‘Your Majesty, may I have a word in private please?’ the ambassador asked that evening.
‘Of course.’ Gabriel stood up from where he sat opposite India. They’d spent their first afternoon in Bagazin absorbed in games of chess and he’d enjoyed every second of her company. ‘Excuse me, India. My move when I return.’
‘I can hardly wait,’ she returned with sarcasm. ‘You might just have saved me by breaking his concentration, Ambassador Rousseau. He’s beaten me the previous two games.’
Having taken a few steps away, Gabe spun back on his heel. ‘Fine. I’ll put you out of your misery.’ He moved his piece and pronounced, ‘Checkmate!’
India groaned and he laughed as he followed the ambassador from the room. Gabe hadn’t won easily. She’d sorely tested every strategy he’d put into play and he’d enjoyed the challenge of playing against such a worthy opponent. India’s skills had been honed as a child. She told him her father had played whenever he had the chance and had taught her the rules very early.
Gabe was in good spirits as he walked down the hallway towards the ambassador’s office. His pilots had confirmed it would be a minimum of two days before the aircraft could leave. Depending on what the mechanic found when he arrived in the morning, that time could stretch even longer. Despite India’s unease, Gabe was grateful he’d been given a few more days with her.
He must be a sucker for punishment.
Even though it was a strain to be with her and know he’d never have her as his lover, he still wanted her company. She was nothing like the party girl he’d thought her to be. It was obvious from the understated way she dressed that she didn’t splash her money about. Her clothes on this trip had been completely appropriate—sensible walking shoes, respectable tops that didn’t reveal too much flesh, and mostly long pants. It was just as well she covered herself up and dressed fairly neutrally. The floral dress she’d changed into when they’d arrived at the embassy had revealed her shapely calves and made it difficult for him to concentrate on his chess moves.
India was smart, witty, compassionate, gracious...
Hell! He couldn’t think of a single positive adjective that didn’t apply to her.
No, he was definitely in no great rush to leave Bagazin. The streets surrounding the embassy seemed peaceful enough, and his own team had assured him embassy security was tight. Besides, he hated the thought of saying goodbye to India once they reached Santaliana. It was almost unbearable to know that he’d return alone to the castle, and she’d catch a flight back to London—back to her future husband.
‘What can I do for you, Monsieur Rousseau?’ he asked once he and the ambassador had reached the timber-lined office.
‘Please have a seat, Your Majesty.’ The ambassador closed the door and walked around to the other side of his desk, but didn’t sit down. If anything, he looked ill at ease. ‘There are a number of military vehicles parked at the front of the embassy.’
So much for thinking the streets were peaceful. Gabe tried to catch a glimpse of the street outside through the office window, but the angle of the blinds didn’t allow him a good view. ‘There’s unrest on the streets?’
‘No. I’ve received a direct communiqué from the president.’ He looked extremely uncomfortable. ‘How well do you know the Duchess of Dunmorton?’
The nape of Gabe’s neck prickled and unease crept through him. ‘She was a close friend of my sister’s,’ he said guardedly as he sat back and attempted to project a level of comfort he was far from feeling. ‘She’s also the head of the charitable foundation my sister established.’
‘There’s no easy way to bridge this subject.’ Rousseau cleared his throat. ‘I’ve heard you call the duchess by her given name—India.’
‘And?’
‘The president claims that we’re harbouring a fugitive at the embassy and demands we hand her over immediately.’
A fugitive? He sat forward. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Perhaps you should speak to the duchess, Your Majesty. President Mawandi is certain the woman who travels with you is not a duchess at all, but an imposter. He says that her real name is India Hamilton and that is the name on her passport.’
‘He’s right about her passport, but India’s no imposter. She rarely uses her title of Duchess Dunmorton.’ His jaw clenched and he frowned. ‘I don’t understand why this is of interest to the president.’
‘Your travelling companion is wanted in Bagazin for murder.’
Murder? The word echoed in Gabriel’s head and stuck in his throat before lodging heavily in his gut. He stood up. ‘That can’t possibly be true. I’m sure there’s been a mistake.’
