The Daughters of Nightsong. V. J. Banis

drunk, but not on father’s liquor.”

      “Really, David, I don’t understand.”

      “The most wonderful thing, Mother,” he cried, so happy that not even her habitual primness could dampen his spirits.

      “David....”

      “I have just met the girl I am going to marry!”

      She gave him a cautious look. “And where, may I ask, did you meet this ravishing creature?”

      “Outside a charming little tea shop in Chinatown.”

      His mother shook her head and turned away. “Well, just so long as you haven’t gotten interested in a Chinese.”

      His mood plummeted. She’d given him a brutal reminder of the futility of his attraction. He wanted to cry out the truth about the Eurasian girl with whom he’d fallen immediately in love, but he was forced to hold back the happiness bursting like rockets inside him.

      In San Francisco, in 1887, Orientals, no matter how exotic and alluring, were regarded as no better than the dirt in the alleys.

      Though his mother had chided him afterward about his announcement, David became noncommittal, hiding his pain behind a cryptic smile, purposely cloaking the entire matter in boyish mystery. He had never been open with his parents, and though they liked it no more this time than before, they did not find his attitude unusual.

      So the love April and David shared had become a private thing. They were aware of the disapproval of those strangers who saw them on the rare occasions when they strolled the streets of Chinatown hand in hand. David and April closed their ears to the jeers and insults of the more outspoken of those who passed them. They found all they needed of the world in each other’s eyes.

      Perhaps it was this ostracism that made David more adamant in his defiance of convention and strengthened his need to be with April, nurturing his attraction into a love so all-consuming he’d willingly give up his world for her happiness.

      “Oh, David,” April said as they talked in the rear of Su Lin’s tea shop, “I am so miserable when we aren’t together. Meeting like this in the afternoon isn’t enough.”

      The differences in their cultures was a subject they both tactfully avoided; as if, April thought bitterly, it were an infirmity, though she did not voice the thought aloud.

      “But you are not yet seventeen, April,” David said, letting her name roll lovingly on his tongue. “Your mother would never permit you to go out in the evening without a chaperone, and especially not with me, chaperoned or not.”

      “I know.” She let her shoulders droop dejectedly. “She won’t ever let me do anything, except what she wants me to do. How I hate San Francisco. I hate America, I hate everything about it. I don’t want to stay here, David. I want to go home to my own people in China where I belong, where I would be treated with the respect owed to the daughter of a Mandarin prince.”

      David frowned. She’d told him of her background, of how her mother had forced her to flee China and of her royal father, but David never understood any of it. Why had Mrs. Nightsong abandoned her husband and male child, left a life of palaces and luxury to bring her daughter to a land where she’d be despised and rejected?

      “You are certainly beautiful enough to be a princess,” David said. “I have never seen anyone more beautiful.” He turned her toward him and took her in his arms. “I know I am being extremely forward, but I can’t help myself, April. Every time I think about you I want to hold you, protect you, keep you safe forever and ever.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking. I’ve decided that I am not going back to school next month. I’ll never go back to school...ever. I don’t care what my father says. We’ll go away, somewhere where we can love each other openly without all this sneaking around and hiding in out of the way places, always afraid someone will see us.”

      “China,” April said, her face glowing, her eyes dancing with excitement. “We could go to China.”

      David gave her a patient smile. “We would only be reversing roles. There, I would be the outcast.” He saw her hurt and immediately hugged her close. “I’m sorry, April, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

      “No, it’s all right, David,” she said easing away from him. “I am a half-caste.” She shrugged. “As long as I live here in this terrible country I will always be looked upon as an undesirable.” She looked up at him and her face brightened. “But home in China it would all be different. I was born in China and from the very beginning of my life I have been a Chinese, regardless of what my mother is. My amah insisted that I be brought up as a Chinese princess, much as my mother hated it. That is why the Dowager Empress is so angry with Mother for having taken me away, for having separated me from my royal father and brother.”

      She looked at him pleadingly. “I must go back, David. All the while I stay here I will be punished for having left Prince Ke Loo, my father, and worse still for having left China.”

      It all seemed so much longer than only six years ago when her father had taken them from their palace in Kalgan and brought them into The Forbidden City.

      She’d been frightened in the Imperial Palace in Peking and it had been exciting for her to make the escape, though she never understood why her mother had left Prince Ke Loo.

      April sighed as she leaned her head against David’s chest. Once, what seemed an eternity ago in Kalgan, she had sat in her own little garden, dressed in a lovely soft kimono of flowered silk, and complained to her amah that nothing ever happened in her life.

      As long as she remained away from her homeland, that magic kingdom of the Dowager Empress, she would be punished. She would never be able to escape the Dragon Empress. After all, wasn’t the Empress called Celestial Goddess? And didn’t she rule the world as well as the heavens, as the amah had told her often enough?

      “Yes,” April said in a tight, frightened voice. “I will be punished forever unless I do as the Empress wants and return to what I am and to where I belong.”

      David felt a pressure inside his head, like the welling up of a force so determined it made his eyes blur. He held April closer. “I don’t know how, or even when, my darling,” he said, “but one day I will take you home to where you will be happy.”

      “Where we will both be happy,” she said, clinging to him. “My father will protect you, David. He is a very powerful man, a cousin to the Empress herself, and amah told me that Li Ahn, my little brother, is an heir to the throne. Oh, David, they would welcome us.” She pressed closer. “When, David? When can we leave?”

      “Soon, my darling. I will have to make arrangements, of course, and we will have to be sensible and make plans. We’ll need money, and your mother....”

      April looked up sharply, her eyes fearful. “We must never let Mother know we are even seeing each other, let alone planning to elope. I told you how much she hates your family. And you must not tell your father about us either, David. You haven’t, have you?”

      “No.” He felt cowardly. “But darn it, April, you told me that Father knew you and liked you. Surely he’d not object to our being together.”

      “He’d try and stop us, just as Mother would. There’s a feud between them. They’ll do anything to spite each other. You and I marrying is the last thing they would approve of.”

      She turned reflective. “They knew each other in China, from what I gathered. It all has something to do with a scent mother stole from the Imperial Palace, the Empress’s exclusive scent. When we were put ashore here in San Francisco, we had nothing but the clothes we were wearing, and the Empress’s perfume. So Mother went into competition with your father’s cosmetic firm. She wants to duplicate the perfume—Nightsong, she calls it—but so far none of the chemists have been successful.”

      “Your mother’s firm seems to be doing all right,” David said.

      “Empress Cosmetics is making us wealthy—but