The Shadow and the Star (36 page)

"We should go to the drawing room. They will be assembling."

He lifted the necklace from its bed of satin and moved near the mirrored secretary. "Come here, Miss Etoile. I haven't worked you overly hard in my employ."

Her lips pursed. She put her head down and walked to where he waited. He pulled out the chair at the secretary and she sat with her hands clasped before her, her back to him.

He slipped the jeweled collar around her neck without touching her. But the necklace was made to fit close to her throat, and the tiny, hidden catch required him to work with his fingers against the nape of her neck.

A light fan of hair at the base of her coiffure brushed his finger. It felt warm, her skin cool. He looked up into the mirror.

She was gazing at the reflection, at the diamonds, at him.

He meant to take his hands away. He let go of the diamond catch, raised his fingers too abruptly. A lock of her hair fell free of the loose pinning. The necklace sparkled on her breast. She and the stones were like light, with darkness all around: himself darkness… and falling… falling…

He should not have done this. The necklace should have stayed safely shut in its box; he'd never needed to know her opinion of it, hadn't turned his weakness into strength, had done nothing but allow it to consume him.

The candle found deep highlights in the lock of hair. She lifted her hand as if to tuck the curl back into place, but before she could, he touched it. He gazed down at his hand, fanning the curl between his fingers, resting his fist against the slope of her bare shoulder. It was as if his actions did not belong to him—and yet they did: he felt every texture, every delicate strand of hair, every light breath she took.

He slid his knuckles in a feathery brush up her throat, past the necklace, to a place beneath her ear that was soft with a sensation he had never in his life known before.

He stood silent, touching her. It was beyond him; beyond him; he could not turn back of his own will.

Stop me
, he thought.
Don't let me
. He could not remove his hand; could not speak. No sound at all came out of his mouth when he moved his lips.

She only looked at him in the mirror, her eyes wide and dusky green. In the months he'd been gone, she'd lost the fine-drawn hollows below her cheeks; her face was fuller, gentler. He knew that she had been hungry, lived on the thin edge of destitution; he'd used the desperation in her to bind her to him, one coil after another to hold her, make it impossible tor her to betray him.

But she had never betrayed him. Not from the first, when he had come within an instant of killing her. Her vulnerability seemed enormous, her stillness beneath his hand an act of infinite trust.

With his fingers, he could lay open bark on the trunks of trees… and he could feel her heart in the fragile pulse at her throat, so light and quick. He lifted his other hand and cradled her face.

Small. Delicate. Like the life of a small bird within his palms. Lust flooded him. What he wanted… God, what he wanted…

He thought of Kai, his plans, of the house he'd built. It all seemed another universe: fantasy and mist, and he had never been alive until this instant.

He spread his hands, his thumbs brushing the skin beneath her earlobes, his fingertips resting on her temples, just tasting her cheeks. Still she only stared at him in the mirror. Such fine eyes she had, the subtle green of a foggy meadow, of her English woods, the lashes so long that he felt the sweep of them against his fingers.

He stood there touching her, imagined her hair all around in waves, her body: the voluptuous scent, the sounds. His own throat tightened with a suppressed moan. He wanted only to hold her, to gather her up and cradle her against him—and he wanted to overpower her. There was a terrible violence inside him. All he knew, all he had experienced and mastered in his life was destruction. Will and shame kept it in check, but will had failed him.

Remember this
, Dojun had warned.
Your overflowing passion, your heart that holds so fiercely to the tumult of the body and so rejoices in it, will become a forest of swords to hack your soul to bits
.

Remember this.

It was only shame, vast shame, that finally impelled him to open his hands and let her go, and walk blind and mute from the room.

Leda sat paralyzed in front of the mirror. From what
seemed a long way away, the bell chimed for dinner.

She was aware of the door standing open behind her. The necklace sparkled on her neck in a blaze of diamonds. The image began to swim in her eyes.

She fumbled for the catch, could not find it, and began to weep in earnest.

It is because my mother was French
, she thought.
I am frivolous. I am wanton. I am happy
.

I cannot be happy.

She stared at herself through the blur. Mortification and miserable joy muddled together inside her breast.

She could not be happy. It was indecent to be happy. She had been deeply and dreadfully insulted. He had behaved with gross impropriety. It was an affront to Lady Kai, to the family, to the very roof over their heads. It was unforgivable.

She was unforgivable. For the tears were not tears of remorse.

The necklace would not come free. She struggled with it, heard a step and voices from the domed hall outside, and in panic forced open the clasp. She grabbed the box from the desk, darting into the shadows of the room. In a few moments the houseguests would all be leaving the great drawing room through the open double doors at the head of the staircase, the gentlemen taking the ladies down to dinner in the order of precedence that Leda herself, after careful consultation with Burke's Peerage, had outlined for Lord and Lady Ashland.

