And the Bride Wore Red
And the Bride Wore Red
Lucy Gordon
And The Bride Wore Red
Lucy Gordon
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#ufc30aa58-6bbe-5c8f-9e21-d38ecd6bc21a)
Title Page (#u23dc63db-a169-50f1-8e2d-17a3d3640304)
Dear Reader (#uef2a90d1-4f34-5d6b-a6cc-2525f9f0e381)
About the Author (#uc661d625-7dc8-55b3-bc15-d18c81f2c6ce)
Chapter One (#uc269ce43-1aa2-5c34-9e96-617253150130)
Chapter Two (#ucc5617eb-12a8-51bc-996b-016da38d27a3)
Chapter Three (#uc9490bcb-7d73-53b7-8c0c-5f8617c1a433)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Dear Reader
A couple of years ago I visited China, and was overwhelmed by its beauty, its magnificence and above all its mystery. In Beijing I saw the Forbidden City, where the Emperors lived and where their concubines had their apartments. Later I visited the Terracotta Warriors. I’d heard so much about them, but nothing could have prepared me for their breathtaking, lifelike reality.
After that came a cruise along the Yangtze River, marvelling at the high banks that rise on each side, giving the feeling of being enclosed in a separate world. It could be a perfect place for lovers, as my hero and heroine Lang and Olivia discovered. But at last the outside world intruded, facing them with decisions that threatened to tear them apart.
When they finally found their destiny it was because they were true to themselves, and also because they had answered the magical call of China. It was a call that would always draw them back—just as it has drawn me back, and will do again.
Warm wishes
Lucy Gordon
Lucy Gordon cut her writing teeth on magazine journalism, interviewing many of the world’s most interesting men, including Warren Beatty, Charlton Heston and Roger Moore. She also camped out with lions in Africa, and had many other unusual experiences which have often provided the background for her books. Several years ago, while staying in Venice, she met a Venetian who proposed in two days. They have been married ever since. Naturally this has affected her writing, where romantic Italian men tend to feature strongly.
Two of her books have won the Romance Writers of America RITA® award: SONG OF THE LORELEI in 1990, and HIS BROTHER’S CHILD in 1998, in the Best Traditional Romance category.
You can visit her website at www.lucy-gordon.com
Chapter One
‘OLIVIA, come quickly! There’s been a terrible disaster!’
Olivia looked up from the school books she was marking to where Helma, the young teaching assistant, stood in the doorway. She was only mildly alarmed by the girl’s agitated words. Helma had a wild sense of drama and ‘a terrible disaster’ might mean no more than the school cat making off with someone’s lunch.
‘It’s Yen Dong!’ Helma wailed.
Ten-year-old Dong was the brightest pupil in Olivia’s class at the Chang-Ming School in Beijing. He was also the most mischievous, using his impish charm to evade retribution for his many escapades.
‘What’s he done now?’ Olivia asked. ‘Set a booby trap for the headmistress?’
‘He’s climbed a tree.’
‘Again? Then he can just come down. It’s almost time for afternoon lessons.’
‘But he’s ever so high and I don’t think he can get down.’
Olivia hurried out into the garden that formed the school’s playground and looked up. Sure enough, there was the little rascal, high on the tallest tree, looking cheerful even while hanging on for dear life.
‘Can you climb down?’ Olivia called.
He ventured a step, but his foot slid on the next branch and he backed off hastily.
‘All right, not to worry,’ Olivia said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. ‘I need a ladder.’
One was fetched immediately, but to everyone’s dismay it fell short of Dong by several feet.
‘No problem,’ Olivia sang out, setting her foot on the bottom rung.
Luckily she was wearing jeans, which made climbing easier, and reaching the top of the ladder wasn’t too hard. But the next bit didn’t look so easy. Taking a deep breath, she set her foot on a branch. It trembled but held, and she was emboldened to haul herself up. In another moment she had reached Dong, who gave her a beaming smile.
‘It is very nice up here,’ he said in careful, perfect English. ‘I like climbing trees.’
Olivia looked at him askance. At any other time she would have been delighted with his command of her language. In the six months she’d spent teaching English at the Chang-Ming School, she’d found that Dong was the one who grasped everything first. She was proud of him, but right now she had other things to worry about.
‘I like climbing trees too,’ she said. ‘But I also like getting down safely. So let’s try to do that.’
She began to edge down, encouraging him to follow her so that he descended into the safety of her arms. One branch, then two, then three and finally, to her immense relief, the top rung of the ladder.
‘Just a little further,’ she said. ‘Nearly there.’
But it was the ladder which failed them, sliding away from the tree suddenly and depositing them on the ground with a bump.
Olivia gasped as she felt the bark scrape painfully against her arm, but her real fear was for Dong.
‘Are you hurt?’ she asked worriedly.
He shook his head, refusing to be troubled by a few bruises, and bounced back onto his feet.
‘I am well,’ he pronounced.
Clearly this was true, but Olivia knew she had to be sure.
‘I’m getting you to a doctor,’ she said.
The headmistress had arrived on the scene in time to hear this. She was in her late forties with an air of common sense.
‘That’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘He seems fine, but let’s take no chances. There’s a hospital ten minutes away. I’ll call a taxi.’
A few minutes later they were on their way to the hospital. Olivia kept an anxious eye on Dong, but he was grinning, completely happy with the result of his escapade.
In the hospital someone showed them the way to the clinic, and they joined a short queue. A nurse gave Olivia some forms, and she filled them in while they waited to be seen.
A notice on the wall informed her that today’s clinic was being taken by Dr Lang Mitchell. Briefly she wondered about that name; ‘Mitchell’ suggested that he might come from the West, but ‘Lang’ held a hint of Chinese.
After a few minutes the buzzer announced that the doctor was free, and they went in. Olivia saw a tall young man in his early thirties, with dark hair and eyes, and good-looking features that were mostly Western, yet with an intriguing hint of something else.
‘What have you two been doing to yourselves?’ he demanded, smiling and eyeing the state they were in.
‘Miss Daley climbed a tree,’ Dong said irrepressibly, ‘and I went up to help her when she got stuck.’
Olivia looked aghast, which made Dr Mitchell grin in perfect comprehension.
‘Perhaps it was the other way around?’ he suggested.
‘It certainly was,’ Olivia declared, recovering her dignity. ‘On the way down the ladder slipped, and we landed in a heap.’
He studied the forms. ‘You are Miss Olivia Daley, a teacher at the Chang-Ming School?’
‘That’s right. Yen Dong is one of my pupils. I don’t think he’s hurt, but I have to be sure when I hand him back to his mother.’
‘Of course. Let’s have a look.’
After a thorough examination of Dong, he said, ‘I agree that it doesn’t look serious, but we’ll have an X-ray just to be on the safe side. The nurse will take him.’
‘Perhaps I should go too.’
But Dong shook his head, informing her that he was grown up and didn’t need to be protected all the time. When he’d left with the nurse, the doctor switched to English to say, ‘Let’s see about your injuries.’
‘Thank you. But I really don’t need much done.’
Smiling, he said gently, ‘Why don’t you let me decide that?’
‘Sorry,’ she groaned. ‘I just can’t help it. My aunt says if I’d shut up occasionally I might learn something.’
He smiled again but didn’t answer directly. Then he frowned, saying, ‘It might be worse than you think.’
Now she saw the true extent of the damage. The final slide against the bark of the tree had not merely scratched her flesh but torn the top of her sleeve so that it was barely hanging on.
‘I’m afraid I’ll need to remove your blouse,’ Dr Mitchell said. ‘The scratches seem to go further than your arm. Don’t worry, a nurse will be present.’
He went to the door and called, ‘Nurse.’ A smiling young woman entered, removed Olivia’s blouse gently and remained while he studied her abrasions. He eased her arm this way and that with movements that were as neat as they were skilful. His hands were large and comforting, both gentle and powerful together.
Disconcertingly she found herself becoming self-conscious. The blouse was high-necked and modest, even severe, as befitted a teacher, but beneath it she wore only a bra of fairly skimpy dimensions. She had breasts to be proud of, an unusual combination of dainty and luscious. Every bra she possessed had been designed to reveal them to one man, and although he was no longer part of her life she had never discarded them.
It had briefly crossed her mind to substitute underwear that was more sober and serious, but she’d rejected the thought as a kind of sacrilege. Now she wished she’d heeded it. Her generous curves were designed to be celebrated by a lover, not viewed clinically by a man who seemed not to notice that they were beautiful.
But that was as it should be, she reminded herself. The doctor was being splendidly professional, and deserved her respect for the scrupulous way he avoided touching her except when and where necessary. It was just disturbing that his restraint seemed to bring her physically alive in a way that only one man’s touch had before.
He was cleaning her arm, swabbing it gently with cotton wool anointed with a healing spirit.
‘This will sting a little,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, are you all right?’
‘Yes, I—’
‘You jumped. I guess it stings more than I thought. Don’t worry, I’ll soon be finished.’
To her own dismay she’d sounded breathless. She hoped he didn’t guess the reason, or notice the little pulse beating in her throat.
‘Your diagnosis was quite correct,’ he said after a while. ‘Just a light dressing, I think. Nurse?’
The nurse did the necessary work, then helped Olivia back on with her ruined blouse and departed. Dr Mitchell had retired behind his desk.
‘How are you going to get home?’ he asked, eyeing the tear.
‘I look a bit disreputable, don’t I?’ she said with a laugh. ‘But I’ve got this.’ She took a light scarf from her bag and draped it over the spot. ‘And I’ll take a taxi. Just as soon as I know that Dong is all right.’
‘Don’t worry about him. I never saw such a healthy child.’
‘I know,’ she said with a shaky laugh. ‘He’s a rascal, I’m glad to say. No power on earth stops him getting up to mischief. He couldn’t see the highest tree in the playground without wanting to climb it.’
‘And that can be good,’ Dr Mitchell said. ‘Except that other people have to pick up the pieces, and often it is they who get hurt. I was much the same as a boy, and always in trouble for it. But I only recall my teachers reproving me, not risking their own safety to rescue me.’
‘If he’d been seriously hurt, how could I have faced his mother?’
‘But he isn’t seriously hurt, because he had a soft landing on top of you.’
‘Something like that,’ she said ruefully. ‘But nothing hurts me. I just bounce. And I should be getting him back to school soon, or he’ll be late going home.’
‘What about when you go home?’ he asked. ‘Is there anyone there to look after you?’
‘No, I live alone, but I don’t need anyone to look after me.’
He paused a moment before saying, ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be too confident of that.’
‘Why not?’
‘It—can sometimes be dangerous.’
She wanted to ask him what he meant. The air was singing as though two conversations were happening together. Beneath the conventional words, he was speaking silently to a part of her that had never listened before, and it was vital to know more. She drew a breath, carefully framing a question…
‘Here I am,’ came a cheerful voice.
Suddenly she was back on earth, and there was Dong, trotting into the room, accompanied by the nurse with the X-ray.
‘Excellent,’ Dr Mitchell said in a voice that didn’t sound quite natural to Olivia’s ears. But nothing was natural any more.
As predicted, the X-ray showed no injury.
‘Bring him back if he seems poorly,’ Dr Mitchell told her, his tone normal again. ‘But he won’t.’
He showed her out and stood watching as she vanished down the corridor and around the corner. Closing the door, he reached automatically for the buzzer, but stopped. He needed a moment to think before he saw another patient.
He went to stand at the window. Here, two floors high, there was a close-up view of the trees hung with cherry blossom; the promise of spring had been gloriously kept, and still lingered.
Here in China cherry blossom was a symbol of feminine beauty; seemingly delicate, yet laden with hope and promise. Now he saw that wherever he looked it was the same, as fresh new life returned after the cold, bringing hope and joy for those who were eager to embrace it.
On the surface nothing very much had happened. Olivia Daley was strong, independent, concerned not for herself but those in her care, much like the kind of woman a medical man met every day. It might only have been his imagination that beneath her composure was someone else—someone tense, vulnerable, needing help yet defiantly refusing to ask for it.
He could hear her again, insisting, Nothing hurts me. I just bounce.
He wondered if she truly believed herself so armoured to life. For himself, he didn’t believe a word of it.
A few minutes they’d been together, that was all. Yet he’d seen deep into her, and the sad emptiness he’d found there had almost overwhelmed him. He knew too that she’d been as disconcertingly alive to him as he had been to her.
He’d smothered the thought as unprofessional, but now it demanded his attention, and he yielded. She was different from other women. He had yet to discover exactly how different, and caution warned him not to try. Already he knew that he was going to ignore caution and follow the light that had mysteriously appeared on the road ahead.
It was a soft light, flickering and uncertain, promising everything and nothing. But he could no more deny it than he could deny his own self.
‘Is everything all right?’ asked the nurse from the doorway. ‘You haven’t buzzed.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said with an effort. ‘I just—got distracted.’
She smiled, following his gaze to the blossomladen trees. ‘The spring is beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘Beautiful.’
They arrived back at the school to find Mrs Yen, Dong’s mother, waiting with a worried look that cleared as soon as she saw him waving eagerly.
‘Perhaps you should take tomorrow off?’ Mrs Wu, the headmistress, asked when they were finally alone.
‘Thanks, but I won’t need to.’
‘Well, be sure. I don’t want to lose one of my best teachers.’
They had been friends since the day Olivia had joined the school, charged with instructing the children in English. Now Mrs Wu fussed over her kindly until she went to collect her bicycle and rode it to her apartment, ten minutes away.
She had moved in six months ago, when she’d arrived to work in Beijing. Then she had been distraught, fleeing England, desperately glad to be embraced by a different culture which occupied her thoughts and gave her no time to brood. Now her surroundings and her new life were more familiar, but there were still new discoveries to be made, and she enjoyed every day.
She had a settled routine for when she arrived home. After a large cup of tea, she would switch on the computer and enter a programme that allowed her to make video contact with Aunt Norah, the elderly relative in England to whom she felt closest.
London was eight hours behind Beijing, which meant that back there it was the early hours of the morning, but she knew Norah would be ready, having set her alarm to be sure.
