Merline Lovelace (2 page)

Her mouth firming, Sarah adjusted her stride to her small guide’s uneven pace. Within minutes, she’d passed through the gates that separated the Christian City, as the walled European enclave was known, from the sprawling Chinese village of Mong Ha. Immediately, the sights and scents of the teeming streets engulfed her.

Pigtailed vendors carrying steaming baskets of rice and vegetables cried their wares. In tiny, dirt-floored shops, succulent strips of duck and pork crackled on charcoal braziers. Money changers with strings of copper cash and portable scales for weighing silver shouted their skills, while herb sellers, peddlers, and sweating porters with laden pails of water at either end of their carrying poles elbowed their way through the crowd. Children shrieked, dogs barked, and huge, evil-smelling hogs snuffled in the gutters.

Careful to keep her head down, Sarah peered from under the concealing brim of her hat with great interest.
In her years in Macao, she’d ventured into Mong Ha only twice, once to bring food to destitute families after a typhoon had washed their homes into the sea, and once to ascertain that their ailing Cook was being cared for by his extended family. Each time, a scandalized Chinese official had escorted her back to the gates of the Christian City. By decree of the Emperor, firmly ensconced in his Celestial City thousands of miles away, European women were barred from all Chinese soil except the narrow, three-mile-long peninsula which contained the old Portuguese walled city of Macao.

The Reverend Mr. Abernathy firmly believed that this outrageous edict was the work of the celibate Jesuits who’d held such sway over the Chinese emperors for a century or more. Sarah herself suspected that the prohibition sprang from more direct causes. The simple fact was that the European women’s mode of dress shocked the modest Chinese to their core. The high-waisted, low-necked chemise gowns brought into fashion by the French Empress Josephine some years ago displayed a shameful amount of feminine flesh. Even the Abernathy sisters’ more conservative gowns, with their long, tight sleeves and lace-trimmed bodices, raised Cook’s brows. Thus Sarah had disguised herself in Chinese clothing to seek out the man whose help she so desperately needed.

Her diminutive guide stopped and pointed shyly. “House of Flowers, Big Sister.”

Sarah glanced in surprise at the building the child indicated. Somehow she’d expected a brothel to look quite different from this elegant residence. As viewed from the street, with only the tips of its many-tiered roof visible behind its high walls, the building might
have been mistaken for a wealthy mandarin’s home. An intricately carved ebony gate stood open—to admit nocturnal guests, Sarah supposed. Beyond the peaked gatehouse, she caught a glimpse of lush gardens cut by pebbled walks and illuminated by glowing lanterns.

“You wanchee come come,” the little girl urged, tugging on her sleeve.

Following the child, Sarah plunged into a dark alley that ran alongside one wall of the house. Garbage and other matter she preferred not to identify squished under her wooden clogs. Halfway down the alley, a dark figure detached itself from the shadows.

“Number Five Nephew?”

The figure bobbed its head in reply. “Yes, Big Sister. You come, quick quick.”

Sarah felt her heart begin to pound as she slipped through a side gate. Despite her brave words to Abigail earlier, she wasn’t
quite
as comfortable about venturing inside one of Macao’s most infamous brothels as she’d pretended.

With a terse order to wait, Number Five Nephew pushed Little One With A Limp behind a screen of trailing jasmine vines, then gestured for Sarah to follow. Head down, hands tucked inside her sleeves, she hurried along a neatly swept pebbled path.

As they rounded a corner of the main building, Sarah couldn’t resist taking a quick peek. The scene in the central courtyard made her eyes widen. She might well have been staring at Lady Blair’s own gardens on the occasion of the Midsummer’s Eve Ball, the event that always marked the start of Macao’s social season.

Well-dressed women strolled the walks on the arms of their chosen companions. An orchestra of many-stringed
instruments filled the night air with silvery notes. Scattered tables held every imaginable delicacy. The only difference between this soiree and Lady Blair’s, Sarah noted with a tickle of irrepressible amusement, was that the women here wore embroidered gowns buttoned modestly up to the small collars that banded their necks. At Lady Blair’s, the revealing ball gowns would have bared acres of rounded breasts and dimpled arms.

