A Love That Never Tires (Linley & Patrick Book 1)

by Jeleyne, Allyson

  ***

  Rain dripped off the end of Linley’s hat, traveled down the front of her rain slicker and landed in the mud around her boots. The Talbot-Martin team walked all day in the direction Linley’s father thought would lead them to a place he vaguely remembered someone telling him about ten or fifteen years before. Now they stood at the edge of a river, unsure how to cross. It swelled over the banks from the rain, blurring the boundaries of land and water as it swept away anything in its path. Just across lay the lush green mountains they would still have to climb, and beyond that, the faintest misty gray of the Himalayas.

  “How do you propose we get across?” Schoville asked, taking a step back as the river lapped the embankment where he stood.

  Sir Bedford shook his head. “It’s too high to cross here. And the water is moving too fast.” He looked from one end of the river to the other, seeing only murky brown water rushing through the little tree-lined valley. “We should follow the bank until it narrows.”

  “If it narrows at all,” Reginald said. “These look more like flood waters to me.”

  Linley studied the river. With the monsoon beating down on them, she knew the river was flooded. And with rains sweeping across the whole of India, it would no doubt continue to flood. They either needed to turn back or find another route. “Who has the map?”

  Archie stepped forward and pulled the map from under his rain slicker. He unfolded its tattered edges and held it out for her.

  Linley traced the path of the water with her finger across the paper. “If we head downstream, it will take us miles out of our way…”

  “Then we should head upstream,” her father said.

  “I don’t know. The river looks even wider there.”

  Patrick, who stood a very safe distance away from the water, finally spoke. “It doesn’t matter which way we go, this entire valley will be flooded in a day or two.”

  “He’s right,” Linley said. “It isn’t safe here.”

  Sir Bedford took the map from Archie’s hands and folded it up. “Then we’ll follow the river upstream.”

  They walked single file alongside the river. Their feet slogged in the mud, every step dragging them down. Patrick used his long stalk of bamboo as a walking stick, jamming it into the ground and pulling himself out of the slop. Red mud caked his boots and his trousers up to his knees. The once sturdy straw Panama hat hung limp around his face, beaten into submission by the heat and the wet. He looked more like a weary Gypsy than a young marquess.

  And he felt like one, too.

  In front of him, Linley struggled in the muck. It was harder on her than the men. Her boots grew heavier and heavier as they bogged down with mud, tripping her up. She fell forward on her hands and knees, her feet slipping and sliding beneath her, refusing to gain traction against the slime.

  Patrick swooped down to help.

  He held tightly to her arm as they trudged through the mud together. He would not let her fall again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “Look there!” Archie pointed into the mist that clung to the treetops.

  Barely visible through the rain and the fog, a bamboo bridge spanned one side of the valley to the other. Suspended fifteen feet from the water’s surface, it bobbed in the wind, dipping down over the river below, swaying back and forth as the weather worn bamboo creaked and groaned.

  Sir Bedford pushed on a support rope, testing its strength. “Shall we go one by one, or cross it together?”

  Archie pushed past him and stepped onto the bridge. It was only wide enough for a single file line, but seemed sturdy enough to carry the weight of the entire team. “Let me go first,” he said. “If I cross without incident, then we will know it is safe.”

  Sir Bedford agreed, and Archie took a few tentative steps across the woven bamboo boards. They crunched beneath his feet, but showed no sign of stress. Encouraged, he walked a few more paces. When he reached the center of the bridge, he looked back at the team.

  They waited on the bank for him to cross, no one daring to speak, or even to stir. As the bridge wobbled under his weight, Archie crossed the remaining feet to the other side of the valley. Once his boots hit solid ground, the team let out one collective breath.

  “Come along, everyone!” Linley’s father said, making his way onto the bridge.

  Reginald and Schoville followed at his heels, holding onto the bamboo stalk railings with white knuckles. Linley and Patrick waited until the others were half way across before they started walking.

