Fool's Gold (26 page)

There was an uncomfortable silence.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Owens,’ said Kerhouan heavily.

‘It’s his arm, isn’t it?’ Throughout the evening he had used the stiff arm less and less but drunk more and more.

When she saw him again the following evening, he was full of remorse.

‘An unfortunate baptism for our new dining room, ma’am,’ he apologised. ‘Especially after you had gone to so much trouble. And I understand that my — language — left much to be desired in the company of a lady.’

She grinned wryly. ‘This lady isn’t easily offended,’ she replied. ‘Comes of working in!’

‘But you should do something about that arm,’ suggested Kai gravely.

‘Cut it off, you mean,’ snapped the rancher with a scowl.

‘Nothing as drastic as that!’ smiled Kai, refusing to be provoked. ‘Almost certainly the nerves are pinched between the two broken ends. Let me break it and reset it for you.’

Cornish shook his head. ‘We’ll need every pair of hands for the harvest — even if they’re only half a pair.’

Kai was not discouraged. ‘Then I will do it in winter,’ he stated equably.

The onset of harvest imposed its own pattern on the life of the ranch. Kerhouan was quite capable of running it, for in California there was not the urgency to get the crops in before the weather broke, but Cornish insisted on working alongside the men, even though it put a strain on his bad arm.

‘It’s a bad boss who can’t do what he asks his men to do,’ was all he would say.

When he wasn’t working in the harvest fields, he was out in the far valleys where Juan and Xavier were settling in the new Shorthorns, or on the distant boundaries where Lachie and Evans, the latter still nursing a badly bruised jaw, were building line stations for the hands.

Chen Kai was busy from sun-up till sun-down at the river meadows bordering the Sacramento, organising the digging of drainage and irrigation ditches in preparation for the first rice plantings. In the early evening, when the hands were seeing to the horses and preparing the reapers for the next morning, he and Kerhouan would ride down to see how much progress had been made in repairing the village buildings for the new arrivals.

With Angelina cooking for the house and Li for the hands, Alicia found herself with nothing to do. After weeks spent in the saddle, mapping and surveying all day, rising early to suit her employer and going late to bed so that she could help Kai with the baking, she found it a strange and unwelcome sensation.

‘They’re cleaning out the old buildings,’ Kai told her, when she confided in him. ‘Go and organise that. Tell Mrs Chang to take the laundry to the
agua caliente
with Juan. The rooms upstairs here — they are in a dreadful state.’ He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. ‘It’s for you to organise all this,’ he chided her gently. ‘You are the housekeeper.’

‘But I don’t want to overstep the mark.’

‘You won’t. Assert yourself. Earn your keep. His bark is worse than his bite anyway.’

And she knew that he was right.

Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin she set off that afternoon for the cluster of houses, followed by Tamsin and Josefa, Jorge, Xavier and Luis, all clutching buckets and mops and brushes.

Li pointed them to the third cottage, an adobe building with mended doors and shutters, its walls freshly whitewashed. Leaving the children to explore the overgrown gardens, she mounted the steep stairs and found the two women busily scrubbing the bare boards to the colour of pale honey.

‘No, don’t get up,’ she insisted. ‘I didn’t come to disturb you, only to help.’ She turned to the older woman who had risen to stand respectfully before her. ‘Shall I sweep out downstairs? I’ll set the children to clear the weeds and brambles in the garden.’

Mrs Chang turned to Pearl to ask a shrill question in Chinese.

‘Mrs Chang says it is not fitting that one of the — that you should clean her house,’ Pearl explained.

‘Nonsense! Tell Mrs Chang that this “foreign devil” works for her keep, Pearl!’ replied Alicia, who had recognised the phrase. ‘You speak such very good English, Pearl. And what a pretty name — it suits you so well.’

For the first time since she had arrived, Pearl allowed the ghost of a smile to pass over her serious face. ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ she murmured humbly. ‘The Sisters named me — and taught me my English.’

‘But what of the name your parents gave you?’

‘It is not the custom to give a daughter a name when the parents do not intend to keep her,’ she replied calmly.

‘But they did — keep you?’

‘Oh no, not then. They had two strong sons, what need had they of me? But my honoured father permitted my respected mother to offer me to the nuns and they had room in the season of my birth.’

‘And if they had not?’

