My Beautiful Enemy

by Thomas, Sherry

  In any case, she had not come to make a home for herself in England. Her task was to retrieve a pair of small jade tablets and deliver them to Da-ren, Manchu prince of the first rank, uncle to the Ch’ing emperor, and her stepfather.

  The jade tablets, three in all, were said to contain clues to the location of a legendary treasure. Da-ren was in possession of one of the tablets, but the other two had been taken out of China following the First Opium War.

  “There they are,” cried Mrs. Chase. “Annabel and the Atwood boys.”

  It was impossible to know Mrs. Chase for more than five minutes—and Catherine had known her five weeks, ever since Bombay—without hearing about her beautiful daughter Miss Chase, engaged to the most superior Captain Atwood.

  Such boastfulness was alien to Catherine, both in its delivery—did Mrs. Chase not fear that her wanton pride would invoke the ill will of Fate?—and in its very existence.

  Parental pride in a mere girl was something Catherine had never experienced firsthand.

  At her birth, there had been a tub of water on hand—to drown her, in case she turned out to be a girl. In the end, neither her mother nor her amah had been able to go through with it, and she’d lived, the illegitimate daughter of a Chinese courtesan and an English adventurer who had died before she was born.

  She’d been a burden to her mother, a source of anxiety and, sometimes, anguish. She’d never heard a word of praise from her amah, the woman responsible for her secret training in the martial arts. And Da-ren, the true father figure in her life, the man who’d brought her mother to Peking and given the latter a life of security and luxury, Catherine had no idea what he thought of her.

  And that was why she was in England, wasn’t it, yet another attempt to win his approval?

  Someday, she used to think, someday he would invite her to take a seat in his presence, and she would know for certain that she wasn’t simply an obligation her mother had left him with. But that someday kept receding and he was no longer a young man. She tried not to imagine the very great likelihood that on his deathbed he would glance at her and sigh with a mixture of exasperation and disappointment.

  On the rail platform, a handsomely attired trio advanced, a young woman in a violet mantle flanked by a pair of tall men in long, black overcoats. Catherine’s attention was drawn to the man on the young woman’s left. He had an interesting walk. To the undisciplined eye, his gait would seem as natural as those of his companions. But Catherine had spent her entire life in the study of muscular movements, and she had no doubt that he was concealing an infirmity in his left leg—the strain in his back and arms all part of a mindful effort to not favor that particular limb.

  He spoke to the young woman. A strange curiosity made Catherine listen, her ears filtering away the rumble of the engines, the drumming of the rain on the rafters, the clamor of the crowd.

  “. . . you must not believe everything Marland says, Annabel,” he said. His head was turned toward the others, the brim of his hat and the high collar of his greatcoat obscuring much of his profile. “My stay on the Subcontinent was entirely uneventful. The most excitement I had was in trying to keep a friend out of trouble when he fell in love with a superior’s wife.”

  She shivered. The timbre of that quiet voice was like the caress of a ghost. No, she was imagining things. He was dead. A pile of bones in the Takla Makan Desert, bleached and picked clean.

  The other man, who spoke with a slight American accent, was adamant. “Then explain why your letters came only in spurts. Where were you all those months when we hadn’t the least news of you?”

  Miss Chase, however, was more interested in the love triangle. “Oh, how tragic. Whatever happened to your friend? Was he heartbroken?”

  “Of course he was heartbroken,” said the man who refused to limp. “A man always convinces himself that there is something special about his affections when he fancies the wrong woman.”

  Catherine shivered again. An Englishman who’d spent time in India, whose brother suspected that he’d been further afield than Darjeeling, and who had a lingering injury to his left leg—no, it couldn’t be. She had to have been a more capable killer than that.

  “You wouldn’t be speaking from experience, would you, Leighton?” said Miss Chase, a note of flirtation in her voice.

  “Only in the sense that every woman before you was a wrong woman,” answered the man who must be her fiancé, the most superior Captain Atwood.