  The bridge protested under their added weight. It rocked a little harder with every step, swinging as the wind whistled through the latticed boards.

  “…Whenever I cross the river,” Patrick whispered. “On its bridge with wooden piers/ like the odor of brine from the ocean/ comes the thought of other years./ And I think how many thousands/ of care-encumbered men/ each bearing his burden of sorrow/ have crossed the bridge since then.”

  “Who wrote that?” Linley asked.

  “Longfellow.”

  They crossed the halfway point just as the rest of the team stepped off onto safe ground. Linley and Patrick were alone on the bridge.

  She tried not to look down at the river raging below. “I don’t like it.”

  “Nor do I,” Patrick said, one step behind her. “I don’t know why I said it.”

  Neither spoke another word until they stood with both feet on the solid earth. Patrick looked back at the bridge one last time, amazed that he made it across.

  ***

  They reached the hills by nightfall, and set up camp in the narrow, wooded dell. When supper was finished and the dishes put away, Linley heated up another pot of water on the small campfire. After nearly a week of being wet and muddy, she needed a bath. In her usual fashion, she hung her sheet of canvas as a makeshift curtain, and slipped away while the men smoked their evening cigarettes.

  Patrick watched her out of the corner of his eye. He watched her undress and toss her discarded clothing over the line. He watched her bare feet and ankles pad across the grass. And he watched, finally, as water pooled around them.

  He rose, unnoticed, and walked toward her.

  Behind the curtain, Linley ran the warm flannel over her face, behind her ears, and down her neck. She paused to let water’s heat seep into the stiff muscles of her body.

  That was when she saw the shadow, illuminated by the campfire, standing just beyond her canvas panel.

  “Who’s there?” She knew without asking who it was.

  Patrick took another step closer, and cleared his throat. “I was thinking about having a bath myself.”

  “You can bathe in the morning,” she said. “Men seem to work up a sweat just sleeping in this heat.”

  Linley dipped the cloth into the basin and squeezed water over her arms. He still stood there. She could see him. Why didn’t he say something?

  Patrick listened as the water dripped and sloshed on the other side of the sheet. He longed to reach out a hand and caress the space he believed she occupied. Her naked body lay just out of reach.

  It was almost painful.

  Linley ran her wet, soapy hands over her chest. She remembered the burn of his mouth on her breasts. The feel of his hands, large and warm, as he clutched her to him. Patrick had wanted her then—did he want her now?

  He stood there, his body silhouetted against the glow of the fire. Of course he wanted her. How could he not? It was his principles as a gentleman that stopped him from taking her. And even they were faltering.

  Patrick turned and walked away, leaving Linley to watch his shadow grow smaller until it disappeared completely. Back at the campfire, he stood with his hands in his pockets, thinking over the last few moments. Just knowing she was back there tortured his very soul. God, how he wanted her! But he would not—could not—let himself have her.

  Reginald watched him from across the fire. “I’d better not hear any commotion coming from your tent tonight.” He knew where Patrick had
been, and he knew that hungry look on the man’s face all too well.

  “Commotion?” Patrick asked, coolly.

  Reginald stood up and kicked over a camp chair. “Don’t be coy with me, Kyre,” he said, advancing on the man. “You want her so badly you practically stink with it.”

  Patrick almost smiled. Perhaps the man was right.

  “I see you slinking around here, waiting to snap her up like a snake in the grass.” Reginald stopped inches away from Patrick. “But I know all about you. Who you really are.”

  Fresh from her bath, Linley stepped from the shadows.

  “It was Lady Wolstanton I first heard your name linked to,” Reginald said.

  At the sound of the woman’s name, Patrick stiffened.

  Reginald continued, pleased to finally get a reaction from his opponent. “I’ve had her, too, you know. My brother, Harry, takes her to the theatre from time to time. Before we left London, I escorted her in his place.” He smirked at Patrick, who grew more uncomfortable with each passing minute. “She told me all about you.”

