Читать книгу The Daughters of Nightsong - V. J. Banis - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

She was young and painfully beautiful, her sleek black hair flying behind her and her face—normally an opalescent tint of ochre—reddened to the blush of a peach from running.

“Is he here yet?” she cried, in a single gasp of breath as she burst into the tea shop.

The woman behind the counter wrestled with a tray of tea cakes shimmering behind a veil of steam. “I will be with you in a minute, please,” she said.

“Ohhh!” It was a wail of anguish. “Su Lin!”

The tray slid neatly into a glass fronted case, and Su Lin looked up, mock surprise unable to hide a mischievous glint in her eyes.

“Ah, it is you,” Su Lin said, smiling rather too broadly for mere workaday greeting.

“Hasn’t he come?” the girl asked, alternating anxious glances at Grant Avenue outside, the main thoroughfare of San Francisco’s Chinatown, with looks of desperate pleading, a frantic ransom flung down before Su Lin.

It was more than the tea shop owner could bear; the hand she brought to her mouth was inadequate to stifle an impertinent giggle.

“Is he here?” April demanded, finishing the question on an ascending squeal as Su Lin nodded and darted her eyes in the direction of the curtained doorway that led to the rear of the shop.

April dashed toward the doorway, but she paused just in front of it, for a final nervous glance at the street—even if she hadn’t been followed, one never knew who might just wander by at an inopportune moment—before she went through the curtain.

“David,” she cried. The young man had leapt up, rather too quickly, from the chair in which he had been seated. Its falling provided a crescendo to her cry as she threw herself into his arms.

“Darling,” he sighed, when words were once again possible, “My darling April.”

* * * *

It was so difficult for them, these two young people in love, belonging to warring clans. “Like Romeo and Juliet,” she was fond of saying, and he would smile a trifle sadly, because he knew she had never read the conclusion to that bittersweet tale, and because he sometimes feared the description might prove prophetic.

Their first meeting, mere chance, had been outside this very shop. After that, the meetings had been not merely by chance. Soon they had begun spending a part of nearly every afternoon together, with the connivance of Su Lin, whose husband would no doubt have beaten her for thus encouraging a romance between the lovely half-Chinese girl, and the handsome white youth whose clothes so determinedly proclaimed, “Nob Hill Wealth.”

“A romance,” he would have told her, had he the knowledge, and had he deigned to explain the beating, “inevitably to be as tragic as any literary mating.”

For David MacNair, the inevitability had been written on that first day. From that time on, her image had been indelibly stamped upon his consciousness, so that no matter where he was nor what he was doing, she was always there, hovering just on the fringes of his thought—the almond shaped eyes, the skin like fresh sweet cream, the hands like delicate flowers.

He would remember for all his life—and longer, if the soul existed—the first time he had met April Nightsong; he would remember too, but darkly, as the dark shapes are remembered when the light has proven them innocent, rushing home afterward to share the news of this, his life’s most thrilling moment.

His mother had been in the hall when he’d burst into the house. He’d grabbed her about the waist and whirled her around.

“David,” she gasped, disapproving because Mrs. Steinmetz was in the hall and had seen what was surely a vulgar display on his part. “What’s gotten into you? You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

David laughed and whirled her around again. “Oh, Mother, I am very drunk, but not on father’s liquor.”

“Really, David, I don’t understand.”

“The most wonderful thing, Mother,” he cried, so happy that not even her habitual primness could dampen his spirits.

“David....”

“I have just met the girl I am going to marry!”

She gave him a cautious look. “And where, may I ask, did you meet this ravishing creature?”

“Outside a charming little tea shop in Chinatown.”

His mother shook her head and turned away. “Well, just so long as you haven’t gotten interested in a Chinese.”

His mood plummeted. She’d given him a brutal reminder of the futility of his attraction. He wanted to cry out the truth about the Eurasian girl with whom he’d fallen immediately in love, but he was forced to hold back the happiness bursting like rockets inside him.

In San Francisco, in 1887, Orientals, no matter how exotic and alluring, were regarded as no better than the dirt in the alleys.

Though his mother had chided him afterward about his announcement, David became noncommittal, hiding his pain behind a cryptic smile, purposely cloaking the entire matter in boyish mystery. He had never been open with his parents, and though they liked it no more this time than before, they did not find his attitude unusual.

