"Tang da-ge," she presses, trying to reel him back for a final snatch of constructive conversation before he sets off into the wilderness of his own head again, "who was that handsome gentleman?"
"So familiar." Tang Fan's preening at her address persists as far as them both toeing over the threshold before the smug smile falls flat from his face. Then, "Wait," he starts, craning so far to toss a look over his shoulder that he ends up twisting himself around in a circle. "What— what han…
"Tang da-ge," she presses, trying to reel him back for a final snatch of constructive conversation before he sets off into the wilderness of his own head again, "who was that handsome gentleman?"
"So familiar." Tang Fan's preening at her address persists as far as them both toeing over the threshold before the smug smile falls flat from his face. Then, "Wait," he starts, craning so far to toss a look over his shoulder that he ends up twisting himself around in a circle. "What— what handsome gentleman?"
"If you have a choice in not having a choice about coming,” Fu Meng-po says, eyebrows cocked out from behind the frame of his sunglasses, “then it's not a kidnapping."
“You’re not fun,” Kuan-hung complains. “At all.”
With their house's liveliness lapsed to quiet, and the looming summer rain hanging heavy in the air, Tang Fan seizes upon a temptingly rare proposition of opportunity.
Violet starts to see India the way India sees, and everything else falls out of focus.
Each man grieves in his own fashion.
In the wake of Qingming’s revelation, the night bleeds out into a sombre quiet.
Fitzjames and Crozier take comfort in each other, despite everything.
Every game has a winner.
Too late for Christmas, too early for the new year. (Or, Hal makes himself inconvenient in as many ways as possible.)
Crozier's past has come back to haunt him before, but not quite like this.