My Beautiful Enemy

by Thomas, Sherry

  Her house backed onto a large, shared private garden. The moon had just broken through the clouds, its nimbus copper-colored, its light dancing faintly upon shadowy branches. A fountain trickled. And somewhere in the darkness, someone’s mouser—or perhaps a stray cat—meowed softly.

  The sound pricked his attention: Certain times of the year aside, felines that roamed the night were not usually noisy creatures.

  A hand landed on his elbow. “Won’t you take me for a round in the garden, my dearest Captain?” teased his fiancée. “I told Edwin I needed a minute to breathe before I can dance more.”

  He turned to her winsome, flushed face. “Of course, my dear. It would be a pleasure.”

  “Don’t forget your wrap,” warned Mrs. Reynolds. “The wind can be quite chill.”

  “Yes, Auntie darling,” answered Annabel, already pulling Leighton along.

  He made sure she had the wrap Mrs. Reynolds prescribed before they stepped outside. Mrs. Reynolds remained at the window, not exactly standing guard, but, well, standing guard.

  The aunt approved of him as a man, but he had the impression that she was not entirely convinced that he was the right match for Annabel. He did not disagree with her: The right match for Annabel would be someone like Marland, someone simpler, more high-spirited, and more inherently happy.

  But that someone would not be as grateful as he was to have Annabel’s hand—a man who had not survived a storm at sea could not truly appreciate the solace of a well-sheltered harbor.

  The night air was as cool as Mrs. Reynolds had warned. Near his left femur, pain leaped and spiked. Not too much longer now—the flare-ups were unpredictable in their onset, but they lasted exactly seven days, no less, no more.

  “A delightful night, don’t you think?” said Annabel with a sweep of her hand.

  He liked seeing the world through her eyes. The night, to him, was rather ordinary, overlaid with London’s crowded odors and a damp that promised a deeply unlovely fog in the near future. But she preferred to consider the commonest patch of grass and the most unremarkable clump of trees worthy of a Constable canvas—in which case this night could very well have graced the ceiling of a great cathedral.

  “Yes, most delightful,” he answered. “I enjoyed how much fun you were having.”

  She sighed, a contented sound. “And that’s why I adore you. You actually mean it when you say something like that.”

  A sensation of being watched came over him—or rather, it had been there for a while, but now it had become too strong to ignore.

  He had spent several of his formative years fleeing from the men his uncle had hired to track him down. A large part of the reason he had evaded them for as long as he had was that he had never hesitated to run, whenever he felt the pressure of an unfriendly gaze.

  This attention was not unfriendly, per se, merely close and minute, making him feel as if he had been put under a microscope.

  “Is something the matter?” Annabel asked.

  He realized that he had stopped moving. He resumed his progress. “Just thought I’d heard something.”

  She chortled. “Do you think we have company?”

  “Stray cats and other such trivial creatures,” he said. “Nothing I plan to pay the least mind to.”

  “Good. Because in five years you will snore when I talk, so now you must be extra solicitous,” Annabel teased. “So that in the future, when I realize you have fallen asleep again while listening to me, I can at least think back to moments like this and sigh over how romantic you once were.”

  How could any man not treasure her? “If all I have to do is remain awake to be considered romantic, then I can promise you a great deal of romance in our marriage.”

  She giggled and pulled him onto a bench. “So let’s set a date. We’ve been engaged since Christmas. If we want to be married before the end of the Season, it’s time to put events into motion. I helped with my cousins’ weddings and let me tell you, Napoleon had fewer decisions to make when he marched into Egypt. And I want plenty of time for preparations, so I won’t turn into one of those brides who bursts into tears in the middle of a discussion about whether to serve soup for the wedding breakfast.”

  Sensible as well as sparkling—how much more perfect could a woman be?

  I, for one, am much too fond of the brothels of Kashgar.

  The feeling of being watched intensified further. He touched a hand to Annabel’s cheek. “In that case, set any date you’d like.”

