Party in Peking

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Splendid,’ William Harland said as they set off again. ‘ How many miles do you think we have covered, Lewis?’

  ‘About six. Can you see that dark shape looming up ahead of us? That is Tongku, but I doubt very much that the gates will be open, and even if they are, I think we should give it a wide berth.’

  ‘To do so will put extra miles on our journey,’ Sir William said with a slight frown.

  ‘Better that than finding ourselves trapped with no means of escape if the Boxers attack,’ Lewis said dryly.

  Sir William glanced at him sharply. ‘You think it likely then? At night?’

  ‘Anything is likely,’ Lewis said uncompromisingly. ‘Our best bet lies in reaching Peking in the shortest possible time. If Tongku has opened its gates to the refugees, it will be so packed it will be virtually impossible to move in it, and there’s a great risk that we might become irrevocably separated.’

  Sir William could well imagine what the overcrowded, fetid, sweltering streets of the village would be like and he nodded in agreement. There wouldn’t be only refugees crowding the narrow, dust-blown streets seeking shelter; there would be pickpockets and thieves taking advantage of the crush.

  They could smell Tongku well before they could see it; Lewis halted, catching the reins of both the pony and his horse. ‘This is where we make a detour, I think,’ he said.

  Straining her eyes in the darkness, Olivia could make out a mass of seething humanity encamped outside Tongku’s walls.

  ‘Shouldn’t we rest also?’ Letitia Harland asked waveringly.

  Lewis shook his head. ‘They are not resting, Lady Harland. They’re simply too exhausted to continue. You’ll have to remember that a lot of the missionaries and the converts have travelled from as far away as Shansi. All those who have the strength will be continuing on to Peking, not waiting for Tongku to open its gates at dawn.’

  Sir William regarded the not very substantial walls surrounding the village. ‘They won’t be much protection if the Boxers should attack.’

  ‘But why should they attack Tongku?’ his wife asked bewilderedly. ‘There isn’t a mission or a hospital there.’

  ‘True enough,’ Lewis said, leading the way into a wilderness of scrub that surrounded the village. ‘But it is on the direct route to Peking, and the Boxers will hardly avoid it. They may even find recruits among the local peasantry. Whether they do or not, they most certainly will not leave alive any Europeans taking shelter there.’

  Letitia Harland gave a little moan and her husband patted her hand reassuringly. Olivia, gazing round at the all-enveloping darkness, said with a catch in her voice, ‘I think there is a fire a little way to the west.’

  The clamour of carts and the wailing of the many tired and hungry children outside Tongku’s walls made it nearly impossible to hear anything out of the ordinary, but as they looked to the west, they all saw the unmistakable rose-red hue of flames staining the night sky.

  ‘How far away do you think it is?’ Sir William asked Lewis, his face strained.

  ‘Three miles, perhaps four.’

  ‘Then they are right behind us!’ Letitia Harland sobbed in alarm.

  Unwillingly, Olivia allowed her eyes to slide across to Lewis Sinclair. His lean, dark face revealed very little. His eyes had narrowed and she found something strangely reassuring about the firmness of his jaw, the strong, finely chiselled lines of his mouth.

  ‘There’s a railway line to the west,’ he said. ‘I imagine that is what we can see burning. With a little luck it will keep them occupied for the next few hours.’

  ‘We must go faster,’ William Harland said, beads of perspiration streaming down his face.

  Lewis nodded and said to Olivia, ‘ Will you be able to manage?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied coldly.

  He seemed about to say something more, and then thought better of it merely nodding.

  They continued at an exhaustive pace and Olivia was uncomfortably aware of his eyes resting on her with disquieting frequency. She felt a surge of anger. No doubt he wanted her to say that she could not manage. That she required his arm about her waist. Even, perhaps, like Cheng-yu, that she required to be carried! Sparks flared in her eyes. She would drop with fatigue before she would give him the slightest excuse for manhandling her again!

  ‘Be careful,’ he said suddenly, his rich dark voice rasping across her nerve-ends. ‘ There is a deep hole in the road ahead of you.’

