6 December 1959

Lin was nursing, and Li was humming to her softly. It was an old song, a song without a name, a song Li could not have placed if she tried. She did not think her adoptive mother had sung it to her; Mama was a good woman, a kind woman, but Li had been nearly seven when she'd been taken to her new home, and she could not recall having ever heard Mama sing. Perhaps it was a tune her real mother had hummed to her, when she was small and safe, during those few brief years in Singapore before the war had come for their family. Much as it grieved her Li could not recall anything from those days; she had been too small, and the memories had faded from her mind. Nothing remained, no sense of that place or the people who had been her parents first. Papa had been a stranger to her, all those months ago; when she first laid eyes on him she had hoped to feel some sort of recognition, had hoped to know him on sight, but everything about him was foreign and terrifying to her eyes. That tall white man with his greying beard and his fine suit and his retinue of soldiers, she had looked at him almost with dismay, thinking how wrong it was, that such a man could be her father. All her life she wondered about him, this stranger from a foreign land who had taken a Chinese woman to wife and abandoned her and their child during the war; she had longed for him, and hated him, and grieved for him, and somehow the truth of him had not quite lived up to the expectations that had built over a lifetime without him.

But then he had pressed his hands to his heart and bowed his head to her in greeting, and she had felt the smallest amount of relief; whoever he was, whatever he was, he had approached her with respect according to her own customs, had not rushed at her or begun babbling away at her in a language she did not understand. He spoke Mandarin to her - in the beginning his speech had been rusty and fumbling from disuse, but he had grown more confident in the intervening months, and she had come to learn so much about him, this man who was a part of her very self.

She had learned that he was kind and gentle, that despite his elevated station he was not haughty or hard or demanding. She had learned the truth behind his absence, and grieved for him, for the pain that he had endured. She had learned that he had loved her mother, and loved her well, that she herself had been born into a happy home, even if she could not remember it. For those things she was grateful, more grateful than she could say; Papa had saved her, and never asked for anything in return. If he had she would have given it, and gladly, but he did not press her, or make demands; he said only I want you to be happy, and let her decide her own course for herself. Such freedom, such unconditional - and often exuberant - affection was unfamiliar to her, but in the months since she had come to this place she had grown to love it, and to love him.

Still holding her nursing child she sighed, and looked around the room that had been given to her. It was the same small suite she'd had since the night she first arrived; Papa had offered to move her upstairs, out of the guest suite and into a larger set of rooms more appropriate for a princess, with more space for Li and Lin to share, but she was in no hurry to leave. This suite was opulent by her standards, and she was not quite ready to move into one of the grand rooms upstairs.

"We would be like two little peas, rolling around in an empty pot," she said to Lin. The baby did not answer, of course, but her dark eyelashes fluttered at the sound of her mother's voice, and Li smiled at her, thinking what a beautiful thing she was, thinking how lucky they both were to be alive. Their flight from Shanghai to this place had been a terrifying ordeal, but Li had known at the time she had no other choice; after the horrific death of her husband, she could not in good conscience raise her child in such a place. Even if the accident of her own birth protected her, the knowledge that the government that ruled her could do such things turned her stomach, and she dreaded the thought of Lin growing up surrounded by such fear. It would have been selfish, she thought at the time, to stay in a place only because it was familiar to her, when her child would be safer, happier somewhere else, when there was a man who loved them and could provide for their every need waiting for them on the other side of the sea. It was the hardest thing she'd ever done, leaving her home behind, but with each passing day she grew more certain that she had done the right thing.

And Papa was happy, and his happiness had infected her own heart. She grieved for her husband still, and always would. She worried for her friends across the sea, trapped in famine and strife. But this castle, this kingdom, was her right by birth. She would learn their language and their ways and she would do her best to be a good princess, to make them proud of her, these people who would be her inheritance. Li did not entirely understand them, yet, but she understood duty, and she knew that one had been laid before her. It was a duty that would consume her until her dying day, but if her father could bear that burden, then so too could she, for his sake, if for no one else's.

And one day Lin, too, would take up that duty for herself.

"It will be easier for you, little one," Li told her, rocking absently in the fine upholstered chair Papa had acquired for her. Lin would grow up in this place, with these people, knowing what honor and responsibility waited for her; it would not seem strange to her, as it seemed strange to her mother.

