I dressed early—far too early, with the anxious thought that it wouldn’t do to be late because I hadn’t allowed enough time to get my sluggish body in and out of clothes—then spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the various Dreams at my disposal. I began my wandering aimlessly enough, eager for the dance to begin and impatient with anything that wasn’t the dance, but as I Dreamed I found that everyone else was also preparing for it, bringing a bright, excited tint to the Dreams. A sparkling, unfamiliar sense of fellowship caught fire somewhere deep inside me, as light as a Dream and as certain as Reality.
Perhaps it was because it was the first dance I had ever attended with the idea of actually dancing that made the afternoon so much brighter. Perhaps it was the general feeling of excitement that permeated the manor in the tying of sashes and the brushing of hair.
Perhaps . . . perhaps, after all, it was pleasant to be attending a dance where there was someone to be delightfully surprised to see me and eager to dance with me. Where there was somebody who would see me at all.
And so I watched the others prepare for the dance, wandering in and out of Dreams with a light heart. It wasn’t until one Dream crashed over the others, swallowing them whole and plunging me into the tumbled world of Hyun-jun’s white-faced scowl, that I felt the smile drop from my face. In fact, it hadn’t occurred to me until then that I was smiling, a bright, natural, joyous thing of expectation that faded in the face of what was certainly trouble.
“What now?” I said wearily to Hyun-jun. “I thought you were both happy. What can you possibly have done to her now?”
Hyun-jun’s hair was, if possible, more anguished than ever; his entire air, if it came to that, was so picturesquely disorganised that it took me a moment or two to see the letter that was loosely pinched between his fingers. It was written in Ae-jung’s handwriting.
“That’s interesting,” I said, pulled in in spite of myself. “She’s the cause this time?” I put myself to the effort of sweeping the letter from his fingers to the floor in a controlled flutter, regretfully aware that I was rapidly losing the ability to use my body. Trouble with Ae-jung and Hyun-jun was something best looked after before it overflowed on the people around them—Yong-hwa, for instance.
I crouched to read the letter with a cautious glance up at Hyun-jun; he looked as though he was on the point of doing something either dangerous or objectionable. Hopefully he wouldn’t do either before I had a chance to read and absorb his letter.
It said, “I’m sorry. I’ve thought it over all night, and I can’t wait for as long as it will take to be able to marry you. I can’t leave Eomma and her house in Se-ri-ssi’s hands. The shock would kill her. I’m sorry. I love you, but we can’t be married. Please don’t try to find me; it will be too late by then and it will only hurt us both to see each other again like that. Ae-Jung.”
I gave a small sniff. What nonsense. What was Ae-jung planning? Her house in Se-ri’s hands? And how exactly was she suggesting that she and Hyun-jun would once again meet that would cause pain to them both?
There was a scuffle at the door, and a draught blew away the letter. Hyun-jun had gone rushing through the door, his eyes hot and angry, and I had no doubt that, failing to find Ae-jung, he would be after Se-ri. By the look in his eyes, it was quite possible that he was planning on murder when he did find her.
“Ah,” I said thoughtfully, and swiftly sorted through the Dreams that were bobbing around my darkening room for one of Se-ri. There she was, by the seedlings house, but she would soon be returning to the manor for the dance, where it was very probable that Hyun-jun would find her. I returned to Hyun-jun’s Dream and found with something of a shock that he was leaping into his Overlander; he would be at the manor in minutes.
I pulled myself out of the Dream hurriedly. “Carlin!”
“Miss?”
“Downstairs, now. Se-ri is in the garden by the seedlings house; get her into it as quickly as you can.”
“But—miss—”
“The seedlings house! Now!”
Carlin said desperately, “But how, miss?”
“Pick her up and carry her if you need to. Just get her in there.”
