The Shadow and the Star (50 page)

"Dishes?" She put down her cup.

"Dishes. Pictures. Furnishings. The house is finished, except for the interior. I have the plans and dimensions, for carpets and windows and so on. I guess we need everything."

"You would like me to fit up your entire house?" She sounded incredulous.

"
Our
house."

She turned crimson. "That's very generous of you."

He set the empty cup aside. It provoked him when she was so humbly deferential. With a kind of defiance, he swept the bedspread back and rose, although he made sure he got out of bed on the far side from her. "It's not generous of me, damn it. You're my wife."

He expected a horrified objection to his nudity; instead, in the small silence, he saw that fresh clothes had been laid out for him on a chair next to the bed. He began to dress.

"Please do not swear," she said.

"I beg your pardon." He sat down in his linen and pulled on his socks. "Please do not act as if you're my cookmaid."

When he looked up, she had her head bent and her hands clasped in her lap. For an instant he thought—but no… when she peeked up at him, she was pressing a smile from her lips. He felt a relaxation of something somewhere deep inside him.

"I thought ladies liked to shop," he said gruffly.

"Oh, yes. Rather."

He inclined his head. "Good."

"Is it a very large house?"

He thought a moment, buttoning his trousers. "Twenty-four rooms."

She put her hand over her breast and cleared her throat. "Well. That will require a considerable attack upon Mount Street."

"The plans are in that smaller case—the portfolio's in the bottom."

As she retrieved the leather cover, he went bare-chested into the dressing room and pulled the bell marked "Hot Water Within 1 Minute." And within forty-five seconds, the little window on the dumbwaiter showed white. He opened the door and found a steaming copper jug.

Back in the bedroom, she was poring over the spread house plans. He mixed shaving soap and tilted up the mirror on the low dresser as he rinsed and covered his face.

She rustled plans. "I shall ring for breakfast, and we can prepare our campaign as we eat."

"I'll leave the campaigning to you." He lifted his chin, bracing one arm against the dresser as he leaned, trying to see himself in the mirror.

"I'm afraid I can countenance no such cowardice as that. I shall need your expertise in regard to the battle terrain. What is to be the function of this little room to the side, for instance?"

He had to walk across to her with his face half-lathered. "That's for the electrical plant."

"Oh. Does electricity come from plants?" she asked innocently. "And this—ah—this is the house?" She nulled a photograph from the portfolio into her lap.

Samuel watched her as she bent her head over the picture of the house, with its two stories of broad lanai and tall windows. Muddy workmen stood proudly on the wide stairs that cascaded down to the lawn-to-be, saws and hammers in hand, construction scraps at their feet. "It wasn't yet painted then," he said finally, when she didn't speak.

"Oh, my," she murmured softly, as if she hadn't heard him. "Oh, gracious me." She gave her head a little shake. "That is to be… our house?"

He wanted to ask her if she liked it. He wanted to, but instead he walked away and picked up his shaving brush, leaning over the mirror. "There wouldn't be much point in photographing a different house."

In the reflection, he saw her shake her head again as she held the picture at arm's length. "I promise, I shall
try
not to act like a scullery maid, but really, dear sir—I am awed!"

A slow sensation of satisfaction grew in him. He began to shave his face.

For three days Samuel participated in the testing of sofas and examining of china patterns. He made lists and measured tables. He lent himself to correcting the impression of any shopmen who were not initially quite deferential enough toward Mr. and Mrs. Gerard, of Honolulu, the Kingdom of Hawaii, who had just come down from Lord and Lady Ashland's lovely country seat, having heard from Lady Ashland herself that Coote's of Bond Street had the best selection of marquetry chests, or that Mackay and Pelham were to be depended upon for excellent quality in silk and chintz; little asides which she made to Samuel in the most naturally innocent manner, and which, he had to admit, always worked to produce passionate enthusiasm among shopmen. The stratagem was effective even when he couldn't help smiling mockingly at her as she did it, for which he got himself soundly rebuked as soon as they stepped into the street.

