“Samuel!” Lady Ashland and her daughter said in unison.
“Has he left yet?” Lady Catherine cried, running to the window. She threw open the sash and leaned out. Samuel!” she shouted, in most unladylike tones. “Manō Kane, wait! Come here!” Her voice dropped to a burble of affection. “We need you, Manó, to come and get us out of a spot again.”
Lady Ashland merely stood by, not making any move at all to curb her daughter’s wild display. Lady Catherine turned back from the window. “Caught him!”
“Mr. Gerard can translate,” Lady Ashland said.
“Oh, yes, he speaks fluent Japanese.” Lady Catherine nodded encouragingly at the Oriental entourage. “How lucky that he should have brought us this morning.”
Indeed, it seemed to Leda a remarkably fortunate circumstance, since she supposed there couldn’t be many people with such a singular talent as speaking fluent Japanese who happened to be escorting ladies about London dressmakers just at that moment. But Lady Ashland and her daughter lived closer to Nippon, of course.
At least, Leda supposed they did. She wasn’t entirely certain about the location of the Sandwich Islands either.
She turned toward the hall, expecting one of those mustachioed Yankee businessmen who seemed to have trekked everywhere with their prosperous waistcoats and overloud voices. The footman moved into the room, and in the portentous timbre that Madame Elise insisted gave the proper majestic effect, uttered: “Mr. Samuel Gerard!”
The room full of women went uncharacteristically silent as Mr. Gerard appeared in the door…a collective intake of feminine breath at the sight of him—a golden, slightly wind-blown Gabriel come down to earth, minus nothing but the wings.
Two
The Boy
Hawaii, 1869
Just to one side of the gangplank that thumped and creaked under the feet of the other departing passengers, he stood on the dock, silent. People pushed past him and ran to other people and congregated in laughter and tearful reunions. He shifted his feet, hurting in the new shoes that had been saved since London for this moment. He wanted very much to chew his finger. He had to keep his hands in a tight ball behind his back to prevent it.
He saw women in bright full robes of scarlet and yellow, with long loops of dark leaves hanging around their necks, and men with nothing on at all but breeches and a vest or a straw hat. Amid the crowd, girls sat bareback astride horses: dusky, laughing girls with long black hair around their shoulders and crowns of flowers on their heads, their brown legs dangling, calling and waving at the gentlemen in carriages and the ladies with their parasols. And behind it all were the green mountains rising up to mist and a double rainbow that spanned the entire sky.
On the ship he’d been afraid to leave his cabin. For the whole voyage, he’d stayed in his own snug space down where the steam engines throbbed and stank of coal and the steward brought him all the food he could eat. He’d hidden himself there until this morning, when they’d come and told him that he’d best put on his fine clothes, because the ship had rounded Diamond Head and put in for Honolulu Harbor.
The air smelled good here, with a strange, fresh scent, clean as the sky and the trees. They were odd trees, like none he’d ever seen before, with strange plumed tops glistening and swaying on tall, bare trunks. In his whole life, he hadn’t smelled air so clean, nor felt sun so bright and warm on his shoulders.
He stood there alone, trying to be inconspicuous and conspicuous at the same time, and terrified that he had been forgotten.
“Sammy?”
It was a soft voice, like the wind that ruffled his hair and blew its golden strands into his eyes. He turned around, reaching with a quick hand to wet his fingers and shove the offending lock back into place.
She stood a few feet away, holding a tumbling coil of gay flowers over her arm. He looked up into her face. The incomprehensible shouts and chatter of native children filled the air. Someone brushed past him from behind, shoving him a half-step toward her.
She knelt in her wide lavender skirts, holding out her hands. “Do you remember me, Sammy?”
He stared at her helplessly. Remember her? Through all the lonely days and hated nights, in all the dark rooms where they had tied his hands and done what they pleased with him, in all the days and weeks and years of silent misery, he had remembered. The one bright face in his life. The one kind word. The only hand raised to shield him.
“Yes’m,” he whispered. “I remember.”
“I’m Tess,” she said, as if he might not be sure. “Lady Ashland.”
