Читать книгу The Sins of Nightsong - V. J. Banis - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

China — 1894

April told herself something was wrong. The signal had not come, which meant that the Empress’s soldiers were still watching the escape route. If the way had been unguarded she and little Adam would have been on their way to Shanghai harbor an hour ago.

She heaved a sigh, and in the darkened room rose from the window-seat and lifted Adam onto her lap. “I’m sorry, darling,” April said as she hugged her three-year-old son. “We won’t be leaving tonight either.”

The little boy yawned and put his arms about her neck. “Why won’t the soldiers let us leave, Mama?”

“Because the great Empress wants us to stay with her in the palace.”

“Will they cut off our heads then?”

A shudder ran through her body as April remembered what had happened to Adam’s father. One day she would have her revenge on all those responsible for David’s execution, including the Dragon Empress herself. She remembered the vow of vengeance she’d made that gray day four years ago when she had stood over David’s grave. She had sought refuge in the American legation, never imagining her refuge would wind up being her prison. Her need to escape to America and make her mother and David’s father suffer for what they’d caused was as great now as before—greater. The years had only increased her bitterness.

Moving through the dark room she’d come to know so well, she carried Adam to the trundle bed in the alcove, undressed him, and tucked him snugly beneath the covers. Slowly, and with a sinking heart, she unpacked the small portmanteau.

“Four years,” she said as she went back to the window and looked out at the deserted compound surrounded by the high Tartar wall. The moon was high and full and deep yellow in the black sky, adding to the eeriness of the night. It had been a similar night four years before when she’d climbed the bare apricot tree that leaned over the garden wall of the Imperial Palace and went to swear vengeance over her husband’s grave.

Her plans for vengeance had necessarily been postponed. The weather had turned treacherous, delaying her departure, and she had found herself pregnant with David’s child. To complicate matters she’d left her travel documents in the palace and had to lie to the American minister, telling him she had lost them. He had told her it would take months to obtain new ones—if they could be obtained at all.

“To be perfectly candid, my dear,” he said, looking uncomfortable, “there is no way of disguising the fact that you are...err...Chinese,” he’d said. “Your father is Prince Ke Loo, I understand. Surely you are familiar with the problems in Washington and the Chinese Exclusion Act.”

“But my mother is an American. I lived in America. Mother is very prominent in San Francisco society. She owns a very large cosmetic enterprise. Surely you could cable her and she would verify whatever needs verification.”

The minister shrugged and began shuffling through the stack of papers on his desk. “The Oriental Exclusion Act is enforced most strictly. The odds are very much against your petition, I fear.”

It took a year before her application was officially and decidedly denied, and by then her situation was further complicated by the birth of her son. She knew they’d never bothered to contact her mother because she herself had written her mother and her letters had gone unanswered, which Lydia would never have done. The legation was filled with ambitious politicians who didn’t want to make waves with their superiors in Washington, and April was positive her letters home were never put into the dispatch pouch. China was a subject Washington did not want to be reminded of. A revolution was brewing and both sides preferred to ignore it.

The wasted years only deepened her need for revenge, until it became an obsession. She spent her days constantly dreaming of the glorious satisfaction that awaited her in America. First she would avenge herself on David’s father, the man who’d induced his own son to steal from the Forbidden City. Making Peter MacNair suffer would make Lydia suffer, for as much as her mother protested, she was desperately in love with Peter MacNair.

“You’ll never have him, Mother,” April swore as she leaned her forehead against the windowpane. “You will both pay dearly for killing my husband.”

A sudden wind whipped across the compound, setting the lanterns swinging. Her eyes stung as she thought of David lying in the cold grave just beyond the rise. April gave her head a hard shake. She would never again think about the execution, the ax severing David’s young, handsome head from his body.

You must never look back. She’d cried the last of her tears; now she wanted nothing more than to punish those who’d killed her only love, a love that she would never replace.

The baby moved restlessly, kicking aside the covers. April tucked him in again and kissed his tousled head. His forehead felt warm to the touch. She smiled down at him. He looked so like his father. Apart from her need for retribution, little Adam was her only reason to keep herself alive.

She paced the room, wondering for the thousandth time when she could get away, reminding herself that if Edward Wells hadn’t been appointed as an embassy official last year, she’d never have had any hope of leaving China.

