“Among the travelers to the king’s lands was an English diplomat, Lord Nathanial Kirkham, who preached moderation lest the mandarins and kings of Vietnam stir the anger of their French masters with their excesses. The king listened and so did his favourite daughter, that he called Tuyet. Tuyet means ‘snow white’ in his language. Tuyet and Lord Kirkham fell in love but when he was posted to Peking, she could not go with him, for she was with child.”
“You.” Stuart whispered the word. He feared to halt her tale. He desperately wanted her to continue speaking, for these were the secrets that had shielded her from him.
“Yes. My mother was the king’s favourite and although he was a Christian, he had a Confucian upbringing. My mother was allowed to continue living in the palace with the rest of his children and women but I was never spoken of. I never met the king.” She took a breath. “I lived with the other children and was educated as they were. But my mother also taught me how to read and write English and made me read European history—in English. She kept contact with my father, through letters and sometimes, actual visits, when he would slip across the border from Cambodia. His last visit was when I was five. I remember it. He and my mother were very sad, which I did not understand. My father gave me many gifts and told me he loved me and then he went away again. Not long after that, my father married the English heiress he had been betrothed to when he was born and she had a son two years later.”
“Patrick,” Stuart breathed, as all the facts began to fit together.
“A year after Patrick was born, my mother died of consumption. I was there, holding her hand.” A tremor ran through Bian and Stuart shifted her so that she was closer to him, her back against his chest. Her hand pressed his. “My mother’s last words were of my father and she died whispering his name. So I wrote to him, using the address she had me memorize long ago and I told him of her passing and her last words. Within a month he returned to the palace and negotiated with the king. He took me away with him and brought me to England.
“I was old enough then to understand that my relationship to the Duke of Pemberton had been kept a dark secret and must remain that way. Because I loved my father, I worked to ensure I did not ruin his reputation, because his reputation was what made him powerful and allowed him to achieve so much for Britain in the places he worked—China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Siam, Korea.”
Stuart kissed her brow. “You were courageous, for one so young.”
“I have always felt much, much older than I really am,” she said quietly. “Which was just as well. I did not have friends my own age, growing up. I lived in a big cottage in the Cotswolds, with a nurse and a governess, Bridget. Bridget was a distressed noblewoman, who had besmirched her reputation. I learned that it had not been an unkind circumstance that led to her downfall.” Bian looked over her shoulder at Stuart, and he saw she was smiling – an impish grin. “Bridget was a liberal thinker. Just like you and Aiden, you might say.”
Stuart found himself smiling back. “Liberal thinking, the way you mean it, can be extraordinarily difficult for a woman to maintain. Bridget clearly wasn’t quite discrete enough.”
“Oh, she was careful enough. But a jealous lover revealed her true nature in a way that the rest of society could not ignore. She was ruined. But she was kind and she was very intelligent, although she had not been educated beyond the necessary accomplishments of a lady. However, her reading and correspondence with some of the most forward looking people made her a liberal thinker of the most extreme kind.” Bian looked over her shoulder again. “Of course, now I’m talking about her mind.” She gave a short laugh. “She taught me everything she knew and the necessity of being discreet, for women are not treated kindly in this world.”
“Everything she knew?” Stuart teased.
“Everything,” Bian repeated flatly.
Stuart felt his brow lift. “Your father approved this education?”
“I believe he knew I would be in need of an extraordinary education, given my extraordinary heritage,” Bian replied, somewhat coolly. She pushed her elbow gently into Stuart’s side. “You have benefited immensely from that education. Do you have any cause for complaint?”
Stuart shook his head. “On the contrary.” He stroked his fingers over her hip. “So you lived with Bridget...?”
“So we lived quietly and I spent most of my time reading and asking impossible-to-answer questions of Bridget. And occasionally, very seldom, my father visited. Finally, when I was sixteen, I was permitted to study at Cambridge, with the proviso that I assured everyone there I was at least nineteen. And so I finished my education at the lady’s college there and on my twentieth birthday, I traveled to China to join my father. Most of the diplomatic corps in China assumed I was a secretary, or nurse, or perhaps even a secret lover parading as a secretary or a nurse. The Chinese, many of them, were able to see my resemblance to my father and understood the truth. But the Chinese are even more diplomatic than the English and it was never spoken aloud. And so, for several years, I have traveled with my father and served him as I could.”
Stuart sensed there was more to her story but that the telling of it had ended. There were more secrets, then. But he was content—more than content—with what she had entrusted him with this day.
He held her to him. “Thank you,” he murmured.
She turned in his arms and buried her head against him. “I have never told anyone before today.” She was trembling.
“Not even Patrick?”
“Not all of it. He loves his mother and loved and respected his father. I would not take any of that from him.”
“But he accepts you.” Stuart remembered how Kirkham had stepped between him and Bian.
“At first, he tolerated my presence. But we have had reason to work together since then. I believe he respects me, now.” Stuart could almost feel her smile.
“And who could not respect you? You are beautiful, intelligent and a most independent-minded woman. I have never met anyone like you.”
