The Shadow and the Star (22 page)

The scullery maids found that impossibly funny, especially after Sheppard solemnly pointed out what an exhausting device it must be, since every good Englishman must immediately stand up upon hearing the tune. Even the French chef laughed.

The crowds in the street had been a low roar all morning, but now a different, more excited note rose from below. It was half past eleven—the great moment was approaching. Sheppard asked if Mr. Gerard wished to move to the terrace for a better view, but it was evident the butler's offer of help was merely nominal; Mr. Gerard showed himself perfectly capable of standing up and retrieving his crutches himself. Leda was fairly sure that his main wish was to be left untouched, instead of being pushed and pulled and otherwise mauled by overeager helpers. Sheppard appeared to have divined this, too, merely standing back and directing a footman to place chairs outside for sir and miss.

From the small terrace over the front door, they had a fabulous view up and down Park Lane. As Leda and Mr. Gerard emerged, the spectators just below Morrow House gave a cheer, as if they were notables in their own right. With an ironic smile, Mr. Gerard discarded a crutch, reached back, and lifted first the Union Jack and then the Hawaiian flag from their holders. He thrust the British banner into Leda's hand and limped forward on one crutch, pushing her along with his other arm. The crowd flowed and rumbled. He looked at her with his eyebrows raised expectantly.

Feeling exceedingly audacious, Leda lifted her heavy pole in a tentative wave. He raised his; his arm took it higher than hers, and suddenly he reached out and locked his hand over her fingers, lifting the weight of both banners to full height. The light breeze unfurled their full expanse, spreading royal color. The crowd's cheers grew to a roar of appreciation. The sound rolled away as all the spectators along the street took it up, a sensation like nothing Leda had ever experienced. Her heart filled to bursting with pride and loyalty for her country—and even, in a strange way, for the faraway, unimaginable islands that Mr. Gerard's flag represented.

She stood with a wide smile, her arm raised alongside his, the flags draping and fluttering against her shoulder and then streaming out under a puff of wind, the sunlight of a perfect day pouring down over the park and the mass of people. The sound of distant music beat over the noise; from the corner of her eyes she could see the bunting and flags that decorated Morrow House as they, too, lifted and swung in the soft air.

He lowered the banners, resting the shafts on the terrace without removing his hand from overtop hers. She glanced toward him, unable to hide her enthusiasm, and found him watching her past the folds of the flags. He grinned.

Leda felt something happen in the vicinity of her stomach; something breathless and sensational—oh, really, she thought in sudden alarm, if she didn't watch what she was about, she would find herself in the suds, rather.

She looked quickly away, and tried to withdraw her hand. For an instant he didn't let go, and then he did, leaving her with the staff of the Union Jack. The flags blew between them so that she couldn't see his face.

For Leda, the rest of the event seemed anticlimactic, though the crowd cheered themselves silly for the Life Guards and the Queen herself when they came, passing in brilliant formation, and Leda and Mr. Gerard held their flags in salute to Her Majesty's carriage—separately, this time—and the dear, stout, frog-faced Queen even glanced up at Morrow House and gave them a gracious nod as she passed… and Leda made an appalling discovery about herself: that she would be quite happy to trade the personal recognition of Her Majesty the Queen of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Empress of India for one casual, intimate smile from Mr. Gerard on any day.

Hawaii, 1876

They didn't go to Chinatown for a long time. Dojun
taught Samuel fighting strikes, how to use his thumbs and his fingers and toes as weapons. He learned strangleholds, and toughened his hands and feet by using them against the rough bark of a koa tree. Dojun hung a big, smooth stone from a rafter, and Samuel butted his forehead against it until hot stinging tears ran down his face.

He learned to evade, too. He learned to watch for Dojun's secret strikes—and when he was too slow to elude the hit, which was often, Dojun stopped it a hairsbreadth from completion. There were still the other exercises, too, the breathing and
taihenjutsu
rolls and breakfalls, and new things: how to care for a sword, how to judge one, the history and names of the greatest blades; practicing to walk in silence, to watch for hiding places in every destination; learning to inhale the steam from a cup of tea and identify it out of twenty-two varieties on Dojun's shelf, to sit motionless for hours and absorb the world, noting things he'd never noticed before—because any tiny thing might matter.

His time with Dojun came to seem farther and farther from the rest of his life. No one at home ever appeared to think anything of it; they knew he went to Tantalus to practice carpentry, and the rest of it was, by unspoken consent, a secret between him and his teacher. Samuel went to school, keeping his distance from the other boys, and went to Dojun, and then came home and played with
Kai. At dinner he talked about what he was studying in mathematics with Lord Gryphon, and watched Lady Tess when she smiled, and felt safe again and lucky.