  She wrapped her arms around him. “You are so good to me, Leighton.”

  He lifted her chin and kissed her, a long, deep kiss. She panted a little when he let go.

  “Well, Captain, I’d say you have just signaled that you’d like for us to be married sooner rather than later.”

  “You have read my mind,” he said, to both Annabel and the unseen presence in the shadows. “Let us be married at your earliest convenience.”

  She ought not to be out at this hour of the night, Catherine thought. Amah, if she were still alive, would have disapproved of this kind of recklessness. But then again, Amah, while she yet lived, had been the most reckless woman Catherine ever knew.

  Her fingertips glided over the books on the shelves. Western books, with their pasteboard covers and leather binding, had such a different feel to them, bulky and unyielding. And such a pronounced scent, nothing of the almost tealike fragrance of their Chinese counterparts.

  She moved to the fireplace. On the mantel were photographs, in rectangular and oval frames. She struck a match. A picture of Marland Atwood. Next to it, the portrait of a couple, neither of whom she recognized—his parents, perhaps?

  And then, a profile of the luminous Miss Chase. She gazed somewhere just off camera, a look of both hope and serenity.

  Let us be married at your earliest convenience, Leighton Atwood had said, after that impeccably staged kiss, angled just so for Catherine to take in every detail, despite the murkiness of the night.

  She endured a sharp stab of pain in her heart. Life had been less complicated when she’d thought him dead and herself bound for hell. But no, he was alive and set to marry someone else, someone younger, gentler, sweeter. Someone perfect for this English stranger he had turned out to be.

  Was there any trace of her lover left, beneath the tailored coat and the cool detachment?

  The meadow was almost purple with wildflowers, the sky a piercingly brilliant blue. In the distance, the jagged peaks of the Heavenly Mountains soared, ramparts of God’s own castle.

  Near the edge of the meadow, her silky black hair long and loose, the girl collected wildflowers with her dagger, slicing through the stems of those stalks she found worthy. The sight made him smile: Those who lived by the sword played by the sword.

  She sheathed her dagger, tied the flowers she had collected with another stalk, set the bouquet into his slingshot, and pulled on the strip of vulcanized rubber—all the while still standing with her back to him.

  The bouquet sailed through the air with such perfect aim that from where he stood he had but to stretch out his hand for it to fall into his palm.

  Only then did she turn around, a small smile around her lips.

  “You are showing off.”

  Her smile deepened. “You like it.”

  He lifted the bouquet to his face. It smelled of sunshine and nectar. “I like an arrogant, intractable woman.”

  Leighton opened his eyes. He could just make out, from the moonlight streaming into the room, the face of the mantel clock. Ten minutes after three.

  He had not been sleeping long—he had still been awake at two. His leg hurt, but for the moment, the pain was tolerable, almost subdued. Something else, then, had pulled him out of his dream.

  He closed his eyes and listened. Nothing. But he grew increasingly certain that she was in the room with him.

  How long had he tottered at the edge of death? How had he made his way out of Chinese Turkestan to a British outpost? He had only th
e flimsiest recollection of scorching days, raw cold nights, and constant, marrow-rotting pain.

  She had been like those mythical females of woods and dells, nymphs who took their deadly vengeance on men who elected not to remain with them. Except she had been a product of desert and mountains, as beautiful as the sudden spring in the foothills, as harsh and dangerous as the black sandstorms.

  He flung aside the bedcover, got up, and lit a cigarette for himself, breathing in a lungful of acrid smoke. Suddenly he was back at the edge of the meadow, sharing his dwindling supply of tobacco with her.

  Why don’t you frown upon my smoking? she had asked.

  The day I quit smoking myself, he had replied, is the day I start lecturing you on your filthy habit.

  And she had laughed as if it were the funniest thing she had ever heard.