So the love April and David shared had become a private thing. They were aware of the disapproval of those strangers who saw them on the rare occasions when they strolled the streets of Chinatown hand in hand. David and April closed their ears to the jeers and insults of the more outspoken of those who passed them. They found all they needed of the world in each other’s eyes.

Perhaps it was this ostracism that made David more adamant in his defiance of convention and strengthened his need to be with April, nurturing his attraction into a love so all-consuming he’d willingly give up his world for her happiness.

“Oh, David,” April said as they talked in the rear of Su Lin’s tea shop, “I am so miserable when we aren’t together. Meeting like this in the afternoon isn’t enough.”

The differences in their cultures was a subject they both tactfully avoided; as if, April thought bitterly, it were an infirmity, though she did not voice the thought aloud.

“But you are not yet seventeen, April,” David said, letting her name roll lovingly on his tongue. “Your mother would never permit you to go out in the evening without a chaperone, and especially not with me, chaperoned or not.”

“I know.” She let her shoulders droop dejectedly. “She won’t ever let me do anything, except what she wants me to do. How I hate San Francisco. I hate America, I hate everything about it. I don’t want to stay here, David. I want to go home to my own people in China where I belong, where I would be treated with the respect owed to the daughter of a Mandarin prince.”

David frowned. She’d told him of her background, of how her mother had forced her to flee China and of her royal father, but David never understood any of it. Why had Mrs. Nightsong abandoned her husband and male child, left a life of palaces and luxury to bring her daughter to a land where she’d be despised and rejected?

“You are certainly beautiful enough to be a princess,” David said. “I have never seen anyone more beautiful.” He turned her toward him and took her in his arms. “I know I am being extremely forward, but I can’t help myself, April. Every time I think about you I want to hold you, protect you, keep you safe forever and ever.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking. I’ve decided that I am not going back to school next month. I’ll never go back to school...ever. I don’t care what my father says. We’ll go away, somewhere where we can love each other openly without all this sneaking around and hiding in out of the way places, always afraid someone will see us.”

“China,” April said, her face glowing, her eyes dancing with excitement. “We could go to China.”

David gave her a patient smile. “We would only be reversing roles. There, I would be the outcast.” He saw her hurt and immediately hugged her close. “I’m sorry, April, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“No, it’s all right, David,” she said easing away from him. “I am a half-caste.” She shrugged. “As long as I live here in this terrible country I will always be looked upon as an undesirable.” She looked up at him and her face brightened. “But home in China it would all be different. I was born in China and from the very beginning of my life I have been a Chinese, regardless of what my mother is. My amah insisted that I be brought up as a Chinese princess, much as my mother hated it. That is why the Dowager Empress is so angry with Mother for having taken me away, for having separated me from my royal father and brother.”

She looked at him pleadingly. “I must go back, David. All the while I stay here I will be punished for having left Prince Ke Loo, my father, and worse still for having left China.”

It all seemed so much longer than only six years ago when her father had taken them from their palace in Kalgan and brought them into The Forbidden City.

She’d been frightened in the Imperial Palace in Peking and it had been exciting for her to make the escape, though she never understood why her mother had left Prince Ke Loo.

April sighed as she leaned her head against David’s chest. Once, what seemed an eternity ago in Kalgan, she had sat in her own little garden, dressed in a lovely soft kimono of flowered silk, and complained to her amah that nothing ever happened in her life.

As long as she remained away from her homeland, that magic kingdom of the Dowager Empress, she would be punished. She would never be able to escape the Dragon Empress. After all, wasn’t the Empress called Celestial Goddess? And didn’t she rule the world as well as the heavens, as the amah had told her often enough?

“Yes,” April said in a tight, frightened voice. “I will be punished forever unless I do as the Empress wants and return to what I am and to where I belong.”

David felt a pressure inside his head, like the welling up of a force so determined it made his eyes blur. He held April closer. “I don’t know how, or even when, my darling,” he said, “but one day I will take you home to where you will be happy.”

“Where we will both be happy,” she said, clinging to him. “My father will protect you, David. He is a very powerful man, a cousin to the Empress herself, and amah told me that Li Ahn, my little brother, is an heir to the throne. Oh, David, they would welcome us.” She pressed closer. “When, David? When can we leave?”

