I Ran Away With His Child novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Pearls, Off

"He hasn't asked me yet, Old Madam," said Mu Qing.

It was the first thing that came into his head, and it came out in a clear voice that carried to the rafters.

For a moment nobody in the hall moved.

Then somebody at the back made a small, strangled sound, and forty people in black began, very quietly, to laugh.

Old Madam's mouth twitched.

"Then he has until next solstice," she said. "Zhengyuan, I should not leave it that long. I am eighty-five."

"Yes, Nainai," said Xu, who had gone scarlet to the ears.

She closed the register on the wet ink, and the thing was done.

That night Ran slept in Old Madam's rooms again, by his own request.

"It is in the minutes," he said. "Tai Nainai is going to teach me about the carp. Also, she has a better pillow."

Old Madam, behind him, said nothing and looked extremely satisfied.

The house was very quiet after the hall.

Nobody met Mu Qing's eye in the corridors, and nobody was unkind, and the old cook bowed to him in the kitchen court.

He did not go to the annex.

"Not there," he said at the foot of the back stairs. "Your room."

Xu stopped on the step.

"I have never taken anyone to it."

"I know. That is why."

It was at the end of the east gallery, up four stairs, and nothing in it had changed since Xu was eighteen.

There was a narrow wooden bed and a desk under the window.

On the shelf stood a row of model ships with their rigging gone grey, and a swimming medal on a faded ribbon.

Mu Qing walked slowly down the shelf, touching nothing.

"Which did you build?"

"All of them," said Xu. "Badly."

"The third one has no mast."

"The third one had a mast until my father looked at it," said Xu. "I took it off myself. It seemed more dignified."

Mu Qing laughed, properly, the first time all day.

Xu closed the door and turned the key.

He stood against it, a man who had been brave for a whole day and was now out of it.

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