Burning Tigress Read Free

stopped. Even her golden hair tumbling out of its pins seemed to still. "Gone?"
    "Dai-ge. She and her husband left on horses this morning." Disapproval filled the old man's tone.
    "But where could they be going?"
    Mr. Li didn't answer. Still, Ken Jin could see that there was more. If only Miss Charlotte would leave them alone, he could find out the truth. Instead, she remained absolutely still, looking at Mr. Yi as if he had sprouted horns.
    Abruptly, all changed. Charlotte nodded and more of her hair slipped free to dance about her face. "Very well. Then I shall have to leave her a message for when she returns."
    Mr. Yi nodded, gesturing to the library. Charlotte shook her head.
    "No, I shall leave my message as I did when we were children. Yes," she went on, more to herself than to Mr. Yi, "just like when we were little." And with that, she dashed upstairs.
    Ken Jin longed to follow. He suspected the two women each had a secret cache somewhere in their rooms. The location would be hidden from parents and servants alike, known only to the two girls who had been best friends since Joanna's arrival in Shanghai ten years ago.
    Had Joanna—Shanghai's newest Tigress cub—already left a message for her best friend? What secrets might she reveal? Ken Jin could only pray that the white girl showed some sense and kept private things private. Though when had the ghost people ever been able to restrain their passions? Especially young women? Ken Jin shook his head, fearing the worst, especially since old Mr. Yi was obviously bursting with news.
    Taking a cue from the aged butler, Ken Jin accepted an invitation to tea. Charlotte would not take long, he knew. She was not a woman to linger over letters, even one to her closest friend, so he had little time to learn everything.
    Like all white monstrosities, the Crane home was built and run in the way of a great English house; so Ken Jin was surprised when Mr. Yi did not lead him to a private butler's sitting room. Instead, they went to the kitchen to sit at a large wooden table while water heated on the great stove. There were servants all around: the English cook, two Shanghai footmen flirting with a scullery maid clearly just in from a country farm. Two parlor maids flitted in and out, their easy manners marking them as low-class Shanghai, barely one step up from nail-shack whores.
    All went silent upon Ken Jin's entrance—but only for a minute. Mr. Yi called for tea and then sat down, looking as much like a reclining mandarin as one could while sitting in a hard wooden chair in the middle of an English kitchen.
    The water heated while he dropped tea leaves into a teapot on the table, and the gossip began to flow with special animation as soon as the English chef left for the wine cellar.
    "I would never take my wife to Peking," said a footman. "It's too dangerous—"
    "Too far away," interrupted the other footman as he rearranged the candles on the kitchen altar. "You like things quick and close. And quick."
    It was a sexual joke, and it got a predictable response. The maids laughed, while the scullery girl blushed a bright red even as she shooed the two away from the altar.
    "These white people are crazy," complained the first man. "Why would any father leave? Simply throw the man out—"
    "He's her husband," snapped the scullery girl in her thick accent. "A father has no say anymore."
    "A man has a say in his own house," replied the footman hotly. "He should have thrown them both out. Any daughter who thinks she can choose her own husband deserves no better."
    One of the parlor maids moved close, tweaking the argumentative footman on the cheek. "A smart father opens the doors and learns about his new son-in-law's connections, then decides what to do. That's what the master's doing. He may be white, but he isn't stupid. The barbarians know how to use their friends."
    "The whites know how to use anything and everything," muttered the second footman, clearly voicing a regular