Captive Bride, page 1
Captive Bride
By Bonnie Dee
San Francisco, 1870
Huiann arrives in America expecting to be wed to a wealthy businessman. She no sooner disembarks from the ship than she realizes Xie is not looking for a bride: Huiann is worth more to him as a high-end prostitute. Though her fate is better than that of other Chinese women forced into the sex trade, she has no intention of waiting for Xie to sell her virginity to the highest bidder. At the first opportunity, she escapes and disappears into the city.
When a beautiful woman takes refuge in his store, Alan’s life changes forever. He’s spent the last five years trying to forget the horrors of war, and had almost given up hope of finding love. He hires Huiann as his housekeeper, and though they can only communicate through signs and sketches, they quickly form a bond that transcends the need for words.
But Xie is determined to recover his property, and love may not be enough to protect Huiann from his vengeance.
Dear Reader,
A new year always brings with it a sense of expectation and promise (and maybe a vague sense of guilt). Expectation because we don’t know what the year will bring exactly, but promise because we always hope it will be good things. The guilt is due to all of the New Year’s resolutions we make with such good intentions.
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Dedication
For all women who have suffered or continue to endure injustice.
Contents
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Author’s Note
About the Author
Chapter One
1870, off the California coast
Clouds were painted on the flat blue-gray sky, not even a gull disturbing the barren heavens. From great black stacks, ribbons of white billowed behind the rapidly moving ship. Although the steamer cut steadily through the waves, it seemed it wasn’t moving at all—as though Huiann would spend the rest of her life standing on this deck, waiting for her new life to begin.
When she imagined meeting her husband for the first time, she wavered between nervous anticipation and wrenching fear. Was he handsome, ugly, old, young? Would he treat her gently and listen to her thoughts or expect her to keep silent about her ideas as she tended his house? She hadn’t been allowed to ask such questions when her parents announced she was to be a bride.
Huiann’s parents had found their three daughters husbands one by one, but by the time it was her turn, the family’s prosperity was depleted. So when prosperous American businessman Xie Fuhua sent his agent Lui Dai to secure a bride from the home country and the man spotted Huiann walking in the park, it was considered a miraculous blessing.
“The gods have favored my employer, Xie Fuhua, with riches to match his name,” Lui Dai explained to Huiann’s father. “Any family would be lucky to make such an alliance. With your daughter’s favorable face and family name, she’ll be the perfect bride for him.”
“Our ancestors smile on us today! Such a husband will give you a secure future,” her mother assured her, and in less time than it took to steep tea, the contract was signed and sealed, along with Huiann’s fate. She was to be married to the illustrious Xie Fuhua upon her arrival in San Francisco.
Although Huiann had always dreamed of traveling to foreign lands, faced with the reality her heart ached for Suzhou, her beautiful town on the Yangtze, which she might never see again. Her parents would rest with their ancestors by Lake Taihu while she would be buried far from home.
What would her new home be like? Would her in-laws accept her into their family with warm embraces or be disappointed in the bride their son had acquired from the home country? A mother-in-law could make her new daughter’s life heaven or hell on earth. And with Huiann’s impatient nature, she was quite likely to do something to earn chastisement and bring shame upon her family name. It was as inevitable as the west wind blowing.
Curling her hand around the wet iron railing, she gazed once more at the turbulent gray-green waves before turning to go below deck to check on her chaperone in their stateroom. Madam Teng, another of Xie’s servants sent to escort his bride to America, was miserable with seasickness and lay moaning in her berth day after day.
As Huiann descended from the bright world above to the suffocating dimness of the saloon deck, the thrum of great turbines rattled her very bones. The ship was a fire-breathing dragon devouring the miles between two continents. On the lowest level, men shoveled coal into the beast’s belly to keep her moving. It was like the story of Ping Liu, forced to serve the dragon king for a dozen years to free a princess then tricked into eighty more years of slavery. Huiann felt sorry for the toiling men and curious about the mysterious world below her feet.
She passed her cabin, continuing along the corridor to the stairway leading down to the boiler room. She opened the door. Instantly the throb of the engine grew even louder. How deafening it must be for the men working right next to the great engine. She placed her slipper on the top step then the next. What was the worst that could happen? Someone would tell her to go back where she belonged. It wouldn’t be the first time in her life curiosity had gotten her scolded. Despite her name, which meant kind peace, Huiann was anything but peaceful. Her mother had bemoaned her restless nature for her entire life, and it had led her into many places in Suzhou where a young lady had no business being.