Yes, there she was, sitting up in bed, smiling and waving at the camera on top of her computer screen. Olivia waved back.
Norah was an old lady, a great-aunt rather than an aunt, but her eyes were as bright as they’d been her youth, and her vitality was undimmed. Olivia had always been close to her, turning to her wisdom and kindness as a refuge from the selfcentred antics of the rest of her family.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said into the microphone. ‘There was a bit of a kerfuffle at school today.’
She outlined the events of the afternoon, making light of them.
‘And the doctor said you were all right?’
‘He says I’m fine. I’ll have an early night and be fit as a fiddle.’
‘Are you going out with anyone?’
‘You asked me that last night, and the night before. Honestly, Auntie, it’s all you ever think of.’
‘So I should hope. You’re a pretty girl. You ought to be having a good time.’
‘I’m having a wonderful time. And I do have dates. I just don’t want to get serious. Now, tell me about yourself. Are you getting enough sleep?’
There was more in the query than just a desire to change the subject. Norah was in her seventies, and the only thing that had made Olivia hesitate about coming to China was the fear of possibly not seeing her again. But Norah had assured her that she was in the best of health and had urged her to go.
‘Don’t you dare turn down your chance because of me,’ she’d insisted.
‘I’m just trying to be sensible,’ Olivia had protested mildly.
‘Sensible? You’ve got the rest of your life for that sort of nonsense. Get out there, do things you’ve never done before, and forget that man who didn’t deserve you anyway.’
Norah could never forgive the man who’d broken Olivia’s heart.
‘I’m sleeping fine,’ Norah said now. ‘I spent yesterday evening with your mother, listening to her complaining about her latest. That sent me right off to sleep.’
‘I thought Guy was her ideal lover.’
‘Not Guy, Freddy. She’s finished with Guy, or he finished with her, one of the two. I can’t keep up.’
Olivia sighed wryly. ‘I’ll call her and commiserate.’
‘Not too much or you’ll make her worse,’ Norah said at once. ‘She’s a silly woman. I’ve always said so. Mind you, it’s not all her fault. Her own mother has a lot to answer for. Fancy giving her a stupid name like Melisande! She was bound to see herself as a romantic heroine.’
‘You mean,’ Olivia said, ‘that if Mum had been called something dull and sensible she wouldn’t have eloped?’
‘Probably not, although I think she’d have been self-centred whatever she was called. She’s never thought of anyone but herself. She’s certainly never thought of you, any more than your father has. Heaven alone knows what he’s doing now, although I did hear a rumour that he’s got some girl pregnant.’
‘Again?’
‘Yes, and he’s going about preening as though he’s the first man who’s ever managed it. Forget him. The great fool isn’t worth bothering with.’
Thus she dismissed her nephew—with some justice, as Olivia had to admit.
They chatted for a while longer before bidding each other an affectionate goodnight. Olivia delayed just long enough to make herself a basic meal, then fell thankfully into bed, ready to fall asleep at once.
Instead she lay awake, too restless for sleep. Mysteriously, Dr Mitchell had found his way into her thoughts, and she remembered him saying, Other people have to pick up the pieces, and often it is they who get hurt.
He’d given her a look full of wry kindness, as if guessing that she was often the person who had to come to the rescue—which was shrewd of him, she realised, because he’d been right.
As far back as she could remember she’d been the rock of stability in her family. Her parents’ marriage had been a disaster. They’d married young in a fever of romance, had quickly been disillusioned by prosaic reality and had headed for divorce. Since then her mother had remarried and divorced again before settling for lovers. Her father had moved straight onto the lovers.
She herself had been passed from pillar to post, depending on whichever of them had felt she could be most useful. They had lavished noisy affection on her without ever managing to be convincing. Their birthday and Christmas gifts had been expensive, but she’d realised early on that they were aimed at scoring points off each other.
‘Let’s see what your father thinks of that,’ her mother had said, proudly revealing a state-of-the-art, top-of-the-range, laptop. But she’d been too busy to come and see Olivia in the school play, which would have meant far more.
The person who’d always come to school functions was Norah, her father’s aunt. When both her parents had been busy, Olivia had gone to Norah for long visits and found that here was someone she could talk to. Norah had encouraged her to say what she was thinking. She would argue, forcing the girl to define her ideas then enlarge on them, until Olivia had begun to realise that her own thoughts were actually worth discussing—something she’d never discovered with her parents, who could talk only about themselves.
There’d always been a bedroom for her in Norah’s home, and when she’d turned sixteen she’d moved into it full-time.
‘How did that pair of adolescents you call parents react to the idea?’ Norah demanded.
‘I’m not sure they quite realise that I’ve gone,’ Olivia said. ‘He thinks I’m with her, she thinks I’m with him. Oh, what do they matter?’
It was possible to cope with her parents’ selfish indifference because Norah’s love was there like a rock. Even so, it was painful to discover yet again how little they really cared about her.
Eventually her mother asked, ‘Will you be all right with Norah? She’s a bit—you know—’ she’d lowered her voice as though describing some great crime ‘—fuddy-duddy.’
It crossed Olivia’s mind that ‘fuddy-duddy’ might be a welcome quality in a parent, but she said nothing. She’d learned discretion at an early age. She assured her mother that she would be fine, and the subject was allowed to die.
Before leaving, Melisande had one final request.
‘Would you mind not calling me Mum when there are people around? It sounds so middle-aged, and I’m only thirty-one.’
Olivia frowned. ‘Thirty-three, surely? Because I was born when—’
‘Oh, darling, must you be so literal? I only look thirty-one. In fact, I’ve been told I look twenty-five. Surely you understand about artistic licence?’
‘Of course,’ Olivia agreed with a touch of bitterness that passed her mother by. ‘And if I start claiming you as my mother it spoils the effect.’
‘Exactly!’ Melisande beamed, entirely missing the irony in her daughter’s voice. ‘You can call me Melly if you like.’
‘Gosh, thanks, Mum.’
Her mother gave her a sharp look but didn’t make the mistake of replying.
That evening, she told Norah, who was disgusted.
‘Fuddy-duddy! She means I don’t live my life at the mercy of every wind that blows.’
‘She just thinks you know nothing about love,’ Olivia pointed out.
When Norah didn’t answer, she persisted, ‘But she’s wrong, isn’t she? There’s someone you never talk about.’
That was how she’d first heard about Edward, who’d died so long ago that nobody else remembered him, or the volcano he’d caused in the life of the girl who’d loved him. Norah told her only a little that night, but more later on, as Olivia grew old enough to understand.
Norah had been eighteen when she’d met Edward, a young army-officer, nineteen when they’d celebrated his promotion by becoming engaged, and twenty when he’d died, far away in another country. She had never loved another man.
The bleak simplicity of the story shocked Olivia. Later she learned to set it beside her own parents’ superficial romances, and was equally appalled by both.
Had that lesson hovered somewhere in her mind when she too had fallen disastrously in love?
Looking back, she could see that her life-long cynicism about emotion, far from protecting her, had left her vulnerable. She’d determinedly avoided the youthful experiences on which most girls cut their romantic teeth, proud of the way her heart had never been broken because she’d never become involved. But it meant that she’d had no yardstick by which to judge Andy, no caution to warn her of signs that other women would have seen. Her capitulation to him had been total, joyful, and his betrayal had left her defenceless.
She’d fled, seeking a new life here in China, vowing never to make the same mistake again. From now on men would no longer exist. Neither would love, or anything that reminded her of ‘the whole romantic nonsense’ as she inwardly called it. And so she would be safe.
On that comforting thought, she fell asleep.
But tonight her sleep was mysteriously disturbed. Phantoms chased through her dreams, making her hot and cold by turns, causing her blood to race and her heart to pound. She awoke abruptly to find herself sitting up in bed, not knowing when it had happened, not knowing anything, except that suddenly there was no safety in all the world.
Chapter Two
THE next day Olivia felt down from the moment she awoke. The sight of herself in the bathroom mirror was off-putting. Where was the vibrant young woman in her twenties with a slender figure, rich, honey-coloured hair and large blue eyes that could say so much?
‘I don’t think she ever really existed,’ she informed her reflection gloomily. ‘You’re the reality.’
She wondered if she might still be in shock from her nasty fall, but dismissed that as just making excuses.
‘I’m a hag,’ she muttered. ‘I look older than I am. I’m too thin, and my hair is just plain drab. I’ll be going grey next.’
The woman in the mirror stared back, offering not a glimmer of sympathy. Normally Olivia wore her wavy hair long and bouncy but today she pulled it back into an efficient-looking bun. It suited her mood.
The day continued to be glum for no apparent reason. Her students were attentive and well-behaved, lunch was appetizing and her friends on the staff made kindly enquiries as to her health. Mrs Wu even tried to send her home.
‘It’s a reaction to that fall,’ she said. ‘Go home and rest.’
‘Dong doesn’t seem to need rest,’ Olivia pointed out. ‘I actually had to stop him trying to climb that tree again.’
‘It’s up to you,’ the headmistress said sympathetically. ‘But feel free to leave when you feel like it.’
She stuck it out to the end of the day, tired and grumpy, wanting to go home yet not looking forward to the empty apartment. Finally she delivered some papers to the headmistress and slipped out of the building by a side door, instead of the main entrance that she would normally have used. Then she stopped, arrested by the sight that met her eyes.
Dr Mitchell was there.
Now she knew that this moment was always meant to happen.
He was sitting on a low wall near the main entrance. Olivia paused for a moment just as he rose and began to pace restlessly and look at the main door as though expecting somebody to come through it. Occasionally he consulted his watch.
She backed off until she was in shadow under the trees, but still able to see him clearly. She realised that her view of him the day before had been constricted by the surroundings of his office. He was taller than she remembered, not muscular, but lean with a kind of casual elegance that yet hinted at tension and control.
Yesterday he’d been in command on his own territory. Now he was uncertain.
She began to walk towards him, calling, ‘Can I help you?’
His face brightened at once, convincing her that she was the one he’d been awaiting. Mysteriously the day’s cares began to fall away from her.
‘I thought I’d drop in to see how my patients are,’ he said, moving towards her.
‘Do you always do follow-up visits from the clinic?’
He shook his head. His eyes were mischievous.
‘Just this time,’ he said.
‘Thank you. Dong has already gone home, but he’s fine.’
‘But what about you? You were hurt as well.’
‘It was only a few scratches, and I was cared for by an excellent doctor.’
He inclined his head in acknowledgement of her compliment, and said, ‘Still, perhaps I should assure myself that you’re really well.’
‘Of course.’ She stood back to let him enter the building, but he shook his head.
‘I have a better idea. There’s a little restaurant not far from here where we can talk in peace.’
His smile held a query, asking if she would go along with his strategy, and she hurried to reassure him, smiling in return and saying, ‘What a lovely idea!’
‘My car’s just over there.’
To her pleasure he drove to a place that had a look that she thought of as traditionally Chinese. Much of Beijing had been rebuilt in a modern style, but she yearned for the old buildings with their ornate roofs turning up at the corners. Here she found them glowing with light from the coloured lamps outside.
The first restaurant they came to was full. So was the second.
‘Perhaps we should try—’
He was interrupted by a cheerful cry. Turning, they saw a young man hailing him from a short distance away, and urgently pointing down a side street. He vanished without waiting to see if they followed him.
‘We’re caught,’ her companion said ruefully. ‘We’ll have to go to the Dancing Dragon.’
‘Isn’t it any good?’
‘It’s the best—but I’ll tell you later. Let’s go.’
There was no mistaking the restaurant. Painted dragons swirled on the walls outside, their eyes alight with mischief. Inside was small and bright, bustling with life and packed.
‘They don’t have any tables free,’ she murmured.
‘Don’t worry. They always keep one for me.’
Sure enough the man from the street reappeared, pointing the way to a corner and leading them to a small, discreet table tucked away almost out of sight. It had clearly been designed for lovers, and Lang must have thought so too, because he gave a hurried, embarrassed mutter, which Olivia just managed to decipher as, ‘Do you have to be so obvious?’
‘Why not?’ the waiter asked, genuinely baffled. ‘It’s the table you always have.’
Olivia’s lips twitched as she seated herself in the corner, but she controlled her amusement. Dr Mitchell was turning out to be more interesting than she would have guessed.
The restaurant was charming, the lanterns giving out a soft, red light, the walls covered in dragons. She regarded them in delight. Dragons had been part of her love affair with China ever since she’d discovered their real nature.
Raised in England, the only dragon she’d heard of had been the one slain by St George, a devil breathing fire and death, ravaging villages, demanding the sacrifice of innocent maidens, until the heroic knight George had overcome him and become the country’s patron saint as a result.
In China it was different. Here the dragon had always been the harbinger of good luck, wealth, wisdom, a fine harvest. Delightful dragons popped up in every part of life. They danced at weddings, promenaded in parades, breathing their friendly fire and spreading happiness. They were all around her now.
Perhaps that was why she suddenly felt better than she’d done all day. There surely couldn’t be any other reason.
Looking at a dragon painted onto a mirror, she caught sight of her own reflection and realised that her hair was still drawn back severely, which no longer felt right. With a swift movement she pulled at the pins until her tresses were freed, flowing lusciously again, in keeping with her lighter mood.
The dragon winked at her.
While Dr Mitchell was occupied with the waiter, Olivia remembered a duty that she must perform without delay. Whenever she was unable to make computer contact with Norah she always called to warn her so that the old woman wouldn’t be left waiting in hope. Quickly she used her mobile phone and in a moment she heard Norah’s voice.
‘Just to let you know that I’m not at home tonight,’ she said.
‘Jolly good,’ Norah said at once, as Olivia had known she would say. ‘You should go out more often, not waste time talking to me.’
‘But you know I love talking to you.’
‘Yes, I do, but tonight you have more important things to think of. At least, I hope you have. Goodnight, darling.’
‘Goodnight, my love,’ Olivia said tenderly.
She hung up to find her companion regarding her with a little frown.
‘Have I created a problem?’ he asked delicately. ‘Is there someone who—’ he paused delicately ‘—would object to your being with me?’
