With a sigh, she removed her topi and pushed sweaty hair off her forehead, hoping the cool weather would arrive soon. After washing the dust from her face and neck, she went from her tent to her stepfather's. When she stepped inside, she chuckled. Not only were his furnishings correctly placed, but the book of essays he had been reading the night before had been replaced at precisely the same angle on the table.
Even so, Laura checked everything in the camp carefully, chatting with the cook and other servants as she ensured that all was in order. Keeping Up Standards was the first rule drilled into Englishwomen when they arrived in India, and it included everything from dressing for dinner to unflinching courage in the face of mortal danger. Though Laura doubted that what she wore had much effect on the prestige of the British Empire, she dutifully did her part.
* * *
As he had promised, Kenneth Stephenson returned before sundown. "I'll be going hunting tomorrow," he said as he dismounted. "The headman told me there's a man-eating tiger in the area. Two villagers have been killed in the last fortnight."
Laura gave the dense trees an alarmed glance. "Perhaps we should have camped by Nanda rather than out here."
Kenneth chuckled. "Even a man-eater won't attack a camp this size. But don't wander off into the forest to gather flowers, and tell the servants to be careful as well."
Laura frowned as she studied her stepfather's face. He looked distinctly unwell. "Have you forgotten to take your quinine? You look like you're sickening with fever."
He grimaced. "You're probably right. I'll take a couple of tablets and a nap and be fine by dinner."
Laura's gaze followed him as he went to his tent, but she was not unduly concerned. Fever was a way of life for Europeans in India. Usually people ignored it unless they had a particularly bad attack.
As she went to her own tent to bathe and change, a great cat roared in the forest. Laura paused to listen, wondering if it was a tiger or a lion. A lion, she decided.
The cat roared again as Laura ducked under her tent flap. She shivered, feeling a vague sense of foreboding. In India, danger was never far away, and she sensed that tonight it was drawing close.
Determinedly she shook the feeling away. Tonight was just a night like any other.
* * *
Laura had dressed and was about to have her maid pin up her hair when the bearer, Padam, summoned her. His voice agitated, he called through the canvas, "Miss Laura, come quickly. Stephenson Sahib is ill."
Her earlier foreboding returned with a vengeance. Ignoring her loose hair, Laura brushed by her maid and ducked out the door of the tent. The sun had set and it was full dark as she hastened across the clearing, Padam right behind her.
A lamp was lit inside the tent and the canvas glowed with mellow light, but as soon as Laura stepped inside she was struck by the stench of illness. Her stepfather was sprawled on his bed, and even through the mosquito netting Laura saw that his face was grayish white and his breathing rapid and shallow.
Her heart accelerated with terror. India had diseases that could kill in a matter of hours; one could lunch with a healthy man, then learn that he had died before dinner.
Struggling to control her fear, she went to her stepfather's bedside. As she laid a hand on his forehead, his lids flickered open. It took a moment for his eyes to focus on her, but when they did, he murmured in a voice of eerie calmness, "You'll have to be strong, Laura. My time... has come."
"Papa, no!" she cried out. Alarmed by the hysteria she heard in her voice, she swept aside the mosquito netting and perched on the edge of the bed, then lifted his wrist to feel for his pulse. The beat was fast and thready, as fragile as a songbird's.
He managed a faint smile. "Try not to be... too upset, Laura. I always said... that I wanted to die in India."
Fiercely she said, "You'll die here someday, but not yet."
His feeble headshake denied her words. "I think it's cholera, my dear." He drew a long, shuddering breath. "Remember that you promised... not to choose aloneness. And... don't mourn for too long." His eyes closed again.
Cholera was a messy, undignified disease, and the variety that Kenneth had contracted progressed with unbelievable swiftness. The only treatment Laura could offer was laudanum for the pain, and fluids to counter the dehydration caused by vomiting and diarrhea. Padam and her stepfather's valet, Mahendar, helped with the nursing, but their stricken expressions showed that they had already given up on their master.
In spite of Laura's furious attempt to save her stepfather through sheer will, his life inexorably ebbed away. She felt a curious duality; in one sense the moments dragged with agonizing slowness, yet at the same time they raced past, spilling away like the sands of an hourglass.