Chapter 11

11

"What a shame that nothing came of the journey."

Lily glanced over at Andrew. He was looking straight ahead as they left the Bristol shipmaster's office.

His voice was serious, but then, he also didn't look once in her direction.

Be patient, she reminded herself. He'll tell you when he's ready.

She could already guess that the tale was more sordid than she'd imagined. He'd not wanted to speak with Mr. Callum after coming all that way, and Andrew always wanted to speak to people.

Perhaps he had already known about the fire. Perhaps he hadn't wanted Lily to hear talk about why it had happened. If Mr. Callum had cried arson, and Lily hadn't known the truth, it would have absolutely made her ask questions.

The salt of the sea and the breeze over the Floating Harbor were a reminder that they were not in Wedgeford. Steamships made a forest of round, squat smokestacks ahead of them. Lily had dressed to not stand out, with her hair in a single bun at the nape of her neck and a traveling gown that nobody would glance at a second time unless they peeked at her face.

Which people did. She and Andrew didn't occasion much more than a startled second glance, though. Bristol had an international dock, and people from the Orient were not as uncommon here as they might be elsewhere in Britain.

Now the question of convincing Andrew to admit the truth… That was tricky.

"Didn't you find that entire exchange a little odd?" she asked.

"The fact that Mr. Callum has apparently started the world's least appealing religion centered around logbooks?" Andrew grinned at her. "Yes. That was definitely different."

"No. I meant that there was a fire that destroyed the record of your parents' marriage mere weeks after that particular log entered temporary storage. It seems to be more than a coincidence, when the other logbook has also been stolen."

For a second, Andrew's even gait stuttered, as if he'd forgotten how to walk and tripped over the pavement.

But he recovered. "You heard the man. Kenneth was smoking."

She shook her head. "Perhaps Kenneth was not to blame. One logbook disappearing is a coincidence. Two arouses suspicions."

" Must we have suspicions?" Andrew sounded almost pleading. "I'm not a naturally suspicious fellow. Couldn't we just…"

Tell the truth, she wanted to urge him. Please. Whatever it is. I won't judge you too harshly.

He did not. He did not say anything at all.

Lily swallowed her frustration. "Maybe we should speak to Kenneth."

"We don't know his last name." Andrew exhaled. "We don't even know if he still lives in Bristol. It's been decades. What is he going to tell us anyway? That the logbooks burned?"

"It seems he wasn't listened to," Lily persisted. "Perhaps he will have evidence that the fire was unnatural. Perhaps nobody heard his side of things. Perhaps we might right an old wrong."

Andrew tensed as she spoke—his fingers curling into fists at his side, his mouth compressing into a little line.

"Perhaps," he said slowly, "we could…not."

She stopped walking and turned to him. Now. Now he was finally going to tell her. He took her elbow and drew her off the pavement, out of the way of others.

"What do you mean?" She looked up at him.

"I hate how much trouble I have put you to. We've already spent hours on the train today; we'll spend more hours returning. We don't want it to be dark when we start back from Dover."

She stared at him in disbelief. "The moon is waxing tonight. We can walk in the dark. Don't put off important things on my account ."

He slowly, slowly ran a hand over his eyes. "Listen, Lily."

She nodded.

"I appreciate what you are doing. I know you are doing it because you think well of me."

"Because I think you're the best person I know," she said, looking at him. "Because you deserve good things." She gave him a tight-lipped smile. "And because you told me you wanted it."

"Oh. Right. That." His nose twitched.

Was she going to have to force it out of him?

"Do you not want it?" she prompted.

He had the grace to give her a mildly embarrassed look. "I'm not an earl. I'm a farmer. I run a seed exchange. I'm not any kind of lord. I've never trained to be one."

"To be fair, all that training that the normal sort of earls supposedly get can't be any good. Most of them are horrid people. You'll do a better job of it."

"Yes," he said, "imagine that's true, and then realize that if I'm made an earl, I'll have to spend all my time with those horrid people."

"So," she prompted once again, "you don't want it?"

He looked over at her.

Here it was. Here was the moment when he told her the truth. Where he confessed what he had done and apologized and took her into his confidence. Lily felt certain for one fleeting second that he was finally going to do it.

