Page 15 of A Lord in Want of a Wife (Daring Debutantes #2)

‘T here was a boy at the temple,’ Lucy said, trying to put her thoughts into foreign words. ‘He was older than me. If he had been of normal parents, he would have studied with a doctor. It was his joy to tend to hurts and to make the sick more comfortable. But because he was a half person like me—’

‘You are a whole person,’ Cedric interrupted.

‘Yes,’ she said quickly. ‘Yes, I know.’ But she had grown up thinking of herself as a half. It was hard to adjust her words.

‘Good,’ he said, his tone gentler. ‘Now tell me more about this boy.’

‘I was older then. No longer watching children and catching thieves.’

‘How old?’

Old enough to have breasts and hips. Old enough to know how men would have looked at her if she dressed provocatively, which she did not.

And yet some people still saw. And since her status as a half person was stamped upon her face, many thought that gave them permission to do as they willed with her.

‘Old enough to know better,’ she said. ‘We do not go out at night,’ she said, meaning all the half people like her. It was too dangerous. ‘But I was making money for the silk merchant. I was bargaining between him and a ship’s captain outside of the official halls.’

She saw his face tighten down. He understood that all commerce occurred in specified halls in the Thirteen Factories district. And every transaction was overseen by the emperor’s men. They watched every exchange with foreigners, and naturally, they took their cut from every bargain.

So it was that greedy merchants and whites alike wanted to make secret deals without the interference of the overseers. And if she were willing to help, then she too could make a lot of money. But it was against the law, and the emperor’s men protected themselves.

Black market sales were profitable, but they were also very, very dangerous.

‘You were caught?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘I trusted the wrong person. He said the officials would not be there that night, but he lied.’

‘What did they—’ He cut off his question, then rephrased it. ‘How badly were you hurt?’

‘Not as bad as you fear. The monks taught all of us half—’ She caught herself at his arched look. ‘All of us children to fight. It is not normal to teach anyone but the monks, but one of them believed we needed to know. Especially the girls. We needed to defend ourselves.’

‘He sounds like a good man.’

‘Yes.’

His expression softened. ‘So you were able to fight them off?’

‘Not all. My arm was twisted, but I ran.’ She demonstrated how her shoulder had been wrenched in her escape.

‘I stumbled because…’ She swallowed. She’d never forget the stunned shock of having a knife sink hilt deep into her thigh.

At first the pain hadn’t even registered.

She only knew she couldn’t scramble to her feet as usual.

But she had to run. She was dressed as a boy. If they discovered she was a girl, then that would be the end of her. In the most hideous way.

‘How bad?’ asked Lord Cedric, his voice a harsh rasp.

She looked up to see a sick fear on his face and she was quick to reassure him. ‘A knife in my leg. The scar is there still, and I can no longer run fast. I might have died from the loss of blood, but I still ran. And ran. And ran.’

‘You escaped?’

‘Yes. But I could not go back to work in the morning. They would know who I was because I could not walk. They would know what I had tried to do.’ She looked back out at the dark water.

‘I worked so hard to become a trusted worker in the halls. I had found a place. I made money. I had respect despite my face.’

‘They would never fully respect you,’ he said. ‘Not as a woman.’

‘They thought me a boy.’ A half boy, but still one of them. ‘In one night, I lost everything because I wanted money.’

‘But you needed the money. You needed to survive somehow.’

‘All the more reason to follow the rules.’ But she had been greedy.

He sighed as he joined her in staring down at the water. ‘What did this boy tell you?’

‘That I should not have pulled out the knife.’ At his startled look, she explained. ‘I didn’t bleed much until I pulled it out.’

‘Oh.’

‘But I was close enough to the temple by then.’

‘He took care of your wound?’

She winced at the memory. ‘It was painful.’

‘I imagine so.’

‘There was a fever, too. That began the next day.’

‘Infection.’

‘Infection,’ she said, testing out the English word. ‘Illness.’

‘Yes,’ he confirmed.

And when he remained silent, she moved on to the reason she had shared this painful memory with him. ‘He told me to love what I love but remember that it will not love me back.’

He frowned. ‘I do not understand.’

‘I loved the buying and selling. A day in the factories district was exciting. Always something new to bargain over. I loved that they needed me to speak. To say yes or no, and that sometimes I would be given extra coin for a difficult negotiation.’ She grimaced.

‘I had that every day, but still I wanted more.’

‘More money?’

‘I thought so, but I was wrong.’ She turned to him. She had never said this out loud. Worse, she had no carefully constructed words to hide the truth. And so she gave it to him baldly. ‘I wanted to be loved. I loved the bargaining, and I thought with more money, I could make more bargains.’

