The logic was so simple. Rob wanted to marry Zhinu as his contribution to the growing alliance between the British and Qin empires. Zhinu wanted to marry Rob and run away to Britannia where she would be free to further her own education and a life free of the stifling binds of tradition and expectation into which she had been born.
The private conversation with Zhinu, late in the evening after her maids had retired, about the ridiculousness of it all had not gone well:
“Lady, you don’t even know this man,” Victory said. She leaned over the backrest of a chaise and tried not to squeeze so hard that she burst the furniture’s stuffing. “The earl doesn’t view you as a person. He sees you as an object of power, a way to solidify his political position back home while doing the least work poss
