Intimate Strangers Affair Page 8

  I did not. “Madame Bovary? It’s a lame book. Gustave doesn’t know women, never did. You know. That kind. He lives with his mother, he has no business writing about women. Doesn’t know how to do it.”

  Miguel took his time selecting a round rosy-golden fruit from the bowl. He gently squeezed them, then finally selected one. Held it to his nose, inhaled, smiled. He picked up his silver knife. “What is wrong with the story?”

  “Emma Bovary dies in the end.”

  “She gambled and enjoyed it. Is that so bad?”

  “She still dies. I don’t call that a happy ending. In fact, it stinks.”

  “A romantic.”

  “No, I’m not! I’m just practical. Can’t afford to be otherwise.”

  “Ah. As you wish.” Deftly Miguel peeled the fruit, his long fingers turning it here and there. He cut it quickly with remarkable precision. He certainly knew how to handle a knife. Like a surgeon, or an assassin. He picked up his plate, offering me a slice.

  “What is it?”

  “So careful!” he said mockingly. “Just try it. Don’t worry, querida.”

  Frowning, I looked over my shoulder. Except for us, the room was empty, the house still, the children asleep. “Don’t call me that,” I hissed. “No one else is here. What’s the point?”

  He only slanted one eyebrow as if to say, “All the point in the world.” Silently, he held out a single piece just an inch from my lips. Juice slid down his fingers, collecting at the tips. “My servant Xiang made this,” He said softly. “Peach grafted to plum. Yin and yang, he says. Strange marriage, beautiful fruit.”

  He gestured for me to open my mouth, but I reached over and took it away with my hand instead. I bit down. The flesh was soft and chilled, then juice ran like sweet sunshine down my throat. I closed my eyes, almost sighing as I chewed. Delicious. When I opened my eyes again, I could see that he was amused, almost pleased.

  “It’s called nectarine. Like it?”

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  “Good. There’s more. Much more.”

  I had a sinking feeling he was telling the truth. I’d have to add another sin to my list. I didn’t think I could stop now that I’d started. We ate together in silence.

  “So you went back to Catherine’s. Got your things.”

  “Some of them,” I said, feeling more than a little disgruntled. My opportunistic aunt had claimed that my few clothes had been sent to the laundress. Unavailable. But what a stroke of good fortune, according to Catherine. I’d been forced to accept Miguel’s largesse: a blue tulle gown with a terrifying amount of ivory ribbon and lace. I was sure I would rip it.

  He seemed to be appreciating my off-the-shoulder neckline. “All settled?”

  “No,” I whispered fiercely. “There’s a problem. A real big problem.”

  He set down his knife. “Tell Lin-Mei.”

  “But she’s the problem. I don’t think she understands English so well. You see, she put me in your bedroom. I think there’s been some kind of mistake.”

  “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “That was my intention. What else did you expect, niña? Where else could you possibly sleep?”

  “Well, this is a large house. There must be a guest room, or the dressing room. I don’t care, I’ll even bunk outside.”

  “And start rumors? They will think I’m like poor Gustave. Don’t be ridiculous. It is not a mistake.”

  But I was afraid it very much was. And I needed to change it soon before I made another mistake. An irreversible one.

  ***

  I didn’t usually panic, but this couldn’t be right. This was turning into a nightmare. I must be losing my mind. Seeing something one moment, not seeing it the next. Where was it? I knew I’d packed my nightgown, but now I couldn’t find it anywhere in my valise.

  The bedroom door opened, and the sound of his soft footfall across the rug made me freeze. I stood there cowering like an idiot, wondering how long I could hide in the dressing room. Did the door lock? I hadn’t checked. Dear God, the door wasn’t even closed properly, and here I was, dress off down to my over-petticoat. The thin struts of my corset stabbed into me as I breathed frantically. I could see his back. He had changed from his evening clothes into something severe and black.

  Miguel leaned over his desk. A drawer opened, then closed with a soft snick. He looked once towards the dressing room, but if he saw me through the crack of the door, he didn’t say anything.

