The Shadow and the Star (35 page)

She lifted her head, indignant that he seemed to think she had neglected her duties. "It is quite clear, Mr. Gerard."

Her offended gravity appeared to be lost on him. He gazed at a row of leather-and-gilt bindings with their Latin titles, as if that were preferable to looking Leda in the face. "If they wish to amuse themselves with the infant, that is their privilege."

"His name is Samuel Thomas."

"The name is a matter of indifference with regard to what I'm saying to you, Miss Etoile."

"Lady Kai calls him Tommy."

He looked around at last, one eyebrow lifted. He might be angry, but he was not at all a stupid man.

"She's taken to the child?" There was a faint surprise in his question.

"Mr. Gerard, if you wish to win Lady Kai's admiration, you will find that you went a very great way toward it with your decision this morning. You are presently wearing shining armor."

"Only for saying you might keep it?"

" 'He,' Mr. Gerard. I would not advise referring to Tommy as an 'it' in Lady Kai's presence."

He walked off toward the window, gazing out into the rain. It seemed to be a piece of news that confounded more than pleased him. After a moment, his mouth curled in slight humor. "And what of it? I don't see how I can provide babies to her on any regular basis."

Leda had a flash of Miss Myrtle's incisive irony. "I should think that would be the primary purpose of your marriage, would it not?"

Mr. Gerard went still. A rigid shadow carved his cheek. He closed his eyes and slowly tilted back his head. The smile on his face was of sable etched in stone, bitter cold.

"Of course. You're right, of course. As always, Miss Etoile."

She was already blushing furiously before he spoke. Miss Myrtle, in her age and eccentricity, and allowing for her daunting reputation as a conversationalist—a point of community pride in South Street—Miss Myrtle might have been excused a very forward remark, among ladies, and behind her hand. For Leda openly to mention such a thing was inexcusable. She bent her head. "I am unforgivably impertinent."

"Are you?" He spoke to the ceiling with a low, ferocious coolness. "It's nothing but the truth." He lowered his face and stared into the window glass. Against the gloom outside, the faint reflection of his features made a half-portrait in the pane. "Am I in competition, Miss Etoile?" he asked suddenly. "What of this Haye?"

Leda tucked her chin. She found the corner of her notebook most interesting. "Lord Haye, do you mean?"

He began to prowl the room, touching a chair back, a marble-topped table. "I've told myself that I must be more forthright with her." He stopped, looking slantwise at Leda. "In New York, I went to Tiffany's. I bought a necklace. What do you think?"

Leda did not know what to think. The coal fire in the grate seemed exceptionally warm: the Ashlands expended fuel as if it were seawater, keeping a good fire in every room and the full-time attention of a hall-boy to attend them.

"Should I give it to her?" A note of impatience edged his voice. "For Christmas, I thought."

"Oh." She cleared her throat, realizing she was expected to address the problem.

Leda had a fair notion of Lady Kai's jewelry. She favored modest and elegant pieces, highly appropriate to her age. A gift so personal was not precisely proper, perhaps, but if it was something simple—a pearl drop, or a cameo�then Leda supposed it would not be unseemly, since Lady Kai and Mr. Gerard were so well-known to one another already.

She made a constrained nod. "I believe that it must depend on the necklace. What style it is in, and the expense of it."

"I'll show it to you. I wasn't certain—" He shrugged. "I'm no judge of feminine taste."

"I think I will know what Lady Kai would like." She kept her voice prim, trying to make up for her earlier indelicacy.

"Then come here before dinner." He put his hand on the doorknob. "I'll bring it then."

He felt absurdly restless, waiting in the library for her to keep the appointment. The velvet box from Tiffany's lay on the broad expanse of a well-polished partners' desk, lit by a candle that flickered with each little hail of raindrops against the darkening windows. The wood paneling and rows of books ate up the candlelight: only the mirrored front of a closed secretary against the far wall returned illumination.

Shut inside the box, his choice rested on blue satin. To care for her opinion of it was a kind of weakness, but he did not fight the notion. Better to use the force of his free impulse, direct and distill it, and thereby make it unexpected strength. There were things he wished to understand; she was a source of a certain level of truth, of baffling, cloudy, ever-changing female truth that eluded even what Dojun had taught him.

