The Adventuress Read online

  “I do not think I shall ever adjust to being here,” Amity said, as she and Christabel lounged in the courtyard of the villa Mr. Wells had taken for their stay. “The humidity is intolerable.” She stretched out on a chaise longue and waved a large ostrich fan in front of her face.

  “And it is not yet summer,” Christabel said. “You will adore Simla, though. Everyone spends the summer there. The society is incomparable.”

  “Incomparable society in Simla?” A stocky man in uniform approached them, Birdie’s housekeeper following behind, doing her best to announce the visitor. “Christabel, you are giving this young lady the wrong idea altogether.”

  “Captain Charles Peabody, Miss Wells!” The servant made a slight bow, her hands pressed together as if she were praying.

  “Very good, thank you,” Amity said.

  “And Captain Jack Sheffield as well.”

  Amity thanked the housekeeper again and inspected the new arrivals. Christabel’s brother, Captain Peabody, was a bit of a disappointment; Amity preferred her officers to cut rather more of a dashing figure in uniform. Fortunately for her, his companion filled the role admirably. Tall and lanky, Captain Sheffield moved with careless ease, and Amity was taken at once with his easy humor and self-deprecating ways.

  “The society in Simla is the worst sort of colonial balderdash,” Captain Peabody said. “If one is to be in India, one ought to be there, not set up some sorry version of England instead.”

  “Going native, Peabody?” Captain Sheffield’s grin brightened the room.

  “I take all my opinions from you, old boy, so you ought not criticize me.”

  “Quite right.” Captain Sheffield tugged at the cuffs of his bright red jacket. “India is magnificent: exotic and mysterious. How many forts have you ladies visited thus far?”

  “Forts?” Amity asked, pursing her perfect lips and raising her eyebrows. “Why should I have even the slightest interest in visiting forts? Unless you can promise me more officers as charming as the two of you?”

  “Not that sort of fort, Miss Wells,” Captain Sheffield said. “I speak of the ruins of ancient citadels, the towering walls and heavy gates that kept safe the maharajas and their jewels. You do know about the maharajas and their jewels?”

  “What girl worth her salt wouldn’t?” Amity smiled. “Daddy promised me emeralds while we are here.”

  “Good girl. Insist on rubies as well.”

  “Sheffield is a terrible influence,” Captain Peabody said. “But you could not put yourselves in better hands should you want a guide to show you the area. I am afraid, Christabel, that I will not have quite so much liberty as I had hoped during your visit. Mother is furious, but I must do my duty.”

  “Of course, Charles. No one would expect less from you,” Christabel said.

  “I have brought my friend along as a peace offering. Mother has no interest in doing anything beyond taking tea with her old friends, and I do not wish to see you trapped doing only that. So far as she is concerned, she has already seen the best of India.”

  “She and father were here for nearly a decade.”

  “Yes, but she is very keen on you having a wander around, so long as it does not interfere with her routine. Sheffield is as good a bloke as I know. He will look after you well.”

  “I am still in the room, Peabody.”

  “Right. Well. I must be off. I shall leave the three of you to formulate a plan for your adventures.”

  From that day forth, Captain Sheffield spent every waking hour not required of him by the army with Amity and Christabel. Birdie initially balked at the young man. Captain Sheffield would never make an acceptable candidate for her daughter’s husband—he was a dreaded younger son, and, hence, without title or fortune—but once she learned he was the brother of the Duke of Bainbridge, Britain’s most desirable bachelor, her feelings warmed slightly. That is to say, she no longer did her best to discourage the acquaintance.

  Amity, Christabel, and Jack—for none of them required formality of the others any longer—began to refer to themselves as the Three Musketeers. They traveled (chaperoned, of course, by Birdie) to the Golden Temple at Amritsar, where Amity threatened to become a Sikh, but only if she would be allowed to wear a turban and carry a dagger. The dagger, Jack assured her, was a requirement. They lamented the sorry state of the Lake Palace at Udaipur, where the damp had taken hold and ruined much of the fine interior.

