Chapter 22
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Twenty-Two
Ellie stared after Adam and felt as though she had just been slapped.
Her leg sang with pain. Her wet clothes clung uncomfortably to her skin. She had been tired, sore, and worried since they had crossed the river—but now she was something else as well.
Scared.
Adam’s last words had been so shockingly out of character, her mind struggled to absorb them. His casual dismissal had reminded her of the way a man might speak to a nervous dog.
Don’t worry, sweetheart.
Blast it, Adam didn’t even talk to his actual dog that way. What the devil was going on?
Kalb, for his part, remained at Ellie’s side, even though he quivered as he watched Adam leave, whining at the back of his throat.
Deserting Ellie with such condescension hadn’t been the only bizarre thing Adam had done. She had also been thrown by his easy agreement with Borthwick’s vile remarks about the ‘lower orders.’
Ellie was hardly going to be the first one to rise to Jacobs’ defense—the man had, after all, once threatened to flay her alive—but Adam had never given a damn about the circumstances of a person’s birth. It was antithetical to everything Ellie knew about him.
He had tried to warn her about something before Borthwick had interrupted them.
Things are going to be different.
Adam’s bizarre behavior was obviously some sort of act, but it had the air of a performance that he had rehearsed before. How was that possible when all of it was so contrary to the man Ellie had come to know—and to care about very deeply?
The question made her think of the words that had torn from Adam’s throat just before Borthwick’s arrival, which had struck her at the time as a strange non sequitur.
My father never wanted me.
The lid to the medical kit dropped shut with a snap. Ellie jolted at the sound, which sent a zing of protest through her new stitches. Singh Rao, the tall, self-composed officer who had been left to deal with her, motioned crisply to one of his sepoys, who collected the trunk and carried it away.
“Mrs. Bates?” Singh Rao prompted with brisk courtesy.
She would have to put her worries about Adam on hold for now. There would be time to address them later—once they had made it through the afternoon without rousing any more of Borthwick’s suspicions.
“Yes. Of course,” Ellie agreed and let the bearded subedar lead her to the patiently waiting mule.
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The sun kissed the horizon as they stopped for the day, the pale glimmer barely visible through the endlessly marching trees.
The forest whispered. Birds flitted through the canopy, chirping softly. The ground was thick with grass and wildflowers.
Shadows painted the space between the trees, lengthening with the coming evening. The impatient voices of the sepoys and the crunch of their boots felt like an intrusion that the Dandakaranya did not welcome.
The men set up camp with practiced efficiency.
Ellie had quickly determined that she was unlikely to find allies among them here as she had in British Honduras.
These weren’t hired hands simply along for a paycheck.
They were rigorously disciplined professional soldiers trained to follow Borthwick’s orders.
Only Singh Rao was fluent in English. The sepoys conversed in Punjabi, a language Ellie could barely recognize, never mind speak.
To her surprise, Kalb had stayed by her side all day. As she sat on a rock by the edge of the camp, he stood sentinel by her knee, occasionally letting out a mournful sigh. She might almost think that the animal felt responsible for protecting Ellie while Adam was away.
Ellie gave in and rubbed him between his ears. The dog panted happily at the attention—then stiffened, going still.
She slowly turned her head to see Jacobs standing beside her.
He wore his usual plain black suit and waistcoat, despite the lingering heat of the afternoon.
Ellie couldn’t see even a gleam of sweat on his skin—unlike Dawson, whom she could hear complaining about the climate from across the camp.
She wondered if Jacobs could compel his pores to behave by sheer force of will.
“I assume the day hasn’t gone quite the way you planned,” Jacobs commented mildly, keeping his eyes on the sepoys.
The fact that he remained standing while Ellie sat on the rock left her feeling uncomfortably vulnerable. She supposed that was deliberate. This wasn’t a casual chat. Jacobs had come for a reason—which made this conversation dangerous.
“You might say that,” Ellie returned carefully.
“I do hope you’re not expecting me to stand by while you sabotage this expedition.”
Ellie’s mind spun as she absorbed the significance of his words. Clearly, Jacobs assumed that she and Adam had come intending to get in Borthwick’s way. That conclusion was perfectly logical… if Jacobs had no idea about their connection to Vanika.
And he didn’t, Ellie realized with an unsteady wash of relief. He wouldn’t have seen Vanika with them. So far as he knew, she was just a girl from the village who had gotten herself in over her head.
If he figured out she was more than that, everything would change. Jacobs wouldn’t hesitate to use the child as leverage to force Ellie and Adam to get out of his way.
Ellie had to keep their interest in Vanika a secret… and she was talking with a man who would know the minute she lied.
The threat of that settled over her. Ellie swallowed thickly and forced herself to go on. “You helped us on the bridge.”
“Don’t mistake that for anything more than it was.”
“And what was it?”
“I kept you free of bullets—for the moment. If you’d like to stay that way, you’d best figure out how to extricate yourselves from this situation.”
