Dear Future Husband

14. Dragon Boats

8 June 1889

Maximilian Walker was quite ambivalent toward crowds.

On one hand, they were easy to hide in, and he still felt paranoid about being discovered by Lord Winthrop, or even by Edgar Wakefield, even though the latter was half a world away. On the other hand, they were loud, suffocating, and he often feared pickpockets. In his short tenure in Hong Kong, he had become aware that although he had dark hair, he most certainly did not blend in with the locals in appearance. He wore Western clothing, his skin was too pale and burned easily in the sun, and his mannerisms were too European to ever be mistaken for a local. The factors combined to make him a target for pickpockets, who assumed that all foreigners must be rich.

This made it rather difficult and irritating for him when he wanted to slip out on days off from work, to explore the city. Still, he had managed to find a great deal of scintillating sights in spite of that obstacle. He had seen lion dances, which were great roaring things with a line of men holding what amounted to a heavy, cloth-covered imitation of a lion with an open flap for a mouth and numerous tassels and spangles covering its 'body'. Their undulating movements had been punctuated by a rhythmic flurry of drumbeats and firecrackers. Maximilian had witnessed Cantonese operas and endured their assaults on his eardrums. He'd snuck out to the outdoor markets and sampled nearly every type of food. Now, he was down by the river to witness the dragon boat racing.

Maximilian pushed through the throngs of people, smelling the salt that rose off the sea at Victoria Harbour. Cheering and chatter assailed his ears, the aroma of the zongzi or sticky rice that they would throw into the river for some dead poet to eat-or was it so that the fish didn't eat his body? That myth had left him thoroughly confused, in a state of befuddlement that had not been assisted by Lee's brief explanation.

He thought he caught a flash of gold, and his heart stopped dead in his chest. Could it be-Was it Rosalie's hair?-But, no, it was only the gleam off of one of the boats, brightly decorated. The Chinese, he was learning, preferred bright Colours like scarlet and gold as being symbolic of good fortune. He'd seen one of Lee's relatives get married in red for luck, rather than the white that Queen Victoria had caused to become so in fashion.

Still, as though moved by some unknown force, he shoved through the crowd, all elbows and gangly limbs. Finally, leaning against a railing, he spotted her. There was no one else with a fall of hair so blonde, with such roses in her cheeks, that the sight of her took his breath away. He heard her laugh, clutching the hand of her father as she ate some sort of local food off a stick. Maximilian had missed her so dearly in the last week, he had wondered if it had really been worth it to leave her on that ship without a farewell except for the note he'd left her.

"Rosalie!" he shouted, and she turned her head, but then-

A hand clapped onto his shoulder. Startled, he pivoted, reaching for the knife he always kept in his boot, but it was only Lee. He held two wrapped zongzi. "Still pining after that girl, huh?"

He rolled his eyes, but when Maximilian shifted his gaze again, Rosalie and her father were gone. "Not at all. Shall we go eat some food and watch the races?"

"A good plan," Lee said, pushing his hair out of his eyes.

So they went, eating the combination of sticky rice, beans, and preserved sausage within the bamboo leaf. Earlier today, Lee's mother had wrapped them, asking Lee and Maximilian-as the youngest members of the household-to help her. He had enjoyed the process; though she was from an entirely different culture, Lee's mother reminded him of Aunt Caro. His heart sank at the thought of never seeing her again.

"Are there any girls you are pining after?" Maximilian asked him after a few minutes of strolling in silence, feeling the salt breeze blow against his skin.

Lee snorted. "It wouldn't matter. My mother has her eye on a match for me."

Maximilian had never given much thought to arranged marriages. He had been too poor for anyone to care who he married. Now, his world was gradually expanding and new opportunities were opening up to him, but he still felt-no, he knew-that there were higher echelons which he would never reach.

"Is she pretty?" he asked, swallowing his last bite of rice and crumpling the bamboo leaf and twine in his hand. "Have you met her?"

Lee looked aghast. "No, never."

Then, Maximilian remembered that in China, the girl had probably never left her house without being veiled against men's sights if she was very rich. It was like a more extreme form of the English "coming out" into society. Come to think of it, in his brief time here, he'd only seen poor or married women out and about, not wealthy ones.

"Oh. How do you know her?" Maximilian asked. "Or, how does your family know her?"

"My father is business partners with her father," Lee said with a shrug. He seemed indifferent to the idea of marriage and so, Maximilian dropped the topic. Something about Lee seemed wary, on edge as his eyes continually scanned the perimeter.

"Is something the matter?" Maximilian asked. He, too, was beginning to feel uneasy, as if they were being followed. "Say, is that man watching us?"

"That's what I am attempting to find out, Max," Lee replied, shading his eyes with his hands. "Let us duck into the shade."

They slipped into the shadows beneath a copse of trees, the chatter somewhat muffled by the crash of waves against the shore. Max sucked in a breath as he saw a man, who wore a European-style newsboy cap pulled low over his eyes, surveying the area. His gaze was shifty, his hands tucked into his pockets before he pulled out a cigarette and lit it, his face obscured by puffs of smoke.

"Why is he following us?" Maximilian asked.

Lee frowned. The stranger's face was brown and leathery, so marred by the impressions of the sun that it was impossible to discern his place of origin. He spat onto the ground, wiping his mouth with a stained kerchief. The man must have been a fan of chewing tobacco as well as cigarettes, because his teeth were stained yellowy-brown. When he looked up, his gaze was fixed directly on Maximilian.

He doffed his cap, removed his other hand from the pocket of his tattered trousers, then dropped a note and walked on. The two boys watched it flutter to the ground before Maximilian darted out and snatched it up. Lee gave a cry of warning, but Maximilian didn't care. He had to find out why they were being trailed.

The note smelled of smoke, its edges singed as though it had been rescued from a fire. He squinted to read the spidery script that ran across its small surface: As you value your life, do not return to England. Looking up, the two boys gave chase to the stranger.

"Who would send you such a note?" Lee wondered, sitting next to Maximilian on the dock and watching the sun set. The crowds had thinned out by now, until only a few clumps of people remained. "And are they helping you or aiming to harm you?"

Maximilian was barefoot, seeing that his pale skin had visibly bronzed as he dragged his feet back and forth over the surface of the water with a small splash, creating ripples. "I have to presume that they are aiming to help me, because I left England on the threat of being press-ganged."

"Press-ganged?" Lee echoed with a frown of confusion.

"The man to whom I was apprenticed attempted to sell me into the navy," he explained. Maximilian still felt a stab of betrayal as he spoke the words aloud. "But if he meant to help me, why would he run away?"

"Perhaps his employer did not want you to be helped," Lee suggested, leaning back and interlacing his fingers behind his head. "Perhaps his employer was seeking to harm you."

"Perhaps," he said, before remembering something. "The man had a tattoo on his wrist."

Lee turned to him, sitting up. "Well, was it a symbol? Of what?"

Wracking his brain, Maximilian tried to remember, when suddenly, with a cry and a shout, he felt himself being shoved into the water.