Quite suddenly, Sarah’s amusement vanished. By the light of a hanging lantern she recognized a portly man leaning over the tiny, dark-haired woman on his arm. If Sarah wasn’t mistaken, that was The Honorable Mr. Forsythe, Senior Accountant at the East India Company and a deacon of her father’s small congregation! Her lips folded into a tight line. How would she would ever face the man…or his wife…across a church pew again?

Ducking her head to avoid any further compromising sights, Sarah followed her guide down a dim corridor. Almost immediately, the real purpose of the House of the Dancing Blossoms began to impress itself on her consciousness. Female giggles drifted through thin bamboo walls, punctuated by an occasional male grunt and, suddenly, a tortured groan.

Sarah stopped abruptly at the sound. Her first startled thought was to rush to the poor victim’s aid. Before she did so, the groan ended in a long, shuddering sigh, followed almost immediately by a muttered phrase in English that made her blush to the tips of her ears.

“Come!” her guide whispered, beckoning furiously.

Sarah hurried after him, trying without much success
to ignore the sounds that emanated from the chambers they passed. By the time the boy opened the door to a small, dimly lit room, she knew her face was as red as the silk banner hanging just inside the door. To her relief, the room was empty. Her nerves jumping, she turned to her escort.

“Cap-i-tan come come, same place?”

Number Five Nephew bobbed his head. “Yes, Big Sister. Every nightee, same same.” He shooed her inside. “You waitee, he come. Then we go, quick quick.”

As the door closed behind her nervous escort, Sarah drew in a deep, steadying breath. She needed to cool her cheeks and compose her thoughts for her imminent meeting with the scandalous Lord Straithe.

According to the gossipmongers, James Kerrick had started down the road to ruin some eight years ago. Then a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, he’d been caught in a
most
compromising situation with his admiral’s wife. The fact that he’d just been cited for extraordinary heroism in one of the last naval battles of the Napoleonic wars didn’t mitigate his disgrace. In short order, he’d been dismissed from the Navy, ostracized by society, and shunned by a rigidly disapproving older brother. Undaunted, he’d purchased his own ship and charted a course of dissolution and dissipation ever since.

His brother had died some years ago, Sarah had learned, and the cashiered naval officer had become Third Viscount Straithe. His brother had avenged himself on the black sheep who’d disgraced him, however, by selling the family estate to a land-hungry squire just before he died. Straithe now held the title, and nothing else.

It went against Sarah’s grain to turn to such a man for help, but he was her only hope. Unfortunately, he hadn’t shown the least sign of wanting to aid her. He’d ignored her repeated notes requesting his presence at the Mission House on a matter of some urgency. When she’d tried to contact him through his man of business, Straithe had instructed the clerk to palm her off with a donation to the Mission and the excuse that the captain was too busy to concern himself with the affairs of the colony.

Evidently he wasn’t too busy for regular visits to the House of the Dancing Blossoms, Sarah thought in some pique. Well, at least Straithe’s disgusting habits had given her the means to track him down.

Tipping her hat back, she glanced around the small room. The chamber wasn’t particularly well equipped for the serious discussion she needed to have with Straithe. Aside from a low, lacquered table in one corner that held a porcelain teapot, several handle-less cups and a plate of fruit, the only other piece of furniture in the room was the bed. Canopied and enclosed on three sides by curtains painted with scenes that brought the blood rushing to Sarah’s cheeks once more, the massive platform dominated the chamber.

She turned away from its erotic splendor, reminding herself that she was no schoolgirl to be shocked at such vulgar displays. She’d nursed her mama during the childbed fever that eventually claimed her. She’d tended to her brothers and sisters and many of her papa’s flock. She’d seen more sickness and death than many women of her age and class. Nevertheless, she had to fan herself with her sleeve for some moments before she felt composed enough to face the man she’d come to see.

When the door slid open long moments later and he stepped inside, Sarah’s first, uncensored thought was that the phrase “as black as sin” might have been coined to describe his hair. The disordered locks gleamed with a dark luster that caught the lantern light and made her fingers itch to smooth it back from his brow, much as she did Charlie’s when he came to her flushed and panting after a hard game of cricket.

Her second thought was that the bed, as huge as it was, would hardly hold him. Having glimpsed Straithe at a distance once or twice, she knew he towered over most other individuals. Until now, though, she’d never appreciated just how big the man was.