In spite of the subversive smiling, he was found useful in several capacities; primarily as list-bearer, and occasionally as the handy receptacle for small packages, and infrequently as a consultant in matters of taste, since he thought most all of the furniture they saw was god-awfully ugly. Then of course he had to beg pardon for swearing, so in general he kept his mouth shut. She looked at pieces that were so hideously dark and heavy that his soul revolted, but in the end, the only things she bought were the things he preferred—an antique bureau-cabinet with an abundance of drawers, partitions, and secret compartments, and a set of dishes with different birds on each of the dinner plates. He wasn't so naive that he thought their tastes coincided exactly: by the time the dishes were chosen, he saw how carefully and discreetly she was judging him, and tuning her reactions to his.

He wasn't certain how he felt about that. It was a new experience; only Dojun had ever expended that intensity of awareness on him, and for entirely different reasons. Dojun drove him, demanded of him, watched for flaws and weakness. But
her
… he couldn't see why she would care what he thought of furniture and curtains.

A part of him seemed to turn to it, though, like a secret vine growing beneath pavement and buildings, pushing and yearning toward the light. But the very strength of the pleasure alarmed him: it was like his hunger for her body; it felt as if it might have that kind of power over him if he allowed it.

Already he walked the public streets in a mist, halfway between reality and fantasies of her. He was aroused by nothing more than the neat, straight line of her back, from her demure collar down to the curve of her hip. Knowing the real contour beneath the gathered abundance of fabric and padding stimulated him; a trace of shared scent or the sight of the tiny, tender wisps of hair at the nape of her neck when she bent her head over some glass-topped counter were electrifying.

And the sleep, heavy and dreamless, that overcame him after he had her; it scared him. In its own way, it carried more power and attraction than the act itself. To hold her close and drift into limbo while she talked in that gently animated voice of what they'd bought and seen that day-talked, for God's sake; when the lethargy took hold of him like a blanket of dusky cotton unrolling, and he could not answer, nor help himself: utterly lax, wholly vulnerable and happy—he felt it must be someone else who lay there. It could not be himself.

They had arrived at a pattern, an order of things, after three days. He rose after she did; he shaved and dressed in front of her, except for the few moments he spent alone in his dressing room in swift and concentrated rituals of weaponry and concealment, the only moments of shining hardness left in a fog of intangibles. Then he went out and shopped—an incongruity which amused and disturbed him in its depth of contrast.

After dinner in a private room—no amount of persuasion would convince her to eat in the public dining room and be labeled "fast"—she left him and went upstairs. He surmised that he was then expected to sit in solitary splendor, smoking and drinking port. Instead, he went out and walked along Piccadilly, where the whistles of doormen shrilled at intervals amid the traffic. A girl, dressed in tinsel pink, stepped out from the shadows and took a man's arm. "Come along with me, dear," she said, "and I'll toss you off."

None of those women ever approached Samuel, though he felt them look at him as he passed. They exasperated him by their open stares; their very existence embarrassed him. If one of them had ventured to take his arm that way, to touch him, he would have tossed
her�
fifteen feet, he thought darkly.

The embarrassment lingered. Finally he reached an open bookshop, where he was free to loiter unobserved. He felt hot and restless, thinking of Leda. He wished he were lying with her now, but it seemed somehow that he did not deserve to; that he was an impostor: that what he ought to do was walk until the night swallowed him up.

He stared down at the book in his hand, leafed through the pages of a translation of German philosophy, standing amid dust and books and other browsers. Novels, cookery, travel. Dictionaries. The clock in the back of the store chimed ten times.

Was that late enough? Last night, he'd waited until eleven. He'd found her fresh, her hair slightly damp; he'd turned down the lamp and kissed her, undressed them both, one garment at a time, as they stood in the dark.

If he kept remembering it, he would humiliate himself. But he didn't think he should go to her this early. He should stay here. He should walk longer. He should just keep walking, forever.

He was breathing too deeply. He put an account of sheepherding in New Zealand back on its shelf, thrust his hands in his pockets, and walked out of the shop, nodding in return to the man behind the counter.