  Hastily, I shut the door. Hurry. Better cover up. I turned over my valise and emptied the contents on the dressing room floor. The nightgown had completely vanished, and I was afraid I had my aunt to thank for this dilemma. Fuming, I picked up the nightgown that had been already laid out for me and sniffed it suspiciously: fresh, not overly like soap, no one else’s heavy perfume. Vertical creases ran up and down the front of the gown as if it had sat there folded for a long time. Perhaps this was new, not borrowed from some former paramour. Feeling a little appeased, I undressed and slipped the gown on. The sheer batiste settled over me like a whisper, soft as butterfly wings. I stared at my image in the mirror over the bureau. I could see everything: hints under the wispy cloth, my bare skin wherever there were slits or holes. I fingered the Chantilly lace, which enhanced more than concealed. The fine cream-colored embroidery was more like a hideous painted arrow that pointed to key places. I groaned. What was the point of this negligee? Why even bother wearing anything at all? I spied more gowns on the shelf. I put another one on backwards, then two more. I checked again in the mirror. There. Much better. I was thoroughly covered by a cocoon of them before I felt brave enough to leave the dressing room.

  Breathing deeply, I turned the knob and pushed the dressing door open, finally stepping into the bedroom. It was empty. Panicked, I looked behind me. Was he there? No, even that monstrous four-poster with its turned-down covers was vacant. I searched the room again. Where had he gone? I crossed the floor, rushing around a divan couch and past a bookcase to the window. I squinted into the darkness. A tall silhouette seemed to be moving fast between the wisps of fog. It was him. Where was he going? Did it matter? Stepping back from the window, I congratulated myself on my fortunate escape. It was better this way. But somehow, I didn’t feel like celebrating. I felt a little hollow inside as I carried a pillow and a quilt from the bed to the divan. I lay down, exhausted but alert. I turned on to my side and pulled the quilt tighter around me. Drafty. These Victorian houses. They just sucked in the cold air like one of those Bernoulli wind machines I’d seen in an exposition once. Not like a snug adobe or Catherine’s brownstone with that newfangled steam heating. I’d grown soft. My blood must have thinned. I’d gotten used to that luxury during the short time I’d been at Catherine’s. I was missing my warm flannel neck-to-toes nightgown right now. Stupid negligees. Even four of them. What good was fashion if I died of pneumonia first?

  Teeth chattering, I got up and checked the window. It was shut tight. My gown fluttered as I passed by the bookcase. I halted and held up my hand. Something cool brushed against my palm. The breeze was coming from somewhere behind the shelves. I pushed the end, but nothing happened. Frustrated, I smacked my hand against it, and accidentally hit something rough. There was a faint rubbing sound. The bookcase swung away from the wall and revealed a secret passage. I stared into the night.

  I rushed outside, and the fog swallowed me, making my skin turn into millions of bumps. Where was Miguel? I couldn’t see a thing. Trying to peer around, I moved cautiously past the back of the house and the black shapes surrounding it. In the extreme dark, everything looked flat and strange. I felt disoriented, unsure of what was in front of me. I walked forward, my hands held out like a blind man. Another step, a second, a third…then something grabbed my gown. My heart stopped, my elbow flying defensively up and out. Then I realized my attacker was only four feet tall and very still. A bush. Just a silly bush. Relief pounded through me as I jerked hard. Fabric ripped. Barbs scratched the
back of my hand as the branches snapped backwards. There was a squishing sound, then the thick sweet smell of blackberries.

  I walked faster, anxious to find Miguel. The ground was cool and hard under my bare feet. I started running, but a pebble jammed right into that soft place between my arch and the ball of my bare foot. Nerves jangled up as I hopped on my other one. Idiot. What had I been thinking? What was I going to do? Chase after him in these pieces of nothing, armed only with my good intentions? And supposed I had caught Miguel, then what next? The man had his reasons for sneaking out. Maybe some secret rendezvous with another spy. Or even worse, with Michelle. Was tonight her night?

  I wondered glumly about men and their regular habits at The Golden Catherine as I hobbled back into the bedroom. Speculation was pointless. I had only one job to do here. Better to remember that; remember and stay focused. I firmly closed the bookshelves behind me.

