“You’re not wearing a corset,” he whispered.
“What’s the point? It is too hot, and no one here really cares.” She smiled and bumped him with her elbow. “Besides, I rather like the sensation of not wearing one.”
Patrick puffed out a breath and groaned. It was going to be a long journey.
***
The heat was intolerable. Not a dry, Moroccan sort of heat, but a wet-hot one that clung to him. Within hours, his clothes were damp, and Patrick stood a real chance of growing chafed. Every jerk and sway of the howdah on the elephant’s back rubbed him in a way that could only be described as…wrong.
“Am I the only one who’s miserable?” he asked.
“No,” Linley replied, “You’re just the only one who doesn’t know how to hide it.”
Patrick winced as the elephant stepped over a fallen tree branch.
She laughed and stretched. “We’ll ride until the sun gets low over the tree-line, then we’ll set up camp for the night.”
Patrick struggled to find a position that didn’t cause something to go numb. “And what is it we are looking for, again?”
“Scrolls,” she explained. “Ancient Buddhist texts.”
“Forgive me, but what does the British Museum want with Buddhist scrolls?”
“Nothing, actually,” Linley said, wiggling her arm free and shifting against the side of the basket. “You see,” she whispered, “It’s more a pet project of my father’s than anything dealing with the museum.”
“Then what does your father want with Buddhist scrolls?”
“He has spent the last fifteen years looking for these scrolls,” she explained. “They’re extremely old, and—if they even still exist—would be worth a great deal of money.”
Patrick’s eyes grew wide. “You’re a treasure hunter.”
“No!” Linley slapped her palm over his mouth. “It isn’t like that. These texts are sacred, and until now, no one has ever come this close to finding them. If our team makes the discovery, we would never have to worry about anything again. We’d be famous.”
“So, let me make sure I understand,” he said. “You and your team plan to ransack a Buddhist temple in search of sacred texts for your own fame and fortune…and yet you are not treasure hunters?”
Linley gave his shoulder a shove. “Oh! If you’ve come to mock my work, you should have stayed in London!”
“I’m not mocking,” Patrick said. “Now could you please turn back around? Your knees are digging into my thigh.”
She did as he asked. “I believe in my father, and if these texts are important to him, nothing you can say or do will stop me from helping him find them.”
“I understand,” he said. “I’m sorry for teasing you.”
Linley’s eyes darted over to his. “Apology accepted. But if we are really to spend the next three days sharing this same basket, we’re going to have to come up with something better to talk about.”
“Fine.” Patrick let his arm dangle over the side of the howdah and rubbed the tips of his fingers across the leafy palms that slapped the elephant’s tough hide. “What do you suggest we discuss?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “How about that aside from our names and our immediate family members, we know absolutely nothing about each other?”
“All right,” he said, tucking his arm back into the basket. “What do you want to know about me?”
She drew a complete blank. Thousands of questions had crossed her mind since she met him, and she’d always meant to ask them, but now that he put her on the spot, she could not call any to mind. “I can’t think of anything at the moment.”
“Well, let me know when you do.”
She sat in silence, listening to her father and Archie chat about the possibility of finally discovering the scrolls. Somehow, over the chatter of the birds in the trees and the crunch of the elephants’ feet, she heard Schoville snoring. Reginald, with whom he shared a howdah, sat hunched in the farthest corner of the basket, fingers jammed into his ears.
Over the years, they had all grown very close. Some even closer than they were with their own families. She understood their resistance to Patrick. She really did, and she was certain if one of them brought along a woman, she would be just as upset. After all, they were family, and they were all a bit overprotective of each other.
“Tell me about your family,” Linley blurted out. “About your brother.”
Patrick shifted in his seat. Why did she have to ask him about Johnnie? “What do you want to know?”
“How did he die?”
He cleared his throat. “He drowned.”
“Oh.”
“He was only a year older than I. We were very close,” Patrick explained. “Whenever we were home from school on summer holiday, we would swim in the river near our house. But always together.” He cleared his throat again. “One day, he went by himself. No one even knew he was missing until he didn’t turn up for dinner. By then, it was too late.”
“Did they find him?”