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British citizens had been killed. We told our friends in the hill district that Rose delivered in Bombay
and our friends in Bombay that she had spent her confinement in the country. And we married
quietly. A military chaplain. Strangers for witnesses.”
“That’s sad.”
The blue eyes struggled to focus. “You feel sorry for us? After the betrayal you suffered
at our hands?”
Geraldine smiled. “You did me a favor, Anthony, albeit by accident. I was never
intended for sacrifice on the altar of matrimony and while being an unwanted spinster is a pitiable
state, nothing is more romantically appealing than a woman who lost her great love through a tragic
event. Whenever someone would be crass enough to ask me why I never married, all I would have to
do is cast down my eyes and say ‘I was engaged and then….Cawnpore.’ That one simple word could
silence even the most determined biddy at once, I assure you, and made me the object of fascination
among my social circle.”
Weaver smiled too. “It pleases me to think someone benefited from Rose’s mad
scheme.”
“Michael benefitted.”
“Yes, I suppose he did.”
“But the girl –“
Weaver blinked. “Was an impossible age to explain away with a fiction and besides,
she kept crying for her mother. Yes, I buckled to the pressure which Rose applied and yes, I drove the
child to the orphanage. But I followed her progress through the years. Supported her from afar.
Provided funds.”
“You told Trevor that you drove past the temple where the school is housed on the
morning Rose and Sang died.”
“And so I did, just as I had made that journey on many previous occasions. I used hired
carriages for these visits, since young Felix was a chattering sort who reported every fact to his
uncle.”
“You would go in? Speak to the girl?”
Weaver shook his head. “I would simply have the driver park the carriage and then I
would sit in silence and stare at the gate. Struggle again to make peace with my conscience. I
suppose you think me a coward, Geraldine. A man who spent his entire life in the thrall of his wife’s
machinations. Unable to do the right thing, even when it was clear what the right thing would be.”
“Rose did not recognize the girl? When you went to the school in search of a white
nurse and retuned with the child she had thrown into the jaws of fate?”
“More than thirty years had passed.”
“I suppose that thirty years could be either an eon or the blink of an eye depending upon
one’s perspective. For it would seem that the girl remembered the house. Or your face and that of
Rose and even Sang. Something triggered a memory which was strong enough to evoke…to evoke a
passion that wiped out the last thirty years and turned her once again to the child who had played in
those rooms. Had slept in those beds. ”
“Ah,” said Weaver. “So she did remember her days within our house. I always
wondered, but her face…on the rare occasions in which I saw her, she never made a sign. “
“The rare occasions? She came every afternoon to attend Rose, did she not?”
“No…only a few times with the nurse. To assure we would be good to her, I suppose,
and not demand any services which were beyond that poor creature’s limited capacities to perform.”