My Beautiful Enemy (34 page)

M
ademoiselle Blade,” said Lin.

He was and had always been handsome, his bone structure extremely fortuitous. Dressed in the style of a western gentleman, he cut quite a striking figure.

All Catherine saw was the monster who had murdered her child in cold blood.

She didn’t know how he had found her here, but it didn’t matter. In China there was a saying,
Those with unfinished business will meet on narrow paths.

“Draw your sword,” she demanded in Chinese.

“Bai Gu-niang should step into the modern age,” he answered in the same language. “What sword? These days a man of action carries a firearm instead.”

His hands had been clasped behind his back, but now he showed the revolver in his right hand. The sight staggered Catherine. The playing field had just tilted decisively in his favor. A blade was a deadly weapon, but a blade could be parried and dodged. How did one dodge a bullet at point-blank range?

“You should have left well enough alone—the slate was
wiped clean between us. But you had to cast me into the Atlantic.” He shook his head. “My life will be more peaceful without you.”

“Annabel, there you are!” cried Mrs. Chase from the door of the drawing room.

Lin’s expression changed—revulsion mixed with glee.

“Mother!” Miss Chase’s voice turned fearful—Catherine had not realized that she was still nearby. “I told you to stay in your room this entire day. Go back now.”

“But you don’t understand. I saw Captain Atwood come out of that woman’s room. If you are not careful, she is going to get him to cry off the engagement. Then when your Aunt Reynolds is no more, we’ll be out on the streets! You must do—”

Mrs. Chase gasped.

Lin moved the aim of his revolver a few degrees. “
Ma chère Madame Chase, nous nous réunissons de nouveau.
”

My dear Mrs. Chase, we meet again.

Catherine did not speak much French, but she had spent enough time in the French concession in Shanghai to understand his words.

Mrs. Chase only whimpered.

The relish in Lin’s voice was evident. “I wondered why this young lady looked familiar. She is your daughter, is she not?”

A warning bell clanged in Catherine’s head. “Leave her alone,” she said from between gritted teeth. “Leave them both alone.”

Lin turned to her and switched back to Chinese. “Why? The fat one believes that people of mixed race—like you and me—are abominations. As for the daughter . . . someone sent me a message via the newspaper, telling me to come here. Any guess as to whom?”

Catherine did not want to take her eyes off Lin, but she couldn’t help glancing toward Miss Chase. Before Miss Chase had found Catherine and Leighton at the private cemetery, she could have already learned from the butler that an
unaccompanied woman had come to call on the master of the manor. That would have given her enough time to send a cable to someone in London, in order to purchase an advertisement in the morning paper before it went to print.

Had Miss Chase done that?

Catherine turned back to Lin—she was hardly in a position to judge another woman for what she did in the name of love. “Leave them both alone,” she repeated.

“I won’t kill the girl,” said Lin, again in French. “She needs just a nice, long cut on her face, then her mother will have an abomination of a daughter.”

The very idea made Catherine ill.

The fingers of Lin’s left hand moved. Catherine heard the fall of two bodies. He must have locked their major acupuncture points so that they could neither run nor call for help.

He smiled. “I’ll have enough time for her after I’m done with you.”

The muzzle of the revolver was pointed at her again. And she had not a single weapon with her—lovemaking made one forget that the world was a dangerous place. She had, however, grabbed a small clock from the table next to her, when Lin had dispatched his hidden weapons against the Chase women.

If she could launch it and knock his aim off by a few degrees, she might be able to dive behind the settee before he got off a second shot. And if—

A gunshot went off.

She was stunned for a moment, all her muscles rigid, expecting to feel the pain of a bullet digging into her flesh and puncturing a major organ—only to see the revolver fall to the floor.

Someone had shot it out of Lin’s hand.

From the mirror opposite, she saw Leighton at one of the room’s open windows. Had she not stood in the way, he could have had a clean shot at Lin.

She dove for the revolver. Lin, on the other hand, leaped
over to where Miss Chase lay, pulled her to a standing position, and set a knife at her throat.

“Drop your weapons, or she is dead,” he said in French.

Miss Chase trembled in fright.

Reluctantly, Leighton set down his rifle. Catherine did likewise, though in her case, it was likely no great loss; the revolving mechanism had been bent enough that a bullet might get stuck.

Lin shifted his weight slightly. Instinctively, Catherine sensed that he had changed his mind about what to do first. Since now there was more uncertainty surrounding his killing of her, he was going to mar Miss Chase’s beautiful face while he had her in his grip.

She hurled the ormolu clock toward the major acupuncture point on his right shoulder. He brought up his knife to knock the projectile aside. She grabbed the next thing on the table by her side, a cut-glass candelabra, ripped off a handful of glass drops, and fired them in Miss Chase’s direction, hoping to unblock her mobility.

But Lin had ripped a small painting off the wall behind him and used it to block the glass drops. She launched the rest of the candelabra at him. He deflected it with his knife, the impact metallic and loud.

She lifted a chair and swung it at him. He let go of Miss Chase and, with a snarl, lunged at Catherine. The chair broke apart into several pieces as his palm met the seat.

Catherine somersaulted backward. “Get the Chases out of here,” she shouted to Leighton.

Lin’s knife came at her throat all too rapidly. She reached for a pair of bronze candlesticks on the mantel and barely managed to block him. Lin aimed a kick at her. She stepped back—only to realize that he meant to move her out of the way so he could pick up the revolver from where she had set it down on the floor.

