Chapter Twenty-Eight
Emmaline sat back, thoroughly disgusted with herself and the canvases she had created.
That was a sure sign that she had painted enough.
She’d done a record number this time—six landscapes filled with dark clouds and bright-purple lightning.
Part of her knew that lightning wasn’t purple, but for some perverse reason, she had painted it thus anyway.
And that was another reason for what she was about to do.
“The usual, Nora, please.”
Her maid dipped her chin in agreement or acknowledgment, it was hard to tell which.
Then she passed over a rag. Together the two of them set the room to rights, cleaning brushes and pulling the canvases off their frames.
Emma tried to wash the paint from her fingers to little effect.
She would have to be extra careful to wear gloves for the next few days to hide the stains.
Then she turned to where Nora had built up the fire. “Tell me all the gossip while I’ve been hidden away up here.”
The girl did, talking about ponies and apothecary powders set up in the library. Her father would have a fit when he found out, and Emma wondered if she should make herself scarce until the storm blew over. That all depended on whether her father had been drinking heavily or not.
Meanwhile, she stood and watched as Nora fed her canvases to the fire. Such perverse satisfaction she felt in watching her work turn to smoke. Hours of labor gone and thank God for that. She painted for herself and no one else. Even she wasn’t sure why.
So the canvases burned while she cleaned and heard all about her brother getting a pony for Yihui.
“Perhaps I shall go see how she’s doing.
” It couldn’t hurt as she was heartily sick of her own company.
All she’d done for the last three days was think about Chris and what they’d done.
About how it felt and what she wanted. About what they’d both said and not said.
And every bit of it wrapped in questions and useless, wonderful fantasies that would never come to pass.
But now she was done.
She would think no more of him and herself together.
She’d washed her hands, she’d burned her creations, and now she was ready to find out what nonsense her brother had visited upon their home. Indeed, she was spoiling for someone to rail at other than Christopher.
But Max was locked in his room and unavailable to anyone, according to Nora. So Emma went in search of Yihui.
She found the woman inspecting a dozen or more jars in the library. Yihui sat on a stool, leaning forward and back as she rearranged the jars, but what she accomplished was a mystery to Emma.
“Do you need anything, Yihui?”
The woman startled, spinning around on her stool so fast that she had to catch herself or fall over. Unfortunately, she caught her foot on the stool—as any normal person would—except that her feet were broken. She cried out in shock and alarm while Emma rushed to catch her.
“Oh dear! I’m so sorry! Oh no.”
Emma’s words were useless, of course, but they spilled out anyway as Yihui clutched her. Fortunately, the pain passed quickly, apparently muted by the plaster bandages.
“I’m so sorry,” Emma repeated. “Let me call for Max. He can carry you—”
“No! No Max.”
“Oh.” Clearly her brother had done something reprehensible.
“Would you like to sit down somewhere more comfortable?”
Yihui shook her head as she released her grip on Emmaline. “I am fine here.” She gestured at the table. “I enjoy setting this in order.”
It already looked in order, but Emmaline wasn’t one to argue. Instead, she sat down near to their guest and searched the woman’s face. “You seem unsettled.”
Yihui didn’t answer with words. Instead, her expression slowly tightened until every part of her seemed to frown.
“Has my brother been awful to you?” Emma pressed. She would welcome a chance to vent righteous indignation.
But Yihui shook her head. When she spoke, her words came carefully. “In China, my life was not happy. I wanted to escape. But there, I knew my place. I knew what to do and how to get what I wanted in small things.” She looked down at her hands. “Here, I am grateful and confused.”
No doubt. Emmaline couldn’t imagine what it would be like to leave everything she knew. Not even the language was the same. “Does Max want you to do something you don’t want?”
Yihui’s eyes widened, and it seemed like she would deny it, but in the end, she said, “Prinny wishes us to wed.”
Yes, she’d heard that command, but she’d forgotten it beneath the weight of her other…experiences. At least she could put Yihui’s mind at ease on that matter. She patted the woman’s hand.
“Don’t worry. Prinny doesn’t really mean it.
Everyone knows Max can’t marry you. He will be a duke one day, and he won’t be allowed to marry a foreigner.
Even a Chinese princess.” Emma tried to smile reassuringly at Yihui, but the woman looked even sadder than before. “He’s being confusing, isn’t it?”
“He has told me what he wants.”
“Yes?”
“We are to pretend great love—”
“And then you’ll cry off.” She threw up her hands. “I hate all this nonsense. You should not be forced to wed by royal command. He should not have to go through an elaborate pretense just to soothe Prinny’s temper. And you should be able to have a life free of the demands of ridiculous men.”
Emma knew she was speaking of herself more than Yihui.
She was so sick of having her life defined by men.
Her father’s moods had always dominated the household, even when she was a child.
Then, in her adolescence, her mother made every moment about how Emmaline should catch a husband.
And now, she’d just come to terms with how many years she’d wasted waiting for Christopher to look her way.
Well, now she knew the truth. He would never offer for her, and she had best see to her own amusements.
She had Yihui to thank for that decision.
The woman was a model of strength and courage.
Characteristics that Emmaline sorely lacked while she pined for a man who’d made his position clear a decade ago.
