Always a Stranger by Amara Royce

Author:Amara Royce [Royce, Amara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: eKensington
Published: 2014-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

A Change of Plans

“Hana, blossom, you should set these pieces aside until you can give them the attention they require,” Tsubaki-san said gently while taking needlework from her numb fingers. The eldest of the Jade ladies, a quiet little woman, was the closest thing the Jade Garden had to a housekeeper. And a cook. And she was the most skilled with needle and thread, so she oversaw all their work on clothing and other items needed by the household. Occasionally, Mr. Broek accepted special orders for embroidered silk and linen to be used for gowns and tablecloths and other finery. The delicate linen handkerchief Tsubaki took from her was starting to fray at the corner, so severely had she butchered the fabric, reworking the same area over and over.

She kept thinking that she should feel shame and remorse about what she’d done with Skyler, or rather to Skyler, about how she’d so clearly moved him in spite of his own intentions. She shouldn’t feel intimacy or pleasure or a desire to repeat the event. Between his declaration that he wanted to protect her and his obvious physical attraction to her, she craved more of his attention, more of his presence—which was absolutely something she should not feel.

“Yes, Hana dear,” Bana-san called from the far corner where she was sewing. Her voice carried so easily. “With your mind so far from earth, you may expect those silks to float around you if you let them go. Alas, they would crash to the ground instead and leave a terrible mess for the rest of us.”

The women all chuckled as she felt her face warming. It was fortunate Takara had already gone upstairs to bed. Her embarrassment was overtaken by the truth of their terrible mess. The women presented such a composed and unflappable mask when dealing with all that Broek required of them. How they withstood the cheap use of their bodies—when Broek took all the profits, claiming they covered living expenses!—she could not comprehend. Only Yuki still cried sometimes; a pale, delicate young bud of a woman, she was the last one Broek had recruited along the way . . . in Canton, or was it Shanghai? And Ume truly seemed to enjoy her assignments. True, Tsubaki and Bana had been trained as oiran, their obedience and acquiescence bred into them long ago, when their families sold them to the pleasure house. She almost wished for that same stoic distancing of their spirit from their performances; such mental skill would serve them well in the days ahead.

These days, Broek made a point of reminding Hana every morning that the auction would be soon, that she and her sister would be in the keeping of a new master very soon. Only the gods knew what, if any, restrictions Broek actually placed on the bids—she had no voice in any of it. Even her insistence that Takara go with her when the auction ended held no true weight. She had one measure

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