by Blythe Baker
“Alice,” I scolded, shooing her away with a wave.
Then, as if Alice’s audience was not enough, Aunt Sarah walked into the room. “Graham, are you staying for dinner? We have not had the pleasure of your company for the last couple of days.”
“No, he can’t stay,” Alice said. “He is taking Rose out to dinner.”
Aunt Sarah turned and saw the flowers and Graham, smiling and nervous, and cupped a hand over her heart like she was afraid it would leak out of her chest. “Oh my, it is about time, isn’t it? I knew you two were more than friends.”
“Aunt Sarah,” I said even more severely than I had scolded Alice.
“Now you understand how I feel,” Alice said in a low whisper that was still audible to everyone in the room.
“I actually have not asked anyone to dinner,” Graham said, smiling, though I could tell by the pinch of his mouth that he was disappointed with the way things were going. He smiled at me and winked. “Not yet, anyway.”
Suddenly, I didn’t want Aunt Sarah or Alice to leave. I wished they would stay and insist he stay for dinner. That way we could eat all together in the dining room, and I would not have to contemplate my feelings for Graham.
I was grateful to him for caring so much about my safety, even if his concern did make him a nuisance a large portion of the time. And with the endless changes in my life, it was nice to have a constant friend. But could I see him as more than that? Would my lifestyle be conducive to a relationship? I tried to imagine dinner dates and dancing amidst my sneaking around and covert meetings, and the image refused to form.
“Alice,” Aunt Sarah said, hurrying across the entryway and wrapping an arm around her youngest niece. “Come sit with me until dinner is ready.”
“But I want to see Graham ask Rose to dinner,” Alice whined. “It is the most exciting thing that has happened in days, aside from Daniel’s visits.
“You will have your own dinner invitation to look forward to if Daniel carries on as he has,” Aunt Sarah assured her before closing the French doors, leaving me and Graham alone.
Graham turned to me and sighed. “Your family is very lively.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “That they are. Alice most of all.”
He nodded in agreement and then bit his lower lip, looking up at me beneath his pale eyebrows. Once upon a time, I had seen Achilles Prideaux in his features, but now I wondered at how I ever could have compared them. Graham was open and wide—large eyes, broad mouth, welcoming smile. Achilles had an air of mystery around him at all times, standing in the corners with his slanted eyes and angular chin. Thin mustache aside, they were different in almost every way.
“I suppose my next question will not be a surprise to you,” Graham said, tipping his head to the sitting room where Alice and Aunt Sarah were talking very loudly about the weather. “I know it is short notice, but would you like to accompany me to dinner?”
“I will have to ask Aunt Sarah, as I know the servants have been preparing dinner, and—”
“You may go,” Aunt Sarah called through the door. “It will be no inconvenience to me. You eat like a bird. Barely enough to make a difference.”
My face flushed, embarrassed. No matter how unwise it might be to accept his invitation while still unsure of my feelings, it seemed better than denying him and having to explain my hesitance to Alice and Aunt Sarah.
“Allow me ten minutes to change,” I said, clutching the bouquet to my chest and backing towards the stairs.
Graham smiled wider than I’d ever seen and nodded. “I’ll wait here.”
A live band played jazz music on a stage in the corner and every table was occupied by a young couple, usually holding hands and whispering to one another. The restaurant we’d eaten at our first night in the city with Aunt Sarah had drawn the old-money crowd, but this place catered to the young.
“I don’t usually frequent places like this,” Graham said, leaning across the table. He seemed nervous in the setting, though not uncomfortable. He glanced around with wide eyes like he wanted to see and remember everything.
“It seems very popular,” I agreed, unable to stop myself from comparing the riotous couples around us with the quiet dignitaries that frequented The White Tiger Club. A line formed between Graham’s brows, and I rushed to clarify. “Very fun. I’m enjoying the change in pace.”
He let out a sigh of relief. “I’m glad. I thought we could both use a little fun. With everything that has happened the last few weeks, I almost forgot we are young.”
“Oh?”
“Yes,” he said, sliding his chair closer to mine so we were sitting on the same side of the table facing the stage. “You stayed with the Hutchins’ in Simla, and nothing against their kindness, but they are hardly in their prime. Mr. Hutchins spent every second working and Mrs. Hutchins scarcely left the bungalow. And all of my companions for the last several years have been military men.”
“Aren’t you yourself a military man?” I teased.
“In the same way you are a British official’s daughter,” he said with a smirk.
I pulled back, suddenly on guard. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Graham’s smile told me it was an innocent comment made in passing, but something about it felt ominous. Could he be making a crude comment on the fact that my father—or the man he believed to be my father—was dead, meaning I was no longer an official’s daughter? Or was he choosing this public location to inform me that he knew I was not truly Mr. Beckingham’s daughter? Both seemed outlandish, but otherwise, I could not puzzle out the meaning of the strange phrase.
Graham seemed to note the change in my tone, and he reached out, placing his hand over mine. “I only meant that you are unlike the other women in your same position. I hope you did not think I meant to insult you.”