She heard the quick, careful footsteps on the stairs and hurried to light the lamp on the table. A moment later, Eddie tapped on her door.

“They’re thicker than gnats,” he said breathlessly as he came into the room, taking her in his arms. He kissed her. “I’m sorry, darling, but the Empress’s men would have overtaken us before we’d gone more than a mile. Our scouts reported that there are three of them to every one of us.”

“Oh, Eddie,” April moaned dejectedly as she leaned against him. “Will I ever be allowed to escape?”

“Of course you will.” He tilted her face up to his. “I arranged for the falsified travel papers for you and Adam, didn’t I?” He smiled. “You don’t think for a minute I’m going to let that old Dragon Empress catch you after all the trouble I’ve gone through?”

She hugged him. “It’s just that the time drags so. And since the Empress knows where I am, she will never let me leave China.”

“Don’t talk like that. They’ll tire of guarding the road. New skirmishes with those Boxers are breaking out more frequently. One day the old witch will have to send her soldiers off to put down an uprising and we’ll be free as birds.”

“I feel so guilty about your staying to help me now that your tour of duty is finished.”

“My job in Washington will always be there. Father will see to that. I’ve explained that I’ve been delayed. He bought the lie just as easily as he bought all my others.” He’d already had official entry papers issued naming himself, Edward Wells, as Adam’s father.

April felt no guilt at having seduced him when he first arrived at the legation. She would have seduced Satan if it meant settling her score with Peter and Lydia. As he embraced her she felt his need for her. “Stay,” she whispered.

“I shouldn’t,” he answered, glancing toward the door.

She knew he did not want her to send him away—not yet. “Please,” she urged, placing her leg between his thighs. “Adam is sound asleep. You can stay with me for just a little while.”

April knew he didn’t love her any more than she loved him. Eddie Wells was a rake, a wastrel, the only son of a prominent politician who indulged his son anything. The liaison that had developed between herself and Eddie was almost like a game they both got pleasure in playing.

“April,” he murmured, as he moved her toward the bed, at the same time they were struggling out of their clothes.

She enjoyed being in his arms because it reminded her of all those pleasurable hours in David’s arms. It was heavenly to close her eyes and pretend that David’s hands caressed her breasts and stroked her thighs as his mouth ravaged hers.

His flesh was warm and exciting. April pulled him closer, giving herself to her fantasies as he kissed her ears, her throat, her breasts. She let him part her thighs and reveled in the exquisite sensations of penetration. She kept her eyes tightly shut and her ears deaf to all sounds. She gave herself up to the sheer physical pleasure of the act as she moved up to meet his thrusts. The rhythm of their sex act increased as he moved more urgently, yet with a strange tenderness that was so reminiscent of David’s lovemaking.

April gave herself over to the passion that was building higher and higher from deep inside her. She strangled the cries of ecstasy that she’d so freely vented with David; with Eddie such cries had no meaning.

He groaned as he pushed himself completely into the heat of her body and felt the flood of his passion burst out in jolting gushes of molten passion. He moaned, gasping her name, and then fell, spent and content, on top of her.

April cradled him like a child, stroking the smooth, taut muscles, of his back until she felt him relax. The frightening tensions of the last several hours, the disappointment of a foiled escape were forgotten for the moment. There would be other nights. She only hoped that they would not all end like this one, as had so many earlier ones.

Eddie stirred. “Now I surely must leave you. It will be dawn in a couple of minutes.” He got up and started putting on his clothes. “Get some sleep, pet. Just have patience. I made you a promise that I’d get you out of this infernal country and I will.” He leaned over and pecked her mouth. “We made a bargain, you and I. You’ve been keeping your part magnificently and I swear to you that I will keep mine—or die in the attempt.”

He meant it. She could tell by his voice. Scoundrel that he was, he was an honorable scoundrel, she knew, with all the romantic ideals of a teen-aged boy, which Eddie had forgotten to shed.

He paused before the mirror to tie his tie. “One thing I can’t understand, though; never could.” He glanced over at her lovely face with its almond eyes and skin of pink porcelain. “You are a Chinese princess and look every bit the part. It beats me why you want to chuck away all that royalty stuff and go back to San Francisco, where Orientals are not exactly the favorite citizens.”

She knew what he meant because she remembered only too well how badly she’d been treated when she lived there with her mother.