‘Then they would have put me with the other unwanted babies, down by the river.’

‘To
die
?’

‘It is the custom.’

‘It’s a disgrace!’ The bile rose in Alicia’s throat. The girl’s parents had abandoned her as a baby and yet she still felt a duty to her father, a duty that would have taken her to the Golden Dragon House. She turned angrily on her heel and stalked downstairs to start brushing down the walls.

Halfway through the day Pearl excused herself to attend to her mother. Alicia crossed to the window to watch her and her father carry Mrs Ho out in her wickerwork chair to sit in the warm sunshine. Pearl scurried about, fetching this and that for her father who rewarded her with a scowl, angry words and a blow aimed at her head which she, obviously from practice, managed to dodge.

A few minutes after Pearl’s return, when they had almost finished scrubbing out the kitchen, the children called her in great excitement.

‘Señora!’ cried Xavier. ‘A well! We’ve found a well!’ He put Tamsin back from the edge as Alicia fought her way past the brambles to his side.

It was a splendid well, obviously the water source for the cottages, but blocked with choking weeds and broken slabs of stone which had once formed the well cover. It would be a hard job to clear it out, for only Xavier was really big enough to work around the well without danger of tumbling into it.

‘Xavier, I’m going to get someone to help you,’ she decided. ‘Meantime, keep the others away, there’s a good lad. Josefa?’ She saw her picking wild flowers. ‘Take Tamsin over by that tree. Clear a little space and let her sleep a little — she’s tiring herself out in this heat. Jorge and Luis, you can carry the rubble away when it’s got clear and take it to the end there. But you go no nearer than that.
Comprende
?’

She found Mr Ho sitting in the warm sunshine. His wife, he assured her, was much better. Before he could launch into an account of his own ills, she said with a deceptive smile: ‘I’m glad she’s well enough to be left alone. I have just the job for you.’

Unable to use his wife as an excuse, Ho shuffled grumblingly across the way and set to, clearing the well. Alicia decided to work at the back too, so she could make sure he was pulling his weight and not leaving it all to Xavier.

By the time evening fell, they had almost finished the second house. As Alicia gathered the brooms together and sent Luis to round up the children, Pearl came into the room and stood before her, hands meekly folded. Although she had worked as hard as Alicia that day, she still looked neat, not a hair out of place. From the tip of her dainty feet to the top of her glossy head, she looked exquisite and Alicia felt clumsy and grubby beside her.

‘Yes, Pearl?’ she queried.

‘Mrs Owens,’ she blurted out. ‘Please — would you tell me who it was paid my father’s debt? He will not tell me and it would be impertinent of this unworthy female to speak to the Colonel or to Chen Kai-Tsu unless they spoke first to me. I know one of them paid Mr Kweh — I must know who. I — I must thank him.’

‘It’s not a secret, Pearl, but they don’t expect your thanks. Chen Kai-Tsu repaid the debt and the Colonel insisted on paying half with him.’

In fact there had been quite an argument about it.

‘Hang it all, Chen Kai!’ Cornish had said angrily. ‘D’you think I’d have stood by and let her go to this Kweh if I’d known what was going on?’

‘It makes no matter, Jack,’ insisted Chen Kai stiffly. ‘I undertook to repay you and I will do so.’

‘Hundred dollars to me isn’t a great deal; to you it’s all your savings!’

‘It is just as bad to trick the rich man as to trick the poor!’

‘You aren’t tricking me; I’m offering the money with my eyes wide open. Hell! You think you’re the only one wants to make a humane gesture?’

In the end, each had considered the other’s stubborn pride and agreed to divide the debt between them.

‘Once we’ve finished down here I think we’ll start in real earnest up at the ranch,’ said Alicia, ‘so you’d better move up to Tresco.’ It didn’t really matter to her whether the girl was at the house or down in the village, but she hated to see her go in fear of her father. It made her remember all too vividly the black eyes and the bruises she had received at Robert’s hands. ‘Tomorrow we’ll clear the room next to Angelina’s,’ she went on. ‘Tonight you can sleep in our rooms. Get Li to fetch your bedroll and bundle up later this evening.’

When Li came to find her after the evening meal, she dragged along behind him, her face tragic and her shoulders slumped in misery.

