The Shadow and the Star (30 page)

"Oh, is it a fight you want?" Sergeant MacDonald demanded wildly. He took a step toward Mr. Gerard, his fists closing. "I'll give you that, Fancy Man, limping or no. Is that what you want?"

"Not really," Mr. Gerard murmured. Leda saw the tiger very clearly in his easy, ready stance, crippled but still with lethal claws.

She had a spurt of apprehension for Sergeant MacDonald, who didn't know—who puffed and swung and never saw the danger. She drew in a sharp breath as he threw himself into the punch.

Mr. Gerard just seemed to move past him. For an instant they were together in the doorway, and then Sergeant MacDonald was lurching past onto the landing, grabbing at the stair rail to save himself from falling, while Mr. Gerard turned in front of Leda and stood there, planted between her and the policeman.

She heard Sergeant MacDonald come back, a clump of boots and furious breathing. She rubbed her palms up and down her aching arms and peered around Mr. Gerard. The sergeant stood in the doorway. "I'd have married you," he muttered. "Against Mary and everything! Ask him what he's offering!"

Leda felt her mouth pucker, chagrin and tears and nerves all tangled up together. "You wouldn't have," she said in a small voice. "You wouldn't even speak for me to your sister. I wish you would go away!"

"He's scum! Miss—look at him! You can tell his sort a mile distant.
Look at him
. Everything that's low and shameful, that's his kind. You think he's so handsome, but he's trash. You'll find out what he wants from you." He gripped the doorway and shoved off of it. "Ah, miss�damn you! Both of you!" He turned away and started down the stairs.

His boots echoed in the silence that he left. Mr. Gerard stood motionless, still facing out the open door as the sound of the policeman's footsteps receded. When the distant sound of the front door shook the air with a faint vibration, he turned. He had a strange look, lost, as if he didn't recognize her for an instant.

It was gone in a blink. He leaned on the table and hefted himself up, balancing on one bent knee and foot on the wooden surface. He rose, swinging his splinted leg clear of the edge, reaching for the attic beam. With both hands, he hauled upward, straddled the joist, and came down off the other side, all in one swift flow of motion. Then he was back on the floor, holding a felt drawstring bag of a terribly familiar, long and narrow shape.

She stared at the bag, but he gave her no time to think about it. "Under your skirt," he said quietly, holding the thing toward her.

"What?"

He didn't answer, but pulled her toward him and started to bend down on one knee, lifting her dress below the bustle. Leda squeaked, but managed to clap her hand over her mouth. She grabbed the bag, twitching her skirts away. "I can do it," she hissed. "If you please, Mr. Gerard!"

He rose, with a look that she could not interpret. She glared at him. He turned away, using the table edge to support himself for one stride back within reach of his crutches. Mrs. Dawkins shouted something from below. Leda pulled up her skirts with shaky hands, trying to hide the sword and check to make sure Mr. Gerard wasn't looking at the same time.

He wasn't. He just took his crutches and started at a leisurely pace down the stairs.

Unable to contain her anxiety, Leda dragged open the neck of the bag. Inside, the golden handle of the sword caught a gleam of light.

She gave a little gasp of consternation. How could it be
here
, when it had been located by the police?

A madman. He was an utter madman.

Hurriedly, she slid the bag through the wire cage of her
tournure
and tied the drawstring to her waistband, not without some effort. She finally had to take off one glove to handle the cord. The weight of the burden was awkward, and she knotted the string three times, in desperate fear that it might work loose. As she took a step, the sword banged against her legs—she had to slip it further to the side and brush down her silk skirts while Mrs. Dawkins yelled up the stairwell that she wouldn't have any love-making going on right under her nose.

Leda clutched her skirt and hastened to the stairs. Mr. Gerard was already at the bottom, in conversation with the landlady where she'd limped into the hall. When Leda reached the first landing, he was leaning over Mrs. Dawkins in a way that seemed most intimidating; the landlady was sinking down into a convenient chair with her eyes glued to his face. He didn't stop speaking as Leda passed him, but she was in no mood to linger and listen to whatever he was saying in that low and formidable voice.