I softened slightly, both with relief and apology. “It would only be an insult if you liked the other women in my position you’ve met.”
His smirk returned. “Not half as much as I like you, my dear Rose.”
I looked away, finding his attention too fixed on my face. “You are too kind a man to truly feel that way about your female friends in India.”
He shook his head. “My feelings have nothing to do with their faults and everything to do with your virtues.”
“Virtues,” I said, dismissing the word with a wave. “Since when is causing trouble a virtue?”
“Modesty.” Graham lifted a finger as if he was going to count off my admirable traits one by one. He held up a second finger.
“Truly, Graham, I have you fooled.” I looked around the room in hopes of catching a waiter. We’d been sitting down for ten minutes and had yet to see anyone about ordering our food.
“No, you have me enchanted, Rose Beckingham.”
My skin was suddenly damp with nervous sweat. I felt like I’d been backed into a corner though we were in the middle of the room. I felt trapped. This feeling was not helped when Graham slid his chair even closer to mine until his knee nearly touched mine.
“I’ve been enchanted since the day I first met you in front of The Hutchins’ bungalow. You were exciting and beautiful, so unlike anyone I’d ever known. You are always searching and prying, ill-content to leave things as they are. Instead, you see them as you wish they were.”
His opinion of me was obviously colored by the relative newness of his affections, otherwise he would have seen me as the woman who risked his reputation several times in order to selfishly gather information. He would see me as a nosy girl who fancied herself a detective despite no proper training as such.
“You make the mundane extraordinary, and I fear you have forever ruined any chances of me enjoying a normal life,” Graham continued, having no idea how each of his words clung to me like anchors, pulling me below the surface until I could not breathe. “Before meeting you, I never would have packed up on one day’s notice and sailed across the ocean. I never would have taken leave from my duties and travelled
to New York on a whim. But Rose, you make me want to do extraordinary things. You make me want to be an extraordinary man.”
The faster Graham spoke, the faster my eyes darted around the room. I needed someone, anyone to offer me the smallest excuse to end this conversation. I liked Graham. Truly. But in what way? I was not sure. He had been a good, true friend to me, and I appreciated the steadfastness of his concern, but did that mean I wanted him to fawn over me the way Charles fawned over Catherine? Did that mean I wanted to flush every time he walked into the room and be introduced as his date at every social function we attended? I could not see myself playing the role of the dutiful partner that, no matter how much Graham protested, I knew he truly wanted. Even if I did feel the same way about Graham—which I was not certain was true—returning his affections now felt like a betrayal because I knew he had no real understanding of exactly how different I was from other women.
My heart beat wildly in my chest, and I scanned the crowd again, seeing without really seeing anything until I saw him and froze. Graham’s voice faded to nothing in my ears, and everyone else in the room seemed to fall into darkness. Only Achilles Prideaux was illuminated.
He moved around the edge of the room, navigating around tables and chairs, but when he reached a door set into the back wall, he looked up, his gaze falling at once on me, and I knew this was it. He had the information and had come to deliver it. I stood up before I realized I would need to make an excuse to Graham.
His mouth was hanging open like he’d been in the middle of saying something, and I’d interrupted him. Which I felt certain I had. I smiled. “I’m sorry. I need to use the ladies’ room.”
He blinked a few times, bewildered, and then dutifully stood and bowed, excusing me.
I rushed from the table like I’d just been freed from a burning building, and as if the restaurant had been brimming with acrid smoke, I didn’t take a gasping breath until I’d walked through the door I’d seen Achilles move through and followed the hallway and another door to a narrow alley between two brick buildings.
Evening air filled my lungs, and I was surprised at how clammy my skin had become sitting at the table.
“I see you got my message.”
I turned to see Achilles leaning against the brick wall and spinning his cane in front of him. When I approached, he pressed the cane into the ground and stood tall, towering over me. I’d forgotten how tall he was during my time away.
“Very subtle.” I rolled my eyes. “Was this truly the most opportune moment? You may not have noticed, but I was in the middle of dinner.”
“No, I noticed,” he said, dark eyebrow raising. “From my vantage point, it appeared you were eager for an exit. I simply obliged.”
I was grateful for the darkness when my cheeks flushed. Achilles had noticed from across the room what Graham had failed to see sitting next to me.
“I only have a minute,” I continued. “My date is waiting inside.”
Achilles removed a small piece of paper from an inside jacket pocket and handed it to me. It was a list of names.
“Shorter than I anticipated,” I said, counting only thirty names in total.
“It is not exhaustive,” he said curtly, annoyed at my displeasure. “I can retrieve more, but these seemed to be the most pertinent. Though you told me nothing of what you are investigating, I assumed you would be most interested in the names that had connections to both England and India. If I was mistaken, then forgive me, and I’ll take the list and try again.”
He reached for the paper, but I pulled it out of his grip. “I do not believe you are mistaken.”
I scanned the list just as I had scanned the faces inside the restaurant moments before, seeing but not seeing, hoping for a name to jump out at me. One did: William Alexander Beckingham. However, that was information I already knew and the reason I’d asked for the list in the first place, so I continued on until my eyes stumbled over Charles Cresswell’s name only two lines down.