The ambassador reached inside his jacket, pulled out a piece of paper and passed it across the desk to Gabe.
One look at what was actually a poster and Gabriel’s heart seized for several seconds.
India Hamilton. Wanted for the murder of Charles Mawandi.
Wordlessly, Gabe stared at the picture on the poster. A much younger India stared back at him.
‘You will understand, Your Majesty, that as your travelling companion is not a citizen of Santaliana, the embassy has no agreement with your kingdom to act on her behalf.’
The ambassador’s words barely penetrated Gabriel’s mind as he re-read the words on the poster. ‘There’s definitely been a mistake.’ Even as he made the assertion he heard the confusion—the lack of absolute conviction in his voice. Straightening his frame to his full height, he looked down into Rousseau’s eyes and declared firmly, ‘India’s no murderer.’
Rousseau raised his palms up in a gesture of appeal. ‘Please understand the position, Your Majesty. The French government is not in a position to provide refuge to a foreigner who’s wanted for such a serious crime. As we speak, the president’s representative awaits outside the gates for me to hand Miss Hamilton over.’
‘I can’t let you do that.’ He wouldn’t let him do that. No way would he stand back and watch India passed over to Mawandi.
India hadn’t wanted to come to Bagazin. She’d pleaded with him not to land here. Had she known this awaited her?
Rousseau shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. ‘All I can offer to do is stall him to enable you to speak with the... er... duchess.’
Bloody hell! ‘I understand your position. Stall for time. I’ll sort this out.’
Gabe’s head was in a fog as he left Rousseau’s office and strode back to India.
‘Gabriel, what’s wrong?’ She’d moved away from her seat at the chess table and was sitting on the couch, flipping through a magazine. ‘Have you had bad news from home?’
In his heart, he knew there had to be a sane, reasonable explanation for the insane situation which was unfolding. India had spent her life helping others survive. She wouldn’t willingly take a life.
But she hadn’t wanted to come to Africa and she’d been incredibly tense ever since she’d known they were landing in Bagazin. She’d also insisted she be addressed by the title she’d previously refused to use. He’d thought she believed her aristocratic title gave her more protection, but had she used that title because she hadn’t wanted to be identified as India Hamilton?
‘You look pale.’ Her tone was distressed as she dropped the magazine on the couch and got to her feet. ‘Do you need to sit down?’
He ignored her hand as it rested supportively on his arm. ‘Why did you ask to be identified by your title on the passenger manifest?’
If he’d looked pale, she now looked deathly white. Every ounce of colour drained from her face. ‘I...’ Her head lowered, she dropped her hand from his arm and fixated on her hands as she clenched them in front of her.
‘There’s a situation you need to explain.’ The muscles up the back of his neck were so tight they ached.
Her gaze was wary as it met his. She reached very hesitantly for the poster he extended. As soon as she looked at it, she gasped as though she’d been burned, and the paper fluttered slowly to the floor.
‘This is why you wanted my pilot to divert to another country?’ he demanded.
In answer, she raised one hand to cover her mouth and the other clutched at her stomach. A millisecond later, she sprinted out of the room.
Gabe followed her to the bathroom on the other side of the hall. The sounds of her being violently ill were unmistakable from where he stood on the other side of the door.
Shit!
It was true. There’d been no surprise in her eyes when she’d looked at the wanted poster, and her extreme reaction confirmed it. But Gabe wasn’t about to jump to conclusions this time about her guilt. He’d learnt the hard way that there was so much more to India than met the eye, and every single time he’d thought she was guilty of something, he’d been horribly wrong.
Deep in his heart, he believed in her.
He knocked on the door and called her name softly. ‘Come out. You need to tell me what this is all about.’ And they needed to discuss it urgently. He couldn’t expect the embassy staff to stall Mawandi’s official forever.
The door opened slowly. The woman who appeared was shaking so hard her teeth chattered.
Taking her ice-cold hand, Gabe sought to infuse some of his warmth and strength into her as he led her back into the informal lounge area. It was as much as he could do to project a calm image because his heart was kicking in his chest like a thoroughbred racehorse on steroids, and panic pulsed through his veins.
