The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [456]
His mind made up, Ash lay down across the entrance to the tomb so that no human or animal could pass in without waking him, and was asleep before the moon rose. But though tonight his sleep was untroubled by dreams, it was not so with Anjuli, for three times that night she cried out in the grip of a nightmare.
On the first occasion Ash, jerked into consciousness by that choking scream, scrambled up to find that the tomb was filled with a cold radiance. The moon had risen while he slept and was shining in through the broken dome, and by its light he could see Anjuli crouching against the far wall with her arms across her face, as though to blot out some intolerable sight. She was moaning, ‘No! No, Shu-shu, no…!’ and he caught her in his arms and held her close, rocking her shuddering body and murmuring endearments and comfort, until at last the terror left her and for the first time in all those desperate, terrible days, she broke down and wept.
The storm of tears ceased at last, and it seemed to have washed away some of her tension, for presently she relaxed and lay still, and after a time he realized that she had fallen asleep again. Moving very gently so as not to wake her he lay down, still holding her, listening to her shallow breathing and appalled by her thinness.
Had they starved her?… from what he knew of the Rana and the Diwan, he would not put it past them, and his mind blackened with rage at the thought as he tightened his arms about the skeletal form that had once been so smooth and firm and sweetly slender, and whose every lovely line and curve his hands and lips had explored with such heart-stopping delight.
Less than an hour later she began to toss and turn, and once more started up, screaming Shu-shu's name. And again, shortly before dawn when the tomb was dark because the moon no longer shone into it, the nightmare trapped her for the third time that night, and she woke in the black darkness and struggled frantically against his restraining arms as though she imagined herself to be in the grip of an enemy come to drag her to a pyre – or towards a brazier where a fire-iron glowed white-hot among the coals.
It had taken longer to quieten her after that last awakening, and as she clung to him, shuddering with the aftermath of terror and begging him to hold her – hold her – the physical desire that had once been a living flame between them, and that Ash had thought lost, blazed up in him so fiercely that he would at that moment have sacrificed their hope of safety to be able to take possession of her body and obtain comfort and release for his own – and with it a temporary forgetfulness of all the problems that pressed upon him.
But there was no answering urge in the wasted body in his arms, and he knew that if he were to take her now it would be by force, for she would recoil from him; and also that if he were to give way to his own desires and to succeed in awakening a like response in her, their situation would be a great deal worse than it was already, because once the barriers were down it would be next to impossible for them to keep apart during the following days. Neither of them would be capable of it, yet if suspicion was to be disarmed it was essential that Juli should spend the next week or ten days in one of the servants' quarters behind his bungalow, and that he himself should go nowhere near her. If he were seen to do so it could be fatal for them both, and this way was better. There would be plenty of time for love-making once they were married and the nightmares were over.
Anjuli fell asleep at last, and presently Ash too slept, and did not wake until she stirred in his arms and drew away from him, aroused by the joyous chorus of parrots, pigeons, doves and weaver-birds greeting the dawn. When the sun was up, and after they had eaten, he told her of the plans he had made during the previous night, and she listened to him, raising no objection and seeming willing enough to fall in with any decisions that he might choose to make: but apart from this they talked very