She went right out the door, pulling on her glove, stepping briskly up the street. "Sir will be along in a moment," she informed the waiting cabbie, and pulled open the door of the cab herself, entering from the side away from the police station. She settled into the musty seat with the hard press of metal against her leg, and switched frantically at her skirts, trying to make them fall naturally over it, but the curved point of the weapon insisted upon sticking upward in a manner that she feared made a painfully obvious bump at the level of her knees.

Mr. Gerard arrived. The cabbie handed the crutches inside after Mr. Gerard had hefted himself within the carriage. He sank back into the seat across from her as the door closed.

The cab moved forward with a rocking motion. Leda rested her face in one hand, suddenly feeling as limp as a wet petticoat. She took a few deep, rhythmical breaths, and then lifted her face. "Oh, my." She drank in another gulp of ancient cab air and pushed it out of her lungs in a rush. "Oh, my."

Mr. Gerard was looking at the lump in her skirts. Leda brushed at the telltale point, trying to make it disappear.

"I believe you have it on backward," he said gently.

"How was I supposed to know?" She tugged again at her skirt. "Whatever are we doing with it? I thought the police had found it!"

"Obviously, they haven't."

"But—in the paper—"

"It's intriguing. I think there must have been a copy. Why, I don't know. But someone has decided to save some diplomatic embarrassment, and serve up the fake to Her Majesty." He shrugged. "It makes no difference. I've done what I wished."

"Well, this is too Oriental for me. Whatever are we to do with it now?"

"Take it up to your room. Is there somewhere you can put it that the maid won't be into before tonight?"

"
My
room!"

"Unless you prefer to give it to me now. I could try to conceal it alongside the splint, but I don't think that would work overly well."

Leda could see that it would not, nor did she care to lift her skirts and struggle to untie the thing right here in the cab, with him watching from the forward seat. She frowned at the passing buildings outside the besmudged window. "I suppose—it would go under the skirt of the dressing table. But that will be swept in the morning."

"I'll remove it before then."

She looked at him swiftly. "How?"

He just made that faint curl of his mouth, not quite a smile. He seemed remote, somewhere far beyond her in his thoughts, even though he was speaking to her from two feet away.

Leda made a little moan, pressing her fingertips together at the bridge of her nose. He was a singularly uncomfortable sort of man, and a thief, and now he would be slinking into her bedroom in the middle of the night to retrieve his ill-gotten goods.

"Are you with me?" he asked.

She pressed her fingertips harder and nodded.

"Miss Etoile," he said softly, "you are a remarkable lady."

The family were dining at home that night, and Leda found that she was to have a place at the table. Mr. Gerard ate in his room, stating that his walk in the park had worn him out, which seemed quite plausible to Leda.

She was seated by the foot of the table, next to Lady Ashland. To the right of Her Ladyship's cover, a shiny black bowl sat amid the crystal and delicate china plate. It held a handful of fragrant wood shavings, upon which rested a square of black silk. An unadorned silver ring lay in the middle of the square.

Lady Ashland made no move to touch or examine it, but Leda saw her eyes rest on it several times when the talk was of the troubles in their islands and Mr. Gerard's leaving. When the ladies rose from the table, Lady Ashland lifted the bowl and carried it with her, pausing in the hall to tell her daughter and Leda that she would be back down to the drawing room in a moment.

"That's one of Samuel's gifts," Lady Catherine confided. "He's the most provoking thing—they always mean something very deep, and I can never puzzle out what it is. But it's sweet of him. It means a lot to poor old Mum, you know, even if it is only feathers and bits of cloth and such. I like to give her practical things. She always needs new notebooks, and last Christmas I saved my pin money and had a carpenter make a glass cabinet for her specimens. It turned out very well. I have to think of what I'm going to do this year, since we might be spending it at Westpark. Maybe you can help me."

