The Forbidden Orchid Read online

  “Name’s Howell,” the man said to Alex, ignoring me altogether, as though I were part of the wallpaper. “Cornelius Howell. From London’s Daily Sketch. Mr. McGregor and I are old acquaintances.”

  Papa guffawed when the man said acquaintances, but he didn’t turn around. He continued scratching away at the register with the pen.

  “Dobriy den,” Alex replied.

  “Ah! A Turk, are you? I’m a dab-hand with languages, but it’s been a long while since I visited old Constantinople. Speak English, if you can.”

  “I’m Russian,” Alex said, eyeing the man warily. “And yes, I can speak English.”

  “I’m reporting on the aftermath of the China Wars and the burning of the Summer Palace.”

  When the man mentioned the Summer Palace, I looked at Papa. He set his jaw and stabbed the pen against the book so hard the nib broke through the paper. I glared at the man, wishing he would go away.

  “I’m a war correspondent, you see.” He leaned his skinny frame against the reception desk and tapped his leg with his walking stick. “Wounded in India covering the rebellion of fifty-seven. Left me with a permanent limp.”

  “You slid from an elephant,” Papa said, not lifting his head from the book. “While you were inebriated. I’d hardly call that a war wound.”

  Mr. Howell smiled a tight smile. “A broken leg is a broken leg,” he said. “Dashed painful bloody business, especially in that godforsaken country where the damnable heat alone is enough to cook a man’s brain like a soft-boiled egg.”

  “You’ve forgotten your manners, sir,” Papa said. “I’ll thank you to watch your language in front of the girl.”

  Mr. Howell pulled his head back with a start, as though I’d just appeared in front of him like a fairy—albeit a shabby one dressed in a soiled gown fit only for the rag and bone barrel. “And who is this?”

  “You needn’t know who she is,” Papa said before I could speak.

  “I heard you ask old Briarwood here for two rooms.” He pointed at each one of us in turn and counted: “One, two, three of you. Who is the lucky owner of this fine filly?”

  I didn’t like the way the man’s gaze raked me from head to toe, as though I were a curio that he could examine in a shop and then dismiss—a thing bereft of feelings that didn’t warrant a thought.

  “She’s nothing to do with you,” Papa snapped, his eyes glowing a warning.

  Mr. Howell raised his eyebrows. “Suit yourself, then.” He propped himself against the counter on his elbows and crossed one ankle over the other as though he planned to stay and chat for a good long while. “Swiftly changing the subject. You’ll be interested to hear this bit of news, McGregor. An edict has come out recently that may bring you some comfort. You’ll have no trouble moving about the countryside now. The Chinese must provide soldiers for protection to those going into the interior. And you’ll need them. Many brigands about now haven’t found Westerners very lovable.”

  Father’s pen stilled. “Soldiers?” I saw his throat bob as he swallowed.

  “Yes, and if they fail to protect a Westerner, the emperor must compensate the person for any loss. I’ll have a little chat with the mandarin here, if you like—he’s in my pocket, you see—and make sure he communicates with his fine fellows in the villages along the way to wherever it is you’re going. You’ll be safe as houses traveling. None of that bad business like last time.” He narrowed his eyes, looking at Papa sideways. “How goes your recovery? Would love to sit down with you and chew it over, hey? Make for a good story.”

  Father set the pen down and turned. “Could you possibly do me a favor, Howell? Could you possibly close that hole of yours you call a mouth and remove yourself from my presence?”

  The little innkeeper pressed his lips together, looking for all the world like he might burst out laughing. I suspected that Mr. Howell had not made himself very lovable, if his boorish behavior was anything to go by.

  “Can you blame a man looking for a story?” Mr. Howell said with wounded air. “I’m trying to do my job same as you. We’re more alike than not, you know. You tromp the country looking for flowers, and I tromp the country looking for stories.”

  Papa snorted. “We are not alike. I’ve been in that rag of yours under your byline many a time, I daresay, without my permission, and I don’t wish to repeat the exercise. You’ll get nothing from me, so don’t waste your breath asking.”

