He cupped her face, holding her firmly, and kissed her again, this time just below the center of her lips. She was scorched anew.
She touched the ends of his hair. Closer to his head the texture of his dark hair did not seem very different from hers. But whereas her hair fell as straight as rain, at his ears his hair began to curl into loose spirals and the way they coiled fascinated her.
In return, he kissed the shell of her ear; at the pleasure that spiked into her, she whimpered and buried her hands in his hair. He responded by parting her lips and kissing her inside her mouth. It shocked her. Though she had witnessed endless obscenities, the least of his moves seemed monumental, something no one had ever done before.
But it was delicious, what he did. When he would have pulled away she wrapped her hand around his nape and stopped him. He kissed her with greater force and urgency.
When she did let him go it was only so she could catch her breath.
What he did next made her lose her breath altogether: He opened her robe and pushed it off her shoulders. Without thinking, her hands came up to shield herself. But he caught her hands, leaving her exposed to his gaze.
For all that each of his movements had been slow and deliberate, she understood now that he would not stop, not until he had possessed her in full. A sudden panic caught up to her.
Her heart drummed in her ears as he kissed her again. One of his hands settled at the indentation of her waist; the other touched the undercurve of her breast.
She trembled and placed her hand on his chest. “If you make me yours, then you will be mine. Forever. And you can never leave me.”
He gazed at her a long moment. “I am already yours. Forever.”
The truth of his words resonated within her. And with it came a fierce understanding. This was why fate had brought her to the wild heart of the continent, because it was only here that their paths would cross. It was only here that she would meet this remarkable man.
She kissed him, deeply and ardently, and tumbled him into bed with her.
“Your wounds—” he managed between kisses.
“Are mere scratches. And how dare you doubt my manly forbearance.”
He smiled slightly and slid his palm over her nipple. “Forgive me. I can never be half the man you are.”
She sucked in a breath at the sharp pleasure. He settled himself over her and she sucked in another breath at the rock-hard heft that now pressed into her thigh. The significance of what they were about to do overcame her once again.
She gripped his arms. “You won’t leave me?”
Amah’s lover had stayed with her for only six months.
The Persian took Ying-ying’s face between his hands, his eyes at once intense and impossibly clear. “Never.”
Her doubts evaporated before his absolute certainty. Suddenly she was impatient to claim him, to make him truly hers.
But he would not hurry. He caressed her as if the night were infinite and every square inch of her skin deserved its own hour of worship. And the places he touched—and kissed and licked. By the time he at last joined their bodies together, she was a mindless cauldron of lust. An entire storehouse of black powder that needed only the least spark to detonate.
How he ignited her.
Later, when they lay in each other’s arms, their breaths finally quieting to something approaching normal, she said, “Tell me again.”
He kissed her forehead, her eyelids, and her lips. “I will look after you, for as long as we both live. And there will never be anyone else but you.”
CHAPTER 9
The Kite
England
1891
Two minutes after Catherine left the antique shop, thunder boomed in the sky and rain poured as if Heaven meant to empty its entire reservoir.
She tried to hail a hansom cab, but the ones that drove by all had passengers—a miracle that she wasn’t drenched to the knee with the sludge their wheels splattered. She had planned on visiting two more antique dealers this morning—perhaps the time had come to try the underground railway that she had heard so much about, primarily in friendly advice regarding things not to do while in London.
Or perhaps she ought to just go back to her flat, make herself a pot of chrysanthemum tea, and curl up with Master Gordon’s jade tablet.
Every night since she had found it, she had sat with the jade tablet in hand, turning it over and over, examining every last detail. Even though she had seen it in Master Gordon’s presence only a few times, knowing how important it had been to him, knowing that he had carried it with him across ten thousand miles . . .
He’d had many dreams for her, dreams of a life at once free and secure. Some of the happiest hours of her life had been spent sitting across a table from him as he wove a tapestry of possibilities, a whole wide world for a girl trapped behind high walls.
In truth, they had been fellow prisoners, staring together out of a single tiny window. But such was the beauty of friendship that when she had been with him, she never noticed the bars on that window.
A black brougham pulled to the curb some fifteen feet away. The door of the carriage opened just as she drew abreast to it. “I thought that was you, Miss Blade. Do please come in out of the rain.”
Miss Chase.
And on the opposite seat, her fiancé.
The same shock overcame Catherine again: the same shock, the same searing happiness, then, the same throat-constricting realization that, dead or alive, he remained lost to her.
“It’s most kind of you, Miss Chase.” Catherine smiled with as much warmth as she could muster. “But I shan’t drench your carriage. My flat is only around the corner.”
Miss Chase turned to her fiancé. “Is it, Captain?”
The space of three heartbeats passed before he said, “No.”
“Well, that won’t do at all!” exclaimed Miss Chase, once again facing Catherine. “What would my aunt say if she knew that we left you out in a downpour? Now do please come in and let us take you home.”
Leighton Atwood left his seat and descended. Something acrid lodged in Catherine’s throat—he meant to leave. But no, he only intended to perform the gentlemanly task and assist her into the carriage.
He offered his arm and greeted her blandly. “How do you do, Miss Blade?”
