“All right,” said Hwan-chul, tucking the envelope into her pocket and her ball under one arm. “I’ll see you after, Nuna.”
I wasn’t quite sure why, but I followed her across the garden and back into the manor. Her pilgrimage took her through half the manor before she found Hyun-jun, but somehow I was still following, caught by that letter. Se-ri, in her own way, had influenced the people at the manor as much as I ever had in my Dreams.
Hwan-chul found Hyun-jun in the pool room, playing very badly, and completely unconcerned about his lack of proficiency. He was scowling, but the scowl wasn’t directed at anything in the room, and Hwan-chul wasn’t put off by it.
She said, “Here. That pretty nuna from the city asked me to give this to you.”
“Dae?” Hyun-jun stared at her, then snatched the envelope. His face darkened as he recognised the handwriting on the front, and he said fiercely, “Where is she?”
“Said not to tell you until you’d read the contents,” said Hwan-chul, leaning against the door and very much at her ease despite the angry gaze that Hyun-jun directed at her. “Open it, Hyungnim. Maybe you’ll like it.”
“You—!” said Hyun-jun wrathfully, but despite his glare he opened the envelope. I was looking over his arm as he opened it, and was just as astonished as he was when I found that we were looking down at a house deed.
“Mwohya?” Hyun-jun said suspiciously, and scrabbled for the small pink note that was included with the deed.
I read that, too. It was short and to the point, much like Se-ri’s handwriting. It said, “Kindly tell Ae-jung-ssi that she should keep her dongsang under better control. I’ve better things to do than fend off the tears of young boys who have lost things they shouldn’t have bet in the first place. I have no use for another house in the city, nor do I particularly feel like sinking the amount of money or work necessary to make this house liveable. Return it to Ae-jung-ssi and inform her that as I haven’t told her scapegrace dongsang about it, perhaps he’ll learn a lesson from it. MSR.”
It came too late to help Hyun-jun, but I could still appreciate it. Se-ri, in the most high-handed and haughty way possible, was doing the first really nice thing I’d ever seen her do. It was so haughty and high handed, in fact, that I was suddenly sure that Se-ri was hurting quite as badly as I was hurting. She was the sort to lick her own wounds and snarl at anyone else who tried to offer help or comfort.
I wandered back to where she was sitting in the library, her writing things spread out in front of her and a slight smile on her face. I said, “Good job, Unni,” because she deserved that someone should say it, and it was unlikely that anyone else would.
When I woke from my Dreams, Jessamy was eating a hearty second breakfast from a tray balanced carelessly on the bed, and there were already egg stains on the blanket. I watched him eat until he noticed I was awake and said guiltily, “I’ll be as quiet as a mouse, Nuna, I promise. I was just going to write today anyway.”
“Liar,” I said, but my smile was a little less stretched and tight than it had been earlier, and Jessamy, who was looking concernedly at me, smiled sunnily.
“Well, I’m hiding, too,” he said. “Yong-hwa hyung has one of my compositions and he’s merciless. If he finds me he’ll tell me all the derivative bits of it and make me fix them. He’ll come to find me later, but we’ll pretend we aren’t in.”
There was a knock at the door a little before noon, in fact. Yong-hwa’s voice called out when his knocking failed, but we kept quiet, Jessamy with mischievous glee and I with great weariness. When he had gone, Jessamy dissolved into giggles in the wreckage of his second breakfast.
“He won’t know where to find me now,” he said. “That was his serious voice, Nuna; there must be a lot of bad bits in my composition!”
“Stay here with me, then,” I said. “We’ll hide together.”
Carlin found me still in Jessamy’s room the next day.
“We’re going out, miss,” he said, entering the room without knocking and catching a half-dressed Jessamy by surprise.
“Ya!” said Jessamy indignantly. “I’m not dressed!”
“I wasn’t planning on taking you out with us,” said Carlin. “Sir.”
“Is that any reason to fling open the door when I’m half-naked?” protested Jessamy. “Nuna, discipline your Carlin-automaton! There’s something wrong with his dials.”
“His dials were always fixed on odd settings,” I said, with a very small smile. “I was going to go out into the garden today anyway. Send down for the Contraption chair, Carlin.”
