Sweet Romance16 min read
The Pond, The Promise, and the Man Who Pulled Me Back
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I remember the pond as cold, dark, and traitorous. I remember the sound of laughter and then the sudden hollow silence. I remember hands—someone's push—and then the slick, cold world of the water closing over my face. I remember opening my eyes hours later to the soft lamp glow of my own bed and hearing, "Isabella, you're awake?"
"Am I?" I croaked. My voice came out like paper.
"You're awake," said Red Bean, always brisk, always practical. "Drink this, miss. You burned with fever most of the night."
"I am freezing," I told her. "My bones feel full of ice."
Red Bean hustled and fussed. "Mrs. Karin, she woke," she called into the hall. "She woke."
The older woman who shuffled in—my mother—had hands that smoothed away to care and judgment in equal measures. "You foolish girl," she said, and gave one of the few smiles she reserves for me.
"Don't move too fast," said my grandmother, Giovanna, when she was brought in. "You must sit. Your forehead is still warm."
"I slipped by accident," I told them, and my hand went to the place on my dress where the mud had clung. "Someone bumped me. There were so many people at the spring welcome—crowds, music. I thought the stone was farther out than it was."
My mother, Karin Morris, listened, then said quietly, "We'll find out what happened. Rest. We will not simply swallow this."
"But it was an accident," a woman in a plain dress said at the doorway. "From the Prince's house we sent a token of concern—a small crate of herbs. It could not mean—"
"It was not an accident," my father, Manuel Farrell, said before she could finish.
"Manuel—" my mother started.
"Do not hush, Zhang—"
"Karin," I said softly. "Father, stop."
He made a rough sound and turned away. People who watch for danger with the eyes of old soldiers mark things. My father had been one to do that since before I was born. He had my mimicry of calm and my grandmother's sense of consequence balanced by my mother's warmth.
"They sent a mere attendant," another woman whispered, "a matron with a box, saying, 'It was the shoes, the stones, nothing to do with us.' They snubbed you, Karin."
"They insulted us," my grandmother hissed. "Insult to the house. Insult to Isabella."
"I want them questioned," my father said. "Find who pushed if they pushed."
We had help. Red Bean brought the house to life: warm charcoal stoves, bowls of bitter medicine, quilts. They changed my wet clothes. They spooned the medicine past my lips like a small, living punishment.
"Does it hurt?" my mother asked, smoothing the stray hair that had lost itself across my forehead.
"It hurts more when I try to breathe," I admitted.
"Sleep," Giovanna ordered. "Dream of clean things: white paper skies, a warm hearth."
I slept and woke, and the days unrolled in model ways. The household gossips did what they do. Guests came or did not come. One visitor, the bright and breathless Ximena Dunn, strolled in with her bright skirts and a tray of remedies.
"Isabella! You must try this," Ximena chirped, and set a steaming broth on the table. "My mother sends small foods, nourishing."
"Thank you," I said. "I will try."
We did our best to look ordinary: my mother practiced the formal calls, my father sat stiff at the table as if coal fires could be fanned into bravery. The house needed many hands to return to its rhythms: accounts, store rooms, the water for the kitchens. When the nights turned a little slow, my younger sister Isabelle Cornelius, four years old with an opinion on everything, popped her head in and said, "Sister, did you drown?"
"No," I said.
"Then go play with me."
"Not yet," I said. "Soon."
Among the many strange things that followed the accident was how quickly the rumor wheel turned. The family that had given us the blow-off visit—the Li family of the Prince's house in the old books—was represented, in our city, by a woman known as Joselyn Russo. She was trim, dangerous in private ways, the sort of married woman who had been young and pretty once and never learned to let go of the hunger for being important.
"She sent a box and a curt note," said a servant who had delivered the news. "It said: 'Their shoes slip. Mind them better.' Imagine—"
My father's face went tight. "Enough. We will not take slurs."
"Very well," my grandmother said. "We will investigate."
Days slid into weeks. I slowly recovered, though odd chills clung to me. At night my mother read out old cheerful letters from my father in other towns. My brother, Grayson Feng, came home from the academy where he had studied, bright and sober, with ink on his fingers and the wide, careful eyes of someone who reads the world and stores it.
"Isabelle," he said when he found me awake in the conservatory one afternoon, "who was behind this? Do you suspect anyone?"
"It looked like an accident," I said. "But when a gap is left for a hand—"
"People stage accidents," he said softly. "We must know."