  ‘I can see it perfectly,’ she lied, narrowly missing falling full length into it. His hand shot out to save her, and she snatched it away from her. ‘That was not necessary,’ she said furiously as Lady Glencarty and Sister Angelique trotted close by them.

  ‘Perhaps not, but it saved you twisting your ankle and being left behind,’ he said, a dangerous edge to his voice.

  She glared at him, rubbing her wrist where his hand had circled it.

  ‘I have no intention of doing anything so foolish,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster, painfully aware that, because of him, her hair was falling in wild disarray about her shoulders and that she had not even the respectablity of a skirt.

  ‘Good,’ he said tersely, his mouth a hard line, the skin taut across his cheekbones.

  She flashed him a glance of withering contempt and spun on her heel, her back rigid, her head held high. His whole manner bordered on insolence. She could not even begin to imagine why Sister Angelique should consider him a man of honour. As for him being a man of tolerance and patience! She wanted to laugh, but her throat was painfully tight. Lewis Sinclair possessed neither virtue. He was brusque to the point of rudeness; arrogantly overbearing, and the most objectionable man she had ever had the misfortune to meet. He was also the most disturbing. It was impossible to ignore his presence; to pretend that he did not exist. He was behind her now, talking to her uncle. She closed her eyes, blinking back weary tears, longing for Phillippe.

  From the direction of the distant railway station there came the unmistakable sound of rifle fire. Noise broke out among the peasants surrounding them. Children were urged on faster, carts rattled past with little regard for those in their path. A young Chinese girl gasped in exhaustion, swaying against Olivia, a baby in her arms. She muttered a half-audible apology and instinctively Olivia reached out, taking the baby from her grasp.

  ‘Let me,’ she said, hoisting the baby up against her shoulder.

  ‘Thank you.’ The words were in English, the gratitude in the lustrous dark eyes, intense.

  ‘Where have you come from?’ Olivia asked, slowing her pace fractionally to match that of her companion.

  ‘Lupao. The Boxers attacked the village yesterday afternoon. They were seeking out all the missionaries and Christians. The priest at Lupao refused to leave, but he told me to make for Peking. He said that in Peking we would be safe.’

  The baby was heavy, but Olivia had no intention of handing him back. Lupao was eighteen miles away. Her own tiredness could be nothing compared to that of the girl at her side.

  ‘My name is Olivia,’ she said, aware that Lady Glencarty and her aunt and uncle were already several yards ahead of them.

  ‘And mine is Lan Kuei,’ the girl said with a smile that illuminated her tired face.

  ‘Olivia! Hurry!’ her uncle called out as a surge of peasants hurried into the space that had distanced them.

  Lewis Sinclair turned his head, saw the child in her arms, the girl at her side, and slowed his pace. Olivia was aware of a grudging feeling of gratitude. She had no desire to be left behind but she knew that now she had befriended Lan Kuei, she could not leave her.

  Lan Kuei eyed Lewis’s tall, broad figure and Cheng-yu sleeping snugly on his back. ‘ Your husband is very kind,’ she said shyly.

  Olivia gasped, the blood surging into her face. ‘Doctor Sinclair is not my husband,’ she said with such heat that Lan Kuei was overcome with confusion. ‘He is… He is not even a friend!’

  Her words carried clearly. S
he saw Lewis Sinclair’s shoulders stiffen and was uncaring. It was unbearable that anyone should imagine that they were married. He was the last man on earth she would even consider as a husband.

  ‘My fiancé is in Peking,’ she said, her voice throbbing with suppressed emotion. ‘ We were to be married in September, but now that circumstances have changed, I hope we shall be able to be married much sooner.’

  ‘I hope that you will be very happy,’ Lan Kuei said timidly, aware that she had inadvertently angered her new-found friend.

  ‘Thank you,’ Olivia said stiffly, wishing that her pulse would return to normal and that she did not feel so disturbingly disconcerted. For the first time she wondered if she really would be able to marry Phillippe sooner than they had planned. Her aunt would be disapproving if she suggested it, but surely Phillippe would be pleased? She tried to imagine his reaction, but just as his face began to take shape in her mind, Lewis Sinclair shattered the image by saying, ‘The sky is lightening in the east. It will be dawn in another hour.’

