And the Bride Wore Red. Lucy Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ could have seen the fireworks she set off in there.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘She used to take me out to visit London’s Chinatown, especially on Chinese New Year. I thought I was in heaven—all that colour, the glittering lights and the music—’

      ‘Oh, yes, I remember,’ Olivia broke in eagerly.

      ‘You saw it too?’

      ‘Only once. My mother visited some friends who lived near there, and they took us out a couple of nights to see what was happening. It was like you said, brilliant and thrilling, but nobody could explain it to me. There was a lot of red, and they were supposed to be fighting somebody, but I couldn’t tell who or what.’

      ‘Some people say they’re fighting the Nian,’ Lang supplied. ‘A mythical beast rather like a lion, who devours crops and children. So they put food out for him and let off firecrackers, because he’s afraid of loud noises and also of the colour red. So you got lots of red and fireworks and lions dancing. What more could a child want?’

      ‘Nothing,’ Olivia said, remembering ecstatically. ‘Oh, yes, it was gorgeous. So much better than the English New Year celebrations, which always seemed boringly sedate after that.’

      ‘Me too. It was the one thing I refused ever to miss, and that drove my mother mad, because the date was always changing—late January, mid-February—always lasting fifteen days. Mum complained that she couldn’t plan for anything, except that I’d be useless for fifteen days. I said, “Don’t worry, Mum, I’m always useless”.’ He made a face. ‘She didn’t think that was at all funny.’

      ‘Your grandmother sounds wonderful,’ Olivia said sincerely.

      ‘She was. She told me how everyone is born in the year of an animal—a sheep, an ox, a rat, a dragon. I longed to find I was born in the year of the dragon.’

      ‘And were you?’

      He made a face. ‘No, I was born in the year of the rabbit. Don’t laugh!’

      ‘I’m not laughing,’ she said, hastily controlling her mirth. ‘In this country, the rabbit is calm and gentle, hard-working—’

      ‘Dull and plodding,’ he supplied. ‘Dreary, conventional—’

      ‘Observant, intelligent—’

      ‘Boring.’

      She chuckled. ‘You’re not boring, I promise.’

      It was true. He delighted her, not with any flashy display of personality, but because his thoughts seemed to reach out and take hers by the hand in a way that, she now realized, Andy had never done.

      He gave her a rueful grin.

      ‘Thank you for those kind words, even if you had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find them.’

      ‘According to everything I’ve read, there’s nothing wrong with being born in the year of the rabbit.’

      ‘And you’ve obviously read a lot, so I guess you know your own year.’ He saw her sheepish look and exclaimed, ‘Oh, no, please don’t tell me—!’

      ‘I’m sorry, I really am.’

      ‘The year of the dragon?’

      ‘It not my fault,’ she pleaded.

      ‘You know what that means, don’t you?’ He groaned. ‘Dragons are free spirits, powerful, beautiful, fearless, they soar above convention, refusing to be bound by rules and regulations.’

      ‘That’s the theory, but I never felt it quite fitted me,’ she said, laughing and trying to placate him. ‘I don’t see myself soaring.’

      ‘But perhaps you don’t know yourself too well,’ he suggested. ‘And you’ve yet to find the thing that will make you soar. Or the person,’ he added.

      The last words were spoken so quietly that she might have missed them, except that she was totally alive to him. She understood and was filled with sudden alarm. Things were happening that she’d sworn never to allow happen again.

      She would leave right now and retreat into the old illusion of safety. All she had to do was rise, apologise and leave, trying to avoid his eyes that saw too much. It was simple, really.

      But she didn’t move, and she knew that she wasn’t going to.

      Chapter Three

      ‘THE trouble with soaring,’ she murmured, ‘is that you fall to earth.’

      ‘Sometimes you do,’ he said gently. ‘But not always.’

      ‘Not always,’ she murmured. ‘Perhaps.’

      But it was too soon. Her nerve failed her and in her mind she crossed hastily to the cautious side of the road.

      ‘What about your grandmother? What was her year?’

      Tactfully he accepted her change of subject without demur.

      ‘She was a dragon too,’ he said. ‘With her courage and sense of adventure she couldn’t have been anything else—a real dragon lady. Everything she told me about this country seemed to bring me alive, until all I could think of was coming here one day.

      ‘We planned how we’d make the trip together, but she became very ill. I’d qualified as a doctor by then, and I knew she wasn’t going to recover, but she still talked as though it would happen soon.

      ‘At last we had to face the truth. On her deathbed she said, “I so much wanted to be there with you.” And I promised her that she would be.’

      ‘And she has been, hasn’t she?’ Olivia asked, marvelling.

      ‘Every step of the way,’ he confirmed. ‘Wherever I go, I remember what she told me. Her family welcomed me with open arms.’

      ‘Did you find them easily?’

      ‘Yes, because she’d stayed in touch. When I landed at Beijing Airport three years ago there were thirty people to welcome me. They recognised me at once from the pictures she’d sent them, and they all cheered.

      ‘It’s an enormous family. Not all of them live in Beijing, and many of those who lived further out had come in especially to see Meihui’s grandson.’

      ‘They weren’t put off by your being threequarters English?’

      He laughed. ‘I don’t think they even see that part of me. I’m one of the Lang family. That’s all that counts.’

      ‘It was clever of your grandmother to name you and your father Lang,’ Olivia mused. ‘In England it’s your first name, but here the family name comes first.’

      ‘Yes, my uncles are Lang Hai and Lang Jing, my great uncle is Lang Tao, my cousin is Lang Dai, so I fitted in straight away.’

      A sudden look of mischief crossed her face. ‘Tell СКАЧАТЬ