The Betrayal of the Blood Lily Read Online Free PDF

longer than anyone. It’s the first place one comes on arrival.”
    “Begum?”
    “I think it means ‘lady’ in the local lingo,” Freddy said vaguely. “Some sort of form of honorific. It’s what they call her, is all.”
    With that elucidating explanation, Penelope found herself swept along in his wake into a vast white-walled mansion decorated with English furniture and English guests as Freddy scattered greetings here and there to acquaintances. The rooms were a colorful blur of brass-buttoned uniforms from every conceivable regiment, embroidered waistcoats straining across the bellies of prosperous merchant traders, large jewels decking the hands and headdresses of the middle-aged ladies in their rich silks. In one room, a set of couples formed rows while a sallow young lady in sweat-damped muslin and a cavalry officer cinched into a woolen jacket danced down the aisle, the familiar tune and figures of the country dance contrasting oddly with the fan sweeping slowly overhead. It did more to displace than dispel the muggy air. Through one archway, Penelope could see bowls of cool beverages sweating beads of water down the sides and iced cakes on porcelain platters. Through another, a room had been set out for cards, in small clusters of four to a table.
    Freddy’s eyes lit up at the sight of that last. “You’ll excuse me, won’t you, old thing?” he said, without looking properly at her. “I have a few old scores to settle.”
    Without waiting for a response, without introducing her to their hostess or fetching her a beverage or even making sure she had a chair to sit in, he was off. Penelope found herself standing alone in a drawing room that smelled faintly of foreign spices as a tropical monsoon battered against the windows and the chatter of the other guests shrilled against her ears like so many brightly colored parrots. Penelope gathered her pride around her like a mantle, trying to look as though she had always meant to be standing there on her own, as though she weren’t entirely without acquaintance or purpose in a strange drawing room in a strange city, abandoned by her husband in a lamentable breach of manners that he would no doubt justify to himself by the fact that he had never intended to shackle himself to her in the first place.
    Unfortunately, the little scene had not gone unobserved. Penelope found herself facing the regard of a man in the bright red uniform of one of the native regiments, spangled with enough gold braid to suggest that he had attained a suitably impressive form of command. He was no longer in the first, or even the second, flush of youth. His hair must once have been as red as her own, but age had speckled it with white, making his face seem even ruddier in contrast. His face was seared by sunshine and laugh lines and liberally spattered with a lifetime of freckles. Beneath wrinkled lids, his pale blue eyes were kindly.
    Too kindly. It made Penelope want to shake him.
    He strolled forward in an unhurried fashion. Just as Penelope was prepared to stare him down with her best Dowager Duchess of Dovedale glare, he said, “That’s always the way of it with these young men, isn’t it?”
    He gave a sympathetic wag of his head, his matter-of-fact tone making it sound as though abandonment by one’s spouse was commonplace, and nothing to be bothered about at all.
    “No sooner do they arrive at a party than they’re straight off to the card tables. A blight on society, it is, and a lamentable offense to all the fairer sex.”
    Penelope’s stiff posture relaxed. It wasn’t that she cared what people thought—but it was very unpleasant to be left standing by oneself.
    “I imagine you are a notable card player yourself, sir,” she riposted.
    “Not I,” he averred, pressing one hand to the general vicinity of his heart, but there was a twinkle in his sun-bleached blue eyes that told Penelope he must have been quite a rogue in his youth. It took one to know one, after