by Jeannie Lin
The pin was simple, yet eye-catching. It wasn’t merely pretty; it was intriguing. She hugged it to her chest and imagined Bai Huang searching for this pin, finding this one stone among all the sea of pearls and jade. Her heart felt as if it would burst.
Then a pang of disappointment struck her. How could she ever wear it? A maidservant had no use for something so frivolous. Jeweled ornaments were supposed to draw attention. A gift like this was intended to go to a lover.
She bundled the pin up and shoved it back into her sleeve. In the language of courtship, accepting such a gift meant something. She and Bai Huang were engaged in a flirtation, nothing more. That was all it could be. She would have to give the pin back.
For the rest of the morning, she went about her chores, tending to Mingyu, checking with the other courtesans to see if they needed anything in the market. Between tasks, she would hide away and take out the ornament once more, turning it to catch the light.
She realized the stone’s glow was like moonlight. A little moon. Her heart ached every time she saw it. She didn’t even dare to place it into her hair to give herself one glance of how the stone would look on her.
When she finally was able to get away, she moved swiftly through the market stalls to allow herself extra time to seek out Bai Huang. She didn’t have the coin to spend on hiring a sedan, so she walked past the Three Lanes to the quarter just north of the Pingkang li, the area where students often took residence while preparing for the exams. It took another half an hour searching through the winding alleyways before she found the right gate. By then, her feet were sore.
The residence was a humble, modestly sized space. The entrance courtyard could be spanned in twenty paces and there were several rooms surrounding it. She wondered whether there were other students living there along with Bai Huang, but the enclosure was quiet.
The shutters were open on the first room. She peeked inside to see Bai Huang seated at a desk. He held a book roll in his hands. According to reputation, he was supposed to be dozing at this time of day, yet here he was, reading from a scroll that was as thick as her arm. A deep line cut between his eyebrows. He was so focused that she took three steps into the study before he looked up.
“Yue-ying!” He started in astonishment. Then hastily stood. “What are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?”
“I spoke with the sedan carrier who took you home the other night.”
He folded the scroll closed and fumbled a drawer open. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Why are you so nervous?” She craned her neck to peer over the top of the desk.
“I’m not nervous,” he denied stiffly.
She wanted to laugh. “What is that? A pillow book?”
He dropped the scroll inside and pushed the drawer shut, his movements lacking their usual laconic grace. He was dressed in an understated house robe, dark brown edged in black. Nothing as flamboyant as what she usually saw him in, but as soon as he smoothed a hand over the front a transformation came over him.
“Miss Yue-ying, are you here to spy on me?” he drawled.
That wasn’t her intention, but now she was certainly curious. “What was that you were concentrating on so intently?”
“If you must know, I was searching for lines of poetry I could steal to impress young ladies. I’ve been told my own words are dreadfully boring.”
His eyes had recaptured their playful glint. Rather than charming her, it made her uneasy. What was he really like beneath the flower-prince persona that he wore like a second skin?
“I came to return this,” she said hastily.
She retrieved the hairpin, which she’d tucked beneath her sash, and laid it on the desk. Bai Huang’s gaze dropped to the ornament before returning to her face. His smile faded.
“Thank you, Lord Bai. It’s very pretty, but—”
Her pulse quickened as he came toward her. As he neared her breath caught in her throat, but he moved past her to the door. He lifted his hand, palm flat, and pushed it shut. The quiet rasp of wood against the frame was like the crash of thunder. She jumped at the sound.
Flustered, she tried to continue. “It’s too expensive. And when would I ever wear it?”
He was behind her now, very close, and she was afraid to turn to look at him. Yue-ying fixed her gaze back on the desk to the harmless piece of silver that had given her reason to come here and invade his privacy. A mix of emotions churned inside her.
“I saw this gem in the market yesterday and thought of you,” he said, his tone quiet.
“You shouldn’t be giving gifts like that to someone like me. It’s not—it’s not proper.”
Defeat crept into her. It was true. For an aristocrat to openly court a maidservant—everyone would think the worst of both of them. The literati of the North Hamlet laughed at Bai Huang’s mishaps, but no one treated him with scorn. And she, they simply ignored. She didn’t exist and she didn’t want to, in that way.
“I don’t mean any offense,” she insisted, though she felt she added on more insult with those words. Why couldn’t she have Mingyu’s talent for deflecting a man’s attention without causing him to lose face? And it was a talent; she could see that now.
Bai Huang moved past her again, his shoulder just skimming her arm as he returned to the desk. She felt the coldness of the near miss more acutely than any touch.
He lifted the hairpin, revealing only his profile as he looked it over. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Just like I’ve never known anyone like you.” He turned it this way and that to catch the light, the same way she had done. “I thought you might like it, that was all.”
With that, he opened the same drawer where he’d hidden the scroll and dropped the pin inside. Suddenly, unreasonably, she wanted it back. She clasped her hands behind her back to keep from reaching for it.
The silence that remained was uncomfortable. She turned to look over the shelves against the wall. “I’ve never seen so many books.”