“Soon, my darling. I will have to make arrangements, of course, and we will have to be sensible and make plans. We’ll need money, and your mother....”

April looked up sharply, her eyes fearful. “We must never let Mother know we are even seeing each other, let alone planning to elope. I told you how much she hates your family. And you must not tell your father about us either, David. You haven’t, have you?”

“No.” He felt cowardly. “But darn it, April, you told me that Father knew you and liked you. Surely he’d not object to our being together.”

“He’d try and stop us, just as Mother would. There’s a feud between them. They’ll do anything to spite each other. You and I marrying is the last thing they would approve of.”

She turned reflective. “They knew each other in China, from what I gathered. It all has something to do with a scent mother stole from the Imperial Palace, the Empress’s exclusive scent. When we were put ashore here in San Francisco, we had nothing but the clothes we were wearing, and the Empress’s perfume. So Mother went into competition with your father’s cosmetic firm. She wants to duplicate the perfume—Nightsong, she calls it—but so far none of the chemists have been successful.”

“Your mother’s firm seems to be doing all right,” David said.

“Empress Cosmetics is making us wealthy—but there’s something about that perfume—I don’t think it’s just the money, though mother says it will make us a fortune—I think it’s something to do with your father, with outdoing him in some way.”

“You’re probably right about that. I heard him and mother talking the other day—or rather, shouting, as they usually do. She mentioned your mother’s products, she said all the women were raving about them, and he said she didn’t have to remind him, that he knew his P.M. Cosmetics was second rate and had little hope of being anything else but second rate. He said he had to have Nightsong.” David looked embarrassed. “I thought at the time that it was some kind of magic formula.”

April squeezed his hand. “It is, if it can be duplicated. When we were in The Forbidden City, Mother took care of the Empress’s personal creams and scents and powders. It was forbidden for anyone but the Empress to wear them.”

“And your mother took them?”

April nodded. “She would have been executed if the Empress had caught her.” April’s mouth turned down. “Of course, Mother isn’t Chinese. She doesn’t understand the importance of such things. She deserves to be punished.”

“Hush, April. You shouldn’t say such things about your mother.”

“Why not?” April said, looking petulant. “She’s treated me horribly all of my life.” She felt a sudden stinging behind her eyes. “Because of her I was forced to stay in a terrible place where the Chinese smoked opium, and I was locked in my cabin all during the voyage from China, because of her. And when we lived with her Uncle Richard they were both so mean and cruel, always making me work and study.” She turned her eyes up to his. “I told you how she let everyone think I was her servant because she was ashamed of me.”

“Surely she had her reasons?”

April stamped her foot. “How dare you take her part, David MacNair!”

She let the tears come and fought against his efforts to take her in his arms, but after a minute she collapsed against him.

“I am not trying to excuse what your mother did to you, my darling. I am sorry if I’ve upset you. Only....”

“Only what?” April sobbed, searching for the handkerchief in his breast pocket. “She’s selfish and mean and contemptible. All she cares about is her silly cosmetics company and men.”

“April, don’t say that!”

“Well, it’s true. She ran away from my father and took up with Mr. Bates, which was why they kept us away from all the other passengers on the boat. Then, when we came here, she met that rich Mr. Hanover.”

David’s eyes widened. “Walter Hanover? The one who lives near us on Nob Hill?”

“Yes. Mr. Hanover moved us out of my Uncle Richard’s and set Mother up financially. There was some kind of disagreement about money, I think; then my mother met your father and seduced him.”

“April!”

She was too angry and hurt to be stopped and she resented David’s taking her mother’s part. “It’s true,” she said again, more petulantly. She wiped her eyes and softly blew her nose. “I know because I heard your father in her room one night. He stayed with her until it was light. I stood at my window and saw him leave.” A new flood of tears streamed down her cheeks. “Oh, David, please take me away from here.”

“Yes, April,” he said, recovering. “Of course I will. We’ll start making plans right away.”

* * * *

That night April prayed, but not to the incomprehensible god that her mother had spoken of to her, nor to the gods of China where wisdom was honored more than saintliness. No, she prayed to a woman she’d never met. She prayed to the Dowager Empress.

“I will come back,” she promised silently. “I will remain your subject and I will return to China and to you...to my homeland.”