“Why so surprised? You said she was arranging you a marriage,” he chided.
“I didn’t know she was doing it!”
She hugged herself, staring in morbid horror at the papers. What did they say? What had Mae hoped to get in exchange for her? What was she worth this time?
“The dowry she was offering was quite generous. There’s a decent settlement if you divorce, especially if you stick it out at least five years. Excellent terms if you provide children, especially sons.”
“When? I thought—” She had thought Mae wanted her. That she was doing a good job for her.
She had told him what she was, but it was pure debasement to stand here before him, proven to be nothing but an asset to be bartered in one more business deal. Chattel.
* * *
“The one in textiles is the oldest. Has a heart condition.”
Luli turned her head, expression persecuted.
Gabriel’s conscience twinged, but he was still processing this discovery himself. He had removed the folder with his name on it, curious to see if she would betray a notice of its absence.
She seemed genuinely shocked by the existence of this portfolio at all. The fact it had been stored in the safe told him Mae had wanted to keep it very private. Her notes on each of the candidates revealed explicitly how she saw each of those older men falling short in her estimation, especially as compared to him.
That had been the most disturbing discovery. These other men were fallback positions. Mae had wanted him as Luli’s husband.
Because she did, in fact, seem to view Luli as a daughter. His efforts to find Luli on any payroll list or other household record had turned up nothing. He had personally questioned the butler who had shown him his own system for tracking staff hours and vacation days, but Luli wasn’t on it.
She had her own arrangement, the butler had said with affront. And no, she didn’t leave the house, which was a nuisance. Other staff had to pick up her personal items and the cost went against his household budget—a perk not available to anyone else. In his opinion, if staffing cuts were needed, Gabriel should start with Luli.
Gabriel remembered clearly the feeling of his own money, earned honestly and through great effort, going to support his father. It wasn’t something he should resent. As Luli had said earlier, family supported family, but his father had abandoned any effort to do his part. It had all fallen on Gabriel at a very young age to keep him and his father clothed, sheltered and fed.
Luli had to be suffering a similar impotent anger. She had put in the time, had done what was expected, but that work had gone unacknowledged. Her reward was the opportunity to do the same for a stranger. Him or some other man.
“I won’t do it.” Her voice shook with the rest of her. She lifted her gaze from staring through sheened eyes at the pages she’d thrown across the floor. “You can’t make me.”
“Calm down. I’m only saying that I’ll honor her intentions if you want to go through with it.” He was testing her, was what he was doing.
“Of course I don’t!” She covered her face, visibly trying to take hold of herself.
“You said you would make a good trophy wife. That’s what this is.” He had never aspired to have any sort of wife—trophy or otherwise. That Mae had thought she could interfere in his life to this degree was a shocking affront.
“I want to marry on my terms,” Luli said, echoing his own sentiments. She dropped her hands to reveal a raw agony in her expression that made his heart lurch. “I thought she liked me. Why would she do this?”
He had his theories, but asked instead, “Was there any indication she was ill? Was she putting things in order because she thought her time was near?”
“I don’t think so.” She paced a few steps, calming a little as she thought. “She only brought it up a few times. One of the maids left to get married last year. Mae said I wouldn’t have to marry some fish-smelling man from the hawker center. She said she’d find me a good husband. But she also told me at different times that she would take me shopping and let the chauffeur teach me to drive and take me back to Venezuela so I could tell my mother what I think of her. It was never a good time for any of those things. ‘Another day,’” she tacked on in Mandarin.
Presumably she was quoting Mae. Her accent was spot-on.
“I don’t think she was lying to me on purpose,” she continued despondently. “She talked about a lot of things that never happened. She wanted to redecorate. Retire. She said when you came to visit we would take you to see the sights.”
Gabriel had seen the ones he wanted to see. He’d been here several times and had never once let his grandmother know he was in town.
His stomach tightened in disgust with himself. Had she meant to introduce him to Luli? Oversee their courtship?
So what if she had? What he’d said earlier about having no interest in finding women for other men stood. He had no desire for his dead grandmother to find him a wife, either.
But he ruefully had to admit she had never led him astray with any of the other opportunities she had presented to him.
“I don’t want to marry one of those men and be trapped here for the rest of my life.” Luli’s hushed voice made something grate in the base of his throat. “Why would she do that to me?”
Why had Mae thought she could do this to him? The answer was the same in both cases.
“She was angry my mother didn’t abide by the marriage she wanted for her. Good children allow their parents to make them a good match.”
“I’m not her child and I’m not doing it!”
He held up a hand. “But this does prove she saw you as a foster daughter. She was taking a personal interest in your future the way she thought a mother should. She wasn’t finding husbands for any of the housemaids. Only you.”
In fact, like the rest of the house staff, the maids were entitled to a settlement based on their years of service. Gabriel had shown that part of Mae’s will to the butler and told him to begin making plans to take the house down to a skeleton staff.
Luli wasn’t house staff, though. Not that it mattered. Gabriel could offer her any amount that he deemed fair out of his own pocket and ignore his grandmother’s wishes. He owed Mae nothing.
Except that she had birthed the woman who had given him life. Luli could tell him things about his grandmother, maybe even his mother, that likely no one else could.
He cursed silently and ran a hand through his hair.
“I don’t know how to ask to be deported.” Luli moved to the window where she stared down at the courtyard. Her shoulders seemed very narrow, all of her quite fragile despite her willowy height. “I’m worried they’ll put me in jail if I admit I’ve been here all this time. I can’t stay, though. I don’t want to and I have nothing to stay for. I have no one to put in a good word to help me get a job or find a place to live. They all hate me for never doing laundry or dusting. They think I’m a freeloader.”
Her fingers were digging in to her upper arms, liable to leave bruises beneath her smooth skin.
“I heard men on the other side of the garden wall talking about fake passports once. I should have called out to them, but I was afraid. They were talking about guns and drugs. I would have had to steal money from Mae’s purse. They might have decided to come in if they realized—”
“Luli.” The other suitors crumpled beneath his feet as he walked across to her. “My grandmother intended you