  A shrill whistle blew. Catherine lost the conversation. Mrs. Reynolds reminded her that she was to entirely comply with Mrs. Reynolds’s desire to put her up at Brown’s Hotel. Catherine suspected that Mrs. Reynolds, out of gratitude, planned to find Catherine a respectable husband. A tall task: Catherine had never come across a man willing to marry a woman capable of killing him with her bare hands—and easily, too.

  Except him.

  Until he changed his mind, that was.

  The welcome party was upon them. Greetings erupted, along with eager embraces. Miss Chase’s fiancé stood slightly apart, a cool presence at the periphery of this sphere of familial warmth.

  His brother, golden and gregarious, should be more noticeable. Was more noticeable. But Captain Atwood was the man Catherine would immediately single out from a horde of a hundred for the danger he presented.

  Latent danger. The danger of a man who knew how to handle himself. Who, like a predator of the jungle, was perfectly aware of his surroundings.

  Her heart beat fast: This was how she had first noticed her lover, by his aura of control and perceptiveness.

  She expelled a breath and, at last, looked directly at him.

  A tall, dark, handsome man—remarkably handsome, one might say. Yet there was something extraordinarily understated about his person, something meant to deflect attention from himself, so that he could pass through the crowd like a shadow, little noticed except by those who had trained for years to be alert to just such hidden peril.

  Catherine had never seen this man before.

  Of course. What could she have been thinking? That not only would the lover who had betrayed her, and whom she had punished in turn, be miraculously alive after all these years, but that her friendship with Mrs. Reynolds, largely a product of chance, would lead her to him, on the other side of the world from where they had said their farewells?

  No, such hopes were only for moments of weakness, moments of desperation, moments when she would rather lie to herself than submit to the bleakness of reality.

  Now that the initial hugs and handshakes were out of the way, Mrs. Chase fussed over Captain Atwood. Mrs. Reynolds spoke to him eagerly. Miss Chase had her gloved hand on his arm. Even his brother tapped him on the shoulder, wanting a quick answer to some question.

  Yet Catherine had the feeling that it was she, the stranger, who commanded the bulk of his attention—he was as keenly aware of her as she was of him, though he had not even looked in her direction.

  But now he turned partly toward her—and she gazed into the green eyes from her nightmares.

  If shock were a physical force like typhoons or earthquakes, Waterloo station would be nothing but rubble and broken glass. When remorse had come, impaling her soul, she’d gone looking for him, barely sleeping and eating, until she’d come across his horse for sale in Kashgar.

  It had been found wandering on the caravan route, without a rider. She had collapsed to the ground, overcome by the absolute irreversibility of her action.

  But he wasn’t dead. He was alive, staring at her with the same shock, a shock that was slowly giving way to anger.

  Somebody was saying something to her. “. . . Mr. Atwood. Mr. Atwood, Miss Blade. This is Miss Blade’s very first trip to England. She has lived her entire life in the Far East. Mr. Atwood is on his grand tour after finishing his studies at Harvard University.”

  “Please tell me that I did not overlook your society while I was in Hong Kong, Miss Blade. I would be devastated,” said Marland Atwood, with an
eagerness to please that seemed to arise not from a need to be noticed but from an innate happiness.

  She made herself smile. “No need for premature devastation, Mr. Atwood. I rarely ventured that far south. Most of my life has been spent in the north of China.”

  “And may I present Captain Atwood?” Mrs. Reynolds went on with the introductions. “Captain Atwood, Miss Blade.”

  Leighton Atwood bowed. Leighton Atwood—a real name, after all these years. There was no more of either shock or anger in his eyes, eyes as cool as water under ice. “Welcome to England, Miss Blade.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” Words creaked past her dry throat.

  Then she was being introduced to Annabel Chase. Miss Chase was young and very, very pretty. Wide eyes, a sweet nubbin of a nose, soft pink cheeks, with a head full of shiny golden curls and a palm as pliant as a newborn chick.

  “Welcome to England, Miss Blade. I do hope you will like it here,” Miss Chase said warmly. Then she laughed in good-natured mirth. “Though at this time of the year I always long for Italy myself.”

  Something gnawed at the periphery of Catherine’s heart. After a disoriented moment she recognized it as jealousy. Miss Chase was not only beautiful, but wholesome and adorable.

