Chapter 27
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Twenty-Seven
Dr. Neil Fairfax looked different as Constance descended the slope into the broad green valley with Subhas and the Adrija.
Nothing had actually changed about Neil.
He was still good old Stuffy, dressed in a slightly-worse-for-wear shirt and a brown waistcoat.
The scabbard for Dyrnwyn was strapped across his back, and his spectacles were firmly in place.
But Constance’s eyes hitched against the sculpted line of his forearm under the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt as he rubbed at the sweat that lightly glistened on the nape of his neck.
She vividly recalled how Neil had looked the night before, standing in the downpour with his sword burning in his hands as he confronted the most beautiful monster she’d ever seen.
His soaked shirt had clung to his movements, eloquently displaying every line of his torso.
His long, sensitive hands—made for lovingly turning through the pages of old books—had gripped the bone hilt of the flaming sword as his jaw tensed with both fear and a fierce determination.
The man had admittedly always been attractive. Even as Ellie’s scrawny older brother, there’d been something appealing about the perfect cut of his cheekbones and the way his over-serious eyes mingled hues of brown and forest green.
When Constance had finally run into Neil again as an adult, she’d been surprised to see how well he’d filled out.
When she’d landed on him in the thieves’ tunnel in Saqqara, feeling the firm plane of his chest under his jacket had even sparked the notion that she might make use of good old Stuffy in her plan to sow a few wild oats before settling down to a respectable marriage.
Since then, Constance hadn’t been shy about making a healthy, red-blooded study of Neil’s charms when the opportunity presented itself.
And why shouldn’t she take a moment to appreciate Neil’s assets when they were on display rather than buttoned up under layers of tweed?
She considered herself a connoisseur of the well-formed male physique.
She might even have indulged in musing over what it might feel like to grab hold of his perpetually disheveled hair and drag him down for a kiss.
All of that had been perfectly harmless—nothing one wouldn’t expect between friends who happened to be reasonably attractive.
What had been racing through Constance’s brain since last night felt somewhat less harmless. The sight of Neil facing down that tiger with his flaming sword in spite of a very deep natural aversion to danger had done things to her.
Things that did not seem to be easy to undo.
She was having notions.
It had taken an act of sheer will for Constance to hand Neil back his scabbard without dragging the man down to the floor with her.
She’d had to fight to resist running her hands over his chest when he’d stripped off his soaked shirt to hang it up to dry.
As she had finally lain down on her blanket beside him and tried to go back to sleep, she had been tormented by thoughts of climbing onto Neil to kiss him senseless.
She was having the bloody notions again right now, and all Neil had done was pause to take a swig from his canteen.
Subhas stood right beside him, bare-chested and frowning—a look that undeniably suited the Adrija law student very nicely. Constance would normally have made a point of stopping to appreciate that sort of thing.
She barely spared him a glance. Her attention was locked on Neil’s Adam’s apple as it bobbed against the pale column of his throat with his swallow. She was suffused with the urge to rise up on the toes of her boots and lick it.
Constance had always admired Neil. Even when they were children and she’d made it her purpose to find ways to rile him up, she’d been mostly motivated by the fact that he was just so terribly clever.
It made winning his attention away from his piles of books—even his mortified or exasperated attention—feel like a boon.
Her respect for him had only grown since they’d become reacquainted.
Neil had grown into an exceptional man. He was far from perfect—he’d done some absolutely infuriating things in the brief weeks since they’d become reacquainted—but he wasn’t afraid to admit it, and he genuinely worked to do better.
He listened. He thought about things. He cared.
There was nothing respectful about the way Constance thought of him at the moment.
Everything would’ve been fine if not for that blasted tableau—Neil, all lean and scholarly and not at all the conventionally heroic type, standing in the rain as he faced down a gorgeous deadly beast with a mythical sword glowing in his hands.
Constance was quite sure the image would be emblazoned in her mind till her last breath. How could it not?
It was no wonder she was having lustful thoughts. If she hadn’t been, someone ought to check her pulse.
Constance definitely had a pulse.
What she needed—rather urgently, it would seem—was to find a way to settle things back to normal. She could hardly run around consumed by the urge to lick Neil’s Adam’s apple, could she?
There must be a way for her to exorcise these demons and get back to the comfortably abstract desire she’d enjoyed for the last several weeks.
Thankfully, Constance had a plan for that—one that she intended to execute just as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
She was looking forward to it.
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A short distance later, Constance pushed through the brush to reveal a carved stone archway that towered over her between the trees.
Neil gripped her arm as he stared up at it. “It’s a torana—a ceremonial gateway! Connie, there’s a torana here!”
His hand was hot on her skin through the thin fabric of her blouse.
“Look at the fluting on those columns!” Neil rambled on. “If that’s not Persian, I don’t know what would be. I knew there must be some Achaemenid influence on later Indian architecture!”
He could lift me up against that ceremonial gateway and kiss me senseless, Constance thought distractedly.
She scowled with frustration. This was intolerable. “It’s a very nice torana, Stuffy.”
“Henduko, Abbaya. Kōnja!” Jignesh exclaimed cheerfully.