‘That’s how it works.’

‘But that is not love. More bargains did not love me back.’ She grimaced as she thought of what happened afterwards.

‘Ah-Lan got me work with the monks to manage their business. It was work I had done before, counting and recording things in the storeroom. He told them as a woman, I could not work in the district anymore. So they set me to work in the temple for no coin at all.’

It had been a bitter pill to swallow, but the only way she could survive. And since she worked daily in the temple again, she saw Ah-Lan daily, as well.

‘In time,’ she admitted, ‘I was allowed to bargain for the temple. It was not for the same amount of money. It was not fast like in the halls. But I still had my love for it even though I received no coin at all.’ Did he understand what she was saying?

‘I love the barter of a thing for coin and a coin for a thing. If I make money, if I do not, it does not matter. It is fun. I love it, but it does not give me love.’ That was a hole that had to be filled in a different way.

‘I see,’ he said slowly, and she wondered if he really did. ‘Did this boy, this Ah-Lan give you love?’

She flushed, embarrassment heating her cheeks.

She’d thought so, yes. She believed that what she and Ah-Lan shared was true love, but in the end, what he loved was more important to him.

Despite all the time they’d spent together, he left her and the temple behind.

He had a chance to learn medicine in the mountains far from Canton.

He’d met someone who would teach even a half person. And so he’d left Lucy behind.

Which was why, when Lord Wenshire came, she joined Grace and left China behind.

‘I can see from your face that he did.’

‘For a time. I thought so.’

‘Was he the only one?’

‘What?’

‘Was he the only boy to give you love? The only soul who showed you tenderness?’

‘The monks were kind to us. They raised us, taught us. There was love there.’

‘The love of a parent to a child.’

She nodded.

‘But this boy—’

‘Yes,’ she finally admitted. ‘Yes, he was the only man to show me that kind of…’ Her throat closed down. She could not say the word love out loud. Not when it was gone.

‘There will be others, you know,’ he said, his voice gentle.

She shrugged. She had known Ah-Lan all her life, but they’d become close in the last year before he left. When she was a young woman and he a young man, for all that Lord Domac called him a boy. They’d been teenagers together, and she’d thought Ah-Lan would be everything.

She hadn’t even realised she was looking down until she felt his hand on her cheek. His thumb stroked across her jaw, and his fingers gently pressed her chin up until she looked into his eyes.

‘There will be others,’ he repeated firmly. ‘People who will make you feel as he did.’

‘You did,’ she said. ‘You do.’ He looked anguished, but no more than she felt. So she took his hand and pressed it against her cheek. She held him there and she looked into his eyes. ‘I am worth it,’ she said, though she wasn’t even sure what ‘it’ was.

‘Yes, you are.’

She knew that he was going to kiss her long before his mouth descended towards hers. She knew from the heat in his gaze and the way he leaned closer to her. He tilted her head for a better angle, and she gave no resistance. Indeed, she helped him as she stretched up towards him.

Neither of them spoke as he stroked his thumb across her lips, but oh, how she wanted to give voice to the feelings inside. How could she give sound to the way she desperately wanted to be touched? How could she express the swelling, the hunger and the aching please, please, please?

He pressed his mouth to hers. He did not rush her, nor did he need to force anything. She was more than willing to let his lips brush back and forth across hers, then again with firmer pressure. And when she pressed closer to him, he deepened the contact.

He slipped his tongue between her lips, darting inside and pulling back. Inside harder, before slipping away. Each time she opened wider for him, and she tried to capture his tongue with hers. Twisting and turning, she tried to bind him, but he always slipped back and away.

By the fifth time he pulled back, she gave a mew of distress.

She liked the way he thrust inside her mouth.

She wanted him to keep touching her teeth, the roof of her mouth, and the deepest places that he could reach.

Which was to say nothing of the way his hands slid to her bottom and pulled her tighter against him.

By the eighth time he wrenched apart from her, he pressed himself against the railing. ‘I am playing with fire,’ he gasped.

She felt like a living flame. From the tips of her curled toes through the aching heat in her belly to the way her heart pounded a steady refrain of more, more, more, she felt alive with need.

And it felt wonderful !

He turned to her then, his gaze roving over her face and lower. Did he know that her breasts had swelled, that her nipples were tight and aching? Did he see that she ached lower and deeper? Apparently so, because his eyes widened, but then he shook his head.

‘I cannot have you,’ he said. ‘And I cannot give you what you want.’

‘But I can give you what you want!’

‘God,’ he said in a groan, ‘how I wish that were true.’

Then he backed away. After a very stiff bow, he turned and went below.