He reprimanded her sharply. ‘The way Ho treats you, I thought you would jump at the chance to get away,’ he chided her.

Her eyes clouded and her mouth turned down at the corners. ‘It’s not that, Li,’ she defended herself miserably. ‘It’s just that — oh, you could not understand.’

‘We have been given a great opportunity,’ he reminded her gravely. ‘No more starving in Chinatown slums! We make a good place for ourselves here! We must show that we are worthy of it!’

She bowed her head meekly. ‘I will do my duty,’ she murmured.

It was late when Alicia found her bed that night, for she had stayed up late helping Angelina clear out the kitchen. Among the goods brought back from the auction was a new patent cast iron kitchener, a closed range sufficient for the needs of the large ranch house. It was to be set into the fireplace the next day so that food could be cooked, even on the hottest summer’s day, without the cook being affected by the heat.

Pearl and Tamsin were already asleep by the time she retired and so tired was she that she fell asleep without any of the tossing and turning which usually plagued her.

She did not stir as Pearl rose from her mattress in the early hours of the morning and slipped noiselessly out of the room.

Chapter Nineteen

Kai was in a deep and dreamless sleep; he did not stir when the door opened and closed again noiselessly. A soft footfall sounded and he half opened one eye. ‘Tamsin?’ he muttered. Then, as his senses sharpened, he shot his hand under the pillow, drew out the razor sharp knife and whirled about.

There was a sudden sharp intake of breath as the moonlight gleamed on the wicked blade and the intruder stepped back nervously.

Too slight for a man, thought Kai, relaxing his guard slightly, but not Alicia.

‘Please, master, put away the knife,’ came a soft voice.

‘Pearl?’ he hazarded, confusion in his voice.

‘Yes, master,’ she whispered.

He laid aside the knife and jumped swiftly from the bed, clad in nothing but light cotton pants.

He grabbed angrily at her wrist and pulled her into the shaft of moonlight that slanted down from the high window. ‘What in the name of all the devils are you doing here?’ he hissed. When she did not answer, he shook her furiously and she stumbled off balance, eyes closed against the cold, revealing light. The silken wrap she was wearing parted to reveal small, delicate breasts.

‘Dear God!’ he breathed, dropping her wrist as if it were burning him.

Before he could properly gather his wits, she stepped out of the silken wrap. Beneath the robe she was completely naked, her skin glowing like a golden pearl in the moonlight and rich ebony hair rippling loose down her back.

The air quivered between them and Chen Kai had difficulty catching his breath.

Then Pearl lowered her eyes, as befitted a modest Chinese woman in a male presence, breaking the spell for Chen Kai, who in his years in Gum Shan had learnt to read emotions and intentions in the eyes of both friends and enemies.

‘What the devil are you playing at?’ he demanded furiously. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Master, where else should I be but here? I belong to you now.’

‘You — belong — to — me?’ He let out the words on a long exhalation of breath.

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘You paid the debt.’

With an effort he tore his eyes away from her body.

‘And you are the repayment?’ he demanded harshly.

She nodded.

‘What am I supposed to do with you?’

‘As you wish. I am your woman.’ She stepped forward until they were almost touching. It was a struggle not to reach out and hold her.

‘But what of Corr-onel?’ chided Chen Kai, his voice deceptively soft. ‘He paid half the debt. Does that not make you half his woman too?’

Her head jerked up sharply and she gave a little gasp. Then she murmured: ‘Yes, master, if it is your wish, then I am his woman too. It is your will, master.’

His hand came up from his side and struck her, open-palmed, across the cheek.

‘Whore!’ he swore violently. ‘You think I want a whore? You think Corr-onel wants a whore?’

Her head snapped back and her eyes looked into his for the first time. In them he saw pain — pain and confusion.

His rage died as quickly as it had come. ‘I should not have done that,’ he said gruffly.

She raised startled eyes to him, looking with shock through her long, silky lashes. It was unheard of for a Chinese man to apologise to a woman.

‘Master, I am at fault,’ she assured him. ‘This unworthy person has offended you.’

‘For God’s sake!’ His voice was raw with emotion. He had been too long away from China and the Chinese people; he had all but forgotten the vast differences between the two cultures. ‘Who put you up to this?’ he demanded. ‘Was it Li? Prostituting his own bride?’

‘Please, master,’ she stammered. ‘I am not Li’s bride.’

