Shadow of the Moon Read Online Free PDF Page B

that bore her father’s handwriting with considerable apprehension. But now she stood for a long time holding the pages in her hand and looking out of the window through a screen of blazing bougainvillea to where the distant domes and minarets and jostling roof-tops of the Indian city met the intense blue of the Indian sky, her thoughts four thousand miles away …
    Huntly! That fat, solemn silent baby, Herbert’s son who had been born the year before Waterloo … the year before Johnny died … And now Huntly was to marry Julia Pike. ‘Well, if she is anything like her mother, I am sorry for Huntly,’ said Emily. ‘Sabrina, dear child,
could
you not consent to go home in the spring? Just for the wedding? It will look so particular if you are not there. And then you could discuss your own affairs with Papa at thesame time. So much more suitable in every way. You and Marcos are both young. You can afford to wait for a few months, and it would mean so much to your grandfather … and to Huntly, of course.’
    â€˜Huntly? Pooh! Huntly does not care a fig for me or I for him. Uncle Ashby once said that Huntly was a cold fish, and he was right. No, Aunt Emily. If I go to Ware it will be as Marcos’s wife. I love Grandpapa. He is a darling. But he is an old tyrant too, and I don’t trust him.’
    â€˜Sabrina! What a dreadful thing to say.’ Emily was genuinely shocked.
    â€˜But I mean it. Look how he behaved over Dennis Allington. Oh, he was right about Dennis, I know. But do you not see, Aunt Emily, even though he was so fond of me, he could send me away to India just to get his own way?’
    â€˜That is not fair, Sabrina,’ said Emily. ‘He did it only to prevent you from making a very great mistake. He wished to save you from unhappiness.’
    â€˜Oh, I know, Aunt. But it was not only my happiness he was thinking of. Supposing I had been really in love with Dennis? I was not, but suppose that I had been? He would not have cared. I was only to marry when he decided and whom he decided, and he was prepared to do anything to get his own way. If I went back to England now he’d try to stop me from marrying Marcos. He is a darling old tyrant from the Middle Ages, and I am afraid of him.’
    â€˜Oh dear,’ sighed Emily, ‘it is all going to be very difficult. I hope you may not find that you have made a sad mistake. You think now that this country is beautiful and romantic. But how are you going to like living all your days here? Heat, disease, wars, famines …’
    â€˜I shall have Marcos,’ said Sabrina.
    Emily gave it up and waited with as much resignation as she could muster for the arrival of the mails from England that would bring her father’s answer to the request for his blessing upon the marriage of his grand-daughter to Marcos de Ballesteros.
    The new year dawned over Oudh in a blaze of saffron-yellow light. A new year that was to see the coronation of the young Queen Victoria, the Austrian evacuation of the Papal States, France declare war on Mexico, the abolition of slavery in India and the start of the disastrous Afghan War.
    Beyond the borders of Oudh, in the Land of the Five Rivers, Ranjit Singh, the fabulous ‘Lion of the Punjab’, held dissolute court in Lahore; plundering the hapless peasantry, meting out savage punishment to those who angered him and heaping wealth upon those who pleased, intriguing with the British and driving himself towards an early grave by a deliberate indulgence in drink and debauchery.
    To the north, among the barren hills of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammed the Amir, disappointed in his hopes of a treaty with the British, began to turn his thoughts towards Russia, while the British Emissary, Alexander Burns,defeated by the stubborn stupidity of Lord Auckland from making an ally of Afghanistan, prepared to return empty-handed to India.
    In the capital city of Oudh, Sabrina Grantham