"Promise me you'll stop being theatrical and go study," my mother teased.
"Promising is for brides," he said dryly. "And I'm not courting anyone. Yet."
"You're absurd," I laughed. We both knew he was tenderer than his jokes let on. He left, heavy with worry, and I felt unexpectedly grateful.
Months later the Prince's house offered a clumsy apology through a low servant who had been moved by conscience and fear. "Lady Giovanna," he said, bowing, "I was told to bring herbs and a message that the shoes were improper, that the ground was slippery. I speak the words that were told to me."
"Who told you?" my father demanded.
He hesitated, then said, "A senior matron, named Lan. She is no longer in favor; I only bring what I am given."
"Lan?" My father's eyes narrowed. "Not a name we take at face value."
As the investigation sputtered and small pieces of truth began to fit, a lie tugged loose like an old thread: the matron Joselyn Russo had ordered a small, mean thing to be done. She did not push me; she set up the conditions. She made sure that the stone at the pond's edge was greasy with oil. She had others do her dirty work. Someone was always paid to push.
"Why?" I asked once, not sure I wanted the answer. "Why try to hurt me?"
"Because you were in the way," a cold voice said. It was Justice Ivanov—once a friend in the city who now had corners of envy blackening her face. "Because you were favored, because you smiled and because the Lady at the Prince's house wanted a cause to look important."
"Justice—" I started.
"I am no more 'just' than any other woman here," she said. "We all do what's needed to survive. You took their moment."
"Do you mean to say this—" I said slowly, "—that you plotted against me?"
She tossed her head. "A plot is a fine word. I took advantage. I gave no orders. You are melodramatic."
That seemed to be the end of it for a while: accusations, denials, the soft clatter as people tried not to pick through the rumor-mess for too long. Then a man arrived at our house who would alter what was to come.
"I found you at the base of the cliff," he said simply, to my mother and to me. "You fell from the carriage. You did not strike stone. Someone frightened the horses."
"Who are you?" my father demanded.
"Benjamin Fletcher," he said. "A passerby. A soldier, sometimes. Today, I was riding when I saw a wheel slip."
My heart had an odd hiccup when he bowed to my grandmother. There was something steady about him. He moved like a man whose hands had been trained to hold fragile things. There was a hum to his quiet, a patience like a smith's. When he said, "You are safe now," it felt like a fact, not a promise.
"You saved me," I told him later, when the servants had carried me to the nearest room and the tremors had softened. "You fell into the rain and the danger. Why?"
Benjamin smiled without humor. "Because it's what I do."
There is a particular kind of gratitude that makes you immediate friends with your savior. I invited him to tea—perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of a small wish to be useful—and he accepted, respectful and dry.
"Tell me," I said, cradling my cup, "did you see anyone suspicious?"
"Only a pale man with shaking hands," Benjamin answered. "He had orders. He left before my horse could shift a pace."
"Orders from who?" my father asked, long attendance in his face.
"From a woman wearing an empty kindness," Benjamin said. "Do you want him found?"
"You found him," my father said. "And you found us the truth. For that, we are in your debt."
Benjamin shrugged as if to say a life is measured in small returns. Still, the gratitude in my house flared into a warmth, and as days passed, he came about—at first often, then on purpose. We walked in the gardens and he told me very little of his past; enough to know he had fought and learned and kept his hands clean in ways that mattered to him. He was not the romancing type. He was a man who listened and then quietly pushed back his chair to answer as if the world were a problem to be solved.
"I don't suppose I'm the sort of girl men fight armies for," I joked once.
"Perhaps not," Benjamin said. "But sometimes men fight for dinners, for promises, for daily things. Those counts too."
"You make me sound ordinary," I said, and for the first time since the pond, I laughed properly. He laughed with me, but later, when I glanced at him, his expression softened in a way that wasn't about laughter: protective, aware, something like wanting to be near.
While I stitched and learned to keep my hands steady, the household prepared for what everyone in our circle expected next: a husband. My mother and grandmother received visits, and among those visitors was Polina Sauer—Dawson Wagner's cousin—bearing polite interest. Ximena Dunn, spirited as ever, popped in as though to declare alliances by the hour.
"Isabella," Ximena said at tea, "you must not let them so hurry you. Look for someone who sees you awake and not just the trinkets your family brings."
"I'll try," I said. "But what if they see the wrong side?"
"Then punch them," she said with the seriousness of a true friend. "Not literally. Probably. Unless you want to."
