Moonflower Madness (17 page)

She was still pondering on the best way of presenting this argument to him when they entered the town. It was small and unprepossessing; she had no hopes at all of its having an inn that would be even remotely adequate.

Even Ben appeared to be dispirited, as he plodded up one evil-smelling street and then down another. Gianetta was just about to make a vehement protest to Zachary when he reined in his pony, saying with satisfaction,

‘Here we are, and we might be in luck! There's glass in the windows as well as paper. That indicates a relatively high standard of comfort.'

The building he was referring to was painted a dark, dismal green and had two storeys. Gianetta looked at it unenthusiastically.

‘Does that mean that the rooms might be moderately clean?' she asked with more tartness than she had intended.

He flashed her one of his rare, down-slanting smiles. ‘Any true traveller eventually has to come to terms with fleas, Gianetta. No doubt even Miss Bell is doing so in Syria.

The effect of Zachary's sudden smile, and his once more calling her by her Christian name, filled her with such intense elation that she forgot completely to take advantage of his mention of Miss Bell. By the time she remembered the argument she wanted to confront him with, he was striding away from her towards the inn's open door and the cavernous darkness beyond.

She dismounted but made no attempt to follow him. If only there had been no mention of Peng and of her being returned to Chung King, she would not have cared how many Chinese inns they stayed in. As it was, she cared terribly. He had said that Peng was only two or three days travelling time distant, and that meant only two more nights before her adventure was over. She wanted to spend those two precious nights under the magic of the moon and stars, not in a smelly, claustrophobic inn.

He emerged from the unwelcoming interior and halted in the doorway, beckoning her to join him. Her heart sank down to her boots. He had found it habitable. There was going to be no camp that night. No soothing sounds of slow-moving river-water to lull her to sleep; no sweet-smelling fragrance of juniper and lavender; no gazing up at a sky thick with diamond-bright stars.

Unwillingly she walked towards him.

‘I told you we were in luck,' he said with annoying satisfaction. ‘Szechwan's Viceroy was born here, hence the unexpected standard of the inn. It would be shaming to him if his home-town didn't possess a “semi-foreign” hostelry.'

‘What does “semi-foreign” mean?' Gianetta asked, unimpressed.

‘Glass as well as oiled paper in the windows, three rooms of honour on the ground floor and three above, kangs and washing facilities.'

Despite herself, Gianetta's interest was caught. She had never slept on a kang and had always wondered whether they would be comfortable or not.

‘I am to have the ground floor suite of rooms, you are to have the upstairs rooms.'

Commonsense told her that it was the only arrangement he could possibly have made, but it didn't sound a very friendly one. She would miss the knowledge that he was only yards away from her, that she had only to say his name to attract his attention. And she would miss Ben's nearness and the occasional, comforting noises he made during the night.

She followed him into the musty interior and up a flight of rickety stairs. The room she was to sleep in was well-swept, the kang huge.

‘I'll see you later,' he said peremptorily, ‘when it's time for dinner. Meanwhile, have a rest. I'll have hot water sent up to you so that you can wash.'

The prospect of being suddenly left alone in the cheerless, arid room appalled her.

‘Ben,' she said quickly. ‘I must see that Ben is properly stabled.'

‘I'll see to Ben. Have a rest.'

It was said pleasantly enough, but she couldn't help feeling that his main concern was not for her tiredness but of his own need to escape her company.

He turned and walked out of the room and she sat down slowly on the uncomfortably hard kang. It was over. All the fun, all the exhilaration, all the adventure. There was nothing to look forward to now. Nothing else interesting or unexpected was going to happen to her.

‘How do you feel about being my wife for an evening?'

It was barely thirty minutes later, and Zachary's abrupt entrance woke her with a start.

Gianetta stared at him, blinking rapidly, trying to clear her head. She had obviously been dreaming, and she had an uncomfortable suspicion that she had been dreaming about him.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, pushing herself up into a sitting position on the kang. ‘I must have fallen asleep. What did you say?'

