The Jade Temptress. Jeannie Lin

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СКАЧАТЬ role is different than that of a concubine. If I were to leave the Lotus to disappear into Deng’s household, I would have been completely under his wife’s rule.”

      He took a moment to consider her explanation. His curiosity must have been satisfied, because he gestured toward the door. “Come inside.”

      She went still. They were at the entrance to the study. “I can’t—”

      “I need you to see something.”

      Without waiting for her, he pushed the door open. If Mingyu turned and fled now, things would be even worse for her. She had no choice but to follow his lead.

      It wasn’t as bad inside with Deng’s body removed, yet in a way it was also worse. Bloodstains surrounded the desk and chair, the only clean area being where the corpse had sat.

      “You should know that the evidence indicates the general was killed very close to the time that you arrived at the house,” Wu said. “You may have even been in the house at the same time, with the killer leaving through the rear exit.”

      She swallowed and her hand flew to her throat. “I could have walked in at the wrong moment—”

      “Did you see anyone out in the street when you arrived?”

      Mingyu shook her head. “No... I don’t know.”

      “There are a few details I left off of the official report. I need you to speak to them now.”

      Her chest tightened until she could hardly breathe. She had told him everything, hadn’t she?

      “There was blood on the hem of your robe yesterday. Also on your sleeve.”

      Every muscle within her tensed. “Impossible.”

      “There was also blood on your hands, Lady Mingyu.”

      She vaguely remembered stepping toward the corpse. She remembered backing away, stumbling to the gate. Calling to the boy who was loitering outside.

      “You were studying my hands in the interrogation room,” she said dully.

      “Beneath your fingernails. When I came back here last night, I found the washbasin had been used. You can still see it now.”

      In a trance, she walked to the table in the corner where the basin had been set. The water was tinged pink. Mingyu looked down at her hands next. They were clean now, but she’d scrubbed them for an hour the night before, not understanding why she’d felt the need to.

      “You know things about me that I don’t even know myself,” she murmured. The memory seemed like it was there and it wasn’t, as if there were a fog over her eyes. “I must have gone to him when I saw him. I was so confused, I must have touched my hand to his chest to see if his heart was still beating. I don’t even know why I did it. I already knew he was dead. I didn’t remember any of this until now, I swear to heaven.”

      Wu regarded her with a keen eye and she could feel her cheeks heating under his scrutiny. Her heart was hammering inside her. She didn’t like how it felt to have to plead for her life.

      “People react to death in unpredictable ways,” he began slowly. “With anger, with tears, sometimes even laughter and any number of small madnesses.”

      It was the sort of assurance one said to the bereaved, but there seemed to be something else behind his words. Something hidden deep.

      “You didn’t bring me here to condemn me, then?”

      “I don’t aim to condemn anyone. I just want answers.” Wu walked over to the desk next, to the last place on this earth Mingyu wanted to go. “There is one more thing I need you to see.”

      Laid across the desk were Deng’s personal items—a chop carved from soapstone and a stack of letters. He must have been reading correspondences that morning.

      But Wu’s gaze was directed, not onto the desk, but beneath it. A scroll had fallen to the floor where it remained open, partially hidden.

      “Is this you, Lady Mingyu?”

      She ventured closer, avoiding the bloodstains on the floor and chair. At the first sight of the scroll, she gasped. It was a brush painting of a courtesan rendered in graceful, elegant strokes. A line of poetry had been inscribed down the right-hand side, comparing the lady to an orchid. There were hundreds like this floating around the pleasure quarter, but this one was unmistakably her.

      “I didn’t even know the general owned this.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I didn’t even know such a painting existed.”

      She looked so heartbreakingly young! The painting showed her seated in a meadow with tall grass around her. There was a faint hint of a breeze in the sway of the grass and the way her hair flew about her face. Blood had spilled onto the paper, forming a ghastly frame around her.

      “Your face was the last thing Deng Zhi saw in this life,” Wu remarked. “He sent his guards away to be with you. He was anticipating your arrival the moment he was killed.”

      She shook her head, wanting to deny everything, but it was impossible to ignore. “I don’t know how that came to be here. I meant nothing to Deng. He wanted me the way a soldier procures a horse. As property.”

      “Do not lie to me, for if I find that you have tried to trick me, there will be consequences,” Wu warned. “Were you involved in Deng’s death?”

      At that moment, she was convinced his relentless gaze could pierce straight into her soul.

      “No.”

      Mingyu said nothing else, letting that one word stand. Wu had never been lured or swayed by any of her artfulness. She expected another rainstorm of questions from him, but he remained silent.

      Finally the constable stepped back from the desk. The nod he gave her was a begrudging one, hard-earned, but Mingyu still wasn’t certain whether he believed her or not.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      THE MOMENT MINGYU was free of the house, she fled to the side of one her courtesan-sisters who was waiting in the street. They ducked beneath the shade of a parasol, heads held close in conversation like a pair of sparrows on a branch. Once more, Kaifeng was left to watch as Mingyu walked away, hanging on to the last sight of her until she was nothing more than a shape in the distance.

      Mingyu was frightened and desperate and she was certainly hiding something, but his gut told him she wasn’t guilty. Unfortunately his gut and every other part of him were susceptible to Mingyu. He couldn’t trust his instincts around her.

      Kaifeng returned inside to gather Deng’s belongings as evidence. It was striking that among the few personal items in the study, one of them should be a painting of Mingyu.

      Had Deng been captivated by her? Had he gazed affectionately at the painting, so smitten that he’d missed the warning signs of an imminent attack? Lust and longing might have made him careless enough to dismiss his servants for some privacy, but he was an accomplished soldier. Why was there no struggle?

      As Kaifeng packed the items into СКАЧАТЬ