My Beautiful Enemy

by Thomas, Sherry

  This was what Amah had always emphasized. A woman was unlikely to rival a man in brute strength. But her inner force, the energy generated by the skillful harnessing and amplification of chi through the pathways of her body, needed not be inferior to a man’s.

  That was what allowed a woman to defeat a man—that and the dexterity and cleverness to turn his strength against him.

  But had she really defeated Lin aboard the Maria Augusta, or had there simply been a confluence of factors in her favor, a stroke of pure luck? And would she be as lucky the next time?

  At the thought of her nemesis, her injury throbbed, a cold, dark pain. It had always struck her as strange, twisted almost, that she and Lin had ended up such bitter foes, when they had so much in common. The European fathers that neither had known, the Chinese upbringing, the secret martial arts training, the long years in Da-ren’s household, and their mutual loathing of Shao-ye, Da-ren’s eldest son.

  Yet there it was, an enmity sown by fate and nurtured by spilled blood and ruined lives.

  She wished she could come upon him without warning, as it had been on the steamer. There had been no time for fear or second-guessing of her abilities, only the intensity of battle that swept away any useless thoughts. Much better than this slow, simmering dread, this sensation of being meticulously stalked.

  And yet for all that Lin had declared himself still very much alive and still very much a menace, life had been oddly normal since she’d sighted the kite. If one defined normal as having been pulled into the hurly-burly of getting ready for a ball.

  Slowly she sank into a split. Just as slowly she pulled herself straight again, without using her hands to help. The poker she thrust toward an imaginary enemy, if the enemy moved with the speed of a glacier. A kick, executed with just as much leisure and control.

  She had not wanted anything to do with the ball. She even told Mrs. Reynolds outright that she could not dance—Master Gordon had offered to teach her, but the idea of holding the hand of a man who was not related to her, or, in the case of the waltz, standing in his arms, had quite scandalized her, and so she had never learned.

  But Mrs. Reynolds would not be gainsaid. She saw the occasion as Catherine’s social debut, an occasion for her to meet all kinds of suitable men.

  If only those poor men knew just what sort of unsuitable woman they would be meeting.

  How impossibly complicated everything had become. She hadn’t anticipated that her mission would be easy, but she had supposed it would be more or less straightforward. But now she was caught in a tangled web, her lover on one side, her enemy on the other, her still unfinished task in the middle.

  She lowered into a crouch, then leaped up atop the table, balanced upon an upside-down teacup. A twist of her torso and she was on the floor again, the landing silent, the poker and her other hand both pulling toward the middle, and then sinking to her abdomen.

  She was done with this suite of exercises.

  She returned the poker to its stand and walked into her bedroom—it was time to change for the ball. The ball gown that Mrs. Reynolds had more or less forced on her was already spread out on her bed, ready to be donned. But instead of getting on with her next task, she stopped to light a stick of incense before the spirit plaques of all those she had loved and lost.

  Her fingers traced over the characters of her daughter’s name. Such a beautiful baby she had been, full of brightness and joy. Catherine had held her every moment of her life. And when she had slept, Catherine had gazed upon her sweet little face; the pink, chubby cheeks; the long, upcurled eyelashes; and those strong, winged brows that were exactly like her father’s.

  Now all she had left of the child was a lock of soft, dark hair.

  “Forgive me,” she said to the girl’s spirit. “I did not mean to fail you. Never again.”

  Leighton danced.

  Herb had told him, ages ago, that a gentleman at a ball should dance every set, as there were always ladies in want of partners. So after he had accompanied Mrs. Reynolds for the quadrille to open the ball and spun around on a waltz with Annabel, he danced with young ladies who did not have sufficient gentlemen clamoring for their attention, so that they would not be wallflowers all night long.

  But his attention, as always, was on Miss Blade, who looked quite extraordinary in her silver blue ball gown. People whispered about her, Mrs. Reynolds’s former-expatriate friend. Gentleman lined up to be introduced.

