A Bride for Wen Hui Read online

  “Is it a pleasure?” she whispered.

  A pregnant pause and then, “It always was, Li Yuping.”

  She said nothing to this although she basked in the warmth that spread through her chest at his words.

  If Chen Wen Hui wanted to risk scandal and possible dishonor by partaking of this stolen moment, then he would.

  And she would let him.

  Last night, the house of Li Fuhai, from her esteemed father to the lowest servant, had all been struck dumb when the representative of Peng Jinwei and Yuping’s proxy husband was revealed to be Chen Wen Hui.

  Before that momentous occasion, she’d lived in an ever-growing sense of wrongness. Preparations for the upcoming ceremonies, banquets, and her departure had kept the household in a constant state of activity.

  A new wardrobe was furnished as befitting the wife of a rich husband. Chests were filled with all the worldly goods she would take to her husband’s home. Due to the uniqueness of her marriage, a proxy wedding, certain traditions were abandoned or altered. All of her mothers played a role in preparing the nuances of the reception to take place after the ceremony.

  The frenetic pace and the speed of which everything was carried out on a daily basis scraped like the talons of a tiger against her nerve-endings. She kept quiet, careful to show nothing of the stomach-churning qualms refusing to cease their rigid hold.

  Yuping wanted nothing more than to disappear and never have to marry this stranger. This Peng Jinwei hadn’t the respectful decency to see her in person. With his own desires firmly before her own, he’d stolen her right—not privilege, she thought defiantly—to see the face of the man she would give her life to.

  Often, during these weeks of agony, the words of a great teacher echoed in her mind: "A woman should look on her husband as if he were Heaven itself, and never weary of thinking how she may yield to him.”

  How could she think of Peng Jinwei as Heaven if she couldn’t even behold a glimpse of paradise for herself?

  Along with the indignation of a distant absent husband, she felt a curious dread fester like an infected wound under the wrappings of a bandage. The expected duties of her womanhood began to cage her in day by day. The tentative, delicate freedoms she enjoyed as her father’s daughter started to slip through her fingers.

  Her daily romps to the ting to see if she could capture the beauty of the dawn as the learned men in the past had in their poetry would cease. Her enjoyment of the written word would be stunted altogether. All she would be expected to be was a wife and mother.

  "Woman's greatest duty is to produce a son,” Da niang quoted to her more than once throughout the weeks leading up to the day she was to meet her proxy husband. For her first mother, that seemed to the height of womanly fulfillment. After all, she’d produced two sons for Li Fuhai while his other wives had only given him a son and a daughter each.

  However, two sons or no, Jingli seethed with jealousy whenever her father stayed the night with his favorite concubine, Meiling.

  “You are lucky that you do not have his love,” her birth mother said several weeks ago.

  Yuping had wondered at her words. “Why do you say that, Er niang?”

  Meiling’s word rang in her ears. “Yours will be a marriage that will not affect your heart when you see him enter the bedroom of his other wives.”

  Shiluo’s own words were simpler: “You are lucky that you have been chosen as his third wife and not as a payment for a debt. And yet, shoa ye has been kind to me.”

  “Do you truly think so, San niang?”

  Her third mother shrugged. “I have given him a son and a daughter. Though he does not visit me often, I am still cared for.”

  Her mothers and their distinct relationships with her father had agonized her. Jingli, the legal and unloved first wife. Meiling, the loved and favorite concubine who had no hold on her father’s fidelity. Shiluo, the pet concubine who was grateful for the crumbs of notice Li Fuhai tossed her way.

  Was this what she had to look forward to as the third bride of Peng Jinwei? An uneasy truce with the other wives or an outright rivalry where they fought tooth and nail for the affection of their husband? Was this what it meant to be a woman then? If this was her fate, would she ever be more than a woman, then?

  The strange question had scratched at the back of her mind. Until last night, as Yuping stood to prepare herself, the answer eluded her.

  And then, she looked up and met the gaze of Chen Wen Hui.

