Two months later
Sophie sat on the stone garden bench and tilted her face to the sun. If Mrs. Summers could see her now, no doubt she’d launch into a diatribe regarding the perils of freckling. But her friend was busy inside the Rockeforte country manor happily chatting with Mr. Wang and the visiting Mr. Fletcher.
With Alex busy attending the estate business he had neglected over the last few months, Sophie had taken the opportunity for a little quiet solitude to think over the last few weeks of her life.
She was happy. Absolutely, blissfully happy. But she was hard-pressed not to dwell on the fact that it might very well prove temporary.
“Why the sigh, Sophie?”
She turned to find Mr. Wang standing not three feet behind her. “You move like a cat,” she said without rancor. She had never noticed that before.
“Old habit,” the man replied. “I could teach you, if you like.”
Sophie smiled at him and waved for him to take a seat next to her. “I would, although it might be best not to mention it to Alex. He seems determined not to like you, I’m afraid,” she said honestly.
Mr. Wang just chuckled softly. “He holds me responsible for some notion you have about things going terribly wrong in twelve years.”
“And four months. He mentioned that, did he?”
“He did. I am surprised at you, Sophie, to hold to such silliness.”
Sophie was taken aback. “You’ve never called it that before.”
“I hadn’t thought it necessary. I assumed you knew all that talk of luck and misfortune was merely for fun.”
“How can you say that?” she demanded. “Knowing everything that has happened?”
“How can I not, knowing how it all happened? You are a willful and sometimes rash young woman with a propensity for finding trouble. That tiger came after you because you had recently come from the butcher’s. You got lost in that jungle because you wandered off to inspect an interesting bloom, rather than stay with your guide as you should have, and—”
“Even if what you say is true, though I reserve the right to disagree, how do you explain my narrow escapes?”
“By pointing out that although you are a troublesome young woman, you are also rather clever and levelheaded when the occasion requires it. If you had panicked, that tiger would have pounced on you before I could intervene, and you came across that jungle tribe by following running water with the knowledge that it was your best chance of reaching civilization.”
Sophie thought about that for a very long time. What Mr. Wang was implying threatened a concept she had held as irrefutable truth for most of her life. It was not something she could simply accept out of hand.
“It doesn’t explain everything,” she finally said in a soft voice.
“No, but then we are all subject to the whims of fate now and again. You are not alone in that.”
Mr. Wang stood up and tugged gently at the hem of his coat to straighten it. “Think on what I’ve said. Neither your father, nor Mrs. Summers, nor myself ever meant our little jests about your luck to be anything more than that, little jests.”
Sophie nodded, silently agreeing to consider the matter further, but unable to promise more than that.
Mr. Wang must have understood her reticence. “If you find you cannot bring yourself to see the matter differently, at least consider this. You do not have twelve years and four months with Alex, you have five-and-twenty years…half your life with him, and half without, hmm?”
And with that revelation he took himself off, following the gravel path deeper into the garden.
Sophie sat stunned for a moment.
He was right.
Five-and-twenty years.
They had five-and-twenty years!
She shot up and headed toward the house at a dead run.
She had to tell Alex!
Then she had to go back and thank Mr. Wang properly. He’d given them five-and-twenty years.
And he’d given her hope.