Chapter 10 #2
“‘Reminded’ isn’t precisely the right word,” she confessed. “It felt more like someone ripped me out of where I was and threw me back there again.”
Adam watched her patiently through the gloom. “Thought it might’ve been something like that.”
Ellie had told him before about what had happened when she had made contact with the Smoking Mirror—how in that impossible conversation with a scarred, gold-eyed ghost, the knowledge of an entire civilization had been poured into her brain.
You want to know who we were.
In that moment, Ellie had wanted it with all the compulsion of a lifelong student of history confronted with a place that had been lost to the mists of time.
The mirror had fulfilled that desire in a manner that still made her feel queasy and breathless when she thought about it.
The knowledge now haunted her mind like a ghost itself.
Ellie couldn’t call it up at will. If she tried, it only slipped away from her, teasing along the edge of her consciousness.
The memories came to her on their own terms. Something would spark that distant sense of recognition, and suddenly Tulan would flood her awareness, thrusting her back into a place that had disappeared over two hundred years before she was born.
Once it passed, only fragments remained—a melody on a flute carved from bone. The way the wind moved through the feathers on a headdress. The glitter of jade and gold.
The words burst out of her on a wave of guilt and frustration. “It’s like it’s all right there inside my mind, only I can’t do anything about it. I am the last living repository of the knowledge of an entire world, and I can’t bloody remember it!”
“What would you do if you could remember it?” Adam pressed softly.
Ellie threw up her hands. “I don’t know! It isn’t as though anyone would believe me if I ever did manage to write it all down. But I feel like I ought to be doing something to try to preserve it. I must owe the people of that place at least that much.”
Owe her that much, Ellie silently corrected, thinking of the scarred, solemn face of the woman who still occasionally haunted her dreams.
Adam’s hand clasped her shoulder. “You’ll figure it out.”
The steady faith in his voice warmed her—but doubt lingered. “Will I? It’s not as though there’s a guidebook for this sort of thing. I just feel so useless.”
“The last thing you are is ‘useless,’” Adam firmly corrected.
The words comforted her, even if the guilt still lingered.
“At the club tonight,” she said carefully. “You suspected what it might be like for Constance, didn’t you? Before we’d gone inside.”
“I should’ve thought of it sooner than that.”
“I don’t think it would have stopped her,” Ellie pointed out.
“No,” he agreed tiredly.
“I suppose I should’ve thought of it as well,” she confessed uncomfortably. “I know this isn’t England—not that England is entirely free from such attitudes.”
“It’s not like here,” Adam replied shortly.
Ellie studied the tight expression on his face. “Or like America?”
Adam gazed out over the rooftops. “America’s… bad.”
“Is that why you left?”
Adam laughed. The sound was dark and uncharacteristically edged. “I left for a whole lot of reasons, Princess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Adam demanded.
“You don’t like to talk about it—your life in San Francisco, I mean.”
Adam gripped the rail, still holding the cigar between his fingers. The familiar lines of his face were brushed by the faint light coming through the doors. “It was a different world. Not a very nice one.”
Ellie felt a tug in her chest. “I can’t see you ever fitting in someplace like that.”
“I didn’t,” Adam returned shortly. “That’s why I kept finding ways to run away from it—not that I knew that was what I was doing at the time.”
“What did you think you were doing?”
Adam turned to lean against the rail, the lines of his body projecting a deliberate insolence as he crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Screwing up.”
She thought of the golden compass in his pocket. “You’re talking about your father.”
Adam didn’t respond… which was answer enough.
Ellie didn’t know very much about Adam’s relationship with George Bates, but what she did know made her dislike the man immensely.
Adam had never been good enough for his father. Ellie knew that Adam blamed himself for that, at least partly.
Ellie blamed George Bates.
She wondered what it would feel like for home to become a place where you not only didn’t belong, but were no longer even welcome to try.
Where the doors were only open if you pretended to be someone entirely contrary to who you really were.
She imagined going back to Canonbury and telling her parents that she was involved with a man in a manner that would never end with marriage.
Her stepmother, Florence, would be hysterical. Ellie could already envision the tears and dramatics, just like she could picture the startled worry on her father’s face.
What she could not imagine was the pair of them ordering her out of the house and telling her never to come back.
Adam had suffered that, fundamentally betrayed by the people who should have loved and supported him most.
The thought made Ellie burn with a hot, protective rage. “It takes a great deal of courage and integrity to see past the world you’ve been given and realize that there is more out there—and then leave everything you know behind to go and find it.”
Adam uncrossed his arms, gazing down at her. “You did that too.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Going to university. Applying to the civil service.” Adam’s mouth quirked into a hint of a roguish smile. “Stealing a map to an ancient lost city.”
“I didn’t mean to steal it,” Ellie cut in defensively, blushing.
“Not getting married,” Adam finished firmly.
Ellie remembered her conversation with Constance in the tonga and felt a guilty pang. How much integrity could there be in pretending to go along with an institution she opposed? But what other choice did she have if she and Adam wanted to be together?
She didn’t have an answer to either of those questions.
Adam brushed his knuckles gently over her cheek. “You’ve got more integrity in your little finger than anyone else I’ve ever known.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Ellie grumbled guiltily.
“I am. And it still never ceases to amaze me that out of all the guys in the world, you’ve settled for me.”
