By that time, Yan Ling had accepted the strangeness of the situation. With great care, she scraped the blade gently along Lady Min’s scalp. The blade was sharp and the hair fell away easily.
‘If you’ll forgive me for asking, you sound content with your life here. Why leave?’ Yan Ling asked.
‘It seems the right thing to do to repay the elder lord’s kindness. I’d be nothing but a burden here. And it’s not such a sacrifice. The temple gardens are tranquil. The nuns spend their day in prayer. A simple life.’
Over the next half-hour, Yan Ling finished shaving the rest of the lady’s head. She found a mirror within Pearl’s dresser in the private area of the room and brought it out.
‘Waa … Look at me!’ Min turned her head this way and that as she peered at her reflection in the polished bronze. She rubbed her hand over the newly smooth surface with an expression of amused curiosity. ‘I look like a newborn baby.’
‘When will you go to the temple?’
‘Tomorrow.’ She grinned. ‘I’m already prepared.’
Min began gathering up the locks of hair and the other supplies. ‘I better return these to Old Man Liang before he realises they’re missing.’ She paused as she picked up the jewelled hairpins. ‘Well, I don’t have any use for these any more.’
They laughed together. With the laughter, some of the apprehension Yan Ling had harboured throughout the journey uncoiled within her. She grew pleasantly warm in their small intimate circle. Yet at the same time, she was stricken with a pang of sadness. She would be alone in a house of strangers once more when the lady left.
‘You should take them.’ Min held the pins out to her. ‘And thank you.’
Without warning, the lady swept her up in an embrace. Yan Ling returned it with not as much grace as she would have liked, but Lady Min didn’t seem to notice. When they moved apart, the lady ceremoniously placed the hairpins across Yan Ling’s palm.
‘Fei Long must not be so different from his father after all, bringing you here. He’s not completely blind to a young and pretty woman.’
‘Oh, no.’ Yan Ling’s face grew hot and she shook her head vehemently. ‘That’s not why I’m here at all.’
She quickly explained her role in replacing Pearl as the alliance bride, though there was no way to escape the questionable nature of their journey, alone together when they were neither family nor husband and wife, sleeping in the same chamber. Yan Ling flushed with embarrassment. Maybe this was why Fei Long needed someone with no reputation to lose. If she had any sort of family name to call her own, it would be ruined already.
‘Well.’ Min blew out a breath after the explanation was done. ‘As I said, not so different from his father as I thought.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Fei Long wasn’t always so morose. There’s still some life in him.’ Min embraced her again. ‘Just remember. The elder Lord Chang was a good man. No matter what you may hear.’
The lady stole away in a swirl of silk. After a moment, Yan Ling sank onto the chair, wondering what had just happened. And why, when Min had been so overwhelmingly cheerful, did her parting words sound like a dire warning?
Chapter Four
Yan Ling had never heard Fei Long shout during their journey together. He rarely raised his voice above the stern and steady tone that she’d come to know so well. That morning, she learned that he could shake the rooftops if he chose to.
The yelling brought her out of her room and sent her running into the central courtyard. Maybe there was a fire. Surely someone was dying.
Dao nearly collided with her on the pebbled walkway. ‘Lady Min,’ Dao pronounced, looking to the front of the house. ‘She’s done something crazy again.’
The pieces fell into place quickly between the male and female voices raised in argument followed by the sight of Min running through the courtyard, sobbing loudly. Her bare head gleamed in the morning sun while her opulent robe fluttered behind her. Dao stared after the lady with eyes wide and mouth open as Min disappeared into the back of the house.
‘What is this place?’ Fei Long was shouting. ‘This isn’t my home. This is a den of wild animals.’
‘Will he calm down if we just wait?’ Yan Ling looked to Dao, whose only answer was to shake her head helplessly.
‘Bald as a Shaolin monk,’ he ranted. ‘I must already be dead. This must already be the afterlife because no one alive could be so stupid.’
Several servants from the kitchen and surrounding chambers peeked into the courtyard, only to duck away when Fei Long continued his tirade. Min’s sobbing had receded into the house, but it grew louder once again. She came back into the first courtyard with eyes swollen red and a travel pack slung over her shoulder.
‘On my mother,’ Dao swore under her breath. ‘The scandal.’
‘Stop her before she leaves the house,’ Yan Ling directed, her pulse skipping. ‘I’ll go speak to Lord Chang.’ Maybe it wasn’t her place to be giving orders, but she felt responsible for helping Lady Min.
The servant girl ran in one direction while Yan Ling hurried in the other. She slipped into the front part of the house and wove her way through the hallway. It wasn’t hard to find Fei Long. He had taken to swearing a river of oaths behind a closed door.
‘My lord.’ The door loomed before her. She pressed a hand to her stomach to try to calm it. ‘Are you all right?’
The stomping inside ceased. ‘Miss Yan Ling, this is a private matter. Please return to your room.’ His voice sounded muffled through the barrier.
Private? Not any more when every porter on the street could likely hear him.
‘Maybe I can be of help,’ she began.
The door swung open slowly and Fei Long appeared. There was a slight flush to his cheeks and his eyes glinted with a dangerous light. ‘There is nothing for you to concern yourself with here.’
She could hear the strain at the edge of his voice as he resorted to extreme politeness.
‘Pardon us, miss, for disrupting your morning,’ he continued.
His chest rose and fell rapidly and the muscles of his face pulled tight as he fought for control. Maybe she could help. She was an outsider and he wouldn’t dare yell at her … as loudly, at least.
‘Everyone in the house is frightened. Lady Min is crying.’
The mention of the lady’s name had Fei Long gritting his teeth. ‘She’s lost her mind.’
What would calm him? She tried to think of what little she knew of him and she could only think of one thing.
‘Let me have some tea brought to you.’
Yes, tea. He did all his planning with her over tea. And he had come to the teahouse to ponder over his troubles when she’d first met him. He regarded her woodenly, perhaps thinking that she, too, had lost her mind. But slowly, as if with great difficulty, he nodded once.
A small victory.
They were seated with the tea tray arranged before them in his father’s study. It was his study now, as was everything that had once belonged to his father: this mansion, the servants, all the troubles he’d stirred up like rats let loose in a storehouse.
Like rats, the problems gnawed away at what remained bit by bit. Like rats, they multiplied.
Yan