  As she came back to the present, the agonies of her future life seeped away in an inexplicable fashion that she refused to delve into too deeply. It wasn’t as if the very presence of the boy she once loved had taken away all of her doubts, fears, and uncertainties.

  Was it?

  No, she denied as she compressed her lips. No matter what, Chen Wen Hui was not her husband. Ayah! It was unvirtuous to play a game of pretend even in her innermost being.

  Wasn’t it?

  “Have you written anything yet?” His voice broke through her scattered thoughts. Though she didn’t turn, she could tell he’d drawn closer.

  She shook her head. On the floor rested an ink brush, a small container of ink, a miniature ladle, and an inkstone. “It’s almost time,” she said as she glanced again at the sky. “I must capture the dawn.”

  Taking in a deep breath, Yuping’s senses bathed in the stirring vitality all around, not the least of which seemed to come from the still figure of the man behind her.

  Yuping reached for the minute ladle and bent over the edge of the ting, careful to ensure she didn’t fall in, Dipping the ladle into the pond, minute ripples disturbed its calmness. She added the water to the powdered ink and then used the inkstone to mix it together. Once combined to the proper consistency, she set aside the stone and then lifted the ink brush.

  Her fingers quivered and the tip of the fine-horsehair brush trembled. A bulge formed in her throat and she paused.

  “Today, the dawn will belong to you,” Wen Hui told her in a low, confident voice. “It will!”

  The constriction in her neck eased away and she firmed her grip around the handle of the brush as a dangerous thought echoed in her mind.

  But will you belong to me, Wen Hui or will you remain as elusive as the dawn?

  CHAPTER THREE

  An auspicious day had been chosen for the wedding, set a week from today. When it was announced, a betraying leapt in Wen Hui’s heart almost stole his breath. Fiercely, he reminded himself it was only pretend. No need to be so ecstatic.

  However, he could not prevent a sense of anticipation from pervading his body as he stood in hehua ting, or the lotus pavilion, built alongside the lotus pond. He stared out through a fan-shaped window to the large body of water chocked with the beautiful plants. Their aroma filled the air and he inhaled the fragrance of them deeply and enjoyed their beauty. The lotus blossom always reminded him of Yuping.

  The lines of a poem from Master Yun Shouping he’d once read came to mind as he stared the bright blossom in the center of the green vibrant pad:

  “A new stem broke through the slush with a delicate and charming flower,

  and a withered leaf and seedpod of lotus floating on the water show the late autumn time.

  Even the bleak west wind could not penetrate and diminish the flamboyant red,

  it stretches its body and dress with a deep breath.”

  Indomitable lotus blossom. Indomitable woman. Indomitable Li Yuping.

  These few days had been ones of anguished bliss.

  Every morning, he arose and slipped out of the guest house. Every morning he was certain he’d be caught. Every morning, he didn’t care. He had to see the dawn with her. On the third day, Yuping revealed that her servant, though he never saw the woman, kept an eye out for them.

  “Is she the same one from before?”

  Yuping, her head turned away from him, nodded. “Yes. The same.”

  History was repeating itself but then it wasn’t. They were
children back then. Now, he was a man and she was a woman.

  A man chosen to bring her to another when all he wished he could do was claim her as his own. In his mind alone, he pretended that he, Chen Wen Hui, was the husband to be for his Yuping. No third wife would she ever be in his life. But his one and only.

  A little smile lifted the corner of his mouth as he suddenly thought of Pastor Jones. The old Christian minister disapproved of some of his countrymen’s propensity for multiple wives and concubines.

  “One wife to one husband,” the old minister, who was fluent in Chines, said more than once. “How can a man love more than one woman with all of his heart.”

  “Love doesn’t always have anything to do with it,” Wen Hui had responded back. “You Westerners hold love in such a high standard but how many of your love marriages are truly happy?”