‘Oh, no! I was talking to my elderly aunt in England. There’s nobody who can tell me who to be with.’
‘I’m glad,’ he said simply.
And she was glad too, for suddenly the shadows of the day had lifted.
‘Dr Mitchell—’
‘My name is Lang.’
‘And mine is Olivia.’
The waiter appeared with tea, filling Olivia’s cup, smiling with pleased surprise as she gave the traditional thank-you gesture of tapping three fingers on the table.
‘Most Westerners don’t know to do that,’ Lang explained.
‘It’s the kind of thing I love,’ she said. ‘I love the story too—about the emperor who went to a teahouse incognito with some friends and told them not to prostrate themselves before him because it would give away his identity. So they tapped their fingers instead. I don’t want to stand out. It’s more fun fitting in.’
When the first dishes were laid out before them, including the rice, he observed her skill using chopsticks.
‘You really know how to do that,’ he observed as they started to eat. ‘You must have been in China for some time.’
He spoke in Mandarin Chinese and she replied in the same language, glad to demonstrate that she was as expert as he.
‘About six months,’ she said. ‘Before that I lived in England most of the time.’
‘Most?’
‘I’ve always travelled a lot to improve my languages. They were all I was ever good at, so I had to make the most of them.’
‘How many languages do you speak?’
‘French, German, Italian, Spanish…’
‘Hey, I’m impressed. But why Chinese?’
‘Pure show-off,’ she chuckled. ‘Everyone warned me it was difficult, so I did it for the fun of proving that I could. That showed ‘em!’
‘I’ll bet it did,’ he said admiringly, reverting to English. ‘And I don’t suppose you found it difficult at all.’
‘Actually, I did, but I kept that to myself. You’re the only person I’ve ever admitted that secret to.’
‘And I promise not to reveal it,’ he said solemnly. ‘On pain of your never speaking to me again.’
She didn’t have to ask what he meant by that. They both knew that the connection between them had been established in those few minutes of devastating consciousness in his surgery, and today he’d come looking for her because he had to.
Olivia thought back to last night, to the disturbance that had haunted her dreams, waking her and refusing to let her sleep again. Instinct told her that it had been the same with him.
They might spend no more than a few fleeting hours in each other’s company, or they might travel a little distance along the road together. Neither could know. But they had to find out.
‘So you came out here to improve your Chinese?’ he asked in a tone that suggested there must be more to it.
‘Partly, but I needed to get away from England for a while.’
He nodded, understanding at once. ‘Was he a real louse?’
‘I thought so at the time, but I think now I had a lucky escape. He almost made me forget my prime directive. But when I discovered what a louse he really was, I realised that the prime directive had been right all the time.’
‘Prime directive,’ he mused, his eyes glinting with amusement. ‘Now, let me see—what would that be? “Only learning matters.” “Life can be reduced to graphs on a page.” How am I doing?’
‘You’re part of the way there, but only part. Beware people, beware relationships—’
‘Beware men!’
‘Hey, you guessed.’
‘It was obviously what you were building up to. Are we all condemned?’
‘It’s not that simple. I don’t just condemn men, I blame women, as well.’
‘Well, that seems to take care of the entire human race. Having disposed of the whole lot of them, let’s go on eating.’
His wryly mocking tone made her laugh.
‘My parents were both wild romantics,’ she went on, ‘and I can’t tell you what a misfortune that is.’
‘You don’t need to. Romance isn’t supposed to be for parents. Their job is to be severe and straight-laced so that their kids have a safety net for indulging in mad fantasies.’
‘Right!’ she said, relieved at his understanding. ‘According to Aunt Norah it was love at first sight, then a whirlwind romance—moon rhyming with June. All that stuff.’
Lang regarded her curiously. Something edgy in the way she’d said all that stuff had alerted him.
‘What happened?’
‘She was seventeen, he was eighteen. Nobody took it seriously at first, just kids fooling around. But then they wanted to get married. The parents said no. He had to go to college. So she got pregnant—on purpose, Norah thinks. They ended up making a runaway marriage.’
‘Wonderfully romantic,’ Lang supplied. ‘Until they came down to earth with a bump. He had to get a job, she found herself with a crying baby….’
‘Apparently I cried more than most—for no reason, according to my mother.’
‘But babies can sense things. You must have known instinctively that she was dissatisfied, wanting to go out and enjoy herself, and your father probably blamed her for his blighted careerprospects.’
She stared at him, awed by this insight.
‘That’s exactly how it was. At least, that’s how Norah says it was. I don’t remember, of course, except that I picked up the atmosphere without knowing why. There was lots of shouting and screaming.
‘It got worse because they both started having affairs. At last they divorced, and I found I didn’t really have a home. I stayed with her, or with him, but I always felt like a guest. If there was a new girlfriend or new boyfriend I’d be in the way and I’d stay with Norah. Then the romance would break up and my mother would cry on my shoulder.’
‘So you became her mother,’ Lang observed.
‘Yes, I suppose I did. And, if that was what romance did to you, I decided I didn’t want it.’
‘But wasn’t there anyone else in your family to show you a more encouraging view of love? What about Norah?’
‘She’s the opposite to them. Her fiancé died years ago. There’s been nobody else for her since, and she’s always told me that she’s perfectly content. She says once you’ve found the right man you can’t replace him with anyone else.’
‘Even when she’s lost him?’
‘But according to Norah she hasn’t lost him. He loved her to the end of his life, so she feels that they still belong to each other.’
‘And you disapprove?’ he asked, frowning a little.
‘It sounds charming, but it’s really only words. The reality is that it’s turned Norah’s life into a desert that’s lasted fifty years.’
‘Perhaps it hasn’t. Do you really know what’s inside her heart? Perhaps it’s given her a kind of fulfilment that we can’t understand.’
‘Of course you could be right, but if that’s fulfilment…’ She finished with a sigh. ‘I just want more from life than dreaming about a man who isn’t there any more. Or,’ she added wryly, ‘in my mother’s case, several men who aren’t there any more.’
‘But what about the louse? Didn’t he change your mind?’
For the first time he saw her disconcerted.
‘I kind of lost the plot there,’ she admitted. ‘But it sorted itself out. Never mind how. I’m wiser now.’
She spoke with a shrug and a cheerful smile, but she had the feeling that he wasn’t fooled. Some instinct was telling him the things she wouldn’t, couldn’t say.
She’d been dazzled by Andy from the first moment. Handsome, charming, intelligent, he’d singled her out, wooed her passionately and had overturned all the fixed ideas of her life. For once she’d understood Norah’s aching fidelity to a dead man. She’d even partly understood the way her mother fell in love so often.
Then, just when she’d been ready to abandon the prejudices of a lifetime, he’d announced that he was engaged to marry someone else. He’d said they’d had a wonderful few months together but it was time to be realistic, wasn’t it?
The lonely, anguished nights that had followed had served to convince her that she’d been right all the time. Love wasn’t for her, or for anyone in their right mind. She couldn’t speak of it, but there was no need. Lang’s sympathetic silence told her that he understood.
‘Tell me about you,’ she hastened to say. ‘You’re English too, aren’t you? What brought you out here?’
‘I’m three-quarters English. The other quarter is Chinese.’
‘Ah,’ she said slowly.
‘You guessed?’
‘Not exactly. You sound English, but your features suggest otherwise. I don’t know—there’s something else…’
She gave up trying to explain. The ‘something else’ in his face seemed to come and go. One moment it almost defined him, the next it barely existed. It intrigued and tempted her with its hint of another, mysterious world.
‘Something different—but it’s not a matter of looks,’ she finished, wishing she could find the right words.
He seemed satisfied and nodded.
‘I know. That “something different” is inside, and it has always haunted me,’ he said. ‘I was born in London, and I grew up there, but I knew I didn’t quite fit in with the others. My mother was English, my father was half-Chinese. He died soon after I was born. Later my mother married an Englishman with two children from a previous marriage.’
‘Wicked stepfather?’ Olivia enquired.
‘No, nothing so dramatic. He was a decent guy. I got on well with him and his children, but I wasn’t like them, and we all knew it.
‘Luckily I had my grandmother, who’d left China to marry my grandfather. Her name was Lang Meihui before she married, and she was an astonishing woman. She knew nothing about England and couldn’t speak the language. John Mitchell couldn’t speak Chinese. But they managed to communicate and knew that they loved each other. He brought her home to London.’
‘She must have found it really hard to cope,’ Olivia mused.
‘Yes, but I’ll swear, nothing has ever defeated her in her life. She learned to speak English really well. She found a way to live in a country that probably felt like being on another planet, and she survived when her husband died ten years later, leaving her with a son to raise alone.
‘He was called Lang too. She’d insisted on that. It was her way of keeping her Chinese familyname alive. When I was born she more or less bullied him into calling me Lang, as well. She told me later that she did it so that “we don’t lose China.”
‘My father died when I was eight years old. When my mother remarried, Meihui moved into a little house in the next street so that she could be near me. She helped my mother with the children, the shopping, anything, but then she slipped away to her own home. And in time I began to follow her.’
He gave her a warm smile. ‘So you see, I had a Norah too.’
‘And you depended on her, just as I did on mine.’
‘Yes, because she was the only one who could make me understand what was different about me. She taught me her language but, more than that, she showed me China.’
‘She actually brought you here?’
‘Only in my head, but if you could have seen the fireworks she set off in there.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘She used to take me out to visit London’s Chinatown, especially on Chinese New Year. I thought I was in heaven—all that colour, the glittering lights and the music—’
‘Oh, yes, I remember,’ Olivia broke in eagerly.
‘You saw it too?’
‘Only once. My mother visited some friends who lived near there, and they took us out a couple of nights to see what was happening. It was like you said, brilliant and thrilling, but nobody could explain it to me. There was a lot of red, and they were supposed to be fighting somebody, but I couldn’t tell who or what.’
‘Some people say they’re fighting the Nian,’ Lang supplied. ‘A mythical beast rather like a lion, who devours crops and children. So they put food out for him and let off firecrackers, because he’s afraid of loud noises and also of the colour red. So you got lots of red and fireworks and lions dancing. What more could a child want?’
‘Nothing,’ Olivia said, remembering ecstatically. ‘Oh, yes, it was gorgeous. So much better than the English New Year celebrations, which always seemed boringly sedate after that.’
‘Me too. It was the one thing I refused ever to miss, and that drove my mother mad, because the date was always changing—late January, mid-February—always lasting fifteen days. Mum complained that she couldn’t plan for anything, except that I’d be useless for fifteen days. I said, “Don’t worry, Mum, I’m always useless”.’ He made a face. ‘She didn’t think that was at all funny.’
‘Your grandmother sounds wonderful,’ Olivia said sincerely.
‘She was. She told me how everyone is born in the year of an animal—a sheep, an ox, a rat, a dragon. I longed to find I was born in the year of the dragon.’
‘And were you?’
He made a face. ‘No, I was born in the year of the rabbit. Don’t laugh!’
‘I’m not laughing,’ she said, hastily controlling her mirth. ‘In this country, the rabbit is calm and gentle, hard-working—’
‘Dull and plodding,’ he supplied. ‘Dreary, conventional—’
‘Observant, intelligent—’
‘Boring.’
She chuckled. ‘You’re not boring, I promise.’
It was true. He delighted her, not with any flashy display of personality, but because his thoughts seemed to reach out and take hers by the hand in a way that, she now realized, Andy had never done.
He gave her a rueful grin.
‘Thank you for those kind words, even if you had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find them.’
‘According to everything I’ve read, there’s nothing wrong with being born in the year of the rabbit.’
‘And you’ve obviously read a lot, so I guess you know your own year.’ He saw her sheepish look and exclaimed, ‘Oh, no, please don’t tell me—!’
‘I’m sorry, I really am.’
‘The year of the dragon?’
‘It not my fault,’ she pleaded.
‘You know what that means, don’t you?’ He groaned. ‘Dragons are free spirits, powerful, beautiful, fearless, they soar above convention, refusing to be bound by rules and regulations.’
‘That’s the theory, but I never felt it quite fitted me,’ she said, laughing and trying to placate him. ‘I don’t see myself soaring.’
‘But perhaps you don’t know yourself too well,’ he suggested. ‘And you’ve yet to find the thing that will make you soar. Or the person,’ he added.
The last words were spoken so quietly that she might have missed them, except that she was totally alive to him. She understood and was filled with sudden alarm. Things were happening that she’d sworn never to allow happen again.
She would leave right now and retreat into the old illusion of safety. All she had to do was rise, apologise and leave, trying to avoid his eyes that saw too much. It was simple, really.
But she didn’t move, and she knew that she wasn’t going to.
Chapter Three
‘THE trouble with soaring,’ she murmured, ‘is that you fall to earth.’
‘Sometimes you do,’ he said gently. ‘But not always.’
‘Not always,’ she murmured. ‘Perhaps.’
But it was too soon. Her nerve failed her and in her mind she crossed hastily to the cautious side of the road.
‘What about your grandmother? What was her year?’
Tactfully he accepted her change of subject without demur.
‘She was a dragon too,’ he said. ‘With her courage and sense of adventure she couldn’t have been anything else—a real dragon lady. Everything she told me about this country seemed to bring me alive, until all I could think of was coming here one day.
‘We planned how we’d make the trip together, but she became very ill. I’d qualified as a doctor by then, and I knew she wasn’t going to recover, but she still talked as though it would happen soon.
‘At last we had to face the truth. On her deathbed she said, “I so much wanted to be there with you.” And I promised her that she would be.’
‘And she has been, hasn’t she?’ Olivia asked, marvelling.
‘Every step of the way,’ he confirmed. ‘Wherever I go, I remember what she told me. Her family welcomed me with open arms.’
‘Did you find them easily?’
‘Yes, because she’d stayed in touch. When I landed at Beijing Airport three years ago there were thirty people to welcome me. They recognised me at once from the pictures she’d sent them, and they all cheered.
‘It’s an enormous family. Not all of them live in Beijing, and many of those who lived further out had come in especially to see Meihui’s grandson.’