India walked beside him as though in a trance, her eyes damp with unshed tears.
When he’d guided her to sit down on the couch and sat beside her, he asked gently, ‘Was Charles Mawandi related to the president?’
‘He was the president’s son,’ she told him so quietly he strained to hear her.
Bloody hell! ‘You knew him?’
In the act of closing her eyes, twin teardrops spilled out of the dam of her eyes and tracked down her cheeks. He lifted one hand and brushed them away with the pad of his thumb.
After what seemed to be an eternity, she opened her eyes, nodded and said, ‘I met him with my parents when we came here to request permission to provide medical services to the civilians who’d been caught up in the civil war.’
He bent over and picked up the sheet of paper from the floor. ‘This is a serious charge. Tell me what happened.’
There was no animation in her voice as she said, ‘Mum and Dad were waiting for a meeting with the president. We were on the outskirts of the capital set up in tented accommodation that we’d brought with us. His son paid us a visit that night. Mum and Dad were pleased. His father had denied them an audience and my parents thought that Charles Mawandi had come to meet with them at his father’s behest. They spoke to him for about half an hour before he agreed that he’d speak to his father about allowing the organisation to enter Bagazin in an official capacity and provide medical services. We all thought he’d left, but he came back.’
‘And?’
Her fingertips flew up and rubbed along the ridge of scar tissue under her eye. ‘I was asleep. He came... he...’ She broke off on a strangled cry, which rent his heart in two.
Fear and rage coalesced in his gut and he had to damp down the rising bile. ‘Did he rape you?’
‘He... he...’ One tear rolled down each cheek, then another, until there were continuous streams of moisture tracking down her skin. ‘He was... Oh God!’
Gabe pulled her into his arms and held her shaking form against him. He ran a soothing hand through the silky softness of her hair, even though he burned with rage. ‘It’s okay, India. You can tell me what happened.’
Minutes passed. Just as he thought she’d pulled herself together and found the strength to talk, her body racked with sobs again. As much as he felt her anguish, he had to know the details. The clock was ticking. At any moment, Mawandi’s representatives might grow impatient and try to use force to enter the embassy. It wasn’t just India’s life at stake, but the lives of those who stood guard as well.
‘I need to know the truth. You have to tell me,’ he said empathetically but firmly.
‘It’s true... I killed him,’ she sobbed.
Despair flooded through him and his diaphragm seized, making breathing impossible.
‘How?’ He grabbed her upper arms and pulled her away from him a little so he could look at her tearstained face. ‘Tell me exactly what happened,’ he commanded.
Wiping her cheeks with the back of her hands, she shifted away from him, but not before he saw the shame that haunted her features. ‘He was... on top of me...’
‘I know this is hard, but you have to tell me.’ She had to have killed him in self-defence. He was certain of it, but he needed to hear it from her.
‘His hand was over my mouth.’ She gulped. ‘I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t get away from under him.’ Her blonde hair swished around her face as she shook her head violently from side to side in denial. ‘He was too strong... too heavy. When I kept struggling, he pulled out a knife. He held it under my eye and dragged the blade along.’
That was how she’d got her scar.
‘He told me if I didn’t stop struggling, he’d gouge out both eyes and leave me blind.’
The threat was too horrific to comprehend.
‘He tore at my top and... ripped my...’ Her features crumbled and she cried in earnest as she looked at Gabe through shimmering violet pools. ‘He forced me, Gabe. He pushed inside me.’ Gabe had never felt such violent rage. ‘There was a heavy candlestick next to my bed...’
Nausea roiled in huge waves in his gut as he guessed what was coming.
‘I grabbed the c-candlestick... I struck him on the head... I was panicking, all I could think about was getting him off me... getting him out of me and stopping the pain. I only struck him once... I just wanted him to stop. I didn’t mean to kill him.’
God, she must’ve been scared witless, fighting off a rapist—possibly fighting for her life.
‘I thought I’d only knocked him unconscious. He was still on top of me. I couldn’t move my body but I managed to shift my head. I was able to scream.’
