My Beautiful Enemy by Sherry Thomas

won’t be very useful for me to give you my address now, as soon I might move.”
    He didn’t want her to have his address. A horrible understanding dawned. “You have a wife.”
    “What? No!”
    His surprise seemed genuine. But a girl never knew with men, did she, to what lengths they would go? “More than one wife?”
    “No.”
He rose to his feet, as if to further emphasize that syllable of denial. “I am not married.”
    “How old are you?”
    “Twenty-one.”
    Much closer to her age than she had thought. With his competence and maturity—not to mention his luxuriant beard—she had believed him to be at least twenty-five. But twenty-one was still more than old enough to be married—or at least betrothed. In China, in good families, the matter of a child’s matrimony was often settled before the latter reached adolescence. That no such agreement had ever been spoken of for her was as much a black mark against her as it was a relief.
    “Why has your father not arranged a marriage for you?” she demanded.
    “My father is no more. He died years ago.”
    “Have you no mother?”
    “I do, but she will let me choose for myself.”
    She drew back. “What kind of mother is that?”
    “A slightly negligent one—I’ll grant you that. But the point is, there is no wife, fiancée, or sweetheart waiting for me in India. Or Persia. Or anywhere in the world.”
    And they were back where they started. “Then why keep your address a secret?”
    L eighton could not tell her his address because when he was not on the road, he lived at the British garrison in Rawalpindi.
    Not that he suspected her of any ties to the Ch’ing authority, but he had not only his own safety to consider, but those of others on the expedition. And though the main concern of the local officials was to keep the Russians out, they would not hesitate to treat the presence of spies as evidence of the British Raj’s desire to expand its territory at the Ch’ing Dynasty’s expense.
    “It is as I said, only because I will be moving to a new place.”
    She rose to her feet.
    “I still have a bit more chocolate left. Do you—”
    “No.” She untied her horse and leaped upon the saddle with jaw-dropping athleticism, not even bothering with the stirrup.
    He stood still for a moment, staring after her as she galloped away. Was this it? Was this the last he would see of her?
    The very thought jolted him into action; the next minute he was in pursuit. But then he realized she was not trying to be rid of him—she wasn’t riding at a full sprint and she was headed back to the caravan route, rather than a more obscure path that would make it easier for her to shake him loose.
    He followed her from a furlong behind and let a half hour pass before he caught up to her. She cast him an unreadable look and said nothing.
    And Kashgar drew nearer with every second.
    Finally he could stand the silence no more. “From Kashgar I go to Yarkand. You?”
    She glanced toward the mountains. “It’s spring. I shall go sightseeing.”
    “I will miss you.”
    “I will forget you by next week.”
    He bit the inside of his cheek at her merciless reply. But why should she have mercy on him? He was a man following her about, proposing that she should leave everything behind for the unknown, and then refusing to even divulge where he lived.
    “I will not forget you—ever.”
    “No, of course you won’t,” she said, her tone biting. “Next time you are in Darjeeling, I will be all that you can think of.”
    No need for Darjeeling—she had been all that he could think of from the moment they met. But he did not know what to say to convince her of it. Whatever words he chose would still be only words, of no more value than grains of sand in the Takla Makan.
    Silence again.
    He groped around for something to say. “Your friend, the one who drank Darjeeling tea, was he the one who taught you how to use a sword?”
    She snorted. “My amah taught me.”
    “Your