Chapter 9
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Nine
Ellie absorbed the expression of blank surprise on Mr. Chowdhury’s face as he stood in the doorway to the hotel suite. She decided that it was fully justified.
Her evening dress was torn at the shoulder and smeared with bat guano, her hair half falling from its pins.
Adam was covered in guano as well, stripped to his shirtsleeves and waistcoat.
His feet were bare and muddy. He currently held a sixty-pound dog like a baby as it quivered with relief at being reunited with him.
That was still better than Constance, who had lost her entire dinner ensemble. She was dressed like an Indian servant—one who’d had an intimate encounter with a shrubbery. Pieces of bush were still stuck in her cockeyed turban.
Neil’s face was scratched. The side of his jacket was torn. His spectacles were bent.
All of them were soaking wet.
Mr. Chowdhury took it all in with an astonishing degree of aplomb.
“I take it things did not go entirely according to plan?” he commented mildly.
They had not, Ellie acknowledged, gone entirely according to plan.
She and Adam had crawled into the attic above the broom closet, which had indeed been infested with bats. They had been perfectly normal bats, but even bats that were not flesh-eating monsters were problematic when unexpectedly disturbed.
Adam had finally managed to kick through the vent in one of the clubhouse gables. They had descended a vigorous wisteria vine to the golf course, where they had been doused by an abrupt downpour—and then nearly barreled over by an openly fleeing Neil and Constance.
With all the shouts of alarm and searching lanterns behind them, any opportunity to compare notes on the evening’s activities had been cut short.
Mr. Chowdhury swung open the door, allowing them inside.
The hotel suite consisted of a parlor with two attached bedrooms and a private washroom. It was clean, comfortable, and discreet—which was good, as they had hardly been very discreet themselves when they had paraded through the lobby.
“We ran into a couple of old friends.” Adam set down the dog and collapsed into an armchair, sprawling across it without any mind to the havoc he wreaked on the upholstery.
Kalb immediately crawled back up into his lap, where Adam absentmindedly scratched his ears.
Ellie could see where Mr. Chowdhury had been sitting before they came in, the place distinguished by a peaceful cup of tea and a few newspapers. The tall, distinguished solicitor returned there to pluck a throw blanket from the back of the chair.
“Professor Dawson and his handler, I presume?” he filled in as he held the blanket out to Ellie.
Ellie accepted it, wrapping the cloth around her drenched, guano-stained gown. She dropped onto the settee. “You presume correctly.”
“Well, Stuffy and I succeeded in tracking down Colonel Borthwick and bluffing our way into his stronghold.” Constance unwound her turban, shaking out the length of cloth to allow more pieces of shrubbery to tumble onto the carpet.
“Everything was going swimmingly until Mr. Jacobs turned up there as well.”
“If by ‘swimmingly’ you mean that Borthwick was obviously suspicious and refused to leave us alone with the manuscript for so much as a minute.” Neil peeled off his dinner jacket with a wince.
A crimson stain lined a tear in her brother’s shirt at the side of his stomach. Ellie stiffened at the sight, still clutching the throw blanket. “Are you bleeding!?”
“Why on earth would I be… oh!” Neil glanced down at his side and went over a bit green.
“Looks like somebody winged you,” Adam commented casually.
“Has Neil been shot?” Constance excitedly pulled at the torn edges of Neil’s shirt. “Let me see!”
“I have not been shot!” Neil protested as he tried to pivot his torso away from Constance. “I fell into a hedge! It’s just a scratch!”
As though to prove the point, Neil yanked the shirt from his trousers and lifted it, exposing a pale sliver of his flank—which was marred by a distinct red welt.
Ellie shuffled over in her throw blanket to examine the wound. “I’m afraid that does look rather familiar.”
“Familiar?!” Neil echoed in alarm. “Why would it look familiar?!”
“She’s seen this sort of thing before,” Adam cheerfully asserted, scratching Kalb’s ears. “Haven’t you, Princess?”
He punctuated the remark by giving Ellie a wink.
Ellie blushed at the memory of examining Adam’s close encounter with a bullet in a dark, watery cenote—very shortly before he had kissed her senseless.
“But there isn’t any hole!” Neil squirmed to try to get a better look at his own side. “How can it be from a bullet if it didn’t make a hole?”
“When it just sorta skims you,” Adam replied authoritatively.
“How do you know I didn’t do it when I fell into the hedge?” Neil challenged.
“Well…” Ellie prodded lightly at the injury. “You can see where the heat from the bullet has slightly cauterized the outer edges of the… er…”
She trailed off as she took in Neil’s alarming pallor.
“We can wrap it up nicely for you,” Ellie assured him instead.
“Not until I’ve had a better look at it,” Constance cut in crossly. “I’ve never seen an actual gunshot wound before—even one that hasn’t made a hole.”
Neil clamped a hand over the injury—wincing at the contact—then treated her to a forbidding glare. “No.”
Constance slumped down onto the settee with a pout.
Giving up on trying to contort himself into the right angle for a look, Neil turned to a small mirror mounted on the wall. He shifted until the raw, blood-smeared welt slashing across the side of his abdomen was framed in the glass.
“Eurrrgh,” he gurgled queasily.
“Throw a little petroleum jelly on there, and you’ll be good as new in a day or two,” Adam helpfully instructed him.
“Were you able to confirm Colonel Borthwick’s location while you were entirely ignoring my instructions and getting yourselves shot?” Mr. Chowdhury mildly inquired as he sat back down in his chair, legs elegantly crossed.
