The Shadow and the Star (34 page)

The maid, however, seemed to believe it was not only possible, but imperative. With whispered badgerings and manual efforts, she got Leda up and dressed. A whiff of cherry brandy from the discarded apron Leda had worn the day before almost overset her, but the maid rummaged up a fresh skirt and a blouse embroidered in crisp white at the high collar.

With her hair done up into a tight French braid, Leda descended one wing of the curving double staircase from the balcony that overlooked Westpark's domed central hall. Trees quite the size of forest giants grew right inside the house, spreading tropical fronds to the early-morning light filtering through the rain-soaked skylights, the legacy of Lady Tess's naturalist father. For all the years the family had been away, the house and greenhouses and gardens and jaguars at Westpark had been kept by a Mr. Sydney, a spry and ancient gentleman who could reel off the scientific name of any plant at a moment's notice, and often did, without being asked.

Of necessity, she kept her hand firmly on the banister for support. No one else, family or guests, seemed to be stirring yet, but a footman awaited her at the bottom of the stairs and directed her to the small parlor. At the threshold, she felt a very uneasy moment of rebellion in her middle, but the footman was already holding open the tall, varnished door with its gilt work and brass trim.

At Westpark there was no gas or electricity either. Everything was lit by candles and oil. In the dim, watery illumination of the day, a glass-shaded lamp near the window threw scarlet warmth across the carpet, one colorful corner amid the early gloom. At the edge of the glow, Mr. Gerard stood with his arm resting on the end of the mantelpiece. A small fire, newly lit, sent white smoke up the flue.

Leda pulled her heavy shawl closer. She looked in bewilderment toward a sober-faced woman who rose from a chair in the half-light, dressed in a naval-blue cape with a red uniform jacket beneath. A gold badge and single red ribbon trimmed her matching poke bonnet. "Miss Etoile?" She held out her hand, speaking in a voice that was mercifully soft. "I am Captain Peterson, of the Salvation Army."

"Good morning." Leda kept hers equally soft. She shook hands, swallowing a faint wave of illness. Even breathing seemed distressful in her present case.

"I am on my way to a meeting at the hall in Portsmouth. As I would be passing this way, I felt it would be best if I conveyed the child directly to you."

Leda blinked at her. Captain Peterson lifted her hand, indicating the darkest part of the room. Leda noticed for the first time a large basket set upon a table. She looked back at the Salvation Army officer, her lips forming a faint "Child?"

"The girl Pammy Hodgkins, with whom you left him, was not equal to the task." There was a note of steel in the quiet voice. "Although she did well enough; by God's grace he's healthy for a babe that's been put out to a minder."

"Pammy?" Leda looked at the basket, and the officer, and Mr. Gerard, who looked back at her with frost-gray eyes. "But he's not
mine
!" she gasped. "The baby isn't
mine!"

"Miss Etoile, I appeal to your higher instincts as a mother." The basket rustled. Captain Peterson glanced at it, and lowered her voice to an intense whisper. "We were informed by Miss Hodgkins that she had accepted money from you to care for the child. She was present at the birth, I understand? We requested that a copy of the police record be forwarded to us with the particulars." She extracted a folded paper from beneath her cape and handed it to Leda. Inside, stamped and initialed by some clerk, was a short copy of the record concerning the birth at the station house of a boy to Miss Leda Etoile, resident of Mrs. Dawkins' boardinghouse in Jacob's Island, witnessed by Mrs. Fullerton-Smith of the Ladies' Sanitary Association, and Mrs. Layton, midwife-nurse; Sgt. MacDonald and Ins. Ruby being called out upon the investigation previously noted.

"This is mistaken!" Leda protested in a forceful undertone. "I was a witness, certainly—but it was Pammy's baby. Sergeant MacDonald must have noted it wrong. Everything was very confused—but Captain Peterson, you may believe that this child is
not
mine."

The officer did not argue, but merely gazed steadily at her, as if she could compel the truth in that way.

Leda put her hand to her aching head. "The date alone." She had difficulty keeping her voice from wavering. "You need not take my word. Mr. Gerard—look at the date of this record. This is the very day after the Queen of Hawaii and the Japanese party visited Madame Elise's showroom, is it not? You must see that it is impossible."