‘And help finally arrived?’
‘My parents ran in. They were appalled. They couldn’t believe I’d killed him.’ Her expression grew even more troubled. ‘When it dawned on them what I’d done, they were so ashamed of me I think they were sorrier than ever they’d gone through with having me.’
‘Ashamed of you?’ Anger rose in him like a cauldron of boiling oil. ‘They were more worried about what you’d done than what had been done to you?’ Jesus! What kind of parents had they been?
‘I’d murdered someone, Gabriel. They’d spent their whole lives trying to save people and I’d taken a life.’
He heard the self-recrimination—the guilt—in her voice, and blamed her parents for stoking that guilt.
Grabbing her hands in his, he told her fiercely, ‘For the love of God, India, the guy was raping you. Your parents should’ve been glad you had the candlestick—glad you had a way of protecting yourself. It was bad enough to have been raped, but if you hadn’t hit him, they might’ve walked into your tent the next morning and found you blind or dead.’
‘They didn’t see it that way. You have to realise, we were in a dangerous place where—’
‘Exactly! They had no right dragging you there in the first place. They were responsible for the circumstances you were in, sweetheart. How old were you at the time?’
‘I’d just turned sixteen.’
The savageness of his curse had her widening her eyes. ‘You were still a minor.’
‘Even so—’
‘You are not to beat yourself up about this anymore. As far as I’m concerned, your parents were criminally negligent placing you in such danger and the bastard got what he deserved.’
‘I took his life, Gabriel. His blood will be a stain on my soul forever.’
No. He couldn’t let her keep believing that. ‘You took the life of a rapist—a man who came uninvited into your tent with the intent of molesting you. You were still a minor in the eyes of the law, and it was self-defence.’
Bloody hell! The gravity of the situation slammed home to him. The man didn’t deserve to live, but it was still murder. Murder of the president’s son! A very brutal president wanted for crimes against humanity who knew India was here and was out for her blood.
Steeling himself for her response, Gabe asked, ‘What happened next?’
‘My parents knew what would happen if we stayed—I would’ve been executed and so would they and the two assistants who’d travelled with us.’
‘So they ran?’
‘Dad drove for twenty minutes and... dumped the... body... into the river. When he got back, the assistants had packed up the camp. It was after midnight. Everyone figured the alarm wouldn’t be raised until morning, which gave us enough time to cross the border and get back to Misanti. Once we were in Misanti, Mum and Dad went straight to the camp leader and told him what’d happened. He acted fast and the organisation shipped Mum, Dad and me straight out to South-East Asia that same day. Not long after, the whole team who’d worked in Misanti were also shipped out.’
In the circumstances, running had been the only sensible thing to do. There would’ve been no justice to be had in Bagazin. The Hamilton family had fled for their lives, which is exactly what India needed to do now.
‘Do you have any idea how Mawandi found out what had happened?’ he asked.
India lifted a hand to her face and brushed away a strand of hair that was stuck to the salty moisture on her cheek. ‘Once we were at our next posting, we heard from the camp at Misanti that there was a reward offered for information about Charles Mawandi’s death. One of the assistants who’d been with us on our trip to Bagazin went to claim the reward.’ She shuddered again. ‘The only reward he got was his execution, but obviously he told them what had happened and gave them my name.’
Gabe thought back to the photo on the wanted poster. She’d been so young and her parents had let her carry the guilt when they’d been to blame for placing her at risk. ‘I can’t believe you were in a tent at the edge of Bagazin by yourself,’ he muttered. Too bad her parents were dead. If they still lived, he’d wring the life out of both of them for being so damned negligent.
Rage coursed through him and he stood and paced back and forward, trying to expend some agitated energy as he processed the facts.
Sixteen. She’d only been sixteen for God’s sake.
Surely nobody could ever blame her for her actions? Well, nobody in the real world. Any decent court of law would’ve found her not guilty of murder on the grounds of self-defence. Also, as she’d been under eighteen, he was fairly certain any criminal hearing would’ve been heard in a juvenile court as well, and her name would never have been made public. That was certainly how the justice system worked in Santaliana.