“I’ve learned to hide my true nature behind a mask, so that society will accept me within the limits they will tolerate one of my stature.” Her smile faded. “My father propelled most of that acceptance. Now I must find a way to force them to accept me on my own merits, if I am to continue my work. My father would have insisted I carry on.” Sadness flooded her features.
He quickly changed the subject, to bring back her smile. “Now I understand your name. ‘Bian’ means ‘secretive’, or ‘hidden’.”
“You know Vietnamese?”
“Just a little. Enough to be understood,” he said in Vietnamese. At her delighted smile, he added in English, “I was posted to Saigon for a year. It seemed to run counter to my assignment not to learn the language. How can you get to know a people you cannot speak to?”
She laughed and reached for him.
There was a soft knock on the door. Patrick’s voice filtered through the oak. “There’s another telegram, Bian. You must read it.”
* * * * *
Bian blinked at the blazing sunset glaring through the tall windows, until the maid pulled the curtains.
Patrick held out the thick, folded document. “It’s for you,” he said simply. “From Piggot-Smythe.” He glanced at Stuart. “Would you like privacy?” he asked her and she knew what he was thinking. The contents of this telegram would be about Stuart. It would be best to remove him until she had had time to absorb what it might say.
“No, please stay,” she told them both as she unfolded it. “I would prefer the company.”
Stuart rested his hand briefly on her shoulder, then pointedly moved to the furthest corner and pulled the curtain aside to study the view outside the window, giving her both privacy and the comfort of his presence.
Patrick took the long taper from the maid, showed her the door and took over the lighting of the candles and lamps. They were alone in the room.
With her heart thudding hard, Bian read the long missive.
“Stuart S-B posted Canton. Aiden S-B posted Taiwan. Both under-secretaries to their ambassadors. S.S-B visited Kirkham week before Kirkham arrest. Trial was closed but insiders cite proof against Kirkham 1) constant travels about China conversing with high officials both favoured and not, 2) Chinese security documents in hidden compartment of sea chest.
“Will be returning to England within the month. P-S.”
Bian realized her hand was shaking and put the sheet down. There was a roaring in her ears, that echoed the thunder of her heart beat. She felt ill.
“Bian?” Stuart said sharply, stepping toward her. She lifted her hand, to hold him back and she clutched the arm of the chair with the other. “I think…I think you must leave, Stuart. This concerns family business, that I must discuss with Patrick.”
Patrick and Stuart exchanged glances. It was a mute, male assessment. Stuart must have found reassurance in Patrick’s stare, for he nodded. “All right, I will go, then. But I will return tomorrow morning as soon as decency allows.”
She was too sick to answer. Instead she nodded, the most she could achieve. Cold sweat was prickling hard along her neck.
But Stuart was next to her, crouching to bring his face level with hers. “Tell me you can bear this alone…whatever this is. Tell me you can, or I won’t take another step away from you.”
She summoned up the will to speak. “I can bear this,” she lied and looked him straight in the eye. “It is a shock, that is all.”
Finally, he stood and then slowly turned and walked away. He shut the door after him but not before she saw him look back, the blue eyes trying to look through her, to drag the truth from her that way.
Patrick sat on the chair beside hers. “What is it?” he asked.
She handed him the sheet and rested her forehead against the heel of her hand, finally allowing herself to feel the full impact of the telegram. “It was me,” she croaked.
Patrick whistled as he finished reading—a long, low, hard note. “How was it you? How could anything you’ve done have created this…disaster?”
“The high officials. The dinners, the tours around northern China, visiting cities and officials and being so sociable.” Bian spread her hands, indicating how obvious it was. “It was for me, Patrick. I was there with him for every single visit. He was simply being a good diplomat and learning about his country. I’m the one who was making friends, gossiping with the wives, watching, putting two and two together and writing it all down for Richard.”
Patrick tapped the edge of the sheet against his fingers. “Gathering intelligence is perfectly legal. You weren’t stealing secrets.”
“But put it together with the documents in his sea chest and it makes the proof against him utterly inarguable. Someone put those documents there, Patrick. I know the secret compartment Piggot-Smythe is talking about. He only kept one item in it. It was something that was dear to him. Not documents.”
“The item. It was something of your mothers?” Patrick’s cheeks flushed as he asked. For him, Bian’s heritage was still a delicate thing.
“Yes, it was. A jade tiger with ruby eyes…she’d had it made especially for him, to bring him luck. He kept it with him. Always.”
“Why hidden, though? It sounds like the sort of thing one would keep upon a mantle.”
“It was inscribed with their names and mine, with descriptions of the depth of her love for him. And a call to God to reunite them in Heaven for all eternity.”
“Ah… Yes, that would be something he’d need to keep hidden.” Patrick cleared his throat and focused on furiously cleaning his glasses. “Then Sutherland-Bruce must have put the documents in the compartment. Father already suspected he was betraying English secrets. He sent you here to confirm it. So Sutherland-Bruce gathers up incriminating Chinese documents and puts them into the compartment before he obediently returns to England. And he must have hinted to the Chinese before he left. The arrest barely a week after he left is very suggestive.”
