"Then dried your tears and married Gerry," Ian said bitterly. He glanced again at her swelling waist. "You certainly didn't waste much time in mourning."
She began to cry. Tears didn't diminish her beauty; Georgina had always been able to weep very prettily.
As Ian stared at his former fiancée, he felt something tearing deep inside him, ripping away the mask of normality that he had laboriously maintained ever since he was rescued. Fearing that if he stayed he might lay violent hands on Georgina, Ian spun on his heel and stalked out.
She wailed his name as he left, but he didn't look back. After reclaiming his topi from Ahmed, he flung open the front door with a force that made the bungalow walls shake.
He found himself face to face with Gerald Phelps.
Gerry stopped in mid-stride, his expression a mixture of gladness and guilt. "My God, Ian, you really are alive! Someone told me you'd just ridden in, but I had trouble believing it. It's been so long." He started to raise his hand, as if to shake Ian's, then dropped it. "We all thought you were dead."
"So I have discovered." Ian considered smashing a fist into Gerry's handsome jaw; it might relieve some of his desperate fury. But if he gave in to violence, in his present mood he might do murder; Gerry had never been able to best him in a fight. "Congratulations on your marriage," he said viciously. "I don't know if the best man won, but isn't winning all that counts?"
Without waiting for a response, Ian pushed by the other man and swung onto his mount. Then he set off at the fastest speed the weary horse could manage.
Gerry Phelps watched him go, then went inside to find his wife. Georgina was leaning on the door frame of the garden room, hands knotted together, her face chalky. Gerry wanted to go to her and soothe the distress from her face. Even more, he wanted to hear her say that she was glad she had married him, but her distraught expression stopped him.
Husband and wife simply stared at each other, separated by more than the width of a room. Between them stood the ghost of a man who wasn't dead.
* * *
Ian was a quarter of a mile down the road before he realized that he had no idea where he was going. After pulling his horse to a stop, he sagged forward over its neck, no longer able to hold himself upright. The physical exhaustion he had been ignoring now pounded mind and body like the hammers of hell and his breath came in deep, ragged gasps. Far worse than his physical distress was the emotional pain, and a bitter piece of knowledge that he could neither accept nor deny.
Ever since he had been rescued, he had clung to the thought that Georgina would be his redemption. Instead, he had found ashes. The darkness in his soul had finally broken free and even the blazing Asiatic sun wasn't enough to dissipate the black mists that swirled through him in waves of suffocating anguish.
Ian had just enough sanity left to know that he was falling to pieces, and he didn't have the faintest damned idea how to stop it. Like a wounded animal, he craved a burrow where he could suffer alone, but the club was too public, there were no hotels, and he would never be able to find a friend's home before he broke down in public.
Rapid hoof beats sounded on the road behind and a voice shouted his name. Ian went rigid, wondering if Gerry Phelps was fool enough to come after him. The other horse galloped up on the right and was hauled to a sharp stop. Then a man's hand touched Ian's right wrist.
The fact that he was being accosted on his blind side snapped the last thread of Ian's self-restraint. As he twisted in the saddle, he swung his fist in a wild, furious blow, wanting to strike and not caring who or where he hit.
The intruder wasn't Gerald Phelps. As his fist smashed into the other man's chest, Ian realized that he was assaulting his younger brother David, who wore the uniform of a captain in the 46th Native Infantry.
David managed to stay in his saddle, though only just. For an endless moment, the two men stared at each other. Then a wry smile crossed David's tanned face. "I haven't forgotten that I owe you ten pounds, Ian, but you don't have to beat it out of me. I would have paid long since if you hadn't gone and got yourself killed in Turkestan."
Ian said helplessly, "Christ, David, what are you doing here? When I left India, you were in the Bengal Engineers."
"Calcutta was dull so I exchanged to the 46th three months after you left for Bokhara. I thought life in the north would be more exciting." With fierceness that belied his casual words, David reached out and gripped Ian's hand. The third of the four Cameron offspring, David had the steadiest disposition and the greatest share of common sense. He was also one of the few people whose company Ian might be able to endure at the moment.
Releasing Ian's hand, David said, "What the devil happened to you in Bokhara?"