Alan Wilson had assumed delivering a file to the Supreme Allied Commander for Southeast Asia was a simple errand. A matter of an hour at most.He should have known better.
The Supreme Commander in question was Louis Mountbatten — Earl, Admiral, royal cousin, and, more importantly, a man to whom rules applied only when convenient. It was hardly surprising, then, that Mountbatten was not in his New Delhi headquarters.
If it had been anyone else, Alan might have raised an eyebrow at the absence. But this was Mountbatten. With his family tree tangled through every European royal house from Buckingham to Berlin, he could afford to treat duty as a part-time hobby.
And in any case, everyone in the Raj knew the truth — the victory at Imphal owed more to Japanese blunders and Indian grit than to anything planned in the Commander's drawing room.
Out of caution, Alan took a car straight to Mountbatten's residence. Even that proved an exercise in ceremony: checkpoints, armed sentries, clipped English accents checking his credentials. He submitted to it all with the patience of a man who had seen bureaucracies grind far greater men into dust.
The gates finally gave way to reveal a perfect slice of Surrey transplanted to Delhi — a pristine white-fenced villa with a steep red-gabled roof, manicured lawns trimmed to military precision.All the more obscene, Alan thought, when only a mile away the Old City streets still reeked of open drains and desperation.
He rapped lightly on the polished front door. Silence. A second knock, and he began to imagine the long drive back to Hyderabad with nothing to show for it.
The door opened.
A girl stood there — seventeen, perhaps eighteen, with wary blue eyes and the kind of posture that came from years of governesses drilling deportment."Who are you? Why are you here? Do you know whose house this is?" she demanded in quick succession.
Alan blinked, the file still in his left hand, his right frozen mid-knock. Then, with a faint narrowing of the eyes, he said mildly, "Does no one teach young ladies to greet visitors with courtesy anymore? I'm here on official business — to deliver a confidential file to the Commander himself. Kindly fetch a servant, or step aside."
The steel in his voice — the Hyderabad Resident speaking — made her falter."And do you know who I am?" she shot back.
"A clearly underage young woman," Alan said dryly, moving her gently aside to glance into the hallway. "Now, which room is Mountbatten in?"
She puffed out her cheeks. "My father isn't home. And I'm not a servant. I'm Pamela Mountbatten."
It took a beat for the name to register. Mountbatten's daughter. Future Lady Something-or-other. A direct link to the House of Windsor.And here I am, shoving her out of the way, Alan thought. Brilliant career move, Wilson.
He kept his expression bland. "A shame. The file comes from the Viceroy's own office. Is your mother in?"
Pamela shook her head. "No. I'm the only one here."
Alan's mind calculated three things at once:
This was not the sort of person one annoyed without consequences.
The fewer details she repeated to her father, the better.
Any delay in handing over the file could look… suspicious.
"Even Delhi can be dangerous," he said in a tone of avuncular concern. "This is still wartime. You may think the fighting is far away, but violence can spill into the capital. Even here in the Raj, Congress and Muslim League supporters occasionally try to kill one another in the streets."
That made her pause, uncertainty flickering in her eyes. He pressed the advantage.
"At your age, Miss Mountbatten, you see only the surface. Many of those smiling visitors who court your parents do so for calculated gain. The moment our authority falters, they'll turn on us without hesitation. It's why one must never give one's trust lightly — not even to a Brahmin with perfect manners."
She tilted her head, studying him. "You don't look old enough to be a senior civil servant."
Alan smiled faintly. "I began university in '39, before you'd even finished your debutante lessons."
He had, of course, omitted his actual age. Let her make her own assumptions.
Pamela, mollified by the hint of shared youth, stepped aside. "You can wait. I'll see that my father gets your file."
Alan took a seat in the immaculate drawing room, his mind already elsewhere. This was not about her — not about charm, or impropriety. It was about ensuring the file reached Mountbatten without vanishing into some aide's desk drawer.
Still, he thought as he glanced at the girl again, there were advantages to being underestimated.