pops up today.
While it may have seemed odd to call a redheaded child Chinese Daughter, it generally brought some chuckles. However, although my roots are in no way Chinese, my family has ties to China/Asia. My mother spent six years during the 1930s living in the Philippines. Her father was an Army officer and when asked why he wanted a third tour of duty there replied, “It’s the only place in the world I can live as a gentleman on my salary.”
We also have, what I fear is badly damaged by now, film of my mother with her parents and brother in China somewhere around 1938. Those years, and later living near San Francisco, influenced my mother’s taste greatly and we grew up with furnishings and art that reflected this. My house today has several elements of Asian design. We also enjoyed a period of time when Mother developed an interest in Chinese cooking.
I’m no expert in China or her history, but I do find myself drawn to elements of her society. It is my great hope that I have done justice with my limited knowledge in the portrayal of my heroine, Meilin Wu. If there are mistakes, the blame belongs to my own imagination and ignorance.
Prologue
Satisfaction filled his soul, much like how the now decimated feast being cleared from the table filled his body. Andrew Christian Robinson sat back in his seat at the long dining table, surveying the joyous debris. Christmas Eve tradition demanded that the Robinson family hold an extravagant dinner for not only extended family, but several of the local dignitaries, the Reverend of the family church, and a few family friends with nowhere else to go this night.
However, there was nothing traditional about this year’s celebration. Glasses were raised and congratulations echoed to the heavy Tudor beams overhead. Once he knew Birdie watched from across the table, he glanced toward the ceiling and nodded. As if acknowledging one of the ghosts he’d told her resided in the house. Indeed, it was highly likely a few did haunt the old place. He’d just never seen one. Didn’t stop him from trying to torment her.
Still, if there were ghosts in the rafters, Drew imagined one or two might approve, although some might not. Either way, his father was getting married. Not that any of the humans attending dinner thought that was horrible, but he was now committed to marrying an American he’d fallen in love with twenty-three years earlier. A love that had produced a girl, Drew’s sister, Birdie, whom no one had known about until a month ago. The same one now giving him a skeptical eye from across the table.
Drew wasn’t displeased at all. In fact, he was thrilled to have a sister and a new mother. One who was warm, loving, funny, and very mother-like. Perhaps he’d never be able to lay to rest the ghost of his own mother, good old Beatrice. However, Randi Jean Dailey Ferguson, soon to be Robinson, would at last take her rightful place at his father’s side. Drew already loved her. Had from the moment she’d opened her home to him for Thanksgiving only weeks ago. An invite that’d grown to include his father who’d flown over to visit him at school for his first American holiday.
Seated at their father’s left, his sister kept shooting glances upward. Only three months younger than he, she might have been his twin. It still amazed him that he hadn’t recognized the Robinson golden hair, blue eyes, and sunny disposition in her. He’d met her as Birdie, a fun nickname, but her real name hadn’t been clear until her mother, and their father, were forced to confess their prior relationship. The timing had been damn close as Drew had been trying to figure out how to steal a kiss.
A thought that still twisted his stomach.
Yeah, he’d been attracted to her as he’d never been attracted to another female. He hadn’t understood the feeling, and he’d wanted to investigate it further. Had the story not been told, Drew’s stomach clenched, well, some pretty devastating damage could have occurred. He was still attracted to Birdie, but as a sister, on a soul-deep level. He also felt damned protective of her. Some latent Neanderthal programming to be sure, but she was his sister. And he wasn’t going to let a California meat-headed, beach bum jock use her like a party girl. Not on his watch.
Apparently giving up on ghost hunting for the moment, Birdie smiled at him and tipped her head at their parents sitting to her right, faces dangerously close. Drew lifted his champagne to her, and they shared a silent toast to their new relationship. Next to Birdie, Larry Attenborough, an old school chum of his father, bounced his gaze between Drew and Bird with hawk-sharp eyes.
“Now, really, did you have to keep this secret from me?” Larry asked.
“Too right we did,” Drew answered. “If you’d known earlier, London would be reading about it right now. Instead they’ll have to wait for Boxing Day to get the news.”
Larry made a disgusted sound and dismissed Drew, turning his attention to Birdie. “Tell me about you. Courtney or Birdie? What’s your real name?”
His sister managed to look down her adorable nose at the veteran gossip with an air of regal distain that amused Drew. That look could only be bred into a person, not taught. “My legal name is Courtney, but I’ve always been called Birdie. However, I’m changing that. You may call me Courtney.”
“Named after your old man, eh?” Larry nodded at Court, who paid them no attention whatsoever.
“Yes,” she answered simply. “Although my last name should have been Robinson all along, I’m keeping Ferguson to honor the man who raised me as his own.”
“Right, right. The honorable man who married your mum, knowing she carried another man’s child.” Larry nodded thoughtfully. “Not sure I could be so noble. Looks as if he did a good job of it, though.”
Drew silently agreed. Although Courtney—hell, how was he supposed to adjust to that name? The hell with it, he wouldn’t change—had suffered at the news, she appeared to be coming to grips with it. She’d loved Wyatt Ferguson, the man she’d known as her father all her life, and had mourned his death for the last two years. Now she had to make the mental switch. Certainly she’d taken the news the hardest.
Drew glanced down the table to where his maternal grandparents sat with his paternal grandmother. No, Courtney wasn’t the only one to take the news hard. His mother’s parents weren’t pleased at all, for different reasons, with the news of not only the newfound daughter but the marriage to the woman Court had loved all along instead of their beloved Beatrice.
There would be time to work it out. Drew was first in line to assume the leadership of the family companies from his father. Probably sooner than planned. The newlyweds would want time alone, and that would take his father away from the office.
Which made it imperative that Drew do well with his International Law degree. Followed by the ten week Chinese language immersion program. The path had been laid out four years earlier, geared toward giving him better negotiating skills with China. Court had never been comfortable working through interpreters, never completely sure the deals they’d worked so far had been fair.
With a knowledge of law, and an understanding of the language, Drew planned to spend a fair amount of the next several years in China, working that end of the business, making sure their employees in the Beijing office were loyal to the company.
Those were also worries for another time. Dinner was coming to an end, and it was time to mingle with the guests, including a handful of elderly aunts and uncles on short leave from their nursing homes. Somehow he didn’t think his father and mother-to-be were keen on visiting the drawing room for long. Although Randi looked radiant with happiness, she and her father, RJ, had only arrived that afternoon after nearly twenty-four hours of travel from California. There were shadows under her