For a wild moment, she wondered how in the world he managed to fold those long legs encased in tight, buff-colored trousers and black boots into the Chinesesized bed. Not that he’d be wearing his boots when he occupied that curtained platform, she reminded herself, then flushed again at the direction of her wayward thoughts. Giving up all hope of controlling what she knew was an unbecoming wash of color, Sarah lifted her chin and waited for him to acknowledge her presence.

He certainly took his time about it.

Slipping the pale, nervous nephew a coin, he slid the door panel shut. Sarah saw him wince when it banged against the door frame. His black brows lowered into a frown, as if the mere sound of the bamboo striking bamboo pained him. When he turned and saw who stood at the foot of the bed, his frown deepened into a decided scowl.

Sarah stiffened as startlingly blue eyes raked her from head to toe. When his gaze lingered far too long on the slope of her bosom, evident even under the
loosely fitting blue cotton robe, her hands curled into fists inside the wide sleeves.

His gaze returned to her face at last, and the dangerous look on his face lifted the hairs on the back of Sarah’s neck. She found herself quite unable to break the silence that stretched between them. After a long, tense moment, Straithe shrugged out of his green frock coat and tossed it onto the foot of the bed.

“I take it Mei-Lin is indisposed,” he drawled. “I hope you know her repertoire. I’ve developed a decided partiality for her version of the Fluttering Butterfly.”

Sarah wet her lips. Obviously, Straithe was not at all pleased to find someone other than his chosen paramour awaiting him in this decadent chamber. Before she could respond, he lifted a brow in mocking inquiry.

“Perhaps you have your own specialty?”

Sarah shook herself out of her uncharacteristic timidity. He was only a man, after all. There was no reason for her flesh to raise into goose bumps at the mere sound of his voice. Deciding to let her actions speak for her, she drew herself up to her full, if not particularly impressive, height and tugged off the concealing straw hat.

As she’d known it would, her hair drew his eyes like a lodestone draws iron filings. Sarah realized that the heavy mass must be frizzing in its usual undisciplined manner all over her head. The humidity of Macao’s summers defied her every attempt to subdue the stubborn mass. An undistinguished color somewhere between brick and ginger, it was hot, heavy, and the bane of her existence. One of the banes, she amended,
remembering her father. At the thought of The Reverend Mr. Abernathy, she lifted her chin.

“I’ve come to speak with you, Lord Straithe.”

“Have you, Miss Abernathy?”

The fact that he knew her name took some of the starch out of Sarah’s spine. It was one thing for her to recognize the rogue who caused a veritable storm of gossip whenever his ship appeared in the bay. It was something else again for the dissipated lord to recognize her.

“How do you know who I am?” she asked, curiosity overcoming her nervousness at his rather sinister expression.

“Why shouldn’t I know you? You appear to know me.”

“I hardly think the one leads to the other.”

“Does it not, Miss Abernathy?”

Sarah stiffened at the mockery in his deep voice. Gathering her dignity, she met his sardonic look with a steady one of her own. “Macao is a small community. It would be strange indeed for me not to recognize someone of your reputation.”

That black brow went up another notch.

“And it would be stranger still,” she continued, “not to notice someone of your…generous…proportions. Which explains how I know you, my lord. Now perhaps you’ll explain how it is that you recognize me?”

The saturnine expression on his face deepened. One corner of his mouth curled downward as he crossed both arms, straining the shoulder seams of his linen shirt.

“As you say, Macao is indeed a small community. There aren’t more than a handful of Englishwomen in
residence. It would be difficult for any man not to notice someone of your…generous…proportions.”

Sarah didn’t care for the way he’d turned her words back on her. She’d never enjoyed anything close to Abigail’s sylphlike slenderness, but until this moment she hadn’t considered herself more than well-boned. She soon realized, however, that Lord Straithe considered only a particular portion of her anatomy generous. His blue eyes traveled once again down her throat to her bosom and stayed there for a thoroughly unnerving length of time.

Heat surged through Sarah’s cheeks with a vengeance. The urge to cross her arms over her chest and shield herself from Straithe’s inspection battled with an equally compelling urge to smack his face.