The Dragon Earl

by Jade Lee

  A butler bowed to him, extending a hand to take his hat and gloves. Jie Ke peeled them off gratefully and slowed his pace as he extended them. "I know you," he murmured.

  The man smiled and gently lifted the gloves and hat away. "Yes, my lord."

  Jie Ke focused on the bones of the man's face, the bristly brown hair, the crinkles at the sides of his eyes. None of it was Perfectly familiar, and yet. . . Then the butler turned slightly as he set aside the hat, and Jie Ke saw a dark patch of skin, a birthmark that extended from the ear and down be­neath the collar of his clothing.

  "Egan the footman. I used to call you Egan, but you were really—"

  "Edgar, my lord."

  "Yes. Edgar. You used to play soldiers with me." Jie Ke blinked and frowned. "You're butler now. Congratulations."

  "Thank you, my lord. Tea has been laid out in the near parlor."

  He paused a moment, his gaze traveling down the dark in­terior hallway. He hated the near parlor. Why did he hate the near parlor? He looked at his grandmother, who stood watching him closely. Evelyn did, too, though her face was averted.

  "The near parlor is where I poured sugar down your back," he said to her, remembering.

  She looked up, obviously startled. "Yes," she said softly.

  "Grandfather caned me after that. He knew and beat me for it." He glanced at the parlor door. "That's why I hate that room."

  Grandmother's eyes widened. "Oh, well, we don't have to go in there, then. We can eat in the library—"

  He shook his head. "No, I deserved it." He started walking forward, but again the air felt almost too thick for him to move. "Besides, every room in this house will have memo­ries." His gaze shifted up the stairs. The nursery was there. He glanced back to Edgar. "Are my soldiers still up there?"

  The older man grinned. "Bottom shelf of the bookcase."

  "Just as if I never left them," Jie Ke said with a smile. He'd never cleaned or picked up his toys until China. Well, in China, he hadn't really had any toys to pick up.

  Steeling his spine, he crossed into the near parlor. Nothing had changed, except that the rug had faded over time and the settee fabric had been replaced—though it remained the same soft blue color that his grandmother favored. The fireplace mantel appeared more cluttered, and . . .

  "May I go upstairs?" Had those words come out of his mouth? He could barely breathe, so thick was the air. And yet, he was pulled to see more, to remember more.

  "Of course," his grandmother answered.

  Evelyn said nothing as she stepped out of his way. He would have to pass by her to leave the room. She was pale today, the rosy flush to her face changed to a dull whitish brown. But she was alive, she was beautiful, and she had absolutely nothing to do with the memories that were crowding around him now.

  "Come with me," he said as he passed her. And then, act­ing on impulse, he grabbed her hand, quickly intertwining their fingers. She gasped, startled, and made to pull away, but he held her fast. And when their gazes met, he lifted her hand toward his chest. "Please walk with me. I breathe better when you're with me."

  It was the truth, though he didn't understand why. Neither did she, and she glanced nervously at his grandmother.

  "Go on, dear. My bones are too old to go up and down the stairs like that. I'll just wait here."

  He could see that Evelyn was going to object. The propri­ety of the situation was clearly dubious, but he didn't care. "I am leaving tomorrow morning," he whispered. "Please, just walk with me."

  Her eyes lifted to meet his. They were crystal clear and blue, even in this rather dark house. He met her gaze and held it, and was soon lost in her eyes, focusing on the widening of her pupils and the shifting blue striations. If he thought only of that—of the beauty of round, blue eyes so like his own— then he could breathe again.

  Evelyn never actually agreed aloud to walk with him, but they moved as one. They took two steps back into the hall­way together, and then he had to break eye contact. He could not mount the stairs while staring at her.

  "What is up there that you want to see?" she asked.

  "I don't know," he answered. "Perhaps I am only delaying breaking Grandmother's heart." He glanced back into the par­lor. "She will not accept that I have to leave. She thinks this is my home."

