A Love That Never Tires (19 page)

“Pardon me,” he said, tapping his finger on the brass bell at the desk.

The clerk, a well-dressed Indian, turned in his direction. “Yes, Sahib?”

“I would like to know if you’ve ever heard of the Talbot-Martins.”

He nodded. “Yes, Sahib, I have.”

“Do you know where I could find them?”

The desk clerk shook his head. “No, Sahib.”

“Hmm,” Patrick said, frowning. He leaned toward the man. “Is it a matter of money?”

“No, Sahib,” the desk clerk said. “If I knew, I would tell you. But, I do not know. However, I do know that they stayed here for three weeks in preparation for a very long journey. ”

Patrick almost fell over. “They were here?
In this very hotel? Damned rotten luck!” he cried, pounding his fist on the counter. “I cannot believe I came halfway around the world and missed them.”

“All is not lost, Sahib,” the man said. “They only left yesterday afternoon. If you hurry, you might be able to catch them up.”

“They left yesterday? My God!” Patrick stopped short of grabbing the man by his shirtfront. “How do I find them?”

“I would try the train depot, Sahib.” He pointed out the door with a long, brown finger. “Only a few streets over.”

Patrick didn’t even thank him. He ran out the front door of the hotel, pushing his way through the crush of people, animals, and motorcars until he found himself outside the Chittagong railway station.

The large, red brick building stood at the end of a busy, tree-lined street. White people and Indians alike came and went through its doors. Fancy automobiles and ox-carts shared the same road, picking up and dropping off passengers in front of the depot.

Patrick stepped inside the station, taken aback by the strong odor permeating the space. Dozens of Indian beggars held alms bowls in withered hands. At least the lucky ones had hands—some had no limbs at all, dragging themselves between the feet of white men with nothing more than rotting stumps.

Rushing past them, Patrick hurried to the ticket counter. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” he called out the to man behind the glass.

The man pointed to a sign listing all the railway’s destinations. “Where to?”

“No, I’m not buying a ticket.”

He blinked, and started to turn away.

“Wait!” Patrick called, fishing in his pockets for some change and slamming it down on the counter. At the sight of money, the man seemed more willing to listen. “I’m looking for a young woman. She came through here yesterday with an older gentleman and maybe three other men. Do you remember her?”

“No,” the man said, sliding the money through the opening in the glass. “But you can check with the porters, perhaps they can help you.”

Patrick went down the line of porters waiting to load and unload trains as they passed through the station. No one seemed to remember seeing a pretty young English woman no matter how much he paid them.

“
Sahib!
” The raspy voice of an old, blind beggar-man called out to him. “
Sahib!
”

Patrick tried to ignore it, but the man grew more and more persistent.

“I know the girl you speak of,” he said.

Taking one look at the man’s blue-clouded eyes and the flies crawling in and out of his nostrils, Patrick dismissed him.

“She dropped a few coins into my bowl,” the old man explained. “As she did so, she took my hand, saying she would pray for me. She was an English woman, but her hands were calloused like a man’s.”

Patrick stopped in his tracks. “What else do you remember?”

“She smelled like jasmine,” the old man said. “And a woman that kind-hearted could not help but be beautiful, Sahib.”

The jasmine water perfume! Patrick dropped to his knees beside the man. “Do you know where she went?”

“Assam, Sahib,” he said. “After the train to Assam, I did not smell jasmine anymore.”

Grinning, Patrick reached into his jacket and pulled his wallet. He crammed a fistful of five-pound notes into the old man’s twisted brown hand. “Take this. Here is twenty pounds. Go home and feed your family.”

“Thank you, Sahib.” The beggar smiled, missing most of his teeth.

Dusting off the knees of his trousers, Patrick went back to the counter and purchased a ticket on the next train leaving for Assam. He had no idea where that was, but if there was a possibility that Linley was headed there, so was he.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Linley fell to the floor of the train and slid across the filthy carpet.

“Oh!” she cried.

Schoville, who had been sitting in the seat beside her, now lay sprawled across her. Her father, Reginald, and Archie bounced in their own row of seats, knocking their heads together.

