My Beautiful Enemy

by Thomas, Sherry

  There were fine gardens and pleasure grounds in Peking, but those that did not belong to the emperor belonged to the nobility and the very rich—and they were always surrounded by high walls. There were no great parks allotted, free of charge, to the enjoyment of the commoner.

  And such great parks, with broad lawns, wide avenues, fountains, and a fine lake. She would never love London as Master Gordon had, but for today at least, she saw it through his eyes and she was glad for it.

  “Miss Blade! Miss Blade!”

  She turned to see Mrs. Reynolds. “Why, hullo. How nice to run into you, ma’am.”

  “I had just called on you. I should have guessed that you would be out and about on a day like this.”

  “Like the rest of London.”

  Fashionable London was out in force: Rotten Row all but choked with smart, open carriages conveying sumptuously dressed women. Ordinary London was out, too—elderly ladies seeking the warmth of the sun on their creaky joints, men pale from months of overcast skies, and, of course, scores of rowdy, rambunctious children who had been too long cooped up inside.

  Catherine’s gaze lingered on two dark-haired little girls of about seven playing with a toy sailboat at the edge of the water. If her baby had lived, she would be the same age. Would she be more like the girl on the left, energetic and obviously in charge, or the one on the right, good-natured and happy to be led?

  “Oh, how nice it is to look at trees and flowers for a change,” said Mrs. Reynolds fervently, bringing Catherine’s attention back her way. “Yesterday we spent five hours examining dozens of different kinds of lace for Annabel’s bridal veil—my head quite spun at the end of it.”

  The color of an English wedding was that of a Chinese funeral. Catherine would be digging graves on that day, graves for dreams old and new. “Was Miss Chase able to make a choice?” she asked tightly.

  “She narrowed it down to three candidates. Tomorrow she and her mother will be going back to confirm a final selection. But I’m glad today she has decided to have some fun instead. Ah, there she is.”

  Mrs. Reynolds waved.

  The lovely bride-to-be, in a fetching violet-and-white striped frock, waved back from a rowboat on the Serpentine. Marland Atwood, on the same boat, also waved. A second man turned around to see who had caught his companion’s attention. He had boyish good looks and a head of straight, ash blond hair.

  “That is Mr. Madison,” said Mrs. Reynolds. “His father and the late Mr. Chase were cousins.”

  Miss Chase held up both of her hands so that her thumbs and forefingers approximated the shape of a rectangle. Then she gestured toward Catherine.

  “Good gracious, I almost forgot,” said Mrs. Reynolds. “I had volunteered to hand deliver your invitation to the wedding.”

  The invitation was printed on heavy stock and vellum, with tiny seed pearls sewn into borders of wine and gold. Inside, rose petals had been worked into the paper, their subtle scent rising. Above the time and place was a quote from the Song of Solomon, printed in ornate letters: I have found the one whom my soul loves.

  She lifted her head to see Leighton Atwood, on the opposite shore of the Serpentine, watching her. For a moment it felt as if they stood on two sides of the Milky Way, separated by all the stars in the sky, but without any flock of magpies to bridge the distance between them.

  I am already yours. Forever.

  She glanced away, but not before Miss Chase observed the look that had been exchanged.

  Miss Chase gestured to her fiancé. The two young men in the boat began rowing toward the southern shore. Mrs. Reynolds ushered Catherine into a for-hire boat, and the oarsman ferried them across to join the others.

  By the time Catherine was on solid ground again, Miss Chase already had her arm entwined with Leighton Atwood’s. If Amah still lived, she would cuff Catherine on the back of her head for being so incompetent that she couldn’t even kill a faithless lover properly. But that particular failure was something Catherine could not regret, no matter what.

  “You have not met my cousin yet, have you, Miss Blade?” said Miss Chase, her smile just the tiniest bit tense. “Allow me to present Mr. Madison. Edwin, Miss Blade, who has returned from the Far East to start a brand-new life in England.”