  What had Leighton Atwood said to her? Every woman before you was a wrong woman.

  Of course. A woman such as Catherine was always a wrong woman, anywhere in the world.

  “Thank you,” she said. “It has been a remarkable experience already, my first day in England.”

  Catherine could not stop looking at her erstwhile lover.

  She glanced out of the corner of her eyes, or from below the sweep of her lashes. She pretended to examine the interior of the private dining room at Brown’s Hotel: the crimson-and-saffron wallpaper, the moss-green curtains, the large painting above the fireplace—two young women in white stolas frolicking against an dizzyingly blue sea that reminded her of Lake Kanas in the Altai Mountains—and then she would dip her gaze and let it skim over him.

  Without the thick beard that had obscured the lower half of his face, he looked quite different. Not to mention, his black hair was cut short, leaving no hint of the curls through which she’d run her hands. The lobes of his ears still showed indentations of piercings, but the gold hoops he’d worn were long gone. And the deep tan that had fooled her so completely as to his origins had disappeared, too: Compared to the milk-white ladies at the table, he would still be considered bronzed, but to her he appeared pale. Pallid, almost.

  He did not return her scrutiny, except once, when his brother seated himself next to her. He had glanced at her then, a hard, swift stare that made her feel as if someone had pushed her head underwater.

  “Tell us about your life in China, Miss Blade,” said Marland Atwood. “And what finally brought you home to England?”

  “My mother died when I was very young.” At least this part was true. Her next few sentences would be well-rehearsed lies. “I lived with my father at various localities in China, until he passed away several years ago. I suppose some would call him idiosyncratic—he did not seek the company of other English expatriates and rarely spoke of his life before China.”

  Leighton Atwood did not roll his eyes, but the twist of his lips was eloquent enough.

  She made herself continue. “Sometimes I, too, wonder why I didn’t venture out of China sooner—I’d always wished to see England, and in China I will always remain a foreigner. But the familiar does have a powerful hold. And part of me was afraid that perhaps in England, too, I would always be a foreigner.”

  There was the faintest movement to his left brow. She could not interpret whether it expressed further scorn or something else.

  “But that is nonsense!” exclaimed Marland Atwood. “You are home now. And we shall all of us endeavor to make you feel at home, too.”

  She smiled at her former lover’s brother. “Thank you, Mr. Atwood.”

  “I quite agree with Mr. Atwood,” declared Miss Chase. “I think it’s marvelous that you have come. You must not hesitate to let me know if there is anything I can do to help you become better settled.”

  The girl was so fresh, so unsullied, a lovely, innocent Snow White—with Catherine very close to becoming the fading, malicious Queen. When she smiled this time, her face felt as if it were made of stone. “Thank you, Miss Chase. You are too kind.”

  She glanced at Leighton Atwood. He appeared so . . . very English, so very proper and buttoned up. She could not imagine this man riding across the length and breadth of Chinese Turkestan in a turban and a flowing robe, sleeping under the stars, and hunting her suppers with a slingshot.

  “Mrs. Reynolds, I understand that you and Miss Blade”—did she detect a slight hesitation, the space of a heartbeat, before he said her name?—“met in Bombay?”

  “That is correct,” said Mrs. Reynolds. “We were introduced by Dr. Rigby, an old family friend.”

  “Oh, I remember him—such a dear old man,” said Miss Chase. “How did the two of you meet, Miss Blade?”

  Catherine supposed there was nothing for it, since Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Chase both already knew. “In Shanghai. Outside the ticket agent’s at Mortimer hong. I found Dr. Rigby’s wallet on the pavement.”

  Miss Chase leaned back an inch. Mrs. Chase wore a look of sly satisfaction. Now it was out in the open: Catherine had not been introduced to Dr. Rigby by a known third party; therefore, what everyone knew of her was only what she chose to tell them. Leighton Atwood looked meaningfully at his brother.

  “It sounds like a wonderful coincidence,” Marland Atwood said in oblivious cheerfulness.

  “It was a stroke of luck for the rest of us, too,” said Mrs. Reynolds firmly. “Miss Blade kept us alive when we were set upon at sea.”