  Pastor Jones shook his head. “You may have something there, Henry,” he admitted, calling Wen Hui by his American name. “But duty, security, and familial obligation are meaningless without love.”

  “Chen Wen Hui.”

  He stiffened. Tearing his gaze away from the pond teeming with plant-life, he turned to see the one woman he tried to avoid for the past several days without being rude.

  Meiling minced toward him. A timid-looking woman lagged behind her at a distance, in a stance to give her mistress privacy. Her lotus feet encased in red shoes decorated in yellow and green trimmings drew his eyes to them, which was the whole point. The wide, voluminous jacket, richly embroidered around the collar and the border of the garment flowed around her in a graceful manner. Matching fitted trousers carried the same design.

  Looking at the woman, it was no wonder why Li Fuhai had made her his concubine. She was beautiful in a way that few women were. It was a trait she passed down to her daughter.

  When she came abreast of him, he gave a slight bow and tried to ignore the eyes so very much like Yuping’s and yet lacked her daughter’s inner flame. “Good evening, wife of Li Fuhai.”

  Her eyebrow arched. “Are you mocking me, Chen Wen Hui?”

  Giving her a contrite bow, he said, “I would never be so disrespectful,” he assured her. “I address you as I see you.”

  Her shoulders relaxed. “I am not his wife,” she said bluntly.

  “He loves you,” Wen Hui countered. After all, it was only the truth. Everyone in the house of Li knew its master spent more time in his second wife’s apartments than with his principal wife.

  “Love is meaningless,” she said, her face pinched tight. “I have told you this before.”

  “Well I remember it,” he murmured, recalling that dark day.

  “It won’t come to fruition, Chen Wen Hui.”

  Clasping his hands behind his back, he dallied. “I’m not sure what you mean?”

  “Of course, you do,” she said impatiently. “When you had discovered that it was my daughter to be the next concubine of Peng Jinwei, you should have refused to do this.”

  Turning away from the censure in her eyes, he knew she was right. Despite Jinwei’s insistence he should have never accepted this charge.

  “You say that with such ease, wife of Li Fuhai,” he spoke, staring out at the lotus pond but not seeing it. “But if Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West, offered you a peach from her immortal garden, wouldn’t you take it?”

  Meiling let out an exasperated breath. “You are only torturing yourself. And her.”

  No firmer truth had been spoken. These days, he found himself caught up in the web of his own pretense.

  “It is a pleasant torture.”

  “It is until it is no longer. You may pretend but it won’t make it any less painful when Peng Jinwei takes her as his own.”

  A muscle pulsed in his cheek. He’d kept those kinds of thoughts at bay, not wanting reality to interfere with his fantasy. In this past week, he’d reacquainted his friendship with Li Guangde, reminiscing about the past as he was educated by his side.

  Li Fuhai had given him the gift of knowledge as payment for saving his oldest son’s life from drowning.

  The servants, happy to see his apparent wealth and rise in status, fawned over him. So much so, that Li Fuhai joked he’d steal them away. Wen Hui had been hard pressed to tell him that the only one he was tempted to steal was his daughter.

  He refused to dwell on the fact he lived in a lie. That after a few months travel, he’d deliver Yuping to another man.

  “I’m aware of that,” he clipped out.

  “I am not ignorant,” she told him. “I have seen the way you have looked at her. It was the same when you were children.”

  “I haven’t done anything—”

  “But you have.” She took a step forward, her icy gaze dark as cold, unforgiving marble. “You should have stayed away. And now, you dare to come here as her proxy husband.”

  “Only to deliver her to Peng Jinwei,” he said painfully. “Doesn’t it matter that I am now a man of means?”

  “But you are still unworthy of her!”

  Her words stabbed the center of his chest.

  “Did you think that wealth would change your station?” Womanly comportment kept Meiling from sneering but the disdain was evident in her voice. “You are the son of a poor silk merchant. No matter what you do, that’s all you’ll ever be.”

  “My being here shows you that I can be more.”