She held out the paper toward him, but he made no move to take it.

"I believe Miss Etoile is correct." His even tone was a welcome deliverance back to rationality. "A mistake has been made in the record. What has become of the girl Pammy?"

The officer lowered her eyes. "I am sorry to say that Miss Hodgkins succumbed to typhoid fever four days ago. That is what led us here. With her last words, she asked our officer to bring the baby to its mother." She pursed her lips. "I suppose—it is possible that in her extremity, she might have hoped to prevent the child's being thrown on the parish." She included Mr. Gerard in her searching look. "It is possible, but it does not seem to me likely."

"It is not mine!" Leda whispered vehemently. "I'm very sorry that you've come out of your way, but it is
not. "

Without moving perceptibly, Captain Peterson seemed to slump a little. She frowned at the basket, and then held out her palm toward Leda. "I should like the record, please. It must be corrected." She arched her eyebrows, and the medal on her bonnet glittered. "Or if it is correct, then there is the recourse of legal action to be considered, to compel parental support."

Leda handed her the paper with a stiff, offended motion. "Most certainly. Further inquiry will provide you with the true case. Please trouble yourself to speak to Inspector Ruby, who was present at the station that night."

"Well." The woman looked at each of them in turn, as if she felt she had been deceived, but could not prove it. "Very well! I shall take him back to the parish, then." She walked to the table and hefted the big basket, peering down among the plain blankets. "We must put you among the orphans I'm afraid, Samuel Thomas."

The fire hissed in the silence. Mr. Gerard did not move; he gazed down into the grate with his mouth expressionless.

"Samuel Thomas?" Leda repeated faintly.

Captain Peterson looked up, as if catching the irresolution in Leda's voice. "Perhaps you would like to see the little soul that you are sending away." She carried the basket to Leda.

In spite of herself, Leda looked. Samuel Thomas lay on his back, profoundly asleep in his homely cradle, with fat pink cheeks and a snub nose, a faint dusting of light brown hair. His face screwed up on one side as she watched, like a funny half-smile, and then he released the squint with a baby sigh.

"He's a dear little boy." Captain Peterson lifted the head of the basket slightly, as if to better display its occupant.

The baby squirmed as she spoke, half-waking. Then he squeezed up both his eyes, gave another faint sigh, and subsided.

"We shall pray to God to take care of him. Do you know what an orphans' barracks is like, dear?"

Leda's head ached. She felt miserable. She covered her mouth with both hands and looked up at Mr. Gerard.

His impassive eyes met hers. She read nothing there, no encouragement, no accusation, no denial. The rain gutters echoed a rhythmic plunk of water, over and over.

"Do you think…" She could not quite get it out. "Mr. Gerard…"

The lamplight played on the side of his face and his hair, kindling the bright, inhuman beauty in the shadows. "Keep him, if you like." He inclined his head toward Captain Peterson and walked out of the room.

Samuel Thomas Hodgkins made himself known to those still lying abed immediately after the Salvation Army officer had left in a hurry to catch her train. Filling the small parlor first with minor snufflings and small sobs, and then, as Leda attempted to comfort him by trying to pick him up, with wild shrieks, he brought Sheppard, two maids,

Lady Tess, and finally a very white and wretched-looking Lady Kai to the room.

Before Lady Kai arrived, her mother had already got things partly in hand, pacing up and down with Samuel Thomas' red and unhappy face peeping above the shoulder of her dressing gown each time she passed. His sobs had subsided enough for Leda to stammer out a tumbled explanation of the circumstances, which Lady Tess seemed to accept with only a little perplexity, patting the baby's back and crooning in between Leda's tangled sentences and pauses.

If Mr. Gerard appeared to accept a baby with no more consideration than he would adopt a stray pup, and Leda herself could not say she was much better, the rest of the Ashland household was not quite so innocently sanguine. Lady Tess sent the maids off for something that would do for baby napkins, and a little rice gruel and wanned milk. When the towels arrived, it was Lady Kai, smiling gallantly through her pallor, who took the wailing child and deftly cleaned and changed him, while Leda thought that the sudden odor would finally overcome her willpower and make her gag.