  “I shall make it my mission to return here and restore every corner of this place,” Amity said.

  “I have been laboring under the impression that India did not suit you,” Jack said. “It would impossible to count the number of times you have told me you would prefer to be in Paris or London—”

  “Or the Alps,” Christabel continued, crossing to her friends after she had finished photographing the remains of a frieze on one of the walls. Her brother had given her a camera for Christmas, and she had become something of an expert at using it. Carrying it on their trips often proved problematic, but they all agreed it was worth the aggravation when they saw her pictures. “Or Rome—”

  “Stop, you wretched beasts! I repent,” Amity said. “I repent wholly. The subcontinent has grown on me. When are we to see the tigers?”

  Birdie categorically refused to allow a safari of any sort, tigers or not. This did not give Amity more than the slightest pause. She appealed to her father, who never could resist her, and he organized a hunting party for them. Christabel very nearly begged off coming, but was persuaded in the end, although she was convinced, up almost to the last moment, that it was a wretched idea.

  “Come now, Bel,” Amity said. “Think of us, camping in the wild, riding on elephants—”

  “I do quite fancy riding on an elephant,” Christabel said.

  “I promise you will never regret it.”

  “Oh, Amity, I can never say no to you!”

  “Why would you want to?” Amity smiled. They departed for the Rajasthani hills the next morning.

  2

  The celebration of Jeremy’s engagement to Miss Wells began on board a special train in London, hired by her father. The ordinary boat train was not good enough for his little girl, nor was the ordinary boat that ferried ordinary travelers to Calais. We made our crossing in the lap of luxury—even the weather cooperated, treating us with bright sun and smooth seas—and we were then ushered onto a second special train that whisked us south toward Cannes.

  I resented everything about the trip, particularly having to be away from my twin boys, Henry and Richard, who were now two years old. They, together with our ward, Tom, brought joy and laughter to our home, along with trails of muddy footprints, dogs hidden in the nursery, and more than a few casualties among the breakable objects in our possession. Tom’s mother was a former friend of mine who had turned out to be a cunning murderer, and his parentage had raised more than a few eyebrows in society. That is, his maternal parentage. His father, a dissolute wastrel to my mind, was considered superior because he came from an old and noble Italian family. Fortunately, neither Colin nor I cared a bit for anyone’s opinion on the subject, and we held Tom, who was a few months older than the twins, as dear to us as Henry and Richard. I missed them all terribly and longed to return home to shower their chubby cheeks with kisses.

  When we arrived in Cannes, each member of the party was assigned rooms in the town’s best hotel, located in the eastern end of La Croisette, the wide, fashionable avenue skirting the coast of the Mediterranean. To my mind, we were a motley party: English nobility, American robber barons, and a collection of nouveau riche from both sides of the pond. I hated myself for sounding like my mother, but in this instance, I could not help myself.

  “It is not that I object to Americans,” I said, doing my best to explain myself to two of my dearest friends. We had taken a table in the center of the hotel’s terrace, a large, beautifully landscaped space, surrounded by graceful palms between which one could watch a steady stream of elegant tourists
walking along the sea. Mimosas, orchids, and hyacinths brimmed over vases on each table, their bright colors contrasting with the deep azure of the sky and the seemingly endless stretch of water in front of us. “You of all people know that perfectly well, Margaret, but this American in particular—”

  “She is even prettier than you are. I hated her the moment I laid eyes on her.” Margaret Michaels, whom I had met while in the last days of mourning for the death of my first husband (and who had, as previously mentioned, once pretended to be in love with Jeremy), was a Bryn Mawr–educated American who had skillfully persuaded her parents to accept an Oxford don rather than a duke for a son-in-law.

  “Heavens, Margaret, how I have missed you!”

  “You are both jealous.” Cécile du Lac waved for a nearby waiter and ordered more champagne. “It is unseemly.”

