The Unexpected Wife

by Warfield, Caroline

  Her right hand fisted in fury. “You’re lying.” She felt Temperance’s hand on her wrist and let her arm go slack but didn’t step away.

  “We do keep medicinal laudanum for staff, but of course, your brother is no longer our employee.” His eyes watched her avidly.

  “I’m surprised you can allow employees to disappear into a laudanum bottle with all the business you are conducting in—Fukien Province, is it?”

  “I see you are as well informed as your reputation suggests, my lady.” His grin broadened. “Of course, most of Macao knows and admires our business prowess. Elliot probably knows, too, but the spineless bureaucrat won’t admit it.”

  “Elliot and Lin no doubt know. Neither is a fool.”

  The genial mask slipped. “Neither understands trade and its drivers, madam. Money drives trade, not politics. We go where it can be made. Governments can be bent in the service of trade, make no mistake. The future lies in money, and money lies in Asia. You and your landed relics will fade away. The future belongs to the man who knows where to find coin and how to accumulate it.”

  That’s it then. The hatred of the self-made man for inherited wealth and tradition. They want power at all cost and be damned to honor, grace, and duty. She realized then why she admired Lin. They had more in common than the surface showed. There has to be a middle road.

  “Hate us if you will, but stay away from my brother,” she spat.

  “Come away, Zambak. This man will not help thee,” Temperance said.

  “Wise words. Listen to your friend, Lady Zambak.”

  Temperance tugged at her arm; she let her shoulders sag, prepared to leave. Jarratt’s voice pulled her back.

  “Interestingly, one other person came today to ask about the product. Someone you may know. He had similar wrong-headed ideas.”

  “I beg your pardon.” He had her perplexed now.

  “The Duke of Murnane bought three bottles today. I refused at first, but of course, when he begged . . .” He let his voice trail away.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said through lips that hardly moved. Why would Charles want laudanum? He despises the stuff.

  An elaborate shrug answered her. “Who can explain a man’s predilections? According to his duchess, his are—well perhaps best not described here. We might offend our missionary friend. But then, you may already know about that. Perhaps he accommodated your brother.”

  Temperance’s audible gasp appeared to delight him. “You know, of course, Mrs. Knighton, this lady followed the duke to Whampao and Canton dressed as a man. If one were of a lascivious imagination, one might—”

  His fierce hatred stopped her in her tracks when her slap echoed through his office. She stepped back. She ought to run, or at least walk away with what dignity she had left, but one more thing ate at her.

  “Where is he?” she demanded.

  “I beg your pardon?” He glowered down at her.

  “The Duke of Murnane. You said he came here. Do you know where he is?” She almost choked on the words. She hated having to ask. Where the devil had Filipe gone anyway? I sent him to find answers.

  The corners of Jarratt’s eyes narrowed, his expression sly, his eyes cold. “My dear lady, don’t you know? Your lover is with his wife, the lovely Julia. How she tolerates his odious attentions, I don’t know.”

  His laughter followed her to the street.

  Chapter 37

  Zambak shivered under the coverlet Temperance wrapped around her, clutching a cup of strong tea in a sturdy cup. She rocked in the well-worn chair in the Knightons’ practical kitchen, having sent word to the Elliots that she would stay the night there. Blessing, the youngest Knighton, crawled into her lap, and she welcomed the warmth.

  In spite of the warm June evening, shock and frustration left her cold, and she seemed unable to silence the ugly words echoing in her head. No one could give her direction to Julia’s house, and Temperance convinced her that scouring the neighborhoods this close to night would not be wise.

  Filipe, dirty and apologetic, found her there long after dark. He bowed until she wanted to shake him and force him to talk. “Sorry, Lady Zam. Much help needed. Filipe worked hard.”

  “Worked where? I needed you!”

  “His Grace, little house need much work. Sick lady very bad. His Grace gone much, needs help.”