“Oh!” they all cried, trying to upright themselves in the chaos.

“Are you all right, Button?” Sir Bedford Talbot-Martin asked.

Linley pushed Schoville off of her and scrambled to her feet. She could hear the other passengers’ screaming, the shouts of the train employees as they ran from car to car, and something else—a sound so horrible that her brain could not register it. But the sound did not come from inside the train. It came from outside her window.

“I asked if you were all right, Button,” her father repeated himself, giving her a hard shake. “Can you hear me?”

She nodded, her head still reeling. “I—I’m fine, Papa.”

Schoville helped her back into her seat. His nose bled, and the bright red fluid trickled down his chin. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face and hands. “What in God’s name happened? Did we derail?”

“I don’t know,” Archie said. “But I will go check.”

Before he had time to get up from his seat, a disheveled train employee stopped at their compartment. “I apologize, but we have had an accident,” he explained. “The train has hit a herd of elephants, and we can go no further.”

“Hit a herd of elephants?” Linley asked. So that was the noise she heard—the dying cries of an elephant. “How incredibly tragic.”

“Yes, Memsahib. Very tragic.”

Sir Bedford Talbot-Martin leaned forward in his seat. “So what will we do now?”

“We will reverse to the last station we passed,” the man said. “The locals will not remove the carcasses from the tracks, Sahib. They mourn them.”

Linley thought of those poor elephants and her mind flashed back to the woman at the Derby. She saw her twisted body thrashed beneath the horse’s hooves. She heard the bellows of the elephants just outside her window. She remembered every vivid detail, one accident blurring with another, and she thought she would be sick.

“Excuse me!” she cried as she pushed past the train employee. Linley ran to the lavatory and slammed the door behind her, making it just in time to retch into the toilet. She heaved for a few moments, sobbing. This was a bad omen
.
She braced her hands on the wall in front of her.
A very bad omen.

When she caught her breath, she staggered over to the sink and splashed cold water on her face. Her hands trembled.

“Are you ill, Button?” her father asked, knocking on the door.

It took Linley a few tries to find her voice, and when she did, it came out no more than a whisper. “I…I had a shock…but I’m fine now.”

“Then come out of there,” he said. “This is no time to lose one’s composure over a few pachyderms. Our entire expedition could be in jeopardy if we cannot get to Guahati before the rains set in!”

Linley opened the lavatory door, glaring at her father through bleary eyes. For once—just once—she wished she could tell him that everything was not all about his damned expedition.

***

The train backed down the tracks until it reached a small station on the outskirts of a tea plantation. Fields of little green leaves stretched for miles on both sides of the red dirt road. Far beyond them, the whitewashed walls of the plantation house gleamed in the afternoon sun.

The station itself was no more than a lean-to with a few worn wooden benches set beneath it. The man who sold the tickets also acted as porter, and he helped Linley off of the passenger car.

“There is a village a few miles walk from here,” he told them. “Or you can wait for the wagon, but it only comes when the trains are due…and another is not due for many hours.”

Thank God they planned to wait until they arrived in Guahati to purchase supplies, or else the team would have quite a time dragging a month’s worth of provisions down this dusty dirt path. Linley and the others set off down the road in the sweltering heat, promising to send the wagon back for the rest of the passengers.

As they walked, Linley studied the tea fields and the spotting of trees between the rows. Her father explained that the trees were planted to shield the tea bushes from the relentless Indian sun. She watched the workers in the fields wade through the sea of green, their heads sheltered beneath wide straw hats and swaths of tightly wrapped cloth.

Linley adjusted her own straw hat. The old thing showed every bit of every mile it ever traveled. Her nice clothes had been shipped to their villa in Malta soon after they left London. She wondered if there would be a letter from Patrick also waiting for her whenever she finally went home. Linley thought of him often. More often than she liked to admit to herself.

She wondered what he was doing at that exact moment, whether his sister had her baby yet, and if he really meant what he said about not marrying Gaynor Robeson. Linley knew she would be hurt if she found out he ever married, but she would be crushed if it were Gaynor. Even if she lived to be one hundred years old and had long forgotten what either of their faces looked like, her heart would shatter into a thousand tiny pieces at the news.

