Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [210]
She stared silently at her, her blue eyes frightened. Annie had grown stouter and more solid as she grew older. Her hair was gray instead of shiny brown, but her big shrewd eyes were the same and they were filled with affection and pity.
“I just didn’t want to upset Mommy and Buck more than I had already,” Lysandra murmured, twisting her hands together agitatedly. “I know they blame themselves for letting me go, but it was me, Annie. I was the one who insisted it would be all right. Buck was going and I wanted so badly to see Uncle Philip and—and everything. I put everybody’s lives in danger, the Chens’, Buck’s …”
“And your own,” Annie said softly. Leaning forward, she took Lysandra’s hot, tightly gripped hands, unlocking them and holding them firmly in her own cool, smooth ones. And suddenly the whole story spilled out about how scared she had really been under the facade of cockiness the day she had signed the Japanese document, of her terror when she had seen Irene and Robert disappear into the night and she had realized she might never see them again, of her sense of desolation alone in the Japanese prison and the despair of not knowing what had happened to Philip. When the Chinese came for her she thought they had come to execute her.
“Everybody thinks I was so brave,” she murmured through her tears, “but I wasn’t, Annie, I was scared all the time.”
“Of course you were, sweetheart,” Annie said comfortingly. “Only a stupid person wouldn’t have been.” She listened to Lysandra’s tales of the daily brutality she had witnessed, the beatings and the screams that came in the night, of the scuttling of rats and the smell of vomit and latrines. And though Annie’s face was impassive, inside she was hurting for the child.
“And all the time I thought about Mommy,” Lysandra said. “I thought how worried she must be. I cried myself to sleep every night thinking of her and Buck, and of you, Annie. I pretended the dogs were curled on my bed they way they do at the ranch and that I could hear the rustle of the wind in the orchard and the whinny of the ponies in the stables. I tried to block all the bad things out and sometimes it worked and I dreamed I was home again.”
“And now you are home, child, you really are. And that’s what you must remember, not the bad stuff. War is evil and it was partly your own fault you were caught up in it, but your mother and Buck were also to blame for giving in to you. You’ve all suffered for it, but now it’s over and you can pick yourself up and get on with real life. Just the way your mother had to when she was a girl, not that much older than you are now. And let me tell you something,” she added fiercely, “don’t ever say you were not brave, because you were, Lysandra Lai Tsin. Any good soldier will tell you that he is afraid when he confronts the enemy and goes into battle. And you were as brave as any good soldier.”
“Do you really think so?” Lysandra asked tremulously.
“Damn right I do,” Annie said, a smile spreading across her still-pretty face. “Now, let’s have some more tea, shall we?”
But that conversation stayed a secret between Annie and Lysandra, and afterward, whenever any newcomer arrived in Hong Kong he was always told, “Better watch out for Lysandra Lai Tsin, she’s inherited the old man’s balls as well as his empire.” And they would chuckle as they recounted the story of the schoolgirl taking on the Japanese general and causing him such a terrible loss of face.
Within four years, the Lai Tsin ships were sailing the world once again and the great company had retained its power. Lysandra fretted away her four years at Vassar, longing for Hong Kong. She knew her fate was different from that of