  “Sick lady?” Her mind raced. Julia has fallen ill? She struggled to recall the woman’s appearance when they met in Jarratt’s foyer, but her mind had been on Thorn and Jarratt’s vile suggestions. She leaned out of the chair to grab both his arms. “Tell me everything.”

  He did, rattling on about loose chickens, fetching water, lazy carpenters, and maids who appeared to be not only celestial, but virtuous. The maids, she suspected, had been his chief interest.

  “But the lady?” she demanded.

  “Very sick. Bad luck house. Servants paid much to stay,” Filipe said.

  “Chinese fear closeness to death, Zambak,” Temperance explained. “Charles must have a difficult time obtaining help. You are very brave, Filipe.”

  “Yes, Filipe has no fear. Others?” He shrugged.

  Zambak threw back the coverlet. “You must take me to this house,” she said.

  “I forgot. His Grace say, ‘tell Lady Zam stay away.’” He smiled back, satisfied he had done his duty. “I stay until His Grace come back, and then I go search for Lady Zam.”

  “I don’t care what the wretch said. Take me to the house.”

  Temperance objected strongly. “Thee are not a fool Zambak Hayden. Thee will not wander streets at dark. Morning is soon enough to seek Charles and offer your help.”

  Offer help? Why didn’t he ask for it in the first place? He knows I can manage the thing. I will throttle him for keeping this from me. He hasn’t contacted me once since we got back.

  Filipe and Temperance between them managed to keep her inside, but she set out soon after dawn, stiff from a sleepless night sharing a bed with two little girls and fortified with sweet thick porridge. A sleepy-eyed Filipe led the way, the pink parasol nowhere in evidence.

  Doubt ate at her, planted in the offices of Jarratt & Martinson. In spite of Filipe’s lurid tales of the sick house, one thought kept resurfacing. He put Julia ahead of me. Jealousy knows no reason; guilt—the sure knowledge that she loved another woman’s husband—fed jealousy. He shut me out and went to Julia when she needed him. What about my need? What about his promise to look after Thorn? Jealousy fed anger. Anger sped her steps until Filipe had to skip to keep up.

  Pounding on the door brought no response. “Cook say not his job to answer door,” Filipe muttered. She pounded again. Filipe peered into a window. “Coming,” he said.

  A tiny girl answered, the maid no doubt. She stared up at Zambak, speechless, noticed Filipe at her side, and giggled.

  “Where is your master?” Zambak demanded. Filipe whispered in the girl’s ear. She giggled and pointed upstairs. Zambak pushed past her. She reached the foot of the stairs before Charles appeared at the top.

  “I told you to tell her to stay away, Filipe,” he said.

  “How dare you order my servant,” Zambak shouted, pounding up the steps. “You have no right. You—”

  He had her in his embrace before she cleared the top step, his mouth on hers sending ripples of heat to her belly. She vaguely heard giggles from below disappear toward the kitchen. When he pushed her up against the wall and began to kiss his way across her ear and down her neck, coherent thought fled.

  He wrenched his mouth away but pinned her to the wall with one elbow on either side of her head, his forearms holding her in place, his body pressed shoulder to knees against her, leaving no doubt his need was as great as hers.

  “Dear God, Zambak. You shouldn’t be here. I don’t want you
here, but I’m overjoyed to see you.”

  She pushed at his shoulders, and he moved back a few inches, still close enough for her to feel his breath on her cheek. “You miserable contradictory man! You want me, and you don’t. Make up your mind.”

  “My mind isn’t the problem,” he said ruefully. “It knows this is no place for you.”

  “Oh? Are we still under the impression I belong on a silk cushion, decorative in my idleness?” she said acidly.

  “What? No. Damn it, Zambak. That isn’t want I meant.”

  She recalled her earlier anger and poked him with a pointed finger. “You chose Julia’s needs over mine. You promised to get us passage and to keep Thorn out of trouble, and you’ve done neither. You chose her over me.” Tears threatened, infuriating her further. Lady Zambak Hayden did not, would not, become a watering pot.