She laid her gloved hand on the forearm of the man with whom she had meant to spend the rest of her life. There must be layers of clothes under his coat, cashmere, silk, linen. Nevertheless, her fingertips burned.
With a murmur of gratitude, she sat down next to Miss Chase. The interior of the carriage was polished wood and velvet, the seats dark red, the fixtures brass filigree—not Mrs. Reynolds’s carriage, but his. He retook his seat and gave her address to the coachman.
“That’s not around the corner at all,” Miss Chase chided her. “You’d have been soaked if you were to walk all that distance, and it would have ruined your dress.”
Catherine kept her eyes demurely downcast—a necessity, as he was directly opposite. Her gaze fell instead on his walking stick, the crutch of a man who never knew when he would become crippled by pain. “How fortunate for me that you happened to be passing this way.”
“We were at a shop only two streets north—Captain Atwood bought me this most beautiful music box and had it restored.” Miss Chase smiled at her fiancé. “You don’t mind if I show off a bit, do you, Captain?”
“Of course not,” he answered quietly.
Miss Chase opened the case on her lap. Inside was a music box of considerable size and complexity. Miss Chase wound it up, and half a dozen figurines atop the music box came to life, dancing, singing, playing trumpets, their eyes, mouths, and limbs moving in rhythm to the cheery tune.
“Adorable, isn’t it?” Miss Chase laughed. “Captain Atwood gives the most delectable presents.”
“Absolutely charming,” Catherine managed.
When the music ended, Miss Chase put the music box away and indicated the package
Catherine carried with her. “And did you also find something interesting, Miss Blade?”
“Not quite,” said Catherine, unwrapping layers of cloth and oil cloth and then opening the box for Miss Chase to see. “I was rather hoping to purchase something that would go well with this, but I haven’t had much luck so far.”
“This” was a small, three-frame decorative screen that she always brought with her when she visited an antique shop. Each frame held a rectangle of mutton-fat jade of nearly identical density and creaminess to the Heart Sutra jade tablets, except the triptych depicted not a devotional theme, but scenes from a Chinese folktale.
She would show the screen to the antique dealers and ask whether they had anything that would function as companion pieces to the screen. In response, she had been presented with everything from a pair of stylized ebony African heads made in Vienna, to Delft chinoiserie plates, to a quartet of carved seals purporting to be imperial seals of the Ch’ing Court, when they were at best those of a midlevel provincial official.
Miss Chase laid a hand over her heart. “Oh, how beautiful. What does the scene depict?”
“A Chinese story named ‘The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.’ The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl are lovers who cannot be together, so they spend their lives on opposite banks of the Silver River, which is what the Chinese call the Milky Way.” Was that Leighton Atwood’s gaze she felt on her? She slid the pad of her thumb across the mahogany latticework at the bottom of the panels. “But on the seventh day of the seventh moon of the year, a flock of magpies form a bridge across the river, and they are briefly reunited, before they must each return to their own bank for the long wait to begin again.”
“My, but that is both so romantic and so sad.” Miss Chase examined the screen more carefully. “I can’t decide whether this bridge of magpies is in the process of forming or unforming.”
“It is up to the beholder to decide whether the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl are about to reunite, or about to part again,” said Catherine.
“They must be on the verge of a reunion,” declared Miss Chase. “What do you think, Captain?”
He accepted the miniature screen and studied it. Fiercely, it seemed to Catherine.
“Well,” prompted Miss Chase. “What is your verdict, Captain? Joyous reunion or more heartrending separation?”
Catherine didn’t know why, but she held her breath.
Another two seconds passed before he spoke. “I cannot tell.”
He handed the miniature screen to Catherine. Their eyes met. An almost blank look on his part, yet Catherine felt as if all the air in her lungs had been forced out.
Miss Chase laughed. “Leave it to a man to demand rock-solid evidence for something as silly as this.”
Catherine busied herself putting the miniature screen away. Leighton Atwood should probably have said something, but he did not. Miss Chase tapped her fingers rather self-consciously on the seat—did she sense how out of place her laughter had sounded?
For some time no one said anything. Then Miss Chase turned to Catherine and announced brightly, “Captain Atwood and I have settled on a date. We will be married exactly four weeks from today.”
A betrothal was a formal agreement to marry. Leighton Atwood and Miss Chase were betrothed. Therefore, it should not surprise Catherine at all that they had moved that much closer to the altar.
Yet she felt splintered by the shock.
I will look after you, for as long as we both live. And there will never be anyone else but you.
Her eyes strayed to him. Their gaze locked in a moment of wretched intensity. Yet as brief as it was, it did not pass unobserved. The tension between them was like a scent on the air, little noticeable in larger, more diffuse gatherings, but almost an assault to the senses in such close confines.
A shadow of disquiet crossed Miss Chase’s sugar-and-spice features.
“Many congratulations,” Catherine said, perhaps a beat too late. “What an exciting time this must be.”
“Yes, quite—and busy, too!” Miss Chase said with great cheer. “I have just been to my first fitting for the wedding gown yesterday. The invitations are due to come back from the printer’s tomorrow. And according to my mother, we must produce a wedding breakfast menu no later than this afternoon.”