‘They weren’t put off by your being threequarters English?’
He laughed. ‘I don’t think they even see that part of me. I’m one of the Lang family. That’s all that counts.’
‘It was clever of your grandmother to name you and your father Lang,’ Olivia mused. ‘In England it’s your first name, but here the family name comes first.’
‘Yes, my uncles are Lang Hai and Lang Jing, my great uncle is Lang Tao, my cousin is Lang Dai, so I fitted in straight away.’
A sudden look of mischief crossed her face. ‘Tell me something—have your stepbrothers given you any nephews and nieces?’
He looked puzzled. ‘Three, but I don’t see…’
‘And I’ll bet they call you Uncle Lang.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And what do the children of the Lang family call you? It can’t be Uncle Lang, because that would be nonsense to them. So I guess they must call you Uncle Mitch.’
A glazed look came into his eyes and he edged away from her with a nervous air that made her laugh.
‘Are you a witch to have such second sight?’ he demanded. ‘Should I be scared?’
‘Are you?’ she teased.
‘A bit. More than a bit, actually. How did you know that?’
‘Logical deduction, my dear Watson. Second sight doesn’t come into it.’
He could see that she was right, but it still left him with an enchanted feeling, as though she could divine what was hidden from others. A true ‘dragon lady’, he thought with delight, with magic arts to entice and dazzle a man.
‘You’re right about my grandmother,’ he said. ‘In her heart, she never really left China.’
‘How did her relatives feel about her marrying an Englishman and leaving the country?’
‘They were very supportive, because it’s in the family tradition.’
‘You all believe in marrying for love?’
‘Much more than that. Marrying in the face of great difficulties, putting love first despite all obstacles. It goes back over two-thousand years.’
‘Two thou…?’ She laughed in astonishment. ‘Are you nobility or something?’
‘No, just ordinary people. Over the centuries my family has tilled the land, sold farm produce, perhaps made just enough money to start a little shop. We’ve been carpenters, wheelwrights, blacksmiths—but never noble, I promise you.’
The arrival of the waiter made him fall silent while plates were cleared away and the next course was served. It was fried pork-belly stewed in soy and wine, and Olivia’s mouth watered at the prospect.
‘We’re also excellent cooks,’ Lang observed, speaking very significantly.
‘You mean…?’
‘This was cooked by my cousin Lang Chao, and the guy who served it is his brother, Lang Wei. Later Wei’s girlfriend, Suyin, will sing for us.’
‘Your family own this restaurant?’
‘That’s why they virtually hijacked us. I wasn’t planning to bring you here because I knew we’d be stared at—if you glance into the corner you’ll see Wei sneaking a peek and thinking we can’t see him—but they happened to spot me in the street, and after that we were lost.’
‘We seem to be providing the entertainment,’ she said, amused. ‘Wei’s enjoying a good laugh over there.’
‘I’m going to strangle him when I get home,’ Lang growled. ‘This is why I didn’t want them to see you because I knew they’d think—Well…’
‘That you’d brought one of your numerous girlfriends here?’ Olivia said.
She was teasing but the question was important.
‘I occasionally bring a lady here to dine,’ he conceded. ‘Purely in a spirit of flirtation. Anything more serious, I wouldn’t bring her here. Or at least,’ he added, grinding his teeth and glaring at the unrepentant Wei, ‘I’d try not to.’
‘No problem.’ Olivia chuckled. ‘You tell him that he’s completely wrong in what he’s thinking, that we’re just a pair of fellow professionals having a quiet meal for companionship. There’s no more to it than that.’
‘No more to it than that,’ he echoed in a comically robotic voice.
‘Then you can strangle him.’
‘That sounds like a good idea. But what do I tell him when I take you out again?’
‘Tell him to mind his own business?’ she suggested vaguely.
‘I can see you’ve never lived with a family like mine.’
‘Wait a minute, you said when you “get home”? You don’t live in the same house, do you?’
‘Sometimes. I have a room there, but also a little place of my own near the hospital where I go if I’ve done a long stint at work and need to collapse. But if I want warmth, noise and cousins driving me crazy I go to the family home, so they tend to know what I do. But next time we’ll avoid this place and have some privacy.’
‘Look—’
‘It’s all right.’ He held up a hand quickly. ‘I don’t mean to rush you. I know you haven’t decided yet. But, when you do, let me know where you want to go.’
Her eyebrows rose at this quiet assurance but his smile disarmed her, making her complicit.
‘I didn’t finish telling you about our tradition,’ he said.
‘Yes, I’m curious. How did a family that had to work so hard come to put such a high value on romantic love? Surely it made more sense for a man to marry the girl whose father owned a strip of land next to his own?’
‘Of course, and many marriages were made for such practical reasons. But the descendants of Jaio and Renshu always hoped for more.’
‘Who were they?’
‘They lived in the reign of the Emperor Qin, of whom I’m sure you’ve heard.’
She nodded. In reading about China, she’d learned about the time when it had been divided into many states. Qin Shi Huang, king of the state of Qin, had conquered the other states, unifying them into one gigantic country. Since Qin was pronounced ‘chin’ the country had come to be called China. Qin had proclaimed himself emperor, and on his death he’d been buried in a splendid mausoleum accompanied by any of his concubines who hadn’t born him a child.
‘One of those concubines was Jaio,’ Lang told her now. ‘She didn’t want to die, and she was in love with Renshu, a young soldier who also loved her. Somehow he managed to rescue her, and they fled together. Of course, they had to spend the rest of their lives on the run, and they only had about five years before they were caught and killed. But by then they’d had a son, who was rescued and spirited away by Jaio’s brother.
‘Nobody heard anything for years, but when the son was an old man he revealed the writings that Jaio and Renshu had left, in which they said that their love had been worth all the hardship. Of course, they had to be kept secret, but the family protected them and still has them to this day.
‘Because of this the Langs have always cherished a belief in love that has seen them through many hard times. Often their neighbours have thought them mad for trusting in love when there were so many more important things in life, but they have clung to their ideals. It was that trust that made Meihui leave China and follow John Mitchell to England. And she never regretted it. She missed her homeland, but she always said that being with the man she loved mattered more than anything in life.’
Hearing these words, Olivia had a strange sense of familiarity. Then she realised that this was exactly what Norah would have said.
She sipped her wine, considering what she had just been told. On the surface it was a conventional legend—charming, a tad sentimental. What made it striking was that this serious man should speak as though it had a deep meaning for him.
‘It’s a lovely story,’ she said wistfully. ‘But did it really happen that way?’
‘Why not?’ he asked, giving her a quizzical smile.
She suppressed the instinct to say, Because it’s too absurdly romantic to be real, and said, ‘I only meant that two-thousand years is a terribly long time. So many things get lost in the mists, and you could never really know if they were true or not.’
‘It’s true if we want it to be,’ he said simply. ‘And we do.’
For a moment she almost queried who ‘we’ were, and then was glad she hadn’t, because he added, ‘All of us, the whole family—my aunts, great-aunts, my uncles, cousins—we all want it to be true. And so it is—for us.’
‘That’s a delightful idea,’ she mused. ‘But perhaps not very practical.’
‘Ah, yes, I’d forgotten that you must always be practical and full of common sense,’ he teased.
‘There’s a lot to be said for it,’ she protested defensively.
‘If you’re a schoolteacher.’
‘Doesn’t a doctor need common sense, as well?’
‘Often, but not always. Sometimes common sense is a much over-rated virtue.’
‘And sometimes it can come to your rescue,’ she said wryly.
She didn’t realise that she’d spoken aloud until she saw him looking at her with a question in his eyes.
‘Has it rescued you very often?’ he asked gently.
‘Now and then. It’s nice to know I can always rely on it.’
‘That’s just what you can’t do!’ he said with sudden urgency. ‘You must never rely completely on your head, because sooner or later it will always let you down.’
‘And you think the heart doesn’t?’ she retorted with a touch of indignation. ‘We’re not all as lucky as Meihui.’
‘Or Norah.’
‘I’d hardly call her lucky.’
‘I would,’ he said at once. ‘The man she loved died, but he didn’t betray her. That makes her luckier than many women, and men too, who live for years with the shadows of failed love, bad memories, regrets. Or the others, who never dared risk love at all and have only thoughts of what might have been if only they’d had a little more courage.’
‘That sounds very fine,’ she said. ‘But the fact is that most people are unlucky in love. Is there really much to choose between taking the risk and regretting it, and deciding not to take it at all?’
‘And regretting that?’
‘And living free,’ she said defiantly. ‘Free of regrets, free of pain—’
‘Free of joy, free of the sense that life is worth living or ever has been?’ he interrupted her firmly. ‘Being free of pain can come at a heavy price.’
How had they strayed into this argument? she wondered. And why? The conversation was becoming dangerous, and she acted instinctively to get back into control.
‘I see Wei coming towards us,’ she said brightly.
If he noticed her abrupt change of subject he didn’t say so. Instead he turned sardonic eyes on his cousin, who bustled forward eagerly, his gaze darting between the two of them.
‘We’d like some fruit, please,’ Lang said firmly. ‘And then, vanish!’
Wei gave him a hurt look and departed with dignity. Lang ground his teeth.
‘Sometimes I think I should have stayed well clear of my family,’ he said.
Fruit was served, then tea, and then it was time for the entertainment. Two girls identically dressed in white-embroidered satin glided in. One, holding a small lute, seated herself, ready to play. The other stood beside her.
The lights dimmed except for the one on the performers. The first notes came from the lute and the singer began to make a soft crooning noise, full of a poignancy that was like joy and sadness combined. As Olivia listened an aching feeling came over her, as though the music had sprung all the locks by which she protected herself, leaving her open and defenceless as she had sworn never to be again.
The girl was singing in a soft voice:
‘The trees were white with blossom.
We walked together beneath the falling petals.
But that is past and you are gone.
The trees do not blossom this year.
Aaaii-eeeii!’
That was how it had been; the trees hadn’t blossomed this year and she knew they never would again. Andy had been an abject lesson in the need to stay detached. In future no man would hurt her like that because she wouldn’t let it happen.
‘The bridge still leads across the river,
Where we walked together.
But when I look down into the water,
Your face is not beside me.
Never again…’
Never again, she thought, not here or anywhere. She closed her eyes for a moment. But suddenly she opened them again, alerted by a touch on her cheek.
‘Don’t cry,’ Lang said.
‘I’m not crying,’ she insisted.
For answer he showed her his fingertips, wet with her tears.
‘Don’t weep for him,’ he said softly.
It would have been useless to utter another denial when he hadn’t believed the first.
‘I get sentimental sometimes.’ She tried to laugh it away. ‘But I’m really over him.’
In the dim light she could see Lang shake his head, smiling ruefully.
‘Perhaps you belong together after all,’ he said. Suddenly he reached into his pocket, took out his mobile phone and pushed it towards her, then he leaned close to murmur into her ear without disturbing the singer.
‘Call him. Say that your quarrel was a mistake, and you love him still. Go on. Do it now.’
The dramatic gesture astonished and intrigued her. With a gasp of edgy laughter, she pushed the phone back to him.
‘Why are you laughing?’ he demanded.
‘I was just picturing his face if he answered the phone and found himself talking to me. There was no quarrel. He left me for someone else. She had a lot of money, so he obviously did the right thing. I believe they’re very happy. She bought him a posh car for a wedding present.’
‘And that makes it the right thing?’ he enquired.
‘Of course.’
‘So if a millionaire proposed you’d accept at once?’
‘No way! He’d have to be a billionaire at least.’
‘I see.’ The words were grave but his lips were slightly quirked, as if he were asking who she thought she was fooling.
But he said nothing more. The music had ended. The singer bowed to the heartfelt applause and embarked on another song, slightly more cheerful. Lang turned his head towards the little stage, but reached back across the table to take hold of Olivia’s hand, and kept it.
She found that her nostalgic sadness had vanished, overtaken by a subtle pleasure that seemed to infuse the whole evening. Everything was a part of it, including the man sitting opposite her, looking away, giving Olivia the chance to study him unobserved.
She could appreciate him like this. His regular features were enough to make him good-looking, but they also had a mobility that was constantly intriguing. His eyes could be bland and conventional, or wickedly knowing in a way that gave him a disconcerting charm. She wondered if there was anyone he regretted from his own past. A warm-natured man in his thirties, with a deep belief in the value of romantic love, had surely not reached this point without some sadness along the road.
She began to muse on the subject, wondering if there was a way to question him without revealing too much interest. There wasn’t, of course, and an alarm bell sounded in her head. This was just the kind of atmosphere she’d learned to fear—seductive, romantic, lulling her senses and her mind in dangerous harmony.
It was time for common sense to take over. In a few minutes she would suggest that the evening should end soon, phrasing it carefully. She began to plan the words, even deciding what she would say when he protested.
Lang was beckoning to Wei, paying the bill, and ordering him to stop giggling and make himself scarce. Wei departed jauntily. Olivia took a deep breath to make her speech.
‘We’d better go,’ Lang said.
‘Pardon?’
‘We both have to work tomorrow, so I’ll get you home quickly. I’m sorry to have kept you out so late.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ she said faintly.
On the journey she wondered what was going to happen now. Lang had recognised that she wasn’t ready for a decision, while subtly implying that he was attracted to her. He was charming and funny, with a quiet, gentle strength that appealed to her, perhaps because she could sense something quirky and irreverent beneath it.
A light-hearted flirtation could be agreeable, but if he wanted more, if he planned to end the evening in her arms—or even in her apartment—what then? A gentle let-down? How did you half-reject someone you more than half-liked? Again she began to think about what she would say to him.
When they arrived, he came with her to the apartment block.
‘How far up are you?’ he asked.
‘Second floor.’
He rode up with her and came to her door.
‘Lang?’ she began uneasily.
‘Yes?’
She lost her nerve. ‘Would you care to come in for a drink?’
‘I certainly want to come in, but not for a drink. Let’s get inside and I’ll explain, although I’m sure you know what the problem is.’
Once inside he took off his jacket and helped her off with hers.