That he would finally believe she was enough.

He put his hands in his pockets. "I've had time to consider," he said slowly. "And…no. I don't."

She waited.

He glanced at her, so brief that she'd have missed it were she not holding her breath for his response. "Sorry for making you…" He gestured around them. "Sorry."

He did not say anything about the logbook he had stolen.

Be patient, she remembered his mother saying.

It was hard, because Lily hated being lied to. When she'd been younger and more gullible, she'd fallen for lies and pranks constantly, to the enormous amusement of many of her peers. It had given her a distaste for the whole matter.

It gritted against her now, an irritant.

Getting angry wouldn't help her be patient. It had been less than two full days since he'd stolen the log. Was that so long in the scheme of things? She was being impatient. Lily struggled to tamp down her rising emotion.

He took her elbow and started walking to the train station once more. "Thank you for caring."

"At least we can find some green tea for my grandfather." The words felt bitter in her mouth. "That's enough to make the journey worthwhile, isn't it?"

"You don't mind?" he asked.

He didn't specify what she might mind, and she didn't want to ask.

"Don't worry about it," she responded, the words feeling like ash in her mouth. "It's…"

Not a problem. The words stuck in her mouth. She couldn't make herself return her own lies for his untruths.

"It's just what it is," she finally concluded.

It took Lily more than half their journey home—the train to London, the transfer to a new station, and the start of the final leg to Dover—to understand that she was not as patient as Andrew's mother hoped she could be.

Now, watching the side of his profile in the orange-tinged light, Lily could feel the tendrils of restlessness lodge in her.

What was Andrew waiting for? What was it about Lily that was so insufficient? Why had he concluded he had no choice but to steal from her, and what could she do to convince him that she deserved his trust?

When she was younger, she'd worked herself into a terrible crush on Andrew. She'd come out the other end after a few years, before flinging herself back into it again. Lily didn't think she'd been anything but obvious about her feelings, because circumspection was not within her capacity.

She'd come to one conclusion in those years. If Andrew had wanted Lily to like him, he'd have given her a sign. A real sign, not the vague half-expressions of appreciation he sometimes sent her way.

Maybe that was what he thought Lily lacked: the caution required to be trusted with his secret. She had been forthright to a fault, but her years away had changed her.

She leaned forward. "Can I tell you something?"

He turned away from the darkening landscape. "You can tell me anything."

She clutched her bag and looked at the floor. "I think I mentioned to you that I joined the Hong Kong Aid Society?"

"What about it?"

"The bookshop wasn't the only illegal activity I took part in when I was away," she confided.

"Ah?" He looked intrigued.

"It's all in the word ‘aid,'" she said. "Aid takes all forms. Sometimes we aided someone whose wages hadn't been paid. Often it was providing women with womb veils or, if the situation had advanced beyond that, an infusion of lilac daphne flower bud. Sometimes it was a woman and her children who needed to leave a husband without notice."

"I had assumed it was something like the suffragists—organizing for the right to vote, collecting petitions… That sort of thing."

Lily could still feel the weight of that last suffragist meeting in England—that sharp-faced women telling her not to befoul the cause. Her fists clenched.

"It wasn't not that," she finally said. "But what would women's suffrage even mean in Hong Kong? It's not as if they let anyone vote for members of the legislative council. The British were terrified of strikes and protests—those could shut down the harbor. Think of the money lost."

"And that is what they thought of?" There was a dryness to his tone.

"What else? Here in England, women who agitate for the vote are seen as an annoyance, a nuisance at worst. But in Hong Kong, anyone talking about the vote posed a deadly political danger, one that threatened British control. If there were doubts, your home could be ransacked by police without so much as a warrant."

She wanted Andrew to understand. She was trustworthy. She would keep his secrets, whatever they might be. She would help him.

"I know you think of me the way I was when I left: just saying whatever was in my mind." She had to make him believe these next words, really and truly. "But Andrew, I want you to know… However painful I might be, I actually have discretion now."

The smile he gave her felt particularly patronizing. "You have always had discretion. You've also been willing to discard tact as necessary. It's one of the things I like best about you."