  "Isn't it? Do you really want to return to that foreign place? What waits for you there that can compare to all of this?" She gestured as she spoke, pointing out the stately En­glish home he'd once loved. "Even if you never regain the ti­de, there is still land and wealth and English society. Your grandmother. . ."

  He wasn't listening. The moment she had gestured to the house, his attention was once again caught by the stairway. He began climbing, their entwined hands dragging slightly be­hind him. He slowed a bit so that she could keep pace, but he did not release her. And she dutifully walked with him.

  The nursery was to the right, but he couldn't even see the doorway. He saw instead his memories: chasing his sister down the hall; crashing into a hallway table and breaking one of the legs; rolling a ball down the long expanse and trying to knock flat a wall of soldiers at the opposite end.

  He pushed through the nursery door just as he had as a child, with force and complete disregard for the wall behind. He was much stronger now than he'd been at ten. The door banged hard against the plaster and he winced. Then he wrinkled his nose. The smell of the nursery was wrong. He smelled dust and dry rot.

  "My sister painted," he murmured. There was no scent of charcoal or watercolors. No brushes or wet fabric. "She painted on clothing—muslins first, but then velvet and even silk." His gaze went to the corner where the light danced through dust motes. His sister's brushes were there, neatly lined up on a desk, her sketch papers stacked beside them.

  A chill entered his body, and he shivered. Evelyn tightened her grip in question, but he shook his head. He couldn't speak, but he could hold her as his lifeline. She was beside him as he turned to leave. As a reflex, he whistled, two notes—one high, one low—calling a dog that was long since dead. But he had always whistled like that before leaving the nursery, and so he did it now. Then he froze. Of everything he had missed after leaving England, his dog had been the hardest to lose.

  He stared at the empty spot before the fire. "Zeus always slept there," he murmured. Then he swallowed and looked away, once again finding Evelyn's gaze. Blue eyes, so like his own. "Why do I have to remember this?" he asked.

  "Because it is yours—your memory, your heritage."

  Blue eyes like his own. "Do you want me to stay in En­gland? Do you want me to be with you?"

  Her gaze dropped away. Her blue eyes were shielded from him.

  "I am too Chinese for you." He laughed. "And I am too English for the Chinese."

  "That's not the reason," she answered. He thought she was lying, but she raised her eyes, her gaze skittering between him and the door and back. "What you want, where we would go—I would leave everything behind."

  "Not if I lived here in England."

  He watched hope spark in her eyes. A flash of desire ap­peared, so strong that her hand spasmed inside his. "Could you do that, Jie Ke? Could you stay in this place?"

  "No." The word came out in a kind of panic. He could not stay here. He couldn't bear it. And he couldn't give up all that he had worked so hard for in China. "I am a monk," he said firmly. He looked about the room, seeing it for what it was, not what it once had been. "These memories hold no power over me," he lied. Then he walked out of the room, intending to go downstairs.

  He ended up somewhere different. Instead of downstairs, he found himself in the opposite wing of the house, in front of what once had been his parents' two bedrooms. For Mama: lilac and white, with ruffles everywhere. Browns and gold, dark wood and a high bed for Papa. Jie Ke stood in the doorways—one room after the other—and felt the heavy bat­tering of memory.

  The smell of snuff had faded. Similarly, his mother's per­fume was gone. Dust and old furniture polish we
re the scents that lingered. And yet he could still hear his father's booming laugh and his mother's chiding voice echoing down the hall. Tea. He remembered his mother drank tea up here in her bed­room.

  "Are you all right?" Evelyn's words were a soft whisper, but they somehow drowned out the echoes of time.

  He nodded. "The Chinese believe in ghosts. They believe the ancestors follow and protect their descendants or haunt those who don't honor them."

  She stared at him. "But you don't feel them."

  "No," he agreed. "I thought they would linger here. I thought I would feel them, but. . ." He shrugged. "They are just an echo. A memory that is already fading."

  He took a deep breath, feeling his chest ease for the first time in days, perhaps months. "One last ghost to lay to rest," he said, gesturing to his grandfather's room. "Ready?"

