Chapter 20

20

The days that followed seemed foolishly idyllic. On the first day after their return, Andrew checked the yard-long beans that he had planted.

He'd replaced the bowls with cloches. Underneath those, with the soil warmed by the heat radiating from the water in the vase, they were protected from the evening frost. It hadn't helped two of the seedlings. One of them had wilted, yellowing leaves. The other had given up on life entirely.

But the last seedling was beginning to perk up, sending out little tendrils in search of something to vine up. Andrew tried not to hope, but it was impossible. Maybe this one might survive.

He felt somewhat like the seedlings. He'd avoided the worst possible catastrophe; he was not going to be the earl. But things in Wedgeford would change. Even if nobody ever suspected Andrew's parentage, the news would come out that Mr. Wilderhampsher, the boy who had visited Wedgeford for all those years, was now a young earl. And people would wonder why Andrew, a farmer from nowhere, was awarded his guardianship.

The speculation would grow. People might start to think of him as less the sort of person who worked in the inn and happily provided starts of plants, and more the kind of tiresome individual who labored for the gentry. That was even while he was in Wedgeford. He couldn't take long away from his brother; he had to make sure he was well. How would Andrew even start plants from that damnable, cherub-infested estate?

Wedgeford seemed slow: sweet and unchanging, even though everything in Andrew's life was running directly into permanent alteration. There was a quality to every moment, something that felt like nostalgia for the thing right in front of him. Some day soon, this peace would be disturbed. Some day soon, the news would come that his father had died, that the solicitor's work was ready, and that Andrew's life would alter itself forever.

This was the compromise he'd made with his brother: that neither of them would have their lives completely ruined, but neither of them would remain unscathed.

The world would upend itself. This was inevitable. It simply hadn't yet, and there was nothing to do but cherish his final days of being just Andrew.

Days passed. The two seedlings died; he set up a string trellis for the last one, and coaxed it to start climbing.

Please, he begged his father, still living according to Alan's last letter, albeit more and more laboriously. Please live just a little longer.

He reached out toward the single plant that had a chance of thriving.

Live long enough for me to let everyone have these, he thought, and I will be happy.

It would take months for the yard-long beans to go to seed, and even then, it wouldn't be enough for everyone.

Still, Andrew begged. Please, let me have this one last piece of Wedgeford before everyone finds out that I don't belong.

"Here are the labels." Lily handed over the sheaf of printed pages. "I'm sorry it took me so long. I've had quite a bit going on."

They were in Chloe's office. Chloe rose from a desk, spectacles on her nose, when Lily entered.

"What on earth do you mean, ‘so long?'" Chloe took the papers in her hands, brushing the edges with her fingertips before fanning them out to admire. The printing was sharp and clear without so much as a single smudge; Lily had looked over every last one to be sure. "So long," she scoffed. "It hasn't even been two weeks."

"It shouldn't take longer than a day."

Chloe waved a hand. "This is your first time doing them. You had to make a plate and a flong and all that. Plus, you literally just moved to Wedgeford. You've been settling in. It was much more work than you're admitting, and you are perfectly within time. I don't even need to start adhering them to jars until a week from now." She nodded. "Besides, I heard a little about what has been occuring around here. Andrew's shed being turned upside down and all that."

Lily nodded. "It has been a lot."

"I don't really know what's happening, but I can imagine it's kept you busy."

"Things are resolving themselves. I hope." Andrew had been distant over the last few days—friendly, but distant.

Chloe finished thumbing through the labels. "These are all so good—not a single one blurry, all so evenly placed on the label. I always had to reject a few from the woodcut, and it always made me feel so badly to do so, but I simply can't accept substandard product." She nodded to herself. "Here. Let me get your payment."

She stood, turned away, and went to a cabinet where she opened a little cashbox and counted out coins, before coming back. "Have you prepared a receipt?"

"Oh, dear. Was I supposed to have done that?"

"It's no bother. I'll write one up." Chloe sat over the desk, scribbling on a page. She paused at the end, before peering up at Lily through her spectacles. "You know, Lily, if you ever need to talk about anything…"

She let the words trail off.