  She shook her head. “No, you cannot.” Her gaze flicked away to stare at the lotus pond. Her jaw set. “Just as I cannot be the only woman to be the recipient of all his needs, nor his true wife.”

  They stood in silence in the hehua ting, the fragrance of the blossoms mingling with the tension between them.

  His grip on his hand slackened and fell at his side as if weights were attached to them. “What is it you want me to do?” he asked resignedly.

  A sharp looked entered her eye. like the gleam of a tigress. “Stop seeing her at dawn.”

  His head jerked up. “How did—”

  “I am no fool,” she cut him off. “I knew the moment you came; you and she would meet again.”

  “So.” He licked his teeth. “You did not see us.”

  “No. And I’m sure if others had, it would have been well-known by now.”

  The knot which had formed in his chest eased. “I see.”

  How could she ask this of him? He never came within less than several feet from Yuping. Careful to never get so close as to be tempted to take a liberty. Every morning, he stood by as Yuping wrote her poetry.

  They rarely spoke, content simply to be in the other’s presence. While she watched the dawn and wrote the words to capture it, he observed the dawn upon her.

  Thinking back to that first day, he thought about the words she’d written:

  “The tenuous flames of dawn scorch the sky and leave within its wake ashes of blue.”

  Those same flames flowed over her, cascading their umber light upon her. As a child, she was beautiful. Womanhood had made her exquisite.

  The golden light flushed the fine-grain features of her face, flooding over the slender cheeks that had lost their youthful roundness. The long column of her neck peeked over the collar of her jacket. Flaming light rushed over the crown of obsidian black hair, highlighting its silky texture adorned with pearl encrusted combs.

  She made his heart thud just drinking in her loveliness.

  And always, whenever she glanced back at him, he saw the inner fire.

  “Your request will not matter soon enough. She will be wed to me.”

  “No,” Meiling denied. “She will be the concubine of Peng Jinwei.”

  The slip of the tongue sat between them like a bulbous frog. Wen Hui sighed. “I have not touched her or been dishonorable to her in any way.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Suppose word got out that the proxy husband had been seen in the company of another man’s property? How would it look on the house of Li Fuhai? It would be a disgrace. Your recklessness has to stop. I’ve warned you before
.”

  “Well I remember what happened after that day,” he bit the words out, his eyes narrowed at her. The dark memory surged forward but with a vicious will, he suppressed it. It was the only time in his young life that he wanted strike a woman.

  It was her turn to evade his gaze. “I did what any mother must do to protect the honor of this family.”

  “At her expense,” he said tightly.

  Meiling didn’t respond to that. Instead, she said, “So, you see, it is useless to continue in this fantasy you erected.”

  Wen Hui wanted to refute her word but their truth tore down the castle of dreams he’d built.

  No more pretending.

  No more secret, though innocent meetings.

  “I will do as you bid me…concubine of Li Fuhai.”

  Despite her gasp of hurt, he gave a polite bow and walked away, leaving the beauty of the lotus pond behind him.

  “I thought you wouldn’t come,” Yuping said as she felt Wen Hui’s presence behind her. Six days had passed since the last time they shared the dawn together.

  “You knew I would,” he answered, his voice low and deep. “Especially today.”

  The day before her wedding to Peng Jinwei.

  The last day to pretend.

  Her mother’s warnings had echoed in her mind since last week when she confronted her in the privacy of her apartments. “I will not have this family’s honor destroyed by your foolishness,” her mother declared. “You will not see him again, until the day of your wedding. Do you understand me?”

  She did understand. She and Wen Hui had to stop this game.

  They never acknowledged it openly. To do so would be to unlock the floodgates of desires that could never be realized.

  His presence at dawn only enhance that, though he had grown into a man, he was still very much the same boy she’d known as a young girl.

  When her father had brought the ten-year-old boy home, she’d been intrigued the moment his foot set inside the inner hall. How scruffy and unkempt he’d looked! So different from her dage and other brothers. His hair, oily and mussed.