“Who is your male friend?”
I pressed my finger to Charles’ name, annoyed at having been interrupted, and looked up at Achilles. “Excuse me?”
He looked down the alley as if he didn’t care, dark brows pinched together. “You called your dinner a date. I only wonder how you know the man.”
“I suspect you know the man already,” I said. I had underestimated Achilles on several occasions, but never again. He always knew more than he let on. It was what made him a world-class detective.
His cane tapped a quick rhythm on the ground. “After so much time spent together on the ship from Bombay, I would have thought you’d be tired of one another. In my experience, you tire quickly with the company of friends.”
Clearly, I had wounded Achilles more deeply than I understood when I left him in Morocco. However, unlike Graham’s feelings, I had every confidence Achilles’ would recover from my rebuff. “Graham is more persistent than most of my friends.”
Achilles looked at me from the corner of his eye. “And is that a quality you admire?”
I shrugged and told him the truth. “The answer to that question has yet to be revealed even to me.”
He seemed satisfied enough with this answer, and I returned to the list, skimming past the next four letters in the alphabet without recognizing another name. And then, I nearly dropped the list.
“What is it?” Achilles asked, noting the change in my demeanor and moving forward.
I read the name again and again, feeling the connections being forged in my mind.
“Do you recognize a name?” Achilles asked.
General Thomas Hughes. The same man who had supposedly hung himself from the rafters of the White Tiger Club’s library just prior to my arrival in the city. I now knew his death to have been a murder carried out by the same man who threw the bomb through the Beckingham’s car window. Mr. Barlow had admitted to killing the General and to being part of an organized ring of international assassins who were targeting British diplomats. He had told me all of this with the intention of killing me first, but I managed to end his life, thus sparing my own.
What I had not known, however, was General Hughes’ connection to the Paris Peace Conference, and therefore, his connection to Mr. Beckingham. The two men had not only been diplomats living in Simla during the time of their deaths, but diplomats who had both had a hand in settling affairs after the war.
“Rose?” Achilles leaned forward, catching my eye and bringing my gaze up to his face. “You have gone pale.”
I shook my head. “I lost myself in thought.”
His eyes narrowed. He did not trust me, as he had every right not to. “Will you be needing a more extensive list, or will this one do?”
“This will do,” I said, tucking the piece of paper into my silk handbag and pulling the strings tight to close it. “Thank you for your assistance.”
Achilles sighed. “So, is this the end of our communication, or will you require my help again?”
“Not at the moment. I have no doubt, however, that we will run into one another again.”
“My time in the city is coming to an end. I’m leaving for London tomorrow,” he said, glancing over at me before looking back down the alley.
“Is that an invitation to join you?” I asked with a smile.
Achilles did not return the kind gesture. He simply shook his head. “I would be a fool to ask. You do not follow anyone, Rose Beckingham. Least of all me.”
I could not work out whether his comment was an insult or a compliment. “Then, are you expecting me to ask you to extend your stay in the city?”
“I can’t stay,” he said. “I have business waiting in London.”
That was not really the answer to my question, and we both knew it. “But would you stay? If you did not have pressing business to attend to?”
I didn’t know why the answer mattered to me, yet I could not stop myself from asking the question. Achilles adjusted his tie nervously and tapped his cane on the
ground, the sound echoing off the brick walls. “You should return to your date before he comes searching for you. If he knows you well, he may be beginning to suspect you’ve run away.”
“I do not run away nearly as often as you seem to think I do,” I argued.
Finally, Achilles smiled, this time because he had managed to upset me, and he knew it. I could have kicked his cane out from under him. Then, his smile faltered, and he lowered his voice. “It may do no good, but I would be remiss not to warn you about your companion.”
All teasing between us forgotten, I leaned forward. “You are talking about Graham Collins? You know something?”
He shook his head. “I do not know anything, no. But I find his motivations to be suspect.”
The tightness in my chest relaxed. “Is that so?”
“Yes, in fact,” he continued. “The man hardly knows you and yet he travelled around the world to be with you. It rings suspicious to me and it ought to catch your attention, as well.”
Something was catching my attention, but it had little to do with Graham’s motivations and everything to do with Achilles’. He was jealous. Quite jealous. And I found it all immensely amusing.
“Is it so suspicious that a man could enjoy my company so much?” I asked. Then I waved a hand, stopping him from speaking. “Actually, do not answer that. It is an invitation to insult.”
“I would never seek to insult you,” Achilles said.
“I do not believe you for a moment,” I said with a smile. “You may not understand the feeling that has overcome my travelling companion, but his motivations are clear enough to me. He enjoys my company, and now I must return to him in order to determine whether I enjoy his equally as well.”
It felt good to be honest with someone about Graham, even if that person was Achilles. I also felt a small amount of guilt removed from me at the sight of his obvious relief. I had not settled on a decision regarding Graham, and clearly it brought Achilles some level of comfort.
He bowed low. “I will leave you to your date, then. Sorry to intrude.”