“My family has aspirations of me leaving my wind-and-wine days behind me and passing the palace exams,” he said from behind her. “I suppose I should start reading them someday.”
He was lying. There was dust gathered at the edge of the shelf, but not on the books or scrolls themselves. She wanted to reach out and run her hands over the pages, as if these writings held the answer to who Bai Huang really was.
When she turned back around, he was staring at her with a look that she could only describe as longing. It was there and then gone in the next moment.
“Now was that the only reason you came to see me?” He leaned back against the desk, once again the beloved fool, the failed-scholar, the do-nothing.
She took a breath and told him about the stash of silver that she had discovered and Constable Wu had confiscated. Once again, the investigation was serving as an excuse to seek him out. It was shameless of her.
“You’ve made better progress than I.” He in turn recounted how he had spent the past few days investigating Ma Jun. “It was a waste of time. I was certain he must be hiding something, but, other than taking small bribes, he doesn’t appear to be guilty of a crime. He was at the Hundred Songs the night of Huilan’s death, but the other courtesans are confident that he was downstairs in the banquet room the entire time.”
“What if we’ve been mistaken all along?” she said slowly.
He raised an eyebrow at that. “Why do you say that?”
“We’ve been assuming that something happened at that banquet that upset Huilan, but what if the incident occurred afterward? A lady’s hairpin was found in the body from the river and Constable Wu believes the stranger was drowned near the end of the month. Right around the same time as the banquet.”
Wu Kaifeng knew about Huilan’s visits to the temple as well as the banquet. Yue-ying needed to uncover what had happened before Constable Wu did. It was the only way to protect Mingyu.
“Wu seems to be confiding in you quite a bit,” he remarked
dryly.
She was taken aback by the bite in his tone. “He confides in me for the same reasons you do. He trusts in my knowledge of the North Hamlet.”
Bai Huang sighed loudly. He closed his hands over her shoulders and directed her into the chair beside the desk before taking his seat behind it. “I confide in you because, not only are you perceptive, but I can’t stop thinking of you.”
A thrill went through her. The warmth of his touch stayed with her even though his hands were now folded in front of him. He regarded her with a stern expression. She found his look of concentration so much more compelling than all of the smiles and flirtatious glances.
“A lady’s hairpin was found?” he prompted, as if he hadn’t just confessed that she was in his thoughts or that he was irrationally jealous of Wu Kaifeng.
She gathered the thoughts in her head together and tried to form a coherent picture. “The stranger in the boat could have been someone dangerous, a smuggler or a bandit. That was where all the silver could have come from. Huilan either quarreled with him or fought with him and he was drowned. Frightened, she hid the silver and planned to escape.”
“But his associates found her and took revenge?” Bai Huang finished for her.
“It’s possible.”
He was already shaking his head. “Your story answers some questions, but raises too many others. How did Huilan come to be involved with an outlaw in the first place?”
“It may not have been a previous association. He could have attacked her on the docks and she had to defend herself.”
“Then why not go to the magistrate?”
“Because of the silver. And because she was afraid.” Her answer to Bai Huang was the same as it had been to Constable Wu. “Men can’t understand how hard it is for us to trust anyone. Several years ago, a courtesan and her foster mother were both executed for killing a man. They claimed that he was robbing them, but the magistrate was unsympathetic because they had hidden the body. To Huilan, so much silver had to seem like freedom.”
“She had asked me for help,” he said soberly. “But she didn’t trust me enough to confide in me. Perhaps she would have if I didn’t have a reputation for being so useless.”
“Lord Bai.” Yue-ying could see how the memory pained him. “No one thinks you’re useless.”
“Not that it matters now.” He shrugged, but she could still see the dark cloud over him. “If the stranger is the answer, we should search out the boats along the section of canal between where the pleasure boat was docked and the North Hamlet.”
Hopefully Yue-ying was right and the dead man was indeed some bandit or smuggler. She believed in her heart that Mingyu and Huilan weren’t capable of murder, even for the promise of so much silver.
“I should go now,” she said. “It’s getting late.”
“You always say that.”
“It’s always true.”
Like a gentleman, Bai Huang accompanied her out into the courtyard. He came to a stop at the gate. “Is your mistress the reason why you won’t accept my gifts?” he pressed. “Why you won’t be seen with me?”
He was standing very close to her. She could smell the faint scent of cedarwood on his skin and was aware of his every breath as he waited for an answer.
“She doesn’t like that I spend time with you,” she admitted.
“Has she forbidden this?” He reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers continuing the caress along her cheek.
A shudder traveled down her spine and every part of her warmed all at once. Though it was difficult, she forced herself to meet his gaze. “Mingyu doesn’t need to forbid me. I make my own choices.”
Her face was unsettling to most. It wasn’t as if she were scarred or disfigured, but the red stain was odd enough to cause people to avert their eyes. They pretended they hadn’t been staring. As a result, she was easily noticed, but often ignored. Yet Bai Huang always looked directly at her, or, at times like this, he seemed to look into her. It left her feeling worse than naked.
