Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [127]
When she returned to the hotel there was a message from Edward Stratton. It said, “I’m back, staying at Government House. Would you please be kind to a poor traveler and have dinner with me tonight?” Francie’s spirits suddenly lifted, though she knew she shouldn’t see him again. It was an impossible situation, her life was too fraught with complications, while his was as straightforward as A to Z. Yet just the thought of him made her pulse race and she knew she couldn’t resist. Sitting at the ornate walnut desk, she wrote a note accepting, and summoned the little pageboy to see it was delivered.
A huge bouquet of flowers arrived for her shortly afterward, tall creamy roses. “I remember you best with these lovely flowers in your hair,” Edward’s note read, “only they were never as lovely as you. I shall be at your hotel at seven-thirty.”
Francie was so nervous, she was ready at six-thirty. She wore the long ice-blue silk dress and tucked a rose into her hair.
She paced the floor nervously until seven-thirty and then with one last glance in the mirror, she picked up her floating blue-green lace wrap and her silk purse and walked slowly to the elevator. She took a deep breath as it descended, telling herself this would be the very last time she would see him. And then the metal grille slid open and he was walking toward her, both hands outstretched and a tender smile on his handsome face, and her heart lurched all over again and all her good resolutions were forgotten.
“You look just the way you die the first time I saw you,” he said, taking her hands in his and lifting them to his lips.
She took back her hands quickly and patted the rose in her hair. “It’s because of your lovely flowers,” she murmured. “You remembered the roses.”
She had never realized how intimate a vehicle a rickshaw was until she sat in one with Edward. The black hood closed them off from the view of pedestrians and she felt his arm against hers. “Where are we going?” she asked nervously.
“I’m taking you to my favorite restaurant,” he said, smiling at her.
The rickshaw took them farther along the waterfront to a small dock where a sampan waited. She looked at him inquiringly as she stepped into it, but he just nodded and said mysteriously, “Wait and see.”
The sun was setting and its fiery red glow silhouetted the black, full-sailed junks dotting the bay. The old woman paddling the sampan swung it around, maneuvering it skillfully to a little platform at the side of a junk, where a flight of steps led up to the deck. Her gnarled toothless face beamed into Francie’s and she said something in Cantonese, touching her horny, callused hand to her cheek and patting her stringy hair.
Edward laughed in reply, tipping her lavishly as they climbed from the sampan.
“What did she say?” Francie asked, shading her eyes with her hand to watch the old woman paddle away.
He grinned. “She said the hairy barbarian lord’s woman is very beautiful, but she has too much strength for him.”
Francie laughed ruefully. “I’m afraid she made the wrong guess.”
“Oh, it’s no guess.” He took her hand and led her up the steps as dozens of coolies in white smocks and black trousers appeared to welcome them. “These people can read faces the way we read books.”
The Chinese junk smelled of tar and rope and salt spray, and they walked to the stern where soft Oriental carpets covered the wooden boards and fat silk cushions were piled around a low red-laquered table. Sticks of incense burned in front of tin figures of the sea goddess, a tasseled red awning sheltered them from the last rays of the sun and there were heavy red silk curtains that could be drawn to shut out the wind or to give them privacy.
In a sudden flurry of activity, the coolies clambered along the rigging,