Red, White and Blue (Book Two of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Four: Myrrha

It took Jack two months to track Myrrha down. He didn't sleep with a woman in all that time, because he was terrified it would be like catching Ellini's scent on the sheets that first night. She was so intimately bound up with the idea of pleasure in his mind that he was worried any pleasure at all – any comfort or release – would conjure her up again, and bring back that horrible, detailed vision of what he'd lost.

Besides, all the women in Lucknow had dark hair and eyes – a physical type that, for the first time in his life, he was trying to avoid. Myrrha, on the other hand, had blonde hair – always bound up in those schoolgirl pigtails – and could not have been more different from Ellini in terms of temperament. Better yet, the act of fucking her might make Robin angry, and that was the only kind of pleasure he could imagine at the moment.

The day he killed Garrett was the first day he'd received any news of her. She was staying in the palace-fort at Gwalior, as a guest of the Maharajah. He should have known she'd be in a palace. Some rich, spoilt girls developed a taste for squalor, but Myrrha had never been one of them. She would have lived a perfectly charmed life if it hadn't been for Robin Crake. Everybody would have.

So, while Garrett's body was cooling in the mud, and Joel was making plans to die a meaningful death, Jack rode out of the city to the neighbouring princely state of Gwalior.

The Maharajah of Gwalior was officially loyal to the Raj, but he had some sympathy for the rebel cause, especially when it provided him with interesting stories. He must have been bored in his palace, with its fountains, harems, and stately pleasure-gardens, because every time he had a visitor, he would sit them down – beside an interpreter, if necessary – and quiz them about the outside world. He kept Jack talking for three hours.

Of course, there were British officials at his court, but they'd been easy enough to get rid of, the Maharajah explained. You just invited them to something scandalously immoral – a dance of the seven veils, perhaps, or a fertility ritual – and they would make polite excuses and run back to their rooms to write outraged letters to the government in Calcutta.

"Although, every six months or so, they make me pay for my little moments of fun," the Maharajah admitted. "I get a visit from the Viceroy, and he forces me to play cricket and listen to his sermons on clean living. He thinks being Indian is something that can be cured with plenty of fresh air and exercise."

He made Jack eat dinner – something Jack hadn't done in over a month – and politely refrained from asking why his face was so swollen and cut.

Jack endured all this hospitality as best he could. In truth, it was a relief. He really wasn't looking forward to being alone with Myrrha. Sleeping with her was a kind of grim necessity – and the knowledge that Ellini had turned sleeping with a beautiful woman into a grim necessity made him even more miserable. It made him think that he was broken, in some way.

God, he should have practised with other women first. Myrrha was not the kind of girl who could endure disappointment. Although maybe she would just tear his head off and solve all his problems.

Eventually, after six courses and a real dance of the seven veils – "because, if I'm going to incur a visit from the Viceroy, I might as well have some fun", the Maharajah explained – Jack was shown up to Myrrha's rooms. It seemed to him that the Maharajah gave him a commiserating look when they parted, as if wondering whether he would ever be seen alive again.

Jack was bowed into a room full of gauzy drapes and fluttering curtains. Everything smelled of perfume, which didn't sit well with the alcohol and the unaccustomed food in his stomach. He was acutely aware of the sound of the door closing behind him.

Myrrha was standing by the open window, wearing only a white shift that had been dyed silver by the moonlight. One look at her was enough to convince him that there would be no pleasantries. He realized suddenly that he'd never been expecting any. Those tight pigtails were ostensibly modest, but her eyes were so full of fury that you got the feeling she might use them as whips if she didn't immediately get her way.

It didn't matter. Jack felt just as he had felt when he'd been waiting to fight Garrett in the courtyard of the Chattar Manzil – just as eager to suffer as he was to get his revenge. It all blurred together in a fever of anger.

"I've been waiting for you," she said. She was never one to mince words. Then she slipped the straps of her shift off her shoulders, and the silvery fabric dropped to the floor like a guillotine.

***

Thank you so much for reading! Please give this chapter a vote if you've enjoyed it!