White Tigress (5 page)

Just a rumbly stomach and a bored mind.

So it remained for another hour at least, until she heard the low murmur of men's voices from the other room where the servant resided. She had been dozing, but came instantly alert as the doorknob jiggled. She was immediately flooded with excitement, along with a good deal of trepidation, as she rapidly patted her hair and adjusted the covers.

Maxwell was here at last!

Except that when the door opened, another Chinese man walked in. Or rather, he strode in, his black eyes piercing as he looked at her.

Disappointment cut through Lydia at the same moment that she released an enormously loud burst of flatulence. She felt her face heat almost to burning as she rapidly pulled the covers up to her shoulders, for she was not suitably attired for strangers.

And all the while the man just stood there, staring at her, his thin eyebrows pulled low over his coal black eyes.

He didn't say anything and neither did she, for she was much too mortified. But though her tongue appeared frozen, her eyes were not. She looked at him in stunned amazement, seeing her very first well-dressed Chinese man up close.

He wore silk, that much was obvious, a gray tunic with dark black pants and the ever-present roundish hat over his long black Manchurian queue. All in all, it was the standard Chinese attire from what she remembered of her quick rickshaw ride through Shanghai. But what stood out, what seemed truly exceptional, was the embroidered design on his tunic. A dark green dragon wove in and around his upper body, its flame tongue coiling into the red Chinese buttons—
frogs,
she thought they were called. On the opposite lapel, an embroidered ball of fire hung just out of reach. A truly exceptional design, she thought, and fabulously executed, for it made the wearer appear both man and dragon. An awesome sight indeed.

"Excuse me," she squeaked. Then she cleared her throat, doing her best to sound strong and not at all intimidated by this dark man towering in her doorway. "Excuse me," she said more firmly. "But why are you in my bedchamber?"

She had meant to sound powerful, for Max had written that the only thing these barbarians understood was strength. He'd meant the strength of cannons blazing from warships, but she figured the notion applied in person as well. Unfortunately, her words did not sound powerful as much as haughty. And in a squeaky, little-girl voice to boot.

The man continued to stare at her in some dark Chinese way. It wasn't like when the servant looked at her. The boy's face often went blank from incomprehension. This newcomer's expression was clearly a mask. Carved wood gave more away than his brooding eyes. She rapidly began to squirm under his scrutiny.

Abruptly, he spoke in rapid-fire Chinese to the boy who waited impassively just outside the bedroom. The boy answered, also in Chinese, while Lydia sat, uncomprehending. It was excruciatingly difficult, and for a moment she had the strongest urge to cry.

Rather than do that, she stiffened her spine and consciously released the blanket from where she'd held it almost up to her chin. It drifted down, thankfully not slipping below her cleavage. "Please, sir," she said as calmly as she could manage. "When will Maxwell be coming?"

"Maxwell?" he asked, his voice strangely melodious.

"Yes. Maxwell Slade. He is my fiancé."

"You have no fiancé," he snapped. "You are..." He struggled a moment with the English word. "My servant."

"I most certainly am not!" Thankfully, she was still struggling with an upset belly or she would have leapt straight to her feet despite her lack of clothing. Indeed, she wondered if she could slap his face from her position on the bed.

Fortunately for her dignity, he merely dipped his head in a semblance of a bow. "My apologies—"

"I should think so!"

"You are my..." Again the pause as he struggled with the language. Abruptly he brightened, his eyes actually lightening to a kind of reddish brown. "Slave."

At her gasp of shock, he continued, still with that ridiculously pleased expression. "I have extended myself greatly to purchase you. You were most expensive." His tone indicated disapproval, almost anger. "But it is done now, and you will perform such tasks as I require when I require."

"I most certainly will not!" Throwing caution to the wind, Lydia tossed her covers aside. If he'd thought she was a sickly, retiring female, he was about to get a surprise. Ignoring her state of undress, she stood directly in front of him, poking him right in the embroidered dragon's eye. "I am Lydia Smith, fiancée to Maxwell Slade. And you will take me to him immediately!"

She didn't even see him move, neither him nor his servant. But almost before her words were finished, he had grabbed her wrists and pushed her backward onto the bed. From out of nowhere appeared straps—thick leather straps that he and his servant snapped around each of her wrists and ankles, tying her to the iron grid that supported the bed's mattress. And no matter how much she fought, how much she bit or tried to claw her way free, she ended up flat on her back, her arms and legs spread, her nightshirt halfway up her thighs.

She screamed, screeching out her anger and horror and that she was an Englishwoman and they had no right to treat her this way. And yet they did nothing. They simply stood and watched her, no matter how much she said Max's or her own name. No matter what she threatened or babbled or pleaded. In the end, she lay exhausted on the bed, tears of frustration flowing freely down her cheeks.

The dragon man approached her. Looking down, he smiled almost beatifically, and in the oddest gesture of reverence, he reached out to touch her face. She tried to turn away, but there was nowhere to go, and soon his forefinger was wet with her tears. He lifted his finger slowly, closing his eyes as he brought it to his mouth, obviously tasting and enjoying the salt of her tears.

She stared at him in shock and horror, not knowing what to make of his action. And then he looked back at her, his smile more natural.

"Shi Po was right. You are an overfull cup." Abruptly he turned, his long queue snapping behind him like a serpent's tail. "Your lessons will begin tomorrow."

And then he was gone.

* * *

Her lessons did not begin the next day. Indeed, nothing began the next day because she would not allow it. She fought, she struggled, she refused to eat. She even fouled her own bed. Only to find out that fighting rubbed her skin raw, giving her painful welts that burned and bled. When she refused to eat, she didn't eat. No one particularly cared. And when she fouled her bed, no one cared either. She lay in her own filth, miserable and abandoned.

