Rebecca Hagan Lee (44 page)

“What about me?” James asked.

“I said good-bye to you four nights ago.”

“I’m not ready to say good-bye,” he said. “Not then. Not now. Not ever.”

“Oh, James,” Elizabeth pleaded. “Don’t make this any more painful than it has to be. Please let me go.”

“No,” he said, turning her in his arms and kissing her. “I can’t let you go. Have you forgotten that you invited the entire Coryville Ladies’ League to the house for tea? Are you going to make me face that alone?”

“You said yourself that Mrs. G. can handle a simple tea. And I’m sure you can manage to endure it for one afternoon.”

“What about the rest of my life, Elizabeth? How am I supposed to endure being without you for the rest of my life? What about you? What about the rest of your life? How are you going to endure being alone? Or worse, being married to Samuel Wright?”

“I don’t know, James,” she said. “I don’t know how I’ll manage.” That was a lie. She knew exactly how she’d manage to endure the rest of her life. She’d manage the same way she’d managed the last four days of it—only half alive and with a great big empty hole where her heart used to be. “But I will. And so will you.”

“I don’t want to be alone,” James told her. “I don’t want to endure and exist. I want to be with you.”

“I’m sorry.” Elizabeth answered softly.

“Can you honestly say you don’t want me? That you don’t want to stay with me and the Treasures?”

“Ruby doesn’t want
me.
”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Maybe the problem is that you don’t want her. Or the other Treasures. Or me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Elizabeth snapped at him. “I love Ruby. I love Garnet and Emerald and Diamond.”

“And me?” he asked hopefully.

“I love you most of all.”

“Good,” he announced, scooping her up in his arms before she had time to protest and carrying her out of the cemetery and over to one of the two closed carriages parked on the street in front of Saint Mary’s Church. “Because we’ve got a little surprise for you.” He set Elizabeth on her feet and opened the carriage door. Delia and the Treasures filed out. All four Treasures were dressed in their finest clothes and the three oldest girls were clutching the dolls Elizabeth had made for them. Mrs. G. and Annie climbed out of the other carriage and joined them. They, too, were dressed in their Sunday best. “Will’s waiting with Father Paul inside,” he said. “He’s the best man. And Mrs. G. offered to be the matron of honor.”

“For what?” Elizabeth asked.

James dropped to his knees on the sidewalk. “I love you, Elizabeth. I want to marry you. I want you to be my wife and the mother of these children. Don’t you want to marry me?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “But what about Ruby?”

James smiled. “I think she approves,” he said. “She brought you a wedding present.” He reached inside the carriage and presented Portia. “I found her in my bed the day you left. Ruby seems to think she belongs there.” He leaned down and kissed Elizabeth with all the love and passion he’d been holding in check since she left. “I think you do.”

“Ruby?” Elizabeth asked in wonder. “Are you sure?”

“Ask her yourself.”

Elizabeth knelt on the sidewalk. “Ruby?” she asked, hesitantly, with all the love and hope and heartbreak in her voice.

Ruby walked over to Elizabeth and stood facing her.

James prompted her. “Isn’t there something you wanted to say to Libeth?”

Ruby leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Elizabeth’s neck. “When you coming home, Libeth?” she demanded.

“Do you want me to come home?” Elizabeth asked.

Ruby nodded. “I love you, Libeth. When you gonna be my mommy?”

Tears filled Elizabeth’s eyes, brimmed over, and ran unchecked down her face as she clutched Ruby to her breast. “Soon, sweetheart. Just as soon as your daddy and I can say, ‘I do,’ ” Elizabeth answered, half laughing and half crying, able to breathe once again now that she knew that James and Ruby wanted her and that everything was going to be all right.

Ruby turned to her father. “Say I do, Daddy,” she ordered. “Now!”

“I do,” James told Elizabeth tenderly. “Now and always.”