  “We are not jealous,” I said. “It is just that, well, Jeremy is—”

  “Bainbridge is no longer mooning over you and you feel the loss keenly. It is to be expected. I cannot count the number of times I warned you that it would, eventually, happen.” Cécile, a stunning and elegant Parisian of a certain age, was my confidante, the one person other than my husband who understood every dark corner of my soul.

  “When Jeremy did moon over me it was only for show,” I said, frowning. “He used me as an excuse to avoid marriage.”

  “Perhaps.” Cécile shrugged. “But who would not enjoy a constant stream of attention from a gentleman so longed for by the rest of society, even if he is not nearly so handsome as your own husband?”

  “Her own husband is Adonis,” Margaret said. “Even Mr. Michaels admits as much.”

  “I do wish you would stop calling him Mr. Michaels, Margaret. You have been married for how many years now?” I asked. I leaned over to make it easier for the waiter to refill my glass with champagne.

  “You have met him, Emily. Could you call him Horatio? It does not suit him in the least.”

  “No, it does not,” I admitted. Margaret’s husband, a dear, serious man, and a scholar of Latin, rarely left Oxford. He and his wife were a perfect match, leading a life full of raging intellectual arguments and the exchange of semiobscene Latin poetry.

  “Mr. Michaels would be mortified by Miss Wells,” Margaret said. “She is everything he despises about Britain.”

  “She is American, ma chérie,” Cécile said.

  “Precisely. I would not have dreamed of letting him accompany me here. I do think Miss Wells would have pushed him so far over the edge that he may well have been unable to speak coherently again in any language other than Latin. Perhaps that is why I object so vehemently to her. Her mere presence would destroy my husband’s will to live.”

  “That is unfair. She is a lovely girl!” Cécile drained her glass and signaled for another refill.

  “She is,” I said. “Stunningly beautiful. Bright. Refined when necessary, but otherwise in possession of a passion for life my mother would find wholly unacceptable.”

  “Rather like you, Kallista.” Cécile had always objected to my Christian name and chose instead to call me by the nickname bestowed upon me by my first husband. “Perhaps you are too similar to get along.”

  “That is such a cliché.” I bunched up my napkin, frustrated, and flung it onto the table. “I object to Miss Wells not as an individual, but as a spouse for Jeremy. She is a flawless example of studied perfection. It is as if everything she does has been carefully designed to attract him. Heaven only knows what she is really like. We are not bound to find out until well after the wedding.”

  “I cannot agree with that, Emily,” Margaret said. “I think we are seeing her true self, and unfortunately that true self is intolerable. She is not like Emily, Cécile. She is obnoxious and crass and—” She stopped and smiled too sweetly, looking over my shoulder. “So nice to see you, Miss Wells. Won’t you join us for some champagne?”

  “I can think of nothing I should better enjoy. Garçon, another chair for this table please!” Her voice as she called for the waiter grated on my nerves. It was an octave too low and a level too loud. Furthermore, she had a manner with staff that bothered me. She was in every way technically polite, but at the same time managed to convey that she thought herself superior to them. I did not like it. “You girls must call me Amity. Jeremy is so fond of you all that I feel as if you will be like my sisters, and sisters ought not address each other in formal terms.”

  “Were I your sister, Mademoiselle Wells, I should be most concerned about our parents,” Cécile said. “I am very nearly of an age with them.”

  “Oh, Cécile, you are simply too very! I don’t know how I ever lived before knowing you.”

  “One shudders at the thought.” Cécile drained her glass. “I fear there is not enough champagne in Cannes.”

  “Perhaps that is why I have always preferred whisky. Please don’t share that with my mother.” Miss Wells bubbled with sultry laughter. “Margaret, I must tell you how I laughed at Jeremy’s story of your false courtship. I cannot remember ever before being so amused.”

  “Yes.” Margaret pressed her lips into a firm line.

  Amity gulped down her glass of champagne. “I have come to inform you that we are all going for a stroll along La Croisette this evening before dinner. The light is so lovely as the sun starts to set. I have promised the gentlemen cigars for the occasion. I do hope you can tolerate them smoking.”

