Chapter 10
Lisan sank back on her knees. She couldn’t move, could only stare at the woman’s face. Then she realized that Caroline Stanton
was looking at her, and she collected herself. She touched a finger to the brass plate.
“If this portrait is true to life,” she said, “then I think that Rosalie Roussel is only part Chinese. It would explain the
last name, Roussel. Charles Burnett married a singer. This must be her, Rosalie. It also explains why Mr. Burnett didn’t approve.
Not only is Rosalie a singer, she is also of mixed race.”
It surprised Lisan that Mason hadn’t thrown out or destroyed the painting, given how he must have felt about this unwanted
daughter-in-law. The young woman’s complexion was pale as ivory, a striking contrast against her dark hair. Her features were
sweet, the small nose well-defined, although the jawline hinted at stubbornness. Her European-style dress, deep red and high-waisted,
was a costume. An oval pendant with a red gem in its center hung on a gold chain, nestled just in the hollow of her throat.
This was the face of Rosalie, the owner of the diary she’d found. She needed to get a French dictionary and start translating.
“It’s very skillfully done,” Caroline said, examining the painting. “The eyes are especially expressive.”
Lisan thought the dark eyes seemed anxious, adding tension to the woman’s features. Her sweet demeanor hinted at a tragic fate. It was the face of a woman confronting terrible decisions. But was that Rosalie’s own expression or had she summoned the role of Tosca for this portrait?
“Will you hang this somewhere downstairs?” she said.
“Heavens, no,” Caroline said, turning away to look at the remaining pictures. “I hate portraits, especially when it’s people
I don’t know looking down at me from the wall. Anyway, I suspect Uncle Mason had it stored away here because he didn’t want
any reminders of his son’s wife. It would be in poor taste to hang it up.”
“May I take it to hang in my room?” The request had burst out of her before she’d even had time to think. “Mr. Burnett would
never come into the room, so he’ll never see it.”
“Why, Lisan,” Caroline said, teasing, “do you really want the portrait of a scandalous woman in your room?”
“I don’t think she looks scandalous,” Lisan said. “I think she looks lonely. It must’ve been hard to be the cause of estrangement
between father and son, between her husband and his friends.”
“Well, I’m not planning to hang it anywhere so go ahead and take it,” Caroline said. “Let’s head down. I want a word with
the cook before tomorrow’s luncheon with Mrs. Easton and Mrs. Franks.”
Lisan stared up at the ceiling, then looked over to the portrait, which she had hung on the wall beside the desk. It was dimly
lit by the desk lamp. What had come over her, that she should hang the portrait of a complete stranger on her wall? What had
compelled her to be so bold and ask Caroline Stanton for permission to take it? All she could say was that something about
Rosalie’s portrait had called out to her and she had responded. No, she had obeyed.
She was desperate for a good night’s sleep.
She was so tired. She had been drinking strong tea all day to stay sharp but she was so exhausted tea hardly made an impact now.
She feared appearing slow-witted in front of Caroline Stanton when she needed to be alert.
Constant fatigue plagued her, prevented her from thinking clearly. At the same time, sleep meant dreams.
The portrait of Rosalie drew her gaze again. Even though the painting was not very large, it seemed to dominate the room.
The dramatic red of Rosalie’s dress was at odds with her gentle features. Looking at the young woman’s face, at the proud
tilt of her chin, Lisan couldn’t believe Rosalie had been a gold digger. The dark eyes challenged her, told her not to believe
everything people said.
Rosalie seemed to be observing the room. Hands folded in her lap, her expression seemed rather melancholy to Lisan, her eyes
pleading, as though she wanted to confide in Lisan. What secrets did Rosalie want to share? Her gauzy red shawl left one shoulder
bare, the other carelessly covered. Who had put away her portrait and stored it in the attic? Could it have been someone else
besides Mason Burnett? Had Charles taken it off a wall after she left him?
Lisan got up and turned off the desk lamp. Why had she ever imagined a house far away from the city would be quiet? At night,
the sounds of human activity were stilled, but the quiet only amplified the house’s own noises, gusts of wind forcing their
way inside, timbers creaking from too much damp. She’d get used to the nighttime noises, she thought, as she fell asleep.
She presses her face to the windowpane and cold dread raises the hairs on her arms. A figure walks toward the lake. A woman
in a red dress. Rosa? Rosalie? And there is something different about the lake. Lisan peers through the droplets of rain at the rowboat tied to a small
dock. But she has seen the lake in daylight and there is no boat, no dock.
She looks again and the woman is now seated in the boat, which begins gliding slowly across the lake.
Now that the figure is still and no longer moving, Lisan can see the long dark hair, unbound and whipped by the wind, the rain-soaked crimson dress clinging to her slim body.
The boat stops on the opposite shore and the woman gets out, her feet barely touching the ground.
She drifts up to the edge of the lake, stops by the stand of willows.
