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By Root 2608 0

the age of thirty or the rank of Major, he could not marry without the consent of his Commanding Officer (which in the circumstances he would certainly not get) and going on to point out that in a regiment such as the Guides, which recruited Mussulmans, Sikhs, Hindus and Gurkhas, a British officer who married a Hindu widow would be anathema. By doing so he would sow dissension among the men under his command, offending not only the caste Hindus, but probably the Sikhs as well, causing the Mussulmans to despise him for thinking so little of his own religion, and Sikhs, Mussulmans and Gurkhas together to suspect him of favouring his wife's co-religionists whenever he was called upon to judge between a Hindu and a man of another faith, or to recommend one or other for promotion. The Guides would ask him to leave, and no other Indian Army regiment would accept him for the same reasons.

Ash knew all about that; and so did Mrs Viccary. But none of it was worth worrying about for the simple reason that even if he could arrange to marry Juli, to do so openly would be tantamount to signing her death warrant – together with his own – since such a marriage, once made public, was bound to cause a great deal of talk and speculation and scandal. And in a country such as India where not only regiments but members of the Civil Service, medical officers, policemen, clergymen, men in trade and numerous other Britishers, all accompanied by large numbers of Indian servants, were moved about from one end of the country to another at short notice, a story of this kind would be gossiped over in the Clubs of every military station from Peshawar to Trivandrum, and in every bazaar where the servants of the ‘Sahib-log’ gathered to talk over the doings of the Angrezis and retail the gossip of the station they had just left. And the Indian grape-vine was the swiftest and most efficient in the world…

It would not be long before Bhithor came to hear that the same Guides officer who had escorted the late Rana's wives to their wedding (and been stationed in Gujerat at the time of the Rana's death and the disappearance of one of his widows) had subsequently married a Hindu widow. The Diwan would add two and two together, and coming up with the correct total, would send someone to investigate; after which it would only be a matter of time – probably only a very short time – before Juli died. For Bhithor would require vengeance for their own dead – all those who had died (and there must have been many of them) in the fight to defend the entrance to Bukta's secret road – as well as for the insult that had been put upon them by the abduction of their late Rana's widow.

‘It would have to be kept secret,’ said Ash.

‘Then you still mean to marry her? Even though you tell me that she herself can see no reason for it?’

But Ash was nothing if not obstinate. ‘What else? Do you think I want her as a mistress… a concubine? I want to know that she's my wife, even though I can't acknowledge her as such. It's – it's something I have to do. I can't explain…’

‘You don't have to,’ said Edith Viccary. ‘If I were in your place I'd feel the same. Of course you must marry her. But it isn't going to be easy.’

The difficulty, she explained, was that marriage being a Sacrament of the Church, no clergyman would consent to employ it to unite a Christian to a Hindu, unless it could be proved that the latter had undergone a genuine conversion. ‘God is not mocked, you know,’ added Mrs Viccary softly.

‘I didn't mean to mock. But then I never think of Him as being an Englishman – or a Jew or an Indian or any other nationality that we've invented for ourselves. Nor do I believe that He thinks of us like that. But I did realize, as soon as I began to think about it, that the Church wouldn't marry us, any more than Juli's priests would, even if I dared risk asking them, which I don't. But I thought perhaps a magistrate -?’

Edith Viccary shook her head decidedly. She knew the local British magistrate a good deal better than Ash did, and Mr Chadwick, she assured him, was the last person