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Lucy Gordon
And The Bride Wore Red
Lucy Gordon
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#ufc30aa58-6bbe-5c8f-9e21-d38ecd6bc21a)
Title Page (#u23dc63db-a169-50f1-8e2d-17a3d3640304)
Dear Reader (#uef2a90d1-4f34-5d6b-a6cc-2525f9f0e381)
About the Author (#uc661d625-7dc8-55b3-bc15-d18c81f2c6ce)
Chapter One (#uc269ce43-1aa2-5c34-9e96-617253150130)
Chapter Two (#ucc5617eb-12a8-51bc-996b-016da38d27a3)
Chapter Three (#uc9490bcb-7d73-53b7-8c0c-5f8617c1a433)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Dear Reader
A couple of years ago I visited China, and was overwhelmed by its beauty, its magnificence and above all its mystery. In Beijing I saw the Forbidden City, where the Emperors lived and where their concubines had their apartments. Later I visited the Terracotta Warriors. I’d heard so much about them, but nothing could have prepared me for their breathtaking, lifelike reality.
After that came a cruise along the Yangtze River, marvelling at the high banks that rise on each side, giving the feeling of being enclosed in a separate world. It could be a perfect place for lovers, as my hero and heroine Lang and Olivia discovered. But at last the outside world intruded, facing them with decisions that threatened to tear them apart.
When they finally found their destiny it was because they were true to themselves, and also because they had answered the magical call of China. It was a call that would always draw them back—just as it has drawn me back, and will do again.
Warm wishes
Lucy Gordon
Lucy Gordon cut her writing teeth on magazine journalism, interviewing many of the world’s most interesting men, including Warren Beatty, Charlton Heston and Roger Moore. She also camped out with lions in Africa, and had many other unusual experiences which have often provided the background for her books. Several years ago, while staying in Venice, she met a Venetian who proposed in two days. They have been married ever since. Naturally this has affected her writing, where romantic Italian men tend to feature strongly.
Two of her books have won the Romance Writers of America RITA® award: SONG OF THE LORELEI in 1990, and HIS BROTHER’S CHILD in 1998, in the Best Traditional Romance category.
You can visit her website at www.lucy-gordon.com
Chapter One
‘OLIVIA, come quickly! There’s been a terrible disaster!’
Olivia looked up from the school books she was marking to where Helma, the young teaching assistant, stood in the doorway. She was only mildly alarmed by the girl’s agitated words. Helma had a wild sense of drama and ‘a terrible disaster’ might mean no more than the school cat making off with someone’s lunch.
‘It’s Yen Dong!’ Helma wailed.
Ten-year-old Dong was the brightest pupil in Olivia’s class at the Chang-Ming School in Beijing. He was also the most mischievous, using his impish charm to evade retribution for his many escapades.
‘What’s he done now?’ Olivia asked. ‘Set a booby trap for the headmistress?’
‘He’s climbed a tree.’
‘Again? Then he can just come down. It’s almost time for afternoon lessons.’
‘But he’s ever so high and I don’t think he can get down.’
Olivia hurried out into the garden that formed the school’s playground and looked up. Sure enough, there was the little rascal, high on the tallest tree, looking cheerful even while hanging on for dear life.
‘Can you climb down?’ Olivia called.
He ventured a step, but his foot slid on the next branch and he backed off hastily.
‘All right, not to worry,’ Olivia said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. ‘I need a ladder.’
One was fetched immediately, but to everyone’s dismay it fell short of Dong by several feet.
‘No problem,’ Olivia sang out, setting her foot on the bottom rung.
Luckily she was wearing jeans, which made climbing easier, and reaching the top of the ladder wasn’t too hard. But the next bit didn’t look so easy. Taking a deep breath, she set her foot on a branch. It trembled but held, and she was emboldened to haul herself up. In another moment she had reached Dong, who gave her a beaming smile.
‘It is very nice up here,’ he said in careful, perfect English. ‘I like climbing trees.’
Olivia looked at him askance. At any other time she would have been delighted with his command of her language. In the six months she’d spent teaching English at the Chang-Ming School, she’d found that Dong was the one who grasped everything first. She was proud of him, but right now she had other things to worry about.
‘I like climbing trees too,’ she said. ‘But I also like getting down safely. So let’s try to do that.’
She began to edge down, encouraging him to follow her so that he descended into the safety of her arms. One branch, then two, then three and finally, to her immense relief, the top rung of the ladder.
‘Just a little further,’ she said. ‘Nearly there.’
But it was the ladder which failed them, sliding away from the tree suddenly and depositing them on the ground with a bump.
Olivia gasped as she felt the bark scrape painfully against her arm, but her real fear was for Dong.
‘Are you hurt?’ she asked worriedly.
He shook his head, refusing to be troubled by a few bruises, and bounced back onto his feet.
‘I am well,’ he pronounced.
Clearly this was true, but Olivia knew she had to be sure.
‘I’m getting you to a doctor,’ she said.
The headmistress had arrived on the scene in time to hear this. She was in her late forties with an air of common sense.
‘That’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘He seems fine, but let’s take no chances. There’s a hospital ten minutes away. I’ll call a taxi.’
A few minutes later they were on their way to the hospital. Olivia kept an anxious eye on Dong, but he was grinning, completely happy with the result of his escapade.
In the hospital someone showed them the way to the clinic, and they joined a short queue. A nurse gave Olivia some forms, and she filled them in while they waited to be seen.
A notice on the wall informed her that today’s clinic was being taken by Dr Lang Mitchell. Briefly she wondered about that name; ‘Mitchell’ suggested that he might come from the West, but ‘Lang’ held a hint of Chinese.
After a few minutes the buzzer announced that the doctor was free, and they went in. Olivia saw a tall young man in his early thirties, with dark hair and eyes, and good-looking features that were mostly Western, yet with an intriguing hint of something else.
‘What have you two been doing to yourselves?’ he demanded, smiling and eyeing the state they were in.
‘Miss Daley climbed a tree,’ Dong said irrepressibly, ‘and I went up to help her when she got stuck.’
Olivia looked aghast, which made Dr Mitchell grin in perfect comprehension.
‘Perhaps it was the other way around?’ he suggested.
‘It certainly was,’ Olivia declared, recovering her dignity. ‘On the way down the ladder slipped, and we landed in a heap.’
He studied the forms. ‘You are Miss Olivia Daley, a teacher at the Chang-Ming School?’
‘That’s right. Yen Dong is one of my pupils. I don’t think he’s hurt, but I have to be sure when I hand him back to his mother.’
‘Of course. Let’s have a look.’
After a thorough examination of Dong, he said, ‘I agree that it doesn’t look serious, but we’ll have an X-ray just to be on the safe side. The nurse will take him.’
‘Perhaps I should go too.’
But Dong shook his head, informing her that he was grown up and didn’t need to be protected all the time. When he’d left with the nurse, the doctor switched to English to say, ‘Let’s see about your injuries.’
‘Thank you. But I really don’t need much done.’
Smiling, he said gently, ‘Why don’t you let me decide that?’
‘Sorry,’ she groaned. ‘I just can’t help it. My aunt says if I’d shut up occasionally I might learn something.’
He smiled again but didn’t answer directly. Then he frowned, saying, ‘It might be worse than you think.’
Now she saw the true extent of the damage. The final slide against the bark of the tree had not merely scratched her flesh but torn the top of her sleeve so that it was barely hanging on.
‘I’m afraid I’ll need to remove your blouse,’ Dr Mitchell said. ‘The scratches seem to go further than your arm. Don’t worry, a nurse will be present.’
He went to the door and called, ‘Nurse.’ A smiling young woman entered, removed Olivia’s blouse gently and remained while he studied her abrasions. He eased her arm this way and that with movements that were as neat as they were skilful. His hands were large and comforting, both gentle and powerful together.
Disconcertingly she found herself becoming self-conscious. The blouse was high-necked and modest, even severe, as befitted a teacher, but beneath it she wore only a bra of fairly skimpy dimensions. She had breasts to be proud of, an unusual combination of dainty and luscious. Every bra she possessed had been designed to reveal them to one man, and although he was no longer part of her life she had never discarded them.
It had briefly crossed her mind to substitute underwear that was more sober and serious, but she’d rejected the thought as a kind of sacrilege. Now she wished she’d heeded it. Her generous curves were designed to be celebrated by a lover, not viewed clinically by a man who seemed not to notice that they were beautiful.
But that was as it should be, she reminded herself. The doctor was being splendidly professional, and deserved her respect for the scrupulous way he avoided touching her except when and where necessary. It was just disturbing that his restraint seemed to bring her physically alive in a way that only one man’s touch had before.
He was cleaning her arm, swabbing it gently with cotton wool anointed with a healing spirit.
‘This will sting a little,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, are you all right?’
‘Yes, I—’
‘You jumped. I guess it stings more than I thought. Don’t worry, I’ll soon be finished.’
To her own dismay she’d sounded breathless. She hoped he didn’t guess the reason, or notice the little pulse beating in her throat.
‘Your diagnosis was quite correct,’ he said after a while. ‘Just a light dressing, I think. Nurse?’
The nurse did the necessary work, then helped Olivia back on with her ruined blouse and departed. Dr Mitchell had retired behind his desk.
‘How are you going to get home?’ he asked, eyeing the tear.
‘I look a bit disreputable, don’t I?’ she said with a laugh. ‘But I’ve got this.’ She took a light scarf from her bag and draped it over the spot. ‘And I’ll take a taxi. Just as soon as I know that Dong is all right.’
‘Don’t worry about him. I never saw such a healthy child.’
‘I know,’ she said with a shaky laugh. ‘He’s a rascal, I’m glad to say. No power on earth stops him getting up to mischief. He couldn’t see the highest tree in the playground without wanting to climb it.’
‘And that can be good,’ Dr Mitchell said. ‘Except that other people have to pick up the pieces, and often it is they who get hurt. I was much the same as a boy, and always in trouble for it. But I only recall my teachers reproving me, not risking their own safety to rescue me.’
‘If he’d been seriously hurt, how could I have faced his mother?’
‘But he isn’t seriously hurt, because he had a soft landing on top of you.’
‘Something like that,’ she said ruefully. ‘But nothing hurts me. I just bounce. And I should be getting him back to school soon, or he’ll be late going home.’
‘What about when you go home?’ he asked. ‘Is there anyone there to look after you?’
‘No, I live alone, but I don’t need anyone to look after me.’
He paused a moment before saying, ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be too confident of that.’
‘Why not?’
‘It—can sometimes be dangerous.’
She wanted to ask him what he meant. The air was singing as though two conversations were happening together. Beneath the conventional words, he was speaking silently to a part of her that had never listened before, and it was vital to know more. She drew a breath, carefully framing a question…
‘Here I am,’ came a cheerful voice.
Suddenly she was back on earth, and there was Dong, trotting into the room, accompanied by the nurse with the X-ray.
‘Excellent,’ Dr Mitchell said in a voice that didn’t sound quite natural to Olivia’s ears. But nothing was natural any more.
As predicted, the X-ray showed no injury.
‘Bring him back if he seems poorly,’ Dr Mitchell told her, his tone normal again. ‘But he won’t.’
He showed her out and stood watching as she vanished down the corridor and around the corner. Closing the door, he reached automatically for the buzzer, but stopped. He needed a moment to think before he saw another patient.
He went to stand at the window. Here, two floors high, there was a close-up view of the trees hung with cherry blossom; the promise of spring had been gloriously kept, and still lingered.
Here in China cherry blossom was a symbol of feminine beauty; seemingly delicate, yet laden with hope and promise. Now he saw that wherever he looked it was the same, as fresh new life returned after the cold, bringing hope and joy for those who were eager to embrace it.
On the surface nothing very much had happened. Olivia Daley was strong, independent, concerned not for herself but those in her care, much like the kind of woman a medical man met every day. It might only have been his imagination that beneath her composure was someone else—someone tense, vulnerable, needing help yet defiantly refusing to ask for it.
He could hear her again, insisting, Nothing hurts me. I just bounce.
He wondered if she truly believed herself so armoured to life. For himself, he didn’t believe a word of it.
A few minutes they’d been together, that was all. Yet he’d seen deep into her, and the sad emptiness he’d found there had almost overwhelmed him. He knew too that she’d been as disconcertingly alive to him as he had been to her.
He’d smothered the thought as unprofessional, but now it demanded his attention, and he yielded. She was different from other women. He had yet to discover exactly how different, and caution warned him not to try. Already he knew that he was going to ignore caution and follow the light that had mysteriously appeared on the road ahead.
It was a soft light, flickering and uncertain, promising everything and nothing. But he could no more deny it than he could deny his own self.
‘Is everything all right?’ asked the nurse from the doorway. ‘You haven’t buzzed.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said with an effort. ‘I just—got distracted.’
She smiled, following his gaze to the blossomladen trees. ‘The spring is beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘Beautiful.’
They arrived back at the school to find Mrs Yen, Dong’s mother, waiting with a worried look that cleared as soon as she saw him waving eagerly.
‘Perhaps you should take tomorrow off?’ Mrs Wu, the headmistress, asked when they were finally alone.
‘Thanks, but I won’t need to.’
‘Well, be sure. I don’t want to lose one of my best teachers.’
They had been friends since the day Olivia had joined the school, charged with instructing the children in English. Now Mrs Wu fussed over her kindly until she went to collect her bicycle and rode it to her apartment, ten minutes away.
She had moved in six months ago, when she’d arrived to work in Beijing. Then she had been distraught, fleeing England, desperately glad to be embraced by a different culture which occupied her thoughts and gave her no time to brood. Now her surroundings and her new life were more familiar, but there were still new discoveries to be made, and she enjoyed every day.
She had a settled routine for when she arrived home. After a large cup of tea, she would switch on the computer and enter a programme that allowed her to make video contact with Aunt Norah, the elderly relative in England to whom she felt closest.
London was eight hours behind Beijing, which meant that back there it was the early hours of the morning, but she knew Norah would be ready, having set her alarm to be sure.
Yes, there she was, sitting up in bed, smiling and waving at the camera on top of her computer screen. Olivia waved back.