Linley wished she had a photograph of him. Perhaps he would send one to her someday. She decided she would have Archie take one of her during their trip, and when she went home, she would send it in her first letter to Patrick. Hopefully, he would get the hint and send one of his own.

Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he would never write to her. With all those beautiful, rich London girls turning themselves inside out for him, why would he bother with a spotty-faced, tangle-haired girl seven thousand miles away? She kicked a rock with the toe of her boot. Linley hated feeling sorry for herself, and that was exactly what she was doing. If Patrick forgot about her, it was her own fault. Not a day went by that she didn’t wish she’d stayed in London. All the ‘maybes’ and ‘what ifs’ haunted her, and they probably would until the day she died.

***

Linley and the team sat on the side of the road, sipping from their canteens in the shade of a banyan tree. The sun was at its highest then, and they rested in the cool dirt beneath the tree branches. Besides the voices of the tea-pickers singing, there wasn’t a sound in the air. So when they heard the rumble of an automobile engine, everyone turned to see who it could be.

Speeding down the path came a man and two women in a Renault torpedo. When it reached them, the motorcar skidded to a stop amid a cloud of bright orange dust.

“Hullo, there!” the man called out.

Linley’s father waved in return. “Good afternoon!”

“We don’t see many visitors…have you come by rail?”

He answered that they had indeed, explaining the accident and how they came to the spot on the road where they now sat.

The three people in the car glanced at each other, shocked. “Then we will send someone for the wagon, and you will come with us! You must be famished!”

No one could see the harm in stopping to enjoy a good meal, and one by one, the team piled into the motorcar. As soon as they were settled, the motor sped off down the dirt road.

It turned at the gate of the great plantation, rattling toward the whitewashed main house. Away from the tea fields, the grounds were neatly clipped and meticulously maintained, leading up to the columned veranda that wrapped around the home. The motor stopped at the front steps, and an Indian footman stepped off the porch to help them out of the automobile.

The man driving peeled off his dusty motoring gloves and held out his hands to Linley’s father. “I apologize for not introducing myself earlier. Frank Howard.” He gestured to the woman beside him. “This is my wife, Madeline, and her sister, Adeline, but we call her Ada to avoid any confusion.”

He smiled. Linley thought he smelled like gin.

Her father handled the introductions, and Mr. Howard led them all onto the veranda. A wicker table and chairs sat in the far corner, laid out with a tea service and every kind of teacake and treat Linley could imagine. She took a seat, almost sitting on her hands to keep from reaching for a treacle tart. Plus, Madeline Howard was staring at her.

“What a pretty young thing you are!” Mrs. Howard said. “Frank, don’t you think she’s adorable?”

Her husband looked up and smiled. “Adorable!”

“You must be very excited to be in India,” she continued. “Is this your first visit?”

Linley shook her head, waiting for her hostess to hurry up and pour the tea. “No, ma’am. I lived in Calcutta when I was a very little girl.”

“And where do you live now?”

Accepting the teacup from Mrs. Howard, Linley took a sip, thinking how to best answer her question. “I suppose I don’t live in any one particular place,” she said. “My father and I travel extensively.”

“How fortunate you are!” Madeline Howard said. “I traveled before my marriage.” She turned in her seat to face her sister. “Remember our trips, Ada?”

Ada nodded. “The great highlight of my life.”

Mrs. Howard spun back toward Linley. “Ada laments being stuck here in India,” she explained. “But you see, my husband has quite a lucrative tea business, and it is imperative we spend most of our time seeing to that business…since it is how we keep such a nice home and can afford to buy pretty new things.”

Linley sat silent, thinking she’d somehow found herself in the middle of a thinly veiled argument between the two sisters. She took a treacle tart from the tray and tilted her head to hear the gentlemen’s conversation.

“…There can be no question of you staying in the village,” Mr. Howard told her father. “You will sleep here until the railway is back in working order.”