James Cameron Craig is a fictional hero. During the writing of this book I liked to think that there were real men like him, men who refused to allow little girls to be abandoned or murdered by their parents or family simply because they were born female in a male culture. Imagine how delighted I was to discover during the course of my research that at least one such man did exist. His name was Yu Chih, and he started an Infant Protection Society in his home village in Wu-hsi County, Kiangsu Province, China, in 1843. For the next ten years, until 1853, the Infant Protection Society supported between sixty and one hundred infants every year, most of them girls. In his efforts to gain support for the society and to educate his fellow countrymen, Yu Chih explained the custom of drowning infants and described the heartbreaking results as newborns struggled to survive.

I attempted to re-create the outrage Yu Chih felt as he recorded the history of his Infant Protection Society when I created James Cameron Craig.

For Yu Chih’s and other firsthand accounts of Chinese history and culture, I am indebted to Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for her book,
Chinese Civilization and Society
:
A Sourcebook
and to Fox Butterfield for his book,
China: Alive in the Bitter Sea.

And because hundreds of thousands of baby girls still wait for families in orphanages throughout China, I am including the phone number for the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse: 1-888-251-0075, which puts potential parents in touch with agencies who specialize in Chinese adoptions, in the hope that some of you may find Treasures of your own.

—
Rebecca Hagan Lee

Keep reading for a preview of Rebecca Hagan Lee’s new book

A WANTED MAN

Coming in August 2013 from Berkley Sensation.

San Francisco, California

February 6, 1875

Will Keegan opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling of his bedroom in the Silken Angel Saloon. His head ached from the pall of bluish smoke that lingered in the saloon, produced by the hundreds of cigars and cigarettes his customers smoked each night. The half bottle of brandy and the pot of coffee he’d drunk, the loud conversation, and the music from the slightly out-of-tune piano also contributed to the pounding behind his eyes.

He’d dreamed the dream again. Dreamed that he was back in Hong Kong with Mei Ling, whose features blurred, merging once again with Elizabeth’s. Will groaned.

The tinny drone of a piano, the beat of the drums, and the cacophony of dozens of voices speaking different dialects of Chinese, including the only two he could understand—Cantonese and Mandarin—drifted up from the first floor of the saloon and through the open window from Dupont Street. The Silken Angel occupied a large lot at the corner of Washington and Dupont. It was the last saloon in the Occidental section of town between Jackson Square and the entrance to Chinatown.

He had chosen the lot and built the building for just that reason. A saloon was the perfect front for the special project. The construction of any other sort of building might have raised suspicions and alerted the tongs, but no one gave another San Francisco drinking establishment a second thought.

Will squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth against the splintering pain in his brain. It was early. The soft light of the Saturday morning barely penetrated the heavy fog, but the clouds of moisture hanging over the city did little to muffle the noise. He had lived here for nearly four months and worked longer, later hours than he’d ever worked in his life, but he couldn’t seem to get used to the constant din. Coryville and the chaos that was breakfast with James and Elizabeth and the Treasures was an oasis of blessed silence compared to this. The mining camps in the High Sierras were quieter than this. And it would only get worse.

Today marked the beginning of the Chinese lunar year. In a few hours Dupont Street and the streets along the waterfront would be filled with more discordant sounds—parades, fireworks, bells and horns, bamboo flutes, cymbals, drums, including the hundreds of toy
bolang gu
, the pellet or rattle drums sold by street vendors, as well as the squeals of live pigs that would be paraded through the narrow city streets as the residents of Chinatown welcomed another Year of the Pig.

As a boy in Hong Kong, he had loved the pageantry of the dragon parades and the noise of Chinese New Year, but as a man suffering from a painful head and too little sleep, he found it another challenge to overcome. But it was early yet, and Will hoped that a mug of the strong, scorching-hot brew that passed for coffee and a heaping spoonful of willow bark elixir would ease his head enough to allow him to grab another hour or two of sleep despite the drum banging and the cymbal crashing and the amazingly clear mezzo-soprano voice growing closer and louder by the minute.

“‘Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness. Sowing in the noontime and the dewy eve …’”

Recognizing the anthem, Will rolled to his side, reached over, grasped the window sash, and shoved the window down to block the sound of the Salvationist crusading for women’s suffrage or temperance or some other cause. He’d heard hundreds, perhaps thousands of hymns, and had heard the psalms quoted and preached an equal number of times over the course of his life. Some hymns he liked, some he didn’t, but Will had never heard this one until he’d come to live in the city. He hadn’t known anyone had put the psalm to music. Now he knew every word and note of the song, the anthem of every Salvationist in San Francisco. It grated on his nerves like no other.

