Dao only knew how much she had longed for exactly that, but Dao was right. It was only an illusion. She could be nothing more than an affair. Fei Long had told her as much. His own father had had a proper wife and a concubine, but that hadn’t been enough. Why, Fei Long was practically a monk for refusing her, protecting her from his desires as well as her own.
‘It won’t happen,’ Yan Ling assured.
‘Don’t forget that, all right?’ Dao chewed on her lower lip as she waited anxiously.
Yan Ling would go to Khitan as they’d planned. Fei Long didn’t want her. It didn’t matter now where she went, did it? This was always what he had wanted. He’d made her promise from the beginning to see the plan through to the end.
‘I promise.’ Yan Ling tried to imagine herself fleeing far enough away for the ache inside to fade. ‘I won’t forget.’
* * *
A day went by in agony.
And then another.
There were no more lessons to occupy her afternoons. Yan Ling had haunted the front part of the house and dawdled in the parlour. One of the chairs at the end of the sitting room had a view to Fei Long’s study, so she had sat there to struggle through a book of poems even though the light was poor and she could only understand a few of the words.
She had caught only Fei Long’s dark silhouette as he went through the door. Of course she had hoped he would look into the sitting area and see her intent on her book. He’d pause and then come to her simply out of courtesy—or because he was irresistibly, uncontrollably drawn to her.
He had done none of those things.
She could still hear his harsh tone as Fei Long declared there could be nothing between them. Her heart would shrivel all over again, but then the kiss. The kiss! The fragments of her memories refused to fit together.
It was a silly game and she had known she was tormenting herself, but she had wanted it to hurt, if pain was the only feeling she was permitted to have. She had become hopelessly tragic.
By the next day, Yan Ling’s stomach was in knots from the moment she woke. By the time she sat before her dressing table, the knots had transformed into a swarm of butterflies. Would Fei Long ever speak to her again? The uneasy, burdened silence between them had been preferable to this. At least she could see him and hear his voice.
‘I need to do something,’ she moaned as Dao pulled a comb through her hair.
‘Don’t you have wedding gifts to sew?’ Dao suggested pointedly, her eyes growing sharp in the mirror’s reflection.
Yan Ling decided she’d liked Dao more before her bolder nature emerged.
The two of them separated as Dao went to see to her duties at the front of the house. Yan Ling went about collecting the sewing basket and embroidery thread with a good deal of ill humour, even if no one was there to hear her slam the drawers in the storage closet. She didn’t need Dao’s protection or not-so-subtle reminders when Fei Long wouldn’t even look at her any more.
Traditional wedding gifts were items of clothing a bride would present to the groom’s family to show her skill with a needle. She wondered if the true heqin princesses deigned to embroider the shoes and robes themselves, or did they have their army of handmaidens do so?
The bolts of cloth had been stacked onto the shelf above her reach. She positioned the footstool and searched through the sewing basket for a pair of scissors. Needlework would be good for her. It was time-consuming, meticulous work and a perfectly acceptable excuse for sitting in her lookout spot in the parlour.
She balanced herself on the stool and reached up to unravel a length of black cloth from the bolt. All she needed was a square of it for the embroidered design.
‘You should get someone to help you,’ a deep voice spoke from behind her.
She started, but a firm hand pressed against the small of her back to steady her. Fei Long. Heat flooded through her from the point of that one touch.
‘Scissors, Yan?’ he admonished.
‘I was just—’
‘You could fall and hurt yourself.’
His broad fingers closed over hers to remove the iron shears and set them on a lower shelf. Her heartbeat raced and she was afraid to turn around as he guided her down from the step. Only