  “Yes, well, we’ll see about that. I’m sure you wish old Bowlby were here. You were able to manipulate him, but you can’t me.”

  I stepped forward at the mention of the name Bowlby. T. W. Bowlby was the Times journalist who had been swept up with Papa. The one who had died of his wounds in prison.

  “That is very disrespectful of you to say, sir,” I told him. “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”

  He ignored me.

  Papa clenched his fist so hard his knuckles turned white. “You, sir, are nothing compared to Thomas Bowlby. He didn’t hang about in inns waiting for the story to come to him. He went into the theater of war. He was a brave man, and he died a brave man. And if you’re covering the burning of the Summer Palace, you are miles away. You should be in Peking. Why not take yourself there? This minute, preferably.”

  Mr. Howell had the wherewithal to look humiliated. The bravado dropped a little bit. “I think you’d better return to your reading, Mr. Howell,” I said before he could make a further dolt of himself. Deacon Wainwright and he would get along smashingly.

  “No. I’ll go,” Papa said, and then turned on his heel and quit the room.

  “Well now. Always reverting to type, old McGregor,” Mr. Howell said. He tossed his walking stick in the air and caught it in his hand. “Welcome to China, Miss whoever-you-are. I hope we’ll see each other again.”

  “If we do, I hope you’ll have found your manners, sir,” I said.

  “Well, I’ve been told, haven’t I?” He pushed away from the desk, winked at me, nodded at Alex, and returned to the parlor.

  The innkeeper held out the room keys to Alex, and he took them. “I’ll see to the rooms. Why don’t you go after your father, myshka?”

  I FOUND PAPA AT THE BACK OF THE HOUSE IN A SMALL COURTYARD, sitting on a bench in the cool shade of an exotic tree. Its trunk was gnarled and ancient-looking, and its delicate fan-shaped leaves fluttering in the breeze were green touched with yellow.

  “I’ve never seen a tree like this one.” I touched the bark. “It’s extraordinary.”

  “A maidenhair tree,” he said. “Ginkgo biloba. It’s only native to China.” He plucked a leaf and held it on his palm. “Kew has one. The Old Lion, planted a hundred years ago. Perhaps you’ve seen it growing next to the great stove.”

  “I don’t think I have. Will you show it to me when we return?”

  “Perhaps,” he said. He tossed the leaf down and gently placed his boot over the top of it. “China is a country of contradictions—so much to discover, yet so much to forget. Sometimes I think it would have been best if we’d left China and all her secrets well enough alone. We’ve only brought strife and sorrow to this land and grabbed the best bits for ourselves.”

  I sank down onto the bench next to him and stared down at his boot, a bit of the maidenhair tree leaf poked out from under his toe. “I’m sorry about that odious man.”

  “Stay away from him, Elodie. You must promise me this.”

  “He seems quite harmless, Papa. Obnoxious, yes, but—”

  “Hell’s teeth, Elodie! For once simply do as I say. Keep away from that man. If he approaches you, walk away from him. He’ll be on the lookout for any sort of story.”

  “Can we not stay elsewhere?”

  Papa lifted an eyebrow. “This is not England, my dear. There’s nowhere else for a Westerner to stay in Foochow that’s safe enough. We’d be robbed blind within minutes of arrival.
”

  We sat on that bench, in the shade of the tree, for a long while before I gathered up my courage to speak again. “You seemed concerned when Mr. Howell mentioned the soldiers, Papa. I don’t blame you. They must bring back terrible memories.”

  He plucked another leaf and examined it carefully, holding it up to the sunlight and twirling the stem in his fingers.

  “But I’m sure these will be different. I’m sure they will be useful to you.” I fiddled with the ties of my bonnet nervously, pulling the silken ribbons loose and re-tying them. “To us, I mean.”

  “Us? What do you mean?”

  “I’m not going back to Kent. Alex isn’t going back on the Osprey after we’re married.”

  “I know this. The captain told me he planned to find him a temporary position on another clipper ship.”

  “Yes . . . he did say that. But Alex has chosen not to take it.”