  He walked to the fireplace and tapped the ashes into the grate. Did he turn on the light and look? Did he return to bed and pretend as if nothing were the matter?

  She was directly behind him. No sounds, no movements, but the heat she radiated was palpable, almost coercive.

  “You should not be here,” he said.

  They lived in uncertain times. Those who protected the crown were tense and jumpy. She would not wish to be caught.

  No response from her, except . . . did she move even closer to him?

  The air was thick with her intentions. She wanted to touch him, with her hands, her lips, and all the rest of her, a desire as primal as the origins of the world.

  She wanted to hold him within her.

  His own pulse accelerated. His awareness of her grew excruciating. And the answering desire that arose within him shocked him with its vehemence and recklessness.

  He drew on the cigarette again; his other hand closed into a fist. “I am going to walk out of this room. You have two minutes to make yourself scarce.”

  When he returned, one window of his room was wide open, the curtain whipping in the draft.

  Someone with her skills could have easily closed the window behind herself, if she wanted to.

  Instead, she had chosen to acknowledge her presence. Her invasion of his privacy.

  And in doing so, reaffirmed the desire on her part that had set him on fire, like a city already ransacked.

  CHAPTER 4

  Tools

  Chinese Turkestan

  1883

  The Persian was up at the crack of dawn. He first saw to the horses, grooming them and taking them to the stream for water. Then he went down to the stream by himself. When he returned, he packed up his things and walked around, gathering fuel for a new fire.

  Ying-ying was not the kind to remain on her back while a stranger moved about. But this stranger’s movement was quiet and soothing, almost like a lullaby. She allowed herself to sleep on to the rhythm of his morning routines.

  When she woke up again, it was quite bright. The Persian was tending to the fire, kneeling with his back to her. He was not wearing his turban, revealing a head of thick black hair that curled at the ends. This fascinated Ying-ying more than she would have thought possible: She wondered whether touching his hair would feel like plunging one’s hand into a sheep’s wool.

  That hair was also slightly damp. Foreigners. Her amah would have been livid if Ying-ying had washed her hair first thing in the morning in the ice-cold water of a snow-melt stream—that kind of chill, according to the principles of Chinese medicine, was terribly injurious to the health.

  The Persian, however, did not seem to suffer any deficiencies, healthwise. And despite the loose fit of his clothes, she could tell, by the way the fabric stretched across the width of his shoulders and upper arms, that he was well built and well muscled.

  “Good morning,” he said, without turning around.

  “Good morning.”

  “Do you take tea in the morning?”

  “If there is hot water.” She was usually too lazy to do such things for herself.

  He turned around at last. “There will be, in a few minutes.”

  She smiled a little. “Perhaps I ought to make friends more often.”

  His gaze swept her person before returning to her face; she did the same to him. Alas, he had not become less handsome—or confident—overnight. Had he been anyone else, looking down at her in her bedroll, she would be on her feet in a fraction of a second, a weapon in hand. But he was not anyone else, so she stretched, her hands clasped together, her arms extended beyond her head.

  His expression did not change, but something did. She had the feeling that he had to restrain himself, and rather violently.

  “Help me get up?” she murmured, wanting, perversely, to test that restraint.

  Slowly he approached, his eyes never leaving hers. He sank to one knee—a surpassingly intimate act, as if he had sat down at the edge of her bed. Her breaths came in shallower.

  He took hold of her bedding and flung it aside. Underneath she was fully dressed, of course, but still she tensed. His eyes seemed to turn darker as he took her in. Her stomach felt strangely light, the rest of her strangely heavy.

  He wanted her, she had no doubt. He wanted to see her, touch her, and press himself into her.

  But what did she want?

  Old habits die hard—for too long she had defended her virtue, sometimes at terrible costs. Of their own volition, her fingers closed around the hilt of her sword.

  He noticed. She sensed no anger or frustration on his part—not even surprise. He only took a deep breath, and then another.

