Captive Bride by Bonnie Dee

Author:Bonnie Dee [Dee, Bonnie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-10-18T22:49:27+00:00

Bonnie Dee

147

Dora returned from seeing Mrs. Kittridge out.

“That woman is such a snob!” She pulled a face and tipped her nose high in the air. “Snob.”

“Snob. Yes.” She’d known such women in Suzhou, the ones who spent their lives demonstrating their superiority over others. Although Huiann’s family had been well-respected and fairly well-off, there were always those who placed themselves higher and enjoyed talking down to those they considered social inferiors.

“Ready? Let’s go.” Dora led the way out the kitchen door and down the narrow alley to the street in front of the shop.

Huiann paused at the entrance of the alley, studying the busy street, the traffic, pedestrians and shops.

There was no one who looked like her among all the pale faces that passed by. She tipped her face down, tugged the brim of her hat lower and followed Dora onto the board walkway.

Dora linked arms with her so they walked side by side. They went around the corner and Huiann gazed in fascination at the teeming thoroughfare. She’d thought Suzhou was a large city, but San Francisco was beyond belief. So many people packed into so little space. It felt good to stride along under the open sky and to breathe fresh air after being indoors for days. Relatively fresh air, for a thousand smells assaulted her from horse dung to body odor to cooking aromas.

Dora stopped to examine frosted pastries in a bakery window, pointing out the ones she’d buy if she could afford them. Huiann barely glanced at the sweets before resuming her study of the milling crowd. She 148

Captive Bride

couldn’t let her vigilance drop in case Xie Fuhua was still searching for her even after these many weeks.

She plucked at Dora’s sleeve. “Come.”

“All right, but look at these shoes. Aren’t they beautiful? Wouldn’t you love to have a pair like that?” Dora dragged her to another window.

A salesperson took a pair of shoes from behind the glass pane and replaced them with another pair. All the shoes were displayed on a length of black velvet and were arrayed at different heights in an attractive presentation.

Alan needs to put our dresses in a front window.

We’ll have so many orders our fingers will bleed trying to keep up with them. She was excited by the prospect. A workroom full of seamstresses and her ingenuity in duplicating the magazine fashions, and they’d have a solid business. Maybe over time she could introduce some designs her own.

This time it was Dora who pulled on Huiann’s arm.

“We’d better get going. We have quite a walk ahead of us.”

After several more blocks, Huiann’s feet began to ache. The heavy brogans had rubbed blisters on her heels and toes. She wished she’d worn her soft-sided slippers. They wouldn’t have shown beneath her skirt.

But she marched on without complaining.

They made a few more twists and turns, ending up on a quieter street. Dora stopped before a door with a placard above it. “Dr. Harrigan will have what you need.”

Dora opened the door and ushered Huiann inside a dimly lit, stuffy room.

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