Then, looking straight at Lisan, she beckons. Come find me, a sweet voice beseeches. Lisan is overcome by a sensation of despair so intense she wants to weep. A moment later, the crimson
of the gown fades to gray and she melts into the rain.
Now Lisan is standing by the door of the drawing room. Notes from a piano drift through the air. Is Caroline in the drawing
room playing the grand piano? Lisan pushes open the door and there is a young man, a foreigner, standing at the piano, looking
through sheets of music with a slight frown. He looks up at her and when he sees her, a joyous smile transforms his features.
There’s something familiar about him, something she can’t define.
The music stops and she wakes up.
Getting out of bed, she tried shaking off the strange dream. She longed for daylight to filter through the windows and give
her permission to leave her room and the confusion of her dreams. It was clear she wasn’t going to fall asleep again so she
pulled aside the fire screen and put two more logs onto the embers, then turned on the desk lamp and took out Rosalie’s diary
from the hidden drawer.
Between the messy handwriting and her rudimentary knowledge of French, the task of translating Rosalie’s entries was beyond her.
What she needed was a French-English dictionary from the library.
She pulled on her robe, lit the oil lamp, and made her way down the staircase to the ground floor.
Past the entrance foyer, past the closed doors of the drawing room and dining room, until she reached the library.
The door was slightly ajar. Inside, tall mahogany bookshelves lined the walls.
She lifted the oil lamp and gazed at the shelves. She had come in only once before with Caroline, who’d been hunting for something
on the history of Shanghai. She’d seen a set of encyclopedias on a bottom shelf somewhere; perhaps that’s where the dictionaries
were too.
“Who’s there?” a voice rasped from the corner. She gasped, almost dropping the oil lamp.
A light turned on and a brass floor lamp cast stunted shadows on the carpet. Mason Burnett rose from an armchair, still dressed
in his evening clothes from the night before. There was a decanter and glass on the side table next to the armchair.
“It’s Lisan Liu, Mr. Burnett,” she stammered. “I’m sorry to disturb you.” She turned to flee out the door but he called out.
“Wait. Come back.” Reluctantly, she stopped.
“What are you looking for, Miss Liu?” he said.
“A dictionary. A French-English dictionary,” she said.
“A French dictionary,” he repeated. “Do you understand French as well as English?”
“I only studied it at school for two years,” she said, “not enough to be useful.”
He turned to a shelf beside the window and pulled out a book. “Take this one. In case you need them, all the dictionaries
are on this shelf. German. Spanish. Latin. Greek.”
“Thank you, sir.” She turned to leave again and this time he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“This is the second time we’ve met before daylight,” he said. “Aren’t you too young to be suffering from insomnia?”
“I . . . I think it’s just being in a new place,” she said. “It will pass.”
“I’ve lived here for years,” he said, downing his drink, “still can’t sleep. Well, off you go.”
Settling in the padded leather seat of her desk chair, Lisan found she was still shaking from the encounter with Mason Burnett.
He was so large, his presence so forceful. He’d been trying to be helpful, but it just made her want to back away. Taking
a deep breath, she opened the diary and took out a pad of paper.
An hour later, Lisan rubbed her eyes, dropped her head in her hands, and sighed. She had managed to translate only a few pages;
it was slow work. Thankfully Rosalie’s entries were brief. It was two o’clock in the morning. Perhaps she could get a few
hours of sleep.
Anyway, why should she care about Rosalie? she thought, climbing under the blankets. And why should she be seeing visions
of a woman when Rosa had run away and Charles had died? If anyone was doing the haunting, it would surely be poor Charles,
in which case she should be seeing the apparition of a man, not a woman. This was proof that the disturbing visions and strange
sounds were all due to her imagination, fueled by fatigue.
Unless. Unless she was seeing Rosalie’s phantom because Charles’s ghost had conjured its appearance, because he still longed
for his faithless wife.
She snorted, dismissing such foolishness, and turned on her side to burrow into the blankets. She wished she could find Yao,
get some time with him on his own. She longed for his reassuring smile and good humor. But with the party coming up, like
all members of the staff, he was busy every minute. There were signs of his work inside the house. Flowering plants had replaced
sad-looking specimens and all the overgrown ferns were now beautifully trimmed.
Caroline wanted the gardens to look tidier for the party, so Yao had been out in the rain for the past two days, an oilskin cloak fixed to a wide bamboo hat so that he could use both hands to gather dead branches and leaves.
Xiao Wu had been eager to help and the two of them had been out in the rain chatting away like old friends.
All the servants liked Yao, seemed to respect him.
Lisan envied the houseboy for being able to spend so much time with the gardener.
She finally drifted into sleep as thunder rumbled to accompany crackling forks of lightning. Out on the ornamental lake, wind
rippled the slate-gray water and tore the few remaining leaves off poplar trees. And inside Lennox Manor, it spoke through
cracks and crevices, reverberated down chimneys, called out for release.