He stood in the street. And then he turned back toward the hotel.

The light was on when he arrived at their suite; he could see it beneath the door. The ornately decorated sitting room was empty, but she said his name in a questioning tone. He identified himself and hesitated, not certain if he should go through to the bedroom.

She appeared in the doorway immediately, lush in the jade-green robe, her hair loose. "Hullo."

The way she hovered in the door, not approaching or retreating, instantly warned him that something was different. She stood with her fingers making a little basket. He wanted to ravish her. Instead he took off his hat and gloves.

She retrieved the items from where he cast them on a chair, turning the yellow kid of a glove over. "You've dirtied them."

"Book dust," he said.

"Oh, did you go to Hatchard's? I might have given you a commission if I'd known. Do you read fiction?"

"A little."

"I enjoy Mr. Verne's work," she went on brightly. "He writes of such exotic places. But you've seen all that sort of thing in person. I suppose it's nothing to you."

"Of course. Giant squids. Cannibals. Every day."

"I really meant—" She smiled down at his hat. "Well, I don't know what I meant. I found his stories most exhilarating reading, though."

He looked at her and thought,
Books? Are we going to discuss books
?

She put his gloves together and started to walk past him. He caught her arm. Her body went rigid; she stopped in his hold.

He didn't know what to do, what to say. All of her yielding was gone, the sweet concurrence that made everything bearable. His hunger burned as hot as ever.

He should not have come back. He should have kept walking, and walking, and walking, until he walked off the edge of the earth.

He let go of her. He went to the window and held the drapes apart, leaning on the frame, shutting his eyes. His fingers closed hard on velvet and wood.

She said somberly, "I should tell you—that I'm ill."

He dropped the curtains and turned.

"Oh, no—dear sir—don't look so!" She made a fluttery, patting motion. "Don't look so! It's only… you see… every month… a few days… it's very mortifying!" She gazed at him helplessly.

The thunder in his ears slowly receded. "Jeez-us," he muttered.

"I'm sorry!" she said in a small voice. "I didn't intend to alarm you."

He let out a long breath. It took several moments to think past the rush of panic. He had only the vaguest idea of these cryptic female things, but it was pretty clear that she didn't care for him to touch her in this passing illness. "I'll sleep in the dressing room," he said.

"Oh." She looked rather glum at that.

He scowled at her. "What do you want me to do?"

"I shouldn't like you to be uncomfortable," she said diffidently.

Her wavering was enough to drive him to madness. He strode to her and took her shoulders and kissed her hard. The stiffness in her spine relaxed; she tilted her head back, opening to him as he put his arms around her. As she acquiesced, the dread of rejection in him died away. He grew gentler, exploring her lips. "Tell me what you want," he whispered.

"Well, I thought… perhaps you might just… lie down. In our bed. And I could—possibly you would find it pleasant if I should—massage your back."

"No." He let go of her.

She ducked her head.

"All right." He set his jaw. "All right. If that's what you want." He felt the shaking deep inside him, that unnerved place, but he shut it down, forced it out of his awareness.

She looked up at him. She took his hands. "If you don't wish it, dear sir, then neither do I."

Relief flooded him. He had an irrational desire to thank her. "Just—let me hold you. That's all. Hold you and go to sleep." He smoothed his thumbs over the back of her hands. "You can tell me everything about tableware."

She was silent a moment, gazing down at their hands. Then she said, "Would you like to know about holloware or flatware?"

"Flatware. Naturally, flatware."

"I shall certainly put you to sleep with that. I venture to say you'll be snoring by the time I get to the runcible spoon."

"My God. Do I snore?"

"You were decidedly snoring last night, as I was enlightening you upon the nature and arrangement of sideboards. I'm rather a connoisseur of sideboards, but I suppose not everyone enters into my own enthusiasm. Kindly refrain from swearing, if you please."

"I beg your pardon." He kissed her nose, and slid his hand down to her hip. "Are you certain that you're ill?"

"Quite certain."

"Hell," he said. And covered her mouth with his before she could open it.