Then the world split in a way that would have been impossible to foresee. The Prince's household convicted a matron who had acted in the dames' filthy jobs—someone named Lan—publicly beaten and disgraced. But behind her, hidden in the shadow like a seam in a dress, stood Joselyn Russo, comfortable and composed, who thought herself untouchable.
"She has been untouchable for years," my father muttered. "She has the ears at court."
"Not for long," I said quietly. "People get careless."
We waited for justice in the way that careful people wait: with appointments and quiet lists. Then the punishment: not for one small attendant, but for a woman who had used other people's hands to do her cruelty. I did not want revenge in my bones—never had—but the family's honor demanded that if I had been wronged, it be shown so that others would think twice before pretending tragedy was mere chance.
We made a plan.
The day they chose was bright and full, meant for a harvest party at the hall of a mutual acquaintance. All the city would be there: ladies with their combed hair, men with their sober coats, children with eyes like small moons. We invited more than expected: old rivals, close neighbors, distant officials. The hall hummed with polite greetings and the clink of cups.
I wore the pale blue dress my grandmother liked, pearl trim at the collar. Benjamin stood near the doorway like a calm watchman. Grayson sat with notes, ready to answer questions about the facts. My father had arranged for quiet people to pass along certain items. It was set: the trap would open not with sword or scandal but with a public unmasking—something that would show each person what had been hidden.
"Isabella," my grandmother said softly at my ear. "Remember: whatever happens, the house is steady."
"I know," I said. "I am not afraid."
The hall paused when a servant brought out the ceremonial tea. A man stood and made a short speech about fortune and harvest. Then my father rose. He raised his hands not to shout but to set concerns in order.
"My friends," he began. "We have had a grievous thing occur. A young woman was endangered at a welcome party. We have learned of negligence and false statements from a household whose matron sent an insult to our house."
A polite clearance went round. People shifted.
"People have made the mistake of calling this an accident," my father continued. "It was not an accident. We have witnesses. We have a list of names. We have testimony that was bruited in secret. I will name the first."
He spoke plainly. "Lan." A woman in the Prince's house lowered her head. "Lan has been punished. Her employer, however, has not been examined."
There were murmurs.
"Joselyn Russo," Manuel named, and the air tightened.
Joselyn sat where tea-ladies had placed her, a small smile of upper-class disdain on her face. "How dare—" she began.
"You dared," my father said. "You dared to arrange the conditions by which a young lady was endangered."
"Proof!" Joselyn snapped, indignation like a practiced glove.
"Watch," my father said.
My brother Grayson stepped forward, and he had the manner of a trained scholar when marshaling facts. He set down a small stack of papers—letters, testimony, small receipts for oil, witness accounts of a woman buying a certain resin, and the account of a servant who had been too frightened to speak before.
"Is this enough?" Grayson asked quietly.
The hall fell as if someone had muted it. The air collected at the center like a held breath.
"You had another woman buy the oil on your behalf," my brother said. "You labeled it 'garden use.' You shrugged and said a matron had been negligent. You set the stone and left a note to say 'shoes slipped.' You bought the carriage driver new reins an hour before the party. You assumed no one would pull the thread."
"That is lies!" Joselyn surged. "I would never—"
"You did," my grandmother said. The word was simple but it landed like a weight. "You thought your station would hide you. You thought other people's lives were small."
I rose then. The room turned toward me. "You thought you could make a danger and call it chance," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "You thought you could make me look foolish and then offer a box of herbs and a bow. You thought that would be all."
"Isabella..." Joselyn began. Her composure cracked.
"You were careful," Grayson went on. "You sent Lan to do the work. When Lan began to talk, you ended her. She was beaten and cast out. But the truth stays with hands and paper." Grayson spread out a map. "You placed small amounts of oil. You paid for silence."
At this, the hall was no longer curious but angry. Faces turned like small weather vanes.
"Why?" someone called, and the hall demanded not only words but also the show of conscience. Joselyn's allies began to murmur.
"I did it for the house I belong to," she said, which sounded like a bad excuse even to her. "I did it because we needed to be important."
"You made us the joke of the town," my mother said. Her voice did not waver. "You thought you could humiliate a family and be safe."
"Watch me," Joselyn said, and there was fire in her voice at last. She drew breath and then—something like comprehension seized her. The room had closed on her. Phones these days would record; in our time, hands clasped, lips whispered, eyes narrowed.
