If she was praising the food, she wouldn’t have to think about her other problem. Jeremy. Her… Business acquaintance? Had she just told herself she would treat him as a business acquaintance?
Ha. She had been very silly over him three years back, and she could feel those emotions inside her, preparing to be silly once more. She could remember how he’d almost kissed her and she’d said no. In the years that followed, she’d praised herself for that strength of mind, the decency of her principles, her moral and upright stance.
She had also bitterly regretted her stupid principles. She regretted pushing him away before the kiss. She should have pushed him away after. Then she could have prided herself on the uprightness of her morals, and also been kissed.
She could feel warmth rising to her face; her father looked at her, where she’d paused mid-bite, chopsticks poised. Swiftly, she finished her food and nodded at him. “It’s delicious.”
“Humph.” He folded his arms and frowned to hide his pleasure. “We still need a name for the sauce. I like the name ‘Lucky Sauce.’” Those two words, spoken in English amidst the flurry of Hakka, sounded almost harsh. “What do you think?”
They’d had this discussion before. She wrinkled her nose. “That’s not very British.”
His eyes met hers briefly before he looked away, shaking his head. “You may have noticed this, but my sauce is not very British.”
“Yes, well.” Chloe couldn’t figure out how to articulate her thoughts, so she switched to English. “White and Whistler’s Pure English Sauce is also zero percent English. British people love their non-British sauces, as long as they don’t know they’re not British. It needs a name like…” She trailed off, thinking. “Two Hundred Percent English Sauce: Now Twice as Much English as Pure English Sauce.”
Her father still didn’t smile at this jest. “That sounds like it’s made of English people.”
They stared at each other in silence for a moment, before her father let out a snicker.
“Sauce of Britannia,” Chloe supplied.
“England in a Bottle.”
“Definitely Not Foreign Sauce.”
Her father laughed. “The name still needs work. Too bad we don’t have any stuffy British people around to use as a test.” Not in Wedgeford, they wouldn’t; half the village was white, but the last half-century had altered the character of the place.
No, they needed…
Chloe’s mind went right back to the person she had been trying not to think about all breakfast. Jeremy. He was back, and… And she couldn’t have any hopes of him. She never had. She had known precisely what it meant when they’d spent time together: She was a bit of fun to liven his days. He came for the festival; he stayed a handful of days. He was going to leave. He was always going to leave.
But did that mean she should have nothing? Would she always have all regrets and no kisses?
She swallowed.
“What is it?” her father asked, and, well. She had known she would have to mention Jeremy to allay his suspicions. He had enough to worry about. No need for him to harbor further suspicions.
She sighed. “Do you remember…um… The person who would once come at Trials…?”
Apparently, this was not the way to make her father less suspicious. His eyes narrowed immediately. “No,” he said, but the firm way he said it sounded more as if he was denying the existence of Jeremy altogether rather than his own memory. “He’s returned?”
She thought of the wide curve of Jeremy’s nose. The planes of his face, so much like hers. His eyes, dark and laughing. “He’s returned. And technically, he isn’t…British British. But I could ask him.”
Her father’s jaw twitched. “He is British British. In most of the ways that matter.”
“He’s just here for the Trials.”
If I have to marry someone, he had said, it needs to be someone like you. Her stomach flipped at the memory. Someone like you. Someone like you. It was going to be someone like her—but it was not going to be her, and she had to remember that. He was Posh Jim.
He’d never boasted of his wealth, but the things he took for granted—fancy schools and ice in summer and once he’d mentioned that he had a personal valet who dressed him when he was not in Wedgeford. For God’s sake. She couldn’t comprehend tossing around money on such frivolities.
Ten pounds was apparently only a minor setback for him. He wanted to marry someone a little bit like her. Not a village girl who dreamed of challenging a sauce empire with her father. She had to remember that.
But lying to herself about her own complicated feelings left Jeremy with all the control. He could seduce her far too easily if she didn’t take charge. And she was very afraid she could be seduced.
Her father’s eyes went to the place where her hand had wrapped around the jade bracelet at her wrist. “If he’s here for the Trials, he doesn’t need to see you at all.”
He wasn’t much for giving advice; he never had been. But he remembered the year Jeremy hadn’t come. He remembered the way she’d moped about, waiting. Wanting. He’d hand-pulled thick wheat noodles for her and fried them with pork and scallions, muttering under his breath.
“He doesn’t matter to me,” Chloe lied. “So it doesn’t matter if I see him or if I don’t. But if we have a chance to get his opinion…”
“No.” He shook his head. “No need to expose yourself to any of this. None of this would be necessary if you—”
She held up a hand, forestalling the conversation they’d had dozens of times already. “Please don’t tell me not to help you.”
“It’s not necessary,” he groused. “You’re young. A girl your age should be spending the Trials having fun, not laboring with an aging man and his bao, selling sauce.”
She sighed. How hard was it for him to let her care for him as much as he cared for her?
“Ah Ba,” she said gently. “I’m twenty-five. I’m not a girl. I’m not a child. I should be pulling my weight.”
“All the more reason to stop worrying about my sauce. Especially if it means you have to talk to him.”
There was no point rehashing old arguments. He never argued anyway, which made it terribly hard to win. He just stubbornly insisted that she didn’t need to be helping him. He’d made the sauce; it had taken him years to perfect. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to be in control of the process; she could only point out that it wasn’t possible for him to do everything.
“I need to meet Andrew and Naomi at the inn.” She stood. No need to mention that she’d already planned to meet Jeremy first. Chloe had been supposed to bring Andrew the final, definite, absolute name for Unnamed Sauce. She’d been supposed to decide on it in that unfortunate block of time that she now had to give to Jeremy’s list. She shook her head, annoyed. She would just have to figure it out on her way there.
“You still don’t mind if I choose one?” It was the one thing he had ceded to her, and that made her all the more determined to do this properly.
He waved a hand. “I’m even less British than you. On this, I don’t think my input is needed any longer. Name it what you want. It’s only right.”