Burning Tigress (54 page)

Excerpt from

White Tigress

The Way of The Tigress

Book One

by

Jade Lee

USA Today Bestselling Author

WHITE TIGRESS

Awards & Reviews

4 Stars! Romantic Times

2005 PEARL Best Erotic Romance finalist

~

"White Tigress is an exotic, unique, and sensual journey to a wholly interesting time period and culture."

~All About Romance

~

"The relationship between alpha male Ru Shan and Lydia is powerful, going beyond sensuality into the spiritual realm as Lee guides the readers as much as Ru Shan leads Lydia to uncover the mysteries of life and sensuality."

~Romantic Times Book Club

If God lets Shanghai endure,

He owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah.

—Shanghai missionary

~

Chapter 1

Shanghai, China—1897

"Aaaah-ho. Aaaah-ho." The low, dirgelike chorus drifted across the Wangpu River, settling into Lydia Smith's ears until she shivered in excitement. She had heard stories about the sound. It was the mournful beat of the poor Chinese laborers—the coolies—as they built houses in ever-expanding Shanghai. And now, at last, she was hearing it for real.

"Aaaah-ho. Aaaah-ho." It was a slow sound, monotonous and dull, like the low beat of the city's heart, and Lydia strained to hear every pulse. Just as she struggled to hold the smoky air inside her lungs and see the white bungalow houses behind the brick walls of this new and flourishing city.

She couldn't, of course. The forest of masts obscured all but the boats that clogged the port, and yet Lydia still stood, grasping the rail with her smudged white gloves as she tried to absorb it all.

"It's so beautiful," she whispered, though it wasn't. The sky was overcast, and the air caught thick and moist in her throat. And it tasted faintly of ginger. Still, she repeated over and over, like a litany, "Beautiful Shanghai. My new home."

"Yer sure no one's meeting yuh at the docks, Miss Smith? Not even yer fiancé's servant?"

She jumped as the captain's broad shadow darkened the railing. She turned, wariness mixing with the excitement in her blood. She hadn't liked the looks of him from the beginning, but the temptation of a discounted passage from England to China helped her overcome her scruples. Especially as that meant she was now arriving a full two weeks early.

She couldn't wait to see Max's face when she surprised him.

Meanwhile, the captain was shuffling his feet, apparently concerned for her welfare. "It ain't safe in Shanghai. Not fer a lady alone."

Lydia smiled as she clutched her fiancé's last letter to her heart. "I have his directions and Chinese coins. I shall manage just fine."

"But you don't speak the language, miss. Not a word," the captain pressed, and Lydia felt herself relax at his concern. The man had grumbled about her presence nearly the entire trip, but now that they had arrived, he was obviously worried about her. In truth, he reminded her a bit of her father—gruff on the exterior, but with a heart of gold inside.

"Oh, I know a great deal more than a word." She wasn't fluent, but she was getting the hang of Chinese. "The crew has been teaching me some, and I had an instructor before that. A missionary who'd lived here for years."

He grimaced and began to walk away. "Shanghai's a dangerous place," he grumbled. But if he said any more, she didn't hear it; her attention had turned back to the docks.

Normally, the business of docking at a port would interest her. She'd learned quite a bit about sailing during the journey, had even made some friends among the crew, so she would have liked to be interested in their work right now—these last few moments among her own countrymen. But, of course, nothing could compete with the slowly clearing view of Shanghai. She saw now that it was a cramped city—not unlike London in that regard. The rich and the poor moved side by side, neither noticing the other except to grumble. The rich looked just like they did in London, including the latest fashions and equipages. Even the poor coolies seemed familiar, appearing like sailors to her, with their shortened pants and no shirts they squatted on the muddy banks. Behind them, the tenement houses rose inside bamboo scaffolding, imposing and ugly, in the way of all such buildings.

In short, the scene was no more intimidating than any other big, dirty, living city—or so Lydia reminded herself. She had no reason to feel untoward. After all, she had lived in London nearly all her life. Although no Englishman, no matter how poor, would work without a shirt. But strange sights were to be expected among heathens, or so Max always said.

