The Tiger's Bride

“Oh, no, never say so!” Tears sheened Abigail’s aquamarine eyes. “Truly, I only walked with him because he wished to speak to me about you.”

Charlie shook his head in disgust. “You’re not going to turn on the waterworks again, are you?”

Sarah sent her brother a stern look as she soothed the agitated Abigail. Despite Sarah’s every effort to discourage her foolish dreams, Abby still cherished fond hopes for her older sibling. In her sweet, unselfish way, she sang Sarah’s praises to the men who flocked to her side and refused to admit that her beloved sister was firmly and irrevocably on the shelf, an acknowledged spinster at the advanced age of twenty-four.

Sarah herself had long since accepted the fact that her lack of dowry and unremarkable face would win her no husband. She considered herself fortunate to have been given the responsibility of raising three lively brothers and a loving sister, thus fulfilling her maternal instincts most satisfactorily. If on occasion she tossed and turned at night, kept awake by less maternal urges, she accepted that as an inescapable fact of life. She was a woman, after all, but an eminently practical one. With time, those strange, unspecified longings would pass. Meanwhile, she had her family to care for and her papa to look after.

Assuming she could find him!

At the thought of her missing parent, Sarah patted Abigail’s shoulder a final time. “I must go now. Cook said Number Five Nephew will be waiting for me.”

“I wish you would not go,” Abigail whispered, valiantly battling her tears as she and Charlie trailed their sister out of the small bedroom.

“Don’t worry so. I’m just going to talk to Lord Straithe.”

“But Sarah, must you do so in a…” Abby caught herself just in time, glancing down at Charlie’s bright, inquisitive face. “Must you do so in that particular place?”

“Yes, I must. Since he refused to come to the Mission House, I have no choice but to beard him in his favorite den.”

“Sarah!” Charlie danced on one foot in excitement. “Never say you’re going to an opium den! Can I go with you?”

She ruffled his brown curls. “Of course I’m not going to such a disgusting place. And you may not go with me. You must stay and keep Abigail from worrying until I return.”

Charlie heaved a sigh, but even at his tender years he’d developed the family’s protective air for the overly sensitive Abigail. Nobly, he offered to hunt down a set of spillikins. The childish game would keep his sister occupied during Sarah’s absence.

“Thank you, Charlie,” she said gratefully.

At that moment, a slight, pigtailed figure glided into the room on silent feet. Bowing, he addressed Sarah by the honorary title he’d accorded her years ago.

“You go quick quick, Big Sister. Number Five Nephew no can waitchee long.”

Over Charlie’s head, Sarah met the impassive gaze of the man known to the Abernathys only as Cook. As usual, she couldn’t read the expression in his black eyes, shielded as they were by folded lids and beetling white brows. Sarah was never quite sure what Cook thought of the family of “foreign devils” he’d taken charge of. She knew only that she relied on this slender, graying servant far more than on her own father to keep the Abernathy household functioning.

“I’ll go at once,” she replied.

“Youngest granddaughter, Little One With A Limp, takes you.”

Sarah nodded to the youngster waiting respectfully behind her grandfather. The girl bobbed her head, clearly too overcome by shyness or too awed by her proximity to the Outer Barbarians to speak. After a few final instructions to Abigail and Charlie, Sarah pulled her hat brim down farther over her face, tucked her hands in her sleeves and followed the tiny girl out the back door of the Presbyterian Mission House.

Situated as it was on a steep hill in the shadow of the old Portuguese fort, the Mission enjoyed a spectacular view of Macao’s busy harbor during the day. Even now, as dusk settled in a velvet haze over the narrow peninsula, Sarah caught her breath at the vista below her.

In late July, the southwest monsoons brought traders from all over the world to the vast bay east of Macao. Hundreds of ships now lay at anchor, waiting for passes and Chinese pilots to guide them up the Pearl River to Canton, where all trading officially took place. Lantern lights winked from hulking, many-gunned East Indiamen far out in the bay. Closer in, frigates and sleek, two-masted schooners rocked on the waves. Junks and sampans of every size darted among the foreign ships, sculled by the boat girls who made their living catering to the needs of the sailors.