  ‘The Boxers always attack at dawn,’ Sister Angelique said quietly. ‘If Peking is their goal, they will be riding south as soon as the sun rises.’

  Olivia felt her throat tighten. If the Boxers attacked, she might never see Phillippe again. Involuntarily she glanced across at Lewis. Sister Angelique and her aunt and Lan Kuei were looking at him with childlike trust, and even Lady Glencarty and her uncle were regarding him with quiet confidence.

  She felt suddenly deeply ashamed of herself. If he had wanted to he could have been many miles away; instead he was risking his life by shepherding them across the plains to Peking, and she had declared that he was not even a friend. She hugged the baby tighter, knowing that he had overheard her, and that she had no alternative but to apologize.

  She bit her lip. It was really most unfair. He should have been apologizing to her. But then, perhaps a renegade like Lewis Sinclair thought nothing of taking liberties with any female who happened his way. The sky was pearling to grey. She looked covertly across at him. The commanding profile and strong, assertive jawline did not look like those of a womanizer. She experienced a moment’s doubt and then, remembering his wife, banished it. He was not a man to be trusted. But neither, in view of his courage, was he a man to be maligned. Taking a deep breath, she stepped purposefully towards him.

  Chapter Four

  He looked down at her his eyes inscrutable in the darkness, his eyebrows slightly raised in silent query.

  ‘I wanted to apologize to you,’ Olivia said, forcing her voice to be steady. ‘Lan Kuei took me by surprise a moment ago and I answered her too hastily. When I said that you were not even a friend, I did not mean… I was trying to explain that we had not known each other long… That…’ She floundered helplessly, disconcerted by his nearness.

  ‘I understand,’ he said, putting an end to her embarrassment with a kindness she was grateful for.

  Looking up at him, she forgot that he was a libertine and a womanizer, and was aware only that he exuded a sensation of safety. For a second, she thought that he was going to speak to her further and of something personal, but he merely checked himself, saying, ‘The sun will be up within the hour.’

  ‘Yes.’ She no longer wanted to distance herself from him. Her anger and fury at his earlier actions were already ebbing. She had misunderstood them. She wanted to tell him so, but the words would not come. The very thought of her reaction to his embrace made her cheeks burn scarlet. He must never know. He would think her lewd and shameless. It had not been an embrace of tenderness or passion as she had thought. He had simply held her against him in concern until she had recovered her breath and he had ascertained that she was not seriously hurt. In just such a way would he have held her aunt or Lady Glencarty. That his lips had pressed against her hair had been an accident and nothing more.

  He gave her a down-slanting smile and regret rushed through her. In a moment of stark and painful clarity she knew that she would have liked his embrace to have been occasioned by passion for her. She turned away from him quickly, confused by shame and bewilderment.

  She was betrothed to Phillippe and she had fallen in love with Lewis Sinclair. Lewis Sinclair, a man who was married and whose existence, forty-eight hours ago, she had been unaware of. She began to walk once again by Lan Kuei’s side.

  How had it happened? How could she, Olivia Harland, intelligent and levelheaded, have allowed herself to fall so completely under the spell of a man she scarcely knew?

  She pressed a hand to her throbbing brow and her aunt, seeing the action, asked anxiously, ‘Are you all right, Olivia?’

  Olivia summoned up a reassuring smile. ‘ Yes, Aunt Letitia. Please don’t worry about me. We shall be in Peking before very long.’

  Peking. Her head ached. In Peking she would be reunited with Phillippe. Could she still marry him? Her feelings towards him had not changed. She still thought him the most handsome, charming man she had ever met. But he did not arouse in her the fevered longings that Lewis Sinclair’s presence aroused.

  The sun rose, bathing the plain in golden light. In the far distance the massive crenellated walls of Peking shimmered in the early morning heat. Lady Glencarty straightened her shoulders and brushed untidy wisps of steel-grey hair into a measure of neatness. Letitia Harland stifled a sob of relief and vowed that she would never, ever again leave the safety of the legation district. Sir William closed his mind to the pain in his calf and thigh muscles and kept walking stoically on. There was still at least a two-hour trek ahead of them; a two-hour trek in which the Boxers could attack at any moment. Olivia held Lan Kuei’s baby tighter against her chest, her mind in too much of a turmoil to be overcome with relief at the sight of Peking.

