My Beautiful Enemy by Thomas Sherry

Author:Thomas, Sherry [Thomas, Sherry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781472214553
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2014-08-05T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Choices

Chinese Turkestan

1883

Leighton woke up inexpressibly happy. Every single step that he had taken in his life, it seemed, had led to this place, this moment: the dawn of not just a new day, but a new age.

His beloved sat on the edge of the bed, draped in his robe, her back to him, her head bent. He pushed himself up, wrapped an arm around her, and kissed her on her hair. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” she answered, her voice strangely subdued.

Unease shot through him. Did she regret taking him for a lover? Was she again contemplating leaving?

“What’s the matter?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice even.

She pulled the robe tighter about her person and said nothing. Nerve-racked, he lifted her hair to one side and kissed her on her ear. “It is going to be a long forever for us, if you refuse to discuss things that bother you with me.”

“Will it still be forever?”

This girl and her doubts. “Elephants cannot drag me away from you—the only thing worse than never making love to you at all would be to make love to you for only one night.”

She was silent again.

He shook her shoulder gently. “Please tell me what’s the matter.”

Her brows drew together. Her lips tightened.

He sighed. “Do I have to beg?”

Her head drooped even more, her proud, beautiful neck oddly vulnerable looking. She muttered something, but he couldn’t quite make out the syllables.

“I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“I said I didn’t bleed last night.”

He could not make heads or tails out of that answer. “But that’s good, isn’t it?” he asked, placing his hand over hers. “With so many injuries, why would you want to bleed?”

She pushed his hand away. “A virgin bleeds.”

He had never thought of her in those terms. She had seemed to him entirely outside the narrow paradigm that defined women by the presence or absence of a hymen, and whether the loss of that hymen had taken place in a sanctified manner.

“You were a virgin?”

“Of course I was,” she said indignantly. Then her lips quivered. “But now there is no proof.”

“It doesn’t matter to me.” He sincerely could not think of anything that mattered less.

“It matters to me.”

“Why?”

“Because . . . because . . .” She took a deep breath. “Have I ever told you that my amah and my friend died on the same night?”

“No.”

“Well, they did. And it’s a long, complicated story. But the events of that night were set off because I was unwilling to let my stepbrother touch me. If I had just given in, two people I love might still be alive today.” She turned toward him at last. “It was all for my virginity, and now there isn’t even any evidence of it.”

He gathered her into his arms. “None of it was your fault. None of it, do you understand? Sometimes the forces of destiny intersect in unpredictable ways, forces that have been gathering momentum for years, perhaps even decades. You were only unfortunate enough to have been caught in the middle.

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