and, most of all, loved.

A young sailor coiling a rope looked up and gave her a curious stare, bringing her back to the present. Sara straightened her spine and began to pace the deck again; the waiting had become almost unbearable. A trickle of perspiration ran from beneath her wide straw hat, down her throat and into the neck of her white muslin blouse. Her skin beneath her bodice was slippery with sweat, so she would have to keep her arms firmly pressed against her sides in fear of the dreaded stains under her armpits flooding into even wider crescents. She thought how much cooler she’d be if she hadn’t been wearing a corset, and it was tempting to throw it overboard as she had done with the huge cane bustle her aunt’s maid had packed with her luggage. It would have been more sensible to just have given the bustle away, but she’d thought as a symbol of her new freedom it deserved a much more dramatic send-off.

She’d thrown it overboard at dawn, and watched it hover for a long moment on the waves, refusing to sink, and taunting her for her mutinous behaviour, till it floated almost out of sight and sank at last.

The young sailor smiled at her now in an admiring way, then strode along the deck, his wide baggy pants flapping lightly in the breeze, his linen shirt open at the neck, and Sara thought how pleasant it would be to wear such clothes. Her own long legs were encased in cotton bloomers and hidden by the thinnest layer possible of petticoats. She gave a furious little kick of protest under her skirts, but she knew to throw away her petticoat as well would be a step too far.

She recalled her aunt’s constant refrain over the years beating into her brain like a mantra. “Whatever you do or wherever you are, do not let your standards drop for a moment. People will judge you by how you maintain your appearance. A slovenly exterior shows a slovenly will.”

Sara laughed to herself. She had already let her standards slip and was surprised by how little she cared. Clearly it was other people who seemed to mind.

The hated curling irons too were abandoned almost as soon as the ship had been out of view of the shore, and her hair had improved dramatically ever since, shining with a new life and colour now it was allowed to be as it was meant to be.

She reached up to smooth the heavy chignon held in a wide tortoiseshell comb and tucked a few loose strands under her hat. It was difficult to be neat in such weather, but she consoled herself with the thought that perhaps Charles wouldn’t notice … Men usually didn’t notice such things, but then, he was always so immaculate himself and he couldn’t abide untidiness in others.

Dear, dear Charles … Her face took on a faraway look as she cupped her face in her hands, her elbows on the rail. She hadn’t seen him for over a year, not since their hasty marriage on the day he’d left to return to India.

They had planned to have their honeymoon on board the ship, but when Sara’s aunt became gravely ill on the day of her marriage, Sara had no choice but to stay to nurse her till she died. But, even after her aunt being long buried, Charles wrote asking his bride to wait a little longer before joining him. His letters told of typhoons and outbreaks of hostilities amongst the natives, or cholera amongst his staff, then, finally, the need to wait till the end of the monsoon.

She’d decided she wouldn’t wait a moment longer, regardless of disease or bad weather, when at last, when more than a year had passed, Charles’s letter arrived and freed her from the home where she’d begun to feel she would never escape.

“You must take a passage on the Charlotte, leaving Liverpool on 22^nd October. My friends Lady Palmer and her daughter Cynthia will accompany you. Unfortunately, Lord Palmer must stay in England for a few months longer, which means I am in charge here … a very good sign for my career. They’ve been in Paris shopping for Cynthia’s trousseau, after having become engaged to a young man who will be in time, a Baronet.”

He was clearly impressed with Miss Palmer, and he proved it with the following lines.

“I cannot stress enough the importance of you becoming friends with them both, my future may depend on it, and the long voyage will give you that opportunity …”

Sara’s thoughts drifted back to the world she’d left behind. The solid two-storey, red brick house near Hampstead Heath, set securely amongst pleasant oaks and a garden full of snowdrops and bluebells: a safe world of middle-class respectability, where no hint of worldly passions would ever be likely to enter.

After visiting on a regular basis for some weeks, Charles had come to the house to say goodbye before returning to India, and everyone assumed he’d come to ask for her hand. When he suggested a moment alone with her in the conservatory, her aunt could barely contain her excitement and rushed forward, taking both his hands in hers in a way to show he was already a member of the family. “Of course, my dear boy,” She smirked and winked till Sara thought she would die of shame. Though even she fully expected he’d ask her to marry him then.

But it came to nothing. He took her hand and held it for a moment, then said something about how he’d miss their amusing chats, and how he’d hoped she’d find time to write to him in India.

A terrible attack of panic overtook her. He was going to leave without asking her to marry him!

She thought of India, and how much she longed to go there, so she defied convention and took matters in her own hands. She swallowed her pride and prepared to lie.

She blurted out, “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to.”

He was clearly taken aback.

“I may be married soon, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to write to a single man.”

His face showed no emotion, though he flexed his hands behind his back as he paced amongst the potted begonias.

“Do I know the fellow?”

“No, he’s someone I’ve known for a long time.” She stared at her feet so he wouldn’t see her eyes.

“I promised him my answer within the week.”

“Does this mean you’ll accept him?”

“The family is very fond of him, and so am I really …” but here she hesitated, then sighed, hoping to plant a little seed of doubt in his mind.

“But he’s a highly respectable man with a bright future … so …”

She had almost begun to believe in her fictitious fiancé herself.

Charles left the house deep in thought, and Sara was convinced she’d never see him again.

“Well?” Her aunt met her at the door, her uncle standing behind with a foolish smile on his lips.

She tried to speak but no sounds came out. Her humiliation was too great. She rushed to her bedroom, her face averted, her aunt’s bitter words following her up the stairs.