Leda was happy to lend herself to such an agreeable task until coffee arrived, and Lady Ashland came, and later the men, when the conversation turned political again, full of unpronounceable names and untold complexities of sugar and treaties and labor shortages. Leda sat listening quietly. She would have been willing to sit up quite late, hoping that if Mr. Gerard was going to slip into her room, he would do it while she was downstairs, but in the end she had no reason to stay longer than Lady Ashland and her daughter, who rose to go to bed at ten.

The sword bag was still under Leda's dressing table when she returned to her room. She didn't change, fully intending to sit up wide awake until he came, which somehow seemed more respectable than just drifting off to sleep when expecting a bachelor in one's bedroom.

She sat in a cushioned chair and took up the only book in the room, smoothing her hand over the pages of a peculiar, pleasantly soft and pliable paper decorated by an Oriental chrysanthemum motif. The book was written in both English and the quaint bird tracks of Chinese-looking characters, with pictures of little temples and ships and people, and called
Descriptions and Oddities of Japanese Culture Identified for the Englishman
.

It was interesting, but not interesting enough to keep her eyes from drooping as the night wore on and the electric light glared steadily from overhead, much brighter and harder upon the eyes than gas or candlelight. Finally, as the sound of Big Ben drifted in three slow tones on the night, she finished the entry on the meaning of
maru
, which was a circle, and perfect completeness, and sometimes an affectionate suffix for things like good sword blades.

She rolled her eyes at that, and thought,
Men
, as she closed her lids to rest them for a moment. She mused about the word for circle, and the silver ring, and thought drowsily,
I know what the circle means. Completeness. It means he's coming back
.

She sat up with a start, finding that the room was dark. It was confusing for a few moments, until she realized she had fallen asleep in the chair, and her back was stiff. She squinted her eyes against the sleepy scratch in them.

He must have come and gone already, and extinguished the light as he left.

She could see quite well in the lamplight that filtered into the windows from the street, reflecting back all the pale creams and light blues of the room. She rose, thinking to slip out of her dress and into her borrowed gown, so that she would get some little sleep for the night.

"You're awake."

His voice was soft; it came from the darkness and should have made her jump, but instead it was calming, instantly familiar to her.

"Oh," she whispered, putting her hand to her throat. "You're still here." She located him as he moved; he had been standing quite near her chair, but he crossed silently to the window where she could see his face in the cold light. He had only one crutch with him, and carried the felt bag with the sword in the other hand.

As she watched, he slipped open the bag and drew the sword from inside, holding it up so that the golden hilt and lacquered sheath gleamed, and the bronze tassels fell down over his fist.

"Come here and look at it," he bid her.

Leda walked to the window, caught by the night and the silence, and the pearly shimmer of the sword. The round guard below the hilt reflected inlaid gold: swirling clouds with the face of a lion or a Chinese dog amid them.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" he asked quietly. "The mount is probably at least five hundred years old."

It was beautiful.

He touched the hilt. "This should have a blade forged by a master, with a dragon carved down the length of it, or a war god, for the spirit of the sword."

She looked up at him. He grasped the hilt and the scabbard and drew them apart.

There was only a piece of rough iron, a foot long, loosely set in the hilt like the cut-off stump of an arm.

"What happened to it?" she gasped.

"It was made this way. It's a
kazaritachi—a
. ceremonial sword. A gift to be dedicated to the honor of some temple, I'd guess. Never meant to be used." He slid the hilt home and looked down into the lamplit street. Shadow and silver lined his face in spartan planes. "All this gold outside. Hammered-out iron inside." He rubbed his thumb against the lacquered sheath. "Do you think your sergeant is right?"

"Right… concerning what?"

He only gazed down into the street.

"Sergeant MacDonald is ill-mannered and impertinent," Leda said. "And I shall certainly cut him the next time I see him. He is entirely mistaken in his conjectures about me."

His lashes lowered. "And what of his conjectures about me?"

"I take leave to doubt he is right about anything whatsoever," she said tartly. "He is evidently a rather stupid man."

"He frightened you. I'm sorry for that."

"Oh, well—I suppose it made an excellent diversion. He was so busy accusing me of nonsense, I don't think he had any suspicions about anything else at all."

He looked up into her eyes. "Miss Etoile, is there anything I can do for you before I leave?"