The Shadow and the Star (18 page)

"No," she said in answer to the housekeeper's question. "I have no valise."

She was painfully aware of how bizarre the circumstance must seem to the woman, but the housekeeper only said, "Very good, miss. The house has just been electrified—you'll find that if you push this button, you will have all the light you require. I'll have a supper tray sent up, if you like?"

"Yes, that would be most welcome."

Leda eyed the electrical button with distrust and decided she was not brave enough to attempt it. She removed her hat and gloves, walked to the open window, and gazed down at the side street onto which her room opened. Evening traffic was brisk: the polished carriages clattered up and down around the corner in Park Lane; gentlemen strolled in pairs, their silk hats catching the gleam of the street lamps; early music drifted from some party nearby.

The orchids had no perfume, but as she stood in the window, the soft petals of one spray brushed her cheek gently, clean and fresh. The incredible awkwardness of her position seemed easy to forget. Clearly Mr. Gerard had proclaimed her some sort of heroine to his friends, or family, or however he stood in relation to Lord and Lady Ashland. And they seemed more than willing to take him at his word. This room had been waiting ready for her, as if he'd known she would need it. And him.

Her only regret was when she realized that she had abandoned Miss Myrtle's silver brush and comb in Bermondsey. There was no way to retrieve them now, and no doubt Mrs. Dawkins would sell them the moment she found the chance.

The housekeeper herself, not a maidservant, came with the tray. She arranged it for Leda and then said as she was leaving, "I'll bring a gown and dressing robe for you with the warm water, miss, after your supper."

"Oh, yes," Leda said, as if gowns and dressing robes were commonplace furnishings for the odd houseguest. She saw a folded note on the tray, and bit her lip. "I won't require anything else presently."

The housekeeper bobbed her head and left. Leda picked up the note.

I would like to see you this evening. Anytime is convenient for me, as you may guess, since I'm not going anywhere.

Your servant,

Samuel Gerard

Hungry though she was, Leda could barely swallow the excellent smoked salmon and cold lobster. When the housekeeper returned for the tray, Leda was obliged to ask where she might find Mr. Gerard, and waved the note in a casual way, to show that she was not herself responsible for the irregularity of the proceedings.

"If you'll follow me, miss," the housekeeper said, still giving nothing away of her sentiments. She led Leda down the main stairs to the first floor, along a well-lit hall lined with Turkish carpets, and knocked at a door. A male voice answered, and Leda felt her stomach turn over.

Somehow, she had expected it would be a study, or a drawing room, or some neutral territory. The fact that it was a bedroom, with a bed, and Mr. Gerard ensconced very plainly in it, made her halt frozen on the threshold.

"Come in, Miss Etoile," he said from his pillows, his hair all tousled gold against the bedclothes.

The housekeeper started to pull the door closed behind her. Leda caught it by the edge.

"That's all right," he said. "Close the door, Mrs. Martin. Thank you."

"Oh, I don't think—that's quite—the thing," Leda protested, holding it open. "In the morning—when you're feeling better, and the family is home—perhaps we might rather talk then!"

"I'm feeling as well now as I will tomorrow, I assure you."

"Lady Catherine said you must be asleep," Leda said desperately.

"Ah. Well, I'm not, am I?" He gave the housekeeper a significant glance.

That lady turned pink and bobbed her head. "It won't happen again, Mr. Gerard. I can promise you that. I had a word with Cook."

"Thank you. Lady Catherine doesn't have to know."

"No, sir," the housekeeper said.

"And close the door, if you will."

"Yes, sir." With a firm tug, the wood slid from Leda's hand and the door clicked shut.

She backed up against it, curling her fingers around the knob. It was almost embarrassing, how strikingly beautiful his face was, how difficult she found it not to stare in fascination at him. "This is most uncomfortable. I should not be here."

"I asked you to come."

"That only makes it worse!"

He shifted his leg beneath the bedclothes, cocking his uninjured knee and pushing up straighter. "Haven't we made you welcome?" he asked.

Leda gave a little wild laugh. "Very welcome. I'm overwhelmed!"

"Good." He smiled, passing his hand idly across the sheet that lay over his leg, and then more intently, as if smoothing the wrinkles were an interesting and absorbing occupation. "I hope your coming here means that you're willing to accept the position?"

"I… suppose that it does."

He was silent for a moment, still smoothing the sheet, not looking at her. "I told them that a barrel fell off a dray and hit me. I passed out from the pain, and when I woke up, you had happened along and taken charge. Quite a coincidence. I made a lot of your spirit and sluffed over the details. It went down very well." He looked up beneath his lashes. "They took quite a liking to you at the dressmaker's, you know."

Leda stood uneasily at the door. "I wonder why I didn't see you safely home, if I was such a jewel."

"You refused to take anything for your trouble. You arranged for a hurdle and saw me to a doctor, and left. Vanished like a good angel. But I'd given you my card, and offered a position with my firm."