He nodded, and found his fist pressed against his mouth. With a quick, awkward move, he made himself lower the rebellious hand. He locked it behind his back with the other.
“I’m so glad to see you, Sammy.” Her open arms still offered an embrace. She looked at him with those pretty blue-green eyes. A huge lump in his throat made it hard to breathe. “Won’t you let me hug you?”
Somehow his feet in the pinching shoes took him forward, a step, and then a run, and he fell into her arms with a clumsy force which made him feel stupid and hot with shame. But she was pulling him close with a small glad cry, tossing the wreath of flowers over his head, pressing her smooth cheek to his. There was wet on her face. He felt it as she squeezed him, and the swelling in his throat hurt and throbbed as if something was trying to get out that couldn’t.
“Oh, Sammy,” she said. “Oh, Sammy. It took us so long to find you.”
“I’m sorry, mum.” The words were muffled against the flowers and the soft lace at her collar.
She held him away from her. “It wasn’t your fault!” Her voice laughed and cried at once. She gave him a little shake. “You’re worth every minute of searching. I only wish those hateful detectives could have found you sooner. When I think of where you’ve been—”
He just looked at her, knowing nothing of detectives or searches and wishing she had no notion of where he had been. He ducked his head. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t know—I didn’t have nowhere else to go.”
She closed her eyes. For a miserable moment he thought it was disgust, and he deserved it. He knew he must deserve it. He shouldn’t have let those things happen to him; he should have done something; he shouldn’t have been helpless and afraid.
But she didn’t turn away from him. Instead she pulled him close again, a warm, hard hug that smelled of wind and flowers. “Never again,” she said fiercely. Her voice caught, and he knew she was crying. “Forget it all, Sammy. Forget everything before today. You’ve come home now.”
Home. He let her hold him against her and hid his face in the cool flowers and heard dumb little noises come out of his own throat, little whimpers that would have shamed a baby. He tried to keep them back, and tried to say something like a grown-up, like he ought to be—eight years old, or even nine, maybe, and he ought to be able to say something right. Her tears wet both their cheeks and he wanted to cry at least, but his eyes were dry and his throat just kept making those stupid little noises…Home, he wanted to say, and…Thank you, oh, thank you. Oh, home…
Three
Leda was staring.
She caught herself in the middle of it, but not before Samuel Gerard had looked straight at her, an instant’s lock of glances: hers paralyzed, his silver and burning beautiful, utterly stunning in a face of masculine flawless inhumanity…perfect…perfect beyond the perfection of mere marble art, beyond anything but dreams.
It was the strangest moment. He looked at Leda as if he knew her and had not expected to find her there. But she did not know him. She had never seen him.
Not him. Never before.
His glance skimmed past her. Lady Catherine was coming forward, speaking to him in an easy, familiar voice, as if it were the most ordinary thing in nature to converse with this archangel come down to walk among mortal men. His mouth curved faintly, not quite a smile at Lady Catherine, but suddenly Leda thought: He loves her.
Of course. They made a pair tha
t almost tempted fate, so perfectly matched they were. A dark beauty and a bright sun-touched god. Meant for one another.
Ah, well.
“Now tell us—what are these poor ladies trying to say?” Lady Catherine demanded, drawing him forward with her.
He let go of her hand and bowed formally to each of the seated Japanese ladies in turn. The morning sun sought him through the tall windows as if to confer a special favor, burnished the deep gold of his hair, slid light into the depths of it. When he straightened, lifting his eyes—and really, such handsome lashes as he had, thick and long, much darker than his hair—he spoke in the strange, clipped syllables of their language, bowing again with a courteous deference before he finished the brief speech.
The younger of the ladies answered with a flood of words and gestures, tilting her head once, very slightly, toward Queen Kapiolani with a timid smile.
He questioned her again. She giggled and made a fluid shape in the air, sweeping her hands wide around her own torso and then down toward her feet.
