A Bride for Wen Hui Read online

  Wen Hui had gazed at her sun-flushed face with its indignation and said, “If anyone can, you can.”

  Her pleasure at his confidence in her ability had shown itself in the reddening of her cheeks and the demure downward shift of her eyes.

  A call from one of the sailors aboard the ship drew him once more out of his thoughts. Enough time must have passed now. She should be asleep. Wen Hui decided to return to the lower deck and to their cabin.

  Opening the door, he took one step and then stopped. He hissed and a line a sweat dotted his forehead.

  Instead of being asleep, Yuping sat wide awake on a chair, draped in a diaphanous robe he’d never seen before. Its blossom pink sheerness showed she wore nothing underneath. Her loosened, waist-long hair flowed down her back while her eyes bore a slumberous invitation.

  In a soft, sultry voice, she whispered, “Come to bed, my husband.”

  Yuping’s pulses raced as she sat in the hard, wooden chair waiting for her husband’s response. Would he accept what she offered?

  Her insides quivered, her stomach churning into knots.

  Wen Hui closed the door and leaned against it. Ever since their marriage, his face had become an inscrutable mask. Far from the gentle, giving man she knew him to be, he’d retreated behind a hard shell. Nothing she did could penetrate it.

  Why had he changed?

  Though the circumstances that led to their marriage were not ideal, at least they were together.

  Why wasn’t he pleased?

  Yuping shifted uneasily in the chair. Wen Hui’s eyes never left her scantily clad form but she could not tell if he desired her.

  Had she taken his love for granted then?

  They had never spoken about their feelings, but now, the barriers that once held them apart were gone.

  Barriers.

  She bit at her bottom lip as she thought of the private conversation she had with her father. He had opened up to her in a way she never expected. When he summoned her to his study, she’d fallen to her knees, face to the ground, weeping and begging for his forgiveness.

  Instead of recriminations, he’d come and knelt down beside her. He did a rare thing, bringing her into the comfort of his embrace and holding her gently against his chest as he had when she was a young girl. He smoothed away the tears from her cheeks and then cupped her face in his hands.

  “Daughter, there is nothing to forgive,” he’d told her softly. “Would you believe that I am pleased by what has happened?”

  She’d hiccupped, “Pleased?”

  Her father had nodded. “I chose Peng Jinwei to be your husband because I wanted to provide for you a good home and family. But I had my reservations because I was not truly ready to let you go. But, your mother wanted you gone.”

  Yuping knew which mother he referred to.

  “When I saw that Chen Wen Hui had been chosen to be your proxy husband, I wondered if perhaps the ancestors had orchestrated this meeting?”

  “Fuqin, I—”

  “Daughter,” he’d shushed her with a gentle finger upon her mouth. “You know that I love your mother. My first marriage was arranged by our families. I had to serve my obligation to her and my family.” His eyes had lifted away from her and stared off into something that only he could see. “Had I been able to, I would have married Meiling and made her my one and only wife. I wouldn’t have to divide my attentions between her and Jingli.”

  He’d sighed. “As far as Shiluo, I took pity on her. Her father had lost a game of chance to a disreputable man and had offered to give his daughter to him. I knew the man would probably have harmed her or worse. It was well-known what kind of man he was. I paid her father’s debt and took his daughter.”

  A bleak look entered his eyes. “I’ve always wanted Meiling, but my obligations forced me to do what was required. I thought loving your mother was enough but it isn’t.”

  “Er niang says love is meaningless.”

  A painful grimace lingered on his features. “Confucius once asked his disciples, ‘Can there be a love which does not make demands on its object?’ Such a love does not exist, daughter. For love, by its very nature, is demanding. Inconvenient? Yes. But it is never meaningless.”

  “You remind me of a lotus blossom in moonlight.” Wen Hui’s voice broke in on her thoughts.

  “Thank you, my husband,” she whispered, glad for the darkness that hid the blush along her cheeks.