She dove behind the grand piano as a shot rang out.

Lin leaped up, revolver in hand. In desperation, she yanked at the curtain behind her and sent thirty yards of fabric whooshing toward him. The fabric caught him head-on, enclosing him in green floral velvet. She shoved the piano in his direction.

The moment he landed, the piano, careening on its caster wheels, knocked him down.

She had already run to the fireplace and grabbed a heavy poker. With all her strength and all her training, she hurtled it at him just as he was about to get up.

The poker met his skull with a most satisfying crack. He stilled. She grabbed a coal shovel and tried to decide how to proceed. He was still covered by the curtain and lay half under the piano, which made it easier for him, if he remained conscious, to disguise his movements. By pretending to be unconscious—or dead—he could lure her in and ambush her.

Someone tapped her on her shoulder. Leighton—he had moved the Chases to a safer spot and was back. He raised his double-barrel rifle, aimed, and signaled her to pull the trigger. An excellent solution. Now she no longer needed to risk her person to find out whether Lin had been incapacitated. She could make sure of it.

She stepped behind Leighton, reached around him, and pulled the trigger. Once. Twice.

I
t was more difficult for Catherine to believe that Lin was lying dead in front of her than at the bottom of the Atlantic—perhaps because he had been such an immutable force in her life, that only an ocean seemed powerful enough to destroy him. But dead he was, all his spite and all his skills evaporated into thin air.

Leighton had his arm around her. She leaned against his shoulder, overcome by exhaustion. “Are Miss and Mrs. Chase all right?”

“Still immobile, but unhurt. Are
you
all right?”

She nodded.

“Come with me,” he said.

“And just leave his body there?”

“For now,” said Leighton, pulling her out of the drawing room.

The butler stood outside, looking pale but composed. Leighton gave instruction for the rest of the staff to remain either in their quarters or in the servants’ hall. “The police might come, as well as others. I trust the staff did not see anything?”

“No, sir,” said the butler. “No, indeed.”

Catherine could not be sure whether the servants had truly not seen anything or whether the butler planned to ensure such would be their testimonies. But either way it was a reassuring answer.

“Good,” said Leighton. “And please send some whiskey—and some food suitable for traveling—to my room.”

Catherine and Leighton climbed up the steps. He took her to his apartment.

“What about the Chase women?” she asked.

“What would happen to them if you don’t see to them?”

“Nothing much. They would recover their mobility on their own, after some hours.”

“Then see to them last. Don’t forget British agents are also looking for you. If the Centipede saw the notice in the papers, others would have seen it, too. I am surprised they have not arrived yet.”

He led her into his dressing room and opened a hidden safe. “Here’s the jade tablet that Herb gave to my father. And this is the one you took from the house on Victoria Street.”

She raised a brow. Before she had gone to the Chases’ ball, she had stopped by his town house and hidden that jade tablet, along with all her other belongings that might come across as suspicious, in the mistress’s room. She had thought it a good hiding place, but she supposed it must have been too obvious a choice to him.

“Your other things are still in my town house. You can retrieve them, but I would advise against it. Better go directly to Dover and get on the first ferry to Calais. You can stay in England and reason with the British agents, but they would prefer to err on the side of caution and hold you in custody until they are absolutely sure you pose no threat—and I don’t think you want that.”

“What about you? If they come and I’ve already left, won’t they suspect you of being in league with me?”

He smiled. “But you overpowered me, as you overpowered the Centipede.”

“What about the Chases? What would they say?”

“I will have a chat with Mrs.Chase—I do not believe she would wish her indiscretion with the Centipede to become known to our agents. And as for Miss Chase . . .” His expression hardened. “She will cooperate with my wishes.”

Catherine placed a hand on his arm. “Don’t be harsh to her. She loves you.”

“She finds me agreeable, and my income even more agreeable. But let’s speak no more of her.” His eyes were gentle again as he looked upon Catherine. “Deliver the jade tablets to your stepfather. When things calm down here, I will come and find you. Now tell me your name.”

Eight years ago, he had asked for her name. Then she had demurred, because there had been too many things she had held back from his knowledge. But now she could tell him everything, least of all her name.

“Bai Ying-hua,” she said. “Ying is the word for England, and Hua for China—but you can call me Ying-ying.”

She had not been addressed as such in years, perhaps not since Amah passed away. But when she had imagined her Persian, miraculously alive, coming to find her, this was the name he’d always used for her.
Ying-ying. Ying-ying.

“Ying-ying,” echoed the miraculously alive Leighton Atwood. “Am I pronouncing it correctly?”

She rubbed her thumb along his jaw. “You are saying it exactly right.”

He pressed her palm to his lips. “And where do you live, Ying-ying?”

“Ask for me at Prince Fei’s residence in Peking. They will know where to direct you.”

He kissed her. “I will be there as soon as I can.”

“I know you will.” She laid a hand over his heart. “I know you will.”

China

1891

D
a-ren kowtowed before the spirit plaques of his ancestors, great conquerors and august emperors of yore. Ying-ying kowtowed, too, knocking her head on the floor until her forehead hurt. Silently, she beseeched Da-ren’s ancestors to bless their search.

Da-ren touched down his forehead yet one more time. She watched his movement. He was stiffer than she remembered. His queue, so lustrous and thick in the years of her childhood, had turned white and sparse. She ached deep inside. No one escaped time’s ravage, not even Da-ren.