Now it prodded her down the stairs. The heat increased with each step she took and the thud of the pistons deafened her. At the foot of the stairs, flickering red light from the boiler room flared in the window of the door facing her. She rose up on her toes to peer through the grimy window.
Inside the long low-ceilinged room, coal was piled across from flaming furnaces. A dozen half-naked men, their bodies shining with sweat, shoveled fuel into the burning chambers. They were as black as coal themselves from the dust that coated their skin. Their muscles bulged and flexed with the effort of the never-ending task, and Huiann felt an odd tightening in her lower belly at the sight of their gleaming muscles. She looked away, embarrassed by the uncomfortable warmth that flooded her.
Deep inside she knew she’d soon see more than a little naked male flesh. What would her new husband look like without clothes on? What would he want her to do? Her mother had been frustratingly vague in her explanation of what to expect on her wedding night. “You must lay with your husband in quiet submission, and the gods will reward you with children.”
Huiann knew about the act of copulation but couldn’t imagine how it must feel. Just the idea of making her private parts accessible to her new husband made her flush with embarrassment. The actual union of their bodies was something she didn’t want to dwell on. She could only imagine it would be painful and something to be gotten over with as quickly as possible.
Huiann watched the fascinating scene in the boiler room for several more moments before stepping away from the soot-smeared window. The door above opened and rapid footsteps pounded down the stairs. Huiann’s gaze darted back and forth, searching for a place to hide. At her back lay the boiler room. In front of her was another door. She darted across the passage and through the door into the area of the ship just above the keel.
It was dark, stuffy and without so much as a porthole to cast light on its conte nts. One small lantern burned on the wall, illuminating bins, boxes, crates and kegs. Huiann squatted beside a crate, waiting for the man on the stairs to go about his business so she could return to her room. The sound of hushed voices, whimpering, murmuring, crying and singing, floated from the dark behind her. Ghosts! The ship was haunted. Superstitious dread filled her for a moment before she realized the sounds she heard were very real and human.
Huiann rose from her crouch and wove between the storage crates to explore the area beyond. It was so dark in the hold she could barely make out a row of tall pens made of wooden slats lining one wall. Women’s voices came from inside them. She caught her breath as the smell of bodily waste hit her, and she registered movement inside the nearest cage. Someone was imprisoned inside.
Human cargo. A slave ship. Her stomach lurched as if overcome with seasickness again.
The women spoke Chinese in dialects she didn’t understand. Huiann spoke Wu, the regional dialect of Suzhou, and Mandarin, but couldn’t decipher this rough peasant speech, perhaps Xiang or Gan.
For several moments she remained poised on the brink of flying back upstairs to the world where she belonged, to the comforts of her clean berth and the nuisance of Madam Teng. The foul odors and desolate weeping coming from the caged women were horrifying, but she couldn’t ignore them, just as she’d never been able to pass a beggar on the streets of Suzhou without bestowing a coin or a dumpling from the kitchen.
She approached the nearest enclosure in which several women crouched. The one nearest the bars had long black hair lying in greasy hanks on either side of her broad pockmarked face. The woman’s fingers poked through the space between the slats, gripping the rough wood.
Huiann fixed her gaze on the raggedly chewed fingernails as she spoke to the woman in Mandarin. “Who did this to you? How can I help?”
The pie-faced woman’s black eyes fixed on Huiann and she began to jabber quickly, her voice high and excited.
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand you. Do you speak Wu? Mandarin?”
The woman only spoke faster and louder in her native dialect.
Huiann shook her head in frustration. “I don’t understand. Can I get you something? Water?”
The word was echoed back to her from someone farther down the line. “Water!”
“Hello?” Huiann headed toward the sound, the acrid stench of ammonia forcing her to cover her nose with her sleeve. “Water?”
“Water,” the voice responded. There was a flurry of movement inside one of the pens as the speaker pushed the other prisoners aside and moved toward Huiann. “Food. Water.” The Mandarin words were interspersed with more regional dialect.
“I don’t have anything.” She held her hands wide open. “But I will try to bring something if you can wait.” She was struck by the foolishness of her words. Of course they would wait. They had no choice. But how could she help them? Surely their captors must feed them. They’d be no good as slaves without receiving sufficient nourishment during the journey.
