A Love That Never Tires (Linley & Patrick Book 1)

by Jeleyne, Allyson

  Linley grinned, growing more excited as he appeared all the more confused. With a loud trumpet blast, a great gray behemoth erupted from between the trees.

  “By Elephant!” she cried.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Patrick stared wide-eyed as three elephants emerged from the jungle. On each of their necks, an Indian mahout sat with a large wooden staff in hand. Two were elderly men and one looked no older than twelve. They whispered something to their mounts, and the elephants raised their pink-speckled trunks and trumpeted.

  Linley couldn’t stop grinning. “I told you there was only one way to travel!” she said, smacking him on the shoulder. “Do you think you’re up to it?”

  He looked down at her. “I am if you are.”

  The mahout called another command, and the elephant closest to them went down on one knee. Then, it sank down onto the ground. From the backs of the others, Sir Bedford and the rest of the team frowned. They sat perched in howdah baskets, loaded down with supplies.

  Linley waved up at them, and approached the elephant.

  “Do you need a leg up?” Patrick asked her.

  Seated beside Linley’s father, Archie scoffed and called down, “She doesn’t need your help! She can do it on her own.”

  “Actually,” Linley said, batting her eyes at Patrick. “I could use a hand, if you would be so kind.”

  He smiled down at her and placed his hands around her waist. “It would be my pleasure,” he said, lifting her onto the elephant’s back. With his help, Linley mounted with ease, but on his own, Patrick didn’t fare so well. He took a few steps backward, then got a running start, and leapt upon the great beast’s side, scrambling up onto its back.

  Linley grabbed his hand and helped him into the howdah. “Not bad for a first try.”

  Patrick settled himself in the basket, catching his breath. With another command from the mahout, the elephant shifted back onto its feet. The howdah lurched and swayed, and Patrick reached across the basket to steady himself. As he did so, his body brushed against Linley’s, making them both aware of the tight confines they would be traveling in together.

  “You’re not wearing a corset,” he whispered.

  “What’s the point? It is too hot, and no one here really cares.” She smiled and bumped him with her elbow. “Besides, I rather like the sensation of not wearing one.”

  Patrick puffed out a breath and groaned. It was going to be a long journey.

  ***

  The heat was intolerable. Not a dry, Moroccan sort of heat, but a wet-hot one that clung to him. Within hours, his clothes were damp, and Patrick stood a real chance of growing chafed. Every jerk and sway of the howdah on the elephant’s back rubbed him in a way that could only be described as…wrong.

  “Am I the only one who’s miserable?” he asked.

  “No,” Linley replied, “You’re just the only one who doesn’t know how to hide it.”

  Patrick winced as the elephant stepped over a fallen tree branch.

  She laughed and stretched. “We’ll ride until the sun gets low over the tree-line, then we’ll set up camp for the night.”

  Patrick struggled to find a position that didn’t cause something to go numb. “And what is it we are looking for, again?”

  “Scrolls,” she explained. “Ancient Buddhist texts.”

  “Forgive me, but what does the British Museum want with Buddhist scrolls?”

  “Nothing, actually,” Linley said, wiggling her arm free and shifting against the side of the basket. “You see,” she whispered, “It’s more a pet project of my father’s than anything dealing with the museum.”

  “Then what does your father want with Buddhist scrolls?”

  “He has spent the last fifteen years looking for these scrolls,” she explained. “They’re extremely old, and—if they even still exist—would be worth a great deal of money.”

  Patrick’s eyes grew wide. “You’re a treasure hunter.”

  “No!” Linley slapped her palm over his mouth. “It isn’t like that. These texts are sacred, and until now, no one has ever come this close to finding them. If our team makes the discovery, we would never have to worry about anything again. We’d be famous.”

  “So, let me make sure I understand,” he said. “You and your team plan to ransack a Buddhist temple in search of sacred texts for your own fame and fortune…and yet you are not treasure hunters?”

  Linley gave his shoulder a shove. “Oh! If you’ve come to mock my work, you should have stayed in London!”

  “I’m not mocking,” Patrick said. “Now could you please turn back around? Your knees are digging into my thigh.”

  She did as he asked. “I believe in my father, and if these texts are important to him, nothing you can say or do will stop me from helping him find them.”

  “I understand,” he said. “I’m sorry for teasing you.”

  Linley’s eyes darted over to his. “Apology accepted. But if we are really to spend the next three days sharing this same basket, we’re going to have to come up with something better to talk about.”

  “Fine.” Patrick let his arm dangle over the side of the howdah, and rubbed the tips of his fingers across the leafy palms that slapped the elephant’s tough hide. “What do you suggest we discuss?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “How about that aside from our names and our immediate family members, we know absolutely nothing about each other?”

  “All right,” he said, tucking his arm back into the basket. “What do you want to know about me?”

  She drew a complete blank. Thousands of questions had crossed her mind since she met him, and she’d always meant to ask them, but now that he put her on the spot, she could not call any to mind. “I can’t think of anything at the moment.”

  “Well, let me know when you do.”