Sarah frowned at the thought of the boat girls, several of whom numbered among Cook’s many relatives. The Reverend Mr. Abernathy had launched a vigorous campaign during last year’s trading season to save these unfortunates from the sailors’ unbridled lusts. His efforts had proved spectacularly unsuccessful. Not only had the boat girls objected to this interference with their trade, but the sailors had grown most vociferous in their protests. Lord Blair, Britain’s senior representative, had been forced to step in to quell several near-riots. Closer to home, Cook had placed a series of inedible and highly suspicious dishes before the Reverend for weeks as a signal of his personal displeasure.

Sarah shook her head as she followed her guide through the twisting streets, wondering if life was as complicated for the families of other men of the cloth. She didn’t think so. She still held dim, distant memories of a quiet vicarage in Kent. The Abernathys had left the vicarage when Sarah was still in short skirts. Since then, Papa’s fervor to spread the word of God had taken them to a series of exotic overseas posts. In the early years, Sarah remembered, the dedicated missionary had scored some successes and could take pride in a goodly number of converts.

It was only since her mama’s death, just weeks after Charlie’s birth, that papa had grown so…eccentric…in his pursuit of the Lord’s work. There was no other word for it, Sarah acknowledged ruefully. Nowadays, his family faded from his mind completely when the call took him. So did common sense.

The Presbyterian Board of Elders had already written him twice, warning him to temper his zeal. Lord Blair had added his approbation to the board’s. Another incident could well cause Papa’s recall from China and the loss of the Abernathy family’s meager income. Yet he’d thrown those cautions to the winds when he’d heard of a mandarin in Fukien province who wanted to learn more of the Barbarian’s God. Disregarding his own safety, his family’s worry, and the Emperor’s edict against foreigners traveling inside China, the Reverend Mr. Abernathy had stolen up the coast. Sarah had to find him and bring him home before Lord Blair heard of his unauthorized excursion. And to find him, she had to enlist the aid of the most notorious captain sailing the South China Sea.

Her mouth firming, Sarah adjusted her stride to her small guide’s uneven pace. Within minutes, she’d passed through the gates that separated the Christian City, as the walled European enclave was known, from the sprawling Chinese village of Mong Ha. Immediately, the sights and scents of the teeming streets engulfed her.

Pigtailed vendors carrying steaming baskets of rice and vegetables cried their wares. In tiny, dirt-floored shops, succulent strips of duck and pork crackled on charcoal braziers. Money changers with strings of copper cash and portable scales for weighing silver shouted their skills, while herb sellers, peddlers, and sweating porters with laden pails of water at either end of their carrying poles elbowed their way through the crowd. Children shrieked, dogs barked, and huge, evil-smelling hogs snuffled in the gutters.

Careful to keep her head down, Sarah peered from under the concealing brim of her hat with great interest. In her years in Macao, she’d ventured into Mong Ha only twice, once to bring food to destitute families after a typhoon had washed their homes into the sea, and once to ascertain that their ailing Cook was being cared for by his extended family. Each time, a scandalized Chinese official had escorted her back to the gates of the Christian City. By decree of the Emperor, firmly ensconced in his Celestial City thousands of miles away, European women were barred from all Chinese soil except the narrow, three-mile-long peninsula which contained the old Portuguese walled city of Macao.

The Reverend Mr. Abernathy firmly believed that this outrageous edict was the work of the celibate Jesuits who’d held such sway over the Chinese emperors for a century or more. Sarah herself suspected that the prohibition sprang from more direct causes. The simple fact was that the European women’s mode of dress shocked the modest Chinese to their core. The high-waisted, low-necked chemise gowns brought into fashion by the French Empress Josephine some years ago displayed a shameful amount of feminine flesh. Even the Abernathy sisters’ more conservative gowns, with their long, tight sleeves and lace-trimmed bodices, raised Cook’s brows. Thus Sarah had disguised herself in Chinese clothing to seek out the man whose help she so desperately needed.

Her diminutive guide stopped and pointed shyly. “House of Flowers, Big Sister.”