Norah was an old lady, a great-aunt rather than an aunt, but her eyes were as bright as they’d been her youth, and her vitality was undimmed. Olivia had always been close to her, turning to her wisdom and kindness as a refuge from the selfcentred antics of the rest of her family.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said into the microphone. ‘There was a bit of a kerfuffle at school today.’
She outlined the events of the afternoon, making light of them.
‘And the doctor said you were all right?’
‘He says I’m fine. I’ll have an early night and be fit as a fiddle.’
‘Are you going out with anyone?’
‘You asked me that last night, and the night before. Honestly, Auntie, it’s all you ever think of.’
‘So I should hope. You’re a pretty girl. You ought to be having a good time.’
‘I’m having a wonderful time. And I do have dates. I just don’t want to get serious. Now, tell me about yourself. Are you getting enough sleep?’
There was more in the query than just a desire to change the subject. Norah was in her seventies, and the only thing that had made Olivia hesitate about coming to China was the fear of possibly not seeing her again. But Norah had assured her that she was in the best of health and had urged her to go.
‘Don’t you dare turn down your chance because of me,’ she’d insisted.
‘I’m just trying to be sensible,’ Olivia had protested mildly.
‘Sensible? You’ve got the rest of your life for that sort of nonsense. Get out there, do things you’ve never done before, and forget that man who didn’t deserve you anyway.’
Norah could never forgive the man who’d broken Olivia’s heart.
‘I’m sleeping fine,’ Norah said now. ‘I spent yesterday evening with your mother, listening to her complaining about her latest. That sent me right off to sleep.’
‘I thought Guy was her ideal lover.’
‘Not Guy, Freddy. She’s finished with Guy, or he finished with her, one of the two. I can’t keep up.’
Olivia sighed wryly. ‘I’ll call her and commiserate.’
‘Not too much or you’ll make her worse,’ Norah said at once. ‘She’s a silly woman. I’ve always said so. Mind you, it’s not all her fault. Her own mother has a lot to answer for. Fancy giving her a stupid name like Melisande! She was bound to see herself as a romantic heroine.’
‘You mean,’ Olivia said, ‘that if Mum had been called something dull and sensible she wouldn’t have eloped?’
‘Probably not, although I think she’d have been self-centred whatever she was called. She’s never thought of anyone but herself. She’s certainly never thought of you, any more than your father has. Heaven alone knows what he’s doing now, although I did hear a rumour that he’s got some girl pregnant.’
‘Again?’
‘Yes, and he’s going about preening as though he’s the first man who’s ever managed it. Forget him. The great fool isn’t worth bothering with.’
Thus she dismissed her nephew—with some justice, as Olivia had to admit.
They chatted for a while longer before bidding each other an affectionate goodnight. Olivia delayed just long enough to make herself a basic meal, then fell thankfully into bed, ready to fall asleep at once.
Instead she lay awake, too restless for sleep. Mysteriously, Dr Mitchell had found his way into her thoughts, and she remembered him saying, Other people have to pick up the pieces, and often it is they who get hurt.
He’d given her a look full of wry kindness, as if guessing that she was often the person who had to come to the rescue—which was shrewd of him, she realised, because he’d been right.
As far back as she could remember she’d been the rock of stability in her family. Her parents’ marriage had been a disaster. They’d married young in a fever of romance, had quickly been disillusioned by prosaic reality and had headed for divorce. Since then her mother had remarried and divorced again before settling for lovers. Her father had moved straight onto the lovers.
She herself had been passed from pillar to post, depending on whichever of them had felt she could be most useful. They had lavished noisy affection on her without ever managing to be convincing. Their birthday and Christmas gifts had been expensive, but she’d realised early on that they were aimed at scoring points off each other.
‘Let’s see what your father thinks of that,’ her mother had said, proudly revealing a state-of-the-art, top-of-the-range, laptop. But she’d been too busy to come and see Olivia in the school play, which would have meant far more.
The person who’d always come to school functions was Norah, her father’s aunt. When both her parents had been busy, Olivia had gone to Norah for long visits and found that here was someone she could talk to. Norah had encouraged her to say what she was thinking. She would argue, forcing the girl to define her ideas then enlarge on them, until Olivia had begun to realise that her own thoughts were actually worth discussing—something she’d never discovered with her parents, who could talk only about themselves.
There’d always been a bedroom for her in Norah’s home, and when she’d turned sixteen she’d moved into it full-time.
‘How did that pair of adolescents you call parents react to the idea?’ Norah demanded.
‘I’m not sure they quite realise that I’ve gone,’ Olivia said. ‘He thinks I’m with her, she thinks I’m with him. Oh, what do they matter?’
It was possible to cope with her parents’ selfish indifference because Norah’s love was there like a rock. Even so, it was painful to discover yet again how little they really cared about her.
Eventually her mother asked, ‘Will you be all right with Norah? She’s a bit—you know—’ she’d lowered her voice as though describing some great crime ‘—fuddy-duddy.’
It crossed Olivia’s mind that ‘fuddy-duddy’ might be a welcome quality in a parent, but she said nothing. She’d learned discretion at an early age. She assured her mother that she would be fine, and the subject was allowed to die.
Before leaving, Melisande had one final request.
‘Would you mind not calling me Mum when there are people around? It sounds so middle-aged, and I’m only thirty-one.’
Olivia frowned. ‘Thirty-three, surely? Because I was born when—’
‘Oh, darling, must you be so literal? I only look thirty-one. In fact, I’ve been told I look twenty-five. Surely you understand about artistic licence?’
‘Of course,’ Olivia agreed with a touch of bitterness that passed her mother by. ‘And if I start claiming you as my mother it spoils the effect.’
‘Exactly!’ Melisande beamed, entirely missing the irony in her daughter’s voice. ‘You can call me Melly if you like.’
‘Gosh, thanks, Mum.’
Her mother gave her a sharp look but didn’t make the mistake of replying.
That evening, she told Norah, who was disgusted.
‘Fuddy-duddy! She means I don’t live my life at the mercy of every wind that blows.’
‘She just thinks you know nothing about love,’ Olivia pointed out.
When Norah didn’t answer, she persisted, ‘But she’s wrong, isn’t she? There’s someone you never talk about.’
That was how she’d first heard about Edward, who’d died so long ago that nobody else remembered him, or the volcano he’d caused in the life of the girl who’d loved him. Norah told her only a little that night, but more later on, as Olivia grew old enough to understand.
Norah had been eighteen when she’d met Edward, a young army-officer, nineteen when they’d celebrated his promotion by becoming engaged, and twenty when he’d died, far away in another country. She had never loved another man.
The bleak simplicity of the story shocked Olivia. Later she learned to set it beside her own parents’ superficial romances, and was equally appalled by both.
Had that lesson hovered somewhere in her mind when she too had fallen disastrously in love?
Looking back, she could see that her life-long cynicism about emotion, far from protecting her, had left her vulnerable. She’d determinedly avoided the youthful experiences on which most girls cut their romantic teeth, proud of the way her heart had never been broken because she’d never become involved. But it meant that she’d had no yardstick by which to judge Andy, no caution to warn her of signs that other women would have seen. Her capitulation to him had been total, joyful, and his betrayal had left her defenceless.
She’d fled, seeking a new life here in China, vowing never to make the same mistake again. From now on men would no longer exist. Neither would love, or anything that reminded her of ‘the whole romantic nonsense’ as she inwardly called it. And so she would be safe.
On that comforting thought, she fell asleep.
But tonight her sleep was mysteriously disturbed. Phantoms chased through her dreams, making her hot and cold by turns, causing her blood to race and her heart to pound. She awoke abruptly to find herself sitting up in bed, not knowing when it had happened, not knowing anything, except that suddenly there was no safety in all the world.
Chapter Two
THE next day Olivia felt down from the moment she awoke. The sight of herself in the bathroom mirror was off-putting. Where was the vibrant young woman in her twenties with a slender figure, rich, honey-coloured hair and large blue eyes that could say so much?
‘I don’t think she ever really existed,’ she informed her reflection gloomily. ‘You’re the reality.’
She wondered if she might still be in shock from her nasty fall, but dismissed that as just making excuses.
‘I’m a hag,’ she muttered. ‘I look older than I am. I’m too thin, and my hair is just plain drab. I’ll be going grey next.’
The woman in the mirror stared back, offering not a glimmer of sympathy. Normally Olivia wore her wavy hair long and bouncy but today she pulled it back into an efficient-looking bun. It suited her mood.
The day continued to be glum for no apparent reason. Her students were attentive and well-behaved, lunch was appetizing and her friends on the staff made kindly enquiries as to her health. Mrs Wu even tried to send her home.
‘It’s a reaction to that fall,’ she said. ‘Go home and rest.’
‘Dong doesn’t seem to need rest,’ Olivia pointed out. ‘I actually had to stop him trying to climb that tree again.’
‘It’s up to you,’ the headmistress said sympathetically. ‘But feel free to leave when you feel like it.’
She stuck it out to the end of the day, tired and grumpy, wanting to go home yet not looking forward to the empty apartment. Finally she delivered some papers to the headmistress and slipped out of the building by a side door, instead of the main entrance that she would normally have used. Then she stopped, arrested by the sight that met her eyes.
Dr Mitchell was there.
Now she knew that this moment was always meant to happen.
He was sitting on a low wall near the main entrance. Olivia paused for a moment just as he rose and began to pace restlessly and look at the main door as though expecting somebody to come through it. Occasionally he consulted his watch.
She backed off until she was in shadow under the trees, but still able to see him clearly. She realised that her view of him the day before had been constricted by the surroundings of his office. He was taller than she remembered, not muscular, but lean with a kind of casual elegance that yet hinted at tension and control.
Yesterday he’d been in command on his own territory. Now he was uncertain.
She began to walk towards him, calling, ‘Can I help you?’
His face brightened at once, convincing her that she was the one he’d been awaiting. Mysteriously the day’s cares began to fall away from her.
‘I thought I’d drop in to see how my patients are,’ he said, moving towards her.
‘Do you always do follow-up visits from the clinic?’
He shook his head. His eyes were mischievous.
‘Just this time,’ he said.
‘Thank you. Dong has already gone home, but he’s fine.’
‘But what about you? You were hurt as well.’
‘It was only a few scratches, and I was cared for by an excellent doctor.’
He inclined his head in acknowledgement of her compliment, and said, ‘Still, perhaps I should assure myself that you’re really well.’
‘Of course.’ She stood back to let him enter the building, but he shook his head.
‘I have a better idea. There’s a little restaurant not far from here where we can talk in peace.’
His smile held a query, asking if she would go along with his strategy, and she hurried to reassure him, smiling in return and saying, ‘What a lovely idea!’
‘My car’s just over there.’
To her pleasure he drove to a place that had a look that she thought of as traditionally Chinese. Much of Beijing had been rebuilt in a modern style, but she yearned for the old buildings with their ornate roofs turning up at the corners. Here she found them glowing with light from the coloured lamps outside.
The first restaurant they came to was full. So was the second.
‘Perhaps we should try—’
He was interrupted by a cheerful cry. Turning, they saw a young man hailing him from a short distance away, and urgently pointing down a side street. He vanished without waiting to see if they followed him.
‘We’re caught,’ her companion said ruefully. ‘We’ll have to go to the Dancing Dragon.’
‘Isn’t it any good?’
‘It’s the best—but I’ll tell you later. Let’s go.’
There was no mistaking the restaurant. Painted dragons swirled on the walls outside, their eyes alight with mischief. Inside was small and bright, bustling with life and packed.
‘They don’t have any tables free,’ she murmured.
‘Don’t worry. They always keep one for me.’
Sure enough the man from the street reappeared, pointing the way to a corner and leading them to a small, discreet table tucked away almost out of sight. It had clearly been designed for lovers, and Lang must have thought so too, because he gave a hurried, embarrassed mutter, which Olivia just managed to decipher as, ‘Do you have to be so obvious?’
‘Why not?’ the waiter asked, genuinely baffled. ‘It’s the table you always have.’
Olivia’s lips twitched as she seated herself in the corner, but she controlled her amusement. Dr Mitchell was turning out to be more interesting than she would have guessed.
The restaurant was charming, the lanterns giving out a soft, red light, the walls covered in dragons. She regarded them in delight. Dragons had been part of her love affair with China ever since she’d discovered their real nature.
Raised in England, the only dragon she’d heard of had been the one slain by St George, a devil breathing fire and death, ravaging villages, demanding the sacrifice of innocent maidens, until the heroic knight George had overcome him and become the country’s patron saint as a result.
In China it was different. Here the dragon had always been the harbinger of good luck, wealth, wisdom, a fine harvest. Delightful dragons popped up in every part of life. They danced at weddings, promenaded in parades, breathing their friendly fire and spreading happiness. They were all around her now.
Perhaps that was why she suddenly felt better than she’d done all day. There surely couldn’t be any other reason.
Looking at a dragon painted onto a mirror, she caught sight of her own reflection and realised that her hair was still drawn back severely, which no longer felt right. With a swift movement she pulled at the pins until her tresses were freed, flowing lusciously again, in keeping with her lighter mood.
The dragon winked at her.
While Dr Mitchell was occupied with the waiter, Olivia remembered a duty that she must perform without delay. Whenever she was unable to make computer contact with Norah she always called to warn her so that the old woman wouldn’t be left waiting in hope. Quickly she used her mobile phone and in a moment she heard Norah’s voice.
‘Just to let you know that I’m not at home tonight,’ she said.
‘Jolly good,’ Norah said at once, as Olivia had known she would say. ‘You should go out more often, not waste time talking to me.’
‘But you know I love talking to you.’
‘Yes, I do, but tonight you have more important things to think of. At least, I hope you have. Goodnight, darling.’
‘Goodnight, my love,’ Olivia said tenderly.
She hung up to find her companion regarding her with a little frown.
‘Have I created a problem?’ he asked delicately. ‘Is there someone who—’ he paused delicately ‘—would object to your being with me?’
‘Oh, no! I was talking to my elderly aunt in England. There’s nobody who can tell me who to be with.’
