My Beautiful Enemy

by Thomas, Sherry

  The mother of his child closed her hand into a fist. Her eyes turned hard. “Why? Why do you need to know? Can you bring her back?”

  He crossed the room and set his hands on her arms, his premonition becoming darker with each passing second. “Please, tell me. I need to know.”

  “Very well, then,” she said calmly. Too calmly. “The Centipede killed her.”

  The words pierced him like arrows. “No,” he said numbly. “No.”

  He could not even comprehend it, his beautiful daughter, murdered in cold blood.

  She hit him, hard. Not the kind of punches that would send a man flying backward with cracked ribs, but those of a woman who had too long borne her grief all alone. “She could have been safe in India. But you left me. You left me and he found me. And I could not defend her. I trained my entire life and I could never save anyone I loved.”

  Her face was wet and splotchy. His own tears fell, stinging his eyes as they left. He stood rooted in place and let her hit him again and again, wishing only that she would unleash the sort of violence that did true damage. Broken bones and punctured organs, that was what he wanted—the pain of the body always, always preferable to the despair of the soul.

  All at once, without even thinking about it, he kissed her. She was stunned into stillness. Then she was kissing him back, with fury and something that was almost brutality.

  Then, just as suddenly, the kiss was no longer fueled with anger, but with longing, the kind that had driven him to scale the Himalayas repeatedly, in the hope of finding her again. So much had happened—too much—but he had never, not for a moment, stopped loving her.

  And he never would.

  He kissed her face and her throat. Lifting off her nightgown, he kissed her shoulder and her collarbone. She cupped his face and gazed upon him, tears still in her eyes, but amazement and tenderness, too.

  “When you lower me into my grave,” he told her, again borrowing those words from the great Rumi, “bid me not farewell, for beyond the grave lies paradise. And there is no end while the moon sets and the sun yet rises.”

  And as she had all those ago, she asked, “Do you believe in that?”

  “I do,” he said, smoothing his finger over her brows. “I believe enough for the two of us.”

  They made love with infinite care, because they were fragile. But they also made love with infinite ferocity, because they were indomitable.

  And together they were stronger yet.

  It snowed on the day she was born—we were in the last month of the Chinese calendar, so by the western calendar it was probably sometime in January,” said Catherine. She lay with her head on Leighton’s shoulder, their fingers laced. “I was really afraid of childbirth; both my mother and my amah had died too early to tell me anything about it. But I had a nice woman, Auntie Lu, and she had this round, generous face. She took one look at me and said I would be just fine, that I was young and strong and built for easy deliveries.

  “And she was right. My pain started sometime in the middle of the night, and by dawn she was already born. Auntie Lu had a bowl of noodles ready for me, and I was so hungry, but I couldn’t bear to hand the baby to her long enough to eat—Yuan-jiang was so, so beautiful. And I thought, maybe, if I did everything right by her, your ghost would not be so angry with me in the afterworld.”

  He caressed her arm. “I could never be angry with you. Not for long, in any case.”

  “And I thought, when she was older, I would take her to Chinese Turkestan, so she could see where we had met—and been happy.”

  “And maybe if you had gone,” he said wistfully, “you would have seen the letters I left behind for you. And perhaps even some very old chocolate and Darjeeling tea.”

  She turned toward him. “That reminds me. Thank you for the refuge in London—and the tea and chocolate you left.”

  He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I like doing things for you. It makes me happy.”

  “I will put my feet up and make you do everything for me then.”

  “Ah, but then I might come to bed exhausted, without the strength to make love to you.”

  She smiled. “Somehow I don’t think so.”

  He pulled her closer, his expression turning serious. “Would you like to have more children someday?”

  She had never thought of it before—she had believed him dead and she had never met another man who inspired any romantic yearning in her. “Another child can never replace Yuan-jiang.”

  He laced their fingers together. “I know. All the same, would you like to have more children?”

  She looked upon the face of the man who had waited long years for her, who had forgiven her long before she forgave herself. “With you, yes.”