Then why won't you trust me? She did not say those words. She was having patience, damn her eyes. She was showing discretion. She bit them back instead, until her swallowed rejoinder felt like acid in her stomach.

"Well." She tried her own version of a false smile. "All's well that ends…" Could she say that it had ended well? Not really.

"All's well that ends?" His eyes sparkled. "I'm sure we can disprove that, but here we are."

She had done it again, Lily realized. Repeated her same mistake, the one she'd made when she left Wedgeford. Deep down, she had never really stopped feeling something for Andrew. It had always been there, that warmth she felt for him.

She had liked Andrew because he never made her feel badly simply because she failed at conversation. But liking him hadn't made her better at expressing her thoughts.

She'd jumped at the idea of bringing him the logbook because deep down, she'd thought it would bring them closer. They would strategize how to manage it. Maybe, some part of her had whispered, this time… This time he'd decide that he cared for her.

She was being foolish. Having literal sexual intercourse hadn't brought them together. There was nothing between them at all. It was just her: her own yearning, her own want, her own pitiable storytelling to herself, her own hopes.

"All's well," she told him, "that ends with clarity."

"Lily?" He leaned in, his voice dropping. "Are you crying?" He reached out. For an instant, the tips of his fingertips touched her cheek—warm, a little rough from the calluses he'd built up. She could see her teardrop glistening on the end of his finger.

She pulled back. "No."

"But—" He held up his tear-bedecked finger.

"I said no." Her voice trembled on the last syllable.

"Are you angry with me?"

"Why would I be angry?"

"I don't know. That's why I'm asking." He sounded so reasonable, and he was lying to her.

"What is there to say?" She turned away from him to look out the window. "The matter of the logbook is finished. We can both concentrate on other endeavors."

"Lily." His voice was low.

She turned to him. Even now, she still hoped. Even now, she thought he might say something.

But: "You've been very helpful," was all he said.

"Thank you," she sniffed, "for noticing."

Lily was still thinking the next morning. She'd thought the entire time during her brisk walk at dawn, stopping only to snip shepherd's purse and nettle. She thought while she painstakingly readied Chloe's woodcut to have a flong made from it and thought while she beat the paper in. She thought as she heated the furnace until the blast was almost enough to singe her eyebrows and thought as she cleaned and sanded the resulting printing plate.

She was still thinking when she attached the final plate to the jobbing press and ran a dozen labels for Chloe as a test. The graceful sway of the treadle, the press of the plate, the coordination required to place the paper in just the right way—these felt like a kind of music, one that made a logic in her head.

Lily had come back to Wedgeford at the beginning of the week with a fantasy in her head: an idea that the new, somewhat improved Lily would be able to win back her grandfather's affections and somehow change Andrew's mind.

Maybe things with Andrew had ground to a temporary, but awful standstill made of lies. But her grandfather? There, Lily still had hope.

And tea. Where there was tea, there was hope.

She was more determined than ever by the time she found her boots, gloves, and wrap and made her way up the hill to her grandfather's cottage.

She found him in the garden weeding rows of spring scallions.

"Ah Gung." She waved at him. "Good morning!"

He stood, pressing a hand to the small of his back. "Ei. You're here. I told you it wasn't necessary."

"I'm not here because it's necessary," Lily said tartly. "I'm here because I want to be here. Do you have a moment? I have something for you."

He wiped his hands off and came to the door. "I already got one present. I don't need another."

"I didn't get you a present because you needed it. I got it because I thought you would want it."

"Well." He opened the door and toed off his shoes. "You might as well come in."

He puttered about as Lily took off her own shoes, washing his hands before returning to her.

"Now what's this I hear about you wasting money on more presents?"

Lily took a deep breath and took the tin she'd got in Bristol out of her bag. "You said you wanted green tea."

He finished drying his hands on a towel. "I didn't say that."

"Just a few days ago." She could feel her stomach contract. "You said…"

"I said I missed fresh green tea. I didn't tell you to get it for me."