  Patrick writhed at those words. “She would never do that.”

  “No?” Reginald stepped even closer, if that was humanly possible. “How else would I know she was your first? How else would I know the way you grunted and groaned as you slapped against her—”

  Patrick shoved him as hard as he could, hoping to get enough space between them to throw a punch. Reginald came back at him with the same idea, and his fist smashed against Patrick’s nose, spattering blood all over his white shirt.

  It hurt like hell, but Patrick didn’t swing back.

  “What’s the matter, Patty?” Reginald asked, laughing. “Afraid to hit me back?”

  Patrick felt warm blood trickling down his face, and tasted its metallic tang in the back of his throat. He hated Reginald Bourne more than any man alive. But he didn’t want to start a fight that, no matter what the outcome, he knew he would never win.

  Reginald stepped up to him again and whispered, “She told me you like to be held after you finish.”

  The pain in Patrick’s eyes spoke volumes even as he said very little. Clearly, Lady Wolstanton’s betrayal hurt him.

  Linley’s mouth fell open at the revelation.

  For the first time, Reginald and Patrick, as well as her father and the others noticed her presence.

  “You are weak, and you are a coward,” Reginald said. “And now Linley finally sees you for what you really are.”

  Reginald’s first mistake was to turn his focus on Linley. He took his eyes off his opponent. This blunder gave Patrick a split second to step back and punch from the shoulder, rocking Reginald with one firm blow to the head. The man tumbled backward over a camp chair and sprawled onto his back in the mud.

  Linley ran forward and shoved Patrick as hard as she could. She pummeled his sides and his chest with her little fists. She hated him for hurting Reginald, for rising to his challenge and stooping to his level. And she hated him for Lady Wolstanton, although she was not sure why.

  From his seat by the fire, Sir Bedford sat shocked as to how the argument suddenly became a brawl. Even Linley fought now, punching and kicking, and hurling curses at a stunned Lord Kyre.

  “Enough!” her father said. “I refuse to see my team brawling like spoiled children! Everyone to their tents. Now!”

  As the guilty parties skulked to their tents, Sir Bedford lit another cigarette.

  “It is a wise father that knows his own child,” he told Schoville. “But I’m afraid I am at a loss with mine.”

  Schoville leaned back in his chair, watching the sparks from the fire flutter up into the night sky. “This Lord Kyre business has gotten out of hand. You should have never allowed it.”

  “If I never allowed it, she would want him all the more for it,” he explained. “I let him come along in hopes that the utter absurdity of their relationship would become apparent.”

  Schoville sat forward and yawned. “By no means am I telling you how to raise your own daughter, Bedford, but I think Linley could benefit from learning about man’s true nature. And unless you want a very heartbroken young woman on your hands, you should be the one to tell her.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  In the last valley before the tall, grey, snow-capped mountains began, there seemed to be no other way out but up. To climb the foothills of the Himalayas. The lush green landscape began to give over to a rough, craggy ravine. It was as if a wall had been carved out of a mountainside. Linley craned her neck back as far as she could, and all she saw was cold stone. It stretched into the sky. Climbing higher and higher until the human eye could no longer fathom the distance.

  “My goodness,” she said. “That’s one hell of a mountain!”

  Her father smiled, seeming not the least put off by the obstruction in his path. He stumbled in the rocky ground, running his fingers over the cold slab of mountain.

  At last, he found what he searched for—a narrow break in the rock face.

  It was an unassuming opening, one any passerby would dismiss with hardly a moment’s notice. But upon further inspection, it was clear this was no ordinary fissure.

  “If we cannot go over,” Sir Bedford said, grinning. “We must go under!”

  Linley and her father stepped into the mountain passage. It must have been carved hundreds of years before, but appeared safe and dry, and she was unafraid.