“I’ll take that into consideration,” Ellie coolly replied.
Jacobs gave a dark, tired chuckle. “Sure, you will.”
Ellie took a chance, keeping her voice even. “What about the girl? What’s she doing here?”
“She’s our guide.” Jacobs’ voice dripped with irony.
“You don’t sound convinced of that.”
“Why should I be? She’s lying.”
Ellie’s pulse thudded dangerously. “Then why hasn’t Borthwick gotten rid of her?”
Jacobs’ expression iced with a brief flash of anger. “The colonel does not share my assessment of the situation.”
Surprise pushed the words from Ellie’s lips before she could think better of them. “You mean he doesn’t know what you can do.”
Jacobs was no longer pretending to watch the soldiers as they set up the tents. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
Ellie recognized the words as a warning—and ignored it. She was too caught up in the implication of what he had just inadvertently revealed.
Dawson had known all along that Jacobs could discern a lie.
Ellie had simply assumed that Jacobs’ employers were aware of his uncanny talent as well.
After all, that astonishing asset might easily have explained how Jacobs could rise from his checkered background to become the tool of some of the most powerful people in the empire.
But if the Order of Albion knew of Jacobs’ power, why wouldn’t they have told Borthwick about it?
The answer spilled out of her as her thoughts continued to spin. “They don’t know either, do they? The Order. You haven’t told any of them. But why wouldn’t you? Unless…”
More pieces snapped into place, driven by Ellie’s knowledge of the man who loomed over her—which went far deeper than she would ever have wanted. Opposing him had brought them into an unwelcome sort of intimacy.
“You want to keep using it against them,” she burst out, reeling. “You don’t want the Order to know that you can detect a lie because you want to be able to catch them if they’re lying to you.”
Worlds moved through Jacobs’ midnight eyes. Ellie read surprise there, along with anger, wariness… and a knife-thin, grudging respect.
“You don’t trust them,” Ellie accused.
A dark, quick laugh caught at the back of his throat. “Why would I ever trust them?”
Ellie shook her head. “Then why do you do this? Why are you here? I saw the way Borthwick treats you—like you’re nothing. Julian was hardly better, except that he was too frightened of you to say any of it. Is it like that with all of them?”
But Ellie already knew the answer. Of course, it would be like that. The names Julian had given them were some of the most powerful people in the realm—individuals born to a sense of their own elevated place in the world.
Jacobs wasn’t one of them. Ellie knew it from more than just the hint of the East End that threaded through his speech.
He carried himself like a man who had once battled for every scrap of bread.
He would have had to claw for each bitterly won step up the ladder of power, knowing that all that stood between him and death was the question of just how much violence he could wreak on whoever tried to take advantage of him.
“You aren’t a man who’d tolerate being treated like that,” Ellie declared firmly. “Not without a reason. And it’s not money. You could find another job if you wanted. You’re too bloody clever not to. It must be something else—something only the Order can give you.”
Jacobs’ tone was rich with threat. “Careful, Miss Mallory.”
Ellie couldn’t be careful—not as the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place in her brain. The shock of the picture it created drove her to her feet, even as her wounded calf issued a fiery protest at the movement.
Standing brought her to Jacobs’ level—far closer than she had realized that she would be.
Astonishment pushed the words from her lips in spite of her unease.
“But there’s only ever been one reason for you—the same one that keeps you from shooting Adam and me on sight.
The Order must be tangled up in it as well—your justice. ”
Ellie had an unsettlingly intimate view of the impact the word had on him. Furious determination wrenched under the surface of his implacable rage.
An unexpected impulse rose inside of her. Ellie gave it voice in spite of all the very good reasons why she shouldn’t.
“But we could help you. If that’s really what this is—if it’s really a matter of justice. Maybe that’s why you saw us in the mirror.”
Jacobs reeled with uncharacteristically bald disgust. “I bloody hope not,” he snarled.
He stepped closer, using his slight advantage in height to force Ellie’s head back, his eyes blazing like black coals.
“I won’t save you from your own stupidity—not if it costs me this mission.
And don’t underestimate Borthwick. He’s a bigger monster than the one that tried to eat you this afternoon. ”
Ellie clung to defiance against the storm of his anger. “That’s rich, coming from a man who once threatened to flay me alive.”
“I threatened to flay you because I needed to get a job done. Borthwick will do it because he wants to hear you scream.”
The assertion cracked out of him like a whip, leaving Ellie speechless.
Jacobs leaned in, his lithe form coiled with threat. “Stay out of my way.”
Then he was gone, stalking across the camp as the sepoys moved aside with wary looks.
Ellie’s hands shook as though she had opened up a basket to find a cobra waiting inside of it, escaping peril by the merest breath of fortune.
Warmth pressed against the side of her leg as Kalb leaned into her side, gazing up at her with concern.
“Oh, fine,” she conceded, dropping back onto the rock and drawing the dog’s head into her lap.