She had comprehended what Samuel had not. His blindness had been monumental, so huge that he was hung between shame and grim laughter that he had so far shunned reality. Of course Kai loved children, of course she wanted her own; all afternoon she'd done nothing but cuddle Tommy, and talk of him when the infant could not be pried away from Lady Tess. And it was no momentary enthusiasm: he could look back over the years and see endless evidence of it. All of her friendships, her volunteer work, her hobbies; they all involved children.

He had known it all along. And he had never, until today, come face-to-face with what it would mean.

Kai herself didn't know what it meant, he was certain. She could not know. She would be different if she knew, she would not be so easy and merry, she would not turn to him or to anyone so openly, with hugs and kisses that were like children's hugs and kisses, guileless and clean.

The children like she had been, anyway. He did not wish for those others, the kind he had been, to exist. He wished in a way that he did not exist. He wanted always, and only, to protect Kai from what he knew.

From what he was. From the difference between his love for her and what had coursed through him yesterday as Miss Etoile pressed her body against his. Of all his certainties, the most certain one was that he never wished to injure Kai. She was completely safe with him. He wanted no more from her than those naive hugs and kisses; needed nothing but to be the shield and defense of her open innocence. The sum of his life and intention came down to that: he would marry her, and they would both be safe. They would be protected. He would be whole.

And she wanted children.

He turned it over in his mind, searching for a path around that pit. To even attempt to think of Kai and the other hidden part of him in the same moment gave him a physical uneasiness, like the scent of poison in Dojun's tea. All of his instinct, every fiber of him reacted
no
.

Kai understood nothing of that, nothing of what he concealed, but it was possible that Miss Etoile did. Kai threw herself into his arms: the same Kai, the same free trust, drunk or sober. Miss Etoile wore her propriety like thorns—except when she was drunk on cherry brandy. She held herself aloof… perhaps she understood… perhaps she felt what he felt and struggled too for mastery.

It would be a relief, he thought. Dark welcome relief, to lie down with her and assuage this hunger.

He knew the moment she paused outside the closed door. She was always clear to him, a distinct sense of life. A scent, a step, a certain soft breath, a swish of fabric�those characteristics he knew, of course, but there were things beyond the threshold of his common perceptions, so clear, so very clear to the deeper awareness inside him. Since the night he had begun using her room as a place to conceal his stolen goods, he had known her; had recognized her instantly in the dressmaker's, though he'd never seen her face in daylight.

The essence of her was female. She seemed more feminine, more opposite to him, more hidden in mist than Kai or Lady Tess had ever seemed. The weakness inside him yearned toward her.

You must be ingenious
, Dojun had often said.
To see weakness only as a flaw is to limit intention. Face the truth, then turn it to your own use
.

But this was a weakness that he did not dare to use. To empower weakness he had to know the dimensions of it, and that he did not know, or wish to.

There were others in the hall with her, no one familiar to him. He heard them speak, and her reply in tones of hasty excuse, a promise that she would not be long. She didn't knock, nor crack the door until the other footsteps had continued down the hall.

A scent of foliage swept in with her, cool air in the dry warmth of the room. She shut it out quickly, with no attempt at all to leave the door open.

She wore a green gown cut low, the draped skirt washed in emerald shadows, her skin and unadorned throat like the pale white blush of night-blooming flowers.

He felt weightless, as if he had just voluntarily stepped off a cliff. For months he'd been associating with Dojun and businessmen, Chinese shopboys, architects and carpenters, railroad conductors, ship captains, sailors. He might as well have been a
yamabushi
warrior monk on a mountaintop, as far as women were concerned. If avoidance had sharpened his senses to what he had shunned, then every perception and faculty was flooded by her now.

She was merely dressed for dinner. He knew that. Kai had worn more revealing necklines to the opera. Still it unnerved him. He had never seen Miss Etoile dressed in anything but the most modest of high collars, except for the memory that rushed in on him of her breasts and back and shoulders as she had brushed out her hair in her room.

