The Engineer Falls for His Sweet-Scented Maid - Chapter 36: An Awkward Misunderstanding

Huai’s thoughts were in an absurd tangle.

Nianhe soaked through beside the sink when they first met. The maddening dream that first night. Everything he had felt in his drunkenness last night. It all ran together.

That unbearably sweet milk scent. That tearful little whimper. The warm softness beneath his palm.

And last night…

He could no longer tell what had been a drunken hallucination, what had been a dream—or whether it had all been real.

His throat moved. He wanted to ask whether she had come to his room last night.

Before he could speak, Nianhe stepped back.

All she could think of was being pinned beneath him on the bed. She was terrified he would remember and become angry.

After all, to him she was only a country girl working as a domestic helper. In his drunkenness, he must have mistaken her for someone else.

And now they were standing here together beside the street. If someone from the compound saw them and word reached Huizhen, she would lose the job that kept her fed.

“Engineer Shen, I’ll go home first.” She did not even dare raise her head. With that hurried remark, she turned and left.

She walked quickly, the hem of her red-and-white floral dress rippling in the summer breeze with her hasty steps.

The movement of her slender waist betrayed her panic.

Huai remained where he was. He did not call her back.

He took his bicycle and followed.

They went down the street one behind the other.

Nianhe dared not turn around. She could feel the oppressive weight of his gaze following her.

She caught a small breath and tried to make herself less conspicuous, taking quick, tiny steps.

Huai wheeled his bicycle behind her, neither close nor far away.

He kept three to five paces between them.

Plane trees cast shadows over the asphalt. Patches of light and shade moved through the space separating them.

Huai watched the red-clad figure ahead.

Her waist was so slight it seemed the smallest pressure might snap it.

Yet those narrow shoulders and that taut back carried a stubborn determination to hold herself together.

He remembered her reddened eyes as she insisted she had not just given herself to anyone. An inexplicable irritation rose inside him.

The distance between them widened in silence. Even the summer cicadas sounded more grating.

Only when Nianhe disappeared through the rear entrance of the Municipal Party Committee Compound did Huai stop. He stood outside for a while, then wheeled his bicycle home through the front gate.

The atmosphere at dinner was subdued.

After being drenched in orange soda at the state-run restaurant, Liping had come home and thrown a tremendous tantrum. She did not even come downstairs to eat.

Huizhen asked a few questions. Learning that the marriage meeting had failed and ended in a humiliating scene, she had no kind looks for Nianhe either.

Nianhe carried dishes back and forth between kitchen and dining room, her head lowered. She scarcely dared breathe.

Huai sat in his usual place, eating at a measured pace. His gaze occasionally passed over her busy figure, but he said nothing.

After dinner, the family went to their rooms to wash.

Nianhe cleaned the kitchen, then carried a large wooden washbasin to the sink in the back courtyard.

She washed the family’s clothes and all the clothes she herself had changed out of that day. She took particular care with the red-and-white floral dress that had caused so much trouble.

When she finished, she rose on tiptoe to hang everything, piece by piece, on the wire clothesline.

Then she hurried back to her downstairs room.

Auntie Wang was responsible for settling Ping’an at night. Nianhe only had to hold and feed him when he was hungry; she did not need to watch over him constantly.

She had spent the whole day frightened and anxious, with that tight dress squeezing the breath out of her. Now, in a loose old blouse, she felt as though every part of her had come apart.

The night deepened. The compound grew quiet.

Under the plane tree in the back courtyard, Huai sat in a bamboo chair.

He had showered and wore only a white athletic undershirt and gray trousers.

The evening breeze brought a little coolness.

His eyes remained on the row of clothes hanging from the wire.

The whole family’s laundry was there, but he looked only at the few pieces at the end.

The red floral dress swayed gently.

She really had looked lovely in it today. Dazzlingly fair skin. An astonishingly slender waist.

His gaze moved from the dress to the things beside it: a few small, faded cotton cloths and undergarments. There it stayed.