Sarah glanced in surprise at the building the child indicated. Somehow she’d expected a brothel to look quite different from this elegant residence. As viewed from the street, with only the tips of its many-tiered roof visible behind its high walls, the building might have been mistaken for a wealthy mandarin’s home. An intricately carved ebony gate stood open—to admit nocturnal guests, Sarah supposed. Beyond the peaked gatehouse, she caught a glimpse of lush gardens cut by pebbled walks and illuminated by glowing lanterns.

“You wanchee come come,” the little girl urged, tugging on her sleeve.

Following the child, Sarah plunged into a dark alley that ran alongside one wall of the house. Garbage and other matter she preferred not to identify squished under her wooden clogs. Halfway down the alley, a dark figure detached itself from the shadows.

“Number Five Nephew?”

The figure bobbed its head in reply. “Yes, Big Sister. You come, quick quick.”

Sarah felt her heart begin to pound as she slipped through a side gate. Despite her brave words to Abigail earlier, she wasn’t quite as comfortable about venturing inside one of Macao’s most infamous brothels as she’d pretended.

With a terse order to wait, Number Five Nephew pushed Little One With A Limp behind a screen of trailing jasmine vines, then gestured for Sarah to follow. Head down, hands tucked inside her sleeves, she hurried along a neatly swept pebbled path.

As they rounded a corner of the main building, Sarah couldn’t resist taking a quick peek. The scene in the central courtyard made her eyes widen. She might well have been staring at Lady Blair’s own gardens on the occasion of the Midsummer’s Eve Ball, the event that always marked the start of Macao’s social season.

Well-dressed women strolled the walks on the arms of their chosen companions. An orchestra of many-stringed instruments filled the night air with silvery notes. Scattered tables held every imaginable delicacy. The only difference between this soiree and Lady Blair’s, Sarah noted with a tickle of irrepressible amusement, was that the women here wore embroidered gowns buttoned modestly up to the small collars that banded their necks. At Lady Blair’s, the revealing ball gowns would have bared acres of rounded breasts and dimpled arms.

Quite suddenly, Sarah’s amusement vanished. By the light of a hanging lantern she recognized a portly man leaning over the tiny, dark-haired woman on his arm. If Sarah wasn’t mistaken, that was The Honorable Mr. Forsythe, Senior Accountant at the East India Company and a deacon of her father’s small congregation! Her lips folded into a tight line. How would she would ever face the man…or his wife…across a church pew again?

Ducking her head to avoid any further compromising sights, Sarah followed her guide down a dim corridor. Almost immediately, the real purpose of the House of the Dancing Blossoms began to impress itself on her consciousness. Female giggles drifted through thin bamboo walls, punctuated by an occasional male grunt and, suddenly, a tortured groan.

Sarah stopped abruptly at the sound. Her first startled thought was to rush to the poor victim’s aid. Before she did so, the groan ended in a long, shuddering sigh, followed almost immediately by a muttered phrase in English that made her blush to the tips of her ears.

“Come!” her guide whispered, beckoning furiously.

Sarah hurried after him, trying without much success to ignore the sounds that emanated from the chambers they passed. By the time the boy opened the door to a small, dimly lit room, she knew her face was as red as the silk banner hanging just inside the door. To her relief, the room was empty. Her nerves jumping, she turned to her escort.

“Cap-i-tan come come, same place?”

Number Five Nephew bobbed his head. “Yes, Big Sister. Every nightee, same same.” He shooed her inside. “You waitee, he come. Then we go, quick quick.”

As the door closed behind her nervous escort, Sarah drew in a deep, steadying breath. She needed to cool her cheeks and compose her thoughts for her imminent meeting with the scandalous Lord Straithe.

According to the gossipmongers, James Kerrick had started down the road to ruin some eight years ago. Then a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, he’d been caught in a most compromising situation with his admiral’s wife. The fact that he’d just been cited for extraordinary heroism in one of the last naval battles of the Napoleonic wars didn’t mitigate his disgrace. In short order, he’d been dismissed from the Navy, ostracized by society, and shunned by a rigidly disapproving older brother. Undaunted, he’d purchased his own ship and charted a course of dissolution and dissipation ever since.

His brother had died some years ago, Sarah had learned, and the cashiered naval officer had become Third Viscount Straithe. His brother had avenged himself on the black sheep who’d disgraced him, however, by selling the family estate to a land-hungry squire just before he died. Straithe now held the title, and nothing else.