Now, after months of dining happily with the family, the very notion filled her with panic. She had the order of the evening's dinner partners by heart. As an employee and female of common rank, she would go down last, just before the hostess, on the arm of the gentleman whose lack of social precedence matched her own.

Mr. Gerard.

And she would sit on his right hand through the meal, while Lady Kai sat directly across the table from him.

Leda was horrified to realize that she had planned it that way. Within the boundaries of precedency, she might have instead paired a daughter of the house with Mr. Gerard, and herself with elderly Mr. Sydney, who had no more business than she to eat in the dining room, if one were stricter in one's conventions than the Ashlands ever cared to be.

But in writing out her place settings, she had indulged herself, just a trifle, just for this one week, taken just a tiny advantage of the circumstances that she and Mr. Gerard had in common: the fact of being nonentities in society, if one disregarded his steamship company and directorships and the timber mills and the banks and marine insurance and ten pounds a week to a secretary who did precisely nothing.

The sound of conversation grew louder, Lady Whitberry's voice a distinctive quaver echoing in the domed spaciousness of the hail. Leda daubed hastily at her eyes with her handkerchief, praying that they were not reddened and swollen. Unable to think of anything better, she pulled down the first book within reach and stuck the necklace behind it. With a clearing of her throat, a smoothing of her skirt, and a deep, steadying breath that did nothing whatsoever to steady her, she walked out into the hall and along the arcaded balcony toward the murmur of conversation.

Lord Ashland and Lady Whitberry had already started down the stairs. The rest of the couples, fifteen in all, formed up in the drawing room and followed. Just as Leda arrived outside the double doorway, she saw Lady Tess lean across her escort, Lord Whitberry, and speak to Mr. Gerard, who stood alone.

Leda knew perfectly well that Lady Tess was informing him of whom he was to take down, just as Leda had coached her to do for all the guests. She thought the intensity of her blush must warm the air around her. Worse, when he looked up and met her eyes, he too changed: the shadow in his jaw grew taut and he seemed too rigid even to nod. Lord Whitberry waggled white brows at him and said loudly, "Deuced lucky chaps, ain't we, Gerard? Got all the best gals well in our sights."

Leda saw the dark flush that rose at Mr. Gerard's collar. Whatever he answered, it was spoken so briefly that she could not hear it. Lady Kai, three inches taller than Mr. Sydney, blew Leda a kiss as the brisk little man sailed her past—and then there was no choice left for either of them: Mr. Gerard stopped before her and offered his arm.

He said nothing. He did not even look at her. She heard the conversations in front and behind them, Lady Tess and her daughter well-versed in Leda's dictum that guests must not proceed to the dining room without speaking, but should at once begin a pleasant interchange with their partner.

Leda and Mr. Gerard, however, descended in stifling silence.

She kept her fingers not quite touching his arm, looking down at her other hand, pretending a great concentration upon keeping her skirt lifted on the stairs. At the foot of the staircase the pose betrayed her; she expected the level floor one step too soon and swayed forward out of balance.

She was never in the least danger of falling. Yet her hand tightened instinctively. He took her weight without a waver, his balance flowing into hers. And for a moment the remembered sensations of his fingers on her shoulder, his hands cupping her face, seemed truly real, as they had not seemed when she had experienced them. Every detail came to vibrant life: the way the necklace had lain warming against her skin, the pads of his fingertips spread over her cheek, the brush of his satin-lined lapel against her spine. She walked into the dining room washed in the ghastly truth that the man beside her, perfect and cold in profile, full of subtle strength and cast like a black-and-golden icon in his evening clothes, had touched her intimately, with intent; had all but embraced her.

He
had
embraced her. It would be splitting hairs to say that he had not, to pretend that he had merely brushed her hand in passing. To stroke the bared curve of her throat was nothing less than a shocking iniquity. To caress her face!

She withdrew her arm from his before it was quite polite. He held her chair, and she wondered if the look that Mr. Curzon gave them was as arch as it seemed, or just a twinge of his bad back. The wicked poem that one of the Miss Goldboroughs had recited last week ran absurdly through Leda's head.
My name is George Nathaniel Curzon; I am a most superior person. My cheek is pink, my hair is sleek, I dine at Blenheim once a week
.

Mr. Curzon certainly held himself very much up, and his father was worse. Neither had spoken to Leda or Mr. Sydney since they had been introduced this afternoon, and Lord Scarsdale had positively cut them, looking away when Lady Tess had made the presentations. Leda could understand particularities and niceness, but she had become so accustomed to the easy atmosphere of the Ashland household that it was difficult not to feel the Curzons unpleasantly stiff.

But she could not bring her mind to dwell on it. Mr. Gerard had touched her. Mr. Gerard, who was in love with Lady Kai. Who was sitting at her left hand. Who said not a word, either to Leda or to the Miss Goldborough on his other side.