The Shadow and the Star (65 page)

Anger at Dojun still rode deep in Samuel's blood, but some perverse fusion of loyalty and habit and obligation made him say, "Need help?"

Dojun passed his hand in front of his face, a negative gesture. "
Chigaimasu
. What do you think, little
baka
?"

Samuel looked sideways at Ikeno's ready stance. He smiled caustically. "All right," he said in English. "Have fun."

Leda sat in front of him in the canoe, rigid, with her hands and elbows pulled in close to her body. They reached shore without any sign of threat from sharks. The boy Shoji, who'd manned the rice-paddy tin cans to communicate with Samuel while he was aboard the fishing boat—a single ring to alert him that one of Ikeno's men was coming, two for a stranger, three for Dojun�stood waiting. He jumped to help drag the canoe onto the muddy beach. Samuel, his linen trousers plastered to his knees, waded up onto dry land to hand her out. She gathered her skirts as if she were exiting a carriage in Park Lane.

Shoji had the horses tied to the buggy. Leda waited while they put one in the traces. She looked like a street waif, with her hair flying around her face and her hat gone.

Samuel wanted to go to her and drag her into his arms and hold her, hold her, tight and close. But instead he worked with Manalo and the boy, hiding the awkwardness that came on him. He finished fastening a buckle and stood there, staring at it.

Shoji gave him an anxious look, and he realized that the boy was worried about Dojun. "He's all right," Samuel said shortly. "Just keep watch."

Shoji slipped silently onto the path among the bushes and vanished.

Manalo headed back to the canoe. When Leda vigorously protested the danger of it, the Hawaiian only shrugged. "Got go back, pick up that Dojun-san sometime."

"But the shark—"

He grinned. "Manalo too much bad taste. Shark no like."

"Maybe relish for the whiskey flavor, eh,
blad
?" Samuel muttered. "You get drunk next time, I call shark here, rip off you
laho."

Manalo's grin lost its easy polish. He gave Samuel an uncomfortable look.

"
Mahope aku, "
Samuel said, with a jerk of his head. "Later, brother. We talk."

The Hawaiian made a wry face and bent over the outrigger, wading in as he shoved off. "Maybe Manalo go fish few days." He leaped aboard, lifting his paddle in the air. "Aloha
nui. "

Leda stood and watched intently until the canoe was out of sight around the island in the harbor. "Well!" she said. "I hope he may know whereof he speaks concerning sharks."

Samuel leaned his hand on the horse's flank. He saw her shiver, but she didn't look at him. She hugged herself and stared at the water, blinking rapidly.

"Leda—"

She turned her head, with a bright, blank look. Then her gaze moved over the bloodstains on his collar and lapels. Her breath became a sob. She hugged herself tighter and swallowed, panting, making desperate little noises in her throat. "I don't want to cry! I'm not going to cry!"

He took a step, and halted. "It's all right." He stood stiff, gripping a support bar of the buggy top. "You can cry."

She shook her head violently. "I won't! It's so�undigni—" A loud, sharp, hiccupping sob interrupted her. "Undignified!" Her hair came free and tumbled across her shoulder as the tremor in her broke, going to dry sobs that jarred her body, deep and shrill with delayed hysteria. "I don't—
like
… sharks! I don't
wish
to be held over sharks!"

"No more sharks," he said. "No more swords." He kept his hand clamped on the buggy pole, squeezing it.

"And that—and that is anoth-th—another thing! That was the most un—
sportsmanlike
sword fight I ever saw!" She clutched her arms tight around herself. "Even if I've never seen
any
!" she added vehemently. "It was preposterous! Why did you have to begin by sitting
down
? Mr. Ikeno had
all
the advantage! And with that mah-huh—mah-huh…
monstrously
insufficient—sword they gave you! You might have been—you might—have been—" She lost her voice in squeaky gasps. "Oh—
Samuel
!"

He let go of the pole. He grabbed her hard into his arms. She was shaking so much that her knees kept crumpling beneath her. She clutched him by the sleeves, burying her face in his chest. He stroked her and held her, and rocked her, with a strange, fierce laughter welling up inside him. "My brave lady. It's all right. My brave girl. My sweet, brave lady."

She wept against him. He cradled her, took all her weight on himself. He rested his torn cheek against her hair, welcoming the sting of it.

"Oh, God—Leda," he whispered, with his hand in her hair, her body pressed to his.

Her trembling began to subside. She stood leaning on him, making smaller and smaller sobs. "I wish—I wish I would have thought of something very sharp and cutting to say to those men!" She took a breath and exhaled with a huff. "To be sure I will tomorrow, when it will be too late! I don't see what there is in it for you to laugh about."

"Don't leave me." He shook her. "Leda! Don't ever go away and leave me."

She pushed back from him. "Well, what a nonsensical thing to say! When you've done your best to drive me off!" Abruptly she flung herself away and marched to the buggy. She stopped there, her lips quivering, her dress and hair in wild disorder. "I daresay that if I were not a person of character, I would have gone!"

He took a deep breath. All that empty air beneath him, all the long fall—but he wasn't going to ask, and hope, and work, and bleed, and slice his heart to shreds any longer. He wanted this; he was going to take it. "You've lost your chance to go."

