“Ah,” said Se-ri. Her bracelets tinkled as she reached into her travel wallet and drew out the envelope I’d given her that morning. “Then perhaps you should look at this.”
Carlin took it as if it were a poisonous snake, and gingerly extracted the deed I had put in there. As Se-ri had done earlier, he understood its purpose in one incredulous moment. He sprang to his feet, staggering slightly. “Miss! Miss, I know you can see me! Did you do this?”
“Who are you talking to?” asked Se-ri, leaning away warily.
“Her,” said Carlin grimly. To the ceiling he yelled, “Miss! What are you trying to do to me? I’m not staying with this little harpy!”
Se-ri made a tiny tutting noise and slid out the letter I’d prepared. “I’ve been called a lot worse than that,” she said. “You’re not even trying. By the way, she said to give you this as well.”
Carlin, reaching out a hand for the letter, hesitated. Se-ri looked away disinterestedly, her hand still elegantly extended with the letter in it while Carlin’s face fluctuated with myriad emotions. He knew it held things that he would be reluctant to acknowledge, but he was also curious to know why I’d sent him away. At last he took it, and Se-ri rose in one fluid movement to approach the mirror on the other side of the room. I wasn’t sure if she was being thoughtful enough to give him his privacy, or if she simply didn’t want to see his reaction; but while he read, she made delicate adjustments to her lace collar and rearranged the order of the jewelled hair slides that held her smooth hair in place. I saw her look at him in the mirror once, but she looked away again almost immediately.
Carlin, busy with the letter, didn’t notice. One of his hands was rubbing the top of his head in perplexity, raising spikes, and once he laughed—a frustrated, hopeless laugh. “Typical,” he said. “Oh, that’s just typical of you, miss. Always thinking—I would have been happy to stay as we were. I wouldn’t have tried to push it.”
“She’s not going to stay the way she was, though, is she?” said Se-ri, leaving the mirror. “She’s got Ma Yong-hwa now.”
She twitched the letter out of his fingers as she spoke, her movements quick, businesslike, and precise.
“What are you doing?” Carlin snatched at the letter, but Se-ri was quicker. She backed away swiftly, the crumpled letter behind her back, and when Carlin grabbed her to wrestle it away, she tossed that crumpled ball far back in the fire. Carlin looked at it wildly as it burned, and then at Se-ri. He made one, brief movement forward, as if he would snatch it out of the flames, but Se-ri was in the way and pushed him back with both hands.
“No!” she said, panting. “That’s all over now.”
Carlin said something unbefitting a footman and ran a hand through his hair again in despair. “Why did you do that? I wanted to—”
“You wanted to what? Keep it and read it over and over again? Sigh over it? It’s finished now.”
Carlin sat down in a perplexed kind of slither and put his head in his hands. He was muttering to himself, and I thought I heard, “I’m going to kill her. I’m really going to kill her.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking about me or Se-ri.
“I won’t have you talking about her all the time, either,” said Se-ri, smoothing out her dress and sitting down opposite him. She cleared her throat in a ladylike manner, as if she hadn’t just been in a tussle, and poured something iced into a small frosted glass. “No comparisons, no reminiscences. Not a word. You belong to me now.”
“All right,” said Carlin, slouching back into the couch and pushing his hands into his pockets. He hadn’t been supposed to do that as a footman, but it hadn’t stopped him then, either. “But there are some things you have to remember as well, or I’ll be gone, house or no house.”
Se-ri leaned back with her tiny glass and sipped. “I’ll think about it. What things?”
“Don’t use that stupid voice on me that you use on other men. Don’t try to smile and charm me into doing things, just ask. And don’t make me carry stupid things like shopping bags and hatboxes.”
Se-ri appeared to think about it. Then she said, “What if the hatboxes have contraband in them that I’m trying to smuggle somewhere?”
Carlin’s eyebrows rose. “I’ll carry contraband,” he said. “But why does it have to be in hatboxes?”
“Because no one thinks to look in hatboxes, especially if you have a lot of them,” said Se-ri. “And I won’t try to charm you, but I won’t ask you to do things. I’ll order you.”
Carlin gave that the same kind of consideration that Se-ri had given his list of demands. “All right,” he said. “But if that’s the case, I might sometimes have to disobey.”
“That’s acceptable,” Se-ri said. “Just make sure you obey the important ones. And I don’t want you to call me miss.”
“I wouldn’t call you that anyway. What should I call you, then?”
“Director has a nice ring to it,” said Se-ri thoughtfully. “I’d like people to get used to hearing me called Director. Scandian is a nice way to ease them into it.”
“All right,” said Carlin again. “You’re not going to burn that deed, too, are you?”
“No,” Se-ri said. “It’s too useful to me.”
“Just checking,” Carlin said. “When do I start, then, Director?”
I let the Dream go, my heart unfamiliarly heavy, and woke with my head tilted between the chair back and Yong-hwa’s shoulder, while Yong-hwa’s brown eyes gazed down at me compassionately.
