Chapter 3
“A Chinese woman as your social secretary?”
Mason Burnett was a large man whose beard couldn’t quite conceal heavy jowls. Although his clothing was expensively tailored,
the dinner jacket skillfully fitted to his broad torso, he still managed to look unkempt. Perhaps it was his balding pate
fringed with wisps of gray, or his thick, bristling brows, at the moment drawn together in skepticism. His voice was his best
feature, deep and rich. When she’d first met him, Mason’s voice had made Caroline think of fine, fragrant pipe tobacco. Now
she flinched mentally at the sound of it.
She took a deep, calming breath and smiled, a carefully poised smile that conveyed nothing more than pleasant interest. Her
gown of apricot silk glowed against the drawing room’s mahogany panels, and candlelight reflected from the yellow topazes
at her throat.
“You need to trust Caroline’s instincts, Uncle Mason,” Thomas Stanton said. “My wife has her reasons and she knows what she
wants.” He filled Mason’s glass with more sherry. Their guests would arrive soon, their first dinner party since coming to
Shanghai just over a week ago. She’d made sure everything was ready and could only hope that Mason knew when to stop drinking.
Caroline was certain she’d made a good decision. She had to admit she had enjoyed seeing Mrs. Easton’s face stiffen with displeasure, but that wasn’t why she had hired the young Chinese woman over the other candidate.
“Mrs. Easton seemed to think a Chinese secretary wouldn’t understand anything about our social circle,” she said, “but that’s
hardly going to be a problem given that Mrs. Easton and her friends will be instructing me every step of the way. Who’s who
and which invitations we must accept and which ones we can safely ignore.”
“Her English . . .” Mason began.
“Her English is excellent, Uncle Mason,” Caroline said. “Her typing is very good, and her penmanship is exceptional, a perfect
copperplate. But unlike the woman Mrs. Easton wanted me to hire, Miss Liu also speaks and reads Chinese, which means she can
translate for me when I deal with the staff. I need to be sure they know exactly how I want things done, and I won’t have
them making mistakes just because I can’t make myself understood.”
“I told you,” Thomas said with a proud smile, “my wife has her reasons and they’re always good ones. I learned that very quickly.”
Thomas was a good fifteen years older than Caroline but he’d maintained the lean physique that spoke of his college days as
a rowing champion. A thin face, plain and with a long nose, but pleasant to look at. The few gray hairs he had were nearly
invisible under a thick mop of light brown curls, and his dark eyes gleamed, alert and intelligent.
Caroline had other reasons for hiring a Chinese secretary, reasons she preferred keeping to herself.
Caroline liked it that Lisan wasn’t part of white society.
Gossip was a currency generously exchanged in those social circles, extracted from friends, dressmakers, and jewelers like money lifted by a pickpocket.
But women like Mrs. Easton would never deign to chat with a Chinese servant—for that was how she would regard someone like Lisan, no matter how well educated.
Therefore, Mrs. Easton would never glean any information about Caroline from Lisan.
Lights from headlamps entered the gates and curved around the yew hedge. “Our first guests have arrived,” Caroline said. “Shall
we go out to the foyer and welcome them?”
She rose from the chair and, as she moved across the room, felt a tendril of cold air settle around her shoulders. The house
was beset by drafts. Rain and general humidity had swelled the timbers of the wooden structure, warping planks and window
frames out of alignment. Floorboards creaked and window latches rattled, but nothing could be done until the rains stopped.
One of the things she quickly realized was that Mason hadn’t done a thing in years to keep the mansion in good repair. And
now he expected them—because, as he said, the house would be theirs when he died—to bring it back to its former glory. Caroline
swallowed her annoyance and prepared to receive their guests.
The dinner was for a small gathering of bankers and potential investors and their wives. Thomas was learning the ropes from
these longtime residents, foreigners who considered Shanghai home. “Shanghailanders,” they called themselves. They’d acquired
decades’ worth of business knowledge and Thomas needed that knowledge as well as the connections they had cultivated. He needed
to understand the slow grind of Chinese bureaucracy and how much judicious bribery was needed to push through the project
to build a railway line from Shanghai to Chengtu. And this rope learning, he had remarked dryly, seemed to require a lot of
fine dining, cigars, and cognac.