“Whatever did you do wrong this time?”

Later, when she emerged, her face red and swollen with shame, her relations scarcely bothered to hide the fact they thought she was nothing more than a liability.

She thought back to that evening’s long, silent, unendurable meal, the air thick with disapproval. Her uncle’s furious tight-lipped sawing of the roast, his resentful way of handing her the plate without looking at her, and how he gave her less meat than usual.

Now there was no escaping the endless censure and, with the departure of Charles, there was nothing and no one to look forward to, just endless days of boredom or visiting her aunt’s stuffy friends and walking the pekes. She’d developed a hatred of the poor things.

The next morning, in an attempt to recapture her lost pride, she put forward the idea of going to India by herself.

“Hundreds of girls do it.” She raised her chin and glared, even though she knew she might have gone too far. “Why should I have to wait for a husband to take me …?”

Her uncle was moved enough by her outburst to put down his newspaper in a way calculated to increase her fear of him. “So, you would join a shipload of common shopgirls, to trawl amongst the rabble of India for a husband? Simply because you can’t find one here … or won’t,” he added, referring to the time when she had refused what was seen as a perfectly good offer from a country parson with a generous living because she couldn’t bear the way he blew his nose then examined the contents of his handkerchief.

For almost a week she was hardly spoken to; the outrage was too deep.

It was while she sat, frozen with humiliation, staring down at her untouched breakfast, that the maid had entered and announced Mr Charles Fitzroy was waiting in the library.

“Perhaps he forgot his hat?” her uncle remarked cattily as she flew out of the room. In the hallway she took a moment to tidy her hair and compose her face into what she thought was an expression of pleasant unconcern before she opened the door to face him once more. Even so, her voice came out husky and cracked. “Mr Fitzroy? I didn’t expect to see you again.”

He was standing by the window staring out at the garden, still covered in a thin layer of morning frost, then, with what seemed an enormous effort of will, he turned to face her.

“I’ve been thinking …” He took a deep breath and swallowed hard, unable to look at her while rolling his hat around in his hands. “Look, I can’t accept you’ll marry this other fellow. I had it in mind that you might marry me.”

She held onto the back of a chair for support. “You didn’t mention this before,” she answered at last, her voice shaking.

“It didn’t seem fair to ask you to give up your life here, but it seems if I wait any longer you are lost to me. Though if you love this other fellow …”

“No, I don’t love him,” she managed to blurt out, “I never have. I was going to refuse him.”

He took a step closer. “Are you going to refuse me?”

She had just enough self-control to pause for a respectable time before answering, then to allow him to take her in his arms and clumsily brush their lips together.

Then the relief, the blessed relief, to be able to announce she’d received a proposal of marriage from Charles Fitzroy, and that she’d accepted him.

It was decided to arrange a special licence so they could be married almost at once, then sail for India together on the same day of the marriage, therefore saving the cost of a honeymoon.

Later, when the first throes of excitement had died down, Sara examined her reasons for accepting him. She was fairly sure she loved him, of course, although it had taken her some time to realise it. He’d been lured to the house by her ever-hopeful aunt, as had many other young men before him, and placed as an offering at her feet. Knowing she was expected to encourage him, she’d felt a stubborn resentment, telling herself he was no different from all the others.

Then, while they’d been playing tennis in the garden and he’d paused to take a breath, he was, without warning, suddenly illuminated. He stood with his shoulders back, his chest heaving from the pace of play, one hand on his hip and the other holding his racquet nobly by his side in the attitude of a Greek god. In the soft afternoon light, with the sun shining on his bright blond hair, he appeared almost unbearably heroic.

For a few moments it was as though the world had stopped spinning, and she remembered the flash of realisation.

I love him! I’m in love!

With that insight everything changed, and she couldn’t be easy around him any more. Just brushing her hand by accident on his caused such an intense mingling of pleasure and fear, she felt sure he must know. Even her laughter became forced and unnatural, and she couldn’t look into his eyes without blushing and turning away.

He was different to the other men in her narrow circle.

He was on leave from India for only a few weeks and brought with him into the stuffy air of parsons and bank clerks a lingering atmosphere of adventure and glamour. He told of cobras found asleep in the billiard room at the club, of tiger shoots and playing polo in the shadow of faded pink palaces. But, most of all, he intrigued her with his tales of the Indian people, their strange customs and powerful beliefs, transporting her back to her childhood and the world she so longed to recapture.

As a child she’d gone to bed each night hungrily devouring library books written by yet another female traveller, either fictitious or factual, braving it alone in foreign climes. The women she admired rode disguised in flowing robes on testy camels over vast deserts, or roamed the South Pacific in search of their tropical destiny.

She’d wanted to be one of those women, but how she would go about it was uncertain until Charles had appeared.

For Charles, it was a revelation to watch her shining eyes and rapt expression every time he spoke. It occurred to him it would be very pleasant to come home every night to such an infatuated creature. Though he couldn’t know it, it was not so much his masculine charm that caused her face to light up whenever he spoke of India. It was India itself and the prospect of adventure, or perhaps discovering something of her past, that held her spellbound.

He almost visibly shuddered when he thought about some of the girls he’d met in India. Like the other men in his crowd, he cast a calculating eye over the cargo of English girls, the so-called “fishing fleet”, who arrived every October and stayed till the beginning of the hot season in the hope they’d find suitable husbands. He found the idea of choosing from amongst them impossible, as even the plainest and poorest of them showed an unbecoming haughtiness. For the first time in their lives, these girls found themselves in demand, and were going to make the most of it, despite the fact most of them, in his eyes, were only just passable.