She gave an unbelieving huff. "Amazing that your head was so clear as to think of it, being in such pain."

"Oh, by that time you'd set my leg nicely. I wasn't in much pain."

Leda took a breath. "I fear you must live with sadly credulous people, Mr. Gerard."

"They're the finest friends on earth." He looked at her with a straight, cool challenge, as if inviting her to contradict him.

She dropped her eyes. "You're very fortunate, then. I really must go now."

"As your new employer, Miss Etoile, I really must ask you to stay."

Her back stiffened. "Mr. Gerard, this is a highly inappropriate time and place to conduct business. I must ask you to excuse me."

"I can see why you were dismissed from your position,
Miss Etoile, if arguing with your first instruction is any indication of the way you mean to go on."

"I was not dismissed. I resigned."

"Why?"

"That's none of your affair."

"I've just hired you. It seems to me to be emphatically my affair."

"Very well. Madame Elise wished me to assume duties which were—impossible for me to perform."

"What duties were those?"

Leda simply stared at him in silence.

He held her stubborn gaze, but after a moment a certain consciousness came into his face; he looked down and ran his palm over the sheet again. Leda felt herself turning scarlet.

"May I now be dismissed, Mr. Gerard?"

He rubbed a fold of sheet between his thumb and forefinger. "Are you afraid of me?" he asked in a low voice.

Leda hardly knew what she was. Her fingers seemed to have no capacity in them but to hold onto the doorknob. "Do I have reason to be?" she asked shakily.

"You're extremely eager to leave." There was a note of dryness in his words, but still he didn't look up.

"This is a highly improper situation. I don't know what manners may be in your part of the world, but here—for a lady to be in a gentleman's… bedroom…" She moistened her lips. "It is not decent. The servants will talk."

He gave a moody chuckle. "Surely the servants won't think I'm capable of violating your virtue in my present case."

"Then they clearly don't know you very well, do they?" she said stiffly. "I am better informed."

Her hand tightened on the knob in expectation of a mocking reply, but instead she was startled to see a dark flush of blood rise in his face as he stared down at his fist. "I beg your pardon for that," he said. "And for detaining you in a compromising situation, if that's what this is. You can go."

He looked up at her directly, and for an instant it hung between them, the image of him watching her in her own room while she dressed. Leda felt all her skin grow hot with mortification. His mouth seemed tense with some unspoken emotion, and she suddenly felt that she was precariously too close to him.

"Good night," she said, pulling open the door.

"Good night. I'll see you in the library at nine o'clock tomorrow, Miss Etoile, if that meets with your standards for proper conduct."

"Tomorrow is Sunday," Leda pointed out.

His mouth twisted. "Of course. And I suppose you demand the week free for the festivities?"

"Certainly not," she said. "Nine o'clock Monday will be perfectly appropriate. Good night, sir." Without waiting for an answer, she closed the door firmly.

Hawaii, 1874

Samuel dreamed about women. He dreamed about them
almost every night, something that seemed so shameful to him that he never said anything about it to anyone.

He tried to stop doing it, but he couldn't. In the daytime he could bend his mind to study, or train in Dojun's demanding games: drive himself to the limits of his strength and balance until he was good enough to tumble headfirst off the upper ledges at the top of Diamond Head and land on his feet amid dry brush and talus fifteen feet below. But at night he could fall asleep reciting Bible verses to himself, or practicing Dojun's ways of breathing, or reading
Around the World in Eighty Days
, and still he dreamed of things that made his face burn when he thought of them; made him hot and miserable and horrified at what was inside of him.

He didn't have any friends at school. He didn't want any friends; he much preferred going home to watch over Kai, amusing her until supper was over, when Dojun came to him in their private place and they began the rough exercises, the stretches, the bruising falls and rolls and leaps that gradually grew better; grew quicker and softer and easier; grew into something as natural as answering a question when one knew the solution well.

After a year, when Samuel could fall twenty times from the monkeypod tree in the garden and come up ready to climb it again, Dojun left his place as butler for Lady Tess and Lord Gryphon. He went to live in a small house far up on a knee of Mount Tantalus, where the ferns were like trees and the moths were as big as Samuel's hand. From Dojun's lanai, Samuel could see all the way from Diamond Head to Pearl Harbor. The gray-green sweep of the kukui-nut forest hid the city below; Tantalus was like an earth-scented heaven where the mists drifted in and out and triple rainbows formed above the shoreline and the constant horizon of the sea.

Dojun became a carpenter. He built furniture of koa, running his hands over the smooth wood, the light and dark, the infinite grading from golden blond to chocolate brown, from straight grain to figured—the best was the deep reddish-brown fiddleback grain: the prized "curly" koa—and after school each day Samuel carried endless board feet of it up the mountain on his shoulder for Dojun to work.