"Joselyn Russo," my father said, and now his voice commanded more than curiosity. "You will stand under the same light you used to hide. We will tell all who were close to our house. We will tell them the truth. You will not be spared by social silence."
"How will you make me answer?" Joselyn snarled. "Who will deliver me to shame?"
"Your own words," came Grayson's reply. "Lan lied under fear. You used the servants. We have testimony of your payments. We have statements. You have no further shelter."
The first sound was a gasp. The second was a sob. People in the hall began to stir: women who had pretended not to notice; men who had weighed advantage against conscience. Someone near the dais stood up and shouted, "Enough of coy justice! We demand a reckoning!"
Within minutes, the small social tribunal had become a public unmasking. People wanted to know the face of cruelty when it had been disguised as propriety. Old friends of the Prince's household who had not trusted Joselyn came forward. A former servant who had been threatened stepped forward shaking but resolute.
"I was told to do it," she said, and the room heard a small, pure voice. "I was told to oil the stone. I was told not to speak. I was paid coin and warned of consequences. I am tired of living with this."
"I warned you," another voice said. "You had no honor in secret."
"And now?" Joselyn cried. "Who will believe it? Who will believe me when I say I—"
Her voice failed. She was, at that moment, not in control of the story. The hall had taken the story from her hands and made it its own. People took out their fans and began to whisper into the ear of the city. In our time, gossip is a kind of sword.
"Joselyn Russo," my father said after a long minute, "you will be named among those who would arrange danger. You will be shunned from our circle. You will dine with us no more. You will owe compensations to Lan's living kin. You will not pass unnoticed."
Joselyn's face went white as a sheet. "No," she said, and her bravado was gone. "No, I did not mean—"
"You meant you could do it," my grandmother said, and in that single phrase the whole hall felt the meaning of responsibility.
I had not wanted to make a scene. I had wanted peace. But what I had been given was a small social law: people who design harm in quiet must be exposed in public. We lay the thread bare, and the whole room watched it unwind.
"The world has eyes," Benjamin said quietly to my ear, and I felt sudden gratitude for him. He had been steady through the whole. His eyes were kind, and when he looked at me there was no pity—only recognition.
Joselyn's expression changed as the crowd's mood turned. She first tried to laugh, then to deny, then to cry. "I didn't think—" she mouthed. "I was afraid of losing face—"
"You gambled with a girl's life for face," someone hissed. "We will not have such gambling."
The reactions were as varied as the people present. Some raised their hands in applause for our family, some shook their heads and turned away, some whispered about what the Prince's house would do now that this truth had been pulled into daylight. A young woman nearby took out a small cloth and began to wipe at her nails not because they were dirty, but because she could not bear to stare.
The public unmasking ended with Joselyn's neighbors refusing to visit her, with the hostess of the party cutting her ties quietly, and with word traveling swiftly through the salons. My house had done what we sought: we had forced a face to the harm and let people decide.
Joselyn's reaction changed over the course of that hour. She moved from arrogance to shock to denial to pleading. "Please," she said at the end, voice thin as thread. "Please, forgive me. I can fix this. I will pay. I—"
"Do not speak for your wounds with coin," my grandmother said. "Make the repairs with actions, not money. Live a life that makes others forget you harmed them."
The hall, in those minutes, became an instrument of public judgment: a people deciding who would remain in favor and who would not. People left with new opinions folded into their minds like fresh paper cranes: delicate, sharp, impossible to ignore.
After that day, the tone of the city changed. Joselyn could still move in circles, but every polite nod had a pause now. Her husband—someone who had treasured advantage—began to make his own distance. The Prince's house fumbled, then tried to hold the rest from sliding into a full scandal. It did not fully succeed. Small reputations are brittle.
For me, the public reckoning was both relief and sorrow. I had wanted only to recover and to be left in peace. Instead, truth had opened its mouth. People took sides. Some became cruel with their new judgment; others became kinder. I learned fast that there is a strange satisfaction in seeing injustice named, but it is never entirely clean.
After the storm passed, life tried to return to its softer rhythms. My household—my family—sat down to plan the next steps for the house, and for me. My mother had spoken earlier with the Lady at the House of An-Yuan. There were other invitations to consider, but an unexpected one arrived from the town of the great military family: the young and handsome General's son—Zheng 子怀—had returned triumphant with his father and was to be seen at the temple. The town's long-standing custom involved a small ceremony called an 'inspection of matches,' where two young people might exchange small looks and see if there was a spark.