‘Because your father thinks he can sell you to a higher bidder?’ he queried bitterly. ‘It was your father, of course.’

‘I need no bidding, master,’ she whispered. ‘It is my duty.’

‘Not your duty, any more than it was your debt!’ spat Chen Kai furiously. He bent down and snatched up the robe from the floor. ‘Put this on!’ he ordered. ‘It’s Ho’s debt and
he’ll
damn well repay it! I can find plenty of ways for him to work off the debt! Tell him that!’

‘Master,’ she said frankly, ‘if I speak thus to him, he will surely beat me!’ Her voice quivered.

‘You are right.’ He held her robe for her to slip into and reached out a tentative hand to cup the cheek he had struck. The marks of his fingers still lingered. ‘Enough violence for one day.’

‘Thank you, master.’

‘Don’t call me that!’ he insisted angrily, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her. ‘Pearl, here in California there are no masters, no slaves! How will the Americans ever see us as equals when our women are prostitutes, with no pride and no value? You aren’t my slave, nor your father’s! You are yourself, Pearl, and unless you insist on that, you will be treated as a nothing, a nobody! Never forget that! When you marry Li, for God’s sake bring your children up to be
free
men and women!’

He half turned away from her, angry, but also afraid lest his resolution waver.

He did not see the sudden rush of tears that filled her eyes. ‘You do not want me,’ she stated flatly. ‘You do not find me beautiful or desirable as Mr Kweh did. You want only women who are tall and fair-skinned and can ride horses like men.’

With a hoarse cry of frustration he whirled and caught her by the wrist, drawing her roughly to him. For a brief moment she looked up at him wide-eyed, then she bowed her head submissively.

‘Perhaps you are right, Pearl. Perhaps I have been too long in Gum Shan and forgotten my own people.’

He spoke with studied indifference, but he desperately wished that she would go, for he doubted he could control himself much longer.

In a voice so low he had to stoop to make out the words, she whispered: ‘I am shamed.’

‘There is no shame!’ he shouted furiously, his fingers digging brutally into the soft flesh of her upper arms. ‘You are still thinking like a coolie! You think if I accepted you as payment for a debt that was nothing to do with you, if I took you by force because I was your master and you were my slave, then there would be no shame?’ She winced at the harshness of his words. ‘Yes,’ he ground out cruelly. ‘Put like that it sounds a sight
more
shameful, doesn’t it, even to a dutiful Chinese daughter!’

‘It is the custom …’ she repeated stubbornly, like a child reciting its lesson.

‘Very well,’ he replied coldly. ‘If you cannot break free of the shackles and take responsibility for your own life, then
be
a slave! As for … all this …’ He made a gesture of distaste that took in the girl, her dishevelled robe, her very presence in his room. ‘
I
don’t want you — and neither does the Corr-onel. A fine way to thank Li! You seem to have forgotten that if he had not brought us to your father, you would be at Kweh’s now!’ He pushed her angrily away from him. ‘Get out!’ he said through gritted teeth.

The door closed quietly behind her and he threw himself down on the bed with a curse. His jaw clenched and his brow creased. After a moment he passed his hand tiredly across his eyes and sighed heavily, then he reached behind him and drew out a bottle of whiskey.

*

Alicia and Xavier took the midday meal down in the buggy to the gang digging the drainage ditches. The men broke up into small groups around the buggy and Kai and Alicia squatted side by side in the welcome shade of a huge live oak.

‘Where’s Tamsin?’ he asked her as he sank his teeth into one of Li’s freshly baked loaves.

‘With Pearl,’ she replied through a mouthful of cold beef. ‘Kai, just what’s going on?’

He forced a nonchalant smile. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘It’s not like you to drink alone,’ she said deliberately.

Chen Kai looked at her sharply.

‘I thought you were ill,’ she went on frankly, ‘until I saw the empty bottle.’ And smelt that heavy feminine Oriental perfume, she thought, but she lacked the courage to say that to his face.

‘Jack Cornish …?’

‘Knows nothing.’

‘And you know too much — and see too much sometimes.’ He smiled grimly; there was little humour in him today.

‘Why, Chen Kai?’