"You're being very kind." Lily wrapped her arms around herself. "Very welcoming. It feels strange. We never talked much when we were younger."

"Well, no." Chloe blotted the page she had been writing on. "Not much, we didn't. But we were always friendly. It was you and Andrew, me and Naomi." She picked up the page, blew on it, and held it out. "We weren't not friends."

"I never felt comfortable talking to you," Lily blurted out.

Chloe froze, her arm extended, eyes wide.

"It wasn't you!" Lily exclaimed. "It was me! I know I ruined things between us when we were younger by calling attention to your notebook. I know how you were teased after that, and I couldn't help but fear that you must have harbored some animosity toward me for starting it."

"Ha?" It was more of an exhalation on Chloe's part, a question.

"When we were younger," Lily explained. "I know people were unkind to you, and it always felt like my fault. I bear a great degree of guilt for that. I know that perhaps you've forgiven me for that mistake, but I should like to apologize."

Chloe slowly lowered the receipt. "Lily," she said in a strange voice, "they were teasing me about my notebook before you mentioned it."

Lily blinked.

"Have you been worrying about that all this time?"

Lily wrapped her arms around herself. "In my defense, I would never win awards for ‘most likable woman.'"

"As if I would either!" Chloe tossed her head. "One of the things I'm learning about myself is this: women are supposed to be likable. Some of us aren't."

"I didn't mean you weren't likable!"

"No, but there is a definition, and we know when we aren't it. There's a certain kind of soft, kind amiability…" Chloe's nose wrinkled almost rebelliously. "When we just can't do it, perhaps because we like having our lives a little too organized, or…" She glanced at Lily.

"Or because we blurt things out that are too direct," Lily added.

"Or that," Chloe said. "When we aren't likable in that particular way, from the moment we first learn to speak and walk, we are judged."

"Aren't we ever."

"We learn to flinch. We assume that people don't like us, until the assumption becomes so common that it's our first thought. I have had to make an effort to stop assuming that, because as a technical duchess, if I assume everyone hates me from the start, I pull back and then everyone thinks me unkind and above myself."

"As if you could be beneath anyone!" Lily said hotly.

"Exactly like that," Chloe said. "My instinct is to protect myself, to think I'm not liked and so I don't have to try. But if I don't try, people will think I don't like them, and then I won't have any friends. And I like having friends."

"I do like you, Chloe." Lily made herself say the words. "I've always been more than a little impressed by how good you are at…basically everything."

"I've always appreciated how brave you are," Chloe said. "I always wished we could be better friends."

"Well." Lily swallowed. "Then maybe we should be."

Lily woke up early the next morning full of determination. Chloe had been right; she was in the habit of assuming people disliked her.

Now, she was determined to try one last time to fix things with her grandfather. They could struggle as they had, month after month of his pushing her away and her feeling wretched about it. Or Lily could put her foot down and bring out the heavy cannon.

She just had to figure out what the heavy cannon looked like. She thought, and thought, about what he had said—about the freshness of the tea and how much he liked nettle.

The idea came. Not one to wait, Lily set out to do immediate battle. She donned her boots and gloves. She went tramping through the glade; she spent an hour afterward, washing and drying and letting the leaves she'd gathered wilt, before rolling them in a muslin cloth and throwing them in a dry pot above a flicker of flame, inhaling their essence until it changed just that tiny amount, the way tea would.

Then she carefully rolled the leaves, forming little twists, before leaving them to finish drying.

This was it: another offering. What was the worst her grandfather could tell her? That he'd stopped loving her? That he'd come to despise what she cared for, that she could choose between being a dutiful, patient granddaughter who had his affection, or her own true self?

Hearing the truth in all its painfulness could not possibly be any worse than what they were doing now.

The next morning, she went to his cottage, paper packet in hand and ready to ask hard questions.

"Well?" He glanced at the package she carried. "What did you bring me this time?"

"You wanted something fresh," she said. "Something like the green tea made just a few days prior. Well, here." She held out her offering. "It's just finished drying this morning."

He took the packet from her. She could feel her chin square. "What is it?" He turned it around, shaking the packet.

"Tea."

"Tea? You made it? There are no tea bushes in Wedgeford."