His eyes brightened. “Yes, miss!” He left with a lightness to his step that made me smile to myself, and I went back to the Dream of Se-ri. It was a pleasant tableau: Se-ri in an elegant gown of midnight blue and secret shimmers that brought out the expertly painted glow of her face, strolling beside the seedlings house, her hand trailing lightly along its smooth exterior as she walked. What was it that she was thinking about so carefully? Was she meditating on the success of her plan with Ae-jung’s house? I would have thought her face too serene for that if I weren’t quite sure that Se-ri’s chiefest pleasure was winning whatever campaign she was currently engaged in. How had she managed to get her hands on Ae-jung’s house?
My Dreams seethed and then joined: I saw Carlin hurrying through the servants’ door, and in the distance Hyun-jun leaped from his Contraption vehicle, careless of garden bed and vehicle alike, and dashed through the front door of the manor. As Carlin approached Se-ri along the path, Hyun-jun tore straight back out through the front door and made for the seedlings house at a run.
“Oh,” I said, my eyes wide. “He’s going for Se-ri first. You’d better hurry, Carlin.”
Se-ri didn’t have a chance to either cry out or fight back. Carlin seized her by the knees and tossed her over his shoulder, bearing her away into the seedlings house just a moment before Hyun-jun rounded the manor and came into sight.
The door was closed, so I locked it, a difficult matter that rendered me more incapable than ever, and Hyun-jun, shouting, strode furiously down the path. He hadn’t seen the door close, and now he was angry enough to shout for Se-ri through the garden, in spite of the gardeners who popped up from behind hedges in shock, and the giggling maids who peeped from the windows upstairs.
In the seedlings house, Carlin put down the furiously struggling Se-ri, who was nevertheless intelligent enough to know not to shout at him while Hyun-jun was rushing around outside.
“I’d stay in here if I were you,” said Carlin softly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s planning on strangling you. What did you do this time?”
“Nothing,” said Se-ri. She sounded surprised. “Whatever it is, it wasn’t me. Do you think I’d wait around in the garden if I’d done something to make him that angry? No, I’d be in the ballroom with all the other guests, where he couldn’t touch me.”
She put her ear to the door, listening carefully while the sounds of Hyun-jun’s fury faded into the distance of the farther garden, then put her hand on the plain metal bar that served for a knob on the inside of the door.
“I wouldn’t,” said Carlin. “Think you can make it to the manor before he comes back?”
“Yes,” said Se-ri, and pulled at the metal bar. It didn’t budge, and she pulled again, harder. She sighed. “Open the door, you.”
Carlin gave it a cursory tug. “Can’t,” he said. “It’s locked. Thought I heard something sliding across.”
Se-ri kicked at it with the sharp toes of her shoes. “Break it down, then!”
“Can’t; it’s too thick. Someone will come along and let us out later. Besides, there was no one outside to lock it, which means she wants us to be locked in here.”
“Good boy, Carlin,” I said approvingly. “Stay where you’re put while everything else is sorted out.”
“She? What do you mean, she?”
“My mistress.”
Se-ri’s pink mouth opened and closed. At last, she hissed, “Your mistress locked us in?”
“That’s right.”
“There was no one else on the path! There was no one else even in sight!”
“I suppose the door locked itself, then,” said Carlin, shrugging.
“Wait, but your mistress is Kang Eun-hee’s crippled friend,” protested Se-ri. “I’ve seen you carrying her. How could she lock the door if she can’
t walk?”
Carlin’s head jerked up. “You saw us?”
I gave a small, snuffled laugh. Carlin must have gotten as used to the anonymity of my proximity as I had gotten to being constantly unseen. I said, “You’ve made quite the impression, Carlin, if she saw you in spite of me.”
Perhaps, just like Yong-hwa, who had begun to see me and now always did so, Se-ri had begun to see Carlin and now couldn’t stop.
“Why wouldn’t I?” she said impatiently, turning back to the door. She gave the handle one last fruitless pull and stood gazing at it with her mouth pursed.
“It’s no good tugging at the handle,” Carlin said carelessly, to the back of her head. “I’ve already had a look at it; you wouldn’t be able to kick it loose even if you were at it all night. And it wouldn’t matter if you could; it’s not attached to anything but the door. It’s a plain slider bolt on the other side.”
