Steeped in Blood | TO BE REWRITTEN

III. ELIZABETH LEE

I HAD TO FIGHT BACK A LAUGH AS I watched my future husband try to use chopsticks to obtain a piece of dim sum.

His brows were furrowed and he white-knuckled the pair of slender ivory rods with the completely wrong form. Sighing, I gave into my mother's silent request that she conveyed through her narrowed-but-smiling brown eyes: gwai, lah. (1) In other words, she was telling me to play nice and help him out. I picked up my chopsticks, which had gone untouched due to my lack of appetite, and placed one of the siu mai onto his bowl. (2)

William thanked me as my father flagged down a woman who was pushing a trolley laden with plates and bamboo steamers of buns, sticky rice, and other delicacies. The round table, covered with a white cloth, was already groaning beneath the weight of several dishes, though I noted that my fiancé had barely touched any of the food. Perhaps he had nerves, like I did, that coiled the stomach into knots and made it impossible to eat. Or perhaps he was inwardly turning his nose up at foreign food and refused to show it in any way other than his lack of appetite.

"Won't you eat something?" My mother was asking him now, a concerned smile on her face. She always plied guests with food, and I supposed my future husband was no different.

"I suppose I would have more of an appetite if I knew exactly what I was eating," he admitted with a sheepish chuckle, poking gingerly at the dumpling on his plate with one chopstick.

My mother nodded at me encouragingly, giving me another one of her nudging, pushy looks. I bit my lip, took a fortifyingly bitter sip of tea, and then responded.  "That is a shrimp and pork dumpling."

His wariness seemed to subside and he held it to his mouth, spearing it with one chopstick as though he were eating a kebab. The sight made me cringe though I tried to hide it. "And the orange bits?"

"Fish roe," I replied cheerily.

William Fairfax almost spat out his bite of food, but managed to swallow it. "Excuse me?"

I shrugged and was fairly certain I heard my mother groan in frustration at my antics. Just as I was about to revel in his obvious revulsion, having no better form of entertainment, my father looked me dead in the eye with a disapproving look. I shrank about two inches in my seat.

"Lord William, if you are quite ready to begin our discussions...?" My father said, phrasing it like a request although his tone brooked no argument.

My fiancé nodded, and became quickly embroiled in a serious conversation with my father. I tuned out their deep voices, both of them conversing easily in English, and picked up the teapot to refill my mother's and my cups with teet gun yum (3). The English language, though I had picked up a great deal of it at school, was still foreign enough that if I didn't concentrate, it would simply wash over me in a wave of alien sounds.

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"SO, HE WILL BE staying at our house on the Peak," my father said.

Both William and I choked on our respective bites of food. William coughed into his handkerchief. From across the table, my mother patted me lightly on the back.

"Excuse me?" My fiancé had the fortitude to ask.

I swallowed down my apprehension, waiting for the violent retort he would doubtless receive. My father had no qualms about criticizing those who questioned him.