  Then she made love to him again, because there was no better way to tell him how much she had missed him and how much she loved him still.

  He was helping her dress, afterward, when he stopped in mid-motion.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Did you hear something?”

  “No, I was having the greatest trouble earlier, trying to find a way to make sense of the Chinese characters on the jade tablet. But now suddenly it occurred to me that a certain series of sounds in there could mean ‘tranquil summer’ in Pali.”

  “Tranquil summer,” she echoed, rather doubtfully. Then the realization dawned. She grabbed his arm in excitement. “Yes! There is a Chinese province the name of which could be translated as ‘tranquil summer.’ And it was part of the Tang Dynasty’s territory.”

  He threw on his waistcoat and jacket. “Then we are on the right track after all.”

  She stepped hurriedly into her shoes, eager to make more progress deciphering the meaning of the characters. “And it’s a small province, relatively speaking. Smaller than Scotland, I think.”

  “Scotland is still too big if you are looking for a single treasure cave. We had better narrow the area down much further.”

  She shook her head in amazement. “Have I told you? Last night was the first time I considered that perhaps there is a treasure to be had after all.”

  “Me, too. First time since I turned twelve, at least.”

  They grinned at each other.

  “I’ll leave first,” he said. “Come join me in the library in a few minutes.”

  She watched him leave, glad he was only going downstairs. After making sure that her hair was properly coiffed and all the buttons and hooks on her clothes in place, she walked out herself. As she did so, she saw Mrs. Chase, at the other end of the corridor, peering out from her door.

  Had she seen Leighton leaving earlier?

  Catherine decided she didn’t care about Mrs. Chase’s suspicions. She nodded coolly and started for the stairs. On the bottom step, she stopped to orient herself. The day before she had been to the library with Leighton, but had done so walking from the direction of the study, which they had accessed via a secret tunnel. From where she stood, she wasn’t exactly sure where the library was.

  To her left was the front door. A hansom cab was parked outside. Had Mrs. Reynolds arrived, or Marland Atwood, perhaps?

  “Miss Blade.”

  The voice belonged to Miss Chase. Catherine felt a stirring of guilt: It was far from the best form to make love to a man who was still another woman’s fiancé.

  She turned. “Good morning, Miss Chase.”

  She had expected to detect a measure of unhappiness beneath Miss Chase’s sugar-and-spice demeanor: The girl was clever; she had to understand that her fiancé was slipping out of her grasp. But she could sense no particular dejection in Miss Chase’s features. In fact, Miss Chase’s eyes glittered.

  “Would you mind coming here for a moment?” said Miss Chase.

  Her voice gave Catherine the impression of being strenuously modulated, just on the edge of an excitement too strong to control.

  What was going on? But Catherine had no reasonable cause to refuse her request. “Of course.”

  Miss Chase indicat
ed a set of double doors. Catherine walked through to a drawing room, its walls and curtains shades of light, minty green that were quite refreshing to the eyes.

  There was a dark-haired man in the room, standing before a large seascape, his back to her—the guest who had arrived in the hansom cab?

  But even before he turned around, alarm already raced along Catherine’s nerve endings. Then he did, and she looked into the face of her mortal enemy.

  CHAPTER 17

  The Nemesis

  Mademoiselle Blade,” said Lin.

  He was and had always been handsome, his bone structure extremely fortuitous. Dressed in the style of a western gentleman, he cut quite a striking figure.

  All Catherine saw was the monster who had murdered her child in cold blood.

  She didn’t know how he had found her here, but it didn’t matter. In China there was a saying, Those with unfinished business will meet on narrow paths.

  “Draw your sword,” she demanded in Chinese.

  “Bai Gu-niang should step into the modern age,” he answered in the same language. “What sword? These days a man of action carries a firearm instead.”