  The Talbot-Martin team switched on their lamps. The passage continued for miles, always seeming to stay one step ahead of the lights. Nothing but slick black rock lined the tunnel. No sound could be heard except the echo of their footfalls and the rhythm of their breathing. They were completely alone, miles deep inside the base of a mountain.

  “Extraordinary,” Patrick whispered. He had never witnessed anything like it in his life. This was isolation at it’s finest.

  Slowly, and very tiny at first, a light appeared at the other end. The Talbot-Martin team pushed on, eager to discover what lay ahead. How long had they been in that tunnel? Hours could have passed. Days. Mere seconds.

  Before them, the passage opened up to a lush valley. Everything shone green, and crisp, and fresh. A waterfall seemed to descend from the very heavens to nourish the hidden nugget of earth, which Patrick estimated was only a hundred yards wide. At the base of the waterfall, a large pool of water gathered before trickling off into no more than a brook.

  The brook disappeared beneath a mountain on the far side of the valley, probably traveling underground to meet with the river they crossed days before. This place they stumbled upon was natural—as natural as Patrick and the air he breathed—but to discover it hidden in the Himalayas gave it an otherworldly mystique.

  “Where to now, Papa?”

  “Up,” he said. Linley’s father walked among the tall bushes and trees, stopping to touch a specimen from time to time. He knew there must be a way to the top of the hidden valley, he just waited for it to make its existence known.

  “Stairs!” Reginald cried. “This way!”

  Behind the waterfall, a set of narrow steps were carved into the rock.

  “Marvelous!” Sir Bedford said, clapping his hands together. Bracing himself against the side of the mountain, he climbed the steps one by one.

  Behind him, the rest of the team followed. They made their way up the mountain, up an endless set of stairs that wound around the valley, spiraling higher and higher toward an unseen destination. They passed through clouds settled between the mountains that stood guard over the valley. At some places, the steps grew so steep they were hardly more than ladders. Vertical. Hand over hand and foot over foot as the team ascended.

  It grew dark early in the shade of the mountains. Soon, there was very little light to climb by. Their legs quivered with every step and their hands grew raw clinging to the rocks for support. Patrick did not know how Sir Bedford managed. He was half the old man’s age, and already his lungs burned from the stress of the climb, the altitude, and from general ove
rexertion.

  Not to mention half his nose had been caved in the night before.

  Patrick gritted his teeth, forcing himself to push on. It was his God-given right to defend himself against an attacker, and if Linley didn’t like it, then so be it. Obviously Reginald meant more to her than he did. She cried no tears for him that night. And the next morning, it had been Reginald she fussed over. In fact, she had not spoken a word to Patrick since he cocked back and gave old Reggie what he deserved all along.

  How dare Reginald try to use another woman to frighten Linley off! Sure, he embarrassed Patrick beyond belief, but what else had he hoped to accomplish? Exposing him for the caring, faithful man he was could certainly do no harm to a budding relationship. Yet…Patrick and Linley were no longer on speaking terms.

  In fact, she stayed as far away from him as possible. She walked beside her father at the front of the line, while Patrick kept a safe distance from the entire Talbot-Martin team. If he thought things were awkward before, it was far, far worse when everyone hated him.

  ***

  The moon hung high in the air by the time they reached a suitable place to camp. They were out of the valley, but still surrounded by mountains on every side.

  Linley unfurled her bedroll and slipped out of her boots, giving her feet a few hours rest as she crawled beneath the blankets. The night was bright and clear. There was no need for a tent, and to fall asleep under the stars was a perfect reward for her hard day’s work.

  She listened as the team fell asleep. One by one, each person’s breathing became slow and rhythmic, and in Schoville’s case, a few dozen times louder. But nothing—not even his snoring—could ruin such a beautiful night.

  Until Patrick crawled up beside her.

  “Go away,” she said.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  She shook her head. “Not until you apologize for hitting Reginald.”

  “He hit me first,” Patrick hissed, trying not to wake the others. “I was defending myself. Surely you of all people could see that!”