It wouldn’t work that way in Bagazin. In Bagazin there was no justice system, so getting India the best legal defence money could buy would be pointless.
President Mawandi was the law—the judge and the jury.
‘The ambassador gave you that poster,’ she said quietly. ‘That was what he wanted to see you about.’
He nodded.
Without even looking at her hands, she pulled nervously at her fingernails. ‘What will happen now? Does he feel duty-bound to alert the president to my presence here?’
What did he tell her? He didn’t want her to panic. He didn’t want her to know that an official was knocking on the door of the embassy—possibly prepared to knock down the door of the embassy—if Ambassador Rousseau didn’t hand her over.
His heart thumped against his rib cage as he processed the alarming facts one by one, looking for a solution.
She’d killed the president’s son and it didn’t matter a hoot that it’d been in self-defence, nor that the guy had been every bit as heinously criminal as his father, because this was Bagazin. There wouldn’t be a fair trial. The man who was wanted by the International Court for genocide, and the use of children as human shields and soldiers, wouldn’t think twice about issuing a public execution—or worse, condemning her to live out the rest of her life in a squalid cell, subject to unimaginable torture.
What the hell could Gabriel do to protect her?
‘I need to go and speak to the ambassador,’ he told her. ‘Please stay right where you are and I’ll be back as quickly as possible and let you know how we’re going to handle this.’
She bit down so hard on her lip he saw a spot of blood.
Hunkering down in front of where she sat on the couch, he placed his hands on her knees. ‘India, I promised you when you came to Africa with me that I’d keep you safe.’
Her features scrunched up again with despair before she said, ‘That was before you knew what I’d done.’
If only she’d told him why she hadn’t wanted to come here.
Part of him wanted to rant and rave at her—to tell her that if only she’d trusted him enough to tell him, he would’ve instructed the pilots to take the risk of flying further on a single engine and to head back to Misanti instead of landing here. But being angry at India wouldn’t help.
She needed someone to be angry for her. She needed someone to stand up for her and fight on her behalf because she’d never had anyone do that before. Even her bloody parents had let her down.
‘You are not to feel guilty.’ The savagery of his tone made her jump and he realised he needed to calm down. ‘You are not guilty of murder, and if this case was heard in a court anywhere in the civilised world, you would—at the very worst—be charged with manslaughter, but in any trial you’d be found innocent on the grounds of self-defence.’
‘But we’re not in the civilised world, Gabriel. If the ambassador has recognised me, the customs officers may have recognised my name on my passport too. It could be just a matter of time before the president finds out I’m here.’
He averted his eyes, but not before she read the truth in his expression.
‘Oh my God!’ Her hands flew to her cheeks. ‘Mawandi knows, doesn’t he?’
He couldn’t lie to her. ‘I identified you on the passenger manifest as Duchess Dunmorton, but your passport still identified you as India Hamilton. The customs officer must’ve alerted the president.’
Her shoulders slumped and bent forward and hugged her knees. ‘Can the embassy keep me safe?’
‘The charge is serious, India. Your presence places them in an untenable position, because you’re neither a French citizen nor a citizen of Santaliana.’
‘They... they have to hand me over?’ Her lower lip wobbled. ‘I’m a British citizen. Don’t they have some arrangement with England?’
‘The ambassador isn’t aware of the circumstances,’ he told her calmly. ‘I need to go and explain to him exactly what you’ve told me.’ She hung her head and he rushed to assure her, ‘You have no reason to be ashamed, sweetheart. The bastard was raping you, for God’s sake. For all you know, he intended to murder you afterwards. You fought against his violation and for your life.’ But even as he gave her the reassurance, he wasn’t sure how the French Ambassador would view the case and how much support he could expect.
Damn it! There had to be a way out of this mess.
If there was, he’d find it.
As he looked down at the strain in her beautiful, tearstained face, Gabe realised that he’d do whatever it took to protect India. The truth hit him hard. He’d give his life to protect her, because she was more important to him than anything else in the world. Somehow, he’d done something he’d sworn never to do. He’d fallen in love with her.