"Why should that stop me?" Lily stared straight ahead. "You always did like stinging nettle tea best in spring."

He turned the packet over. "So, this is dried nettle tea?"

"No. It's nettle treated as if it were green tea." She took a deep breath. "It's not tea plant. But it's fresh, it's pan-fired, and it should have a similar flavor profile…"

He opened the packet and sniffed it. "Hmm. I suppose I must try this one."

For a third time, they went through the little ritual. Lily waited. Her grandfather stretched and slapped up and down his legs while the water came to a boil.

He poured water into his teapot, then wandered over. Slowly, they sat. He poured for both of them, brought the cup to his lips, and tasted.

She watched him intently, her own cup warm in her hands. She could see his reaction: the widening of his eyes, the way he straightened up and looked in the cup, then looked over at her.

"This is…" He didn't finish his sentence.

"It's not fresh green tea," she told him. "I know. You cannot get fresh green tea here."

"It's…" He looked almost vexed.

She took her own sip. The flavor—sweet, roasted and vegetal—rolled over her tongue. "But it's also good. You don't have to tell me: I can see it from the look in your eyes. It's good. It's not what you're used to. It's not anything you remember having. But it's still something different and vibrant and fresh—something with that toasted flavor you remember. It's not green tea. It's something that comes from here, from Wedgeford. From our home."

He looked at the cup and took another sip. "It is…nice."

"Ah gung." She stood up. "I know I'm not what you want in a granddaughter. I am too brash, too outspoken. But I am the only granddaughter you have here, and I don't have to be the proper woman you're imagining for us to care for one another."

His eyes narrowed.

"I'm never going to be a good, obedient filial child?—"

"Bah."

She glared at him. "Let me finish before you tell me you're not interested. I will never do anything the right way, and to be perfectly frank, it's because I don't care. You sent me to my grandmothers to rid me of my radical notions, and it didn't work. I've come back worse than ever. I'm now more radical than the British suffragists you feared, and I am not going to get better. This is who I am."

"How very strange," he said slowly. "I?—"

"I wasn't finished." She stomped over to him. "I am tired of tiptoeing around everything. I am your granddaughter. You raised me. I adore you. But if I am not enough for you because of who I have grown up to be, just say so and I will leave you alone. I don't like having my dearest relation break my heart over and over. Either you drink the tea and like it, or you tell me now that there won't be anything like affection between us ever again, and I'll stop trying to win back your regard."

Her heart was pounding.

He looked up at her, his face somber. Deep in her heart, she knew the answer. It was over. It had long been over. But there was understanding what was probably happening, and there was knowing in her bones.

She wanted to know.

He exhaled a long, deflating breath.

"Have you nothing to say?" she demanded.

"I wanted to make sure you were finished."

Lily swallowed. "Oh. Right. Yes. I am. Say what you need."

"You said…" He held up two hands, fingers bent on both of them. "At least six things that were wrong. I lost count."

Lily felt her soul wilt. "Go ahead and correct me."

"I didn't send you to your grandmothers because I was disturbed by your association." He looked upward. "It was because if that was what you wanted from your life, you deserved to be guided by women who knew what to do without men."

The cottage somehow managed to seem very, very large, the words ringing in her ears. "What do you mean?"

"What do I know about suffragists?" He waved a hand in the air. "Just what I hear people say. They're man-haters."

"Ah gung, that's a pejorative way of viewing suffragists. Wanting equal rights doesn't make you hate men."

"Well, not all of them, maybe, but if you want equal rights and don't want to kick more than half of them in the…" He cleared his throat. "That would be a surprise. I have heard about your poetry."

"Fair." Lily sucked her teeth. "More than a few. But just the bad ones."

"Which ones do you mean?"

"You know," she said. "The ones who abuse their power, who don't believe that others should have a say in the world around them, or who imagine women as inherently inferior to men. The ones who think women must do as men say, no matter their own inclinations."

"Yes." Her grandfather subsided in his chair. "Only those ones." His voice dropped lower. "That's me."

"You?" She stared at him. "When have you ever—well, technically, you did make me go back to Hong Kong, but I was a child. When have you ever done any of that?"

