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een in Bombay. It is my reward. A small payment for having survived the heat and clamor of the
day.”
“I know. I have watched you.” Tom gestured toward the men’s side of the courtyard
with the four glowing windows, lined up as regular and symmetrical as a line of soldiers. “I daresay
we all have.”
She made no response to this, although she did glance in the direction of the windows.
“And I further daresay,” Tom went on, “that we have all dismissed the British gardens of
Bombay too quickly. For they are the one common denominator of each place we have visited to
date, are they not? Even the jail has a sort of mean garden, and it is easy to mock these patches of
green as just one more example of Raj nostalgia, just one more doomed attempt to recreate England in
the tropics. But then the sun falls and you see that what the gardeners have really engendered are
little pockets of paradise within the city, places which are neither fully Indian nor fully English but
rather exist as a world into themselves.”
Emma nodded, although the candle was now down at her waist and he likely could not
see her face. “Tonight is the most appealing yet. Perhaps it is because the moon is finally full.”
“Ah, the moon,” Tom said, turning to look up at the sky. “Yes, but of course there would
be one. Utterly and precisely round, as if a child has used the bottom of his drinking glass to draw it.
This is the just sort of night when you would think Mrs. Tucker and her staff would move our beds
into the garden and allow us a full viewing of the canopy above. Which makes me wonder if they
ever do, or if this is just one more romantic claim our hostess makes to lure her boarders in just
before she forces them back out. When we are expelled from this Eden tomorrow she will no doubt
stand at the gate holding a fiery sword.”
Emma laughed. “I find it easy to picture. And with that thought, I should go back to my
room. I must pack my things for Geraldine says…well, fiery sword or not, she seems under the
impression that we shall be required to leave very early in the morning.”
“Do not go just yet. Sit a minute more and let us talk. It seems…” He hesitated, for
trying to pull up the memory was like recalling a dream. “Something about you in that gown seems so
familiar. You with your hair down and your feet bare and looking so different than you do in the light
of day. It seems that we have sat together, just the two of us, like this before? Or am I wrong?”
“You are not wrong.”
He paused before speaking, both because he was not sure of the accuracy of the memory
and because, even if he were right, there was no way of known how Emma might react. “Was it at
Aunt Gerry’s house just after the Ripper took Mary? You were drugged and I was drunk and it was
all such a muddle.”
Emma nodded again.
“I thought it was…I am sorry, Emma. It is nothing short of horrid that I could not
remember until now.”
“But you have come close to remembering at times, have you not? At least bits and
pieces? I have seen it in your face.”
“I kept assuring myself that I must have been wrong, mistaking a dream for reality.” He
hesitated, compelled to ask the next question, even thought he wasn’t sure he could handle the
answer. “Was I –“
“You were gentle. I was willing. There is nothing to apologize for.”
“Nothing to apologize for?” he said, although her answer did bring him a bit of relief.
“It would seem that I have everything in the world to apologize for.”