Chapter 4

After I got back from the company, I shut myself in the west wing and dug out the old bronze box my grandfather had left behind.

Inside was an old-fashioned voice recorder, the one he used to use back when he chatted with his old friends. It had long since gone dead.

It took me forever to find a matching charger, and after fussing with it half the day I finally got it to charge, then pressed play.

Static crackled, and then came my grandfather's aged voice.

"Andrew, I ask you, what kind of thing is this?"

"That Fox girl. Falsely claiming a debt of gratitude all those years ago was one thing, but last month my heart gave out, and she happened to be at the house. She saw me collapse on the floor, and instead of calling an ambulance, she went through my kesi pattern book and stole the weaving-technique manuscript."

"If a neighbor hadn't been passing by and found me, this old life of mine would have been over."

Andrew sounded angry as he said, "Why didn't you expose her?"

My grandfather said with a sigh, "Expose what? The girl's barely a teenager. If word got out, her whole life would be ruined."

"Besides, that Henson boy is so grateful to her he can't see straight. Even if I said something, no one would believe me."

"Forget it, forget it. It's just a shame about the Pruitt kesi technique. Handed down for generations, and stolen just like that."

Andrew asked, "Does your Penny know?"

My grandfather let out a long breath. "I didn't tell her. That child is too stubborn. If she knew, she'd go and make a scene for sure."

"She just needs to restore her old books in peace. The less she touches everything else, the better."

The recording cut off there.

Cold sank through me, and my body gave a faint tremble.

So it turned out Isabel had not only stolen the debt of gratitude, she had left him to die and stolen the kesi technique my family had passed down.

No wonder, before my grandfather passed, he had kept holding my hand, his lips moving as if to speak, but in the end he said nothing.

No wonder he kept telling me, over and over, to stay away from the Hensons.

My fists clenched, grief and fury churning in my chest.

I lifted a hand and wiped the wetness from the corner of my eye, then carefully set the recorder back into the bronze box.

My grandfather was too soft-hearted. He couldn't bring himself to expose her because she was young. But I, Penelope, could.

Early the next morning I spread out the volume of Sinclair's poems as usual.

The worm-eaten half page went deeper the more I picked at it, and all at once I noticed something seemed to be hidden in the layer inside the book's spine.

Not ordinary lining paper. A sheet of mulberry-bark paper, folded very thin, tucked between two layers of pages. Worms had eaten away most of it, leaving only a corner showing.

Something stirred in me.

Old Mr. Henson had been careful his whole life. Hiding something important inside an old book fit his way of doing things perfectly.

I held my breath, worked the bamboo lifter carefully along the stitching of the spine, and eased the mulberry-bark paper out bit by bit.

The paper was yellowed and brittle, covered in old Mr. Henson's firm, forceful hand, written dense and close, in two parts.

The first part was a supplementary will.

"After my death, all the antique book holdings in the west wing of the old Henson estate shall belong to Penelope Pruitt of the Pruitt family. The Pruitts have shown kindness to the Hensons for generations. Every descendant of my Henson line must treat them well for generations to come, and never with disrespect."

"Furthermore, the Fox girl, Isabel, falsely claimed a debt of gratitude in those years and is of poor character. She must never enter the Henson household. If Anthony insists on marrying her, he shall be stripped of his right to inherit his thirty percent share of Henson Group."

The second part was a page of hurried notes recording the doubts around the car crash that had killed Anthony's father all those years ago.

"Anthony's father's crash: the brake line was severed. This was no accident."

"The driver responsible confessed before he died. He had taken money from Jasper Fox. Jasper Fox is Isabel Fox's father, the man I drove out of the industry over malicious competition years ago, who nursed a grudge ever since……"

"A pity that the driver responsible is already dead. There is no evidence……"

I held the sheet of paper, my hands shaking badly.

So it wasn't only that the debt of gratitude had been stolen, not only that my grandfather had been left to die.

Anthony's father had been murdered by Isabel Fox's father.

And Anthony had taken his enemy's daughter for his savior, doted on her for over a decade, and was even going to marry her.

What a colossal joke.

I tucked the mulberry-bark paper carefully into my notebook, something I couldn't name churning in my chest.

There was anger, and rue, and a thin thread of pity for Anthony.

But the pity passed in an instant.

He couldn't see people for what they were. He was blind in the eye and blind in the heart. For three years he had treated me with nothing but coldness. All of that was real.

His reckoning was only just beginning.

A week later, the city's cultural heritage exhibition officially opened.

I was invited to take part as an antique book restorer, demonstrating the restoration of a Song-dynasty woodblock print on site.

And Isabel, waving the banner of "Pruitt kesi heir," had also claimed one of the largest booths.

She'd stolen my grandfather's weaving-technique manuscript and had the nerve to call herself a Pruitt heir. What a face on her.

On opening day the hall was full of people coming and going.

A crowd had gathered in front of Isabel's booth. She wore a modernized qipao, standing before a kesi folding screen, holding forth about how the Pruitt kesi was a craft handed down through her grandmother's family, something she had absorbed since childhood.

The crowd let out little sounds of admiration every so often, and reporters were photographing her.

"Miss Fox really is accomplished for someone so young. A heritage bearer at such a young age."

"This kesi screen of A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains, the stitchwork is stunning. It looks exactly like the original painting!"

Isabel was glowing with self-satisfaction. When she caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye, she deliberately lifted her chin, like a peacock that had just won a fight.

I stood in front of my own booth, unhurriedly arranging my carving knives, and paid her no attention.

At ten in the morning, the organizers had scheduled a live exchange among the heritage bearers.

The host warmly invited Isabel up onto the stage and asked her to demonstrate the knot stitch, the core technique of the Pruitt kesi's "continuous warp, broken weft."

This was a stitch unique to the Pruitts. My grandfather's manuscript had a diagram of it, but no written description of the actual method. Without the family's spoken formula, it simply couldn't be done.

Isabel's smile froze for a moment, then she forced a composed look. "This stitch is rather complex. It's not really convenient to demonstrate on the spot. You can all just look at the finished pieces."

I crossed my arms and stepped out from the crowd. "Come now, Miss Fox."

"Everyone's here for the Pruitt kesi. Show us a little something, let us all broaden our horizons."

She saw me, and her face changed in an instant. "Penelope? What are you playing at?"

I walked up onto the stage and picked up the shuttle she'd left on the table. "Nothing at all."

"I just heard Miss Fox is a Pruitt heir, and it happens I know a little about Pruitt kesi myself. I thought I'd ask you to teach me a thing or two."