Bian nodded. “Yes, but who did hinted to the Chinese authorities? Stuart, or Aiden?”
He shrugged. “Stuart, of course. Piggot-Smythe says he was there the week before Father’s arrest.”
“But when you had Lord Baring ask the Home Office here in London, they said that Stuart had been here for nearly a month. It was Aiden who had been home only a few days.”
Patrick blinked. “Good God,” he said softly, wonder colouring his voice. “You think some sort of…masquerade has been going on?”
“I think that’s exactly what has happened,” she said. “Aiden visited my father, pretending to be Stuart. Stuart was posted to Canton, so he would rarely have called on my father. Piggot-Smythe would not have been able to tell the difference—these two are peas in a pod, Patrick. Even I was confused at first.”
“What tipped you off, then?” Patrick asked curiously.
She felt her own cheeks bloom with heat. “He looked at me with the same lust as Stuart but in his eyes there was no…”
“Warmth?” Patrick suggested.
“Love,” Bian replied.
Patrick’s gaze skidded away. Then he made himself look at her directly. Firmly. “So you can tell them apart but others who do not know them intimately would not.”
“Exactly. So Aiden pretends he is Stuart and visits his ambassador. One last official visit before returning to England. While he is in the residence, he finds a way to place the documents in the compartment—”
“How would he know it was there?” Patrick asked.
“It was hidden but not impossible to find,” she answered. “I found it, after all.”
Patrick gave a low, almost silent laugh. “Of course you did. So Aiden found the compartment, placed the documents in it, and let the Chinese know where to find them. He hurries back to England and reverts to Aiden when he arrives, while the Chinese quickly do his work for him and remove the biggest threat to his role as a treasonous, lying, amoral son-of-a-bitch.”
“Patrick!” She was shocked at Patrick’s curse and the vehemence of his anger.
He held up a hand. “Forgive me. This man, whichever man it was, was the man who arranged to have my father executed.”
“It was Aiden,” she said flatly.
He looked at her with a wise expression. “You would like it to be Aiden. But what if the reverse happened? What if Aiden was the first to return to England and Stuart actually did do this thing?”
A chill rippled down her spine before Bian could gather her wits about her enough to refute Patrick’s question. “The Home Office said—”
“They reported that one of the brothers returned several weeks before the other,” Patrick overrode her. “But you only have Stuart’s word that he was the first one to arrive in England.”
She squeezed her temples with her fingertips. “Why would he lie about it here, if he did not in Peking? If he had really been trying to avoid suspicion, he would have presented himself to my father and Piggot-Smythe as Aiden. But he did not.”
Patrick’s smile widened. “And here is another thought, darling sister. What if the man you have taken to your bed isn’t Stuart at all? What if it has been Aiden all along?”
Chapter Eight
“For heaven’s sake, Bian, you cannot go to him!” Patrick strode into the bedroom right behind her, too intent on making sure she heard him to have registered where he actually was. “Until we can learn which of the two arrived in England first and the true identity of that man, you should not step within a mile of either of them!”
She fumbled at the ties of her house robe. “Have you never heard of baiting the tiger, Patrick? Sometimes it the only way to get him to come out of his lair.”
His hand fell on her elbow, halting her. “I understand the principle,” he said quietly. “But one of them is a killer. He cold-bloodedly arranged to have another man murdered to cover his crimes. Crimes that will have him hanged if you find the proof you’re looking for. You think he will hesitate for even a moment
to kill you, if he realizes what your intentions are?”
She patted his hand. “I know, Patrick. I know that only too well. But one of them is the man I love. I can’t wait around like a lady for some miracle to provide an answer. So if you do not want to see me naked, I suggest you leave.”
This time he flushed clear to his hairline and backed quickly out of the room, just as she had known he would. Patrick was a gentleman to his core and unworldly despite his post as Lord Baring’s secretary.
She dressed quickly and hurried down the stairs to find him again. When he looked up from his plate of roast beef, his eyes widened and his jaw dropped.
“Yes, I know,” she said, tucking her braided hair into the back of her jacket. “I did say I could not stay a lady for this.”
“Those are a man’s clothes!” He rose to his feet.
“Indeed they are. A gentleman’s clothes, in fact. A very young, very short gentleman who perhaps hasn’t reached his majority yet but still has the full force of money and tradition behind him.” She tugged down on the silk waistcoat and arranged the chain of her fob watch so it wouldn’t hinder her draw. Then she checked the load on the pistol in her pocket a second time.
As she rolled the barrel to count the bullets and pushed it back in place, Patrick sank back onto his seat with a speed that suggested he had fallen onto it. She looked up and saw that he had turned quite pale. “And now you have some idea of the real work Richard demanded of me.”
“But…but…you’re a woman!” Patrick spluttered.
“Which has worked in my favour for ten years now. Would you ever suspect that the demur maid cleaning out the fireplace climbed three floors in the pre-dawn light and will read all the papers on your desk the minute you leave the room and write down the essentials using a shorthand system of writing? That she will spend a day touring your house and soaking up any household gossip about your bedroom activities, your vices and weaknesses, before leaving with the day staff at the end of the day?”
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