“I’ll carry you out,” said Carlin. “There’s no need for the Contraption chair.”
“There is a need,” I said. Other things had overshadowed it, but I still remembered the conversation that Carlin had had with Se-ri, and it struck me now that I hadn’t been quite fair with him. “There’s no reason for you to be carrying me here and there when I’ve got other means of transport.”
“I’ll carry you out,” said Carlin again, obstinately. “You don’t even like the Contraption chair.”
“Carlin—”
But he had already stooped to pick me up, Scandian style, and we were halfway through the door before I could protest further.
“You’re very disobedient, Carlin,” I said to his profile.
“Yes, miss,” he said. “You know me.”
Jessamy shut the door behind us, muttering, but I caught the brief, anxious look he shot at me just before it closed.
Carlin brought me back to Jessamy’s room late in the afternoon, just as a cool breeze was beginning to lift around the garden. He would have stayed with me, but I shooed him away with instructions to return to my suite instead.
“I’ll sleep here tonight, too,” I said. “You can start packing my bigger trunks for the journey to Abeoji’s estate. I’ll talk to Eun-hee tomorrow about leaving early.”
Carlin’s eyes roamed my face as worriedly as Jessamy’s had, but for a wonder he bowed and did as he was told. I followed him in my Dreams for a little while, but there were other Dreams stirring around me, and I was soon pulled away. A strong one of Yong-hwa tried to draw me in, so I followed the second-strongest one to find Jessamy and Dong-wook eating apricots in the conservatory.
When I joined them, Dong-wook, grinning, was saying, “You missed all the fun, Jessamy-a.”
Jessamy made a rude noise. “Fun! In that crowd, with nothing to do but dance? What fun is there in that?”
“Ah, but that’s the fun of it!” said Dong-wook. “Ae-jung came in partway through the dance and talked with Ma Yong-hwa very seriously for a good half hour or so.”
“Hyung, that’s not even interesting!” Jessamy said in disgust.
“I haven’t finished yet! You know that tall, angry Hyun-jun? He came in just a little while after, very angry and excited, and tried to drag Ae-jung out.”
Jessamy made a disgusted noise. “So they’re back to that, are they?”
Dong-wook shook his head. “Ani. There’s no ‘they’. Ae-jung stood up as bold as brass and told him that she and Yong-hwa-ssi were getting married and that she wasn’t going anywhere with him. Who would have thought that scared little thing had it in her!”
“Oh dear,” I said.
“Mwoh?” said Jessamy, his face entirely astonished. “Ani, that can’t be right! He said what?”
“Not him, her!” said Dong-wook, grinning. “They’re engaged, all right. But the funny thing is, I would have sworn that it was Hyun-jun she was sweet on. Even Eun-hee nuna thinks so. Ah. Matda. Jessamy-a, can’t you tell Clovis nuna to stop worrying Eun-hee nuna? She sent me up and down the dance last night to find Clovis nuna, and Clovis had already left with that footman of hers.”
“Engaged to Ae-jung!” Jessamy, for once bereft of words, pelted his apricot through the sliding doors and into the garden. His mouth opened, closed, and twisted in a fierce grimace. “Just wait until I get my hands on him!”
He darted away and out of the room before the startle
d Dong-wook could react, dashing along the lower hall and taking the stairs two at a time into the men’s wing of the guest rooms. Moments later I heard his hasty footsteps pass by the door outside.
“Jessamy-a!” I said frantically, but he didn’t so much as pause. If he went to Yong-hwa in that sort of mood, Yong-hwa would soon know exactly where I was. “Aish!”
Jessamy flung himself to a halt at Yong-hwa’s room and knocked rapidly on the door. I heard it faintly in my Reality, too, and covered my ears against the sound.
Yong-hwa answered the door swiftly, and today his tie was just a little more crooked than it had been yesterday. He tugged at it without seeming to notice that he did so, and said, “Jessamy-a. What’s wrong?” Then, sharply, “Is it Clovis?”
“What’s wrong?” Jessamy gazed up at him in openmouthed rage and spluttered, “What do you mean by kissing Nuna and following her around and then being engaged to Ae-jung?”
