Not Quite a Husband Read Online Free Page B

flags, merchants from Yarkand and Srinagar traded with their counterparts from Lahore and Amritsar.
    It was the Moravian mission house, as humble as a cowshed, that had been quiet and somnolent. There a handful of brave, naïve Christian do-goodersconverted perhaps one Ladaki a year and slowly forgot their homelands.
    Bryony had not planned to stay at the mission beyond the return of the resident doctor. She also had not looked forward to returning to Delhi. When a team of German alpinists coming back from a climb had passed through Leh on their way to Rawal Pindi, she’d bought a tent from them for no reason other than that the tent, a symbol of nomadic life, had appealed to the restlessness inside her. A week later, the Braeburns stopped by the dispensary. And when they told her they’d be most glad of the company of a physician on their westward journey, she’d said yes without another thought, ready to move again, her new tent in tow.
    “But the climate of Leh didn’t suit you any better, did it? And once you had enough of Leh, you bribed the missionaries to not reveal your destination to anyone.”
    She shrugged. “Don’t you ever get tired of letters from Callista?”
    Callista had missed her calling as a novelist. Her letters, when it came to Leo, were full of cheerful fabrications, little asides on his illnesses, disappointments, and courtships that were certain to upend Bryony with concern, helplessness, and jealousy.
    When Bryony left Leh, she’d decided to do herselfa favor and sever all contact with Callista for a year. To that end, she’d scribbled enough short, uninformative letters for the good missionaries to post weekly and requested that they not give out her whereabouts to anyone—even Christian do-gooders could be tempted by the promise of five hundred pounds to keep a few harmless secrets.
    “Letters are written on paper. You could have thrown them into the fire.”
    “I did.”
    But each time she burned a letter from Callista unread, it was a fresh reminder that she still cared—and cared too much. A far worse feeling than if she never received those letters in the first place.
    He pulled out a silver flask from his coat pocket, took a swallow—Mr. Braeburn had insisted that Leo help himself to some of his special whiskey—and said nothing.
    She was uncomfortably reminded that he was here because of her ruse. A coolie cleared away their dinner plates and set down a slice of mulberry tart before her. She poked at it. “I hope you didn’t come all the way to India just because Callista asked you to find me.”
    “No, in fact, I was already in Gilgit.”
    “What were you doing in Gilgit?” She was astonished. Of all the places in the world he could bewhen Callista needed someone to find her, Gilgit, in the foothills of the Korakoram, somewhere halfway between Leh and Chitral, could not be a more convenient departing point.
    “A friend of mine organized a ballooning expedition to reconnoiter the upper slopes of the Nanga Parbat. They decided on Gilgit as their base camp. Since Charlie had been the political officer at Gilgit before he went on to greener pastures in New Delhi, my friend invited me along to expedite matters, so to speak.”
    She tried to contemplate the mind-boggling coincidence of it and gave up.
    “And how did you find me in the end?”
    “You mean how did I pry your current location out of the missionaries?”
    “No. I mean—did you show them the photograph too?”
    It would have been the biggest scandal at the drowsy mission in years—the widowed physician’s husband materializing out of nowhere. She did not care if people thought of her as cold or unapproachable, but she did not want to be remembered as deceitful.
    He rolled his eyes. “I wish I could have. The photograph arrived in Gilgit only after I’d left to look for you in Leh.”
    She frowned. “Then how did you get the missionaries to tell you where I was? They were supposed to keep it a secret.”
    He