“I owe her everything,” she tried to explain. “You don’t know how it is to have your well-being, your happiness or your sorrow tied to another person so absolutely.”
“I know what it means to have to answer to others,” he said darkly.
Ever since that first stolen kiss in the wine cellar, Bai Huang always waited for her to lean toward him. To give him some signal with her eyes or her lips to invite him to her. As much as she wanted him to kiss her at that moment, she pulled away.
Obligingly, he opened the gate for her. Out on the street, he waved down a sedan for her and handed a coin to the carrier once she was seated.
“It’s always been you sending me home before.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Usually drunk.”
She bit back her smile, but Bai Huang still caught it. His eyes didn’t leave her as the sedan pulled forward. When she glanced back, he was still standing there in the street, watching her leave.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HUANG PUT ON his plainest robe and had Zhou Dan meet him at his quarters midmorning. For the past few days, Zhou Dan had explored the docks with a few of his cronies to gather information.
They were going that day to meet Ouyang Yi, the owner of the most successful shipping fleet in those waters. He also happened to be the owner of the pleasure boat where the Market Commissioner’s banquet had been hosted.
The headquarters of the shipping operation was a building on the waterway with its own private port. Boatmen and laborers swarmed over the dock, loading and unloading crates and baskets.
Huang moved past the boats with Zhou Dan following dutifully behind him, carrying a bundle beneath one arm. The swampy scent of the canal surrounded them as they headed for the office. A clerk sat at the front. After a courteous introduction under an assumed name, Huang asked to see the shipping baron himself.
“Mr. Yuan.” The clerk nodded. “Mr. Ouyang is expecting you.”
Huang was posing as a merchant from Henan looking for transport services. He and Zhou Dan entered the inner office and Ouyang Yi stood to greet him. He was a middle-aged businessman, robust in appearance. His beard was neatly trimmed and his robe expensive, but not extravagant.
“Your fleet is very impressive, sir,” Huang began once he was seated. “You must have more ships than the imperial navy.”
“Not so great as that!” Ouyang laughed. “But times have been good.”
They continued with a few more pleasantries before the business discussion began. “What is it that you’re looking for, my friend?”
“Monthly shipments of cargo to our associates in the capital. I hear your prices are reasonable. And your connections are good,” Huang added, keeping his expression controlled.
Ouyang was equally placid. “What sort of goods are you looking to transport?”
“Silk, of course.”
Zhou Dan stepped forward and placed the bundle he’d been carrying onto the shipping merchant’s desk. Ouyang pulled back the hemp wrapper to inspect the bolts of silk inside. “This is quite a small shipment.”
“There is more to arrive by wagon,” Huang explained smoothly. “Once the details are arranged.”
The silk wasn’t the cargo. It was what was required for Ouyang Yi’s boatmen not to inspect or inquire about what was being transported.
“Henan province,” the trader said thoughtfully. “That would fall under the domain of my business partner.”
“Partner?”
“We have had to add more vessels due to increased demand in the past few years. Taking on a partner was much faster than building new ships and recruiting laborers to run them.”
Huang nodded. “That sounds reasonable. How do I make arrangements with your...associate?”
“He is away, but will be back in a few days. I’m certain he can find space in his holds for your shipment.”
Huang had not only discovered the trader’s vessels shipped all forms of goods, but there were certain
boats and routes that were known to reliably be overlooked for inspection. For all Ouyang Yi knew, they all contained bolts of silk.
They spoke around a few other particulars: the size of the shipment, how many ships might be required and, interestingly, any special care the silk might require. Ouyang Yi chose his words very cautiously. This arrangement with his other half, if such a person even existed, apparently provided separation from the shadier activities that went on in his fleet.
At the end of the discussion, they arranged another meeting in a few days’ time. Afterward, Huang stood and thanked the trader for his time, leaving the bolts of silk behind as a goodwill gift.
“He’s certainly not on the straight and narrow,” Zhou Dan declared, once they were far from the docks. “Can’t you go to the magistrate and have him arrested?”
“Our goal isn’t to arrest every crooked trader in the city. We’re trying to catch a murderer. Lady Huilan may have happened upon illicit activity along the canal.”
“Or she was involved in it,” Zhou Dan suggested.
“That’s possible as well.”
He had considered many different angles. Perhaps he was putting too much trust in Yue-ying’s instincts. She had left out important parts of the picture in her explanation; most obviously that Huilan would not have been walking alone from the banquet, no matter how familiar she was with the area. Mingyu was also on the pleasure boat and she had mysteriously sent Yue-ying home early that night. Yue-ying was protecting her mistress; he had no doubt of it.
“We need to know what activities occur along that stretch of the canal after dark,” he directed.
Zhou Dan grinned. “More interesting than scrubbing pots back home.”
At the next crossroad, he and Zhou Dan parted ways. Posing as a crooked merchant was only one of his tasks for the day.
Father had sent him a message the night before to request a meeting. Huang followed his father’s instructions and arrived at the designated place near the Ministry of Defense. The teahouse was three stories high and every table appeared full. With some effort, they were able to procure a place beside a window in the corner.