He stood with his feet apart, his hands pushed deep into his breeches pockets, a lock of night-black hair tumbling low over his forehead.

‘I asked if you would care to be my wife for an evening?'

Her heart began to race erratically. Was he suggesting that he share her room with her? He couldn't be. Not in such an offhand, indifferent manner. And yet what else could he mean? Heat suffused her. There could be no question of her acquiescing to such an insulting suggestion. It had been made without the slightest overture of tenderness. An offer to a woman of the streets would have surely been made with more finesse. And yet … and yet …

‘The Viceroy is at his family home, and word of my arrival having reached him, he would like to meet with me,' he said, a gleam of amusement in his gold-flecked eyes. ‘It isn't customary for Viceroys to give audiences to women, but no doubt an exception would be made if I were to present you as my wife.'

She could feel the heat stinging her cheeks. Was he amused because he had guessed the assumption she had so presumptuously and erroneously come to? Even worse, had he guessed her unspoken response? Fury and humiliation fought for supremacy. Holding his eyes with difficulty, Gianetta said stiffly,

‘If I cannot be presented to the Viceroy as Miss Gianetta Hollis, then I prefer not to be presented at all.'

He gave a slight shrug of his broad shoulders. ‘Just as you please, although I think it is a decision you may well come to regret. Viceroys may be pretty thick on the ground in China, but audiences with them are not so easily come by, especially for women. You may not get such a chance again.'

It was true. And if she didn't go with him, she would have to remain in the inn alone. As the desire to accompany him struggled with her indignation at the terms he was stipulating, there came a small scuffling noise from behind one of the interior walls.

‘A rat,' Zachary said off-handedly as she looked towards where the noise was coming from. ‘They're not vicious unless you try and corner them.'

She breathed in deeply. She had no intention of trying to corner one, nor had she now any intention of remaining alone in her room while he visited the Viceroy.

‘I hadn't thought of the visit from an educational point of view,' she said with admirable dignity. ‘Perhaps I ought to accompany you. It would be really rather negligent of me not to.'

‘I thought you might see it like that,' Zachary said gravely as the scuffling noises continued with increased vigour. ‘Could you be ready in fifteen minutes or so, looking suitably … ladylike?'

It took Gianetta all her self-control not to reach for the nearest object and throw it at his head.

When Zachary had gone, she moved quickly. First she kicked the wall soundly in an attempt to scare off the rats, then she pulled her ankle-length skirt and a high-necked, lace-trimmed blouse from her carpet-bag. Spreading them out on the kang she smoothed the wrinkles from them and began to undo her queue. Fifteen minutes. How on earth did he expect her to make the transformation from dusty, male-attired traveller into elegant femininity in fifteen minutes? There was a bowl and a jug of cold water by the kang and she undressed, sluicing herself down as best she could. The water was freezing cold and she dried herself quickly, reaching into her carpet-bag for clean underclothes. When she had dressed she brushed her hair, sweeping it off her neck with practised ease and piercing the neat twist she created with long black coral pins.

There was no mirror in the room or in her bag but she did not need one to know that her transformation was complete. When she heard Zachary impatiently calling her name she picked up her Eton-styled bolero jacket and walked out of the room to join him.

If he was impressed by the transformation she had effected, he didn't allow it to show.

‘You've been nearly half an hour,' he said brusquely, leading the way into the inn's courtyard where sedan-chairs and bearers were waiting for them.

His own transformation was almost as complete as her own. He was wearing a snowy-white evening shirt with a high, starched collar and exquisitely cut dark jacket and trousers. His dove-grey waistcoat would have done credit to a London dandy and there was even the gleam of a gold watch-chain across his breast.

His finery must, until now, have been rolled in one of the saddle-bags. Gianetta wondered how many minions had been called into service in order to press it into its present pristine condition.

