The Hidden Blade: A Prequel to My Beautiful Enemy (Heart of Blade) by Sherry Thomas

Author:Sherry Thomas [Thomas, Sherry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: loss, death, travel, family life, grief, China, coming of age, Downton Abbey, youth, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, friendship, childhood, 19th Century
ISBN: 9781631280061
Published: 2014-07-19T21:00:00+00:00

Ying-ying ran into Little Dragon on the way. He carried a carafe of spirits and a small cup on a tray. She looked at him quizzically—what business did he have in this part of the residence?

“Bai Gu-niang,” he greeted her coldly as they passed each other.

She gave a small nod.

Then, behind her, she heard him say softly, “The wind is strong today. Would Master Keeper Chang care for some heated spirits?”

She looked over her shoulder. He was speaking to a middle-aged manservant, rail-thin and stooped, who was sweeping the snow that had fallen onto the walking path.

She would never have pegged Little Dragon as the kind-hearted type, but he treated the older servant as if the latter were his father.

The garden where she had first seen Master Kuo-tung was empty; she kept walking. When weather turned cold he had invited her to his rooms, where they could be nice and warm inside. That was when she learned that he lived in the Court of the Contemplative Bamboo, which also housed Da-ren’s study, in a row of east-facing rooms.

It is so his sons would take their lessons with me seriously, Master Kuo-tung had explained as to why he had been given such a place of honor.

Do they? she had asked.

He had smiled and shaken his head slightly. The younger one takes everything seriously. The older one, well, I’m afraid the older one doesn’t take anything seriously—or at least not his studies.

Which had not surprised Ying-ying at all.

She stopped just outside the moon gate to peer into the Court of the Contemplative Bamboo—she didn’t want to run into Da-ren and then have to explain what she was doing there. Once she was sure she was safe from that possibility, she skirted around the bamboo grove and slipped past Master Kuo-tung’s door—he had told her there was no need for her to knock, and she had immediately taken him up on his offer, happy to not make any noises that might attract Da-ren’s attention.

If Da-ren was home, that was. He was still a busy man and left the residence almost daily for business at court and elsewhere.

The arrangements of Master Kuo-tung’s rooms was a familiar sequence to her: the first room for receiving and dining, the second as a study, and then an inner bedchamber—Mother’s rooms had been laid out exactly that way.

He was not in the receiving room. She called him and received no response. She poked her head into his study—and nearly stumbled a step backward: He had in his hands the jade tablet Amah had stolen from Da-ren!

She must have made some noise. He glanced up and smiled. “Ah, Bai Gu-niang, when did you come in? I didn’t hear you at all.”

Her mouth opened and closed several times before she could ask, “If you don’t mind my curiosity, Master Kuo-tung, how did you come by your artifact?”

“This? From my father. He purchased two such tablets in Nanking many years ago, after the First Opium War.”

He made it sound so ordinary. Perhaps Da-ren—and consequently Amah—had been wrong about the value of the tablet.

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