Yong-hwa looked down at him, frowning, then said, “You’d better come in, Jessamy-a.”
“Aish!” I said again, but when both Yong-hwa and Jessamy looked up at the word, I retreated back into Reality, worried and shaken. I put my feet on the ground and then drew them up again, now certain that I should go the few yards to Yong-hwa’s room and make sure that Jessamy wasn’t trying to murder him, now certain that I didn’t want to be near enough to Yong-hwa to save him from anything.
In the end I sat back in the brocade chair, pulling my feet up on the seat and wrapping my arms around my legs. The Dream was still there, inviting me to see and hear; but although I pushed it away firmly, I was still as startled as though I’d woken from a Dream when a knock sounded on the door.
I said another, muted “Aish!” and looked at the door with wild eyes.
“Clovis-a,” called Yong-hwa’s voice. “Please let me in. I need to talk to you.”
I hugged my knees and shivered, but didn’t speak. There was really only one thing that Yong-hwa could want to say to me, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear it—now or ever. He would tell me, kindly and quietly, that he’d been mistaken in his feelings for me, that Ae-jung had agreed to marry him, and that he’d come to say goodbye.
Or, worse, he would come to me with the thought in his mind that he’d already committed himself to me, and that he couldn’t escape it now. He would be kind, and unbearable, and I didn’t want to hear that, either. I would much rather sneak away quietly to Father’s estate and forget everything that had happened during the summer at Eun-hee’s manor.
There was a slither outside the door, and I caught a brief Dream-sight of Yong-hwa sliding down to sit on the carpet with his back against the door. He turned his ear against it, and said softly, “Clovis-a. Clovis-a, I know you’re in there. Jessamy came to see me just now, and I think perhaps you came for a little while, too.”
“I’m too tired to talk, Oppa,” I called. “I didn’t sleep well last night, and now—”
“You didn’t sleep well?” Yong-hwa sat up straight and pressed his ear to the door properly, one hand spread against the panels. “Why didn’t you sleep well? Clovis-a?”
I opened and then closed my mouth. At last, I said, “Go away, Oppa. I don’t want to talk.”
“You said you didn’t Dream about me two nights ago,” said Yong-hwa. His other hand was pressed against the door now, too, as if he could slip through it as I did in my Dreams if he were only forceful enough. “And I didn’t sense you there, but—Clovis-a, something happened at the dance that night. Something interesting and unexpected.”
“It’s all right,” I said, swallowing a horrible lump in my throat. The pressing pain was back in my chest, and it was harder to speak than I’d thought. “I heard. You don’t have to explain it to me. I was there at the dance and I heard everything.”
“You—Where were you? I was watching to see if you would come through the door; I was hoping you’d change your mind.”
“The gallery,” I said. “So you don’t have to explain, Oppa. I heard everything, and it’s all right. You can marry Ae-jung without worrying about—”
Outside the door I saw Yong-hwa’s eyes close briefly, then open again, glowing with a brighter light. “So you heard everything, did you?” he said. “I beg to differ, Clovis-a, or you wouldn’t be wishing me happy with Ae-jung! Open the door!”
I squeezed my eyes shut, hugging my knees, but eventually slipped my feet back to the floor. It was only fair to face Yong-hwa instead of talking to him through the door. And perhaps when it was over I would be able to put aside everything that I’d learned to feel in the last month and go back to Dreaming, as I’d thought about earlier.
Despite that, I stayed with my hand on the latch for a long time, caught between a Dream Yong-hwa safely out of reach and a Yong-hwa in Reality, who was on the other side of a much more substantial door but who felt infinitely more perilous. When at last I opened the door, Yong-hwa was standing again, his hands still against it and his head still turned to hear through it.
“Clovis-a,” he sighed. “You have no idea how glad I am to see your face. Why didn’t you come to dance with me last night instead of hiding up in the gallery?”
“Ae-jung was already there,” I said simply. “You—you don’t—you shouldn’t feel obliged to stay with me when Ae-jung has decided to marry you. I know you love her. You don’t have to stay with me just because you feel you might have—might have led me on, because I told you, Oppa. I told you that I don’t have enough feelings to—”
“Aish!” said Yong-hwa, making his tie crooked again by tearing at it with his long fingers. “You—Oh, this girl!”
