The Luckiest Lady in London

by Sherry Thomas

  The other man 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 unique and 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 farther 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 the Brown Hotel. Catherine suspected that Mrs. Reynolds, out of gratitude, planned to find Catherine a respectable husband. A tall task: She herself 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 only a few feet away. Catherine looked toward him, her heart beating fast without a shred of reason.

  He had a face that was almost ridiculously beautiful, exactly the kind of progeny one visualized—but didn’t usually get—when an extremely lovely woman married an equally handsome man. A face that would have been considered too pretty were it not for a long scar on his jaw. And there was something hard-edged and cynical about the otherwise amiable smile he directed at his future mother-in-law, who fussed over him as if he were her own firstborn son.

  Catherine had never seen this man before.

  Of course. What was she thinking? That the lover who had betrayed her, and whom she had punished in turn, would be miraculously alive after all these years?

  Then he glanced at 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 like a device of torture, 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 on 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. “. . . Lieutenant Atwood. Lieutenant Atwood, Miss Blade. This is Miss Blade’s very first trip to England. She has lived her entire life in the Far East. Lieutenant Atwood is on home leave from Hong Kong, where he is serving with the garrison.”

  Benedict Atwood was several years younger than Catherine, a jollier, brawnier version of his brother. “Please tell me that I did not overlook your society while I was in Hong Kong, Miss Blade,” he said. “I would be devastated.”

  She made herself smile, in a properly amused manner. “No need for premature devastation, Lieutenant. I rarely ventured into Hong Kong. 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 chilling 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 remarkably pretty. Wide eyes, sweet nose, soft pink cheeks, with a head full of shiny golden curls and a palm as plain 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 realized it as a corrosive jealousy. Miss Chase was not only beautiful, but wholesome and adorable.

  Every woman before you was a wrong woman.

  Of course. A woman such as Catherine was always the 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 Hotel: the crimson-and-saffron wallpaper, the moss-green curtains, the large painting above the fireplace—two young women in white stolas frolicking against a dizzyingly blue sea that reminded her of Heavenly Lake in the Tian Shan Mountains—and then she would dip her gaze and let it skim over him.

  His hair was cut short, no hint of the curls through which she’d once 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—he was quite pale; pallid, almost.

  He did not return her scrutiny, except once, when his brother seated himself next to her. He had glanced at her sharply 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 Benedict 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 would always remain a foreigner. But the familiar does have a powerful hold. And part of me was afraid to find out 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 Benedict Atwood. “You are home now. And we shall all of us endeavor to make you feel at home, too.”

  She smiled at the young man. He looked to be the sort who was easily impressed and easily delighted. But his sincerity was genuine enough. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  “I quite agree with Lieutenant 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.”

  “Now would you believe me, Miss Blade, when I tell you that you would meet with a most unambiguous welcome?” said Dr. Rigby.

  She glanced at Le
ighton Atwood. He was all languid, indeed, lethargic elegance, if such a thing existed. What happened to the young man who rode the length and breadth of East Turkestan, slept under the stars, and hunted her suppers?

  “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 Shanghai, Dr. Rigby.”

  “We certainly did,” Dr. Rigby replied.

  “Oh, how did you meet?” asked Miss Chase, greatly interested.

  “Outside the ticket agent’s at Mortimer hong. Miss Blade saved me from losing my wallet.”

  Mrs. Chase wore a look of smug satisfaction. Miss Chase started. 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,” Benedict 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 of it, if we could.”

  That said, Mrs. Chase launched into a luridly detailed account: her first glimpse of the insolent Chinaman, his aggressive interest in her, her virtuous attempt to avoid his distressing attention, and her last-resort plea to the captain to cast him ashore.

  Miss Chase listened with wide eyes. Benedict Atwood abandoned his lunch entirely. Dr. Rigby was discomfited by Mrs. Chase’s enthusiasm in the telling. Mrs. Reynolds looked outright troubled—so Catherine was not the only one to suspect that there might have been a sexual liaison involved.

  Lin’s appearance during the storm had been a shock. But Da-ren had warned her before she departed that news of the jade panes had reached ears other than his own. The Dowager Empress herself wanted the treasure; she would dispatch an agent of her own.

  Mrs. Chase was now vividly re-creating the night of the storm off the coast of Portugal. The Atlantic 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 Benedict 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 beat down the door, Miss Blade saved us once again.”

  “Was the man brought to justice?” asked Benedict Atwood.

  All eyes were now on Catherine. She shook her head. “He fell overboard.”

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

  “Hear, hear,” said Benedict Atwood.

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

  He had been gazing into his goblet, but he looked at Catherine now. Pain suffused her, pain complicated with a twist of pleasure, like a drop of blood whirling and expanding in a glass of water.

  “I was fine. 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, Benedict Atwood turned to Catherine. “But to single-handedly fight off a villain, Miss Blade, how did you manage it?”

  “I had the advantage of surprise on my side,” Catherine replied modestly, “a great deal of luck, and the experience of taking a pot to a miscreant’s head once in a while.”

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

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