She’d just refused to see it. Honestly, it was embarrassing how weak she was compared to Yihui, and she resolved to be more like their foreign guest.
So she leaned forward until she and Yihui were eye to eye. She wanted both of them to hear her question loud and clear. And give an equally bold answer.
“What do you want?” she asked.
Yihui bit her lip. “He will not marry me?”
“No. You are free of that, but he will see you established however you want.”
She watched as Yihui absorbed the information. If she collapsed a little as she thought, then that was to be expected, wasn’t it? Forging one’s own path was difficult, even for a man. But in the end, her gaze found the jars of herbs.
“I will make medicines for your mother and others like her. I will be an apothecary.” Her words grew stronger as she spoke. “I always thought I’d do it in my father’s shop.”
“And now it will be your own shop.” She smiled as she gripped Yihui’s fingers. “Hold on to that dream, Yihui. If you’re to go through this elaborate charade for Max’s sake, then make sure every moment of your time is paid for with a step toward your own dream.”
“What do you mean?”
She wasn’t exactly sure, but the plan formed in her mind even as she spoke it aloud. “You will have to go to parties soon. You have been seen in public, yes? My maid said you went out on your pony.”
Yihui nodded. “We spoke with several people.”
“That means you’ll be invited to parties. I expect the invitations are already arriving. Everyone will want to meet you. That means gowns, polite conversation, and, well, you won’t be dancing but can you sing or play an instrument?”
Yihui shook her head. “No. Not even Chinese ones.”
Right. She hadn’t thought that the Chinese would have different kinds of instruments than they did, but she supposed that made sense.
“Can you paint? I know you can use a brush.”
“All I have ever done is work in my father’s shop and help my brothers with their studies.” She looked at Emma with a kind of panic in her eyes. “Must all English women sing and dance? Or paint?”
“In our set, yes. Those are the outward graces. Everyone expects you to excel at one or another.” She rolled her eyes.
“The hidden graces are the ones that manage a household and know how to hostess a party. We’re to support our husbands in their endeavors and the height of talent is to appear as if you did nothing at all.
” She clenched her hands together. “How I wish I had something to claim as my own! Something that I’m good at. ”
Which was to say she was a disappointment in all the feminine graces. Certainly, she danced without tripping, and she spoke French in the usual way of polite conversation, but all the great talents had escaped her. She looked longingly at the array of jars.
“You have a skill, Yihui. Something that is yours alone, and I envy that. I say that if Max is to parade you about the ton as his fiancée, then you should get a place of business out of the charade. And customers, too. I think every hostess who puts you on display must, I don’t know, try a headache powder or something. ”
“You want me to use your brother to find customers?”
“He is using you to appease the prince. Why not get something out of it for yourself?” She lifted her chin. “That is what I plan to do.”
“How?”
“I believe I shall start asking for payment from my father. I manage the meals and the servants, plus whatever entertaining is to happen.” She looked down at her hands where they were clenched in her lap.
“I shall take control of the household accounts. I will pay the bills, manage what is spent, and save what is not. Better yet, if I am to attend a party as mother’s companion, then I should be paid for that as well.
I am worth at least that much, am I not? ”
It was clear that Yihui didn’t understand what she was saying, and no wonder.
Emma already knew that her father would hate every radical idea in her head.
He would call it preposterous. Both her parents had lived in dread of the possibility of her becoming a spinster.
The shame of it had haunted her earliest days.
They would be revolted by the idea of her declaring herself on the shelf, but that was what she meant to do.
“What will you do with the money?” Yihui asked, proving that she was smart enough to see to the heart of the matter.
Emmaline deflated. “I don’t know. I have spent my life fitting into the roles I’ve been commanded to fulfill.
I wasn’t given a passion like Kimberly nor a skill like you.
” She lifted her palms in an open gesture.
“Surely God has given me a talent of some kind. I simply haven’t found it yet.
” Her gaze brightened. “Perhaps you could teach me about medicines!”
Yihui released a small sigh. “Everyone wants to learn about my medicines when all I want is to be a good woman for Max.”
Emma shook her head. “No, Yihui. Believe me, you are much better as you are. A woman with a skill, a woman of substance.”
“What if I want to learn how to dance?”
Emmaline looked for a moment—truly looked—at the woman before her.
Stripping away the myths around her, Yihui was a shop girl who had been thrust into the world of high society in a foreign country.
Of course, she wanted the glittering world of the ton.
Because she didn’t see the darker side of it.
She didn’t know how women tore at each other all for the chance to subjugate themselves to a husband who might or might not care for them.
It was not a world that treated those born to it with any sort of kindness. It would be disastrous for a foreigner.
“Even if your feet were not broken, Yihui, there is no way to succeed here. It speaks well of you that you want to repay Max’s kindness, but there is nothing you can give him that the world will value.
You are Chinese. He is a future duke. Best you turn to your own happiness and leave him to his games with Prinny.
You are nothing but a pawn here and equally powerless. ”
She looked at Yihui’s face, realizing belatedly that the woman could not understand everything she’d said. What did a Chinese shopgirl know of playing chess? Or of the power games among the elite?
“Trust me,” Emma said. “Your best option is to barter for your apothecary shop. And I shall be your very first customer.”