“We did better than that.” Constance perked up excitedly. “We know exactly where he’s keeping the book. If I’m able to return to the building with a bag of sawdust, twenty or so yards of rope, and a live rooster, I feel quite certain—”
“There’s also this.” Neil pulled a piece of crumpled paper from his pocket. It looked only slightly damp, unlike the rest of him. He offered it to Mr. Chowdhury.
“The nominative case?” Mr. Chowdhury skeptically read from the page.
“Ignore all that,” Neil instructed with an embarrassed flush. “It’s the rest of it that might help—the Brahmi.”
Ellie hurried over to Mr. Chowdhury, tripping slightly over the throw blanket that she still wore. “What Brahmi?”
“The Brahmi from the manuscript,” Neil elaborated. “Or at least the last page of it. I managed to copy it down before Borthwick, er…”
“Became aware of our espionage and shot Neil,” Constance filled in cheerfully.
“I have not been shot,” Neil protested again, still looking green.
“Just grazed a little,” Adam helpfully elaborated.
Ellie leaned further over Mr. Chowdhury’s shoulder for a better angle, consumed by scholarly curiosity about the transcription.
Mr. Chowdhury cocked his eyebrow in a manner that perfectly combined a hint of amusement with mild disapproval.
“Er… sorry,” Ellie began awkwardly. “It’s only that I have a tremendous interest in ancient Indo-Aryan languages…”
He handed her the paper, rising from his chair.
Ellie snatched it, dropped into his seat, and eagerly scanned Neil’s copied lines. “Oh, but this is wonderful! Do you know, I think I can see some similarities to Phoenician in some of the character styles.”
“Are there really?” Neil perked up, forgetting his injury for a moment to come peer over Ellie’s shoulder.
“Do we need the book if we’ve got a copy of the important stuff?” Adam asked.
Mr. Chowdhury moved to the doors that opened onto the suite’s narrow balcony. He studied the rooftops, which still glistened from the recent downpour. “Trying to get the manuscript from Borthwick involves risk—which is why I very clearly instructed you not to try to do it.”
“We weren’t trying, exactly,” Constance protested. “We just… fell into it.”
“Fell into the colonel’s study,” the solicitor returned dryly. He frowned, his mind working. “It will take Borthwick time to track down someone who can translate the text. If we can beat him to it and reach the astra first, it might be possible to avoid a confrontation entirely.”
“Which I’m guessing would be a safer option than sending your own people in—and risking Borthwick finding out where they came from,” Adam added.
“Rather,” Mr. Chowdhury agreed.
“I’m afraid this is my first encounter with Brahmi,” Ellie admitted, waving the page with Neil’s transcription. “I’d need access to an extensive library to make any sense of it.”
“You don’t need to make any sense of it,” Mr. Chowdhury corrected her. “His Highness will do that.”
“Uncle Vijay?” Constance piped in with a spark of delighted interest.
“He has made an extensive study of Sanskrit and ancient Indian literature. The royal library at Nandapur will have whatever else he requires,” Mr. Chowdhury explained.
“Royal library?” Ellie’s thoughts leaped excitedly to what she might find in the official collection of a kingdom that had been founded before the reign of Edward I.
Adam’s eyes twinkled knowingly. “Don’t let your fingers get too itchy, Princess. As best I can figure, it’s a solid two-day trip to Nandapur.” He looked to Mr. Chowdhury. “Can we afford that kind of time?”
“Nandapur is also a secure base for planning whatever operations are required next.” Mr. Chowdhury tapped his fingers thoughtfully against the table. “And it is where our resources are focused. That may prove critical.”
That ‘our’ seemed oddly intimate for a man who otherwise uniformly referred to Constance’s royal relative as ‘His Highness.’
Mr. Chowdhury’s fingers stopped tapping. “We’ll go. But we’ll travel separately. It’s best no one associates you with the royal party, especially after tonight’s… complications. I’ll arrange a compartment for you on the eight-thirty train.”
He straightened. “You had all best clean up and get some sleep in the meantime. You’ll find your trunks in your rooms. I took the liberty of having dinner sent up in case you didn’t have a chance to eat.”
“Are we to be left to our own devices for the evening, then?” Constance asked the question with an air of studied innocence.
A wicked spark of hope flared at the thought. Might they finally have a night where they weren’t being thoroughly chaperoned? Ellie would very much like to act on some of the impulses she had been robbed of in the broom closet.
Of course, her brother was unlikely to approve of being made an accessory to Ellie and Adam’s intimacies—even if Ellie could have brought herself to ask him. The very notion of that made her want to pull the throw blanket over her head.
Constance, however, was nothing if not a trusty companion in subterfuge. Surely she could find a way to distract Neil and give Ellie and Adam a chance to spend a private hour together.
Maybe two hours, Ellie corrected as her gaze roamed over to Adam’s sprawled, half-dressed figure.
“Not exactly,” Mr. Chowdhury replied.
A knock sounded at the door. Neil automatically pulled it open to reveal the tall, frowning figure of Mr. Mahjoud.
The dragoman was exceptionally tailored, as always. He carried a slender overnight bag as he crushed all of Ellie’s nascent sensual hopes.
“His Highness the Maharaja of Nandapur is looking for you,” Mr. Mahjoud reported tiredly.
“I’m sure that he is,” Mr. Chowdhury returned with an indulgent quirk of his lip. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
Mr. Mahjoud took in the scene—Neil’s bloody shirt, Ellie’s guano-stained blanket, Constance’s servant’s uniform, and Adam’s bare toes.
Still sprawled on Adam’s lap, Kalb lifted his head hopefully.
“Are we planning to wash up at some point this evening?” Mr. Mahjoud demanded with an air of resigned disdain. “Or do we harbor ambitions of ruining all of the hotel furniture?”