“Good evening, Zhi Hao,” she whispered, her sense of danger climbing. “You seem different tonight.”
“Me? No. Have you come for another lesson?”
She nodded slowly, concerned by the glittering anger she felt radiating from him. It was not right, and she instinctively shrank back from him.
“I do not think this is a good night to converse,” she said. But as she turned to leave, his hand shot out and gripped her shoulder. Not hard enough to bruise, but strong enough to concern her.
“Tell me about yourself, Song Ling Xin,” he said, a seductive note in his voice that worried her, even as it thrilled her. “Tell meabout your family. What does your father do for the emperor? What are your favorite fairy tales?”
What an odd set of questions. “Why?”
He smiled, the white of his teeth flashing bright in the moonlight. “So I know that you are real, Song Ling Xin. Tell me something that a spirit would not know.”
She gaped at him. “You think me a spirit?”
“I think that the Song daughter would not be someone who climbs walls.”
She almost laughed at that. “Then you don’t know her very well, do you? I have been the bane of my nurse’s existence since the day I was born. Hard on the breast as I sucked with all my might. Then running, always running, when I was little. My mother used to rub her temples as I rushed up and down the stairs out of boredom. I even did it in summer. No matter how hot it was, I could not sit still or I would scream. My mother used to wish that they had bound my feet so that I would cease moving.”
He glanced down at her legs, hidden beneath her light robe. “Why aren’t your feet bound?”
Did he know nothing? “Because it has been banned and no daughter of an earl would be so treated.” She arched a brow. “How do you not know that?”
“I do know it. And yet, where I grew up, many girls are still crippled.”
She grimaced. She had seen older women hobbling on their heels, growing fat because they tried to eat away their pain. She was fortunate to have been born of a Manchu bannerman. The Manchu had never bound their daughters’ feet. That had been a custom of the conquered Han. And yet, all became China and some customs remained.
“My feet are strong,” she said. “But my spirit…” She sighed. “My spirit has always been a little wild. Sometimes I think theybound women’s feet because only then would they be content to live inside walls.” She glanced out toward the street. How many times had she wanted to leap over the stone and run free? Nearly every day of her life. But she knew the cost. After all, Li Fei had been banished for wandering into the market and kissing a man.
Meanwhile, Zhi Hao was watching her. Did he see the shifting thoughts on her face? She couldn’t tell, but in a moment, his expression softened and he gently stroked the back of her hand.
“The Forbidden City will be equally constricting,” he said. “Once there, you will never leave.”
She knew it was true. “At least it will be a bigger cage.”
He exhaled with clear exasperation. “But you have options besides the Forbidden City. You would have more freedom if you married. If your husband was generous.”
“And whom would I marry?” she countered in a whisper. “The butcher’s son? The apothecary’s nephew? You?”
His shoulders squared at the offense. “Would that be a bad life?”
Maybe not. But as the daughter of an earl in the year of the Festival of Fertility, her path was set. “My father has declared that I will be empress.”
“He has high aim.”
Of course he did. No man became counsel to the emperor without it. “He says it must be. He said I must make it so. He has said that since the moment I was born a girl.”
“But how?” he pressed.
That was the very question she had been asking all day. All week. Perhaps all her life.
“I am here so you may teach me,” she stressed. Then she reached for the ties of his pants.
He caught her well before she could touch him. “You have seen my dragon. You have seen how it releases. But that is like seeing the end of a story without learning about the beginning.”
She lifted her gaze to his. “How do I begin?”
“You must show the emperor, from the first moment he sees you, that you are excited to be with him.”