All of that mahogany hair, that hair that had fanned his jaw yesterday in feathery softness; she had swept it up into a loose mass of some intricate, impossible-to-decipher coiling and braiding. She was not as classically featured as Kai; Miss Etoile's face might be called pretty at best, her eyes not quite pure green, her chin heart-shaped. Her mouth had a pleasant curve even when she wasn't smiling. How well he knew it, from stolen moments of observation. Next to Kai, it hardly seemed that she should even be noticeable, and yet he noticed.

She did not look at him now. She stood with her hands behind her on the knob, Joan of Arc at the stake.

"I won't make you miss the dinner bell," he said, taking refuge in a mocking tone, irritated at her unease and his. "I wish only a moment of your time."

"Of course." She looked up at him and made a vague motion behind her. "That was the Misses Goldborough and their mother."

She seemed to think that he would make something of that. He did not.

"They wouldn't understand." She spread her hands and moved them in a flutter. "That I am
your
secretary, you see. I'm afraid Mrs. Goldborough wouldn't like it. They believe I am Lady Kai's companion and Lady Ashland's social assistant."

"You told them that?"

"Certainly not!" She went into her posture of brisk and offended propriety, which usually made him want to smile. Tonight it made him notice the lift of her bare shoulders and the curve of her waist. "It was not necessary to prevaricate. I have merely gone about the duties which have fallen to me, and allowed the houseguests to draw their own conclusions."

"And does this mean you can no longer function in my personal employ?"

She bit her lips. Clearly, she would have preferred it that way, but she walked past him and turned, shifting her skirt behind her. "I'm completely at your service, of course. But—I would so dislike to have anything reflect badly on the family."

"As would I." The faint annoyance in him grew stronger. He put his hand on the velvet box. "Will you look at the necklace?"

"Yes. Certainly. I've had a peek at Lady Kai's jewelry box this afternoon. She does not have a pearl—if that was your choice, perchance."

"It isn't pearls." He pulled back the lid and tilted the box in her direction.

The candlelight caught the stones with full intensity. He looked up at Miss Etoile.

He watched her breathing catch, an intake and a long pause while her skin grew pink. She closed her eyes and then opened them again, very wide.

"My gracious me." She let out the air in a rush.

The necklace was a fitted collar, designed like a wide, filigree ribbon completely done in diamonds, with diamond flowers and leaves twining along the middle of it. At the front it widened, simulating a bow, the center represented by a large marquis-cut stone, the two filigreed tails of the bow curving downward to tassels of tiny glittering blossoms strung like flowers on a lei. On each tail, the tassels were finished with three pear-shaped diamond drops.

He waited. He was reduced, finally, to asking outright. "Do you like it?"

She put her fist to her mouth and shook her head.

Samuel lowered the box. He set it on the desk, fingering one of the diamond tassels. In an obscure way he felt personally rebuffed. It was only a necklace, for God's sake; he had thought it pretty, but if it was not, it wasn't. "I'll send it back." He kept his voice stolid, fearing that she would hear the disappointment in it.

"No!" She lowered her hand. "No. It's magnificent. I'm sorry, I was—overcome, for a moment."

He looked up at her.

She tilted her head, and gave a small laugh. "How fortunate Lady Kai is." She blinked twice. "And how silly I am. You have brought tears to my eyes, Mr. Gerard." She made a stilted gesture with the handkerchief that had been tucked in her sleeve.

"You approve?"

She made another small and peculiar laugh. "I assure you, your taste is most laudable. However—" She lifted her head and took a deep breath as she pushed the lacy piece of fabric back into her cuff and smoothed it. "I think it is perhaps better saved as an engagement gift, unless your suit has been accepted before Christmas."

Though her voice was steady, there was still something of candlelight swimming in her eyes, and a faint fluttery wistfulness to her mouth; that sweet and curving mouth.

"Would you try it on?"

He heard himself ask it. Again the weightless feeling had come on him; he felt carried by tides, blown before a rising storm.

"Oh, no. I could not."

"I'd like to see it." He attempted nonchalance. His artificial shrug rustled the formal collar of his shirt. He, too, was dressed for dinner, in black swallowtails and white tie. "There were only men at the jeweler's."