"Do they like me?" I asked my mother with that impossible childlike hope.
She glanced at me, then at Benjamin, who had now become an acquaintance I trusted more than most. He had a face that grew warmer when I was near, but he was not the man my family thought might hold the household's future. "They like what they see on paper," she said. "We will see what they like in person."
We went to the temple. The world lifted us there: candles, the scent of incense, the quiet of steps up and down the hill. The young Master Zheng—stern, quicker than anyone expected—came and bowed with the manners of a soldier. He looked across at me, and in that look there was the sense of a man who had seen battlefields and knew the weight of responsibility.
He smiled once, a small thing, and then turned to the mountain path. He had urgent news—family matters—and departed in haste. He left a small, solid impression: not fireworks, but a warmth like embers.
"Two things," Benjamin said softly when we had walked down. "He is a good man. He will demand courage. You are not ordinary."
"Neither are you," I said, looking up at him.
We walked back to the carriage, and then the world tipped. Outside the lane, a coach’s escape set the horses in a panic. The driver shouted. Benjamin ran—faster than I had expected—and in the rush, the cart lurched, the pole snapped, and the coach went wild. The wheel hit stone. The carriage began to tumble toward a steep ridge.
There was no time. The driver screamed. The coach lurched. I felt the future slide away.
Someone else's arms caught me—strong, warm, sure—and the next instant the world had been changed. Benjamin had dived, arms around me, and we tumbled together into a soft bed of bayberry leaves in a hollow. Pain flicked like small lights on my skin, but I breathed. I was safe. Benjamin lay on his side, breathing hard, sky in his eyes.
"You moved wrong," he said, with a grin that made me laugh through the fear.
"You came back for me," I said.
"I came back for you," he corrected. "Don't make me gallant unless you plan to keep me for the job."
We both grinned then. In that moment, I understood a truth I had been dancing around: men like him do not always rescue for glory. Sometimes they die small deaths daily to keep others whole.
"Benjamin," I said softly, feeling the scratch on my palm where the carriage had nicked me. "Would you—"
He glanced up. "Yes?"
"Would you stay?" The words felt as precarious as the carriage had been.
He looked at me and then, with a small, decisive breath, he answered, and it was the single thing I had been waiting to hear since the pond. "I would. I will."
That day, in a muddy hollow with horses pacing and people shouting, I found that the world could be honest. They could both be brave and kind, both justice and love. My house would repair its name slowly. Those who had done harm had been exposed. I had love touching my life, patient and practical.
"Come home," my grandmother said when she saw us. "We have much to do."
"Yes," my mother said, squeezing my hand. "We will make you ready."
When we stepped back into the house, it smelled of soup and strong tea. People had spoken of the day's events: the unmasking, the near crash, the look between me and Benjamin. People whispered of weddings and of promises. For now, there was warmth and sunlight in the garden, and that was enough.
I had a ceremony of sorts later—small visits, small bows, more decisions. The things that mattered in old houses happen slowly, through agreed steps, through cloth and rituals. We planned, we sewed, and we laughed. We also prepared for the future I did not dare to imagine before the pond but could now imagine with a steadier hand: a life with a man who would help me build the ordinary joys of retaining a home, who would stand when the world did not behave, who would be present to catch me when I stumbled.
"Will you take my name?" he asked one night, and there was no show in the question—only the simple fact of asking.
"I will take what we make," I said, feeling my grandmother's old hands smoothing the quilt. "I will take it, if you do."
Years from that day, I would tell my children about the pond, not as a tale of terror but as a pivot: the moment where honesty was demanded, where cruelty was named in sunlight, where a stranger bent down in rain and said, simply, "You are safe." I would tell them about the woman who believed power could mask cruelty, and how she learned—slowly, publicly—to wear her shame. I would tell them that houses are kept by hands who do chores and by small mercies.
The end of the pond was not the end of pain, but it was the end of being alone in it. We had the shaken, public justice that made the city hush and examine itself. We had men and women who learned to be kinder because a small revelation forced them to be. And I had a man who would bend to catch me rather than let me fall.
"Promise me one thing," Benjamin said the night before the ceremony, not as a demand but as a soft wish.
"What?"
"That when the weather is rotten, you'll come sit by the fire and complain with me. We'll make hot drinks and laugh at foolishness."
I leaned into the warmth of his arm and felt the small, true thing: a future stitched from many small promises. "I promise," I said.
The End
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