  When he spoke, his voice was almost playful. “Do you never wash your face?”

  She needed a moment to find her voice. “It isn’t manly to be too clean.”

  The Persian took her hand and pulled her to her feet. “And we would never question your manliness, would we?”

  Leighton was used to letting women talk. Whether by temperament or by the requirement to be amiable, women talked, their speech the unguent that greased the gears of polite society.

  The day before, there had been no question of conversation while they traveled, as the girl always rode ahead of him. Now she spent as much time riding alongside him as she did out in front, yet still, for hours not a single word would be uttered. And when they did say something to each other, almost invariably it concerned such impersonal matters as feed for the horses and the amount of fluid that remained in their waterskins.

  He was at a loss, faced with a woman who spoke as little as he did. Even worse, he wanted her to talk. Everything about her fascinated him. She could speak of herself for a fortnight without stop, and he would listen raptly.

  But she felt no such need to unburden herself. From time to time, he would try a question. Will you return to the bosom of your family to celebrate Eid? Where did you acquire this fine horse of yours? Are you meeting anyone in Kashgar?

  Her answers were always short, sometimes to the point of brusqueness. I’ll think about it when it’s almost Eid. It was a gift. No.

  He was beginning to despair of ever learning anything about her when they stopped that afternoon. When she wanted to travel fast, she used the caravan route; to rest and water the horses, she preferred to find meadows and valleys where there was fresh water—and groves of poplar for her privacy.

  When she returned from this particular grove of poplar he already had a fire going and water nearly at a boil. She made herself a cup of her snow chrysanthemum infusion. He spared a pinch of his own tea leaves—there was hardly any left—and set it to steep, while he knelt down facing the direction of Mecca and pretend-prayed like a good pretend-Muslim.

  “Is that tea from Darjeeling?” she asked as soon as he finished, her expression oddly intense.

  “Yes,” he said, surprised, as much for her quick identification of the tea as from being spoken to at all. He extended toward her his dwindling supply of sultana raisins. “You know of it?”

  She declined his offer—she did not accept any food or drink from him the preparation of which she had not
witnessed—but she did answer his question. “I once had a friend who drank this tea. Black, without milk or sugar.”

  He, too, once had such a friend, the friend for whom he had made the long trek to China. “A very dear friend?”

  After a moment, she said, almost as if to herself, “Yes, a very dear friend. Although when he was alive, I had thought of him more as a teacher, because he was much older than me. It was only after he passed away . . .”

  Her face had gone blank, but it was there, a grief that had not yet lost its anguish.

  He remembered his own disbelief when he’d been informed of Herb’s death. No, it cannot be, he had said numbly. I saw him only yesterday. He told me he was coming back today. With firecrackers for Chinese New Year. And when I get well we are to go to a teahouse theater—and eat candied haws in the street.

  That night he had wept, for Herb, for Father, for the ten thousand miles that he had journeyed in vain. With the passage of the years he had come to see that he had been fortunate to have met Herb again at all, even if it was only for half an hour. But her pain, just beneath the surface, called to the sorrow he would always carry.

  “Did you often take tea together?” he heard himself ask, his voice quiet.

  “Yes, quite frequently in those days.”

  “And what did you talk about?”

  It was never the tea, but the conversation.

  Her eyes took on a faraway look. “We talked about the outside world. The places he would like to see again. The places I would like to see for the first time.”

  He remembered the wistfulness in her voice, when they spoke of Kashmir. “Was he the one who told you that Kashmir was a nice place?”

  “Yes. He had visited Kashmir in his youth—and a great many other places in India. The white marble palace that a king built for his beloved, the holy river in which tens of thousands of people seek blessings, and hill stations like Darjeeling, where the British go to escape the heat of the plains of India.”

  Leighton felt a little light-headed. Herb had toured India many years ago. And before his exile, during those years when he visited Starling Manor regularly, sometimes he, too, had spoken to Leighton of those places he had loved best.