  “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t. Enlighten me.”

  His head sank back for a moment on a long breath before he stood upright, took her by the hand, and led her to the door of a dingy bedroom. The skeletal body of the Duchess of Murnane lay under a clean coverlet, her rasping breath agitating the cloth.

  “The death rattle,” Zambak murmured. She had come to know it too well in the clinics.

  “She’s dying, Zambak, and she’s my wife. I can’t turn my back on her. I have to finish this.”

  When Julia died, he would be free. The temptation to rejoice curdled in her heart at the sight of the woman on the bed, dying painfully and, but for the generous heart of the husband she abused and abandoned, alone.

  Zambak knew this man, his capacity for love, his forgiving heart, and his powerful drive to care for those under his responsibility. She understood the guilt that wracked him—not over his treatment of Julia, never that, but over his desire to be free at the cost of her life. He may hate what she had done, but he wouldn’t abandon the woman, not even for Zambak. This was his penance, and he would suffer it to the end. Alone.

  Her shoulders slumped. He doesn’t want me here. “What about Thorn?” It was a half-hearted attempt to seize a scrap of his attention.

  “What of him?”

  “Did you give him laudanum?” She glanced at the brown bottle on a side table.

  “No! Did Jarratt tell you that?” She nodded, and he seemed to realize the import of that. “Can I at least convince you to stay away from them? Promise me, Zambak? Let me finish this.”

  When she didn’t answer, he pulled her to his chest, rubbing circles on her back. She felt kisses on her hair and over her ear. “Please,” he begged. “Give me time. Just stay with the Elliots, and I’ll get us out of here.”

  Us. The word gave her hope, but she made no promises.

  A moan pulled his attention away. He bent to give his wife a sip of water. Zambak watched it dribble from the corner of her mouth and him gently wipe it away. She left without another word.

  ~ ~ ~

  After a stop at her bank, Zambak returned to her sunny room in the Elliots’ mansion that afternoon to wait, as Charles asked. She spent the afternoon sorting her belongings behind a locked door. In her privileged upbringing, a lady left packing to her servants. Not so this time.

  She pulled her smaller traveling trunk from her dressing room and lifted the false bottom. Charles still had her first journal, but she had another, and it fit easily under the board, along with the few pieces of jewelry she had sewn into her breeches when she left London. A wad of the currency from her account went into the hollow space; a second one remained in the reticule she planned to keep close.

  She left the breeches and most of her English dresses out, choosing instead to squeeze both sets of Manchu costume in over the false bottom, followed by the bare minimum in personal linen and practical clothing. If needed, she could dress in her Chinese finery on the voyage home.

  Won’t that just please my mother? She smiled to herself at the looks of horror she planned to provoke. She closed the trunk and lifted it by both handles. She could manage it herself if she needed to; she shoved it under her bed.

  She left the larger of her trunks open in the dressing room. If they left in an orderly fashion, she might have servants pack the rest of her belongings. A tension in the air suggested she might have to move too fast, however.

  No word came from Charles that day or in the ones that followed, and Zambak spent more time at Temperance’s small home, returning to the mansion to sleep most nights or to change her clothes. Filipe followed her some days and disappeared others. When he came back, he never had messages, and she gave up asking. Clara Elliot, preoccupied with her own fears, did not stand in her way. The sense of rising tension left the British community stewing in the summer heat.

  Temperance spent her mornings at the school, before she and Zambak worked side by side in the missionary clinic every afternoon. Opium-recovery patients continued to make heavy demands on their resources, and the Portuguese authorities were of little help.

  After one such afternoon, they returned to the Knightons’ home to find Aaron entertaining a guest. Dan Oliver leaned toward Temperance’s husband in earnest conversation.