  The leaf stilled in his hand.

  “Alex and I have decided to go with you.”

  “You’re not. You’re going back to England on a steamship, just as soon as I can find passage and a traveling companion for you.”

  “We will simply follow behind you. Alex will be my husband in a manner of hours and he has decided to go with you. He wishes me to go, too. You cannot oppose him.”

  I’d never stood directly into the teeth of a storm before and felt the wind and water lash at my face, but given the choice, I would have gladly done so rather than submit myself to Papa’s reaction.

  Papa stood up. His face was a mask of fury. It was as though I had provoked a dangerous animal. “I should have sent you home with your sister and the abominable deacon that day back at Kew,” he shouted. “This expedition has nothing whatsoever to do with you. I could take you by the shoulders and shake you!”

  “Well, you may try it!” I said, my voice matching his. “It won’t change anything. We’re going with you to find the Queen’s Fancy. You have no ability to travel by yourself. I thought it was a ridiculous notion then, and I think it’s a ridiculous notion now!”

  “A ridiculous notion? Well, because of your folly, I have Cleghorn’s man nipping at my heels. He’s probably taken a steamship, beat us to China by weeks, and is halfway to the Queen’s Fancy as we speak! You are a young naïve girl who, it seems, is more lacking in intelligence than I thought!”

  I blinked. Papa’s voice chilled me. There was not a shred of affection in it. “Please do not shout at me. Please do not say such things. I didn’t mean to tell Cleghorn’s man! He deceived me. Have you never made a mistake? Never made the wrong decision? Are you so perfect?”

  I knew then I had said the wrong thing. He paled and drew his head back as though I had slapped him. I felt instant remorse. Of course he’d made mistakes. His had nearly cost his life.

  “Do you think I want you to experience pain and fear? My life is about taking care of you, protecting you, your mother, and your sisters!”

  “But by keeping me shuttered away, keeping all of us shuttered away? Like flowers in one of your glasshouses? If I were your son, you’d welcome me, encourage me. Not push me to the side!”

  “But you are not my son, Elodie.”

  “And you regret that most heartily, don’t you?”

  He drew his head back. “Of course I don’t! That’s ridiculous.”

  “You think because I am a girl, I can’t want to protect my family? That I have no longing for adventure? Only a male can have those feelings?”

  “Enough, Elodie.” He flung his arms out. “You are not going with me. You’ll go home on the first steamship. The devil take Alex, for all I care.”

  “Tell me why I can’t go? If you can give me a good reason why, then I’ll consider it.”

  Papa said nothing. He looked away.

  “Well then. We’re going, Papa. And nothing you can say will change that.” I had to stand up to him. Despite mistakes I had made, I knew that my opinions had merit, as I had seen the proof. I shouldn’t have backed down to Dr. Thumpston and Deacon Wainwright, but I’d done so because I was frightened of their disapproval. I wouldn’t make that same mistake again. Papa was already angry with me for stowing away, and he could continue to be angry. I would rather see him and my family safe, even if that meant he’d never forgive me.

  He screwed the leaf up into his hand and punched the tree so hard the trunk shook and the leaves rained down around us.

  AN HOUR LATER, ALEX AND I FOUND OURSELVES PLEDGING OUR lives to one another at the mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in what was known as the southern suburbs. I stood at the altar in my soiled tartan, Alex in his workmanlike sailor’s jacket and trousers, and Papa in his canvas expedition suit. Alex looked dazed and slightly startled, and I’m sure my expression matched his.

  The vicar was a large bear-like man with long Dundreary whiskers who looked as though he would be more comfortable on an expedition to the Arctic than as a minister at a humble missionary church in China.

  I held Alex’s hands tightly as the vicar read out the wedding sermon. We repeated our vows to one another, and when it came time for the wedding ring, I fully expected Alex to say he didn’t have one, but instead he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a ring, and not just an ordinary band of silver. The piece was striking, with three gold bands of varying shades joined together in an interlinking pattern. Alex reached down and took my right hand and slid the ring on.

  The vicar beamed down at us. “Well then, you may kiss your bride, Mr. Balashov.”

