‘You knew that Joe was wounded and you didn’t tell me.’ Annie’s voice rose to a cry of anguish.

‘We hoped that Harry could bring your brother home as quickly as possible and we didn’t want to worry you. Now it seems that they are both in trouble.’ Kate folded the letter and tucked it into her skirt pocket. ‘I’m going to India. I won’t leave them both to die in a military hospital. I’ll bring them home.’

‘If you go, I’m coming with you. I won’t be a hindrance, Kate. I’ll do everything I can to help.’

Kate thought quickly. ‘All right, we’ll both go. It would be difficult for me to travel on my own, but the two of us together will be fine. I’m going to the village shop to get Mr Ruggles to send a telegram to Perry. We need two tickets to Bombay on the first ship available.’

Kate had wanted to leave immediately, but it was almost a week before she and Annie were able to obtain tickets for the ship that would take them to India. Annie had never been on a vessel of any kind, and she confessed to being nervous but excited. Perry had been reluctant to let her go, but Lady Lyndon had applauded Annie’s courage, and she thanked Kate wholeheartedly for undertaking the journey to bring Harry and Joseph home. Arabella had been against the voyage, but Giles had been encouraging, and that had calmed the situation. Kate could have kissed him, but she managed to control herself. If Giles Pomeroy-Smith was to be her stepfather she was more than happy. He had brought the smiles back to her mother’s face and she was like a different person. The old, sharp-tongued Arabella was gone, leaving someone much more amenable and kind, which made life more pleasant for everyone.

The East Indiaman was a three-masted Blackwall frigate and the passengers were mostly soldiers returning to duty, although none of them seemed to know if they would still be employed by the East India Company, or whether they had been transferred to a regiment of the British Army. The uprising had caused great confusion as well as tragedy, but the officers who shared the saloon with the small number of civilian passengers seemed optimistic. The other travellers included a missionary and his wife; a doctor, who drank too much at dinner each evening, and two spinster school teachers who were returning to Bombay after completing their home leave. The officers kept mainly to themselves, although they were affable and courteous in company, but the sound of their revelry late at night after the civilian passengers had retired to bed could be heard above the sound of the wind in the sails and the beating of the waves against the hull.