And worst of all was knowing Maxwell had abandoned her. He was nowhere to be found, though she sobbed his name like a litany.

In her more rational moments, she knew Maxwell wasn't at fault. In fact, her fiancé was likely blissfully ignorant of her state, happily believing his future wife safe at home in England. It would be months before enough messages crossed between Shanghai and England for both him and her mother to discover she had disappeared. Months. In the meantime, Lydia would be trapped here, slave to some deviant Chinese monster.

Months. As a slave.

The thought was insupportable. Impossible. And yet she could not deny the reality of her situation. When she was rational, that is. And so she spent as much time as she could irrational.

Or at least she pretended. A couple of days of raving lunacy convinced her that insanity got her nowhere. It did not relieve the agony in her mind, nor did it affect her captors in any appreciable manner. So she tried a different tack, feigning exhaustion—even cooperation—in the hopes that she could overpower the servant boy and escape.

She failed. The boy was stronger than he looked, more than a match for her. And when she was left alone—unbound—in her room, she found that the door was locked and the small, high window barred. That beautiful iron latticework she'd so admired was in truth iron fixtures designed to prevent escape.

Still, she raised herself up as high as she could, screaming herself hoarse in the hopes that someone would hear her and come rushing to her rescue. Maxwell was in the forefront, of course. But though she screeched her throat raw, no one came to her aid.

And all the while, her hatred of the dragon—that was what she had come to call him in her mind—grew. She who hated to kill a mouse would have easily, happily wrung the dragon's neck and danced upon his dead body.

Indeed, she had elaborate fantasies, each more gruesome than the last, as to how she would kill her captors. God would give her inhuman strength and she would crush them with her two fists. God would give her a voice that could shatter eardrums, and she would scream until their heads exploded. God would give her fantastic powers of the mind, and she would overpower them with a thought.

Maxwell no longer figured in her dreams except to be gloriously amazed by her ingenuity in engineering an escape. Though she still wished he might somehow find her, rush through the door and rescue her, she realized now it would never happen. She would have to find her own way out and to his side.

So it was, around a week later—at least, she thought it was a week; time was difficult to track in this place—when the dragon stepped into her room. Lydia was curled on the floor in a corner, quietly humming to herself. The tune an old nonsense rhyme that her mother had once sang to her, and which she found oddly comforting.

She knew she was a disgusting sight. Matted hair, filthy nightshirt, bruised and swollen body from the more violent encounters with the houseboy. But she did not care what the dragon thought of her. Indeed, she very much hoped she disgusted him and he would toss her out on the street.

But that did not happen. Instead, he came to stand over her, glaring down in fury, his lip curled in disgust.

"Are you done with this now?"

She didn't answer, so eventually he continued.

"Have you accepted your situation? Because I swear to you that my patience is at an end. If you do not stop your fighting, then I shall return you to the whorehouse where I first found you. I will recover whatever monies I can, and I will be done with you forever."

She looked up, hope sparking within her. He crushed it.

"I do not know if you remember what happened at that place, but I can tell you what will happen when I return you. You will be beaten, that much is assured. Then you will be addicted—to opium, no doubt, because it is easy and will make you docile. Then your virginity will be sold as many times as they can manage until you become an old harlot."

Her mind exploded. She screamed. She launched herself at the dragon.

He was prepared, of course. And strong. He had no need of the boy to assist him in slamming her onto the bed. Then he continued speaking, his voice low and implacable.

"But it will not end there, ghost woman. No. If you learn quickly and spread your legs easily, they will keep you on for as long as you bring in customers. All the while your craving for opium will increase. You will do anything for the drug. You will spread your legs, debase your body and others', anything and everything, just for another taste of that vile drug. And then, when you are old and wasted, they will throw you out on the street to die. But you won't die. You will crawl into the Shanghai slums, find a shack and a filthy piece of wood so that you can spread your legs for whoever will give you another taste. In the end, you will die in that black hole of your own filth, and no one, least of all your precious Maxwell, will ever know or care."

The life he painted seemed too real to be a lie. Indeed, Max had once written of the poor fates of men and women who became addicted to the opium the Chinese adored. And if Lydia doubted, she needed only remember the time she had spent in that other awful place. As bad as her treatment here was, her injuries were all a result of her own actions. Her many indignities were nowhere near what she had experienced in her moments of lucidity at the whorehouse.

She could not go back there. She would not! Which meant she had to stay here. With the dragon. Until she could find a way to escape.

She did not want to stay and please this monster. She did not want any of this, but God had long since turned a deaf ear. She would have to make her own plans, her own bargains. And yet, she had no strength to begin. She simply lay on her side and sobbed loud, messy tears of the truly wretched.

In time, the dragon stood up and stared at her, seemingly unmoved by pity or remorse. "I give you one day, ghost woman. One day to present yourself to me in such a way as to prove you are worthy of my attention. Fight Fu De in the least, and I will chain your hands and feet together and toss you back into the cesspool from which you came."

He meant it. Every evil word. He would toss her back and she would die. This she knew.

And yet, long after he left, she could not stir herself to care. She longed for death. Prayed for it. Desperately she needed an end.

But there was nothing in the room with which to harm herself. Even the iron bars that provided the framework for the bed could not be used. She had tried. At the time she had been looking for a weapon against the servant—what was his name? Fu De. The frame was solid and unwieldy for any purpose except as a bed. Even her gown was not long enough to create a noose from which to hang herself. In short, she would have to make a bargain with the dragon, and pray for a time when she could find an escape.