“You have a great deal to recommend you!”
“Unemployment?” Adam suggested wryly.
“How about bravery? Principle. Compassion. Strength. Intelligence.” She punctuated each remark with a poke at his solid chest.
“Now you’re just buttering me up,” Adam protested.
“I am listing objective facts.”
“Not gonna put anything in there about my manly physique?” Adam’s mouth quirked wickedly.
“I think you are quite aware of my opinion of your physique.”
Adam took a step closer—which brought them into a very intimate proximity. “Doesn’t hurt to have a reminder every now and then.”
Ellie’s mind bloomed with all the things she might do to appreciate Adam’s physique, were Mr. Mahjoud not reading the rail timetables on the other side of the glass doors. “I think rather than a reminder, I might prefer an uninterrupted hour in a broom closet,” she grumbled.
Adam laughed.
“Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking of it as well,” Ellie accused.
The night burst with noise and color as chrysanthemums of pink, orange, yellow, and purple bloomed to life against the night sky. A triumphant roar rose from the distant festival.
Adam’s body was etched in dancing hues of blue and gold. His scent filled her senses, salt and forest and animal heat mingling with the tang of cordite from the display overhead.
“You don’t wanna know what I was thinking, Princess,” Adam warned darkly.
Elle’s desire warred with her common sense. “Why not?”
Adam leaned in close, the heat of his breath brushing against the skin of her cheek as the colors continued to crack and shimmer overhead. “Because we’re on a balcony.”
“What’s wrong with balconies?” Ellie’s hands twitched at her sides with the urge to reach up and tear open the buttons of his shirt.
Adam’s hand glided over the small of her back, the callouses on his fingers catching lightly against the delicate silk. “Gravity.”
“Who needs gravity anyway?” Ellie protested breathlessly, tilting up her face. Adam was so close to her now that the gesture made the subtle roughness of his cheek glide against her jaw.
Adam’s hand flexed against her back with barely contained power. “Can’t say I care to mind it much at the moment,” he muttered, eyes darkening with wicked determination.
The French doors flew open. Constance plowed through them in her dressing gown, arms spread wide and happily toward the sky. “Fireworks!”
Adam stepped back. Ellie whirled to grip the railing, forcibly trying to steady her breath.
Constance shouted loudly back into the parlor. “Stuffy! Come see!”
Neil popped into view in his worn blue robe and gray striped pajamas, toweling his hair. “What’s that?”
“Lord Jagannath must have made it to his aunt’s house. They’re putting on a show!” Constance grabbed him by the arm and hauled him out onto the balcony—which had grown rather crowded.
With a whistle and a bang, more color burst to life in overhead, orange and red joining shimmering falls of green and yellow. Constance’s heart-shaped face was lit with the dancing hues, her eyes wide with childlike joy.
Neil stared up at the show from behind her—and worry twisted through Ellie’s gut. He knew that Ellie and Adam were involved with each other… but she hadn’t exactly advertised what the two of them had gotten up to during those stolen nights in Cairo.
Knowing Ellie had romantic feelings for his best friend was one thing. Learning that they had done debauched things together while deliberately remaining unmarried was something else entirely.
For a moment, Ellie wondered what it would feel like to lose her brother over that. What if by letting him see who she really was—and what truly mattered to her—she risked having him shut her out of his life forever?
Neil wasn’t just her family. He was her friend.
Her colleague. The first person in the world who had shared and understood her scholarly passions and her boundless curiosity.
Their relationship hadn’t always been easy, punctuated by periods of hurt and confusion…
but through all of that, there had always been an immense and unmistakable bounty of love.
The notion of having all of that torn from her was wrenching.
Emotion roiled through her with the power of a storm, threatening tears.
Neil’s mouth tightened with concern. Ellie could read the question in the angry look he shot at Adam.
Has he hurt you?
She had to choke back a wild laugh at his assumption—and at his quick instinct to protect her.
She shook her head, reassuring him. Neil warily accepted it.
With the memory of that terrible fear still twisting through her, Ellie reached out her hand.
Neil blinked down at the gesture—and pulled her gently to his side.
Ellie found herself securely wrapped in her brother’s arm. She let her head fall to his shoulder, soaking up his steady warmth.
The shocking impulse toward tears flooded up in her again, but different now. The tide was warmer and richer, woven through with gilded threads of affection.
Ellie felt the truth in her bones. She wouldn’t lose Neil over the question of who she needed to be. Some of her choices might be harder for him to understand, or could drive him to worry… but he would never walk away from her.
She tightened her grip on his waist as though her arms could communicate what words would never be big enough to hold.
Ow, Neil mouthed softly, wincing at the pressure on his wounded side.
Sorry, Ellie mouthed back with a wince.
He shook his head ruefully—and subtly tightened his warm hold on her shoulder.
Ellie leaned against him as he gazed up at the fireworks through his spectacles.
Like a compass needle returning to the north, her eyes moved to where Adam stood by the rail.
He was watching her and Neil, smiling with a warm understanding that only Adam Bates would have so quickly, intuitively grasped.
He punctuated it with a casual fist to Neil’s shoulder.
Neil startled—and then smiled at him as well, the expression more tentative but unmistakably genuine.
“Beautiful,” Constance breathed in front of them, absorbed by the colors blooming across the sky—prayers made light and shot into the stars. “It’s beautiful.”