  “Set upon?” exclaimed Miss Chase. “Surely not by pirates?”

  “Only the most awful Chinaman,” answered Mrs. Chase. “Oh, darling, forgive us for not telling you sooner. It was a terrible ordeal. We thought we’d spare you the knowledge, if we could.”

  That said, Mrs. Chase launched into a luridly detailed account: her first glimpse of the insolent Chinaman during a shore excursion to Gibraltar, his aggressive pursuit of her, her virtuous attempts to avoid his distressing attention.

  Miss Chase listened with wide eyes. Marland Atwood abandoned his lunch entirely. Mrs. Reynolds looked more than once toward Leighton Atwood and seemed discomfited by his carefully neutral expression—so Catherine was not the only one to suspect there might have been a reciprocal sexual interest on Mrs. Chase’s part, at least initially.

  Mrs. Chase was now vividly recreating the night of the storm off the coast of Portugal. The ocean that had the ship in its hungry maw. The hapless vessel, pitching and bobbing like a piece of refuse at high tide. The intruder in her cabin, subduing her, hauling her outside to set her on the railing, above the roiling black waters, tormenting her with visions of her own death.

  She ended with a coy, “Then I knew no more.”

  “But what happened?” Miss Chase and Marland Atwood cried in unison.

  “Miss Blade saved us,” said Mrs. Reynolds quietly. “I couldn’t. But she ventured out into the storm and brought back my sister. And when the man almost broke down the door, Miss Blade saved us once again.”

  “Did you bring him to justice, Miss Blade?” asked Marland Atwood, his eyes bright with an astonished admiration.

  Catherine shook her head. “He fell overboard.”

  “That’s justice enough for me,” said Mrs. Reynolds.

  “Hear, hear,” said Marland Atwood.

  “And were you all right, Miss Blade?” asked Miss Chase. She had one hand over her heart, the other clutching at Leighton Atwood’s sleeve.

  He had been gazing into his water goblet, but he looked at Catherine now. Pain suffused her, pain that had nothing to do with her injury—pain complicated with a twist of pleasure, like a drop of blood whirling and expanding in a glass of water.

&n
bsp; “I was fine,” she said. “Mrs. Reynolds was the one who suffered injuries.”

  When Mrs. Reynolds had satisfied everyone that despite the bandages under her turban, she was quite all right, Marland Atwood turned to Catherine. “But to single-handedly fight off a villain, Miss Blade, how did you manage it?”

  For once, Catherine was happy that Mrs. Chase, even if she had seen something beyond her own misery, would not come forth with details of Catherine’s strength and dexterity. “I had the advantage of surprise on my side, a great deal of luck, and the experience of taking a pot to a miscreant’s head once in a while.”

  Marland Atwood laughed. “My goodness, Miss Blade. Do remind me to remain in your good grace at all cost.”

  Leighton Atwood’s lips curled in a sardonic smile. “Yes, indeed. Do remind us.”

  Marland Atwood leaned forward. “Do you know what? Miss Blade’s bravery made me remember the time Leighton faced down a lethal beast.”

  “What is that?” Miss Chase turned toward her fiancé. “I’ve never heard you mention any such deed.”

  “You never told her?!” Marland Atwood exclaimed in disbelief. He grinned at his brother. “You must have become quite a catch if Miss Chase accepted you without ever hearing that stirring tale.”

  “Well?” Miss Chase prompted, eager admiration in her eyes. “Won’t you tell us, Leighton?”

  “There isn’t much to tell. A boy got too close to a tiger and I pulled him back.”

  Marland Atwood shook his head. “And if you listen to him, you’d have thought that our men in India daily ran in front of full-grown tigers. Allow me to tell it better. Sir Randolph Clive was a nabob who lived like a maharaja. He kept elephants and pet tigers. And one day, in the middle of a garden party, one of the tigers got loose.”

  “My goodness gracious,” said Miss Chase.

  Leighton Atwood turned the base of his water goblet a few degrees. There was no expression of modesty on his face, only detachment, as if he himself played not the least role in the tale.

  He did not like being talked about, it struck Catherine. He did not like being the center of attention.