Chapter 31
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Thirty-One
Neil lay on the ground beneath Constance in the near total darkness. At Adam’s call, she felt his chest fill as he drew in a breath to respond.
She clamped her hands over his mouth, whispering quickly at his ear. “Careful!”
Neil’s sword had gone out, tossed from his hand as they’d fallen into the narrow room carved into the rock at Hanuman’s back. Dust still coated Constance’s skin and hung thickly in the cool, still air.
A wall of rubble filled the space where the door had been. Whispers of light slipped through slim cracks near the top of the pile, providing just enough illumination for her to make out the ghostly circles of Neil’s spectacles.
He nodded.
Constance climbed free of him and picked her way over to the wreckage of the upper gallery. She kept her voice to a low hiss through the tiny gaps in the debris.
“We’re here! Everyone is fine—but don’t tell them anything! Lead them off, and we’ll dig our way out to come and find you!”
A sliver of Adam’s jaw came into view as he moved his head closer to the cracks.
“Sure about that?” he murmured back, his lips barely moving.
Constance glanced back over her shoulder at Neil, who had climbed up from the floor. His face was dusty, pale, and distinctly nervous.
“Absolutely,” she whispered back to Adam—ignoring the twinge of unease under her skin.
Borthwick’s voice echoed down to her from farther away. “Mr. Bates?”
Adam’s face disappeared as he moved away. “Nothing. I don’t see any way they could have made it.”
His voice was flat as though he were talking about the untimely demise of a pair of strangers.
Neil grasped Constance’s arm, his grip tight with worry. “What about Jacobs?”
Constance felt a quick jolt of fear. She had forgotten that the man who loomed above them could tell when someone was lying.
She waited for him to intervene—for that smooth, cold voice to call out Adam’s falsehood.
Jacobs said nothing.
“He needs Adam alive,” she reasoned aloud, still close by Neil’s side by the blocked door. “He can’t say anything or he’ll risk Borthwick deciding to shoot Adam on the spot.”
Neil didn’t look particularly reassured. Constance supposed that was fair. Their situation was admittedly a bit precarious.
Borthwick’s voice took on a tinny edge as it filtered through to where Constance stood on her toes, pressing her ear to the gap in the rubble.
“Pity.”
His clipped tone reminded Constance of what the colonel had said before about persuading her and Neil to reveal their secrets.
She felt queasy.
“Let’s move on,” Borthwick ordered. “I want us in that valley by sunset.”
Relief washed over her, along with a flicker of hope.
Borthwick’s next words tainted the feeling with unease.
“Mr. Singh Rao—I believe it might be prudent for Mr. Bates to have an escort for the remainder of our journey.”
The officer answered with a note of hesitation. “Sir?
“The ground ahead is likely to be treacherous,” Borthwick elaborated.
The response was tactful, but Constance had no doubt about his meaning. Adam’s actions in the well had crossed the line into rousing Borthwick’s suspicions.
He had just been put under guard—which admittedly made her situation a touch more complicated.
The stern Indian officer called out an order, and the crunch of boots on stone signaled that the soldiers were moving away. Still, she kept her hand on Neil’s arm, warning him to silence. She kept it there until long after the last footsteps had faded.
Then she sprang into action. “Where’s your sword? We need light to figure out how to dig our way out of here!”
Neil felt his way along the floor, and a moment later, flames bloomed up Dyrnwyn’s iron blade.
The room came to life—and Constance found herself staring at a massive slab of stone.
It was the floor of the upper gallery. The entire piece had hinged down to slam across the door to their chamber.
Constance’s twinge of unease grew deeper as she faced it.
Neil looked queasy. “How are we supposed to dig through that?”
Constance smothered her growing fear with a forceful optimism. “Adam must have seen that this was here. He’ll know to bring the necessary tools to break it up with him when they come back for us. Or perhaps Ellie can move it with a small explosion.”
“When they come back for us,” Neil echoed dully, staring at the rock.
“They’ll find a way to get free of Borthwick,” Constance insisted, willing herself to believe it. “We’re perfectly fine in here in the meantime. There’s air getting inside, and we’re hardly going to starve in a day or two.”
“We would die of dehydration before we starved.” Neil let out a tight, nervous laugh. “I might die of dehydration inside a Somavamshi stepwell.”
Alarm thrilled through Constance at his words. “There is really no reason to panic.”
“Why would I be panicking?” Neil began to pace the narrow confines of the room, Dyrnwyn flaming in his hand. “We’re only trapped inside a thousand-year-old closet waiting for our currently imprisoned friends to dig us out. What could possibly go wrong in that scenario?”
His voice hitched up at the end of the words as his breathing went tight.
Constance put her hands on his shoulders and pushed. “Sit. Now. And put your head between your knees.”
Neil dropped to the ground and obeyed, still holding the sword awkwardly in front of him. He drew in a few shaking, uneven breaths.
Constance patted his back reassuringly. “We’re going to be just fine. Your sister and your best friend are not going to leave us here, and they are both exceptionally resourceful people.”
Neil lifted his head and ran a shaky hand through his disheveled, dust-streaked hair. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right.”
“We just need to find a way to pass the time that doesn’t involve contemplating our possible slow and painful deaths,” Constance asserted.
Neil went a bit green. “Like what?”
Constance suddenly found herself more aware of everything around her—the light pall of dust on her skin. The cool stillness of the stone-scented air. The way Dyrnwyn’s pale light flickered across the carvings that covered the walls.
“Now that you mention it, I might have an idea,” she mused.
“Oh?” Neil pressed hopefully.
Her gaze traced the length of Neil’s arm where he gripped the sword, following it up to the firm, straight line of his shoulders. Stubble lightly dusted the sharp angle of his jaw, and the arch of his cheekbone was scraped under the curve of his spectacles from their tumble into the carved room.
“It’s just a little… experiment I’ve been considering.”
Neil perked up. “What sort of experiment? Is it geological? Perhaps something related to hydrology?”
Constance stood up and held out a hand. Neil took it, and she levered him to his feet. He brought the sword with him, its dancing light bringing the carvings on the walls to life.
The maneuver put them in quite intimate proximity. Neil loomed over her. His shirt and waistcoat were scuffed with dust, one of his buttons lost at the collar.
She stood right at the level of his Adam’s apple. “It’s not related to hydrology.”
Neil swallowed thickly. Electricity singed through Constance at the subtle movement in his throat. “Then what is the—er—subject matter?”
Beyond the gold frames of his spectacles, his eyes were touched with green and brown like a forest in riot.
Yes, she thought distantly. Her idea was really a stroke of genius—an eminently sensible solution to their problem.
“Kissing,” she reasonably replied.