  “I don’t think any man could resist you at this moment.” He took a step forward. “It would be agony to not touch your soft, pearl-white skin. A sin to not feel the silk of your hair. A travesty to not inhale your sweet scent that would drive a sane man mad.”

  Her heart almost burst out of her chest. A fine trembling overtook her limbs.

  Wen Hui kept coming toward her until he stood directly in front of her. “For a husband who has waited for so long to make you his own,” he said with a light rasp, “it would be torture.”

  His voice carried a hypnotic quality to it. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the desire blatant in his gaze. “I have dreamed of this moment, chi tzh.” A wry grin lifted his lips. “Perhaps not on a ship in the middle of the ocean but you, like this, before me? I have wanted this for more years than I can count.”

  A violent shudder wracked his body and his eyes drifted close. Yuping could scarcely breathe, cognizant of the weighty tension between them. His words conjured up an intense desire within her. She waited with bated breath for Wen Hui to claim her.

  “I cannot take what you offer me.”

  The pulsating sensations ceased in an abrupt manner and a chill swept over her body.

  “Shao ye?”

  “I cannot take you,” he repeated, a pained expression on his face.

  Her eyebrows drew in. “Why not?”

  Rubbing the back of his neck he replied, “You do not belong to me.”

  Yuping blinked rapidly. “I do not understand. I am your wife.”

  He went on his knees before her. “I shamed you!” Gripping her hands in his own, he squeezed. “I lost myself in you and caused dishonor on you and your family.”

  “But—”

  “There is no excuse for my actions!” Dropping her hands as abruptly as he had taken them, he leapt back to his feet and began to pace the confines of the room. “I remember when your mother punished you before for my actions.”

  Yuping drew in sharp intake of breath. The memory she had shut away came back to the forefront. She’d not forgotten it but she chose not to dwell on that horrible time. When her mother had changed from the strict but loving woman to a stranger she didn’t know.

  “No. That is a different thing.”

  “I wanted things to be different this time,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. Perhaps, caught up in his own anguish, he did not even hear her. “I swore after that day I would make sure that I was able to become a rich man somehow and ask your father if I could have you for my wife. It was the reason why I’d gone to America. Lured by stories of gold.”

  A harsh, humorless laugh escaped his mouth. “The gold that may have been there is now gone. All that way, I traveled to a strange country where I had no idea how to speak the language and the people who treated me worse than an animal.”

  He stopped his pacing and looked at her. “There is a lot of hatred toward our people in America. I’ve been mocked, struck and ridiculed but I endured because of the pearl I longed to have.”

  “Pearl?”

  “You.”

  Her head dipped, feeling a warm tide settled within her belly.

  “I wanted to prove to your mother that I was capable of taking care of you. I’d finally had enough money to convince my father to send a large shipment of silk to me that I could sell to the Western powers. He refused to trade with them so I did. I knew that I could make a sizeable amount if it was shipped. But I had no connections until I met Peng Jinwei.”

  “And he has more connections?”

  Wen Hui nodded. “Our
association was timely. After years of futility, everything seemed to be coming together. I would make the wealth needed and then…”

  Yuping could guess the rest.

  A long silence rested between them. How long it lasted, she didn’t know. Her thoughts were chaotic with no sense of order. After a while, Wen Hui spoke again.

  “The reason why Peng Jinwei trusted me with you is because I have never looked at, or…touched another woman.”

  Her head jerked up. From the even, look he gave her, she grasped his meaning.

  “Do you mean to say—"

  “Everything I am belongs to you. Everything I want to be, I want it with you. And if I can’t have you, I want no other. No other woman will ever be you. Why should chastity be for women only?”

  She swallowed and felt tears bead in her eyes. His words moved her. “Wen-Wen, you honor me.”

  “Do you understand why, though we may be husband and wife, I will not touch you? I shamed you and it would be wrong.”

  “It isn’t wrong if I give myself to you,” she said boldly. “Just as you have honored me with the preservation of your chastity, then I have the honor of giving mine to you. Surely it’s what we both want?”

