He hadn’t been able to warn her.
Ellie searched his face, looking for some hint of reassurance.
Adam couldn’t give it to her.Things were already bad—and they were only going to get worse.
Borthwick hovered in front of him with an air of mild impatience.“Shall we?”
Every instinct in Adam’s body raged against what he was about to do.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said, the words distant and lightly patronizing.“You’ll be just fine.”
Shock and confusion swept through Ellie’s features—but nothing more.Because after that, Adam turned and walked away from her without looking back.
?
Twenty-Two
Ellie stared afterAdam and felt as though she had just been slapped.
Her leg sang with pain.Her wet clothes clung uncomfortably to her skin.She had been tired, sore, and worried since they had crossed the river—but now she was something else as well.
Scared.
Adam’s last words had been so shockingly out of character, her mind struggled to absorb them.His casual dismissal had reminded her of the way a man might speak to a nervous dog.
Don’t worry, sweetheart.
Blast it, Adam didn’t even talk to hisactualdog that way.What the devil was going on?
Kalb, for his part, remained at Ellie’s side, even though he quivered as he watched Adam leave, whining at the back of his throat.
Deserting Ellie with such condescension hadn’t been the only bizarre thing Adam had done.She had also been thrown by his easy agreement with Borthwick’s vile remarks about the ‘lower orders.’
Ellie was hardly going to be the first one to rise to Jacobs’ defense—the man had, after all, once threatened to flay her alive—but Adam had never given a damn about the circumstances of a person’s birth.It was antithetical to everything Ellie knew about him.
He had tried to warn her about something before Borthwick had interrupted them.
Things are going to be different.
Adam’s bizarre behavior was obviously some sort of act, but it had the air of a performance that he had rehearsed before.How was that possible when all of it was so contrary to the man Ellie had come to know—and to care about very deeply?
The question made her think of the words that had torn from Adam’s throat just before Borthwick’s arrival, which had struck her at the time as a strange non sequitur.
My father never wantedme.
The lid to the medical kit dropped shut with a snap.Ellie jolted at the sound, which sent a zing of protest through her new stitches.Singh Rao, the tall, self-composed officer who had been left to deal with her, motioned crisply to one of his sepoys, who collected the trunk and carried it away.
“Mrs.Bates?”Singh Rao prompted with brisk courtesy.
She would have to put her worries about Adam on hold for now.There would be time to address them later—once they had made it through the afternoon without rousing any more of Borthwick’s suspicions.
“Yes.Of course,” Ellie agreed and let the bearded subedar lead her to the patiently waiting mule.
?
The sun kissed the horizon as they stopped for the day, the pale glimmer barely visible through the endlessly marching trees.
The forest whispered.Birds flitted through the canopy, chirping softly.The ground was thick with grass and wildflowers.