“Is it done, Clovis-a?”
I took in a breath that caught slightly, and let it out in a sigh. “It’s done,” I said.
“Can you tell me about it now? Or will Carlin come by to take you back to your room and chase me away?”
“Carlin,” I said slowly, “Carlin won’t be coming to chase you away. I helped Se-ri kidnap him this morning.”
Yong-hwa froze for the barest moment. Then his eyelashes dropped and lifted again to display eyes that were glowing with laughter. “Clovis-a,” he said. “I think you’d better tell me all about it.”
I told him about it slowly and quietly while he played with my fingers, his gaze on them as if he were concerned with them and nothing else. When I trailed away into silence with my head resting against his shoulder again, my tale done, Yong-hwa gave me one of his direct looks, which held more than its usual share of warning.
“Clovis-a,” he said. “Don’t ever think to try and send me away like that.”
“I wouldn’t,” I said, with a faint smile in remembrance of the pain I’d felt when I thought that I’d lost him to Ae-jung. “I couldn’t. I don’t want to.”
“Won’t he come back?”
I shook my head. “He would have come back straightaway if he was going to come back.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“That deed,” I said. “It’s fake. He knows that.”
“Then why did he go along with Se-ri?”
“Because he’s decided to stay with her,” I said, and this time my smile felt a little lighter.
Yong-hwa hissed a soft, delighted laugh into my temple. “Just when I think there’s nothing more to be learned about you, I find something new,” he said.
“It’s funny, though, Oppa,” I said, my gaze going beyond him and out the window to the starlit sky.
“What’s funny?”
“That deed,” I said. “Se-ri knows it’s fake, too. And she knows Carlin knows it. And he knows that she knows it.” I chuckled at the stars. “It was a good game, wasn’t it, Oppa? I got the idea from Ae-jung’s dongsang.”
“Clovis-a,” said Yong-hwa sternly, drawing my eyes back to him. “You led me to believe that your games extended only to me. Am I to understand that playing games with any remotely possible lovers who come within your reach is actually a favourite pastime of yours?”
“I don’t always play games with them,” I said. “Sometimes I prod a little. It’s just that they’ll make such a good team and neither of them would ever admit i
t if I didn’t do something.”
Yong-hwa, still playing with my fingers, asked, “Will you manage without Carlin?”
“I’ll miss him,” I said. “But we wouldn’t do each other any good now; it’s time we both grew out of our need for each other. The only pity is that I’ll have to train someone else to see me.”
“You could do that,” agreed Yong-hwa. “Or you could marry me, since I no longer see anything but you anyway.”
I said, “That would be easier than training someone new.”
Yong-hwa laughed, and touched his forehead to mine. “Haven’t I told you about the delicacy of the male ego, Clovis-a?”
“Oppa,” I said, with a strange, contented warmth in my chest, “I missed you today.”
“If that’s a sop to my feelings, it’s a very good one,” he said. “Don’t stop, Clovis-a. I’m ready to be consoled.”
“You always want more,” I said, the warmth growing. “Should I tell you how beautiful you are? Or should I tell you how your music dances in the air when you play?”
“Both,” said Yong-hwa. “But tell me very slowly so we can talk all night just like this. I’ll have to stop you every so often to kiss you, and you should stop every so often just to look up at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Warm and pink and contented,” Yong-hwa said, consideringly. “You were so pale and cold when I first started to see you, and I only saw that warmth when you were around Jessamy-a. I was quite jealous. I wanted you to see me properly, to look at me with some of that tenderness.”
“I always saw you,” I told him, threading my fingers through his. “I didn’t understand it; even when I thought to Dream of Jessamy, there you were. The Dreams kept coming back to you, and you always seemed to know when I was around. That hadn’t happened before.”
“Then I’ll stay very close to you so that I’m in your Dreams when you sleep, and here with you when you wake.”
“Will you come to Abeoji’s estate when I go? I should tell him if we’re going to be married.”
“Clovis-a,” said Yong-hwa. “You’ve been very busy plotting and planning, but perhaps you’ll remember that I’m quite capable of doing my own plotting and planning. I wrote to your father several weeks ago to tell him that I meant to marry you, and asking for his blessing.”
“Several weeks ago?”
Yong-hwa nodded, his cheeks sharpening. “Ever since I was sure you were the one who was playing games with me.”
“Ah,” I said. “I knew it was a bad idea to play games with you.”
“Take that back, Clovis-a,” said Yong-hwa, nudging a kiss against my lips. “Or I might have to keep kissing you until you concede.”
“That’s—that’s counterintuitive,” I said, between kisses. “There’s no incentive for me to yield.”
“Mmm,” agreed Yong-hwa, and kissed my eyelids. “But I prefer to think of it as a happy outcome for me whichever way it turns out. I must admit to a bias toward kissing, however.”
“Ya,” said Jessamy’s voice from the doorway, “you can’t keep doing that.”