The interlocking gears of a wedding, like those of a war machine, ground on inexorably.
It was another moment before Catherine realized a further reply was expected. Just as she was about speak, however, Leighton Atwood said, “Your generalship would put Napoleon’s to shame, my dear.”
A very nice compliment. Except to Catherine’s ear, it sounded like an attempt to distract Miss Chase from the odd rhythm of Catherine’s replies.
Miss Chase smiled at her future husband, a smile that was not entirely unclouded. Then she looked back at Catherine. “We are thinking of a big wedding, Miss Blade. Won’t you honor us with your presence?”
A nearly inaudible crunch of fabric—Leighton Atwood had shifted in place. Had he been caught as much off guard as Catherine?
Miss Chase’s gaze stayed on Catherine. Her cheeks had become more rigid, her shoulders taut. The girl might be young, but she was perceptive. And she did not hesitate to go on the offensive at the urging of her instinct.
The carriage stopped: They had arrived at Catherine’s address.
She took a deep breath. “I will be delighted.”
It would, if nothing else, cure her of false hopes. As the Chinese said, All excellent remedies are bitter to swallow.
The door opened. She thanked Miss Chase and Leighton Atwood again for their kindness. A footman, holding a large umbrella, escorted her to her front door.
The brougham rolled away and with every turn of the wheels, carried the pair inside closer to their wedded destiny.
For the first time since they’d become engaged, Leighton considered the possibility that perhaps he did not know his fiancée as well as he had believed.
The Annabel he thought he knew, the one who had charmed him with her frankness and transparency, would have asked if there was something the matter between himself and Miss Blade.
A thorny question for him, but one that would have been well within her rights to pose.
Instead she told him about her friend Miss Featherstone, who, unable to decide between her two suitors, had decided to entrust her fate to table-turning, that silly diversion whereby one spun around a table with letters on it until a letter had been picked, then another.
“And guess what the table’s answer was? The frog in the grass!” Annabel cried triumphantly.
He obliged with a smile. “Not the answer she was looking for?”
“No, not when the suitors’ names are Bloomsbury and Wellington. Now the poor girl doesn’t know what to do, which goes to show that you should never leave important decisions to parlor games.”
Her amiable chatter sounded scarcely any different from usual. It would be all too easy to suppose that she had noticed nothing, except he could not dismiss her abrupt invitation to Miss Blade to witness their exchange of vows: It had been a declaration of ownership.
A saber rattling, almost. A shot across the bow.
He observed her closely and listened not so much to her words as to her tone as she maintained an amusing, agreeable, if somewhat one-sided conversation.
Never a moment of awkward silence between the two of them—and certainly not now.
He walked her to the front door of her house and handed her the music box. “Is there anything that bothers you, my dear?”
He was not at liberty to divulge the covert mission to Chinese Turkestan while he had been stationed in India, but he could truthfully say that he had met Miss Blade when he had traveled to China many years ago. And if Annabel pressed, he was prepared to admit having, at one point, harbored strong sentiments for Miss Blade.
The unease in Annabel’s eyes barely existed before it was replaced by a look of seamless surprise—if he hadn’t been
looking for it, he would have noticed nothing unusual.
She rapped him on the arm. “No, silly, nothing bothers me. Well, except the prospect of Mother insisting on having pigeon pie at the wedding breakfast—you know how I feel about those dastardly birds.”
He kissed her on the cheek. “Then tell her that I detest pigeon pie and would not stand for it to be served at my wedding.”
They parted with every appearance of warmth and affection—and he walked away more than a little troubled.
The clerk at the window shook his head.
Still nothing from Mrs. Robert Delany of San Francisco, then. Catherine hoped it was only because the woman had decided to reply via letter, which would take weeks to make its way across a continent and an ocean, and not because anything had happened to her.
The antique dealers of London could not help Catherine—of course not, if the other jade tablet remained in private hands. But Mrs. Delany could. Catherine had decided that Mrs. Delany must be Master Gordon’s beloved’s sister, and had acted as a liaison and facilitator of their forbidden affair. And he, in turn, had given her almost the entirety of his worldly possessions in a grand gesture of gratitude.
Catherine had a wishful notion, that of Mrs. Delany’s eventual response containing not just the exact detail Catherine wanted—the jade tablet he had once given my brother—but a warm invitation to visit San Francisco at her earliest convenience. And of course this miraculous letter or cable would come in the nick of time, so that before her steamer sailed, she could reasonably send in her regrets for missing Leighton Atwood’s wedding to Miss Chase.
“Thank you,” she said to the clerk, and yielded her place at the window.
Outside the poste restante office, an unfamiliar sight greeted her: sunlight. When she had arrived at St. Martin’s-le-Grand, it had still been overcast, and she’d had every expectation of yet another wet, grey day. But now suddenly London was in the fullness of spring, the sun shining, the sky blue, and the trees so green their leaves glistened.
London as Master Gordon would have wanted her to see it. So she took herself to the green lungs of the city, the vast expanse that was the combined acreage of St. James’s Park, Green Park, Hyde Park, and Kensington Gardens.
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