"Of course," she said with a relieved laugh, "You'd never ask for anything for yourself. All the more reason for me to obtain it. I traveled to Bristol recently. There's a tea merchant there, and… To make a long story short, I found a green tea from Guangxi province." She set it down in front of him. "Here you are. It's probably not exactly what you're used to, but I hope it's similar enough that…"

He took off the lid of the tin and sniffed it. "This must have cost a fortune," he grumbled.

"Chloe is paying me to make labels. I can afford a little extravagance."

"What a waste of money. Do you know how many eggs you could have bought with the cost of this?"

She knew him well enough to know that he was only raising objections for show. She just smiled. "Why buy eggs, when I can treat my ah gung instead?"

"Ah, well." He shook his head sadly. "It's probably too late to return it. I might as well try it."

"You might as well."

Once again, he put a kettle of water on the stove. Once again, while they waited, he slapped up and down his arms, up over his neck and then back down. Once again, the water boiled, and he trundled over to fill the pot.

Lily waited while it steeped. She knew how her ah gung reacted when he tasted something extraordinary. His eyes widened. His mouth opened, just a little. If she could give him that…

She poured the tea eagerly and waited.

He took a sip. His eyes did not widen. His mouth did not open. He looked as if he were engaged in a struggle to find a compliment. Finally, he spoke. "It's very good."

Lily's heart sank. "You don't like it."

"I like it." He said it the way one might say one liked burnt toast.

"But you don't love it."

"Lily. I'm not sure what you're trying to do here. But I don't miss green tea because I have chosen not to purchase it."

"No?"

"It's because it's not possible to get fresh green tea here in England. It takes too long to arrive. By the time it's come down the river from the plantation, made its way through the trading ports, and crossed two oceans, it's not fresh any longer."

Lily sat in place, biting her lip.

"I know you're trying," he said. "But gifts… Those aren't necessary. I don't know what you're imagining, but we can't replace a love we once had with things we purchase. And you will just hurt us both if you keep trying. Do you understand me?"

Lily stared at her teacup, widening her eyes to keep her tears from falling. "Yes," she whispered. "Yes, ah gung. I understand."

"If I want fresh tea these days, I'll drink nettle." He let out a little noise. "And that's no cost to anyone. Save your money."

"Yes, ah gung." Silence stretched, too long, but Lily could think of nothing to fill it.

He spoke first. "I hear the women talking about the poetry book you're printing. With poems."

"That is the usual kind of poetry book, ah gung."

"Hmph." He looked at her. "I hear they're poems about men."

"Um." Of course, Chloe had talked about her poetry, and of course it had come around to her grandfather. "Some of them? Yes."

His face set in grim resolve. "I see. Finish your tea. I think that's all we need to say to one another."

Lily finished her tea in blighted silence, wanting nothing but to escape. She made her goodbyes and fled. Outside, the wind was chilling, cutting through her wrap and irritating her eyes.

The entire situation—her entire life—felt horribly unfair. She wasn't trying to purchase her grandfather's love. She was just trying to show him that even if she had radical views, she was still his granddaughter. She still loved him.

Her love had never been the problem. He was the one who sent her away. It seemed so awful, so unfair—that his care for her had felt boundless up until the moment it crashed into her belief that she deserved to make decisions for herself. And still Lily had thought that if she did everything right on her return, it would make up for who she was at heart.

It wouldn't. Even if she managed the impossible task of doing everything right, she could not change who she was.

She braced herself for a fresh wave of sorrow at this thought, but it did not come. In reality, what she actually felt was anger: a deep, rising anger that she hadn't even known she harbored.

It was anger that consumed her, anger that came to the front, anger that told her that it was not fair, that she deserved to be loved and cared for as herself.

Look at Chloe, after all—she was everything a woman was supposed to be; she'd won everything imaginable, and people still made her question whether she was good enough.

All her life, Lily had believed the problem was her. That's what everyone had said. Lily was tactless. Lily was blunt. Lily was always, subtly, not enough. She was always the one making mistakes; of course she was at fault.

For the first time in her life, filled with a rage that somehow, she'd always held so deep inside her that even she had never perceived it until now, Lily came to a conclusion that shook her to her core.

Maybe the problem was not her. Maybe it was everyone else.