  I sat down on the divan and rubbed my bruised foot. Me, injured in the line of duty! Think I’d get a medal for that? Not likely. Some shadow I was. I hadn’t even noticed that he’d sneaked away from the house. Well, I wasn’t a secret agent, I was a doctor. The doctor and her runaway patient. And I hadn’t even sent him the bill yet. That was the best part of the joke.

  ***

  Have you ever had a dream that felt so real you couldn’t tell the difference? I sometimes did, but last night’s had been a whopper. When I woke up this morning, I lay there for a long time, feeling warm and confused. I didn’t know if I had dreamed it or lived it. It all seemed so hazy but solid, as if my body still felt what my mind couldn’t exactly remember. I only remembered feeling large warm hands. Callused fingers had brushed the hair off my face, then touched the torn hem of my blackberry-stained nightgowns.

  “Zarzamora,” a voice quietly said with exasperation, maybe a little affection. Then it fell silent again while someone watched me for a long time. It was comforting, not creepy, as though I was absolutely protected. Safe. It felt unfamiliar, something I had never known during all of my chaotic childhood and new independent adulthood. Love, I knew, but this felt different. Strange, but secure; like trying on a good pair of boots for the first time. That feeling surrounded me, and I remembered liking it just like I remembered smelling the tang of salt and sea from a thick fisherman’s sweater, and something more bitter. Unfamiliar. Sweat. Gunpowder. Sulfur. The smell of danger itself.

  I frowned, stirring, until I felt a hand gentle me. Little pats on the shoulder, another stroke down my hair. “Shhhhh.” The patting continued for some time, then something soft fell over me like a cloud. Warm and fluffy. Absolute comfort.

  Had that really happened? It seemed real. I tried to bring it all back as I lay on the divan, blinking back the morning light and stretching my cramped muscles. The harder I tried to remember, the faster the memory vanished like dew under the rising sun. Something slithered off me on to the floor. I reached down and picked it up. What was this? It was smooth like silk and softer than anything I had ever felt before. A Kashmir shawl, something that all the high-top fashionable ladies wore in Paris these days, worth as much as those Siberian mink capes. A miner’s take for one year, here under my hands. It was beautiful, its teardrop paisley design worked in purple and blues, embroidered here and there with gold thread. It looked like sun and sky. I held it to my cheek. My warm cloud. Mine.

  Chapter 4: Amour

  I’d always heard that Orientals were stoic and never showed their feelings. Sure, sure. It was just one of those stories that everyone believed, like the ones about the Bigfoot monster up in gold country. I was smarter than that. I knew better than to believe in stereotypes, so I was completely surprised by the servants’ reaction. Or lack of it. Perhaps Miguel had given them special instructions. I didn’t know, I hadn’t seen the man since he’d disappeared into the darkness after dinner last night.

  His absence didn’t seem to matter to the servants. Maybe they were used to this. The household ran smoothly without him, even though there were so few servants: the housekeeper Lin-Mei, the giant manservant Xiang with a mysterious wide scar around his neck, and the English secretary George, who worked mainly on the docks. And none of them said anything at all about my sudden arrival at the home of Don Miguel. They all treated me as if I’d always been the mistress of the house. Perhaps they were also used to strange women taking up residence all of a sudden. Perhaps it had always been that way.

  For instance, Lin-Mei took me all in her little stride. Here I was, a day later, distilling herbs in her kitchen, and she didn’t seem to mind at all. I couldn’t imagine Mrs. Bernard being so accommodating. The late afternoon sun shone through the tall windows while we worked companionably side by side in the kitchen. On the Windsor stove, something was sizzling in a wide deep-dished pot called a wok, and the air smelled like mushrooms, garlic, and the fleshy salt of fresh fish. The long pine table was covered with clay bowls of half-prepped food, cut into neat cubes and matchstick slivers, a platter of small cakes dusted with powdered sugar, and my bundles of herbs that I’d gathered today. Lin-Mei even lent me her favorite cleaver to cut up the poppies.

  The large square blade split the pods open without bruising the seeds. A thick milky liquid began to seep out. I quickly turned the blade sideways and scooped them off the chopping block and into the glass flask. A piece of stem fell into the slop.

