Page 8 of Scandalous Heiress
Petite soft-spoken Wu-lai acted as a nurse maid to the two little girls.With her good command of English, she’d told Ezzie and her that she was fifteen years old.Wu-lai, Ada happily noted, was different from many women in her native land.Ada had heard her family discuss the Chinese practice of foot-binding, bending back the toes of a baby girl into her heels, crippling women physically and emotionally, making them dependent on their fathers and husbands.“It’s unusual for a young woman to travel abroad.I understand the Chinese are very protective, even backward, in treatment of their daughters.”
“My man is very progressive.He knows much about the West because he comes from a large family of Chinese agents.He is a third generationhowqua.”
“Ahowqua?”she asked him, irritated he cited a term she did not know.“What is that?”
“When Westerners opened the ports to trade with the Chinese nearly a century ago, we needed men who wanted to learn English and French and German so that they could translate to the Chinese officials and the coolies.These translators learned Western business methods and formed a class of business leaders to deal with us.”
“I see,” she said.“A comprador is a new type ofhow qua.And your agent allowed you to bring his daughter to Britain.Good of him.”
“It was.Without her father’s approval to allow her to travel with me, I would not have been able to bring my children home with me.I’m grateful to her.”
“And in return she can learn much about Britain to tell her father.”
He took up his tea cup.“And teach her family about us.The best way to learn a new culture is to live in it.”
“I agree,” she said, recalling how she’d suffered the intricacies of proper address at school in Connecticut and after she’d arrived in England four years ago.“I spent months learning when to curtsy and when not.”
“And how to use a fish fork!”Ezzie giggled.
The duchess blinked, not amused.“I say, my dear, I’m eager to learn what news you have of ending the illegal opium trade.It’s vile.We should not be a party to such debauchery.”
Ada understood the dynamics of the trade of the poppy.Taken by the British East India Company to treaty ports along the Chinese Empire’s coast, the drug was sold to balance exports of cotton, silks and porcelain.Only in this way did the British merchants make a profit.The upshot was that thousands of Chinese had become addicted, smoking the powdered and liquid poppy in opium dens, ingesting it or eating it.Exported in large quantities around the world by British merchants, millions were dying of their craving.
“It’s now in cough syrup and tonics for every ailment,” Ada said.
“Surely not!”proclaimed the duchess.“Victor, is that not illegal?”
Lord Victor stared at Ada with startled eyes.Appreciative eyes.Then he smiled at his mother.“I’m afraid not, Mama.”
“Miss Hanniford, how do you know this?”
“My sister,” she offered and put her tea to the table.
“The duchess of Seton,” Her Grace added in an aside to inform her son.“How comes your sister to know this?”
“She’s very attentive to the health of her tenants.The duke, her husband, encourages her in this and has established dispensaries at all his properties.Lily has learned that many of the tonics that chemists dispense contain opium.Laudanum, for one.Too often used by women for various maladies.And for babies, the ‘quieting syrups’ have strong quantities of the drug.Lily claims that’s why so many infants do not eat, fail to thrive and simply waste away.”
“Dear me,” said the duchess with a hand to the lace fichu at her throat.“I did not know this.Did you, Victor?”
He had stared at Ada, hanging on each word throughout her explanation.Making her tingle.Making her twitch.“I do.Miss Hanniford is correct, Mama.Opium debilitates the body in any quantity.The trade must be stopped.”
“I thought we could no longer export it,” the duchess said.“Wasn’t that a condition of the treaty after the Second Opium War?”
Victor narrowed his eyes, looking rueful.“We can’t, but we have arrangements with other countries to ship it for us.”
“Who?”his mother asked, indignant.
“Us,” said Ada.
The duchess drew back, a hand to her throat.“No.”
Ada nodded.“Not Hanniford Companies.My father and brother refuse.But other American traders traffic in it.”
“Miss Hanniford is right, Mama.”
Ada glanced at him, grateful for the confirmation, yet questioning why she should so value it from him.
The duchess was aghast.“Oh, but I had no idea of this.How is it that you both know and I don’t?”
