Read Online Shadow of the Moon by M. M. Kaye - Free Book Online

thumbling! Thou shalt be a great king and have seven sons.’
    As the cold weather neared its end and once again the days began to take on an uncomfortable warmth, Sabrina moved abroad less and less. Her slight figure was heavy now and distorted by the coming child, and she had suffered considerable unnecessary discomfort from the new tightly laced, small-waisted fashions of the day, until Juanita had persuaded her to adopt the Mohammedan form of dress for wear inside her own house. Lady Emily had been deeply shocked by the news of this innovation, but with the arrival of the hot weather Sabrina found the loose light silks of the Eastern garb unbelievably comfortable after the high, close-fitting bodices and innumerable petticoats demanded by the European mode.
    The Bartons were moving to Simla once more, and Emily was anxious that Sabrina should accompany them. But Sabrina would not leave Pavos Reales, despite the fact that Marcos supported her aunt’s plan.
    â€˜It is not good for you to remain here in the heat,
querida
,’ said Marcos. ‘Already the nights grow hot, and this is only the first week of March. April is a bad month in the plains, and May is worse. Go now with your aunt to the hills and I will join you there at the end of May.
Se lo prometo
!’
    But Sabrina was obstinate. ‘Your mother did not go to the hills when her children were born, and neither did Juanita. Besides, my son will spend his childhood in this country as you did, so he must get used to such things as heat. It does not trouble you, and it is only because I was born and brought up in a cold country that I feel it. This is your home and mine, and I want my children to be born here.’ Yet in the end she had agreed to go: though not in March. Marcos had affairs that would keep him in Oudh until May, and she would remain at Pavos Reales until these were completed, and then remove to the hills with him.
    So it was arranged, and the Bartons, who had been staying at Pavos Reales on their way to the hills, bade her an affectionate if anxious farewell and left for Simla.
    It was often lonely at the Casa de los Pavos Reales during the early weeks of the hot weather, for Sabrina could no longer go riding with Marcos; and with Emily in Simla and Juanita unable to leave the Gulab Mahal, there were few visitors at the great house on the banks of the Goomti. Yet Sabrina did not find her solitude irksome. She loved the high, white-walled rooms, the beautiful portraits and carvings and tapestries that the old Conde had brought from Spain; the dark, glowing devildom of the magnificent Velasquezthat hung on one wall of the vast drawing-room, and the scent of orange blossom and water on parched ground that drifted in from the patios. She loved the sound of horses’ hooves that told her that Marcos had returned, and their walks together in the late evening along the stone-paved river terrace.
    She was very happy, with a quiet serene happiness that nothing could touch or spoil. It was as though there was a wall around her; a shining transparent wall through which she could see the outside world, but which protected her from its harshness as the glass of a greenhouse protects a rare and delicate plant from the cold east wind. She loved and was loved. She was adored, cherished and protected. The whole world, it seemed to her, was beautiful, and life stretched ahead of her like a green path bordered with flowers along which she and Marcos would wander hand in hand, gently, happily and without haste …
    Far to the north, as April drew to a close, Shah Shuja with the British Envoy, Macnaghten, riding behind him, entered Kandahar. Dost Mohammed’s brother and his men had fled before the ponderous advance of the Army of the Indus, and the population of Kandahar gave the ageing Shah Shuja a riotous welcome that deceived Macnaghten into thinking that all Afghanistan was ready to welcome the puppet Amir and to depose Dost Mohammed - a