Ellie patted his arm, her mouth quirking wickedly.“‘Cheer up your spirits.Our foes are nigh.’”
?
An hour later, Ellie pushed into the ladies’ retiring room with a breath of desperate relief.
She despised making small talk.She was also terrible at it.How long was she supposed to natter on about horses or the weather?Whenever she tried to bring up a genuinely interesting subject—like the natural mummification properties of certain peat bogs—people responded with blank or frankly disapproving looks.
Thankfully, Adam had turned out to be adept at making people comfortable and then steering the conversation around to local authorities like Colonel Borthwick.Ellie had found it frankly shocking.She had half expected him to pin a lizard to the wall with his machete and then light up a cigar.
The Adam she had seen in the lounge had been a different person, one perfectly equipped to navigate this privileged space—but then, why wouldn’t he?He’d been born to this life until he had left it to build a better one for himself.
Then Ellie had noticed the tightness in the lines that braced his smile.
He hates this,she had realized with an uncomfortable jolt.He hated every minute of it, and yet he was doing it anyway.
The ladies’ room was a narrow space of floral wallpaper and polished teak.It felt like a respite after the tense exhaustion of navigating the lounge.
The night was hot and the club stuffy, even with screens open to catch the breeze from the veranda.Intermittent rumblings continued to promise some sort of storm, but the rain hadn’t yet broken.
Ellie stopped at the vanity counter to press a damp towel to her face.The wet cloth was cool against her skin.She ran it over the back of her neck.
A voice spoke from behind her, bright and sharp as glass.“That tall American you’re with—is he staying in Puri long?”
Ellie looked up into the mirror mounted on the wall to see a woman of perhaps twenty in a fashionably low-cut gown amply accented with cream colored lace.
“Excuse me?”Ellie prompted, struggling to catch up.
“Unless the two of you are together,” the woman corrected smoothly.“I didn’t see any rings and thought you might be cousins.Very…distantcousins.”
Her smile was cold and white.
“But if I have it wrong, I wouldn’t want to cut in,” she continued.“That would hardly be cricket, would it?”
Ellie was left with the distinct impression that the woman did not feel the least bit inclined to bind herself to what might be considered ‘cricket.’She was being toyed with, the way a bored cat might bat around a beetle it found on the floor.
The cat in the retiring room was admittedly lovely.Her pearly skin lacked any of Ellie’s freckles.Her golden hair was elegantly styled.She held herself with the willowy posture of someone who had been trained in social graces.
Ellie choked as she realized that she had absolutely no idea how to answer the woman’s question.
Were she and Adam together?Of course—but not in any way that a creature like this would understand.
He is mine, body and soul,Ellie burned to say.I know the groan he makes when you touch him in the right place.I have tasted the salt of his tears on my lips.And you will keep your filthy claws off him.
Uttering any of that wouldn’t have been exactly ‘cricket’ either.
She and Adam weren’t wearing rings.They weren’t married.They weren’t traveling as a couple or even the vague approximation of one.He was the friend of her stepbrother and nothing more so far as the world this woman came from was concerned.
Adam would never be tempted by a creature like the one coldly and contemptuously watching Ellie through the mirror.It didn’t matter how beautiful she was.
It still bothered Ellie deeply that she had no easy way to shut the harpy down.
“He’s leaving soon,” she bit out instead.“We all are.”
“Pity.”The woman dabbed a bit of powder on her nose.Snapping her compact shut, she treated Ellie to a savage smile.“Enjoy your evening.”
She drifted from the retiring room.
Ellie wondered distantly whether she ought to start carrying daggers in her own garters.She pictured what the woman’s face would have looked like had Ellie thrown up her skirts to adjust her stockings and flashed a blade at her.