  He seemed to stop breathing.

  “Wen-Wen, you are my husband. Not Peng Jinwei.” She stood and started to walk toward him. The robe slipped off her neck, exposing her shoulder. His eyes riveted to the sight. “You don’t have to take it as I offer to you. Like you, I didn’t want any other husband but you. But I knew the decision would not be mine. Or so I thought. Yet, you have made it possible for me to choose. And I choose you.”

  She stood under him, and his eyes stared down at her. “Shao ye, we belong to each other as we’ve always known. The red threat of fate—or maybe even this new God you’ve spoken of to me—has drawn us together. Whatever it is, you and I are here together now.”

  Nervous, but determined, she lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck. He smelled of the sea and a masculine scent all of his own. Carried away by some instinct, she placed a kiss on his chin. His hands grabbed her waist and clutched her tightly to him but he didn’t move.

  “You and I are together as we’d always hope,” she murmured. “Won’t you take your pleasure, my husband?” Her lips trailed light kisses across his jawline. A part of her felt completely wanton. After all, she was supposed to be a chaste, virtuous woman.

  But the fire burned within her.

  “I am yours, Wen Hui.” She placed a soft kiss on the pounding pulse at the base his throat and pressed her body even closer to his. “Take me,” she pleaded. “Please, take me.”

  A deep rumble erupted from his throat. The next she knew, he thrust her away. She almost lost her balance and by the time she regained it, he’d yanked open the door and went out, slamming it shut behind him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Yuping stared down into the murky waters of the bucket. Her distorted image reflected on the wavering surface showed the deep hollows of her eyes and the pinched muscles around her face.

  Two days had passed since she offered herself to her husband. Two days of an awkward, stifling tension that strained their relationship. Wen Hui avoided her gaze, his eyes careful to not rest upon her. His entire body projected a sense a blatant desire for her to stay away.

  Yuping longed for them to regain their earlier camaraderie. Then, even though their mutual love remained unsaid at least they could talk to each other and share the dawn.

  She sighed and pulled off her lotus shoe. Bright red with swirls of gold and a wooden block heel, the entire shoe fit inside the palm of her hand.

  Setting the tiny shoes aside, she started to unwrap the bandages wound tightly around her feet. Over the past ten years of binding her feet, they had formed into the most desirable of lotus feet—the golden lotus. Three inches long with a perfect triangular shape with a prominent big toe and the rest flattened against the sole. The high arch created the illusion that it melded with her leg.

  “I wish I had feet like Yuping’s,” she’d once heard her third mother’s daughter pout. “They’re so beautiful and tiny.”

  When Yuping looked at them, she only saw evidence that her life was not her own.

  Once the bandages were cleared away, she soaked her feet in the bucket. When she lived at home, she performed her cleansing ritual every day, checking for injury, infection, trimming down the nails. Being on the steamship had allowed her to only clean them every two to three days.

  A few of the other girls she’d known had simply pulled off the nails. Others had allowed infection to set so that the undesirable toes could fall off in order to make their foot even tinier to obtain the golden lotus.

  Yuping paused in her ministrations, her mind reaching back to the day her mother bound her feet. The day Meiling discovered Wen Hui and she at Dawn’s Tears, alone and unchaperoned in the early hours of the morning.

  Tears smarted her eyes. As a young child, she had allowed her confidence to grow without caution. It wasn’t the first time she and Wen Hui had watched the dawn together but it was the first time they’d gotten caught.

  It would also be their last for a long time.

  “How dare your risk your father’s honor and your own.” Meiling’s cheeks had turned apple red, her lips pulled back from her teeth, her eyes cold as black marble.

  “Er niang, we’re just watching the dawn,” she’d tried to tell her. “I want to capture the dawn like a poet.”

  How anguished her mother’s gaze as it shifted between her and Wen Hui, and then lingered on Wen Hui, growing darker and harder.