Such thoughts led Li's mind back to her own mother, the mother she had known so briefly, the mother she could not recall. Her name was Mei Lin, and her family had been powerful in Singapore before the war, and Papa had loved her, and that was all the Li knew of the woman who'd given her life. Mei Lin must have known who her husband was, the life that waited for them in this place, must have known that her daughter would one day be a princess; did that thought fill her with fear, or with pride? Had she tried to raise Li to be a perfect princess, pretty and polite, tried to teach her about responsibility from a young age, or had she tried to shield her daughter from the weight of the crown, tried to give her a normal childhood before the castle called them all home? Li did not know, but she would have given anything to have known her own mother, truly, to have been able to talk with her about all these questions, all these doubts that filled her. It was a foolish wish, perhaps, but it lingered just the same.

She had no mother to turn to, and now Papa was bringing another woman to the castle. A woman he meant to marry, a woman who would become her queen, and her stepmother. The very thought terrified her; Li was not comfortable conversing in English, and likewise she was sure Papa's new woman would not speak Mandarin. How then would they converse with one another? How could they come to know one another? And could Li come to love her, come to welcome her presence in their lives, knowing that Jean was only here because Li's own mother had died? Would this woman, this Jean, even want to know her, or would she disdain Li and Lin, these reminders of Papa's colorful past?

"No, I think she will be nice," Li told her daughter. Oh, it didn't matter to Lin, but Li had to talk to someone about it, and she could hardly talk to her father. Papa had returned the day before grinning fit to burst, had scooped her into such an exuberant hug that he swept her clean off her feet. He could not wait for his woman to come home, and knowing that Jean made him so happy was reassuring in some measure to Li, for her father was a good man, and surely, she told herself, any woman he could love so deeply must be good, too. He had not told her much about his Jean; she had been a housekeeper, Li knew. She was a housekeeper, and she loved flowers, and she loved Papa, and she had left because she could not bear him children, could not marry him, and did not wish to bring trouble down upon him for her own sake; Jean had been the one who told him to go to Shanghai, who sent him to Li all those months ago. These things Papa had told her, and knowing all of this, then, Li could not imagine that Jean would be cruel, or hard.

Could she? Papa was a very important man, and the world was not always a happy place for a woman on her own. Was Jean as lovely as Papa believed, or had she simply seen a lonely man, a wealthy man, and done whatever she could to ensnare him? Li did not want to believe that Papa could be so easily manipulated, but she had seen enough of the cruelty of life to be wary.

"We will have to wait and see," she said to Lin, but just then there came a knock upon the door, and it opened a moment later. Her visitor was a lad called Charlie, a serious-faced young man with kind eyes and dark hair who had been assigned to guard Li, and followed her everywhere, silent as a ghost and always watchful for any threat to her person. Though at first Li had been dismayed by the thought of having a soldier dog her steps she had grown accustomed to him, and of late she had begun to appreciate his quiet, steady presence.

"It's time," he said, but then he caught sight of her, realized that she was nursing her child and spun on his heel in an effort to give her some privacy. "I'm sorry."

Charlie had learned a few words of Mandarin - please, thank you, yes, no, I'm sorry, stop, that sort of thing - and combined with Li's burgeoning English they had formed a language of their own, muddling words from both here and there until they could understand one another. It worked for them, and Li rather liked it; she was half her mother and half her father, and in this place she was beginning to feel as if those two halves were finally, at long last, becoming one whole. She was not entirely one thing or the other, but she was learning how to be both, and how to be happy in herself.

"Wait, please," she told him in English. It's time, Charlie had told her, and Li supposed that meant that Jean had arrived at last, that the moment had come when Li would finally meet this woman who was about to change her life yet again. Lin had finished eating anyway, and so Li held her daughter to her shoulder and rubbed her back for a moment before rising slowly to her feet. Carefully she buttoned up her dress, and then checked her appearance in the mirror. Perhaps she should have changed into nicer clothes, but she did not have time to change now, and she would have to do.

And so she crossed the room, and at the sound of her footfalls Charlie turned around again. He did not smile, but there was still a certain warmth in his expression, and so Li smiled for him. Her smiles came more easily, more readily now than they ever had done before; perhaps, she thought, she was beginning to pick up a few habits from her Papa.

"Ready?" Charlie asked her.

"Ready," she told him.

They walked from that place together, Li with Lin in her arms and Charlie walking just behind her. Since her room was on the ground floor they did not have very far to go; they emerged into the grand foyer, and found Papa waiting there, with Matthew and Alice. Other faces were watching from doorways, Li saw, but the servants kept their distance, observing in silence as one of their own returned to them, not as a housekeeper, but as their queen.