Her chin lifted. "I have never wished to
have
a chance, you impossible man! I suppose it is incomprehensible to you, as a male, to be told that I've loved you since you retrieved a pair of scissors for me when I was a showroom woman! That will mean nothing to you; I daresay you've forgot it entirely, but men are known to be the most hopeless creatures alive when it comes to a subject of any consequence whatsoever. And I must say, it is certainly beneath feminine delicacy to have to continue to insist upon one's affection in such brazen terms!"

"
Is it
? What if I want to hear it?"

She tucked her chin and blinked at his sudden intensity.

"What if I need to hear it?" he asked fiercely. "What if I need to wake up every goddamned morning of my life and hear you say you love me?" His voice began to grow louder. "What if that's all that means any fucking thing to me?"

She drew in a scandalized breath. "That is a bad word, isn't it? That is
most
indecent language!"

"So what?" he shouted. "What if I fucking want it, Leda? Every morning! You love me.
What if I want to hear it
?"

She stared at him. He was breathing hard, as if he'd been fighting. The echo of his words went over the water and came back again and again.

She moistened her lips. Then she gathered her skirts and wiped her hand across her wet cheeks. Her petticoat made a rustling flourish as she stepped up into the buggy. She pulled pins from her hair and coiled and tucked it into a semblance of order.

"Well, then, sir." She sent a prim look back at him beneath her lashes. "To be sure, you shall hear it!"

Leda felt quite shy, and Samuel was no help. Mr. Dojun
was not even there to smooth over the delicacy of the moment with an idle conversation in pidgin. The gardeners had all seemed to vanish from the premises. Rising Sea was deserted, with the tall white pillars catching the late-afternoon light and casting sharp shadows across the lanai.

She wriggled her bare toes against the polished wood, having learned to leave her shoes and stockings by the threshold after Mr. Dojun had advised her that it wasn't polite to wear one's shoes indoors. She waited in the hall, just within the open front doors, while Samuel took the horse around to turn it into the paddock.

The house seemed stark and stately and lonely, white walls against the deep reddish-gold gleam of the koa door frames and tall shutters. There was no furniture in the hall, nor anywhere else except in the bedroom and study upstairs, where she had concentrated all her initial efforts.

She hoped that he would like it. She was hoping so hard that she couldn't hear anything but her heart in her ears. He made her jump when he appeared, moving silently on bare feet. She'd suggested that he drop his hopelessly stained coat and shirt in the horse trough until the laundress could take it; he'd evidently washed his face there, too, for his hair was damp and the war-marks of blood were gone, leaving only an angry slash from his jaw to his temple.

She frowned at him. "Your poor face! I still believe that we should have reported this incident to the police."

"Maybe I'll develop a rakish scar." A corner of his mouth tilted. "Not that it's ever happened yet."

"A doctor should see to it."

"Not tonight." He leaned on the door frame, crossing his arms over his chest. In bare feet, muddy trousers, and no shirt, he looked as sun-bronzed and disreputable as Manalo, only without all the flowers.

She clasped her hands, feeling self-conscious. He hadn't spoken much on the drive back, only informed her that the police would be of no assistance in this matter; that it had not been a kidnapping for ransom after all, but just some rather rough business associates of his. She made a mental note to deliver an address upon the wise and proper choice of one's commercial colleagues in the very near future.

But not now. Gentlemen were known to be inclined to resent any implication that they were not perfect masters of their own enterprise. She didn't wish to discuss it with him now.

"Well!" She gave him a bright company smile. "I would invite you to sit down in the parlor, but I 'm afraid there's no furniture."

"I thought you'd done nothing but haul furniture up here for the past week."

"I have. I began with the upstairs chambers." She felt herself blushing. "I thought—"

Samuel watched her.

"Manalo… he and Mr. Dojun recommended—"

He moved his shoulders back a little, a shadow of combativeness in his easy bearing. "You listen to me, not those two."

"I shall be most happy to do so. It's been rather difficult of late, as you weren't here to be listened to."

He was silent a moment. "Now I'm here."

It seemed altogether too forward to just brazenly invite him up to the bedroom. She considered various modes of working it into the conversation, but since there was no conversation, or very little of it, and that only marginally civil, she felt helpless and somewhat illused. He was the most singularly provoking man of her acquaintance.

"Do you love me, Leda?" he demanded.

"Decidedly."

"I want to—" He exhaled sharply and turned his head. The cut on his face grew white at the edges.

Belatedly, she realized what he meant—and what was happening to him. He muttered something too low for her to hear. She bit her lip, the corners of her mouth curving upward, but the abruptness with which he pushed himself off the door frame and came toward her made her turn and press her back against the wall.

He stopped short. His face went taut.

Then he swung away, walking past her to the staircase. "So. I want to go look at your damned furniture."

He went up the hand-burnished stairs two at a time, past the elegant curve where the staircase bent back upon itself. He stopped there. She couldn't see his face, but she saw him seize the carved rail.

"Leda!" His yell echoed through the vacant house. "God damn it! You said you loved me.
And that's me
! I can't help it; I can't stop it; I want to touch you; I want to lie down with you; I want to be inside you. Christ, as soon as I got you out of that bastard's hands I wanted it! On the deck, in the buggy, against a wall. I don't care! It doesn't make any damned difference to me!"

She looked down at her toes peeking from beneath the sandy hem of her skirt. "I prefer a bed."