  In hindsight, Yuping could see the vulnerability and fear. That in some way, her mother feared her daughter would travel in the same footsteps as she. Loving a man who could never give her his whole heart while she had no choice but to be the property that only he could possess.

  “Do you think a man will marry you if they believe you are a wanton” her mother accused. “Did not Confucius, ‘A good woman is an illiterate one’? How could you, a mere girl, think yourself equal to your fathers and brothers.?”

  In the present, Yuping hissed as she recalled her words. “I don’t want to be a good woman. I want to capture the dawn.”

  How her mother must have felt at her stubbornness, a wayward will that had never been truly supplanted. Seeing her daughter spouting dangerous ideas. Her mother stood there quoting ancient scholars, as if to try to embed the knowledge in her mind.

  “A wise woman also said,” her mother added. “‘To be a woman, work hard to establish one’s purity and chastity. Purity to keep yourself undefiled. Chastity to preserve your honor.”

  “We’ve done nothing wrong,” Yuping insisted, her hands on her hip, her then flat feet spread apart in a stance of great arrogance. As if she were a captain of a ship.

  “If Da niang saw you, she’d make things very difficult. She is the one who will ultimately choose to find a husband for you.”

  “I’ll marry her.”

  Wen Hui’s words, uttered in a low voice had caused the discourse between mother and daughter to cease. Meiling’s face had slackened with disbelief. “You? Some poor silk merchant’s son who eats the scraps from my husband’s table?”

  Wen Hui’s lip had compressed into a thin, flat line.

  “Chi tzh?”

  A strong, violent shudder went through her, and she let out a soft cry of alarm.

  “Forgive me,” Wen Hui said as he stood in the doorway of their cabin. “I did not mean to frighten you.”

  Yuping nodded slowly, her heart gaining back its original rhythm. Her gaze took in her husband’s deep-set eyes, and the gaunt hollows along his cheekbones. Those deep-set eyes drifted to her feet. Most men had no wish to see the lotus feet in all of its naked glory, preferring to only see it adorned in the ornate decorative shoes.

  But Wen Hui had never been like most men. Unashamedly he stared at her feet for a long moment and then asked, “Do you want me to leave?”

&nbs
p; Her eyes followed the direction of his gaze. The lotus foot, considered to be a symbol of beauty, status, and marriageability.

  “Do you want to go?” she countered.

  He came further into the room and shut the door. “No, I want to be here.”

  “That seems strange,” she retorted. “Seeing that you have done all you can to spend as little time with me as possible.”

  An uncomfortable, strained look appeared on his face. “I deserve your resentment, chi tzh. It has been a difficult two days.” The creases on his high, shaved forehead reappeared.

  With a sense of self-preservation, she pulled her gaze away. If she didn’t, she’d reached out and see if she could smooth those wrinkles away with her fingers.

  Her voice hardened. “Have the days been too long as well?”

  “Very much so,” he answered without pause.

  She sighed in relief, knowing that in his own way, he’d acknowledged the changed tone to their relationship.

  His footsteps sounded loud in the small cabin as he walked toward her. When he stopped in front of her, he knelt down and over her golden lotus feet.

  “Do you find them beautiful, shao ye?”

  Wen Hui’s eyes lifted to hers. They met her own with a heavy-laden sorrow. “I was there the day this happened,” he uttered out softly.

  Yuping blinked. “You were there? How?”

  He nodded, his eyes lingering on the high arch of her foot. “I’d hidden away after that talk at the ting. Your mother had walked you to her apartments and I’d hidden outside the door. I’d hope to be able to gain a private moment with you. But then…” his voice trailed away and the light in his eyes dimmed.

  “But then what, shao ye?” she prompted in a low, curious voice.

  “Through a tiny crack, I could and hear everything. I heard you try to muffle your cries as your mother broke all of your toes except for that one.”

  He pointed to her big toe as if accusing it of some crime. “I watched as she took your other four toes and folded them under you. I was there when she wrapped the broken toes over and over in those silk bandages. I cried when she ordered you to stand and walk.”