‘I’m glad,’ he said simply.
And she was glad too, for suddenly the shadows of the day had lifted.
‘Dr Mitchell—’
‘My name is Lang.’
‘And mine is Olivia.’
The waiter appeared with tea, filling Olivia’s cup, smiling with pleased surprise as she gave the traditional thank-you gesture of tapping three fingers on the table.
‘Most Westerners don’t know to do that,’ Lang explained.
‘It’s the kind of thing I love,’ she said. ‘I love the story too—about the emperor who went to a teahouse incognito with some friends and told them not to prostrate themselves before him because it would give away his identity. So they tapped their fingers instead. I don’t want to stand out. It’s more fun fitting in.’
When the first dishes were laid out before them, including the rice, he observed her skill using chopsticks.
‘You really know how to do that,’ he observed as they started to eat. ‘You must have been in China for some time.’
He spoke in Mandarin Chinese and she replied in the same language, glad to demonstrate that she was as expert as he.
‘About six months,’ she said. ‘Before that I lived in England most of the time.’
‘Most?’
‘I’ve always travelled a lot to improve my languages. They were all I was ever good at, so I had to make the most of them.’
‘How many languages do you speak?’
‘French, German, Italian, Spanish…’
‘Hey, I’m impressed. But why Chinese?’
‘Pure show-off,’ she chuckled. ‘Everyone warned me it was difficult, so I did it for the fun of proving that I could. That showed ‘em!’
‘I’ll bet it did,’ he said admiringly, reverting to English. ‘And I don’t suppose you found it difficult at all.’
‘Actually, I did, but I kept that to myself. You’re the only person I’ve ever admitted that secret to.’
‘And I promise not to reveal it,’ he said solemnly. ‘On pain of your never speaking to me again.’
She didn’t have to ask what he meant by that. They both knew that the connection between them had been established in those few minutes of devastating consciousness in his surgery, and today he’d come looking for her because he had to.
Olivia thought back to last night, to the disturbance that had haunted her dreams, waking her and refusing to let her sleep again. Instinct told her that it had been the same with him.
They might spend no more than a few fleeting hours in each other’s company, or they might travel a little distance along the road together. Neither could know. But they had to find out.
‘So you came out here to improve your Chinese?’ he asked in a tone that suggested there must be more to it.
‘Partly, but I needed to get away from England for a while.’
He nodded, understanding at once. ‘Was he a real louse?’
‘I thought so at the time, but I think now I had a lucky escape. He almost made me forget my prime directive. But when I discovered what a louse he really was, I realised that the prime directive had been right all the time.’
‘Prime directive,’ he mused, his eyes glinting with amusement. ‘Now, let me see—what would that be? “Only learning matters.” “Life can be reduced to graphs on a page.” How am I doing?’
‘You’re part of the way there, but only part. Beware people, beware relationships—’
‘Beware men!’
‘Hey, you guessed.’
‘It was obviously what you were building up to. Are we all condemned?’
‘It’s not that simple. I don’t just condemn men, I blame women, as well.’
‘Well, that seems to take care of the entire human race. Having disposed of the whole lot of them, let’s go on eating.’
His wryly mocking tone made her laugh.
‘My parents were both wild romantics,’ she went on, ‘and I can’t tell you what a misfortune that is.’
‘You don’t need to. Romance isn’t supposed to be for parents. Their job is to be severe and straight-laced so that their kids have a safety net for indulging in mad fantasies.’
‘Right!’ she said, relieved at his understanding. ‘According to Aunt Norah it was love at first sight, then a whirlwind romance—moon rhyming with June. All that stuff.’
Lang regarded her curiously. Something edgy in the way she’d said all that stuff had alerted him.
‘What happened?’
‘She was seventeen, he was eighteen. Nobody took it seriously at first, just kids fooling around. But then they wanted to get married. The parents said no. He had to go to college. So she got pregnant—on purpose, Norah thinks. They ended up making a runaway marriage.’
‘Wonderfully romantic,’ Lang supplied. ‘Until they came down to earth with a bump. He had to get a job, she found herself with a crying baby….’
‘Apparently I cried more than most—for no reason, according to my mother.’
‘But babies can sense things. You must have known instinctively that she was dissatisfied, wanting to go out and enjoy herself, and your father probably blamed her for his blighted careerprospects.’
She stared at him, awed by this insight.
‘That’s exactly how it was. At least, that’s how Norah says it was. I don’t remember, of course, except that I picked up the atmosphere without knowing why. There was lots of shouting and screaming.
‘It got worse because they both started having affairs. At last they divorced, and I found I didn’t really have a home. I stayed with her, or with him, but I always felt like a guest. If there was a new girlfriend or new boyfriend I’d be in the way and I’d stay with Norah. Then the romance would break up and my mother would cry on my shoulder.’
‘So you became her mother,’ Lang observed.
‘Yes, I suppose I did. And, if that was what romance did to you, I decided I didn’t want it.’
‘But wasn’t there anyone else in your family to show you a more encouraging view of love? What about Norah?’
‘She’s the opposite to them. Her fiancé died years ago. There’s been nobody else for her since, and she’s always told me that she’s perfectly content. She says once you’ve found the right man you can’t replace him with anyone else.’
‘Even when she’s lost him?’
‘But according to Norah she hasn’t lost him. He loved her to the end of his life, so she feels that they still belong to each other.’
‘And you disapprove?’ he asked, frowning a little.
‘It sounds charming, but it’s really only words. The reality is that it’s turned Norah’s life into a desert that’s lasted fifty years.’
‘Perhaps it hasn’t. Do you really know what’s inside her heart? Perhaps it’s given her a kind of fulfilment that we can’t understand.’
‘Of course you could be right, but if that’s fulfilment…’ She finished with a sigh. ‘I just want more from life than dreaming about a man who isn’t there any more. Or,’ she added wryly, ‘in my mother’s case, several men who aren’t there any more.’
‘But what about the louse? Didn’t he change your mind?’
For the first time he saw her disconcerted.
‘I kind of lost the plot there,’ she admitted. ‘But it sorted itself out. Never mind how. I’m wiser now.’
She spoke with a shrug and a cheerful smile, but she had the feeling that he wasn’t fooled. Some instinct was telling him the things she wouldn’t, couldn’t say.
She’d been dazzled by Andy from the first moment. Handsome, charming, intelligent, he’d singled her out, wooed her passionately and had overturned all the fixed ideas of her life. For once she’d understood Norah’s aching fidelity to a dead man. She’d even partly understood the way her mother fell in love so often.
Then, just when she’d been ready to abandon the prejudices of a lifetime, he’d announced that he was engaged to marry someone else. He’d said they’d had a wonderful few months together but it was time to be realistic, wasn’t it?
The lonely, anguished nights that had followed had served to convince her that she’d been right all the time. Love wasn’t for her, or for anyone in their right mind. She couldn’t speak of it, but there was no need. Lang’s sympathetic silence told her that he understood.
‘Tell me about you,’ she hastened to say. ‘You’re English too, aren’t you? What brought you out here?’
‘I’m three-quarters English. The other quarter is Chinese.’
‘Ah,’ she said slowly.
‘You guessed?’
‘Not exactly. You sound English, but your features suggest otherwise. I don’t know—there’s something else…’
She gave up trying to explain. The ‘something else’ in his face seemed to come and go. One moment it almost defined him, the next it barely existed. It intrigued and tempted her with its hint of another, mysterious world.
‘Something different—but it’s not a matter of looks,’ she finished, wishing she could find the right words.
He seemed satisfied and nodded.
‘I know. That “something different” is inside, and it has always haunted me,’ he said. ‘I was born in London, and I grew up there, but I knew I didn’t quite fit in with the others. My mother was English, my father was half-Chinese. He died soon after I was born. Later my mother married an Englishman with two children from a previous marriage.’
‘Wicked stepfather?’ Olivia enquired.
‘No, nothing so dramatic. He was a decent guy. I got on well with him and his children, but I wasn’t like them, and we all knew it.
‘Luckily I had my grandmother, who’d left China to marry my grandfather. Her name was Lang Meihui before she married, and she was an astonishing woman. She knew nothing about England and couldn’t speak the language. John Mitchell couldn’t speak Chinese. But they managed to communicate and knew that they loved each other. He brought her home to London.’
‘She must have found it really hard to cope,’ Olivia mused.
‘Yes, but I’ll swear, nothing has ever defeated her in her life. She learned to speak English really well. She found a way to live in a country that probably felt like being on another planet, and she survived when her husband died ten years later, leaving her with a son to raise alone.
‘He was called Lang too. She’d insisted on that. It was her way of keeping her Chinese familyname alive. When I was born she more or less bullied him into calling me Lang, as well. She told me later that she did it so that “we don’t lose China.”
‘My father died when I was eight years old. When my mother remarried, Meihui moved into a little house in the next street so that she could be near me. She helped my mother with the children, the shopping, anything, but then she slipped away to her own home. And in time I began to follow her.’
He gave her a warm smile. ‘So you see, I had a Norah too.’
‘And you depended on her, just as I did on mine.’
‘Yes, because she was the only one who could make me understand what was different about me. She taught me her language but, more than that, she showed me China.’
‘She actually brought you here?’
‘Only in my head, but if you could have seen the fireworks she set off in there.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘She used to take me out to visit London’s Chinatown, especially on Chinese New Year. I thought I was in heaven—all that colour, the glittering lights and the music—’
‘Oh, yes, I remember,’ Olivia broke in eagerly.
‘You saw it too?’
‘Only once. My mother visited some friends who lived near there, and they took us out a couple of nights to see what was happening. It was like you said, brilliant and thrilling, but nobody could explain it to me. There was a lot of red, and they were supposed to be fighting somebody, but I couldn’t tell who or what.’
‘Some people say they’re fighting the Nian,’ Lang supplied. ‘A mythical beast rather like a lion, who devours crops and children. So they put food out for him and let off firecrackers, because he’s afraid of loud noises and also of the colour red. So you got lots of red and fireworks and lions dancing. What more could a child want?’
‘Nothing,’ Olivia said, remembering ecstatically. ‘Oh, yes, it was gorgeous. So much better than the English New Year celebrations, which always seemed boringly sedate after that.’
‘Me too. It was the one thing I refused ever to miss, and that drove my mother mad, because the date was always changing—late January, mid-February—always lasting fifteen days. Mum complained that she couldn’t plan for anything, except that I’d be useless for fifteen days. I said, “Don’t worry, Mum, I’m always useless”.’ He made a face. ‘She didn’t think that was at all funny.’
‘Your grandmother sounds wonderful,’ Olivia said sincerely.
‘She was. She told me how everyone is born in the year of an animal—a sheep, an ox, a rat, a dragon. I longed to find I was born in the year of the dragon.’
‘And were you?’
He made a face. ‘No, I was born in the year of the rabbit. Don’t laugh!’
‘I’m not laughing,’ she said, hastily controlling her mirth. ‘In this country, the rabbit is calm and gentle, hard-working—’
‘Dull and plodding,’ he supplied. ‘Dreary, conventional—’
‘Observant, intelligent—’
‘Boring.’
She chuckled. ‘You’re not boring, I promise.’
It was true. He delighted her, not with any flashy display of personality, but because his thoughts seemed to reach out and take hers by the hand in a way that, she now realized, Andy had never done.
He gave her a rueful grin.
‘Thank you for those kind words, even if you had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find them.’
‘According to everything I’ve read, there’s nothing wrong with being born in the year of the rabbit.’
‘And you’ve obviously read a lot, so I guess you know your own year.’ He saw her sheepish look and exclaimed, ‘Oh, no, please don’t tell me—!’
‘I’m sorry, I really am.’
‘The year of the dragon?’
‘It not my fault,’ she pleaded.
‘You know what that means, don’t you?’ He groaned. ‘Dragons are free spirits, powerful, beautiful, fearless, they soar above convention, refusing to be bound by rules and regulations.’
‘That’s the theory, but I never felt it quite fitted me,’ she said, laughing and trying to placate him. ‘I don’t see myself soaring.’
‘But perhaps you don’t know yourself too well,’ he suggested. ‘And you’ve yet to find the thing that will make you soar. Or the person,’ he added.
The last words were spoken so quietly that she might have missed them, except that she was totally alive to him. She understood and was filled with sudden alarm. Things were happening that she’d sworn never to allow happen again.
She would leave right now and retreat into the old illusion of safety. All she had to do was rise, apologise and leave, trying to avoid his eyes that saw too much. It was simple, really.
But she didn’t move, and she knew that she wasn’t going to.
Chapter Three
‘THE trouble with soaring,’ she murmured, ‘is that you fall to earth.’
‘Sometimes you do,’ he said gently. ‘But not always.’
‘Not always,’ she murmured. ‘Perhaps.’
But it was too soon. Her nerve failed her and in her mind she crossed hastily to the cautious side of the road.
‘What about your grandmother? What was her year?’
Tactfully he accepted her change of subject without demur.
‘She was a dragon too,’ he said. ‘With her courage and sense of adventure she couldn’t have been anything else—a real dragon lady. Everything she told me about this country seemed to bring me alive, until all I could think of was coming here one day.
‘We planned how we’d make the trip together, but she became very ill. I’d qualified as a doctor by then, and I knew she wasn’t going to recover, but she still talked as though it would happen soon.
‘At last we had to face the truth. On her deathbed she said, “I so much wanted to be there with you.” And I promised her that she would be.’
‘And she has been, hasn’t she?’ Olivia asked, marvelling.
‘Every step of the way,’ he confirmed. ‘Wherever I go, I remember what she told me. Her family welcomed me with open arms.’
‘Did you find them easily?’
‘Yes, because she’d stayed in touch. When I landed at Beijing Airport three years ago there were thirty people to welcome me. They recognised me at once from the pictures she’d sent them, and they all cheered.
‘It’s an enormous family. Not all of them live in Beijing, and many of those who lived further out had come in especially to see Meihui’s grandson.’
‘They weren’t put off by your being threequarters English?’