“I beg to differ, Jessamy-a,” Yong-hwa said, nudging another warm kiss into my jaw. “Clovis and I haven’t seen each other since yesterday. It’s been very difficult, and I still have things I need to talk about with her.”
“Try telling Abeoji that the reason you’re late meeting him tomorrow is that you spent all night kissing Nuna,” said Jessamy, stuffing his hands in his pockets and grimacing expressively. “He and Nuna like to pretend they don’t care very much about each other—”
“It’s not pretend,” I said in Yong-hwa’s conveniently close ear, and saw his cheeks sharpen again.
“But he’d care about that, all right.”
“Your father arrives tomorrow?”
“Got a letter from him when we got back in,” nodded Jessamy. “Hyung, did you write to him?”
“I did.”
“Oh. That’s good. When are you and Clovis getting married?”
“As soon as your father allows it,” said Yong-hwa.
“Then you’d better both go to bed,” advised Jessamy. “If there’s one thing Abeoji hates, it’s being made to wait when he’s decided to see someone. Should I call the Carlin-automaton for you, Nuna?”
“Absolutely not,” Yong-hwa said. “Jessamy-a, your sister has passed on ownership of that particular automaton, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t bring it back!”
I tipped my head to brush a kiss across his cheek. “It’s all right, Oppa. I don’t need it any more. I have you, remember?”
Yong-hwa’s head turned at once, a glow of warmth kindling in his eyes. “Clovis-a, it’s too early to go to bed.”
“Well, Hyung can’t put you to bed anyway,” said Jessamy, surprisingly practical. “That’s not proper. I’ll take you up, Nuna.”
“Wait!” protested Yong-hwa, as Jessamy lifted me from the seat beside him. “There’s more to talk about.” More threateningly still, he added, “Jessamy-a, I’ll see you tomorrow, too!”
Jessamy, giggling, continued to bear me away. “I’ll run, Hyung! You’ll never catch me! Come on, Nuna; it’s time we were in bed. We’ll sleep in your room tonight; I brought a dead bird back with me to stuff and it’s gone all puffy and smelly.”
“Thank you for looking after me so unselfishly, Jessamy-a,” I said solemnly, and he giggled again.
Behind us, Yong-hwa said again, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jessamy-a!” but when I looked back he was in the doorway of the library, watching us affectionately. And in the mellow light of the hallway I saw him smile, his eyes as bright and laughing as they ought to be.
“Dream of me, Clovis-a,” he called after me.
You said before that you wanted more. I didn’t know what you meant then, but I do now. There’s one last thing I want to tell you, Oppa—something I should have said before now.
I love you.
Ya. You should warn me before you do that.
Glossary of Korean Terms
Note: These terms are in Romanised Korean, a phonetic form of the original Hangul.
Abeoji/Abeonim: “Dad”/respectful “Father”
Agassi: “Miss” (spoken of/to younger ladies)
Ahjumma: “Lady/miss” (spoken of/to older ladies)
Ahjussi: “Mister”
Aigoo: Indistinct; can be “Goodness!”/“Sheesh”/“Aw”/“Darn”
Aish: “Bother”/“Darn”/“Damn”
Ani/Aniyo: “No”/respectful “No, sir/ma’am”
Caja: “Let’s go”
Dae/Nae/Ye: “Yes”/respectful “Yes, sir/ma’am”
Dongsang: “Little bro/sis” (spoken by older males/females about younger males/females)
Eomma/Eomeonim: “Mum”/respectful “Mother”
Gayageum: A traditional Korean instrument, wooden, stringed
Hajima: “Stop it”
Hyung/Hyungnim: “Big bro”/respectful “brother” (spoken by younger males to older male friends/older brothers)
Komawoyo: “Thank you”
Matda: “That’s right”
Miane/Miyaneyo: “I’m sorry”
Mwoh/Mwohya?: “What?”
Nuna: “Big sis” (spoken by younger males to older female friends/older sisters)
Oppa: “Big bro” (spoken by younger females to older male friends/older brothers)
Sajang/Sajangnim: “President”/respectful “Mr. President”
Seonbae: “Teacher/senior” (spoken to a senior at work/more experienced teammate)
Seonnim: “Guest”
-ssi: “Mr./Miss/Mrs.”; a polite particle attached to a person’s name
Unni: “Big sis” (spoken by younger females to older female friends/older sisters)
Wae: “Why”
Ya: “Hey”
-ya/-a: A familiar particle attached to a younger person’s/close friend’s name
-yo: A suffix added to any word to make it more polite
Than
k you for reading Lady of Dreams! Please do consider leaving a review on Amazon: I value every review I receive. If you simply want to get in touch, I can be found on Twitter, Facebook, and at my website, The WR(ite) Blog.
If you enjoyed Lady of Dreams, there’s good news! You can look forward to three further books in this world over the next two years.
Planned for 2017: Lady of Weeds
Planned for 2018: Lady of Ink and Lord of Spies
In the meantime, check out my other books on Amazon!
Lady of Dreams Page 33