Chapter 7
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SEVEN
Ice tumbled into cocktail glasses and balls bounced softly against green baize as Neil Fairfax watched Constance work her ruthless charm.
They had landed among the club’s ‘flash set,’ elegant younger people who were avidly curious about the new arrivals. Neil couldn’t help but be awed by how easily Constance disarmed them—even as he caught the odd glance snagging on the warm brown of Constance’s complexion.
Let one of them mention it, Neil thought, his hands flexing at his sides. Just one of them.
He caught himself. What was he doing? He wasn’t a fighter. That was Adam’s role. Neil avoided fights. He liked things calm and predictable. So why was he daydreaming about the looks on the faces of these laughing, careless people if he flipped over their table?
Because he was wildly, ferociously angry. The notion that someone might try to hurt Constance simply because of who her grandmother happened to be unleashed a part of Neil that he hadn’t known was there.
Now that the feeling was out, he was having a hard time pushing it back under control.
Since arriving in India, Neil had been overwhelmed by the noise, beauty, and color of the place. Everything was a surprise—like the fact that he had somehow ended up dancing at the festival earlier that day. To anyone watching, it would have looked as though he had known exactly what he was doing.
Neil had not known what he was doing. He remained at a loss to explain how he’d done it anyway.
Usually, Neil rooted himself in a new place through its history.
He had known next to nothing about India’s past when he’d learned that he was coming here.
He had been frantically catching up, interspersing his study of the Ramayana with texts about the Mughal empire or the conquests of Ashoka.
The research hadn’t been even close to enough, leaving him feeling as useless as a piece of excess baggage that Constance’s grandmother had insisted on hauling with her.
Except for the fact that he could see through time.
Neil shied away from the thought, just as he’d done for weeks now, ever since his friend and former excavation foreman Sayyid had ruthlessly put the notion into his head.
What good was it anyway? Neil didn’t have the slightest notion how to use this supposed power of his.
He had tried, of course, spending over an hour staring at the town of Suez to see if he could spot any sign of the ancient Greek trading settlement of Clysma hidden beneath the modern buildings.
He hadn’t. Nor had he seen any echoes of the Ethiopian conquest of Socotra as they’d steamed slowly past the island on their way out into the Indian Ocean.
But he had known that the spire of the chapel at Fort George in Madras was a later addition to the structure. It had come to him with a feeling in his bones that made him want to saw the architectural feature off and toss it into the sea.
Neil’s magical past-seeing abilities turned up whenever they bloody felt like it, not when he commanded them. They were just frequent enough to leave him questioning everything he thought he knew about his own academic abilities without offering a damned thing in return.
How many of Neil’s insights over the years had been prompted by his supernatural powers rather than his scholarship? Could he even still call himself a historian and archaeologist?
Not that he’d shared any of this with Ellie, Adam, or Constance. What could he possibly tell them? Would they even believe him? Or would they think he’d gone completely mad?
Mad, Neil thought dully.
He forced his attention back to the game room. He couldn’t afford to keep slipping into daydreams. He had a job to do, even if he didn’t have the foggiest idea how to do it.
“So then he said, ‘I know you are—but what about the horse?’” the posh fellow at their table announced, eliciting a screech of laughter from his companions.
What had his name been again? Frederick? Rupert?
“Jolly good one, Bunty,” said the man beside him, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.
Bunty, Neil reminded himself with a burst of rage.
The rage was out of proportion to what more or less amounted to a batch of uninteresting toffs talking about cricket.
Neil had spent plenty of boring hours around people who had never heard of a funeral stela, never mind knowing how to translate one out of Middle Egyptian.
He had never had to actively work to keep himself from punching them in the face before.
That feeling was new, and he wasn’t at all comfortable with it.
Constance pushed up from her chair. “I think I need a drink.”
Bunty rose with her. “I’ll fetch something for you. Champagne? Gin and tonic?”
“Aren’t you a darling?” Constance tapped him playfully on the arm. “But I’d like to stretch my legs. Dr. Fairfax will escort me. We’ll be back in a tick.”
She slipped her hand under Neil’s arm and flashed the table a glittering smile.
The others fell back into conversation as he and Constance walked away. The speculative glances and furtive tones made it perfectly clear who they were talking about.
Neil’s hand clenched reflexively.