  She nodded, though he could see regret in her eyes. It warmed his heart that she didn't want his last tie to England to disappear. But she had chosen Christopher, he reminded himself, and so he turned away from her. But he did not re­lease her hand.

  His grandfather's room wasn't dusty. The room was aired, but the smell of pipe tobacco was still strong, plus the remains of a fire dead a week or more now.

  "Your grandmother must still come in here," Evelyn said. And with her words he caught an echo of the dowager count­ess's powder.

  "Yes, she must," he agreed. Then he wandered deeper into the room. "My grandfather was a stern man," he murmured. "He had no understanding of my father's passions. A dog, toy soldiers—these things he under-stood. But my father's love of plants? Of exploration into foreign climes to sketch bizarre people and things?"

  "He didn't approve of your father?"

  "Not in the least. He called Uncle Frank a boor at times, but at least Uncle Frank 'knew what it meant to be English.'"

  She smiled, recognizing his description of the current earl. "Sheep, wheat, and local politics—what more could a proper Englishman care about?"

  He tightened his grip on her hand. "I never really under­stood either of them. Why did my grandfather have to limit the world to England? And why did my father care so much about pictures of foreign birds? Back then, I wasn't sure why we were setting off to China. . . ."

  She tilted her head. "And now?"

  He frowned back at her. "Now? Now, nothing. They are both dead and their thoughts are even fainter than their memories."

  He turned to leave the room, but she held him back by their joined hands. She stood there and looked at him, her eyes widening as if she saw something for the first time.

  "What?" he asked.

  "I see now why the abbot made you come back here." He pulled away, startled. "What?"

  "You are a lost boy, cut adrift from everything you once were."

  He gaped at her. She might as well have been speak-ing Greek. He had no true comprehension of her words.

  She waved at the room with her free hand. "Your family is dust, and they mean nothing to you. Your home is an echo to you—your grandmother makes you sneeze. You push me to discover who I am, what I want, and yet you are like a blank slate. It's like you have no past and no future, so you might as well become a monk."

  Fire burned through his mind, bringing pain with it. "You know nothing of what I want or who I am," he growled.

  "Nothing at all," she agreed. "Because you don't know ei­ther. Isn't that what the abbot said—that you have to remem­ber who you are?"

  He spluttered, looking for the words to fight her, but his mind had splintered open with pain. A headache threatened. He hadn't had one like this since that first day at the church, but now he longed for a bucket of ice water.

  "I see it so clearly," she murmured. "You said it that first night. The path of a monk is to see the truth with clarity and to search for another answer when one fails." She stepped closer to him, pulled herself directly in front of him to see into his eyes. "This is the truth you have failed to see. Jie Ke. That you are blank until you remember this."

  "But I remember all of this! It just means nothing!"

  She looked at him sadly, and the compassion in her eyes cut him all the way to the bone. "I have lived all my life as a 'fu­ture countess.' Until you, that label occupied my every wak­ing and sleeping thought." She brought his hand to her mouth, pressing her lips against his knuckles. "It was mad­dening, it was overwhelming, and most of all, it erased every­thing I could have been long before I even had a chance to discover what I wanted to be. Jacob, my past was . . ." She shrugged. "It is so much more than nothing."

  He pulled his hand out of hers, a fury rising from deep within him. "That is your choice, Evelyn, to be saddled with your past. It is most certainly not mine."

  She threw up her hands. "That's the whole point! Where one comes from is not a choice. It exists. And until you ac­knowledge the past, you can't progress to the future."

  "You are being foolish!" he snapped and whirled away. He didn't see where he was going. The pain in his head impinged too much on his vision. He had thought he was moving to the bedroom door. Instead, he ducked through the connecting hallway to his grandmother's room.

  He recognized the error immediately. Her huge dressing table loomed before him as he stumbled forward. He saw his face in her mirror: pale, as white as the ghost man the Chinese peasants labeled him. The sight made him shake, and pain lanced once again through his head.

  He tried to focus elsewhere. He blinked at the array of bottles and perfumes. Feminine frippery, his grandfather used to say, yet his sister had been fascinated. He reached out to touch a tin. The lid was askew, and he could push it back down. He thought of nothing else but that. Replace the lid for his grandmother. Push the top back down.

