Lily knew that her Grandmother Ye loved books. Aside from reading, her Grandma Ye would spend a lot of time in this house to tend to her roses and have some time alone for herself. Lily used to wonder what would the older woman do in this house alone aside from tending her garden.
The answer was writing.
Surprisingly, her grandmother loved to write in notebooks that were bound in brown leathers. She smiled as she held one of the notebooks that was piled up just next to her bookshelves. Was this a diary? She asked herself but quickly shook her head. If this is something important, she would not have just left this thing out in the open.
"Surprisingly, this place is clean." Qin Yuanfeng uttered after he examined the room. He insisted on coming inside the room before letting Lily in. "Are you paying someone to clean this place?"
"Yes. Once a month." The house is already old. Without maintenance, who knows what kind of nasty molds would grow around this place. Sitting on the velvet chair near the fireplace, Lily let out a sigh of relief.
This place was not that big, however, everything about the room screamed comfort, warmth. Something that she never felt when she was living in Lilian's mansion.
"This place is nice." Qin Yuanfeng sat on the other chair that is fronting the fireplace. "This is different from the mansion in London, no?"
"You noticed?"
"That place is — creepy."
"I know! But it was old so naturally ghosts roam around the place all the time." Lily smiled at Qin Yuanfeng's face.
"Ghosts? I'm pretty sure someone is living inside the walls of that place, watching me as I sleep." He hugged himself and shivered at the memories. "I am not afraid of ghosts. But I am afraid of creepy people watching over me while I'm unaware."
His words immediately made Lily laugh. "Paranoid."
"Says the queen of paranoia."
Another laughter left Lily's mouth.
"So you inherited this place?"
"Hmmm. I didn't expect her to give this place to me as this was pretty important from her side of the Family." The Ye Family that she never had the chance to meet. Of course, Lily perfectly understood now that she was not really a part of the Family so she had no right to even meet them. Because of this, she was really surprised to know that Grandmother Ye gave this house to her instead of her Ye Family from mainland china.
What surprised her even more was the fact that they seemed not to care about this place.
"And those books?" he turned towards the bookshelf opposite to the fireplace.
"Hers."
"In latin?"
"Yes. In latin." She nodded. "Grandma Ye was a very well read woman. She knew a lot of languages too. I remember she spoke English and German I think? Of course, I am not really sure. I was a child then and I don't really have the best memory." She shrugged. "I believe I heard her read books in three or four languages."
"Isn't that strange?"
"What is?" She asked.
"A Chinese housewife knowing stuff like that. I mean… don't get me wrong but the society in the past was extremely patriarchal. Meaning, women were not taught to read and write, instead, they were told to learn the arts. Embroideries and other feminine stuff."
His words immediately made Lily laugh. "Well… Grandma Ye wanted to learn. I believe she did it secretly as I never saw her read something not in Pinyin when she was in the Qin residence. Or maybe there was really a problem with my memory." She stared at the stack of books on the table to her left. "But yes, I agree with you. That is extremely strange."
"So… did she teach you how to read these books?"
"A few words in Latin." She answered. "I was not particularly that bright while growing up and my interests were not into learning so I believe… she gave up when she noticed that I was not really interested to learn? So… I forgot most of it. I believe… I remember counting in Latin? But that was it."
"So she taught you Latin but not English?"
"No. Just Latin." At that time Lily did not think too much about it. First, she is not really interested in learning another language. Even her grasp of English at that time was weak— so weak it is embarrassing to even talk about it. Second, what kind of books were printed in latin? At that time she was extremely ignorant and simple minded. Third, she did not spend a lot of time with her grandmother as she was sent to a boarding school that was located near the orphanage before.
And once Tang Lingyun decided that she should stop going to school, the latter forbade her from going out of the house or even going with her grandmother and always used her health as an excuse to keep her confined.
Moreover, when Lily was saved by Lilian, she focused all her energy in learning about the business and decided to stop thinking about her past. That included her Grandma Ye. Slowly, she had forgotten about these things and the reason why she could even remember them now was because she saw the Latin books and she talked about this with Zhou Jingren before.
"Do you know how to read any other languages?" Lily asked.
"Russian, Malaysian, Japanese and Korean. Aside from English and all dialects in China."
Lily immediately widened her eyes. "All dialects in China? Like the dialect used by people in Yunnan?"
"Hmmm."He nodded. "If you have a lot of time, then you don't have a choice but to learn something new or you will die from boredom."
A smug smile slithered in Lily's face. "Hehe... of course you know a lot of languages. After all, you are a genius. You have my genes in you."
...
Proofreader: Dragon777
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