  Put her in a proper frock and she would enslave legions, he’d once thought. He had been right.

  She was not the girl he had known in Chinese Turkestan, but neither was she the dowdy, faded woman who had reentered his life on the platform of Waterloo station. Something had changed—or revived—in her. She was beauty and mystery, her seeming fragility belied by a heart of blade.

  Annabel, who had issued the invitation in the first place, was not pleased. Of course she was more than generous with her praise of Miss Blade’s appearance and related the story of Miss Blade’s rescue of Mrs. Chase with apparent relish. But Leighton could not help but feel her frustration: It was in the set of her jaw, the grip of her hand on her fan, and the way she seemed to show too many teeth when she smiled.

  He tried to make up for the fact that she was at risk of being eclipsed at her own ball. It would have been better form had he not danced with her at all—it was frowned upon for an engaged couple to pay too much attention to each other at public functions—but that would have seemed like abandonment on his part.

  Unfortunately he did not think his solicitude helped, or the fact that he spoke three times as much as was normal. Annabel was too clever; she understood that such a heaping serving of courtesy and consideration meant that a man was concealing a guilty conscience.

  But they played along, he fetching her glasses of punch and champagne between sets, and she reacting with every ostensible pleasure, all the while the center of the storm stood fifteen feet away, a force of nature with black hair and beautiful shoulders who smiled and made small talk.

  Leighton had just reached the punch table again when Madison took him by the arm. “Windham wants us.”

  “Now?”

  “He is outside.”

  They found Windham inside a large brougham with all its drapes drawn. He looked quite grave.

  “We have retrieved a traveling case from Paddington station.”

  “Did you—” Leighton began.

  “We took every care. Put out word that there was an Anarchist bomb. The station was closed. It swarmed with police. All kinds of baggage were carried out. Ten of the Centipede would not have seen us smuggling out the traveling case in question.”

  Windham was good at what he did, but he did have the occasional tendency toward overconfidence.

  “I take it you found something quite interesting in that traveling case,” said Madison.

  “We did. We found the jeweled clock taken from Her Majesty’s nightstand.”

  Madison whistled. Leighton felt as if he had been pushed off a bridge: This was exactly what he had feared.

  “And we found a note. It was written in code, but Sanders was able to decipher it without too much trouble.”

  The deciphered text read:

  Dear Miss Blade,

  Welcome to London. I hope your trip from China was enjoyable. Please accept this gift fit for a queen. I look forward to serving as your right hand.

  Yours truly,

  The Centipede

  “And Tomlinson found this in the Times right before I left to come here.”

  Windham handed them a copy of the paper, opened to a page of small advertisements, with one circled in red. Blade, did you watch the sky? Did you find your present?

  Now Leighton felt as if he had fallen through ice to the frigid water below.

  “My God,” Madison cried. “Captain Atwood, you don’t suppose he means the Miss Blade we know?”

  Leighton took a deep breath. “I do suppose that. I believe the Centipede is try
ing to frame Miss Blade.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Windham. “And who is this Miss Blade?”

  “Miss Blade is an English expatriate my fiancée’s mother and aunt met in Bombay.” Leighton went on to give a brief account of her action on the Maria Augusta against the Centipede.

  “But how would you know that was the Centipede?” asked Madison.

  “And was there any eyewitness to her actually shoving this man overboard?” Windham frowned. “If not, we have only her word that it had been any kind of a combat at all.”

  “I began to suspect that the man might be the Centipede when I heard that before Mrs. Chase described him as Chinese, she had thought him a Frenchman,” Leighton answered, holding on to his calm. “It has been the rumor that the Centipede is of mixed race and that he lives in France. As for how we know he truly went into the Atlantic, I checked the passenger list and picked up the luggage belonging to a man who boarded the Maria Augusta in Gibraltar but never claimed his things in Southampton. And inside the luggage I found brush-and-ink drawings of the Centipede exactly like those he leaves behind. I don’t think the Centipede, unless he truly had been pitched overboard, would leave his luggage for someone else to discover.”