“I told you,” April said. “I have a debt that needs to be paid. Besides, the Dowager Empress would only make me a prisoner, perhaps even kill me if I’m taken back inside the walls of the Forbidden City. She and my father are not particularly close.”

She snuggled deeper into the covers and watched him slick back his hair with her brushes. He was a good-looking man and a very accomplished lover. She felt a stirring below her waist. The lovemaking had been too brief, but that was always the way with Eddie Wells—the one important way in which he differed greatly from David.

“But you’re a princess,” he insisted with his practical American way of thinking. “A member of her family.”

“In China, royal family members are the most susceptible to the High Executioner’s hatchet.”

He stooped and kissed her again, briefly. “The next contingent of Marines leaves in a week,” he said. “If the road is clear we’ll try again to hide you and Adam in one of their caissons.” He blew her a kiss and was gone.

Left alone, April heard Adam move uncomfortably and mutter something in his sleep. She slipped out of bed, pulling a robe about herself, and went to his trundle bed. Again he’d kicked off the covers and again April tucked him in. As her hand brushed his little arm she frowned. It felt warm. She placed her hand on his forehead. She couldn’t decide whether or not he was running a temperature, but to be safe she’d have the doctor look at him in the morning. It might well be just the excitement that was making him flushed and feverish.

She started back to her own bed. A glint of moonlight reflected on the silver box she’d removed earlier from her portmanteau and had left lying atop the bureau. Unconsciously she lifted its lid and sorted through the collection of exquisite jewels and packets of money she’d taken when she fled the palace. She picked up the sapphire ring the old Empress had given her and bit down on her lower lip to stop its quivering.

“You too, you old devil,” April swore, remembering the Empress’s stony face as she sat stolid and unmoved while David was dragged to the block. The woman she’d once revered above all the gods would also feel the sting of her revenge one day, April vowed. If it meant the giving of her own life to accomplish it, the three of them—Peter, Lydia, and the Dragon Empress Tz’u Hsi—would suffer as they had made her suffer.

She took up the long strands of pearls she’d braided into her raven, waist-length hair that night in Paris when she and David planned their flight to China, to what they believed to be the security of her father’s royal house. It all seemed so long, long ago and yet the agonies and terrors she’d undergone had left no scars on her lovely young face. Her dark almond eyes were just as lustrous; her flawless complexion still exquisitely delicate. She’d be twenty-four in the spring. She smiled at her image in the mirror. She still looked like a young girl.

She replaced the jewels, lowered the lid, and returned the box to the top drawer. It would take most of what she had to pay for her protection to the harbor in Shanghai and once there for passage on a ship bound for San Francisco. Once in America she would be a princess no longer. She’d be despised and demeaned as she’d been once before. She hated the city and the people in it, but that was where her enemies were and that was where she had to go. Afterward—and time being on her side—she would come back and somehow wreak her vengeance on the Dragon woman who thought herself invincible and eternal.

That meant that she would again have to seek her father’s help. Perhaps by then Prince Ke Loo would have lost the incestuous interest he’d expressed in her. She’d learned early that in China a woman was a woman, nothing more, a mere commodity any man could bid for, regardless of kinship. A shudder ran through her as she thought of the way her father, had coveted her with his eyes.

Outside the legation compound was beginning to stir with the approach of dawn. In the years she’d lived here she noticed the gradual dwindling of the presence of foreigners. Eddie said it was the ever growing threat of the Chinese rebels who called themselves Boxers. April couldn’t understand why the Occidentals feared these Boxers, an unorganized ragtag of Chinese peasantry who wanted change, but did not know what kind. It took any peasant forever to accomplish anything so she could not see what everyone feared. There was no immediate danger.

The light in the sky heightened. April unlatched the casement window to relieve the closeness of the small room. There was a winter chill in the air and the sky was already beginning to turn slate gray. Winter was getting nearer and Peking would again be a deserted city when the royal parties retreated into the recesses of the Forbidden City, and peasants stayed sheltered in their hovels, having no need to bend under the yokes of their lords. Winter in China was a time for quiet and boredom, a time when the people, like the earth itself, turned hard and cold and slept.

“I pray I’ll never see another winter here for some time to come,” she said, closing the window against the cold morning.

She went over and checked Adam’s temperature again. It seemed higher. She scooped him up and carried him to her bed, then crawled in beside him, cuddling him protectively in her arms.