The Daughters of Nightsong. V. J. Banis

to her of the small band who called themselves I-ho-chuan, the Righteous and Harmonious Fists Society—the Boxers, as they had come to be known—who were gradually gaining converts, and the White Lotus sect, whose only purpose was to overthrow the Manchus, her father’s family; but they had to be foolish, insolent peasants to think they could uproot her father’s dynasty, the Empress herself, all of the great Manchus who’d ruled China for almost three hundred years.

      As they sat holding tight to one another, neither April nor David could imagine anything blighting their future together. Nothing would ever blemish their happiness, certainly not some insignificant political malcontents.

      * * * *

      Lydia heard the commotion in the foyer. She started out of her chair just as the doors to the sitting room were flung apart and Lorna MacNair stood framed in the doorway. They had never met but Lydia knew the woman.

      “Where are they?” Lorna demanded, shaking a crumpled piece of paper in Lydia’s face as she stormed forward.

      “Who do you mean?” Lydia asked.

      “You know perfectly well. My son and that half-Chinese daughter of yours.”

      Lydia stiffened and clenched her fists. She felt the first twinges of fear and put her hand on the back of a chair to steady herself.

      “My daughter is in her bed,” she answered, but she could see the truth in Lorna’s face.

      “Not according to this,” Lorna said, throwing David’s note at Lydia’s feet.

      Lydia hesitated but the urge to read the note was stronger than her refusal to stoop before this woman. She lowered herself gracefully and unraveled the paper, turning her back to Lorna.

      “You may rest assured that April and I will never humiliate you, Mother,” she read aloud. “Don’t try to find us. David.”

      The words blurred as Lydia’s hand began to tremble. She turned suddenly, throwing aside the note. Gathering up her skirts, she ran to the staircase and to April’s room. Her heart stopped for an instant when she saw the empty bed and the note folded neatly on the pillowcase.

      “I love him,” it said simply. “I am sorry if I disappoint you but, like you, I must do what I must do, go where I belong,”

      “Go where I belong,” she read aloud. She stared at the words for a moment until their full impact struck her. “Good God!”

      Lorna MacNair was standing at the bottom of the staircase. “Well?” she asked.

      “She’s gone...with David,” Lydia said, hurrying past her to ring for the housekeeper.

      “This is all your fault,” Lorna hissed. “If you’d stayed out of my family’s life my son would never have been corrupted.”

      Lydia turned on her, eyes flashing. “I no more welcome your son into my family than you welcome my daughter into yours,” she replied.

      The housekeeper appeared in the hall. “Nellie, go out and hail a hack, please,” Lydia ordered. “I’m going out.”

      “Out?” Lorna asked, as the housekeeper pulled a shawl around her shoulders and went out the door. “Where are you going? What do you know?”

      Lydia was tempted to repeat Lorna’s bad manners by throwing April’s note at her, but she handed it to her instead.

      “What does it mean, go where she belongs?” Suddenly Lorna gasped. “Dear God, not to Chinatown?” She put her hands over her mouth as if to hold back a scream.

      Lydia paid her no mind as she went toward her downstairs bedroom to fetch her cape.

      “You know where they are,” Lorna accused as she hurried after Lydia. “I demand that you tell me.”

      “I do not know where they are, but I have my suspicions. I only hope they prove to be right.”

      As Lydia started toward the foyer, the front door again crashed open and Peter barged in with Nellie, the housekeeper, in his wake. He glowered at his wife. “What in hell is going on?” he demanded. “When I got home a few minutes ago Susan said you were screaming something about David and that you were coming here. What’s this all about?”

      “Oh, Peter,” his wife said, throwing herself against him.

      He held her away, turning to Lydia instead. “What is it?” he asked, more gently than before.

      Lydia kept her eyes averted as she pulled on her gloves. To the housekeeper she asked, “Did you manage to find a carriage?”

      “My carriage is outside,” Peter told her. “Tell me what the devil’s the matter.”

      “David and April,” Lydia said as calmly as she could. “It appears they’ve eloped.”

      “Good God!”

      His exclamation angered her without her really knowing why. She hesitated, wondering if she should tell him where she suspected the young people were bound, wondering if she should seek his help. Peter knew of the dangers that lay in wait for them if indeed April was foolish enough to take David to her father’s house in China.

      Lorna decided for her. “She knows where they are, Peter, but she refuses to tell me.” Lorna clung to her husband’s lapels.

      He loosened her grip. “Do you, Lydia?”

      She nodded quickly. “April wrote in her note that she must go where she belongs.”

      “China,” Peter gasped. “Good Lord, no!”

      “China?” Lorna said, not understanding. “How will they get to China? It’s across the ocean. It’s thousands of miles away. And what will they live on? Where will they go when they get there?” A thought struck her. She looked up at Peter and said, “The company’s Chinese representative. David must have written him....”

      “Oh, be quiet,” Peter snapped as he reached for Lydia’s arm. “Come on, we can take my carriage. I only hope we can find the ship before it sails...if it hasn’t already.”

      “But what about me?” Lorna wailed as the two of them hurried out the door.

      “Go home,” Peter called back over his shoulder. “With any kind of luck I’ll have David home with me soon.”

      Lorna stood gaping at them as they got into Peter’s carriage and started off toward the docks. Even when the fog had swallowed them up she still stood in the light of the doorway, shoulders sagging, heart aching.

      CHAPTER SIX

      Lydia sat huddled in the corner of the closed carriage. She hadn’t wanted to go with Peter but she knew he was the only one who understood the dangers and could help her. She would have to forget for now how he’d abandoned her in China, sold her—for the price of his own passage to America—leaving her a slave to a Mandarin prince for over ten years. If she hadn’t saved herself and April from that cruel, selfish barbarian, their bones would be rotting in China this very day, victims of the executioner her husband had set upon them.

      How could she believe Peter MacNair when he told her he’d done it for her own good? Still, it was true enough that they had been in the middle of that accursed country, surrounded by millions of Chinese who’d been goaded by the Empress into killing every white they could find. Her mother was dying of cholera, her father just dead; there had been no chance, Lydia knew, of her reaching any of the distant seaports.

      At least with the Mandarin prince she had survived—for a while, Lydia told herself, even if it had been almost as a slave, a concubine. She would never have been able to escape from Ke Loo’s heavily guarded palace. He had wanted her too desperately at the beginning to ever permit her to slip away from him without his going after her. She told herself she should be thanking Peter MacNair rather than cursing him.

      Peter had said he’d tried to find her over the years. Had he lied to her again about that? He could