  Alex touched his lips briefly to mine, more like a brother to a sister than a husband to a wife. And I wondered if the intimacy I’d felt those days on the ship had been real or if they were a figment of my own imagination.

  I COULDN’T BEAR TO WEAR MY TARTAN GOWN ANY LONGER, SO AT MY insistence Papa directed the coolies to a shop in Foochow where I could purchase some new clothing. I was most surprised by the goods available there, even Western things, and the money Papa gave me went a very long way. I went into a perfumer’s shop so that I could purchase some soap. They sold pearl powder in little paper packages along with rouges in colorful cardboard boxes. There were lotions, dyes for the hair, and even Rowland’s Macassar Oil hair pomade, sold in the same British packaging I knew so well. It was funny to find that an English fashion had made it all the way to China. There was a curio stall that sold ordinary China and some with Swiss scenes painted on. A linen drapers shop offered blue stuff for the common tunic and trousers I saw bedecking the Chinese men, as well as calicos, printed cottons, and Russian cloth in red and blue. I purchased two wool skirts and a few blouses as well as several pairs of pantaloons and three chemises.

  The sun was setting and Papa was anxious to return to the foreign settlement before it grew dark. When we arrived, the short-statured innkeeper had a hot meal waiting for us—a steamed chicken pie and a trifle for dessert.

  It was a somber dinner, a far cry from a joyful wedding breakfast. Alex had grown quiet again, saying nothing after the ceremony and even less at dinner. I was silent as well, apprehensive over our wedding night, and what Alex expected of it. Papa finished his meal quickly and excused himself, saying nothing more than good night, leaving Alex and me alone in the empty dining room.

  I wished myself anywhere but here. I wanted to go home, home to my sister, and lie in the dark giggling and telling each other tales. I knew who I was there, I knew who Elodie Buchanan was. She collected ferns and looked after her sisters and mother and went to church. I had no idea who this new girl was, this Elodie Balashov, despite my declaration on the boat when I had thrown my braid into the ocean. Now I wasn’t sure I wanted to be her. Not with my friend Mr. Balashov sitting there, looking handsome—too handsome with his dark eyes and pale skin and unkempt hair that looked dashing on no one but him.

  Finally, after another round of awkward silence, the innkeeper poked his head around the
door and said the dining room would be closing.

  We couldn’t dither any longer, so we rose and went upstairs.

  Our room held a small Western-style bed with a wrought iron bedframe covered in pillows and a patchwork quilt. It looked massive compared to the tiny bunk Alex and I had shared on the Osprey. A bamboo washstand holding a blue patterned basin and ewer depicting a pagoda and willow tree stood in the corner, a linen towel threaded through a wooden ring on its side. A little beveled mirror hung above it, lined with a shelf that contained a cake of yellow soap.

  “Elodie Balashov,” I said, sitting on the end of the bed. Alex remained by the door, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. “The name sounds so exotic. I suppose I should learn some Russian to go along with it.” I was trying to jest, but Alex didn’t laugh. The smile faded from my lips.

  “I don’t think it’s necessary for you to hold up that wall,” I finally said, feeling peevish. I rubbed my temple where a headache was forming, and all I wanted was for this impossible day to be over. I just wished Alex would say something, anything. When I told Violetta that Alex was handsome like Heathcliff, I never meant his personality was similar. But now with him standing against the wall, that shuttered look on his face, I could imagine him as Heathcliff, brooding.

  “Are you coming to bed or not?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Thinking what?” I snapped.

  “That you look very pretty.”

  “Oh,” I said, the anger fading away. Alex left his wall and came to my side. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to quarrel with you.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose again. “It’s just . . . the day has been very long.”

  “Are you feeling unwell? You’ve gone pale.”

  “I have a headache. It’s silly, really. I felt quite well on the ship, and now we’re on dry land and on a bed that doesn’t pitch back and forth and I have a headache. My ears are ringing, too.” I could feel tears welling up, which sometimes happened to me when I got ill like this. Headaches made me feel wretched and despairing and not a little pathetic.