But her cousin dismissed her with a wave. “You are too good to have secrets. Watching a man sweat in the moonlight is not so terrible a thing.” She slanted her cousin a look. “Unless you were doing something else?”
“Something else!” Ling Xin exclaimed. “There is nothing else to do when we are trapped inside all day singing or reading poetry. I am sick to death of this life.”
“Which is why I asked the question.” Her cousin rolled closer, until they were nearly nose to nose. She’d always had the patience of a stalking cat. Her voice dropped to a serious tone. “What were you doing out there?”
“I was thinking,” Ling Xin lied. The last thing she’d been doing was thinking. And yet, the word came out nonetheless. “Day after day, we are taught the Confucian virtues. Every girl set before the emperor will be virtuous and beautiful.”
“Not every girl is beautiful.”
“But every girl set before the emperor will be.”
Li Fei nodded. They both knew it was true.
“So I must find a way to be different. Some way that will pique his interest.”
“That is why we are taught how to converse.”
Ling Xin nearly gagged. “Ugh. More poetry and the beauty of flowers. Even mother is bored by those topics.”
Li Fei flopped onto her back. “What are you thinking?”
Ling Xin sat back on the bed so that she was leaning back against the wall. “What if we need to know how to be courtesans?”
Her cousin opened her mouth to argue. She was the picture of proper outrage at the very idea. But she didn’t speak. It was as if the words froze in her throat. And that was when Ling Xin knew that her cousin had indeed done something unexpected.
“Oh, Li Fei, you must tell me.”
Her cousin shook her head. “It is nothing.” And when Ling Xin began to object, her cousin gripped her hands. “I met a man. That is all. A man who…” She shrugged. “Well, he was very exciting.”
Ling Xin bounced on the bed. “Tell me everything!”
But her cousin’s expression wasn’t eager. It was shadowed and sad. And she wouldn’t look Ling Xin in the eye. “We were caught,” she said. “That is why I am here. Did you not wonder?”
Ling Xin nodded. “I thought you had wandered to the market alone. That’s what Mama said.”
“I did. And then I went a great deal further.” Li Fei looked away and even in shadow, Ling Xin could see that she was crying.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“I was sent here.” The words sounded like a death knell. Then Li Fei shuddered. “After I proved that I was still pure.”
Ling Xin bit her lip. She had heard that such an experience was awful. It would be required of her during the Feast of Fertility. All potential brides had to prove their virginity. But that wasn’t the worst thing in what her cousin had said. Li Fei had said, “We.” As in, they were both caught.
“What happened to him? To the man you were with?”
“Dead.”
The word was spoken so quickly that Ling Xin barely heard it. Her heart throbbed painfully in her throat. But it couldn’t be true. Her uncle was not a violent man.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
Li Fei nodded. “Father showed me the bloody clothes. Then he brought me here. He did not speak one word to me the entire trip. It was as though I was not his daughter anymore. Maybe not even a person.”
“No!” Ling Xin cried. “He loves you still. You are his daughter.”
Li Fei shook her head. “You judge my father by your own. It is different in the northern villages. We are by nature more violent.”
“More cruel, you mean.”