Constance plucked Neil’s too-distracting hand from her arm. “Kōnja?”
“It’s our clan name,” Subhas replied, mildly amused. “It means ‘monkey.’ They’re on the arch.”
She realized that the weathered carvings on the stones weren’t just ornamental decoration. Lanky limbs and curving tails wove through depictions of thick leafy vines heavy with fruit.
“It really is Kishkindha!” Constance burst out excitedly.
“Kishkindha?” Neil echoed distractedly, still studying the torana.
“The monkey kingdom? Hanuman’s home?” Constance pressed.
“Kishkindha’s a myth,” Neil replied automatically. “Monkeys don’t have a kingdom.”
“I know they don’t have a literal kingdom, Stuffy,” Constance retorted impatiently. “But they’re all over the stonework!”
“Animal motifs appear frequently in early Indian art and architecture.” Neil bent over the base of the archway. “I wonder how deeply these foundation stones are buried.”
Constance hauled him up by the back of his waistcoat and forced him to face the arch. She jabbed a finger toward the stone simians.
“Let his midday shadow point you to the ruins of the most loyal kingdom. That’s Kishkindha—the monkeys were Rama’s fiercest allies. And now we are staring at an archway covered in monkeys!”
Neil’s eyes widened. “Oh!”
“Are we going in?” Subhas prompted.
The rest of his men lingered around him with varying expressions of amusement and impatience.
“Of course, we are.” Constance reached back and grasped Neil’s hand… which was a perfectly friendly thing to do.
His long fingers instinctively wrapped around her own, the heat of his palm warming her skin.
Constance suppressed a shiver.
Neil looked down at their clasped hands with a blink of surprise.
“Come on, Stuffy,” she ordered and dragged him through the gateway.
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To Constance’s eyes, the ruins that followed were slightly disappointing.
She had been hoping for towering palaces draped with vines, hiding secret chambers packed with treasure.
Instead, tumbled piles of stone grew plucky flowers.
The structures that did remain intact weren’t very large, consisting of maybe a room or two across a single story.
She bit back a sigh of disappointment.
Meanwhile, Neil exploded with excitement.
“Look at these holes in the paving stones! I’d bet my left foot a substantial wooden structure stood on this terrace.” He whirled, pointing to a few rocky squares in the ground. “And these are likely residential structures, based on their size, or maybe storerooms for the temple precinct!”
He pressed forward, hurrying through the ruins.
The trees parted to reveal the column they had glimpsed through the canopy the day before. The scale of it was even more impressive up close. Pale gold stone gleamed in the sunlight that filtered down through the trees.
Neil gaped at it with an air of astonished wonder. “The high gloss of the Mauryan-era stone polishing techniques... The lack of any base adornment…”
His eyes sparked greener with excitement as he whirled to grab Constance by the shoulders. “Connie, this is an Ashoka Pillar!”
Constance reeled from the unexpected contact.
He released her a moment later, circling the monument as he kept rambling. “Ashoka raised these after his conquest of Kalinga, when his guilt over the slaughter of the war prompted him to convert to Buddhism. Which means that somewhere on here, there’s going to be…”
He jabbed a finger at the towering shaft of stone, voice rising with elation. “An inscription! In Brahmi script! Can anyone here read Brahmi?”
He looked hopefully to Subhas.
“No,” Subhas replied dryly.
Neil visibly slumped with disappointment.
“I thought you didn’t know anything about Indian archaeology,” Constance accused.
“I don’t,” Neil replied. “I’ve only picked up a few things here and there over the years.”
“Like Mauryan stone-polishing techniques?”
“Yes?” Neil appeared confused by her wry tone.
The man honestly had no idea. Constance wondered what level of knowledge it would take for Neil to consider himself reasonably well-informed on a topic.
Subhas shook his head.
Neil traced his fingers reverently over the script on the column.
“The other structures aren’t Mauryan. I’d estimate they date from the eleventh or twelfth century, along with the torana.
The presence of the Ashoka Pillar indicates this was originally a Buddhist site, but I suspect it was resettled by Hindus sometime after its initial abandonment.
” He clambered over to a jumbled pile of rocks nearby.
“I wonder if there’s evidence of the earlier Buddhist structures in the foundation stones. ”
“Watch out for pit vipers,” Subhas commented mildly.
“Wait—what?” Neil danced back from the ruins as if expecting a snake to strike from behind them at any moment. “Are there pit vipers here?”
Subhas’s eyes glinted wickedly. “Keep jumping around in the rocks where they like to hide, and I suppose we’ll find out.”
Neil went pale.
Constance shot Subhas a glare.
Subhas answered it with a wink. “Let’s go find your waters. Jignesh! Ziju aanaha!”
“Waters?” Neil contemplated his beloved foundation stones as though torn between the urge to clamber over them and a natural aversion to being bitten by a deadly snake.
“The Waters of the Son of the Wind?” Constance reminded him. “You know—from Tulsidas’s clues?”
“But… the foundation stones…” Neil cast a mournful gaze back at the jumbled rocks.
Constance hooked a hand through his arm and dragged him from the pillar. “The rocks will wait for you, Stuffy.”