"I knew." He reached for the teacup and clenched his hands around it, "that you should learn from women who had triumphed despite the men in their lives. So, I sent you to your grandmothers."

"But…" Lily shook her head.

"I sent you, knowing that you would learn to hate men who tried to force their wives to do things. And that you would learn what I had done." He did not meet her eyes.

"Ah gung."

Still, he didn't look at her.

"Ah gung, what are you talking about?"

"I have made so many mistakes in my life." He drank a little more tea. "Your first grandmother… She was strong. She disagreed with me about many things—about what I should do, about how we should manage the children. I see now…" His fingers tapped the low bowl of the cup. "She was…not wrong. Most of the time, she was not. But I had a view of what I was supposed to be: the man, the husband. In charge, and she would just never let me do things my way. I can see my error decades too late: seeing myself as master always, and partner never."

It was hard for Lily to imagine her grandfather thus: lording it over a wife, telling her what to do.

"So," her grandfather said, "I thought to put her in her place. To keep her on her toes, to make her see that her position was not so certain in the family that she could push me like that. I decided to take a second wife. That would show her."

"Oh, ah gung."

"They were supposed to squabble with one another for my attention. Instead," her grandfather said, "I found that I could please neither of them. It took months to realize that they loved each other the way they should have loved me. It was humiliating. They took charge of everything, and I was shown to be a useless appendage. I was a failure as a husband, as a father." He let out a long, slow breath. "What was there to do but leave? When you came into my care so many years later, I decided I didn't want to fail as a grandfather, too. I didn't know how to be a good grandfather. What did I know about raising a girl? Nothing. There are so many rules for little girls—the women of Wedgeford would sometimes tell me that I was doing it wrong, that you talked too much and ran too fast. I was supposed to teach you different things. I was supposed to make you more quiet, more sedate. Less you. But what did I know? I had only the experience of being a husband, and the one thing I had learned was that I wasn't good at making someone less. What could I do for you? Try. That was all."

"Ah Gung." Lily took a step forward. "You did more than try. You succeeded."

"Then you told me you'd gone to a suffragists' meeting, and I knew. Despite everything I'd tried, you were your grandmothers' grandchild more than you were mine. You needed their guidance to survive in this world. What more could your foolish grandfather provide? I tried to force my first wife to respect me by showing her how replaceable she was. I was exactly the kind of man that they talk about when they say women need rights." He shrunk in on himself. "You needed them because in a matter of years, you'd be old enough to understand who I was and why you should hate me, too."

"It wasn't because I was too radical?" Lily's voice seemed like a small thing coming out of her. "It wasn't because you never wanted to see me again? Because I'd disappointed you?"

Her grandfather shook his head. "I learned my lesson long ago. I left to work on a ship to make money, to prove to my wives that I had value as a man. I was angry for years, but distance and time gave me some understanding. I came back after my first indenture, the anger released, and I realized they were happier in my absence than they would be with me there. What else could I give them, except freedom from my presence? What else could I give you, but the same?"

For the first time since Lily had come back, she felt like she could understand her grandfather. He wasn't angry at her; he didn't resent what she'd become. He was afraid— afraid that she would hate him.

That she would hate him. What absolute nonsense.

He finished the tea in his cup. She picked up the teapot and refilled it, the steam wafting over her face. That wasn't what made the corners of her eyes prickle.

"Ah Gung, a granddaughter is not like a wife. I know you didn't know any of the rules that young girls were supposed to follow."

He flinched.

"It's just as well." Lily smiled through her tears. "I would never have been good at following rules, not with any method of raising. I am your granddaughter."

"I have made so many mistakes." He looked down. "So many."

"I was not one of them." Lily set her hand on his shoulder. "I don't know what happened between you and my grandmothers. But if there's one gift we can give ourselves, it's to not make the same mistake twice." She leaned over and kissed his forehead. "I thought you believed I wasn't enough. I was wrong. You thought you were not enough. And we can't have that."

"But—your grandmothers."

"Are happy," Lily said "If you erred, they found their own way. And if you erred, you did the most important thing afterward."

"What was that?"

"You tried to fix your mistake. You succeeded. You raised a granddaughter who believed she could do anything. And she loves you for that."