She opened her mouth to respond, but Lao Go blustered forward, stepping between her and the Englishman.
“No touch!” he barked in English. “No touch!”
As if he cared anything for her purity. But with his sudden push forward, Pervert was able to bend down and roughly pick her up. He jostled her foot by accident or out of spite, but either way she cried out as white hot pain shot through her entire body.
“Hush, bitch,” he growled in her ear. “Or I will drop you on your feet.”
The feet that he had taken great pleasure in breaking.
She white-knuckled through the pain, thankful for the remaining bits of opium in her body. Her dream of revenge kept her from screaming again as she envisioned the chi—the energy life force in his body—draining away until he was a wasted hulk.
They knew—because she had told them—that she could do these things. That her grandmother ran a shop selling curses, and she had learned from the woman’s knee.
“I will die very soon, Yan,” she whispered, giving voice to her fantasy. “My ghost will haunt you. I will eat the chi of your feet and cripple you ten times what you have done to me.”
“Shut up,” he snapped, his hands tightening painfully on her arm. “Or you will die now.”
“Please kill me now, Yan. I do not want to wait for my revenge.”
She’d frightened him. His expression wavered as she stared at him. He knew she spoke in earnest. With two broken feet, how was she to survive? Best to die now.
Except Max was suddenly there before them, his expression dark.
“You will take care!” he snapped. He looked like he wanted to grab her out of Pervert’s hands. She would have gone willingly, but the ship captain stepped in between.
“She must go back in the palanquin, my lord. How else can she go to your home?”
“Do it carefully,” he snapped.
“Of course, my lord. Of course.”
The English lord stepped back, his expression wary. Yihui smiled as she meted out a bit more revenge.
“Yes, Yan. Put me in the litter carefully. Otherwise, my ghost will chew on your balls before your feet.”
He set her very carefully in the wood cage. She resolved to eat his chi anyway. Every aspect of her body throbbed with pain. So hard not to howl at the knowledge that she might never walk again.
The others continued to talk. She didn’t want to hear their babble. Her life was over now that she couldn’t run to safety. What did she care what they planned?
But one could only fixate on pain for so long. Despite her will, she heard what they were saying.
“Well, how the devil did they get her here?” demanded the white lord.
“In a donkey cart, my lord. We couldn’t very well walk her through the streets of London.”
“Like so much cargo?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And you think that’s more dignified than sitting in my carriage?”
The captain shrugged. “It’s the Chinese way.”
It wasn’t the Chinese way unless one wanted to make a show of privilege and didn’t have a carriage. Did these Englishmen think the streets of Peking were clogged with men carrying palanquins?
“Seems remarkably uncomfortable,” the man grumbled.
Lao Gu, the obnoxious sycophant, sniffed his outrage. “She is an exalted lady! It is an insult to treat her as anything less!”