She looked at the young and frivolous Lady Kai with a new respect. Everyone else seemed to know exactly what was to be done, while Leda stood aside, feeling stupid and useless in her ignorance. While she kept trying to explain to Lady Kai where the baby had come from, Lady Tess worried aloud about more practical things: that he might not have taken any solid food yet, if cow's milk might make him break into hives, if there was a wet nurse to be found on such short notice, and numerous other concerns that Leda would not have had the vaguest notion to consider.

But Samuel Thomas seemed to take to his rice cereal with enthusiasm. When the spoon clinked in the dish, he stretched his eyes wide and opened his mouth like an anxious baby bird. A single tooth could be observed in his lower jaw as he gaped.

"There." Lady Kai wiped his face when he had finished the bowl and sucked water from a clean cloth dipped in a glass. "How are you now, poor little muffin? Do you feel better now? What's your name?"

"Thomas." Lady Tess answered before Leda could speak.

"Tommy, Tommy!" Lady Kai made his name a singsong, sitting him up on her knees and swaying him back and forth. "Little Tommy Tittletumps!"

The baby stared at her, and then his mouth curved up in that one-sided grin. He reached out toward her nose with his plump hands, laughing.

"You silly muffin." She pressed her face into his tummy, shaking her head. "Silly little muffin!"

He shrieked with laughter, grabbing at her loose hair.

"Sweet muffin!" She gathered him up and gave him a hug. "Have you come to visit? Have you come to visit Auntie Kai, mmmh? Did you lose your mummy and dad, poor,
poor
little Tommy Tittletumps? What is to become of you?"

"Mr. Gerard said he might stay," Leda offered tentatively.

"Samuel is a brick!" was Lady Kai's comprehensive endorsement of this news.

Leda looked up at her mother with considerably more diffidence. "If it is quite all right with you and Lord Ashland, ma'am? Perhaps I could find a woman in the village who might like to take him in."

"What?" Lady Tess lifted her head from a frowning contemplation of the carpet. "No—certainly not. I have just been thinking of what we shall require to refurbish the nursery."

To strengthen his leg, Samuel walked. He used it against tree trunks in lethal kicks, pushing off sometimes into a backward roll and then immobility, a suspended space of time, breathing the long, silent breath of the woods around him. The rain slid down his face when he was still. The scent of leaf mold clung to his hands and clothes.

He recognized fear in himself. He recognized the gaping hole that had appeared in his intentions. He stood in the rain and thought of elemental things. Fire. Water. Wind. Faith. Will flowing into action without pause.

There was a time to hide himself, and a time to walk into the open.

Leda felt that her recent encounters with Mr. Gerard had not been entirely satisfactory. She had a great urge to meet with him in a situation of which she was the mistress, in order to show how very collected and temperate she was, not at all inclined, as a rule, to overindulge in brandied cherries and lean back for support against bachelor gentlemen.

He managed, however, to startle her out of her sobriety by appearing—damp, and with part of a dead leaf in his glittering hair—just as she exited the library on her way to convey the new week's place settings for dinner to Sheppard.

"Where is Lady Kai?"

No greeting, just that brusque demand, as if she were a footman. His gray eyes held hers only an instant.

Leda pressed her notebook against her breast. "In the nursery."

"The nursery!" His mouth tightened. "Why?"

"She and Lady Tess are taking stock of the furnishings, to see what will do for the baby."

He looked at her with a slight, chill narrowing of his eyes. "Miss Etoile, will you be so kind as to step into the library a moment?"

She clutched the notebook much harder and ducked her head, obeying him with a sense of apprehension very far from the dignified composure which she had hoped to produce. As he closed the door behind them, she turned and reopened it. He waited until she had moved to a chair and seated herself before he reached around without looking and swung the door shut again with a resounding boom.

"Miss Etoile, I would like to make it inflexibly clear to you that this infant is your responsibility. Not Lady Ashland's. Not Kai's. Yours, if you wish to keep it here."

"Certainly." She swallowed down her distress. "But—"

He turned away and addressed the bookcases. "You will locate a wet nurse, and arrange for whatever else it happens that a baby requires. If the nursery wants refurbishing, and Lady Tess consents to it, you will see to the work. Bring me a list of what you believe it will cost, and whatever bills you incur. Is that clear to you?"