  Windham frowned even more. “Why did you not bring this to my attention? The Centipede’s movements are always a matter of concern.”

  Windham was right. Leighton should have reported his findings as soon as he had them. Yet he had deliberately kept the news to himself. He had wanted to protect her from any association with the Centipede and from the notice of anyone, such as Windham, who might turn an unfriendly eye toward her.

  “It seemed less important when I was convinced that the Centipede was dead,” he said.

  “Well, he is not. And, Captain, as much as I appreciate your gallantry, we cannot blithely assume that this Miss Blade and the Centipede feel any enmity toward each other. It could be all for show. Now, where can this Miss Blade be found?”

  Madison laughed a little. “Funny you should ask, sir.”

  Master Gordon had once shown Catherine an image of a ballroom of magnificent size and grandeur. She had pored over every detail of the picture: the floor, as smooth and shiny as a mirror; the pillars, surely wrapped in an abundance of gold leaf; and the overhanging gallery—a balcony on the inside!—a concept that had turned her understanding of architecture upside down.

  Miss Chase’s ball was a far cry from what she had imagined a real ball to look like.

  Mrs. Reynolds’s house overflowed with guests, unable to move two steps sideways; the drawing room, emptied of furniture, was crammed to a rather alarming density with spinning dancers.

  Almost invariably, those dancers included Leighton Atwood, light on his feet and quite something to behold with his beautiful carriage and expertly tailored evening coat.

  Tonight he was perhaps the furthest he had ever been from her Persian. But yesterday, in her parlor, the way he’d watched her, as if the dagger at his throat was a caress . . .

  She had come so close to kissing him, the very thought of it still made her lips tingle.

  “What a wanton tragedy, Miss Blade,” said a very dashing Marland Atwood, stopping by her side. “An entire roomful of gentlemen delirious to waltz with you, thwarted by the fact that you have never learned to dance!”

  She smiled at him. “The gentlemen seem to have no trouble finding substitute partners, but alas, it is a bit ridiculous to be at a ball when I cannot dance.”

  “Well, that will not do, will it? Come to Starling Manor and I’ll teach you.”

  “Starling Manor?”

  “Leighton’s house in the country.”

  Many gentlemen had houses in the country—it was practically a requirement. But for some reason, she had always thought the pouch of gems and his horse the entirety of her Persian’s fortune—and had liked his lack of worldly goods.

  “We are going down the day after tomorrow and you should join us,” continued Marland Atwood. “The English experience is not complete unless you have trudged through ten miles of mud and then have had your picnic eaten by ants.”

  The English experience. He said it almost as if he were also a foreigner.

  “If you don’t mind my curiosity, sir, why is it that you are Captain Atwood’s brother but you speak more like an American?”

  “I don’t mind at all. After my father passed away, Leighton remained in England under the guardianship of our uncle, but my mother and I emigrated to the States.”

  When my father died, my uncle, whom we all despised, told her that if she did not give me to him, he would take both me and my younger brother from her. I convinced her to go away with my brother where my uncle could not reach them—and she did.

  “Were you separated for long?”

  “Quite a few years. We finally reunited when I was ten—in the Sandwich Islands, of all places.”

  “Hawaii?”

  “Yes, on the island of Oahu. I remember waiting for his steamer to come into port, so many leis around my neck I almost couldn’t see anything. The moment the smokestacks became visible on the horizon, I started to cry—definitely one of the happiest days of my life.” Marland Atwood grinned. “You should visit there someday, Miss Blade. I, for one, never understood the term ‘perfumed air’ until I stepped onto those shores.”

  The important thing was that we protected my brother, her Persian had said. The brother certainly seem to be happy and well adjusted.