  But Evelyn had followed him. She didn't speak, or if she did, he couldn't hear. But he felt her. She touched his back at just the wrong moment. He jumped and his hand slipped off the tin. The lid clattered on the table and the tin tipped with the force of his reaction. The powder flew up. It had been filled with Grandmother's white powder, which now per­fumed the air and whitened everything—the table, the air, and him. In his reflection, he saw himself covered in the stuff.

  And in that moment, he remembered.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Powdered. Mama's face was white and perfect, just as she liked it. The monks had insisted that he help prepare the bod­ies. Jacob hadn't done anything. The orange-robed brothers did all the work, but he'd been in the room. He'd seen. He'd smelled. And like the earl he had become upon his father's death, he hadn't vomited.

  His parents looked almost nice. With the blood and mud gone, Mama's face didn't even need powder. It was white and perfect, just as she liked it.

  Jie Ke turned away, knowing she would never see his cow­ardice, but there was nowhere to turn. Papa was to the left, Maria to the right, and Mama in the center. There were other bodies, too. Other people the abbot insisted he visit: porters, servants, the monk guide. He saw them all as he walked body to body with the abbot. And every one of the corpses was powder white, even the ones whose skin was normally col­ored like mud. Their eyes were slightly open, their bodies stretched out as if dozing.

  Zhi Min's mother had joined them for part of the walk, her Chinese words flowing out of her like turbulent water. She had held his hand for a while and patted his cheek, but then her duties had called her away. Jacob had been left with the abbot and all those bodies.

  He endured a rough night on a pallet, bad dreams with screaming people and knives and blood. So much blood. Then early morning prayers. Even at that time he'd understood the rhythms of the temple, though it would be many weeks before he adopted them as his own. And after prayers . . . the burning.

  The abbot tried to explain it to him, but Jacob's Chinese was deplorable. Even with pictures drawn in the dirt he hadn't un­derstood. Bodies in a crematorium with smoke rising meant nothing to him. The English buried their dead. He hadn't un­derstood until he saw them carry the body of a porter inside the building, and stil
l it had taken a moment to comprehend that his parents and sister had gone in first. That they had all been burned inside.

  None of it felt real. He had expected to accompany his family back to England. He had held on to that. It would be his first act as an earl. He would travel with them all the way back to England.

  But then he'd felt the powder: ash. White ash was everywhere—in the air, on his clothes, in his nostrils.

  His parents and sister had burned first. Out of respect to their status, the tide he kept repeating over and over, his fam­ily had been burned first, and now they were gone. There was nothing to take back to England. Even the ash was mixed in with everyone else's, and the air was thick with it.

  Jacob screamed and ran for the crematorium. He desper­ately needed to recover what little of them was left. He ripped past the women, tore through the line of praying monks, and neared the workers with the other bodies. He was an earl, he screamed, they had to listen to him. He was an earl! He had to bring his family back to England!

  He couldn't breathe. The ash was everywhere, a thick cloud that choked off breath. He nearly made it to the door. The heat was unbearable, flowing in waves over his body, bringing pain to every inch of skin.

  Then pain exploded along his temple. He'd learned later that the abbot had struck him. He had caught Jacob with a kick to the temple, and only that swift action had kept him from running into the oven with his family.

  He'd woken an hour later and had begun screaming with his first breath.

  He realized now that he'd never stopped.

  Evelyn held Jie Ke. He was screaming and clawing at his face. She tried to pull his hands down, but he was too strong. Ser­vants poured into the room, quickly followed by the dowager countess and . . . and the Reverend Smythe-Jones?

  "Help me hold him down," she cried. He would claw bloody streaks in his face soon if she didn't prevent it. Except, just as the Reverend stepped close, Jacob shifted. He was still screaming, but his voice had cut out. The only sound that emerged from his open mouth was a high keening. His hands stopped working at his face to pull tight to his chest, and he curled against her. His face buried against her breast and he rocked.