Caroline and Thomas were hosting this dinner; the house, however, belonged to Mason, so the most politic thing was for all
three to receive the guests. It rankled her because this created the impression that Mason and Thomas were equal partners
in the railway venture.
Mason picked up the sherry bottle. “Another quick one, then, before facing the hordes.”
“Yes, the municipality says we will finally have reliable electricity this year,” Mason said, “but I do like it when the power
fails. Candlelight is more flattering to my aging looks.” He leaned closer to the woman beside him, Mrs. Tennison, whose husband
was a shipping magnate. She seemed amused rather than revolted, as Caroline would’ve been.
“When people first began building along Brenan Road,” Mrs. Tennison said, “Lennox Manor was one of the first—and also the
farthest out. Do you not find it rather remote, out of the way?”
“Not at all,” he said. “I bought this house because of its remote location, and I’ll be sorry when the lots nearby fill up with more homes. It will spoil the feeling of living
in a country home.”
One could always count on real estate to monopolize a dinner conversation for at least thirty minutes, Caroline reflected
as she signaled her head servant. Chin snapped his fingers and two houseboys took away the soup bowls. Their cook had made
a delicious leek soup. Next to come was a fish course of poached salmon with Hollandaise, then a sautéed chicken-and-mushroom
dish, then roast lamb with potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, and steamed asparagus. At the end, a compote of pears with cream,
and a selection of petits fours. The vegetables and fruit were expensive at this time of year, shipped in from Australia and
New Zealand, but Thomas had told her not to worry.
She turned her head to the man at her left, half listened as he described in detail the activities of the Shanghai Paper Hunt
Club and why Mongolian ponies were best for the chase. Caroline fixed her gaze on his face but tilted her head to better hear
what the couple across from him were saying in low voices. Those were always the better conversations.
“A stroke of luck for Mason, a rich nephew who married an heiress,” the woman said. “Do they realize he’s almost insolvent?”
“They’ll find out soon enough,” said the gentleman beside her. “Thomas Stanton is the real thing though. Silver mines, if
I recall. Very astute businessman, not like young Charles Burnett.”
“And not the sort to fall for the wrong kind of woman. Poor Charles.”
A woman’s voice, loud and confident, interrupted all other conversation. “Tell me, Mr. Stanton,” Mrs. Tennison said, “how
did the two of you meet? We’ve only heard rumors. A rail disaster?”
“No rumor,” Thomas said, a wide smile breaking over his face. “Caroline was traveling with her aunt and uncle. We were all
on the same train bound for Seattle. But it had been snowing heavily and snow was banked so high on the railway tracks we
were stranded for days near a small town in Washington State.”
“It was hardly a town,” Caroline said, looking across the table at her husband. “It was more like a depot for railway employees,
with a small hotel and stables.”
“And a tavern,” Thomas said, “don’t forget the tavern. We were trapped there nearly a week and that tavern kept me and others
from losing our minds to boredom. I checked into the hotel just to get off the train. Good thing I did.”
“You tell the story, darling,” she said. Caroline knew that in Thomas’s mind, the avalanche had taken on mythic dimensions
because it had brought them together. He had shaped and honed the narrative to make it clear that their romance had been fated.
She preferred to sit quietly and listen, recall her own memories of the event that had changed her life.
He beamed at her and turned to his audience.
“It was this time last year, almost to the exact date. Our train was on its way to Seattle, but days of heavy snowfall had turned into a fierce blizzard and created such difficult conditions that supervisors of the Great Northern Railway decided that all trains in the area should stop at their nearest station. But in fact our train really had no choice by then. We were trapped not far from a small town called Wellington, in the middle of the Cascade mountains. It was just a railway town, a depot and a small hotel, a tavern, and a telegraph machine.”
The tracks were blocked by snow, and some passengers got out to make the walk to the town, including Thomas, who hoped to
use the telegraph to let business contacts know that he was delayed by the blizzard. But the telegraph wires were down, so
Thomas decided to check into Bailets Hotel.
“It was just luck,” he said, “a lucky impulse that made me take a room in the hotel, for a change of scenery and to be near
the telegraph office. I wanted to send messages as soon as the wires were back up again.”
“Where was Caroline?” Mrs. Tennison asked. “Did she also check into the hotel?”
Caroline interjected. “I would’ve liked to walk to the town—not to stay at the hotel, just to take a look and get off the