“They don’t know anything about Borthwick,” Constance reported under her breath as she steered him into the lounge. “I think we need to find an older set if we’re going to track him down. Champagne, please.”
The bartender pulled a bottle out of an ice bucket, filling her a slender glass.
Neil looked down at Constance’s lovely, heart-shaped face, and the thought idly skipped through his brain. I think I really would hit them, if any of them tried to hurt her.
But wasn’t Constance far more capable of that sort of thing than Neil? She had already bested Neil in a fight before—though admittedly at the time, Neil had lost his glasses, could barely see a thing, and was armed only with a book.
Perhaps he’d do better if he were ready for it.
Neil’s brain flooded with images of his hands on Constance’s arms. Her strong thigh thrusting between his legs as she tried to trip him. Neil using his greater weight to roll them, pinning her to the floor…
Neil blinked behind his spectacles, coming back to himself with an uncomfortable jolt. Where on earth had that notion come from?
Constance was an objectively lovely woman—but she was still the danger gnome, the diminutive monster that had wreaked havoc over his childhood. They were friends—just a couple of mates.
It was one thing to be mates and be aware that one of you happened to be exceptionally attractive. It was something else to vividly imagine sliding your hands up your mate’s skirt while her ample breasts heaved against your chest.
“Drink, Stuffy?” Constance pressed, staring at him with a wary look that made Neil wonder how many times she had already asked.
Blood rushed to the tips of his ears.
“Beer,” he blurted out automatically.
Neil hardly ever drank and had never been any good at it. At least a beer wasn’t particularly strong.
The bartender handed him a glass. Neil jerked up his arm to accept it.
His first sip was appropriately bitter.
Constance grasped Neil’s arm to lead him away—but they were stopped by a voice from behind them.
“Hold on. Is that Neil Fairfax?”
The plummy tones resonated with an uncomfortable familiarity. With a creeping feeling of unease, Neil turned.
A tall, thin man with ruddy hair and freckled skin sat at the bar. He wore a beard, and there were more lines at the corners of his eyes, but Neil still recognized him, memories flashing up from his years at Cambridge.
The man before him had played squash. Studied engineering. His father was a professor. Neil had bonded with him over a passing interest in botany. He’d been a decent bloke, though they’d never been particularly close. They hadn’t had enough in common, besides the ferns.
“Fletcher.” The name popped to Neil’s lips with a vague discomfort. “Rennie Fletcher.”
“It is you!” Fletcher exclaimed, rising from his stool to extend a hand.
Neil took it automatically. The smile he forced onto his face felt like glass, but must have been passable, as Fletcher answered it with a more genuine grin of his own.
Neil’s question was a little more pointed than it ought to have been. “What on earth are you doing here?”
Constance cast Neil a concerned look.
“I’ve been in India for five years now,” Fletcher cheerfully replied. “I’m practically a fixture at this point. They’ve got me on railroads, mostly, with a bit of bridge work here and there. But what are you doing out this way? I thought you were supposed to be in Egypt!”
I was, Neil thought distantly. But then I abandoned my dig, betrayed the trust of my funders, and left the post in disgrace.
His murderous idiot ex-employer had admittedly had a bit to do with it, but that was hardly the sort of thing one brought up in a chat at a bar.
Nor could Neil entirely absolve himself of responsibility for what had followed after.
“You know how these things go,” Neil weakly answered.
“Do I ever!” Fletcher chuckled. “Fair warning—once you put down roots here, it’s damned hard to pull them out. Mine was only supposed to be a two-year posting, and look at me now.”
An uncomfortable silence lingered.
“This is Miss Tyrrell,” Neil blurted out, remembering himself. “I’ve been traveling with her and her grandmother.”
Fletcher gave a neat bow over Constance’s hand. “Charmed. So are you on another dig, then? Something here in Odisha?”
Sweat started to bead on Neil’s forehead. “I’m actually between excavations at the moment.”
“Doing a bit of scouting, eh? Always was a little jealous of your line. Digging up ancient treasures must be a spot more interesting than studying water tables for laying track beds.”
“I’m sure your work poses plenty of interesting challenges,” Constance piped in charmingly.
“Challenges? Certainly.” Fletcher smiled at her. “They just make for terrible dinner conversation. You should see the people I’ve bored over cocktails. You’d think they were all malarial.”