He pushed through the door, knocking me off balance, but I wasn’t given the chance to fall, because by then Yong-hwa’s arms were around me so tightly that I couldn’t have moved if I’d tried. More importantly, I was being kissed so thoroughly that when I found myself sitting down on the brocade chair again with his arms still around me, I couldn’t quite recall how we’d covered so much ground. In fact, it was difficult to think of anything except the insistent movement of his lips against mine, or the way that insistence at last softened into a warm, gentle nibbling of my lower lip. Then I was able to come to myself—and to the realisation that Yong-hwa’s hands were still around my face, his forehead lowered to brush against mine, and that my own hands were clinging to the lapels of his coat.
“I’m sorry to be so forceful, Clovis-a,” he said, “but I want to be very sure that you understand I’m not here because I feel badly about having led you on. Led you on! After I’ve been doing everything I can to show you that I’m in love with you and have been ever since I knew it was you who was playing with me!”
“But I heard Ae-jung say—”
“She did,” said Yong-hwa. “There was some trouble with her eomma’s house—a dongsang with a habit of betting against people he shouldn’t bet against—and Ae-jung had the somewhat adorable idea that of course, since I had been so kind to her, I might be willing to marry her.”
“Ya,” I said, indignantly. “I won’t have you thinking she’s adorable.”
“Really?” said Yong-hwa, and kissed me again, warm and lingering. “Very well, Clovis-a. I’ll save all my adoration for you. I nearly laughed, but she was so serious and conscientious about explaining that she didn’t love me but that she really quite liked me, that I didn’t have a chance to tell her I’d simply loan her the money to redeem her house without the need for anyone marrying anyone. Then, of course, Hyun-jun stormed in, and everything went on about as smoothly as it usually does when he appears.”
“Then yesterday—”
“I thought that you’d Dreamed the whole thing, of course,” said Yong-hwa. “It never occurred to me that you were in the gallery—or that you could misunderstand me so much. Actually, I’m inclined to be hurt, Clovis-a. It only came to me that something was wrong when I went to see you after putting Ae-jung and Hyun-jun together in a quiet sitting room with the very firm assurance that I wasn’t going to
marry anyone but you. You saw nothing of that?”
I shook my head soundlessly.
“That’s a pity,” said Yong-hwa. “I was very eloquent. Drive out with me tomorrow and I’ll tell you all about how eloquent I was. We’ll put Jessamy and Hwan-chul in the back and tell them to look away when it becomes necessary to kiss you.”
I gave a small hiss of laugher. “Necessary?”
“Necessary!” reiterated Yong-hwa, and for a little while we were too much occupied to talk.
When talking was again possible, I leaned back into the warmth of Yong-hwa’s arm and said slowly, “I’m curious, Oppa.”
I didn’t consider the words before they came out, and it was only when Yong-hwa’s eyes turned on me, all bright with delight and satisfaction, that the full implication of my words hit me. When it did, I sat silent for a moment under that now-watchful gaze, until it came to me that I wasn’t going to take them back. I’d meant them in every way that Yong-hwa could have wished, and he’d never been less than honest with me about his own feelings.
“I’m curious,” I said again, this time even more slowly.
“Clovis-a,” said Yong-hwa, still bright with delight. “I thought you were going to take it back.”
“Ani. This—I need to know this, because I haven’t understood for long enough to know yet. That night at the dance I saw you with her and it hurt here. I want to know if I’ve ever made you feel like that.”
Yong-hwa hesitated. “Clovis-a, are we keeping score?”
“No,” I said, slipping my fingers through his. “But I need to know so that I know what to do about something else. Did I make you feel like that?”
“How could I help it?” he said. “Your footman—every time he picks you up, every time he touches you, every time you smile back at him. I’d come as near to hate as I’m capable of if I didn’t know he was taking good care of you long before I knew you. But it irks me to be grateful to him, so—”
“Why didn’t—why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’d already burdened you so much,” he said. “Even my touch weighs you down; how could I ask you to give up something so precious?”
Lady of Dreams Page 31