  Up close, there was an odd familiarity to Mr. Madison’s face. Yet Catherine didn’t think she had come across him in either Peking or Shanghai, and she certainly had not encountered him during her voyage to England.

  “A brand-new life, eh?” he said, his voice surprisingly rich. “What do you think of London, Miss Blade?”

  “Never mind what she thinks of London,” Marland Atwood interjected. “What can she think of it but that it is a dirty, noisy, and crowded place? The point is, Miss Blade, have you been having fun?”

  Master Gordon had loved to entertain her by describing all the fun he saw in her future. When Leighton Atwood had made his promises, they, too, had been implicit in their guarantee of diversion and merriment: the endless bazaars of Delhi and Bombay, the fireworks of Diwali, the tropical atolls of the Maldives, lapped by the aquamarine waves of the Indian Ocean.

  But fun, to this day, remained an alien concept.

  “I’m afraid I have been busy settling in,” she answered, holding her voice steady. “But now I am more than willing to devote myself to fun. Any suggestion on what I should do?”

  “Ride a bicycle,” Marland Atwood said immediately. “I ruined two pairs of good trousers and still have a bandage on my knee, but it is the most delicious fun I have had in a while.”

  “I do enjoy the theater, myself,” said Mr. Madison.

  “And of course you must come to the ball we are holding the day after tomorrow,” added Miss Chase. “Mother said we must have a ball before the wedding.”

  Catherine almost wished she could tell the girl to relax: A man who wanted to stay could not be lured away. And as for a man who did not want to stay, nothing could keep him from leaving. “My, so many fun things to do, so little time.”

  “Here is another fun thing,” said Marland Atwood. “There is a man selling kites. Let me buy one and let’s fly it.”

  “You will have a difficult time of it,” Mr. Madison pointed out.

  There were several boys trying to fly kites, none succeeding. The day was calm, the breeze a bare whisper on the skin, not enough to sustain a kite in the air.

  “Somebody managed quite well,” Marland Atwood said. “See that?”

  Catherine was about to look up to see for herself when Mr. Madison pulled a pair of spectacles from his pockets. As he put them on, she realized exactly where she had come across him. It was the second time she had passed through Kashgar, during her desperate search for her Persian. She had spied his horse in the market and had rushed toward it, almost knocking over a display of melons. Somehow she had managed to restrain herself in time when she realized that another man was already inquiring after the horse. Mr. Madison had been the man, in stiff but passable Turkic, asking the trader where he had come across the steed.

  It had been found on the caravan route without a rider, had been the trader’s answer.

  And Catherine, hidden behind a cart, had slowly crumpled to the ground.

  Mr. Madison, too, had been a spy.

  She glanced at Leighton Atwood. He gazed back at her, while those all around him had their eyes on the sky. A nameless emotion surged through her, an uprising of chaos.

  Vaguely Mr. Madison’s voice came again. “That can’t be a kite—it’s too high. Must be a hot air balloon.”

  “But I can see a string on it,” argued Marland Atwood.

  “On second thought, you are right,” said Mr. Madison. “It is a kite. What do you think is the design on it? A snake?”

  “That would be a bit horrid, wouldn’t it?” said Mrs. Reynolds. “There are many people who do not care for the sight of a snake, real or painted. They are so . . . reptilian.”

  “I’m amazed you can make out that much detail, Edwin. I
can’t see the design at all,” said Miss Chase. “What do you think it is, Leighton?”

  Leighton Atwood at last turned his gaze up. Catherine did the same. Instantly her blood turned cold.

  The design on the kite was a black centipede.

  Lin’s sigil.

  CHAPTER 10

  Choices

  Chinese Turkestan

  1883

  Leighton woke up inexpressibly happy. Every single step that he had taken in his life, it seemed, had led to this place, this moment: the dawn of not just a new day, but a new age.