When Kai was seven, she crept downstairs and saw a waltz at a ball that Lady Tess gave in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Dominis' wedding anniversary. It was a particularly grand occasion because Mrs. Dominis was no longer simply Lydia, she was the new king's sister, and now called the Princess Lili'uokalani. Upon discovering the dresses and lights and music, Kai decided she must have dancing lessons and be known as Lady Catherine.

Of course Robert would have none of it, and Kai refused to accept the notion of a female partner, so Samuel became her beau for practice. At fifteen, or possibly sixteen—he had never known his birthday—he was so much taller than she that she only came up to his waist, but he didn't mind the task—he teased her to see her giggle and preen and pretend she was a grown-up lady.

He loved Kai. He always had. He'd forgone Lord Gryphon's offer to legally adopt him years ago, when he was no more than eleven, because he'd been sure that he was going to marry her, although he never said so out loud. He was still certain now, long after he'd realized that it was an intention considerably more weighty than he'd understood at the time.

But he could wait for Kai. He was determined to. He kept himself decent, he thrust away the dreams and thoughts that shamed him, he governed his body with Dojun's work. It was a relief to be with Kai; he never felt with her the way he felt when he saw one of the Hawaiian women canter along the street astride a raw-boned mount, with her feet bare and her hair unwound, falling down her back in waves that haunted his days and nights.

The visions seemed to come out of the walls and the sky and the air; fantasies of women spreading arms and legs, flashes of things he remembered, female curves and female skin. Once he was standing in a hardware store in Honolulu while Lord Gryphon placed an order for glass jars for Lady Tess, when one of the American wives walked in. She stopped a moment to speak to Lord
Gryphon, a cheerful figure in a modest dress, and Samuel caught the scent of her: an intimate, secret, explicit scent that blossomed in his brain.

He stood paralyzed. He knew that scent; he saw her head thrown back on a pillow, her face flushed and her breasts arched. His body suffused with heat and hunger and loathing. He could not bear the sight of her. He turned away and imagined pressing his face to her belly and breathing that salty, strong aroma, craving the taste until she filled him up to exploding.

The things he invented shocked him. He wanted to shout at her to go home and bathe herself; to leave him alone.

He left the store and stood in the street, breathing deeply. Without waiting for Lord Gryphon, he began to walk, then run. He found Kai in the front parlor at home, practicing at her scales on the piano, a gloomy scowl on her face as the teacher corrected her frequent flat notes. Samuel sat down in a chair in the corner of the cool room, facing a window where the sweet, clean breeze blew across his face, listening to the notes go up and down, and up and down, over and over.

Kai was his. He protected her. He was going to make sure her life was always exactly as it should be. Nothing was ever going to hurt her or frighten her or make her really cry. He loved her, and when she was old enough, she was going to love him.

When summer vacation came, Lord Gryphon asked Samuel if any position at the Arcturus Company held an interest as a future career. Samuel went to work in the harbor office, profoundly pleased with the suggestion that Lord Gryphon thought of him as a protege. Sitting among the logs, poring over shipping manifests and warehouse inventories, he learned the accounts of the enterprise, and slowly, with astonishment, came to realize that the shipping company was really just an avocation for his foster father; that the reason there weren't enough steamships and too much profit was poured into maintaining the sailing fleet was simply because Lord Gryphon loved his sailing ships and had the money to waste lavishly on them.

Lord Gryphon was rich. Astronomically rich. Samuel had never had the faintest notion of what his foster family must be worth until he saw the money that flowed through the company books. They lived well, but nowhere nearly as grandly as half the American businessmen in Honolulu. The Arcturus fleet was better manned and better maintained than any other, and it barely broke even with the competition. It was a wealthy man's form of amusement, with one ship always moored in Honolulu harbor for Lord Gryphon to command if the mood took him to do it.

The office agents were happy to educate Samuel as to the real source of the money: Lord Gryphon's ancestral holdings in England, and the huge trust he managed for his wife. As Samuel listened to the details, his heart grew cold with dismay.

Kai's parents were unthinkably wealthy. He could not offer himself with nothing.

He trained with Dojun and worked all summer at the shipping office. When September came, he told Lord Gryphon that he'd rather continue his position there than return to school. Lady Tess seemed distressed, and said his schoolwork was so excellent that she'd hoped perhaps he would think of college, but that meant the United States or England. It meant leaving. He tried to convince her that he knew some of the boys who'd gone to Harvard, and the young men who'd returned. They were elegant and sophisticated, and liked to show it, but they were stupid. She talked of Oxford and education. He said that he enjoyed the shipping work, and promised to read all the same books they read at Oxford. She said that he deserved better instruction than Honolulu could provide. Finally, he locked his hands together behind his back and stood facing away from her, staring out into the sparkling shade of the lanai, and asked her not to send him away.

Not yet.

Please God, not yet.