Mr. Gerard repeated his bow when she had finished. He looked toward the queen and her sister. “It is a question of a fashion, ma’am. A particular dress.” Like Lady Catherine’s, his accent was more American than English, and he spoke as gravely as if the fate of nations hung in the balance. “Her Majesty Queen Kapiolani has worn a white dress at court, ma’am? Heavily embroidered?” He made a slight motion with his hand: a vague, awkward, male sort of copy of the Japanese princess’ descriptive movement. The color rose in his neck a little. “Loose? With no—ah—”
“No corset,” Lady Catherine said wisely!
Mr. Gerard turned quite a deep crimson beneath his tan. He shifted his glance. All the ladies, of all nationalities, began to smile. Really, men were so charmingly absurd.
“Yes,” the princess intoned. “The mu’umu’u of Japan silk.” She spoke to her sister in yet another language, this one more liquid and lovely than the Japanese.
Mr. Gerard smiled. “Japanese silk, is it?” He spoke to the Oriental ladies again, and received pleased nods and eager chatter. He looked back at the others and translated. “They wish to thank Your Majesty for the honor to their country.”
A series of courtesies were exchanged on this point, leaving everyone highly pleased with everyone else. Madame Elise clapped her hands, settling back into her overblown French manner.
“Of course, ze flowing robe of white brocade, cut in ze Hawaiian mode. I see it describe in a page of Ze Queen periodical.” She fluttered obsequiously. “Perhaps Their Serene Highnesses wish it to be copied, if Her Majesty should be zo gracious as to permit?”
It seemed that this was the case. Her Majesty showed herself perfectly satisfied to extend the favor to her estimable royal sisters from Japan. A footman was dispatched to escort the gown in question from the hotel; in the meanwhile, the fabric must be selected: it must be a pale brocade, and poor Mr. Gerard, as translator, was well and truly caught in the net of international fashion diplomacy.
Leda hurried off to discover what the storeroom had to offer. She returned carrying five bolts of white and blond silk piled to her nose. As she stepped into the showroom, Mr. Gerard moved next to her, lifting the ponderous weight all at once from her arms.
“Oh, no, please”—she was panting a little—“don’t trouble yourself, sir.”
“No trouble.” He spoke softly as he laid the bolts of fabric across the counter. Leda lowered her eyes, pretending to busy herself with the silk. She glanced up beneath her lashes. He was still looking at her.
She could not fathom what was in his face. The moment she caught him at it, he turned away, and she could not decide if his interest was more than her hopeful imagination. Not that she wished him to take an interest: not here—never here; she could not bear that—not the kind of regard a man would have for a showroom woman. It was all mere whimsy, just an amazingly beautiful man—a splendid sight that she could not but admire.
Still…he seemed, in a curious way, to be familiar to her. And yet that faultless masculine face was unforgettable; even the way he moved was memorable, with a controlled and concentrated grace in his dark, conservatively cut morning coat and winged collar. His broad shoulders, his tall stature, those remarkable dark lashes and gray eyes: already he was burned indelibly on her mind. She could only suppose she’d seen some illustration of a shining hero once, in a book, Prince Charming on his white steed—and here he was in Madame Elise’s showroom, standing with pensive composure, surrounded by colorful silk and chattering women.
The other showroom girls were taking whatever excuse they could find to come into the room. Word of Mr. Gerard had spread. As Leda unrolled an ivory brocade over the counter, she intercepted a downcast smirk from Miss Clark, who was making herself inordinately busy straightening up a counter that did not need straightening.
Leda tried to check her by ignoring the smirk. Miss Myrtle had felt men to be something of an imposition on the world, not quite acceptable as topics of civil conversation, with the sole exception of that unspeakable man, who had evidently contained, entirely in himself, a complete repository of all the various and assorted incarnations of depravity to which the human soul was capable of sinking. That unspeakable man was therefore perfectly suitable as a conversation piece, and had in fact been abused for Leda’s benefit and instruction with vigorous regularity in Miss Myrtle’s drawing room over the years.
Leda was a little wary of men. But finally she could not help giving a tiny grin back at Miss Clark.
He was just too tremendous. He truly was.