  His beloved sat on the edge of the bed, draped in his robe, her back to him, her head bent. He pushed himself up, wrapped an arm around her, and kissed her on her hair. “Good morning.”

  “Morning,” she answered, her voice strangely subdued.

  Unease shot through him. Did she regret taking him for a lover? Was she again contemplating leaving?

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice even.

  She pulled the robe tighter about her person and said nothing. Nerve-racked, he lifted her hair to one side and kissed her on her ear. “It is going to be a long forever for us, if you refuse to discuss things that bother you with me.”

  “Will it still be forever?”

  This girl and her doubts. “Elephants cannot drag me away from you—the only thing worse than never making love to you at all would be to make love to you for only one night.”

  She was silent again.

  He shook her shoulder gently. “Please tell me what’s the matter.”

  Her brows drew together. Her lips tightened.

  He sighed. “Do I have to beg?”

  Her head drooped even more, her proud, beautiful neck oddly vulnerable looking. She muttered something, but he couldn’t quite make out the syllables.

  “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “I said I didn’t bleed last night.”

  He could not make heads or tails out of that answer. “But that’s good, isn’t it?” he asked, placing his hand over hers. “With so many injuries, why would you want to bleed?”

  She pushed his hand away. “A virgin bleeds.”

  He had never thought of her in those terms. She had seemed to him entirely outside the narrow paradigm that defined women by the presence or absence of a hymen, and whether the loss of that hymen had taken place in a sanctified manner.

  “You were a virgin?”

  “Of course I was,” she said indignantly. Then her lips quivered. “But now there is no proof.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me.” He sincerely could not think of anything that mattered less.

  “It matters to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because . . . because . . .” She took a deep breath. “Have I ever told you that my amah and my friend died on the same night?”

  “No.”

  “Well, they did. And it’s a long, complicated story. But the events of that night were set off because I was unwilling to let my stepbrother touch me. If I had just given in, two people I love might still be alive today.” She turned toward him at last. “It was all for my virginity, and now there isn’t even any evidence of it.”

  He gathered her into his arms. “None of it was your fault. None of it, do you understand? Sometimes the forces of destiny intersect in unpredictable ways, forces that have been gathering momentum for years, perhaps even decades. You were only unfortunate enough to have been caught in the middle.

  “And it wasn’t your virginity you fought for, but your ability to control your own life. Why should you ever cede that? Why should such a choice be made by anyone except you? You had every right to repel him, and I am glad you did, for the principle of it.”

  She pulled back and stared at him. “I have never heard anyone talk like that.”

  “Maybe not, but that is how you have lived. And that is how those you loved would have wanted you to live.”

  She gazed at him another moment, then laid her head on his shoulder. “I wish they, too, had lived. They both had so much to live for. My amah had finally cured herself of an injury that had plagued her for years. And my friend had just received some wonderful news—his life was about to start anew.”

  He caressed her hair, feeling impossibly privileged by her trust. “The great poet Rumi once wrote, When you lower me into my grave, bid me not farewell, for beyond the grave lies paradise. And there is no end while the moon sets and the sun yet rises.”

  “Do you believe in that?”

  “Perhaps not always. But sometimes I recite the whole of the poem, to remind myself that it is possible to find extraordinary beauty in the circle of life, to believe that we neither live nor die in vain.”

  She was silent for a minute. “So instead of making love to girls, you read poetry.”

  He smiled. “Sometimes.”

  “What do you do other times?”

  “I read books that aren’t poetry. I walk. I write letters to my family.”

  “Will you tell them about me?”

  “Of course.”

  “What will you tell them?”

  “That I have met a girl with the strength of steel, the cunning of a desert fox, and the beauty of the sky.”

  “You have read a great deal of poetry.”

  “Well, I thought I had better educate myself, since I could never rival you in brute masculinity.”

  She laughed at that, and his heart floated like a sky lantern set aloft. He rose to his feet and held his hands out toward her. “Come, let’s go eat breakfast outside. I believe it will be another glorious day.”

