Chapter 5
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Five
Adam Bates stared up at the gilded facade of the Puri Beach Club.
Shit, he thought with a lurch of dismay.
He ought to have figured out what he was about to walk into back at the hotel.
But when Mr. Chowdhury had tactfully suggested that Constance hang back from this particular mission, Adam had assumed the solicitor was showing additional concern for Constance’s safety because she was a member of his employer’s family.
He had been thinking of Constance as the charming heiress of a high-ranking civil servant or the firecracker partner-in-crime to the woman he loved.
The look the majordomo had just given her reminded him that she was something else as well.
The polished brass lanterns, the carpeted stairs, the manicured hedges—they all screamed of a world that Adam had lived in for years and never wanted to go back to. Pulling on his impeccably tailored dinner jacket earlier that evening had felt like forcing himself into an old, half-rotted skin.
Adam hadn’t worn a dinner jacket since the day his father had disowned him.
He had never been to the Puri Beach Club before. That didn’t matter. He knew how places like this worked—places with great big walls to keep the wrong sort of people on the outside.
Which meant he knew exactly what was going to happen next.
The majordomo led the four of them into the club. Adam didn’t let that coax him into lowering his guard. The situation wasn’t over. It was just being passed on for someone else to handle.
Shit.
They climbed the stairs to the club’s public rooms, which were situated on the upper floor.
More thick carpets muffled their footsteps as they passed walls of gleaming hardwood hung with dull landscape paintings.
Potted palms softened the corners. The air rang with the clink of glass and a giggle of English laughter.
Waiters strode through the halls in picturesque uniforms, their white tunics and pressed trousers accented by bright red sashes. They were universally dark in complexion—but then they would be, wouldn’t they?
Adam felt sick.
Thirteen years fell away, and Adam was in a different hallway echoing with the same sounds of privileged chatter and brittle crystal, where silent men carrying trays of champagne moved aside like ghosts as the silk-clad and glittering elite swept past without so much as a glance.
He remembered sitting on velvet with brandy on his tongue, forcing a smile as he endured the luxury of a world built on exactly who it kept out.
The underhanded innuendos. The backhanded compliments.
The crushing, impossible weight of his father’s expectations.
Surely you can muster up enough intelligence to engage in a little polite conversation.
For a moment, it was hard to breathe. Sweat beaded on the back of Adam’s neck. The dinner jacket was a vise closing around his chest.
This wasn’t the same, Adam desperately reminded himself. He wasn’t walking into the prison of that old life. He hadn’t come here to try to force himself into a mold he would never fit—and to hear, over and over, how he was failing at it.
He would never do that again.
Adam tried to flash Ellie a reassuring smile. Her worried look lingered.
Well, maybe she should be worried, Adam reasoned grimly. This place was more threatening than the wilds of the Cayo. The opulence around him was its own sort of snake-infested jungle—one that Adam trusted far less than the kind he was used to, with actual snakes.
His hand twitched at his side, missing the reassuring feel of the hilt of his machete.
They passed a dining salon tastefully decked out with white linen and silver. Patrons in dinner gowns and jewels watched them pass, blatantly assessing.
The majordomo stopped at the door to an office that was dominated by a heavy wooden desk and a pair of richly upholstered club chairs.
“Mr. Secretary, Dr. Fairfax has arrived with his party,” Sykes announced before stepping aside to admit them.
The secretary was a slight fellow, bald save for a fringe above his ears. He glanced up at Adam. “Dr. Fairfax?”
Neil stepped forward. “Ah—no. That would be me, actually.”
The secretary frowned at Neil’s youthful features. “You’re a doctor?”
“Yes,” Neil replied with a note of exasperation.
The man cleared his throat and recovered.
“Apologies.” He checked through the notes on his desk distractedly.
“Your solicitor has already provided your references and deposit. You are paid up through July. Dues are invoiced at the end of each month, and meal tabs are settled weekly. Overnight accommodations are…”
His voice trailed off as he finally looked over the rest of their party—noticeably halting on Constance as she studied the mediocre art on the office walls with a frown of disdain, not bothering to listen to his monologue.
“…available,” the secretary finished awkwardly. “But I do need to clarify that all overnight guests must be personally approved by the club council and are typically restricted to family members or business acquaintances visiting from another cantonment or overseas.”