  His hands had been clasped behind his back, but now he showed the revolver in his right hand. The sight staggered Catherine. The playing field had just tilted decisively in his favor. A blade was a deadly weapon, but a blade could be parried and dodged. How did one dodge a bullet at point-blank range?

  “You should have left well enough alone—the slate was wiped clean between us. But you had to cast me into the Atlantic.” He shook his head. “My life will be more peaceful without you.”

  “Annabel, there you are!” cried Mrs. Chase from the door of the drawing room.

  Lin’s expression changed—revulsion mixed with glee.

  “Mother!” Miss Chase’s voice turned fearful—Catherine had not realized that she was still nearby. “I told you to stay in your room this entire day. Go back now.”

  “But you don’t understand. I saw Captain Atwood come out of that woman’s room. If you are not careful, she is going to get him to cry off the engagement. Then when your Aunt Reynolds is no more, we’ll be out on the streets! You must do—”

  Mrs. Chase gasped.

  Lin moved the aim of his revolver a few degrees. “Ma chère Madame Chase, nous nous réunissons de nouveau.”

  My dear Mrs. Chase, we meet again.

  Catherine did not speak much French, but she had spent enough time in the French concession in Shanghai to understand his words.

  Mrs. Chase only whimpered.

  The relish in Lin’s voice was evident. “I wondered why this young lady looked familiar. She is your daughter, is she not?”

  A warning bell clanged in Catherine’s head. “Leave her alone,” she said from between gritted teeth. “Leave them both alone.”

  Lin turned to her and switched back to Chinese. “Why? The fat one believes that people of mixed race—like you and me—are abominations. As for the daughter . . . someone sent me a message via the newspaper, telling me to come here. Any guess as to whom?”

  Catherine did not want to take her eyes off Lin, but she couldn’t help glancing toward Miss Chase. Before Miss Chase had found Catherine and Leighton at the private cemetery, she could have already learned from the butler that an unaccompanied woman had come to call on the master of the manor. That would have given her enough time to send a cable to someone in London, in order to purchase an advertisement in the morning paper before it went to print.

  Had Miss Chase done that?

  Catherine turned back to Lin—she was hardly in a position to judge another woman for what she did in the name of love. “Leave them both alone,” she repeated.

  “I won’t kill the girl,” said Lin, again in French. “She needs just a nice, long cut on her face, then her mother will have an abomination of a daughter.”

  The very idea made Catherine ill.

  The fingers of Lin’s left hand moved. Catherine heard the fall of two bodies. He must have locked their major acupuncture points so that they could neither run nor call for help.

  He smiled. “I’ll have enough time for her after I’m done with you.”

  The muzzle of the revolver was pointed at her again. And she had not a single weapon with her—lovemaking made one forget that the world was a dangerous place. She had, however, grabbed a small clock from the table next to her, when Lin had dispatched his hidden weapons against the Chase women.

  If she could launch it and knock his aim off by a few degrees, she might be able to dive behind the settee before he got off a second shot. And if—

  A gunshot went off.

  She was stunned for a moment, all her muscles rigid, expecting to feel the pain of a bullet digging into her flesh and puncturing a major organ—only to see the revolver fall to the floor.

  Someone had shot it out of Lin’s hand.

  From the mirror opposite, she saw Leighton at one of the room’s open windows. Had she not stood in the way, he could have had a clean shot at Lin.

  She dove for the revolver. Lin, on the other hand, leaped over to where Miss Chase lay, pulled her to a standing position, and set a knife at her throat.

  “Drop your weapons, or she is dead,” he said in French.

  Miss Chase trembled in fright.

  Reluctantly, Leighton set down his rifle. Catherine did likewise, though in her case, it was likely no great loss; the revolving mechanism had been bent enough that a bullet might get stuck.

  Lin shifted his weight slightly. Instinctively, Catherine sensed that he had changed his mind about what to do first. Since now there was more uncertainty surrounding his killing of her, he was going to mar Miss Chase’s beautiful face while he had her in his grip.