  In Peking, Lewis Sinclair would take his leave of them. She would never see him again. Perhaps then, free of his disturbing presence, she would be able to resume her relationship with Phillippe with equanimity. A cold chill seemed to settle on her, despite her fatigue. Not seeing him would not prevent her from thinking about him. Wondering where he was and what he was doing. She could not marry one man and continue to think of another.

  The baby was heavy and she moved it from her right arm to her left. Her life which, a few hours ago, had seemed so uncomplicated, now seemed fraught with difficulties. She wished that there was someone that she could talk to, but the truth of her feelings would shock her aunt indescribably. She felt a surge of longing for her dead mother. Perhaps she would have been able to give her guidance. Certainly no one else could. The problems awaiting her in Peking could be solved by no one but herself.

  There was a cry of alarm from behind them and Olivia spun round, half-expecting to see red-sashed figures bearing down on them. Instead, a young woman, dusty and dishevelled, was standing beside an old man who had collapsed and was lying insensible on the ground. Instinctively Olivia began to run back towards them, the baby so heavy that she thought she would faint with weariness.

  The peasants hurrying past on either side ignored the old man and his distraught companion. As she knelt at his side, Olivia saw the familiar bleached wood of the gnarled birch staff and recognized the old Chinese as the man Lewis had first spoken to when they had joined the highway south.

  Lewis was there, even before she was. As the girl wailed and wrung her hands, they knelt in the dust at either side of the inert body. Lewis lifted a wrinkled eyelid, pressed his ear to the old man’s chest, and then said tersely, ‘There’s a leather case in my saddle-bag. Bring it quickly.’

  She rose obediently to her feet, hoisting the baby higher on her shoulder, swaying with tiredness.

  ‘Give the baby to Lan Kuei for a while,’ he said, his eyes dark with concern, but whether for her or the old man she had no way of knowing. ‘She is more rested than you are now.’

  She did as he told her, ignoring the panic-stricken comments of her aunt that Doctor Sinclair was once more unnecessarily delaying them.

  As she ran back to him she saw that he w
as supporting the old man against his knee. She felt her throat tighten. No one else in the throng milling around them, not his fellow countrymen nor her aunt or Lady Glencarty, cared whether the old man lived or died. Only Lewis Sinclair cared. Sister Angelique had said that he was a man of integrity and honour, and watching him flip open the leather case and take a phial from it, Olivia understood only too well what she had meant. The drawing-rooms of public society had been closed to him because he had married the Chinese girl, yet Olivia knew that there were many men socially acceptable, who had Chinese mistresses tucked away in little-visited parts of the city. It was they, she thought fiercely, who should be ostracized, not Lewis Sinclair.

  As she knelt beside him, he broke the phial against the old man’s slack, parted lips.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘Digitals. A heart stimulant.’

  ‘Will it save him?’

  Lewis shook his head. ‘No,’ he said as the old man’s eyes fluttered feebly open, ‘but it may enable him to reach Peking and die with a measure of decency. If he dies here, his body will simply be food for carrion. The manner of death is important to the Chinese.’ He began to talk again to the still weeping girl and Olivia could tell that he was giving her instructions for the care of her aged relative.

  At last he turned to Olivia. ‘ He needs shade. The sun will be high within an hour and he can’t possibly continue the journey in his present condition.’

  ‘But the horse? The pony? Couldn’t we use one of those?’ Olivia asked, distressed.

  He shook his head. ‘Peking may be in sight, but it is still a good two hours away and neither Sister Angelique or your aunt would be able to manage the walk in the heat of morning. He bent down, scooping the frail figure up in his arms. ‘There’s a tree a little to the right. I’ll leave him and his granddaughter in its shade with our remaining water.’

  ‘But he’s going to die out here for lack of a pony!’ Olivia cried, stumbling to her feet and following him. ‘We can see Peking! Surely help will be on its way. There will be horses and ponies soon, lots of them. Let me stay with him until they arrive.’