Each time Leda spread out a new bolt for view, he pulled the previous one out of her hands as she began to roll it, and turned the fabric back onto the bolt himself, hefting the unwieldy weight easily. And he didn’t make a fuss over it, either; he just kept up his translation from the Japanese to English and back again as he worked alongside her, while Madame Elise held each fabric up to the window and explained its properties and how it would show by candlelight and gas.
When Leda dropped her silver scissors, he picked them up for her. She accepted them with a mumble of thanks, feeling painfully bashful, as scatterbrained as a fluttery old maid when his bare hand brushed hers.
Leda was so absorbed in surreptitiously watching him that she started when the footman murmured in her ear from behind. She looked down and saw in his gloved hand a monogrammed letter sealed with a coronet.
“For Mademoiselle Etoile.” The servant held it out to her.
Everyone glanced toward her except Madame Elise, who went on talking without a pause. Leda felt her face go to a scalding color. She plucked the letter from the footman and held it behind her, wishing desperately for a pocket.
Madame Elise’s phony French voice droned on, but suddenly she raised her eyes and stared directly at Leda for a moment. Leda dropped the letter to the floor behind her, standing so that her skirt covered it. She swallowed and looked down, fumbling blindly at the fabric on the counter.
She had no need to open the missive. She’d no need even to look closely at the coronet. It made no difference to which peer the seal might belong—such a note could mean only one thing, and have but one end.
This was how Mrs. Isaacson was to “arrange something.” Leda felt appalled and humiliated, furious with Mrs. Isaacson, and then chagrined to think that perhaps it was what her employer had thought she was requesting. Many of the girls did walk out with men…but no…no—it did not have to be done this way, in the showroom, in front of the other girls and the clients.
She was publicly branded—her position made crystal-clear. Sold for the price of a silk plaid showroom dress and cockade.
Business had gone on around her. When she found the nerve to look up, the Japanese ladies were engaged in appointing a time for the first hand to go round to their hotel for the measurements. In the midst of it, Mr. Gerard translated. He would have seen the letter, too. They had all seen it, but of course no one was paying any attention to the affairs o
f a dressmaker’s showroom woman.
The Japanese ladies rose to leave. Leda had no choice; she was forced to move away from where she’d dropped the letter so impetuously and attend to the Hawaiian party while Madame Elise ushered the others to the door. Mr. Gerard went with them out to the carriage. Before Leda could discreetly retrieve the letter, Lady Catherine called her name, eager to begin her own choices. Leda had just produced the rose swiss for her and an emerald glazed silk for Queen Kapiolani when he returned.
“Now do tell us, Manó” Lady Catherine spread the swiss across her throat and struck a coquettish pose. “How does this take your masculine fancy?”
As he crossed the room, he had to walk right over the stretch of carpet where the letter lay. He did not glance at it, or at Leda.
But Lady Catherine just then had noticed, and pointed out his omission to him. “I believe Miss Etoile has mislaid her note.” Her sociable American smile at Leda held nothing but innocence. “Won’t you retrieve it for her?”
He turned and bent down. In misery, Leda accepted the envelope. He gave it to her with the face up, though the coronet had been showing clearly where it had fallen.
She could not even thank him. She could not look up. When Lady Catherine gaily drew his attention to the rose swiss again, Leda wished herself deceased and beyond humiliation, hidden beneath a nameless headstone in some obscure churchyard leagues away.
But she determined to do nothing so coarse as to expire of shame in company. She put her head down and calmly aided Queen Kapiolani in her decision on the emerald glazed. She helped Lady Catherine and her mother choose a suitable pattern for the morning dress. She listened to the easy talk between Mr. Gerard and all the ladies from Hawaii, who would not let him go now that he was in their power. It was obvious that they knew one another as well as any family: even the large and elegant Hawaiian ladies treated him with a motherly air, smiling indulgently when the others scoffed and rode him for his masculine discomfort at voicing aloud his opinion of the fashions. And in an amiable, teasing way, Lady Catherine took his verdict as law, discarding any pattern that he did not approve.