  It was a moment before she remembered to ask, “But why were you meeting in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, of all places?”

  “Oh, because Leighton sailed from Shanghai,” said Marland Atwood, as if it was the most natural thing. “Oh, goodness, the music is starting again. I had better go find Miss Chase. I believe I am her partner for the next set.”

  Catherine blinked. Leighton Atwood had been to China’s eastern seaboard?

  Before she could decide whether that boyhood journey to the Far East meant anything, Mr. Madison took Marland Atwood’s place. “Are you enjoying yourself, Miss Blade?”

  “I am.” With Mrs. Reynolds two steps away, Catherine could scarcely give any other kind of answer.

  “The day we met, I asked you what you thought of London.”

  There was something odd in Mr. Madison’s expression: an intensity of interest that had been wholly absent earlier. Catherine became wary. “And you never got an answer, because Mr. Atwood gave everyone’s opinion of London.”

  “Precisely. But then I realized I had asked the wrong question. Instead of your opinion on London, I should have asked for what you thought of China. For there you are the expert, are you not?”

  “That would make everyone in London an expert on England, wouldn’t it? And that is hardly the case.”

  “Well put. Be that as it may, you have far more experience with China than any of us.”

  Why did Mr. Madison suddenly want to know what she thought of China? Did it have something to do with the Centipede’s schemes? “Greater experience actually renders it more difficult to have a decisive opinion, at least for me. It is such a large country, of such varied geography and people, any sweeping judgment must come with a staggering number of caveats.”

  “And yet it is one country, under a centralized government.”

  “You do realize, sir, that many Han Chinese consider their country to be under foreign rule, since the Manchus originate from outside the Great Wall.”

  “Then let me ask you, what do you think of the decline of China?” asked Mr. Madison. “While the European Age of Exploration was barely under way, great fleets from China had already sailed to the Middle East and Africa. They could have colonized; they could have developed trade monopolies. But the Chinese instead decided every bit of the outside world was inferior, so they went home and closed their doors—until one day men they deem to be savages forced those doors open. Surely, sentiments must run quite strong against foreigners.”

  It was a nuanced view
, for an Englishman. But Catherine only grew more convinced that he was asking her leading questions. “Yet hordes of foreigners live unmolested in China.”

  “But while many of them are but passing through, you lived a very different life. To you China was home. Did you ever find yourself considering matters from the Chinese point of view?”

  “It would be strange if I never did, wouldn’t it? Everyone should be able to consider matters from someone else’s perspective.”

  Mr. Madison opened his mouth to say something more but was interrupted by Mrs. Reynolds’s arrival. The latter took hold of Catherine to present to her yet another cluster of gentlemen. Catherine smiled and chatted until she could stand it no more. With the excuse of using the cloakroom, she escaped to the garden behind the house, the one from which she had spied on Leighton Atwood her first night in England.

  Somehow it did not surprise her to find him by the fountain, a cigarette in hand. He glanced at her, his eyes grave.

  “What is it?”

  He exhaled a stream of smoke. “It is as I feared. The Centipede is coming for you.”

  As he spoke of the Centipede’s machinations, cold sank into Catherine’s very marrow.

  “They believe him?”

  “They don’t dare not believe him.”

  “What are they going to do? Arrest me?”

  “No, they will use you. Earlier I was able to persuade them to act with caution, to not bring the Centipede’s gaze upon themselves. But now I believe they will do the exact opposite: They will draw the Centipede’s attention and lead him to you—and see if they can, with you as a lure, get him into the open.”

  “They will do his work for him,” she murmured.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She turned to him. “And you, why are you telling me this? Aren’t you worried that I also want to slit Her Majesty’s throat?”

  “If that were what you wanted, we would have already had a state funeral.” He pulled on his cigarette and stubbed it out against the edge of the fountain, his motions unnecessarily rough. “You had better leave England. Go far away. He cannot find you so easily.”