  She sat in silence, listening to her father and Archie chat about the possibility of finally discovering the scrolls. Somehow, over the chatter of the birds in the trees and the crunch of the elephants’ feet, she heard Schoville snoring. Reginald, with whom he shared a howdah, sat hunched in the farthest corner of the basket, fingers jammed into his ears.

  Over the years, they had all grown very close. Some even closer than they were with their own families. She understood their resistance to Patrick. She really did, and she was certain if one of them brought along a woman, she would be just as upset. After all, they were family, and they were all a bit overprotective of each other.

  “Tell me about your family,” Linley blurted out. “About your brother.”

  Patrick shifted in his seat. Why did she have to ask him about Johnnie? “What do you want to know?”

  “How did he die?”

  He cleared his throat. “He drowned.”

  “Oh.”

  “He was only a year older than I. We were very close,” Patrick explained. “Whenever we were home from school on summer holiday, we would swim in the river near our house. But always together.” He cleared his throat again. “One day, he went by himself. No one even knew he was missing until he didn’t turn up for dinner. By then, it was too late.”

  “Did they find him?”

  “Not until the next morning.”

  Linley lowered her head. “I’m very sorry.”

  “My father never recovered. He was never the same man again.” Now that he started talking, Patrick couldn’t seem to stop. “He didn’t just lose a child, he lost an heir. And I went from being the carefree second son to having to shoulder a world of responsibility that I was not born for. By the age of nineteen, I’d lost my mother, my brother, my father, and even Georgiana—she was sent to live with relatives until I reached my majority and became her guardian.”

  Linley could not resist reaching over and taking his hand. “Most young men would rather their sister live with a relative than take on the responsibility of raising her.”

  “It was clear our stepmother had no desire to care for her, so who else could do it
but me? The way I saw it, I really had no choice.”

  “Whatever you reasoning,” Linley said. “I respect you for it.”

  He tried to smile for her. “Don’t think that it was all bad. Georgiana, and Johnnie, and I had some really wonderful times growing up. I think we were the three happiest children in all of England.” Patrick leaned forward in their basket. “Now, it is my turn,” he said. “I have a question I’ve been meaning to ask you all along.”

  Linley leaned forward, too. “What is it?”

  “Why does your father call you Button?”

  She squeaked, covering her face with her hands. “It’s just a silly nickname.”

  “Every nickname has to come from somewhere,” Patrick said. He reached up and pulled her hands down. “So…out with it.”

  Linley groaned, hesitated, and then finally blurted it out. “I used to eat buttons.”

  “You ate buttons?”

  “I always had this obsession with putting things into my mouth,” she explained. “Nothing shiny was safe—cufflinks, collar buttons, glove buttons, dress buttons…I could snap them off and pop them in my mouth faster than you could blink.”

  Patrick rubbed his palm hard against the side of his face. “I do believe this is the most fascinating conversation I’ve ever had.”

  “Most of them were recovered, though,” she added. “Shinier than ever.”

  He smiled. “And you lived to eat buttons another day.”

  “Oh, I grew out of it,” Linley said. “But I went through all sorts of strange phases as a child. Someone once told me it was because I never had a mother. That I developed fixations in place of her to fill that necessary void in my life. A ‘fetish’ they called it, though I am not sure I believe that.”

  “You did not know your mother?” Patrick asked.

  She shook her head. “I was just a baby when she died.”

  “I cannot remember mine,” he said, frowning. “I was three years old.”

  “It still affects us, you know. Whether we realize it or not, losing a parent, or the absence of a parent in whatever capacity, shapes us into the adults we grow to become. If your mother had not died, you might be a very different man today.” Linley paused and shrugged. “Who knows, if my mother had not died, I might’ve been a normal girl with a normal life. But there is no use in speculating,” she said. “I am here, and you are here, and everything happens for a reason.”

  ***

  “So you never missed growing up with other children?” he asked her.

  The sun hung much lower in the sky, and the jungle grew more active in the cool of evening. It seemed even the animals loathed the midday heat.

  “I played with other children if they were around, but I was always more comfortable when I kept to myself,” Linley explained.

  “What a pity. You must have missed out on a great deal of fun.”

  She snorted. “I had heaps of fun as a child. I got to play in the dirt while other little girls learned embroidery and practiced French lessons. And, by the way,” she wagged her finger in his face for emphasis. “I speak French from talking to real French people. Not from reading a book to a governess.”

  Patrick pretended to clap. Clearly, he was not impressed.

  “My father could have left me, you know. He could have given me over to my mother’s family, or to his own. But he didn’t. Instead he gave me a life most children could only dream about.” She paused for a moment, and then turned to him. “What did you dream about when you were a boy?”

  “The usual things, I suppose. Brave knights, fast horses, and fair maidens.”

  Linley smiled. “You wanted to be a hero.”

  “Oh, no. I was never that foolish.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am not brave or strong. Not in the ways that matter. Even as a boy, I knew that. I knew I would never fight battles, or slay dragons, or save princesses. I would never be a hero, so I set out to be a good man. The best man I could be.”

  “You are a good man, Patrick. Those who know you love you.”