He laughed. ‘I don’t think they even see that part of me. I’m one of the Lang family. That’s all that counts.’
‘It was clever of your grandmother to name you and your father Lang,’ Olivia mused. ‘In England it’s your first name, but here the family name comes first.’
‘Yes, my uncles are Lang Hai and Lang Jing, my great uncle is Lang Tao, my cousin is Lang Dai, so I fitted in straight away.’
A sudden look of mischief crossed her face. ‘Tell me something—have your stepbrothers given you any nephews and nieces?’
He looked puzzled. ‘Three, but I don’t see…’
‘And I’ll bet they call you Uncle Lang.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And what do the children of the Lang family call you? It can’t be Uncle Lang, because that would be nonsense to them. So I guess they must call you Uncle Mitch.’
A glazed look came into his eyes and he edged away from her with a nervous air that made her laugh.
‘Are you a witch to have such second sight?’ he demanded. ‘Should I be scared?’
‘Are you?’ she teased.
‘A bit. More than a bit, actually. How did you know that?’
‘Logical deduction, my dear Watson. Second sight doesn’t come into it.’
He could see that she was right, but it still left him with an enchanted feeling, as though she could divine what was hidden from others. A true ‘dragon lady’, he thought with delight, with magic arts to entice and dazzle a man.
‘You’re right about my grandmother,’ he said. ‘In her heart, she never really left China.’
‘How did her relatives feel about her marrying an Englishman and leaving the country?’
‘They were very supportive, because it’s in the family tradition.’
‘You all believe in marrying for love?’
‘Much more than that. Marrying in the face of great difficulties, putting love first despite all obstacles. It goes back over two-thousand years.’
‘Two thou…?’ She laughed in astonishment. ‘Are you nobility or something?’
‘No, just ordinary people. Over the centuries my family has tilled the land, sold farm produce, perhaps made just enough money to start a little shop. We’ve been carpenters, wheelwrights, blacksmiths—but never noble, I promise you.’
The arrival of the waiter made him fall silent while plates were cleared away and the next course was served. It was fried pork-belly stewed in soy and wine, and Olivia’s mouth watered at the prospect.
‘We’re also excellent cooks,’ Lang observed, speaking very significantly.
‘You mean…?’
‘This was cooked by my cousin Lang Chao, and the guy who served it is his brother, Lang Wei. Later Wei’s girlfriend, Suyin, will sing for us.’
‘Your family own this restaurant?’
‘That’s why they virtually hijacked us. I wasn’t planning to bring you here because I knew we’d be stared at—if you glance into the corner you’ll see Wei sneaking a peek and thinking we can’t see him—but they happened to spot me in the street, and after that we were lost.’
‘We seem to be providing the entertainment,’ she said, amused. ‘Wei’s enjoying a good laugh over there.’
‘I’m going to strangle him when I get home,’ Lang growled. ‘This is why I didn’t want them to see you because I knew they’d think—Well…’
‘That you’d brought one of your numerous girlfriends here?’ Olivia said.
She was teasing but the question was important.
‘I occasionally bring a lady here to dine,’ he conceded. ‘Purely in a spirit of flirtation. Anything more serious, I wouldn’t bring her here. Or at least,’ he added, grinding his teeth and glaring at the unrepentant Wei, ‘I’d try not to.’
‘No problem.’ Olivia chuckled. ‘You tell him that he’s completely wrong in what he’s thinking, that we’re just a pair of fellow professionals having a quiet meal for companionship. There’s no more to it than that.’
‘No more to it than that,’ he echoed in a comically robotic voice.
‘Then you can strangle him.’
‘That sounds like a good idea. But what do I tell him when I take you out again?’
‘Tell him to mind his own business?’ she suggested vaguely.
‘I can see you’ve never lived with a family like mine.’
‘Wait a minute, you said when you “get home”? You don’t live in the same house, do you?’
‘Sometimes. I have a room there, but also a little place of my own near the hospital where I go if I’ve done a long stint at work and need to collapse. But if I want warmth, noise and cousins driving me crazy I go to the family home, so they tend to know what I do. But next time we’ll avoid this place and have some privacy.’
‘Look—’
‘It’s all right.’ He held up a hand quickly. ‘I don’t mean to rush you. I know you haven’t decided yet. But, when you do, let me know where you want to go.’
Her eyebrows rose at this quiet assurance but his smile disarmed her, making her complicit.
‘I didn’t finish telling you about our tradition,’ he said.
‘Yes, I’m curious. How did a family that had to work so hard come to put such a high value on romantic love? Surely it made more sense for a man to marry the girl whose father owned a strip of land next to his own?’
‘Of course, and many marriages were made for such practical reasons. But the descendants of Jaio and Renshu always hoped for more.’
‘Who were they?’
‘They lived in the reign of the Emperor Qin, of whom I’m sure you’ve heard.’
She nodded. In reading about China, she’d learned about the time when it had been divided into many states. Qin Shi Huang, king of the state of Qin, had conquered the other states, unifying them into one gigantic country. Since Qin was pronounced ‘chin’ the country had come to be called China. Qin had proclaimed himself emperor, and on his death he’d been buried in a splendid mausoleum accompanied by any of his concubines who hadn’t born him a child.
‘One of those concubines was Jaio,’ Lang told her now. ‘She didn’t want to die, and she was in love with Renshu, a young soldier who also loved her. Somehow he managed to rescue her, and they fled together. Of course, they had to spend the rest of their lives on the run, and they only had about five years before they were caught and killed. But by then they’d had a son, who was rescued and spirited away by Jaio’s brother.
‘Nobody heard anything for years, but when the son was an old man he revealed the writings that Jaio and Renshu had left, in which they said that their love had been worth all the hardship. Of course, they had to be kept secret, but the family protected them and still has them to this day.
‘Because of this the Langs have always cherished a belief in love that has seen them through many hard times. Often their neighbours have thought them mad for trusting in love when there were so many more important things in life, but they have clung to their ideals. It was that trust that made Meihui leave China and follow John Mitchell to England. And she never regretted it. She missed her homeland, but she always said that being with the man she loved mattered more than anything in life.’
Hearing these words, Olivia had a strange sense of familiarity. Then she realised that this was exactly what Norah would have said.
She sipped her wine, considering what she had just been told. On the surface it was a conventional legend—charming, a tad sentimental. What made it striking was that this serious man should speak as though it had a deep meaning for him.
‘It’s a lovely story,’ she said wistfully. ‘But did it really happen that way?’
‘Why not?’ he asked, giving her a quizzical smile.
She suppressed the instinct to say, Because it’s too absurdly romantic to be real, and said, ‘I only meant that two-thousand years is a terribly long time. So many things get lost in the mists, and you could never really know if they were true or not.’
‘It’s true if we want it to be,’ he said simply. ‘And we do.’
For a moment she almost queried who ‘we’ were, and then was glad she hadn’t, because he added, ‘All of us, the whole family—my aunts, great-aunts, my uncles, cousins—we all want it to be true. And so it is—for us.’
‘That’s a delightful idea,’ she mused. ‘But perhaps not very practical.’
‘Ah, yes, I’d forgotten that you must always be practical and full of common sense,’ he teased.
‘There’s a lot to be said for it,’ she protested defensively.
‘If you’re a schoolteacher.’
‘Doesn’t a doctor need common sense, as well?’
‘Often, but not always. Sometimes common sense is a much over-rated virtue.’
‘And sometimes it can come to your rescue,’ she said wryly.
She didn’t realise that she’d spoken aloud until she saw him looking at her with a question in his eyes.
‘Has it rescued you very often?’ he asked gently.
‘Now and then. It’s nice to know I can always rely on it.’
‘That’s just what you can’t do!’ he said with sudden urgency. ‘You must never rely completely on your head, because sooner or later it will always let you down.’
‘And you think the heart doesn’t?’ she retorted with a touch of indignation. ‘We’re not all as lucky as Meihui.’
‘Or Norah.’
‘I’d hardly call her lucky.’
‘I would,’ he said at once. ‘The man she loved died, but he didn’t betray her. That makes her luckier than many women, and men too, who live for years with the shadows of failed love, bad memories, regrets. Or the others, who never dared risk love at all and have only thoughts of what might have been if only they’d had a little more courage.’
‘That sounds very fine,’ she said. ‘But the fact is that most people are unlucky in love. Is there really much to choose between taking the risk and regretting it, and deciding not to take it at all?’
‘And regretting that?’
‘And living free,’ she said defiantly. ‘Free of regrets, free of pain—’
‘Free of joy, free of the sense that life is worth living or ever has been?’ he interrupted her firmly. ‘Being free of pain can come at a heavy price.’
How had they strayed into this argument? she wondered. And why? The conversation was becoming dangerous, and she acted instinctively to get back into control.
‘I see Wei coming towards us,’ she said brightly.
If he noticed her abrupt change of subject he didn’t say so. Instead he turned sardonic eyes on his cousin, who bustled forward eagerly, his gaze darting between the two of them.
‘We’d like some fruit, please,’ Lang said firmly. ‘And then, vanish!’
Wei gave him a hurt look and departed with dignity. Lang ground his teeth.
‘Sometimes I think I should have stayed well clear of my family,’ he said.
Fruit was served, then tea, and then it was time for the entertainment. Two girls identically dressed in white-embroidered satin glided in. One, holding a small lute, seated herself, ready to play. The other stood beside her.
The lights dimmed except for the one on the performers. The first notes came from the lute and the singer began to make a soft crooning noise, full of a poignancy that was like joy and sadness combined. As Olivia listened an aching feeling came over her, as though the music had sprung all the locks by which she protected herself, leaving her open and defenceless as she had sworn never to be again.
The girl was singing in a soft voice:
‘The trees were white with blossom.
We walked together beneath the falling petals.
But that is past and you are gone.
The trees do not blossom this year.
Aaaii-eeeii!’
That was how it had been; the trees hadn’t blossomed this year and she knew they never would again. Andy had been an abject lesson in the need to stay detached. In future no man would hurt her like that because she wouldn’t let it happen.
‘The bridge still leads across the river,
Where we walked together.
But when I look down into the water,
Your face is not beside me.
Never again…’
Never again, she thought, not here or anywhere. She closed her eyes for a moment. But suddenly she opened them again, alerted by a touch on her cheek.
‘Don’t cry,’ Lang said.
‘I’m not crying,’ she insisted.
For answer he showed her his fingertips, wet with her tears.
‘Don’t weep for him,’ he said softly.
It would have been useless to utter another denial when he hadn’t believed the first.
‘I get sentimental sometimes.’ She tried to laugh it away. ‘But I’m really over him.’
In the dim light she could see Lang shake his head, smiling ruefully.
‘Perhaps you belong together after all,’ he said. Suddenly he reached into his pocket, took out his mobile phone and pushed it towards her, then he leaned close to murmur into her ear without disturbing the singer.
‘Call him. Say that your quarrel was a mistake, and you love him still. Go on. Do it now.’
The dramatic gesture astonished and intrigued her. With a gasp of edgy laughter, she pushed the phone back to him.
‘Why are you laughing?’ he demanded.
‘I was just picturing his face if he answered the phone and found himself talking to me. There was no quarrel. He left me for someone else. She had a lot of money, so he obviously did the right thing. I believe they’re very happy. She bought him a posh car for a wedding present.’
‘And that makes it the right thing?’ he enquired.
‘Of course.’
‘So if a millionaire proposed you’d accept at once?’
‘No way! He’d have to be a billionaire at least.’
‘I see.’ The words were grave but his lips were slightly quirked, as if he were asking who she thought she was fooling.
But he said nothing more. The music had ended. The singer bowed to the heartfelt applause and embarked on another song, slightly more cheerful. Lang turned his head towards the little stage, but reached back across the table to take hold of Olivia’s hand, and kept it.
She found that her nostalgic sadness had vanished, overtaken by a subtle pleasure that seemed to infuse the whole evening. Everything was a part of it, including the man sitting opposite her, looking away, giving Olivia the chance to study him unobserved.
She could appreciate him like this. His regular features were enough to make him good-looking, but they also had a mobility that was constantly intriguing. His eyes could be bland and conventional, or wickedly knowing in a way that gave him a disconcerting charm. She wondered if there was anyone he regretted from his own past. A warm-natured man in his thirties, with a deep belief in the value of romantic love, had surely not reached this point without some sadness along the road.
She began to muse on the subject, wondering if there was a way to question him without revealing too much interest. There wasn’t, of course, and an alarm bell sounded in her head. This was just the kind of atmosphere she’d learned to fear—seductive, romantic, lulling her senses and her mind in dangerous harmony.
It was time for common sense to take over. In a few minutes she would suggest that the evening should end soon, phrasing it carefully. She began to plan the words, even deciding what she would say when he protested.
Lang was beckoning to Wei, paying the bill, and ordering him to stop giggling and make himself scarce. Wei departed jauntily. Olivia took a deep breath to make her speech.
‘We’d better go,’ Lang said.
‘Pardon?’
‘We both have to work tomorrow, so I’ll get you home quickly. I’m sorry to have kept you out so late.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ she said faintly.
On the journey she wondered what was going to happen now. Lang had recognised that she wasn’t ready for a decision, while subtly implying that he was attracted to her. He was charming and funny, with a quiet, gentle strength that appealed to her, perhaps because she could sense something quirky and irreverent beneath it.
A light-hearted flirtation could be agreeable, but if he wanted more, if he planned to end the evening in her arms—or even in her apartment—what then? A gentle let-down? How did you half-reject someone you more than half-liked? Again she began to think about what she would say to him.
When they arrived, he came with her to the apartment block.
‘How far up are you?’ he asked.
‘Second floor.’
He rode up with her and came to her door.
‘Lang?’ she began uneasily.
‘Yes?’
She lost her nerve. ‘Would you care to come in for a drink?’
‘I certainly want to come in, but not for a drink. Let’s get inside and I’ll explain, although I’m sure you know what the problem is.’
Once inside he took off his jacket and helped her off with hers.
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Lucy Gordon
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: And the Bride Wore Red, электронная книга автора Lucy Gordon на английском языке, в жанре современные любовные романы