Steeped in Blood | TO BE REWRITTEN

IV. WILLIAM FAIRFAX

HIS NEW ABODE, IF UTTERLY FOREIGN, WAS AT the very least highly luxurious. Cherrywood screens divided his apartment from the rest of the Lees' house on the Peak—the part of Hong Kong reserves mainly for government officials and very, very rich men. Purple silk curtains embroidered with rich designs of golden dragons and phoenixes were tied back with yellow tassels, to reveal a stunning view of Hong Kong island, the sea and the wharves and the buildings below. People bustled about their day just as they would in London or Paris or any other big city. The floors were tiled with mosaics, blue and red tiles forming intricate patterns beneath his feet.

Elizabeth leaned against his bedroom door and watched as servants carried in his trunks, unpacking winter clothing into camphor chests to keep out the moths. "Are your apartments to your liking, Lord William?"

So she was no longer calling him simply by his Christian name, then? "They seem to be of the highest quality." It was true. He hadn't even seen such beautiful surroundings since his Grand Tour. "Thank you for your hospitality, Liza."

Her brows raised at the nickname, the first genuine expression of her sentiments that he had seen on her face. "I never allowed you to call me Liza."

"And I asked you to call me only by my first name. Which one of us is wrong?" William asked her, folding his arms across his chest.

They gazed at each other for a long moment, blue eyes meeting brown ones before she looked down and away and murmured, so quietly he could scarce hear her. "We are now both at fault if you wish to keep score."

He chuckled, his body unbending, tension released as he uncoiled his limbs. William walked over to her, each step feeling pivotal, as though he stood on the edge of a blade and the wrong move could leave him sliced or worse, falling off. Her face was still out of sight to him, the top of her head now aligned with his collarbone. An elaborate hair clip glinted at him in the sunlight, red gems dangling off of its gold bar and contrasting with her ebony hair. She had changed, her outfit a far cry from the schoolgirl's uniform she had donned earlier today, all draping silks and voluminous sleeves: a picture-perfect image of the Orient. Yet he thought--no, somehow he knew--that there was more to her.

"I do not." They were too close. They were too far. She looked up and he could pick out the one lone freckle on her face, right beneath her eyebrow, and notice all the features that made her beauty unlike that of any other girl he'd known. "I do not wish to keep score or play games with my future wife. I only want to get to know you, and for you to get to know me."

She was silent. He feared the thoughts that swam behind her eyes. Judgmental ones, no doubt.

"I have no need to become acquainted with one of the men who ruined my country with drugs and took my homeland from me," Elizabeth forced out, each word brittle and sharp. "If you call me Liza again or anything else that is improperly intimate, I shall not respond. Good day, Lord William."

"Took your homeland from you, Elizabeth?" he repeated the words, a bitter taste forming on his tongue. "That was the Crown and the East India Company, not me."

She turned to face him, the cold stare in her brown eyes seeming at odds with the warm hue. But no--her clothes were blood red, her skin a milky white, her hair jet black. Elizabeth Lee was everything but warm.

"Your father is going to be the governor, William. I think that warrants you to some responsibility for the takeover of Hong Kong." A sneer curled her lip and he was overcome by the sudden desire to crush his mouth to hers and erase that expression. But he held himself still as she pulled herself to her full height, an entire foot shorter than him but seeming larger somehow. The servants around them stilled their movements. "Do not pretend that you are an innocent."

William strode towards her and she opened the door slowly as if to leave. Yet her hand was still on the doorknob, her unmoving form limned by the setting sun. "Believe me when I say this, Elizabeth. I have never, in my life, I assure you, claimed to be innocent."

Elizabeth opened the door and quietly left. William let his forehead fall against the doorjamb for a moment, his body sagging as emotions drained from him and left him, for a moment, feeling even more exhausted by their conversation than he already had been by the long journey and alien environment. 

☕️

HEAT, STICKY AND CLOYING, WRAPPED AROUND HIM LIKE a second skin, and William woke up thrashing beneath the silk sheets as he tried to lower his body temperature. His fair hair was damp against his forehead with sweat, and he managed to separate himself ungracefully from the blankets before getting out of bed. He thought about wrapping a light robe around himself to hide his less-than-appropriate state, but it was still far too hot for that. So, clad only in his nightshirt and a pair of loose linen trousers, he wandered toward what he thought was the direction of the kitchen for a drink of water. 

Somehow, he wound up at a balcony instead, watching the city as it lit up even at this hour of the night.

"What keeps you up at this time, William?" Elizabeth's voice, polite but edged with a cold poison, reached his ears. 

He turned to look at his fiancee, trying to keep his expression placid. "The heat. Is it always so hot?"

"It gets better in the winter," she replied. "Did you require something?"

He had the urge to say no, to make her stay and not leave to fetch anything for him. He wanted desperately to act on that urge. "Why are you awake, Elizabeth?"

Her eyes widened, looking at him as though he had asked her if she thought that mermaids existed. "Ex--I... I  could not sleep, is all. The heat had nothing to do with it."

William sensed that she added the latter sentence to rub something in his face, to assert some superiority over him. To say that he was weak for not being able to withstand changes in the climate. "What are you implying, fiancee?"

She tilted her head back to look at him--bloody hell, he forgot that she was a whole foot shorter than him when she acted like she was an entire foot taller and wearing a crown--and only said, "I implied nothing. I stated facts, sir."

"Very well, then." He doubted he would be able to get through to her tonight and had no desire to endure more of her thinly veiled hatred for him. "Could you direct me to the kitchen? I desire a glass of water."

She did so silently and when his hands were wrapped around a cool glass, she murmured, "Good night, William."