At last, with a dismissive gesture, Ke Loo swore aloud again. “Give her the child,” he barked, turning on his heel and striding angrily from the room.
The Chinese women broke into excited chatter, laughing nervously as they discussed the marvel of a woman defying her husband’s direct orders.
Lydia went to the amah and took her daughter in her arms. Almost at once April ceased her shrill screams.
“That’s better, my darling,” Lydia murmured, holding her close. “You need have no fears. Your mother will take care of everything, wait and see.”
And she would take care of everything too, she vowed it. Before, the only thing she had had to live for had been her oath of revenge upon Peter MacNair. Now, however, she had something else that mattered, something that mattered more to her than anything else.
She had her daughter. And her daughter would not grow up a slave, a prisoner in a Chinese harem. She had defied Ke Loo to save the child. She would defy anyone, anything, to ensure her daughter’s wellbeing.
“You shall be rich and beautiful,” she murmured, touching her daughter’s chin with the tip of one gentle finger. “You shall have everything your heart desires, the finest clothes, the finest jewels, the finest perfumes. Your mother swears it.”
She strolled into the garden, averting her eyes from the pool in which April had nearly been drowned. Beyond the wall towered the great mountain range of northern China; and there, far, far to the east, lay America.
“Someday,” she said, hugging the baby still closer, “somehow, I swear it, we shall go home.”
“Home.” She repeated the word in a whisper, and felt the sting of tears in her eyes.
Her own land, her own people, so very far away. It would soon be a year since she had been betrayed by Peter MacNair; already it was difficult to recall exactly her parents’ faces. She ate and lived and spoke Chinese.
She must see that her daughter spoke English as well as Chinese. She must see that her beloved April grew up knowing who and what she was. It would not do for the child to feel like a foreigner when at last they reached America.
When. She would not say, “if.” She would not even let herself think “if.”
Always, it must be “when.”
PART TWO
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