There were advantages to traveling as royalty—even royalty in a land dominated by a foreign empire.
The parlor, where Ellie sat, was appointed in European style, though the purple upholstery that covered the sofa and chairs was richer in texture and color than anything she knew from England.A wet bar in the corner glittered with crystal glasses and decanters.A small library was fixed to one of the walls, the volumes held in place against sudden stops by a raised ridge at the bottom of each shelf.
The other members of Ellie’s traveling party were scattered about the room.
Constance Tyrrell lounged on the sofa, dressed for the day in a striped blouse and matching blue silk skirt.A natty red bow tie finished off the ensemble.Ellie’s best friend was desperately excited to finally explore India, a land that constituted a quarter of her heritage.Though both her mother and grandmother had been born here, Constance knew relatively little of the country and was determined to soak up as much about it as she could.
She had spent most of the trip pressed to the window of the carriage, exclaiming over everything they passed as they traveled up the coast, from shipwrecks to roadside shrines.But as there was currently little more than farmland to gawk at, she settled for idly turning the pages of a magazine.
“What a darling hat!”She held the magazine out to the lanky tweed-clad gentleman who sat in the chair beside her.“Isn’t this a darling hat?”
Dr.Neil Fairfax did not look up.Ellie’s stepbrother was engrossed in his own reading material—namely, the second volume of Mr.Dutt’s Ramayana.
“That’s a reference to Indra, I believe,” Neil commented distractedly as he turned another page.
Constance whacked him lightly on the shoulder with the magazine.
Neil startled in response, his round gold-rimmed spectacles going crooked around his green-tinted eyes.
“Hat, Stuffy.”Constance snapped the magazine open again and pointed to the accessory in question.
“Connie, I haven’t the foggiest notion…” Neil trailed off as Constance narrowed her thick-lashed eyes dangerously.
“Very nice,” he offered uncertainly.“Excellent… brimmage.”
“Brimmage,” Constance echoed musingly, flipping the magazine back around to study the hat herself.
Neil warily returned to his reading.Over the last month, his comfortable life as a respected scholar and archaeologist had crumbled into a howling maelstrom of the unknown.He had been forced to raid his own excavation, escape from a luxury yacht, and fight with swords—not that it had been much of a fight, Neil not having the least notion how to use a blade.
He’d lost his job, and his academic reputation was in tatters, but at least he looked like himself that morning, with his soft brown hair neatly combed and his yellow bow tie in place.Ellie hoped that was a sign that he was beginning to adjust to his unconventional new circumstances.
Neil and Constance were getting along well, at any rate.Perhaps the time they had spent together back in Egypt had kindled a deeper connection between them than the one they’d shared as children.Back then, Constance had been a hell-raising terror, and Ellie’s scholarly, easily mortified older brother had served as an ideal target for her more diabolical pranks.
Her musings about her brother and her friend fizzled as Mr.Adam Bates stepped out of the carriage’s washroom, haphazardly toweling his freshly shaved cheeks.Of course, even a freshly shaved Adam Bates still looked on the verge of sprouting stubble along his rugged jaw.He was far more gifted in that department than Ellie’s reluctantly youthful-looking brother.
Adam also found himself recently unemployed.He had originally taken a leave of absence from his job as Assistant Surveyor General to the colony of British Honduras when he and Ellie had run off to Egypt, but continuing on with her to India had meant resigning his post entirely.
Ellie felt a bit rotten about that—but then, Adam had already been struggling with his own uncomfortable questions about the job.He might very well have left anyway, even if he hadn’t been hijacked into chasing dangerous magical artifacts across the globe by the lady scholar who had quite literally fallen into his lap.
Not that she would mind being in his lap again.In his shirt and braces, with his sun-kissed hair still tantalizingly damp, Adam looked absolutely delicious.
Before leaving Egypt, the pair of them had managed to steal two memorable opportunities to further the physical side of their relationship.Though they had put certain practical restrictions on the activities they had engaged in, Ellie had still made herself intimately familiar with more or less every single part of Adam Bates.And by God, she could not complain about any of it… except the fact that it had been damnably too long since she’d had a chance to further her explorations.Traveling to India with her uptight stepbrother, nosy best friend, and her nosy best friend’s royal and all-seeing grandmother had thoroughly foiled any chance of arranging more illicit encounters.
Maharajkumari Padma Devi was the reason all four of them were now in India.She made her chair on the far side of the train car look like a throne as she spoke in rich, authoritative tones, handing letters back to the exceptionally well-dressed Sudanese gentleman behind her.“No reply.Schedule a call for this one.And this should be forwarded to my banker.”
Mr.Mahjoud had graduated from dragoman to personal secretary as he accompanied Padma on their journey.He had adapted to the role with aplomb, mustering an exceptional air of dignity in his perfectly starched shirt and silk waistcoat.
Constance’s royal granny must suspect thatsomethingwas going on between Ellie and Adam.She hadn’t made any comment on the subject, which Ellie took as a sign of tacit tolerance—but she doubted that extended so far as to condone Ellie sneaking into Adam’s berth to do wicked things to him.
Not that Ellie could have done that anyway, as he’d been sharing that berth with Neil for the entire trip.The notion of asking her brother to make himself scarce so that Ellie could take flagrant and glorious advantage of his best friend was enough to make her want to hide behind her book.
It was all dreadfully unfair.Why should an independent-minded woman face such difficulty when all she wished to do was enjoy the company of the man who loved her without subjecting herself to the unjust shackles of holy matrimony?
Adam claimed the sofa beside Ellie’s chair, sprawling across it with his customary ease.He was joined a moment later by an explosion of gangly fawn-hued limbs from the washroom.The animal skidded to a stop against Adam’s legs, panting up at him hopefully.
Ellie had been somewhat less than entirely enthused when Adam had insisted that they bring his new dog—creatively named Kalb, the Arabic word for ‘dog’—along with them from Egypt.
Admittedly, she wasn’t overly fond of dogs in general.She had not grown up with them, as most dog-loving people had done.The animals seemed to be either clumsy agents of destruction or needy black holes for affection.