  “I would prefer to join them,” Margaret said.

  Miss Wells grinned. “My dear, you really are simply too very. I would smoke with you but promised my darling Jeremy that I would only do it when we are alone so that his friends aren’t scandalized. I imagine your own divine husband wouldn’t look kindly on the activity, would he, Emily? Although I suspect he is far more enlightened than his dignified exterior suggests. Still waters and all that. At any rate, we shall take a turn along the sea before we eat. The boys are off to the casino afterward for a party I’ve organized. I thought it would be nice for them to have some time away from us ladies. I don’t like to stifle them. Ah! I see them now. Ta-ta, girls!” She stood up and excused herself, flitting across the street to the edge of the beach, where Jeremy and some of his friends were standing.

  “I cannot put my finger on what it is, precisely, that I don’t like about her,” I said, “but there is something that rings decidedly untrue. She is an extremely beautiful chameleon. She likes cigars when Margaret does, whisky when Jeremy fancies it.”

  “As I have already said, it is jealously.” Cécile’s smile resembled that of a cat. “And it is unbecoming in a lady.”

  Three hours later we gathered in front of the hotel, where Amity lined us up, two by two, like schoolchildren. “I want us all to get to know each other better,” she said. “There’s no fun in everyone sticking with their ordinary partners, so I have decided to mix us all up. Jeremy, darling, you walk with Christabel. Emily, you’re to be with Jack.” She continued on, and I wondered if Cécile’s opinion of her high spirits and similarities to me would change after she endured this forced march on the arm of Amity’s father, Cornelius Beauregard Wells. She had saved Colin for herself, saying that it was only fair the bride should be escorted by the most handsome gentleman, and flirted with him so shamelessly that his eyes danced with a mixture of mortification and amusement. Chauncey Neville, Jeremy’s chum from his school days at Harrow, dutifully took the arm of Mrs. Wells, politely complimenting her on the rather extraordinary hat she was wearing, and as soon as Amity had finished pairing off the rest of the crowd, we set off along the pavement.

  “Your brother has shocked us all,” I said, leaning close to Jack as we strolled. “All these years he has sworn off marriage and then a handful of weeks in Egypt convinces him to abandon his principles.”

  “It shook me to my very core, Emily,” Jack said. “Yet they were so very happy from the moment they met, I do not see how things could have ended any differently.”

  “I understand you made Miss W
ells’s acquaintance some time before Jeremy’s arrival in Cairo.” I shook my head. “It is difficult to imagine him agreeing to go to Cairo. I half suspect you dangled her in front of him as an enticement.”

  “I did, and I am not ashamed to admit it. She is such a wonderfully open girl. One gets to know her so quickly that before long one cannot imagine having ever not known her.”

  “You first met her in India, did you not?” I asked. He nodded. “Was it immediately apparent your brother would like her?”

  “Without a doubt. They are so very alike. When I told her stories about him I was amazed by how readily she related to him.”

  “Yes, it is rather astonishing.” I wondered if my tone shouted cynicism.

  “Not so astonishing,” he said. “They are both under a great deal of pressure to satisfy the desires of their families. You know how difficult that can be. I am pleased they have found each other and only hope they have a pack of sons as quickly as possible so that I am as far removed from the dukedom as possible.”

  “Jeremy does so wish you would return to England.”

  “And I do so wish I would be posted back to India. My brother and I have rarely wanted the same things for me.” He flashed a bright smile. “Or for him, for that matter. Amity may indeed be the first.”

  “Then I am happy for him,” I said. “He is deserving of every good thing, and if he is content that is what he has found in her, no one could be more delighted on his behalf.”

  Jack’s grin widened, conspiracy in his eyes. “We both know he always wanted you, Emily. I may have only been six, but I saw him kiss you—”

  “Don’t be silly. We were children and any flirtations we may have shared in the past were mutually agreed upon performances to keep him from the bonds of matrimony for as long as possible. Now that he has found his heart’s desire, he has no need for such games.”