She’d been trying to work it out all morning. Pearl had been like a different girl today — no chatter, no smiles, just silence and sniffs when she thought no one was looking. And once, when Mrs Chang had said something to her, she had started to cry! Li had been like a bear with a sore head when she went to fetch the bread and Chen Kai, directing the excavations, had been looking at Ho as though he’d like to strangle him and working him as hard as though he were a strong and healthy young man!

‘Why? Oh, the usual reasons. Call it a clash of cultures. And leave it at that. Please?’

She looked at him for a long, still moment and then nodded abruptly. ‘If that’s how you want it …’ She picked up the earthenware jars and began to pack them away. ‘But next time, wake me. It’s not good for the soul to drink alone,’ she said sombrely.

He reached out a hand to her, knowing she was remembering those nightmarish days after her release when, bruised both in mind and body, she would steal and cheat to lay her hands on drink in a vain search for oblivion. He had sat with her then and seen her through the worst.

He handed her up into the buggy and as she reached down to take the reins from him, she caught a glimpse of Pearl’s father, shuffling grey-faced towards the levée.

‘Go easy on old Ho,’ she suggested mildly. ‘I know he’s not a very admirable character, but you won’t endear yourself to his daughter by driving him until he drops!’

‘You are mistaken,’ muttered Chen Kai woodenly.

‘About her father?’

‘About Pearl. She is spoken for. To Li. At least, in a manner of speaking.’

‘In whose manner of speaking?’ snapped Alicia angrily. ‘Ho’s? Li’s? Yours? Has anyone asked
her
?’

Before Chen Kai could answer, she clicked her tongue at the horse and was on her way back up the bluff to the ranch house.

*

Cornish was modifying the piping which fed water into the boiler on the side of the new kitchen range when there was the sound of hooves and a cheerful shout from the yard.

Alicia hurried down to the kitchen to see Augustus Brenchley pause dramatically on the threshold, Clive Revel close on his heels.

Brenchley looked from the Colonel to Alicia until he was sure he had all their attention.

‘The judgement will be handed down today — officially,’ he said gravely. Then his eyes twinkled. ‘Unofficially, they told me late last night!’

The atmosphere was so tense that it was almost snapping. Even Angelina and Tamsin, only vaguely aware of the reasons, held their breath.

Alicia had an almost overwhelming urge to cross to Jack Cornish’s side, but she forced herself to stay where she was and willed Brenchley to say the right words, to produce the magic formula.

‘You won!’ crowed the lawyer triumphantly. ‘Tresco is yours. That’s final. The Commission’s last decision before it closed its doors, so there’s no argument and no appeal!’

The stunned silence lasted a bare moment longer and then Brenchley and Revel were pumping Cornish’s hand; Angelina kissed Alicia and then the startled Revel, then Brenchley and Cornish in turn. Clive Revel, his face wreathed in a rare smile, planted a cool kiss on Alicia’s brow, then Brenchley caught her by the hands and whirled her around, grinning like a schoolboy, and kissed her on the cheek before spinning her around and into Cornish’s arms. It should have been the simplest thing in the world for him to have kissed her in similar friendly fashion on the cheek, but he held her a moment too long, his hands gripping the soft flesh of her upper arms. For what seemed an eternity, he held her gaze, staring gravely into her brown eyes as if he would read her mind.

At last, she moved to break the spell, reaching up to plant a chaste kiss on his cheek, anything to get out of that disturbing grasp. He made a move at the same moment, bending to kiss her cheek. As they both moved together, their faces brushed and their lips briefly touched. They both recoiled as if they had touched fire.

‘The Commissioners commended the map and the photographs most highly,’ Brenchley went on. They were the deciding factor — all Lamarr’s perjured witnesses and bribed lawyers could not argue with the facts! He was livid! You should be very grateful to Alicia, Colonel,’ he went on admiringly. ‘I am sure she has saved Tresco for you.’

‘Mrs Owens has my gratitude —’

‘I did my job,’ intervened Alicia swiftly. ‘For which I was well paid.’

‘The labourer is worthy of his hire?’ asked Cornish.

‘What else?’

‘I must find Kerhouan and Chen Kai and tell them the good news,’ grinned Cornish. ‘Tell Chen Kai how right he was to trick me into taking on a female at Tresco! Clive, you’ll ride with me? And you, Brenchley?’

‘Willingly.’ Brenchley answered for both of them.

*