  “Damn!” I tried reaching inside it with my fingers, but they felt slow and clumsy, sluggish from lack of solid sleep. I had lain awake on that divan for a long time, waiting for a meeting that had never happened. I felt sleepy and more than a little irritated with myself. Nothing worked well. My fingers fit, but wouldn’t work through the narrow glass neck.

  “Here, Missy. You use this. Quick, quick,” Lin-Mei handed me a pair of wooden chopsticks, worn smooth by frequent use.

  It had been a long time since I’d used them, and I wasn’t sure if I remembered how. Carefully, I inserted the sticks into the flask. After a few false tries, I fished out the stem.

  “Good, good. No wrong parts in your tea. Some parts help, some parts hurt.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Even if all the parts are from the same plant.” I scooped up some more chopped poppy and poured in into the flask.

  “This Happy Tea?” Lin-Mei giggled behind one hand. “The Don, he no need Happy Tea.”

  “Oh really? Good for him.” Happy, or Joy anything was the name given to Chinese restoratives and aphrodisiacs. Why on earth should Lin-Mei know about that and the Don’s need? My suspicious question rested on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask it. I picked up a fistful of poppies, shook off the last petals, then put the naked pods on to the block.

  “You know what the Don need, Missy Arnaud,” Lin-Mei said, her voice suddenly serious.

  Doctor Arnaud, I thought automatically, feeling protective of the title I’d fought so hard to earn. But neither title seemed right. It fit awkwardly like trying to cram one of Lin-Mei’s little shoes on to my big feet. I waved a green-stained hand. “Nathalie. Just call me Nathalie.”

  Her tongue clicked, her head shook once. “Not proper.”

  “Please. It would please me.”

  “Na-tha-lie.” The high-low way she said it sounded like the song of a bird. She repeated my name and laughed.

  “Do you know herbs?”

  “Ginger for heat, melon-rind for cool. Yes, I know. Make better. Stronger. White ghost medicine make sicker. The high-hat doctor bled the Don. Take all his chi away. He grow weak, weaker. Then stronger when they leave him alone. Better until they come again. It start all over.”

  “What starts?”

  “Demons.” She turned to the left and spat suddenly on the clean kitchen floor. Startled, I moved to wipe it up, but she stopped me. “For luck,” she explained.

  I straightened up again, wiping my hands on my apron. “So what’s this about demons?”

  Nodding, Lin-Mei pointed to her belly. “Fire demons. He…” She drew a line from her belly up
to her throat, then her hands fanned up and out from her mouth. “Demons want out. That good. I help. Give this.” She opened a cupboard by her stove and rummaged around the shelves. Giving a glad cry, she pulled out a small bottle and handed it to me.

  I tilted it to one side. The dark oily liquid moved slowly.

  “What’s this?” I uncorked the bottle with a small pop, then waved my hand over the open top and cautiously sniffed. Sharp. My nose wrinkled. Poor Don Miguel. No wonder. His housekeeper had been regularly dosing him with castor oil, a known irritant. Well, by now I’m sure he was thoroughly purged of anything evil; internally cleansed of absolutely anything at all. I corked the bottle again.

  “No more,” I said, searching for a way not to offend Lin-Mei. No matter how well intentioned, this had to stop. “The demons. You forced them out, but they come back stronger. Grow angry. Need to find a balance. Let’s do something differently. Let me take care of Don Miguel now.”

  “Of course. Duty of wife…or concubine.” She bowed her head, but not before I caught her look of skepticism. She turned her back on me and returned to the stove. Briskly, she shook the wok and stirred the food.

  I picked up the cleaver once more. There was something behind that look. Something wrong, something she wasn’t telling me. “Is there anything else I should know about Don Miguel? Or about his…uhm, demons?”

  “No, no. I no say more. Bad luck to speak. I speak. Make happen.” She shook her head more vehemently this time.

  “Lin-Mei, please. You know men, they’d rather die than talk. Go to their graves silent. Especially Don Miguel. He needs your help. I need your help. Please, tell me. What else has happened? What else have you tried so far?”

  “Make offerings, burn incense. Write healing prayer on kite, then let it go up in the sky to the Gods. But Gods no listen, no help him. No help at all.” Lin-Mei poured water into the wok. It hissed viciously, a fragrant cloud of steam rising to the ceiling. “He worse.”