"Hello, sweetheart," Papa said when he saw her; Li came to stand beside him, and he kissed her cheek, brushed his hand over Lin's soft hair in a gesture of such easy affection that it made Li love him even more, somehow. Her life before had not been quite like this, full of gentle touches and words of endearment, but she had grown accustomed to her father's affections, and she was grateful for them.

"Is she here?" Li asked him softly, and in response Papa beamed at her, his eyes crinkling up with the depth of his joy.

"She is," he answered, and a moment later the door swung open, and two guards ushered Jean into the foyer.

The first thing Li thought, upon seeing the woman who would be her stepmother, was that Jean did not look like a queen. The dress she wore was pale blue, and patterned in white flowers. It hit her just below the knee, and the sleeves went almost to her elbows. There was a small bow on the front of it, and it was to Li's mind very lovely, but hardly the sort of thing that would be worn by a woman who was about to marry a king. It looked, she thought, like the best dress an ordinary sort of woman might own, saved for a special occasion. Her hair was very dark, and curled according to the style that ladies preferred in this place, but it was touched with grey at her temples. Her face was beautiful, but lined - she was not as young as that woman Joy had been, but looked to be closer to Papa's own age. Overall she looked, to Li's mind, like a very normal sort of woman, and that reassured her, very much. Li was not comfortable with the idea of royalty, these people who had been given from birth every comfort and blessing that Li herself had been denied, these people who did not understand what it was to truly suffer. Jean did not look like one of them; hers was the face of a woman who had lived a full life, with pain and with joy, and her hands had surely known work, and those things made Jean rise in Li's estimation.

Jean walked with her back straight and her chin up, but Papa did not stand and wait for her to reach him; he squeezed Li's shoulder once, and then began to walk, so that he and Jean met together in the center of the foyer. Li could not see Papa's face, but she could see the way this woman smiled at him, and she saw goodness in that smile, and hope.

"Welcome home, my darling," Papa said, reaching for her hand. He took it, and kissed it, and Li watched, breathless, wondering what might happen next, wondering whether this woman might speak to her at all or if Papa might instead whisk her away.

"It's good to be home," Jean said, smiling, and then Papa pulled her close, and she let him, and for a moment they simply held one another, tightly, standing there in the vast sprawling beauty of the castle foyer, utterly unconcerned by the people who had gathered to watch them. Perhaps they spoke, but if they did it was in voices too soft for Li to hear. They clung to one another; Li could see that Jean had fisted both her hands in the back of Papa's jacket, and in that one gesture she felt she could see just how much Jean loved him, how happy she was to be back here, and Li hoped that was all for the good.

Watching them together, however, was growing a bit uncomfortable for Li, and no doubt for everyone else as well. A king did not do such things; Li was receiving lessons in etiquette along with English, and the more she learned the more she realized that no matter how strange Papa seemed to her at times he seemed strange to these people as well, for he did not keep to their rules of behavior, defied their every expectation. And that was one of the things she loved about him best; he was not just a king, was not just a symbol of perfection and power. He was perfectly, imperfectly Papa, and he was always himself.

As last he and Jean broke apart from one another; he brushed the tears from her cheek with his thumb, and then slid his arm around her waist, and led her across the floor to Li. Those tears, they spoke to Li's heart; Jean had left this place for the sake of Papa's reputation, and perhaps that leaving had wounded her, as it had wounded him. Perhaps they could both be happy now; perhaps this was one story that could end in love, and in joy.

"Li," he said as he drew near, "this is Jean Beazely. Jean, this is my daughter."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Your Highness," Jean said, ducking into a graceful curtsy. That was one of the first phrases Li had learned in her English lessons; people are going to say it to you all the time, her tutor had told her, so you might as well know what it means. If Papa did not always respect the rules of courtesy it seemed that Jean did; Jean had called her Your Highness, and Li knew what it meant, knew that Jean was offering her the deference owed her by her station, but Jean's voice had been soft and warm, neither haughty nor afraid. Li liked the sound of it, very much.

"I am pleased to meet you, Jean," Li answered slowly. "You have made my father very happy."

Jean smiled at her then, widely and without artifice, and Li liked that smile as much as she had liked Jean's voice.

"He makes me happy, too," Jean told her.