  “They respect me. They know I am honest and fair, that I am good to my word and pose no threat to anyone. I know exactly what is expected of me, and I accept it,” he explained. “In other words, I know my place. And where I come from, that is more important than knowing one’s own name.”

  “But why do you have to accept it?” she asked. “Why try to fit yourself into that same, tired mold when you could become something better?”

  “Because it’s safe,” he said. “Don’t we all want to feel safe?”

  Linley shrugged. “Not always. Sometimes I like to push the boundaries. I like seeing what I’m truly capable of.”

  They both ducked down to miss a long, overhanging branch that skimmed across the jungle path.

  “But you could get hurt,” Patrick said. “You could get yourself killed.”

  “Isn’t death the one risk of really living? Think of yourself as a child, huddled in a corner with your books, praying for something to come along and break you out of your dull, boring life. But nothing ever came along, did it? And here you are now, still living the same life you’ve dreamed of escaping since you were a boy.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “No one is going to make you a hero, Patrick. You have to go out and do it yourself.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Here looks as good a place as any to set up camp,” Sir Bedford said, stretching after almost twelve hours on an elephant’s back. “Archie, if you and Reginald would go for water, Linley and I will see to the tents.”

  Both Archie and Reginald nodded, gathering the water buckets.

  “Schoville,” Linley’s father continued, “You are in charge of collecting wood for the fire this evening.”

  Without a word, Schoville dug a hatchet from their pile of tools, and started off toward a large clump of trees at the jungle’s edge.

  Patrick looked from face to face. “And what can I do?”

  “You can stay out of the way.” Archie snorted, pushing past them. He and Reginald pulled a pair of machetes from their cases and hacked a path into the dense jungle.

  Ignoring them, Patrick blinked down at Linley. “How can I help?”

  “Do you know how to pitch a tent?”

  “No,” he said. “But I’m a quick learner.”

  She glanced around the small clearing that would serve as their campsite. “For now, why don’t you just stay where you are until Schoville comes back with the firewood. Papa and I can work much faster without you getting in the way.”

  Patrick threw up his arms. “I do not understand why everyone here treats me as if I am incompetent.” With a huff, he stamped over to a fallen log and started to sit.

  “Don’t do that,” Linley called. “There are ants.”

  He jerked up from his seat. With the heel of his boot, he gave the log a strong kick, sending a legion of large red ants scurrying into action. He watched them rush about, and then looked up at Linley.

  She smiled and shook her head, and if Patrick didn’t know better, might have even rolled her eyes.

  An hour later, the campsite buzzed with activity. Six canvas bivouacs formed the perimeter around a crackling fire, and inside the circle, wooden tables and camp chairs sat angled toward the blaze. The mahouts preferred to sleep with their elephants, but hung around the camp in the hopes of a decent meal.

  Patrick sat in one of the stiff-backed chairs, arms crossed over his chest. He watched Linley stoop over the fire, brushing a loose strand of hair back as she bent to stir something boiling in an iron pot. Even she—a girl—was more helpful then he was! He felt ridiculous, and not at all manly. What was he thinking coming all the way to India? He belonged in Kyre, huddled in the library with a dog curled at his feet. At least there he could shoot or ride to hounds. In India, they hardly allowed him near the firewood, let alone within arms reach of a gun.

  Patrick shifted in his seat, causing Linley to look up in his direction. She sm
iled, long and slow, sending her freckles scattering across her cheeks. Her glance stilled him.

  That was what he was doing in India.

  Her.

  He smiled, not nearly as wide or as bright as hers, but with no less meaning behind it—perhaps with even more. They held each other’s gaze for a breath of a second. Whether from the heat of the fire, or her own feelings, Linley’s skin grew flushed, and she looked away. She stared down at the boiling pot, stirring. She stirred and stirred, never once breaking her concentration or looking back up at him.

  He made her nervous. His advances, if they could even be called advances, embarrassed her. Patrick reveled in the thought. Usually, young ladies made him blush, their overzealous attempts to seduce him often more distressing than convincing. He was not ignorant of why. He knew they saw him as a title. A living, breathing pay-packet. An old house they could fix up and flaunt to their friends. An opportunity.

  But not Linley Talbot-Martin. She saw him as a friend. Perhaps as something more than a friend, but never as a way to better herself. Despite what Gaynor Robeson and so many others tried to tell him, Patrick knew in his heart that he was not a vehicle to further Linley’s own ambitions.

  Archie must have noticed the way he stared at her, because he leaned over and hissed in Patrick’s ear. “I’ve known Linley since she was a baby,” he said. “I was there when she learned to walk. I taught her how to swim, how to drive.” He took a deep breath, letting his words settle in. “If you so much as lay a hand on her—”

  Patrick snapped his head around, locking eyes with him. “You’ll do what, then?”

  Archie rose to his feet and shrugged. “The jungle is a dangerous place, my friend. Especially late at night. I would hate to see you carried away by tigers.” He slapped Patrick on the back for emphasis.

  ***

  After dinner, Linley pulled Patrick aside.

  “I have something for you,” she said, reaching into her tent and pulling out a tin of talcum powder.