  The meadow was a carpet of wildflowers, the sky so bright a blue it almost hurt the eyes. In the distance, the shapely peaks of the Heavenly Mountains, a high wall against the outside world.

  At the edge of the meadow, Leighton’s beloved, flipping her knife in her hand, waded nearly thigh-deep in the grass. She must have heard him approaching on horseback, but she did not turn around. Instead, her attention seemed entirely taken by the furious blooms that surrounded her: She was picking flowers, the knife serving as her garden shears.

  The sight made him smile: Those who lived by the sword played by the sword.

  And then he noticed that she also had his slingshot with her. She returned the dagger to its sheath and tied the wildflowers she had gathered into a bouquet. He dismounted. Before he could call out a greeting, she catapulted the bouquet into the air with the slingshot.

  She had her back to him, yet the bouquet came at him so perfectly he barely needed to extend his hand to catch it. “You are showing off,” he told her.

  She turned around, a smug smile on her face. “You like it.”

  “I like an arrogant, intractable woman.” He lifted the bouquet to his nose. It smelled exactly as wildflowers under the sun ought to, clean, sweet, and vibrant with life.

  Something else sailed toward him. He caught it with just as much ease—she’d returned the pouch of gems. “Diamonds and flowers—are they both for me?”

  She tossed a strand of her hair over her shoulder and said grandly, “You may keep them.”

  This girl . . . put her in a proper frock and she would enslave legions. “I don’t know that I have anything so nice to give to you in return, unless you’d like some of this tobacco I bartered from the Xibes.”

  Her eyes lit with interest. “Well, don’t just talk. Hand me a cigarette.”

  He did, after first rolling one. She was lightning swift with her tinderbox and in no time at all was puffing on her cigarette. He rolled one for himself. They sat down, shoulder deep in grass, and smoked in companionable silence.

  “Can I have another?” she said, before she was even halfway done with her first.

  “How long has it been since you last had one?” he asked, his words muffled as he clamped his cigarette between his lips, his hands busy with tobacco and paper.

  “Months.”

  He licked the edge of the paper, sealed the new cigarette, and ha
nded it to her. “Hardship indeed.”

  She stuck the new cigarette inside her robe. “Why don’t you frown upon my smoking?”

  “The day I quit smoking myself,” he answered, “is the day I start lecturing you on your filthy habit.”

  She threw her head back and laughed. He grinned at her, his heart full of sunshine and spring flowers. Smiling, she blew a jet of smoke his way. He grabbed the front of her robe, pulled her toward him, and planted a kiss on her cheek.

  She laughed again and ran her fingers along his beard. Then her thumb was tracing along his lower lip. Her expression changed, from mirth to the beginning of desire. She glanced down at her cigarette, which still had a good inch left, and stubbed it out.

  His heart beat hard all of a sudden.

  She looked back at him. “Kiss me—and make sure I don’t regret not waiting until I finished my cigarette.”

  He cupped her face. “You won’t.”

  Tell me your name,” said the Persian afterward, as Ying-ying lay with her head in the crook of his shoulder.

  Names were troublesome things. A name was never just a name, but an identity, a history, and sometimes an entire genealogy. If she gave her Chinese name, it would raise a whole field of questions. Did she come from the interior of China? Why? And why did she have slate-blue eyes?

  Years ago, Master Gordon had told her that the unreadable note she had found among her mother’s things gave the English name her father had wished her to have: Catherine. That, too, would be unhelpful here.

  “You tell me your name first,” she said.

  “Hmm, come to India with me and I will.”

  “After we marry, maybe I will consider it.”

  He lifted himself up on one elbow. “You will marry me?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You think I will sleep with anyone I do not already consider my husband?”

  An amazed smile spread across his face. “You already consider me your husband?”

  “Of course.” She bared her teeth at him. “You look at another woman and I will crush you where it hurts.”