The lieutenant raised an eyebrow. ‘Praise from you, Miss Linton? That is a rare gift indeed. Thank you very much. I am delighted to hear you appreciate my bravery in the face of danger.’
I had to work hard to keep a smirk off my face. ‘That’s not really what I was talking about. I think it’s amazing that you’re sitting here alive.’
‘That is due to his bravery,’ Maria pointed out, which the lieutenant acknowledged with a graceful bow of the head.
‘More to a miracle,’ I disagreed. ‘You stabbed the elephant into its belly? From below?’
‘Yes?’ The lieutenant’s voice was suddenly cautious. I had to say that up to this point the conversation had rather bored me. But now I was enjoying myself.
‘You see, that’s what I find so amazing,’ I mused. ‘The elephant collapsed, and you were standing right underneath. Yet you are sitting here alive on our couch and are not flattened to some part of the Indian soil as lieutenant-pancake.’
‘Err… well… the elephant fell to the side?’
‘To the side?’ I asked sweetly. ‘Onto the savages that you were still busy fighting off?’
‘Yes.’
‘The ones you said you had already killed before the elephant attacked?’
‘Err…’
‘Be silent, child,’ my aunt chided me. Then, turning to Lieutenant Ellingham, she continued: ‘You must excuse my niece, Sir. She has led a very sheltered life and knows little of the ways of the world. Certainly she is totally inexperienced in such manly activities as you have described.’
He nodded graciously. ‘That is no problem, Madam. Maybe,’ he said, throwing a suggestive glance in my direction, ‘I could show her a few manly activities. Then she would not be so ignorant anymore.’
I thought I was going to be sick.
‘Which brings me to the point of my visit,’ Lieutenant Ellingham continued, rising and extending his hand to me. ‘Which is to enquire whether Miss Lillian Linton would wish to go for a walk with me. There is a beautiful park outside your house, and I am sure there are some things she has not seen there before.’
There were various possible answers to that:
Oh yes, of course there are things I haven’t seen yet in the park. I’ve only lived here for over a decade of my life.
Or:
Hey, you can talk to me directly, you know! I’m right here in the room.
Or better yet:
Go for a walk with you? I’d rather go for a walk with a drunken French sailor!
But then I saw my aunt’s face over the lieutenant’s shoulder and decided on the more diplomatic:
‘Um… I don't know. I think I know my way around the park pretty well already. But thanks for the offer.’
‘That is no matter,’ he said, waving my answer away. ‘It is not the park I wished to see when coming here, but you. It is not the lush green trees I wish to enjoy, but your company, Miss Linton.’
Ugh! So much for diplomacy!
He extended his hand farther. Over his shoulder my aunt glared at me, promising death and destruction if I made the wrong choice now. Wasn’t there any way to get out of this?
Then I thought: Come on, it’s only a walk. It’s not like he’s asking you to marry him. Well, not yet anyway. What harm can a walk do?
Preferring not to think about the answer to that question, I took his hand and faked as believable a smile as possible.
‘I would be delighted to take a walk through the park,’ I told him, neglecting to mention that the same wasn’t true for having him along as company.
He took my hand. It felt moist and alien. Holding it was a repellent feeling, like having a bug crawl up your arm. But I smiled bravely as I let him lead me out of the room. At least this would keep my aunt happy.
As we left the room, I couldn’t help a thought shooting through my head: how very, very different this hand felt from that of Mr Rikkard Ambrose.
~~*~~*
‘…and I was standing there, you see? Two hundred feet away from the Indian, and even farther away from the young lady he was running towards, knife in hand. I knew I couldn’t reach him or her in time. Yet I also knew that I was a crack shot.’
Personally, I would have called him a crackpot rather than crack shot.
I was walking beside Lieutenant Ellingham through Green Park. His promise to show me new spots in the park was long forgotten. He was far too busy entertaining me with stories of his supposed adventures in India. So far, he had killed about three hundred seventy-nine so-called ‘savages,’ thirteen elephants, five lions and one giraffe. Quietly I wondered whether he actually thought me stupid enough to believe above one word in ten.
‘I took out my rifle, aimed, and bamm! He lay dead on the ground, shot through the heart. The medicine man of his tribe had never seen a gun shot before. So he and all the other Indians believed I was a god of some sort and freed the young lady when I commanded it.’
‘Excuse me?’ I interrupted. ‘Medicine man? Tribe? I thought you were talking about Indians that live in India, not the kind that live in America. Only those have medicine men, or tribes.’
‘Oh, really?’ The lieutenant shrugged. ‘Well, maybe he was on holiday in India. These savages are strange people, you know?’
‘I can think of some that are even stranger,’ I muttered, but he either didn’t hear it or wasn’t very well-versed in sarcasm.
After that, he didn’t start telling any adventure stories again. Well, he had talked for the last half hour pretty much non-stop. Maybe it was time I contributed something to the conversation. But what could I say apart from, ‘You may have a square jaw and a whitewashed smile, but you are the most odious man I ever met. Get the hell away from me right now, because I never ever wish to see you again. And by the way, I don't like you, and you smell funny.’
The face of doom, otherwise known as the face of my aunt, appeared in front of my inner eye, staring at me ferociously. Oh well, I guess I could at least make a tiny effort to be civil.
‘Err… you seem to have led a very exciting life so far. Rescuing ladies… shooting Indians… must be fun. I mean the rescuing of ladies, not the other part.’
He sighed like a wise, worldly man talking to a silly student.
‘Actually, the shooting is the part that is more fun. The ladies get tiresome over time. They are always so overwhelmed by thankfulness. So many ladies have shown interest in me that I have really grown tired of what is called the fair sex.’
‘Oh well, if that is so, you’re probably very tired of my society,’ I jumped at the opportunity. ‘I should leave you immediately.’
‘On the contrary.’ Shaking his head, he turned to me with an arrogant grin on his face. ‘It is that fact that made me come to you.’
What?
‘You’re so unlike the other ladies,’ he continued. ‘Other ladies sigh and whimper to get a man’s attention. You on the other hand - you are feisty! You insult me and push me back - but I’ve figured you out! It’s your way of saying you’re attracted to a man.’
What the…!
‘It’s no great surprise, I suppose.’ He took a step closer to me, his eyes gleaming with some dark emotion that made me shiver all over. I remembered my earlier thoughts about what could possibly happen on a walk in the park, and the unwelcome idea occurred to me that I might be about to find out first hand.
I didn’t like the expression on his face, not at all. He no longer looked like the pleasant, if slightly arrogant, young man of a few minutes ago. He now looked like a very, very nasty arrogant young man. And his eyes were fixed on me.
Desperately I looked around for anybody, but we were standing hidden behind a clump of trees. No help was in sight.
‘You’ve had no proper upbringing, aren’t even a proper lady,’ he was saying. ‘But that actually could make you quite fun, you know? Ladies are very restrained, but I’m sure you would be more open to… amusement.’
Taking another step forward, he leaned towards me. I didn’t even know where it came from. My hand just to seem to appear out of thin air and make contact with his cheek.
Slap!
‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ I snarled.