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Rosalind thinned her lips. “I’m just thinking out loud. You’ve heard the same rumors as I have.”
“Juliette would never.”
The air was getting a little thick. Kathleen hadn’t expected this, hadn’t expected a wary silence to follow when she wanted agreement instead.
“You can’t be too trusting all the time.”
“I’m not too trusting,” Kathleen snapped, prickled now.
“Oh, really?” Rosalind shot back. The volume of their voices was growing. “What is this quick need for defense, then? I was just throwing the possibility out there and you’re acting like I’m biting your head off—”
“Talk is dangerous,” Kathleen cut in. “You know this. You know what a few thoughtless words can do—”
“Who cares what talk can do! She’s Juliette!”
Kathleen jerked against her nest of blankets, shocked. Her ears were ringing, like her sister’s outburst had been an explosion rather than an exclamation. Though they were both close to Juliette, Rosalind’s relationship to their cousin was different from hers. Rosalind and Juliette were too similar. They both coveted the leading role, the right to have the ultimate decision. When they clashed, only one could be right.
But… this wasn’t a clash. This was just…
“God, I’m sorry,” Rosalind said suddenly, her voice softening. “I don’t—I’m sorry. I love Juliette. You know I do. I’m just… I’m scared, okay? And we don’t have the same safety she does. Lord Cai is going to stop at nothing to find out who’s acting the traitor, and you know he’ll suspect outsiders like us first.”
Kathleen stiffened. “We are hardly outsiders.”
“But we are not Cais, at the end of the day.”
Much as Kathleen hated it, her sister was right. It mattered little that they were more closely related to the beating core of the Cais than the other second, third, fourth cousins. So long as their last name was different, there would always be that doubt in the family over whether Rosalind and Kathleen truly belonged here. They came from Lady Cai’s side—the side that had been brought into this house rather than the side that had been raised in it for generations.
“I guess we need to be careful, then,” Kathleen mumbled. “Make sure we have no reason to be accused.”
People like Tyler would not have to worry. Even if they were all just as related, he bore the Cai name. Anything he did, anything he achieved was something wonderful reflecting back on the family, on the generations of ancestors who had built them from the ground up. Anything Kathleen and Rosalind were a part of reflected back to the Langs instead, and Kathleen knew absolutely nothing about that side of her family history, short of the grandmother she visited once a year.
“Yeah,” Rosalind whispered. She sighed, scrubbing her forehead. “Okay, I should go. I’m sorry for yelling.” She hopped off the bed. “Get some sleep. Bonne nuit.”
“Good night,” Kathleen echoed. The door had already closed. When she lay back down and picked up her magazine again, she could no longer return her attention to the shoes.
You’ve heard the same rumors as I have.
“Wait,” Kathleen whispered aloud. “What rumors?”
Twenty-Seven
Juliette was a hairsbreadth away from snapping.
The air was crisp that afternoon, a product of clear skies and the sea breeze. As she strolled along the pavement under the delicate shade of the waving green trees, she was surrounded by the sounds of rushing fountain water and chirping birdsong—the sounds of the International Settlement when it was still a little dazed from its previous wild night, only awakening with the golden sunbeams caressing its edges.
It should have been peaceful, calm. Too bad she was strolling with Paul Dexter, who hadn’t yet given her any substantive information to work with, despite the hours they had spent together already.
“I have a surprise for you,” Paul was saying now, giddy with his enthusiasm. “I was so delighted to receive your letter, Miss Cai. I’m thoroughly enjoying our time in each other’s company.”
That makes one of us.
It was almost as if he knew what game she was playing at. Every time she mentioned his father’s job, he diverted it to talk about how hardworking Walter Dexter was. Every time she mentioned his work with the Larkspur, Paul steered into Shanghai’s climate and how terribly difficult it was to find reputable work. Briefly, she wondered if Paul had perhaps heard about Juliette rushing into one of the vaccination houses and now suspected her of trying to take down the Larkspur, but it seemed improbable that the information would pass to someone as irrelevant as Paul Dexter. She also wondered if he had received the same instruction from the Larkspur as those other merchants—on killing Juliette for a price—but she couldn’t imagine how he was planning to play his hand if that were the case. It was more likely that he was sitting on everything he had, simply so he could keep her around for longer.
“A surprise?” Juliette echoed absently. “You shouldn’t have.”
He had to know that she was digging around for something. That fact alone gave him the upper hand—gave him the right to tug Juliette around as he pleased. But there was no chance he knew specifically what she was looking for, and Juliette held that close to her chest. There was no chance he realized she knew about his father’s role as the Larkspur’s supplier and that she was after every little thread of information the Dexters had on the Larkspur’s identity.
Somebody who was supplying the Larkspur with the very drug he needed for his vaccines had to have an address to work with. It was absurd to think otherwise. How el