“Sorry?” Neil blinked at the man, clearly not understanding.
Adam understood.
Back in San Francisco, many establishments had made matters clear by posting signs in their windows.
No Blacks. No Chinese.
But those rules weren’t always spelled out in big, bold letters. Sometimes the only sign read Welcome—but you weren’t, really. Not if you were a certain kind of person.
Adam should have known he’d find that again here in India, where the majority of the power lay with an unwelcome set of foreigners vastly outnumbered by the people they ruled over.
An arrangement like that only held if everyone Indian was resolutely shut out of the places where ruling happened, digging the lines between races as deep as battle trenches.
Constance—with her ferocious courage, her adventurous spirit, and her Indian blood—was on the wrong side of the trench.
The secretary was still talking. The words had a nervous edge. The man must be wondering whether the circumstances were about to go from merely awkward to something that qualified as an incident.
Adam wanted to make it an incident. He couldn’t—not without sacrificing what they had come here for. And that wasn’t his call to make.
“Other guests may be entertained in our North Dining Room, but we ask that they are kept clear of the rest of the club facilities.” The secretary punctuated his speech with a look at Neil that was both hopeful and slightly belligerent. “Is all of that acceptable?”
It wasn’t—not even remotely.
Adam answered anyway.
“It’s fine.”
At his uncharacteristically clipped response, Ellie shot him another quietly concerned look.
Then understanding snapped into place, and her expression fell into one of shock—quickly replaced by a hot, rising fury.
Adam took her hand and squeezed it in warning.
“Will you be needing any rooms for the night, then?” the secretary prompted carefully.
Neil opened his mouth to answer. Adam cut in first. “We’re good.”
Constance’s brow furrowed as the unexpected tension in the exchange finally drew her attention.
It wouldn’t take her long to figure out what was happening. When she did, it was going to hurt.
Helpless rage flared up inside of Adam once again. He choked it back.
He could do that well enough. After all, he’d had plenty of practice.
The secretary’s posture softened with a subtle relief. “If you’ll just sign here, then?”
He turned his book to Neil and handed him a pen. Neil signed the page, casting a questioning look back at Adam as he did so.
The secretary snapped the book shut. “Welcome to the club, sir.”
“Yes. Well.” Neil straightened awkwardly.
Adam walked out the door.
He spotted Sykes at the end of the hall, talking to one of the waiters. The majordomo glanced their way as though trying to discern how their conversation with the secretary had gone.
Adam wanted to punch him. The impulse was both irrational and overwhelming.
“Why did you tell him we didn’t want rooms?” Neil pressed in a whisper as he joined Adam in the hall. “I thought we were going to stay in case it took a while to locate Borthwick.”
“Change of plans,” Adam returned shortly.
“But—” Neil clamped his mouth shut as Sykes approached them.
“I believe the club secretary will have related that your party would best be accommodated in the North Dining room,” he offered with practiced courtesy. “Shall I direct you there now?”
At the majordomo’s careful tone, Constance’s expression blanked with mortified understanding.
Adam stepped between Constance and Skyes, a move that put him closer to the majordomo than was strictly polite. He pinned the man with what he knew to be a damned intimidating glare. “I think we can find our own way around.”
The majordomo schooled his expression to blankness. He gave a short bow. “Very good, sir.”
Adam watched the man go. Part of him ached for Sykes to turn around and make an issue out of it—one that he might’ve settled with his fists.
“I see,” Constance said quietly from behind him.
The words hit like two short, breathless blows.
Adam burned with shame. He forced himself to face her anyway. “It’s my fault. I know how places like this work. I should’ve steered you off back at the hotel.
“I doubt I would have listened to you if you’d tried.” Constance’s voice held a pale shadow of her usual wryness.
“Connie—” Ellie began, taut with anger and concern.
“I don’t understand.” Neil looked between them helplessly. “What’s going on?”
Constance lifted her chin, her eyes flashing with challenge. “We’re not taking rooms because I wouldn’t be allowed, Stuffy. Because I’m part Indian.”
Neil’s face drained. “But that’s… That’s…”
His look hardened, shifting to an expression of heated fury that Adam wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before.
Neil spun on his heel, stalking toward the secretary’s office.
Adam caught him by the shoulder, forcing him to halt. “We do that now, we’re getting kicked out of here.”