Closing the window silenced the tinny piano, but not the singing.

It kept coming … growing closer and louder….

“Not again.” Will sat up, raked his fingers through his hair, grabbed the silk dressing gown at the foot of his bed, flipped the bedcovers aside, and stepped into his boots.

She was inside the building. Inside his saloon …

Will didn’t know who had let the crusader slip through the doors of the Silken Angel, but there would be hell to pay when he identified the culprit.

He didn’t mind religious fervor. He’d grown up with missionaries and had been surrounded by it. His father was minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Hong Kong, his mother had preached the gospel according to John Knox on her deathbed, but a little religious fervor went a long way, and Will was rapidly reaching the end of his patience.

The construction of the Silken Angel Saloon had become a clarion call for every follower of William Booth’s philosophy in San Francisco—and their numbers seemed to be multiplying daily. A year ago, you could count the San Francisco Salvationists on one hand, but the past few months had brought boatloads, all looking to save the city—particularly the Barbary Coast—from itself and eternal damnation.

Will didn’t object to the goal, but he certainly objected to the methods. Between visits from the Salvationists and the Women’s Suffrage and Temperance League, he’d had to replace three bar mirrors, two plate-glass storefronts, a case of whiskey, two tables, and half a dozen chairs. All of that in addition to the breakage caused by the usual assortment of rowdy customers.

He’d nearly reached the bottom of the stairs and was in the midst of shoving his arms into the sleeves of his dressing gown when the soprano reached the refrain.

“‘Bringing in the sheaves. Bringing in the sheaves. We shall come rejoicing, bring—’”

He hurried down the remainder of the stairs and collided with the figure standing at the foot of them. The girl looked up, widening her eyes in surprise at the force of the impact. He recognized the look of astonishment and fear as her ugly black boots lost purchase on the polished oak floor and she wobbled backward.

Reacting instinctively, he reached out, grabbed the girl around the waist, and hauled her against his chest. The air left her lungs in a whoosh of warm breath.

“Oh!” came her muffled exclamation. Her hat had been knocked askew and her face was buried in the hair on his chest, revealed by his open robe.

Will held her fast until he was certain she was in no danger of falling, then set her down on the floor and released his hold.

She sucked in a breath.

“Please …” Will held up his hand. “Don’t sing anymore.”

A startled look crossed her face. “I wasn’t going to sing.”

“Thank God,” he murmured beneath his breath.

“I was going to scream.” She didn’t look up, but continued to stare at his bare chest as if mesmerized by the sight.

Staring down at the top of her head, Will pulled the silk edges of his robe together and knotted the belt. “Don’t do that either.”

“I most certainly will!” she warned, still staring at the bit of flesh left exposed by the wide lapels of his dressing gown, a frown marring the area between her eyebrows. “If the situation warrants it.”

“It won’t,” he muttered. “As long as you don’t sing.”

She looked up at him then, her gaze narrowing in a warning that matched her frown. “What’s wrong with my singing voice? I’m told it’s quite pleasant. And how dare you manhandle me this way?”

Her eyes were blue. Cornflower blue fringed by thick dark lashes and framed by eyebrows that were a dark reddish brown. A tiny sprinkling of lighter reddish-gold freckles dotted her nose. Her hair, beneath her awful military gray bonnet, matched her eyebrows. “Would you rather I allowed you to tumble to the floor?”

“No. Of course not,” she replied. “I thank you for saving me from that, but if you hadn’t come charging half-clothed down the staircase as if the building were on fire, I wouldn’t have been taken unawares or thrown off balance in the first place.”

“You’re blaming me?” Will was taken aback by her audacity. He stood nearly three inches over six feet tall in his bare feet and was solidly built, while the top of her head barely reached his chest despite the two-inch heels on her boots. She was a tiny, auburn-haired spitfire of a girl standing toe-to-toe with a man practically twice her size.