The sounds, she realized, were very different, and she pushed her bonnet back in the hopes of hearing more clearly. Early by the clock—not more than nine in the morning—the city was already alive and cacophonous. The high-pitched nasal tones of the Chinese language bombarded her from all sides, only growing in volume as she was at last allowed to disembark. She heard hawkers' high-pitched squeals as they sold their wares. The more rounded tones of her own countrymen added a kind of trumpet accompaniment, an occasional ornamentation rather than the main melody. And beneath it all came the steady drone of the coolie
aaaah-ho.

It was all so wonderfully different, and Lydia could barely keep herself from dancing up the dock toward the row of rickshaws awaiting passengers.

A strange sight, indeed, this line of cabbies without cabs. Though she had heard of rickshaws, she had never actually seen one. Now she found them comically bare, with no more than a bench set upon an axle between two large wheels. They had the addition of two long poles extended from the sides for the driver—or runner, really, as a coolie served the function of a horse, pulling the carriage with his every step.

Thinking carefully, she chose a larger conveyance, one that included an umbrella-like covering for shade and a long extended cart for luggage.

"Take me to
this
street," she said in Chinese, holding out the written characters for Max's address. She would have tried to speak the name, but Max had not given her any indication of how to say the strange symbols, so she could only pray that the driver could read.

Apparently he could not, because he barely even glanced at the page. Still, he smiled warmly, showing his crooked teeth, and gestured for her to climb into his carriage. Meanwhile, all around her, the other runners began speaking and gesturing as well, all in a loud jumble of language, none of which she understood.

Fear made her mouth taste bitter. Things were not quite as easy—or as comfortable—as she'd imagined.

"Do you know where this is?" she repeated in her stilted Chinese.

The driver merely grinned stupidly and tried to help her climb into his rickshaw.

Frustrated, Lydia yanked away, turning to the entire row of drivers, raising her voice to be heard above the din. "Does anyone understand me?"

"Yer speaking in the wrong Chinese, miss," came a familiar voice behind her.

Lydia spun around to see the captain standing there, a grin splitting his coarse features. "It's like I feared, miss. You learned the language from Canton. These here speak Shanghai."

She frowned, surprised. "They do not have one language?"

"They's ignorant savages, miss. They ain't got the same of anything anywhere." He sighed, folding his arms in an irritated gesture. "I ain't planned on this, but I got a bit o' time. And my own regular driver over there." He gestured to a covered rickshaw and a driver in a cone-shaped hat who grinned and dipped his head at her. The captain took her letter and quickly scanned the page. "We can take you where ye need to go."

Lydia smiled, suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude for a man she'd barely tolerated for the last month. "That would be a great help, sir," she breathed. "I had not thought there would be different kinds of Chinese."

He didn't answer except to gesture for his driver to take up her luggage. It was not a great lot for her bridal trousseau—only one trunk—but after her father's death, she and her mother had been forced to practice some rather stringent economies.

"Follow me," said the captain as he escorted her down the line to his waiting rickshaw.

It was then she heard another sound, this one from one of the other drivers in a mixture of English and Chinese. "No, no, laiiddeee. Come wid me. Not wid him. No, no."

She turned, trying to understand what the frantic man was saying, but the captain grabbed her arm in a bruising grip. "Stay with me, Miss Smith. They are thieves and ruffians, every last one of them."

She didn't argue. Indeed, she knew that even London cabbies could be devious if one didn't look sharp. She didn't want to contemplate what could happen to her here without even the right Chinese language to assist her. And thank God the captain was her countryman—a familiar rock amid this sea of strangeness.

So she allowed him to guide her as she stepped uneasily into his rickshaw. The bamboo seemed too flimsy to hold herself and her luggage, but to her surprise, it did not even bow beneath her weight or that of the captain as he shoved his massive body in beside her. Then, before she had time to gasp, they tilted backward. The coolie had lifted the poles and begun to run, quickly pulling them along.