“You were listed as dead, Adam. I know this because I checked.” She was aware of Rory and Bella’s shocked expressions.
A tinge of crimson mottled Adam’s cheeks. “True. But in reality my company was merely cut off from our own lines for a number of weeks. We survived.” He said this in the same vein as if he were discussing the weather, not as if he were a man who had wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
“I see.” So that was it. She still wasn’t entitled to a better explanation.
They moved into the parlor for coffee. In a numb stupor she listened to the conversation shift to Adam’s interest in the forestry works. She excused herself, needing to get outside even if the air was as sultry and unmoving as it was in the drawing room.
She strode through the house to the front door, across the wide veranda and down the steps. The garden’s darkness reached out, a haven to quiet herself so that she would not cry. With her hands clenched at her sides she counted her breaths and stalked down the road along a high wall of bamboo that enclosed a group of huts, all the while fighting the trembling of her limbs.
She veered around once, thinking she heard the soft pad of footsteps behind her. Only the clammy winds moved the lemon trees, and she strode closer to the bamboo wall.
A flurry of movement behind the wall brought her up short. So too did a hiss of indrawn breath. Right now she didn’t care if a Bengal tiger watched her through the gaps between the bamboo stocks. She leaned closer. In the darkness she couldn’t see what hid between the barricade and back of one of the huts. But something breathed hard.
Running footsteps pounded on the road. “Come away, Laine, please.” Adam swung her around to face him. She could hardly see him in the dark. He breathed hard, but not surely from running a hundred feet from the veranda. “Please come back to the house. We were about to serve coffee.”
They were alone, and that nervous tick to his jaw meant he knew she would jump on this chance. “A moment, Adam. You know what I’d like.”
“All I can say is I’m sorry, again, Laine. I could have written you in a far more gentle manner, but somehow cut and dried seemed kindest at the time.”
“What happened to you when you were missing? That’s the root of everything, isn’t it? Why you suddenly changed.”
He ran a hand through his hair, letting it fall to his side with a slap. “It was all quite as I said at the table. You were over there. You know. At times it was hard to see where the lines were drawn in the mud. Where the Germans were, where my own men were. We were lost. Some of my platoon...hurt. Many died. What more can I say? We made it back.”
“And you no longer wished to marry me.”
He went silent for several heartbeats. His voice came out as soft as the moths fluttering in a trace of light. “I’m afraid that’s correct, Laine.”
His lack of explanation clawed at her last shred of composure, and she silently fought to win it back. He gestured for her to walk to the house. At one time he would have taken her arm to guide her in the dark. Most men would have. Strangers even. But apparently not the man who, when he was a boy, had been more of a brother than a friend. Or when he’d become a man who used to express his love for her with the passion of a poet. Now he walked far from her so that he wouldn’t inadvertently touch her.
He glanced back at the walled-in huts. She knew him too well and recognized the poise he worked hard to strum up. “When did you transfer from Étables to Colchester, Laine?”
His lighthearted friendliness snapped her last strand of self-control. That was it! She stopped and glared at him with the fury of an offended water buffalo. “I was transferred to Colchester shortly after receiving the RRC, Adam. Which was shortly after receiving the news that you and your unit were missing in action. And then the news that you were dead. Then a number of weeks later, your charming letter arrived telling me that you were very much alive, but our wedding was off. You see, those in command thought I’d seen enough of the front and needed time to...grieve for you.”
Even in the dark she was aware of his flinch. She didn’t enjoy that but couldn’t help her last jab at him. “We obviously just missed seeing each other. You must have been routed home to India around the time I was being sent back to France. Perhaps you were even on the same ship as the mail packet that returned your family engagement ring that I had been wearing.”
He met her gaze but seemed unable to speak.
“I’m sorry, Adam. But it’s not even that—Dear Jane letter and all—that has left me somewhat testy. It’s that I’ve known you since I was a squalling, red-faced infant in a pram and you just learning to walk, and all these years have passed without receiving so much as a by-your-leave. If you didn’t want to marry me, you could at least have treated me as the friend I had always been, and let me know how you were.”
She gulped and shook her head. “And it’s the fact that your mother...Auntie...must be in on this...this conspiracy to keep me in the dark.”
He took her wrist with gentle fingers. “You mustn’t blame Mother. I badgered her. She didn’t want to—I alone am to blame, Laine, for...keeping you in the dark.”
She rushed past him, swallowing the painful lump in her throat, and marched toward Rory and Bella who stood on the veranda. As she stomped forward, the rains landed in a sudden sheet of water. One moment the air had pressed against them, suffocating. Now the world disappeared as if she strode through a waterfall.
Adam reached the veranda a moment later. The strain in his voice showed as he focused on Rory and Bella. “Perhaps it’s best we call it a night. I’ll have Ravi drive you home.”
He didn’t look at her, but all four of them could distinguish that the change in his tone was for her. “Laine, the raw jungle is on our doorstep. It’s best you don’t go exploring the surroundings unaccompanied. Far too dangerous what with snakes, leopards, wild elephants, and tigers to name a few. So if you desire to visit the plantation...I must insist on—” He searched for words. “I must insist you send a note, and I’ll make arrangements. I also ask that you respect the privacy of these outbuildings.”
She stood frozen while the warm rain cascaded off the edge of the veranda, obscuring everything outside. She had no intention of visiting his blasted plantation or snooping in his barns anyway.
When a large black Daimler drove up, Rory stepped into the rain to open the back passenger door. Adam had the good sense to assist Bella into the car so that Laine could scramble in by herself. If he had so much as touched her she couldn’t be held accountable for what she’d do to him. In spite of the monsoons, her anger burned like a tin roof under the Indian sun. What a dolt she’d been when she’d thought him dead, to think that death, and death alone, had separated them.
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