The Daughters of Nightsong. V. J. Banis

show him and the world that despite all the efforts to destroy her, she had bettered them all. With Raymond Andrieux’s help she would have her triumph and whatever the cost, it would be worth it.

      “I wasn’t thinking in terms of money,” Raymond said, watching her carefully.

      Yes, he could even have her, Lydia told herself as she sipped her coffee. She didn’t love him, of course, but she could not deny that he was the only man other than Peter MacNair to arouse her sexually.

      Lydia raised her eyes to him. “A price does not always have to be money.”

      His slow, steady smile brightened his face. “You’re a very curious woman, Lydia,” he said.

      “Oh? How so?”

      He kept his gaze level. “Nothing seems to disturb you.”

      “Perhaps that is because I have had too many disruptions in my life already. I’ve learned how to deal with just about every situation.”

      “Toward what end?”

      “I beg your pardon?”

      Raymond sat forward. “What do you want, Lydia? Why are you so determined to succeed? You don’t seem to really enjoy any of this,” he said, motioning to the tasteful luxury of the drawing room.

      Lydia looked wistful. “I have not had a very attractive past.” She paused, not wanting to look back. “April has had a particularly difficult time of it. It’s better now that Empress Cosmetics has begun making money. Still, even now I feel I could never make up to her all she’s been made to suffer.”

      “No,” Raymond said slowly. “I am a very intuitive man. There is something deeper, even deeper than April.”

      Lydia looked up sharply, then lowered her eyes just as quickly for fear he’d seen the truth in them. “April is my only reason for whatever I do.”

      “She’s an exquisite creature,” Raymond said softly.

      Again Lydia looked up quickly. There was something unnerving in the way he had spoken.

      He saw her questioning look and said, “I can understand why you would want to give her the world. She is a charming young lady.”

      “It has been hard for her, living here in San Francisco. There is a great dislike for Orientals. Her father was Chinese.”

      “I assumed as much. You never told me of your husband.”

      Lydia grew uneasy. “There isn’t much to tell,” she said evasively. “My parents were missionaries. They both died of cholera and I was left alone. A Mandarin prince, Ke Loo, took a fancy to me and we married.”

      “And is your husband dead?” he asked.

      “My husband,” she said, a bit too sharply, “is in China—and, I assure you, of little consequence in my life.”

      He made no reply, and she was embarrassed at having spoken so rudely. It was a subject on which she was more than a little sensitive. Why should her life be affected, after all, by a cruel Mandarin who lived in a palace thousands of miles away, a man she had always hated and feared? Too, she could not help a certain feeling of guilt for the son who had been left behind in China, now a prince in his own right, but more, far more to her than that.

      Raymond got to his feet when April came into the room. She was dressed in yellow silk—the Imperial color of China. She looked cool and expensive, he thought, a prized China figurine, fragile and alive with brilliance.

      April’s appearance surprised Lydia. Since the angry scene after David left that day, she only saw April at meals, and even then the girl sat sullen and ill-tempered. Of late however, April seemed less hostile, as though she had resigned herself. Yet Lydia wasn’t completely sure her diagnosis was right. There was a strange light in April’s eyes and she had a conspiratorial air about her now that prompted Lydia to study her more closely.

      Raymond said, “Have you changed your mind and decided to join us for coffee after all, April?”

      April smiled charmingly. “I was finishing the book I started, but the ending depressed me so I thought I’d try and take my mind from it by joining you.”

      “And what book is that?” Lydia asked.

      “Just a book,” April said, dismissing her. “Tell me about Paris, Monsieur Andrieux. At dinner you mentioned a great fair which is planned.”

      “Ah, what a grand affair it will be. You must let me take you there.”

      Lydia said, “An exposition?”

      “Yes. It will open in 1889.” He gave her a cool smile. “Perhaps we can introduce Nightsong to all of Europe then.”

      She beamed in anticipation.

      “France cannot possibly be as beautiful and enchanting as China,” April said abruptly, spoiling Lydia’s pleasure.

      Raymond chuckled and said, “It would be disloyal of me to agree and impolite of me to argue. Let me just say that I would like to show you my beautiful country and let you decide for yourself.”

      “Only if you’ll permit me to show you mine,” April countered.

      “But this is your country,” Lydia reminded her gently.

      Without a glance at her mother April said to Raymond, “I was born in China, you know. I believe one’s homeland is the land where one was born.”

      Raymond shifted uncomfortably. “Let me tell you about the Paris exposition,” he said, pointedly returning to safer ground. “They are right now building a steel tower that will be the tallest structure in all the world. Eiffel’s tower, they call it, after the architect who designed it. It will have hydraulic elevators that will carry the people all the way to the very top, with places where you can eat and shop, observation platforms—even a weather station is planned. And the fair itself will surpass any other ever held, even your centennial when the telephone was introduced.”

      “It sounds very exciting,” Lydia said, her earlier excitement having been cooled by April.

      “It is in Paris at the exposition where we will have the Empress Cosmetic exhibit and introduce Nightsong. And we must create new creams and lotions and powders.” He grew more serious and added, “You must begin thinking of expansion, Lydia. You will find you have outgrown San Francisco in the next year, even America. Nightsong will enrapture the whole world.” He smiled at April. “It will even enchant your beloved China.”

      April’s face clouded with anger. “The Empress will never permit her personal essence to be capitalized upon. She will kill whoever dares attempt it.”

      Lydia grew uneasy, remembering suddenly that what April said was much more than the ranting of a jealous child. More than once the Empress’s long arm of revenge had stretched itself across the ocean that separated San Francisco from the Forbidden City in Peking.

      “What April says is true, Raymond,” she said aloud. “I suppose I should have mentioned it, but there have been attempts on my life...Chinese assassins obviously in the employ of the Dowager Empress. Your connection with her personal scent may have put your life in danger too.”

      Raymond laughed. “Oh, no, you don’t, Lydia. You cannot scare me off now that I am so close to making us both a fortune. I have never been afraid of any woman’s threats, not even those of an imperial dowager empress.”

      April said, “My Empress does not make idle threats, Monsieur Andrieux.”

      “Every woman makes idle threats, little one,” he said tolerantly. “But then you yourselves are women and put importance on such things.”

      April felt her patience with him beginning to run out. She wondered if all Frenchmen were so egotistical and complacent. David wasn’t like that. He understood when she talked of the mysterious powers and the omnipotence of her magnificent Dowager Empress.

      “I’m