  She hurled the ormolu clock toward the major acupuncture point on his right shoulder. He brought up his knife to knock the projectile aside. She grabbed the next thing on the table by her side, a cut-glass candelabra, ripped off a handful of glass drops, and fired them in Miss Chase’s direction, hoping to unblock her mobility.

  But Lin had ripped a small painting off the wall behind him and used it to block the glass drops. She launched the rest of the candelabra at him. He deflected it with his knife, the impact metallic and loud.

  She lifted a chair and swung it at him. He let go of Miss Chase and, with a snarl, lunged at Catherine. The chair broke apart into several pieces as his palm met the seat.

  Catherine somersaulted backward. “Get the Chases out of here,” she shouted to Leighton.

  Lin’s knife came at her throat all too rapidly. She reached for a pair of bronze candlesticks on the mantel and barely managed to block him. Lin aimed a kick at her. She stepped back—only to realize that he meant to move her out of the way so he could pick up the revolver from where she had set it down on the floor.

  She dove behind the grand piano as a shot rang out.

  Lin leaped up, revolver in hand. In desperation, she yanked at the curtain behind her and sent thirty yards of fabric whooshing toward him. The fabric caught him head-on, enclosing him in green floral velvet. She shoved the piano in his direction.

  The moment he landed, the piano, careening on its caster wheels, knocked him down.

  She had already run to the fireplace and grabbed a heavy poker. With all her strength and all her training, she hurtled it at him just as he was about to get up.

  The poker met his skull with a most satisfying crack. He stilled. She grabbed a coal shovel and tried to decide how to proceed. He was still covered by the curtain and lay half under the piano, which made it easier for him, if he remained conscious, to disguise his movements. By pretending to be unconscious—or dead—he could lure her in and ambush her.

  Someone tapped her on her shoulder. Leighton—he had moved the Chases to a safer spot and was back. He raised his double-barrel rifle, aimed, and signaled her to pull the trigger. An excellent solution. Now she no longer needed to risk her person to find out whether Lin had been incapacitated. She co
uld make sure of it.

  She stepped behind Leighton, reached around him, and pulled the trigger. Once. Twice.

  It was more difficult for Catherine to believe that Lin was lying dead in front of her than at the bottom of the Atlantic—perhaps because he had been such an immutable force in her life, that only an ocean seemed powerful enough to destroy him. But dead he was, all his spite and all his skills evaporated into thin air.

  Leighton had his arm around her. She leaned against his shoulder, overcome by exhaustion. “Are Miss and Mrs. Chase all right?”

  “Still immobile, but unhurt. Are you all right?”

  She nodded.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  “And just leave his body there?”

  “For now,” said Leighton, pulling her out of the drawing room.

  The butler stood outside, looking pale but composed. Leighton gave instruction for the rest of the staff to remain either in their quarters or in the servants’ hall. “The police might come, as well as others. I trust the staff did not see anything?”

  “No, sir,” said the butler. “No, indeed.”

  Catherine could not be sure whether the servants had truly not seen anything or whether the butler planned to ensure such would be their testimonies. But either way it was a reassuring answer.

  “Good,” said Leighton. “And please send some whiskey—and some food suitable for traveling—to my room.”

  Catherine and Leighton climbed up the steps. He took her to his apartment.

  “What about the Chase women?” she asked.

  “What would happen to them if you don’t see to them?”

  “Nothing much. They would recover their mobility on their own, after some hours.”

  “Then see to them last. Don’t forget British agents are also looking for you. If the Centipede saw the notice in the papers, others would have seen it, too. I am surprised they have not arrived yet.”

  He led her into his dressing room and opened a hidden safe. “Here’s the jade tablet that Herb gave to my father. And this is the one you took from the house on Victoria Street.”

  She raised a brow. Before she had gone to the Chases’ ball, she had stopped by his town house and hidden that jade tablet, along with all her other belongings that might come across as suspicious, in the mistress’s room. She had thought it a good hiding place, but she supposed it must have been too obvious a choice to him.