If he was expecting an apology from her, for her lateness, he didn't receive one. There had been no-one on hand to press
her
skirt or blouse, and it was a wonder she hadn't taken twice as long to complete her toilette. She was also intensely annoyed at not receiving any acknowledgement concerning her own appearance. She had expected a compliment, even if only a small one. Instead, he had spoken to her as if she were a troublesome young sister.

In icy silence, Gianetta allowed him to hand her into the sedan-chair. It was a form of transport she had never liked, being claustrophobic and joltingly uncomfortable. Seconds later the bearers lifted the chair and she gritted her teeth. The town was small. The Viceroy's family home could not possibly be far. The sedan-chair's curtain swung against her cheek, heavy with the odour of stale perfume. She wrinkled her nose in distaste. To the best of her knowledge, her aunt had never accompanied her uncle when he had visited Chung King's Viceroy. Women, in China, were not usually accorded such privileges. Stringent rules of etiquette were being broken for her benefit. But only because Zachary had requested that they should be.

As the sedan-chair rocked and swayed she wondered what his motive had been? Perhaps he had sincerely thought that it would be an educational experience for her and one that she should not miss. It was certainly a possibility, but it was a doubtful one. She suspected Zachary Cartwright of many qualities but altruism was not one of them. It was far more likely that he had made the request merely because it amused him to do so.

The sedan-chair came to a halt and the door was opened. As she stepped gratefully into fresh air she was struck by a third possibility. Perhaps he had requested she be allowed to accompany him for no other reason than that he found pleasure in her company?

He was standing before her, looking down at her with a slight frown.

‘You have a smudge on your cheek,' he said critically, putting a swift end to any such speculation.

She raised a hand to where she had felt the curtain swing against her cheek, but before she could locate the spot he had brushed the mark away with a kid-gloved forefinger.

‘Now you at least look respectable,' he said, taking her arm and slipping it through his own.

She was just about to make a suitable stinging retort when the massive gates before which they were standing were flung open and one of the Viceroy's retainers proclaimed loudly:

‘Make way! Make way for the Honou'able Mr Zacha'y Ca't'ight and the Honou'able Mrs Zacha'y Ca't'ight.'

Even though she had known the identity she was to assume for the evening, the shock of hearing herself announced as his wife was so great that she stumbled.

Zachary's hand tightened its hold of her arm.

‘Steady, Mrs Cartwright,' he whispered in obvious amusement. ‘Don't disgrace yourself in front of the Viceroy.'

With relief she saw that, despite their having been announced, there was no imposing Viceroy yet in sight. They were in a lamp-lit inner courtyard filled with orange, camelia and azalea trees in large pots on carved stone pedestals. The attendants who had greeted them escorted them across to another set of imposing gates on the far wall of the courtyard. When they reached the gates, they were again flung open, a flight of stone steps was ascended and the pair were again loudly announced.

This time the courtyard was marginally smaller, but again there was no sign of their host.

‘How long does this go on for?' she whispered to Zachary as they were led from the second courtyard and up another flight of steps into a third courtyard.

‘I suspect the Viceroy will meet us in the fourth court and escort us himself into his inner sanctum. By meeting us in the fourth court, he will not be showing us too much honour, or too little.'

‘And if we had been European royalty?'

‘Then he would have met us himself in the second courtyard.'

‘Not the first courtyard?'

He flashed her one of his sudden, down-slanting smiles. ‘No, that honour is reserved only for Chinese nobility.'

Her stomach muscles tightened as they always did when he looked so directly at her. ‘And does leave-taking have the same rules?'

He nodded. ‘The host escorts the guest, and at each gate the guest must protest that he be escorted no further. The host will do so, however, until the gates appropriate to his guest's honour are reached.'

She was intrigued and beginning to enjoy herself. ‘And will both host and guest be in agreement on which set of gates those are?'

His grin deepened. ‘Not always. The possibilities of insult are infinite, and news as to which gate a guest is welcomed at, and at which gate his host has taken leave of him, travels fast.'

‘And so if the Viceroy isn't waiting to welcome us at the next gate the entire district will know of it and will judge our status accordingly?'