Se-ri, who wasn’t inclined to let it go at that, gazed at the door a moment longer with a pained expression. Then she drew in a deep breath and assembled her most winning smile before wheeling to face Carlin. “I’m sure you could do it if you tried,” she said sweetly.
“Why are you doing that with your face?” said Carlin impatiently.
Se-ri opened and closed her mouth. At last she gasped, “Doing—What do you mean, what am I doing?”
Carlin jerked his chin at her. “That stupid smile. Stop it.”
“What—You—!” Se-ri, at last finding her voice, said with some bitterness, “I suppose you’re in love with that girl, too!”
“I don’t have to be in love with anyone to find that annoying,” said Carlin. “If you’re angry, just be angry. Don’t pretend you’re not. You’re more interesting when you’re angry anyway.”
“Who are you to tell me when I’m interesting!”
“No one,” Carlin said, shrugging. “But if you want to know why they all find that girl so irresistible, it’s not because she hides behind false smiles.”
“I don’t want to know!” snapped Se-ri. “Who asked you, you—you tray carrier!”
“No one,” said Carlin again. He grinned at her. “That’s my charm.”
“It’s not charming,” Se-ri said. And then, putting up her chin, she added, “What do you mean, I’m more interesting when I’m angry?”
Carlin shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged again. “The fake smiles might work for a little while, but if you want to run your father’s company, people need to know you care about something besides yourself.”
Se-ri, as furious as I’d ever seen her, backed Carlin up two whole steps with her small finger jabbing in his chest. “How dare you tell me how to care for my father’s company! What do you know about it? What do you know about the nights I’ve spent practising my expressions in the mirror so that I don’t offend the old men who only want women to smile at them? What do you know about the general managers and stockholders who condescend to me because I’m just the chairman’s daughter and must be spoiled and stupid? What do you know about anything except carrying trays?”
She stopped to draw breath, and noticed that he was grinning down at her. “And—and—what do you mean by looking at me like that? Get away from me!”
She shoved him with her full strength and Carlin stumbled back another few steps, still grinning. “That,” he said. “Do that at ’em. Frighten ’em. If you want your father’s company, get it fairly and honestly. Do you think he’d still refuse to name you his heir if he thought you could run it like that?”
Se-ri gave a breathless, angry laugh. “If it was that easy, I would have done it already. And while you’re being so free about giving out advice, why don’t you take a bit of your own advice, tray carrier?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You and your precious mistress! If you want her, get her fairly and honestly—why are you still gazing at her while another man wins her heart?”
“What are you talking about?” asked Carlin, but his voice cracked.
“Don’t imagine that I’m a fool,” Se-ri said impatiently. “I’ve seen the way you carry her and smile at her. For being such an insignificant thing that I have trouble remembering what she looks like, she certainly seems to be doing well for herself; I’ve heard how absent Ma Yong-hwa has been lately. Why don’t you take a bit of that advice you’re so free about giving out to me? Are you too afraid to chance it?”
“Oh,” I said, as a bright new thought crackled across my mind. “Oh. Oh, dear. It’s not true. It can’t be true—”
But Carlin, with a sigh, sat down on one of the seedling benches, heedless of dirt and pots. “Of course I’m afraid,” he said. “Right now I can be with her every minute of every day—picking her up, taking her outside, making her tea, talking to her. How can I risk that? What will I have if I tell her and she sends me away?”
I saw Se-ri’s mouth twist a little; she almost looked sorry. She sat down on the bench beside him and said in a well-modulated tone of indifference, “If you look at it from a risk-assessment point of view, you’ve got very little to lose at this stage. She can’t be more lost to you if she sends you away than she is if she marries another man. Will you still serve her after that?”
“I’ll serve her for as long as she’ll have me,” said Carlin.