  “Dan! Thee are welcome as always, but thy face tells me thee do not bring equally welcome news,” Temperance said, giving voice to Zambak’s thought.

  “How bad is it?” Zambak demanded.

  “We don’t know yet, but it isn’t good,” he said.

  “Then tell us simply,” Temperance told him, “and be done with it.”

  He chewed his pipe for a moment, drawing a scowl from Temperance. “Trying to decide where to start,” he said. “Do you know the Lorne has returned, Lady Zambak?”

  “No one has said so outright, but I’ve heard snatches of conversation.” And read Elliot’s dispatches all week. “I am given to understand it is anchored off Hong Kong Island along with the Reliance watching the situation.”

  “Watching the war junks that are watching them, yes. Just like last year,” Oliver agreed. “Boring work for fighting men. Some of your jack tars went on ashore along the coast for a bit of leave. They caused some mischief.”

  “How much mischief?” Zambak asked.

  “A man is dead. They burnt down a temple—caused a riot.” His ferocious frown conveyed his opinion about the matter.

  “Shameful behavior,” Temperance said. “They will be punished?”

  Dan took a few more puffs, choosing his words, his eyes on Zambak. “That’s the crux of the problem. The dead man is Chinese. Lin wants them turned over. Chinese law is harsh on matters of murder.”

  “And Captain Elliot refuses,” Zambak finished for him. Of course he does. The hopeless inevitability of the crisis made her sick.

  “He has them in custody and has promised a trial.” His eyes caught hers.

  He knows. For killing a foreigner? They’ll get a slap on the wrist. “We have another standoff,” she murmured.

  “This time in Macao. Rumors down river are that Commissioner Lin is coming to consult with the Portuguese governor. He wants the murderer.”

  Zambak caught a tender exchange between the Knightons. Their entire life lay in Macao, their work as well as their precious children. Aaron took his wife in his arms. “Will there be room on thy ship, Dan?”

  “If it comes to that, yes. But Aaron, it is the British Lin wants, not us.”

  Temperance took Zambak by the hand. “Perhaps thee ought to warn Charles.”

  Her heart leapt. An excuse to see him would have driven her there even if fear didn’t. She glanced out the window. “I best go quickly before dark.”

  Light shown in the kitchen but nowhere else when she arrived at the little house. She wasn’t surprised when no one answered the door. She went to the rear of the house, side stepped the laundry tubs, and picked up a handful of pebbles. It t
ook her three attempts to hit the window where she believed Julia lay.

  The damned man has it closed against a draft. Isn’t he hot in there?

  She hit the window a second time before it came open and a familiar auburn head peered out. She devoured the sight. He looked exhausted and, when he recognized her, panicked.

  “Zambak! What is it? Are you well? Is it Thorn?”

  “No, I—” She realized with a jolt that she had pushed the marquess from her mind. Helpless to change him, she had simply avoided the problem.

  “What is it?”

  She told him, eliciting a string of curses. “Lin is coming here?”

  “Yes. Elliot will keep his prisoners off shore, but the Portuguese will do whatever the commissioner asks. Civilians should be safe.” More hope than belief lay in that last statement.

  “What were you doing at the Knightons’? I told you to stay with Elliot. You’ll be safest there.” He flicked a glance back over his shoulder and turned back to her. “Be ready to leave.”

  “I am.” She smiled up at him.

  “Good girl. I’ll check on Thorn and make sure he’s ready as well.”

  “Can you evacuate Julia?”

  “Not without increasing her misery or hastening her death.” The pause that followed bristled with unspoken wishes and unspeakable thoughts.

  “No, you can’t,” she said. “I will wait with you.”

  “It may not come to that. We don’t know that the city is in danger.”

  “Yet.”

  “If it is, go home. Be safe. Do what Elliot tells you when the time comes,” he insisted. She stood her ground, watching him above her leaning both hands on the window frame. “Did you hear me, Zambak?” he asked, his voice cracking.