They were the cloths Nianhe placed inside her bodice to absorb leaking milk, and the garments she wore closest to her skin.

The fabric was thin and old. Yet in the darkness, it held an intensely private allure.

Looking at those undergarments, Huai could not stop last night’s liquor-scented kiss from returning to his mind.

He remembered that fullness beneath his touch, that cloying milk scent, even the maddening warmth and softness of her body.

The self-control he had always prided himself on seemed to waver before these small things.

Just then, soft footsteps broke the courtyard’s stillness.

Auntie Wang was walking Ping’an around, trying to soothe his nighttime fussing.

Nothing persuaded him to close his eyes, so she had brought him out back for some air.

She rounded the corner and stopped short.

Engineer Shen, usually cold as ice and rarely giving anyone a second glance, sat in the bamboo chair staring fixedly at the laundry.

Auntie Wang followed his gaze. Her heart gave a jolt.

Weren’t those the undergarments Nianhe had washed?

He sat with an indefinable tension in his back, his eyes glued to the young woman’s most private clothes. He had not even noticed someone approaching.

Holding Ping’an, Auntie Wang felt a chill rise from the soles of her feet.

The younger Shen son always seemed such a gentleman. What was he doing in the courtyard in the middle of the night, staring at the maid’s underwear? And that look in his eyes… Like some lecher.

Deeply unsettled, she turned with the baby and slipped quietly back to the front courtyard, afraid she had stumbled upon a terrible secret.

The breeze went on blowing. Huai remained in the bamboo chair, his long legs bent and his back resting against it.

The clothes swayed gently on the wire.

He knew he should not look. He did not even know why he was looking. But he could not drag his eyes away.

Every faded little garment, every cotton cloth, carried something of Nianhe.

Upstairs, in the main bedroom, Huizhen sat at her dressing table applying vanishing cream.

Wanshan was propped against the headboard, reading an internal reference bulletin.

“Wanshan, Huai is twenty-six this year. It’s time he settled down.” She replaced the lid on the cream. “Other men his age in the compound have children old enough to run errands. He spends every day at the mill. He’s never even touched a woman’s hand. This can’t go on.”

Wanshan turned a page. “He knows his own mind. Stop worrying so much.”

“How can I? These past few days he’s seemed completely distracted, and last night he got blind drunk. Perhaps the strain at work is too much, with no one for him to talk to.” Huizhen rose. “I just spoke to Guiying on the phone. She’s arranged things with two young women. I need to tell Huai so he can meet them tomorrow.”

She left the bedroom and knocked twice on Huai’s door.

No answer.

She opened it. The room was empty.

Huizhen went downstairs. One light was still on in the sitting room.

After searching the ground floor without finding him, she opened the little door to the back courtyard.

She stopped as soon as she stepped outside.

Huai sat beneath the plane tree in the bamboo chair. He did not even notice her approach.

She followed his gaze.

Her head buzzed. She nearly lost her footing.

A row of clothes hung on the wire. At the end were Nianhe’s delicate underthings and several faded cotton cloths.

Huai was staring at those panties and undergarments without so much as blinking.

Huizhen drew a sharp breath.

For most of her life, she had cared above all about personal conduct and respectability. The Shens had an upright family tradition. How had they produced a creature like this?

Her heart pounded.

Had the boy been a bachelor so long that something had gone wrong in his head?

Usually he wore that cold expression and scarcely glanced at the pretty young women in the arts troupe. Yet here he was, in the dead of night, staring at the maid’s underwear!

What on earth was this?

If he truly couldn’t contain himself, he could go to Nianhe’s room and find her. At least that would make him a proper man.

What could he possibly get out of looking at her clothes?

This was perverse!

The more Huizhen thought about it, the more frightened she became. What if prolonged bachelorhood had left her son with some psychological affliction?

If word got out, what would become of his reputation?

She forced herself to steady and cleared her throat.

“Ahem.”