Se-ri’s mouth made the little twisting motion again. “Oh well, that’s your business,” she said. “I’m sure another little tray carrier will fall in love with you at some stage if you don’t dare.”
“I should try the door again,” Carlin said, without moving.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Se-ri. Her shoulders had entirely lost their rigidity. “If Hyun-jun is here, Ae-jung is. The dance is bound to be boring by now.”
“You mean not every man in the room will be looking at you because half of ’em will be looking at Ae-jung instead,” Carlin said brutally.
Se-ri shrugged. “There’s no need to sneer because you weren’t born with looks as nice as mine. They’ve been very useful to me.”
Carlin was surprised into a laugh. “I’ll have you know that I’m very popular with the ladies here at the manor. I’m my mother’s pride and joy.”
“You’re all right, I suppose,” Se-ri said. “For a tray carrier.” She swung her feet, looking up at the dusk through the glass ceiling, and said, “I’m not going to apologise.”
“That’s all right,” said Carlin. “I’m not going to apologise, either.”
When I left them in order to look around in my Dreams for one of Ae-jung, they were gazing up at the stars in the silence of the seedlings house, Se-ri’s scrutiny a frowning, uncertain one, and Carlin’s pensive. I unlocked the door and drifted away to other Dreams, content both that Se-ri was safe from Hyun-jun, and that Ae-jung was safe from Se-ri.
In the eye of the storm, I Dreamed of Ae-jung. It was something of a shock to see her exiting Eun-hee’s room, dressed in one of Eun-hee’s older, perennially unworn bargain dresses that she routinely brought back from her trips to the city. It was a sky-blue, traditionally Eppan hanbok that would never have suited Eun-hee, but despite the pallor of Ae-jung’s face, she was as appealing as ever.
“Unni!” I protested, sitting up in my indignation. Eun-hee’s maid had been assisting Ae-jung, so it was certain that Eun-hee was the instigator of Ae-jung’s presence. “What are you doing?”
I staggered to my feet, regretting Carlin’s absence, and blindly made my way across the room to the door. Ae-jung’s steps passed my door as I stumbled onward; in the Dream she passed down the hall and took the stairs to the main level. Why was Ae-jung going to the dance? I found myself out in the hall more by chance than by skill, and groped my way toward the ballroom with a constant, uncomfortable heartbeat in my throat. Reality around me was dark; I could see nothing but Ae-jung, the blue hanbok flowing smoothly behind her as she drifted to one of the wood-and-glass doors that opened into the ballroom and looked anxiously in. I looked with her in the Dream, my body still stumb
ling forward in Reality, and discovered with something of a shock that she was watching Yong-hwa.
“That’s—You can’t go in there,” I said. “He’s just gotten used to not having you there. You can’t ask him for advice.”
But Ae-jung was still gazing through the door, her eyes wide at the press of people. Then she looked up, her eyes thoughtfully resting on the gallery beneath which Yong-hwa sat, and at the staircase that led from it. She left the door in a flutter of blue cloth and climbed the stairs on the other side of the hall, determination in her step. In my blind Reality, insensible to everything but the Dream, I collided with someone soft and scented, and gasped, “Unni!”
“Clovis-a! What are you doing down here? Didn’t Carlin take you to the gallery?”
“Take me there, Unni,” I said, my voice somehow quite as usual. “I don’t seem to be able to see.”
“I’ll send Dong-wook up with food later,” Eun-hee promised, and tugged at my arm. “Clovis-a! Must you walk so quickly? You’ll have us both on the carpet at this rate!”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, and resisted the tugging of that arm to chase the flicker of blue skirt that was Ae-jung. There was a mad thought in my mind that if I could stop her from getting to him, Yong-hwa need not be made hurt, or confused—or was I afraid that he would be made hopeful?—by Ae-jung’s disturbing presence.
A warmth, sticky and wet, slid down my face. It stopped me in my tracks, confused and uncertain, and Eun-hee stopped with me.
“Omo!” she said. “You’re crying!”
Lady of Dreams Page 29