What kind of work were they bound for—working on farms and in factories or maybe as servants in wealthy homes? Huiann realized how little she knew about life in the foreign land that was soon to become her home.
She studied the pale face and single black eye staring at her from between the slats. This girl looked very young, surely no older than Huiann’s little cousin Min. The lump in her throat nearly choked her and tears welled in her eyes. She touched the slender fingers that reached out for her.
“When we land, somehow I’ll find a way to free you. My new husband is a great man in America, a rich man. When I tell him, he will fix this.” She squeezed the girl’s fingers then stood as the clamor of voices begging for help rose in a cacophony. “I’m sorry. I have to go now. I don’t belong down here.”
Huiann felt guilty at her relief in leaving the shrill clamor and the horrid smells behind as she retraced her steps along the dark passage, past the noisy engine room and up the stairs to the middeck. There she drew a deep breath. Sweat rolled down her face and her stomach felt as if she’d eaten a bad piece of fish. She went to the rail and leaned over as far as she dared. She retched up the contents of her stomach, which swirled away in the gray waves far below.
How could she take water down to the women, let alone food? And if someone caught her interfering what would they do to her? A feeling of hopelessness swelled through her, but she fought it off. Since when had she allowed circumstances to stop her once she had a goal in mind? Her mother had often bemoaned her stubbornness and likened her to a thistle among peonies in comparison with her older sisters.
Huiann pushed away from the railing and went to her cabin, where Madam Teng lay on her berth, whimpering. Huiann offered her a dipper full of water from the small metal cistern allotted to their room. After Madam stopped grumbling and subsided into a doze, Huiann heaved the half-empty cask in her arms. She was barely able to clasp her arms around the slippery cylinder. It was awkward to carry and she feared discovery at any moment on this busy ship, but she made her way back down to the hold and the prisoners.
The cacophony of whispering, whining voices truly did sound like ghosts, and even though Huiann now knew they were flesh-and-blood women, a shiver still ran up her spine. She dipped water from the cistern and offered the tin cup to the grasping hands reaching through the bars. The cup was jerked from her and passed from one thirsty woman to another.
“Slowly or you’ll spill it,” she warned.
She refilled the cup several times before pulling out the tin of crackers she’d placed in the inner pocket of her loose-fitting qípáo gown. “I wish had more to offer. Maybe I can get food for you tomorrow.” Already her mind was busily at work like a mouse worrying a piece of cheese from a trap as she tried to figure out a way to secure extra food from the galley.
She scraped the last of the water from the cistern and offered it to the woman who spoke a little Mandarin. The girl returned the empty cup to Huiann and then clasped her hand, her skin as cool as river water. “Thank you. Thank you,” she repeated her gratitude over and over, mixed with foreign words.
Huiann bobbed her head. “You’re most welcome,” she answered formally. “May the gods bestow only good fortune on you and your family.”
“Great blessings come from heaven but small blessings come from man. Thank you, kind sister.” The woman’s accent was atrocious but the old proverb was clear enough. The gods could only be counted on for so much help. The rest was up to one’s fellow man.
Huiann squeezed the cold hand then let go. “I must leave now. Tomorrow,” she promised.
Once more she scurried upstairs, heart pounding as the passed the noisy boiler room, and returned the cask to her cabin where Madam Teng still slept. Huiann couldn’t bear the thought of staying in the stuffy room for the rest of the night. She returned to the deck and her spot at the railing, which had become her true home on the ship.
The scent of brine replaced the ghastly odors from below, and the fresh air cooled Huiann’s heated cheeks. She stared at the horizon where for weeks there’d been nothing to see but the union of ocean and sky. But as the sun emerged from clouds just long enough to set behind the fast-moving ship, its golden shafts illuminated a thin dark line bisecting ocean and sky in the east.
Land! By tomorrow they might reach it. She imagined meeting her husband for the first time and how he’d listen with concern when she told him about the miserable women imprisoned on the ship, even as he scolded her for going where she wasn’t allowed. She fantasized about a handsome, bold man, confronting the ship’s captain, freeing the women and finding them jobs in one of his factories where they could earn money for passage home. What happened after that, she couldn’t quite picture. Her wedding night was a mystery and the life she would live as the wife of an important American businessman would not come into focus.
