“Ma’am!” In spite of herself, Leda was shocked.
“I don’t wish you to go, although you may if that’s what you decide.” She looked at Leda very directly, her dark hair smooth and her eyes intense. “If you care what I wish…I wish you to be brave, Leda, dear, and stay here and face them.”
Face them. Lord Ashland, Lord Robert, Mr. Curzon, all the guests…Lady Kai.
“I don’t think—I can.” Her voice almost failed her. She clutched her hands in the folds of her skirt.
Lady Tess fingered the pearl drop at the end of the hat pin. She looked up again. “If you leave, where will you go?”
Leda caught the reflection of herself in the tall pier glass between the windows. She feared that she even looked different, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, still unbrushed, her skin blotchy with tears, her eyes too large in her pale face. Did she appear fast? Could anyone see that she was unchaste?
She spread her fingers wide in the folds of her skirt, turning away from the image. “I wished to be a typist. I’ve saved my wages—and if I had a letter…”
Lady Tess did not answer the unspoken plea. She pressed the tip of the hat pin against her forefinger, as if the action were a delicate and important one. “Do you think that Samuel owes you nothing more?” she asked softly.
To her dismay, Leda felt the hot tears well up. She bit her lip, trying to prevent them from spilling over again. “No, ma’am,” she whispered.
Lady Tess laid the hat pin aside and lifted her head. “Really? I suppose it’s natural that I have more faith in him than you do. I’d like to think that we brought him up to know what is right.”
“I am not—his responsibility.”
“Oh, Leda. Leda.”
“He is to marry Lady Kai.” She said it quickly, or she would not have been able to say it at all.
Lady Tess turned her teacup around on its saucer. “I’m not aware that any such engagement has been announced.”
Leda remembered suddenly that Lady Tess was opposed to the marriage, that she had been most upset when Lord Gryphon had told her of Mr. Gerard’s intentions. Leda began to breathe more deeply. “Ma’am—it would be very foolish—you cannot force him—he will not wish to marry me!”
“I’m afraid that’s true. And you are free to go away if that’s what you decide, my love, because it will be very hard for you if you stay. He will not yield to this easily.”
“You want—you want me to prevent their marriage? Do you hate the match so much?”
The older woman frowned, gazing past the vanity mirror out the window. “I love my daughter. I love Samuel as well. I don’t want you to misunderstand me, but in a certain sense I—have a deeper attachment to Samuel. Kai and Robert—I wish nothing would ever hurt them. They’re my children. I wish happiness for them all of their lives. But Samuel…Samuel is the strongest…much, much stronger than I can tell you—” She smiled sadly, and shook her head, “—and the one whose happiness I hope for the most ferociously.” Her smile tilted up on one side. “Vicky and her cubs are nothing to me as a mother, I assure you.”
Leda looked down at the red-and-blue carpet at her feet.
“I don’t know.” Lady Tess rested her cheek on her hand. “I’m sure when I was younger, I’d have thought that by the time my children were this age, I’d fret over them less. I wonder why it seems as if I brood about them more?”
“Ma’am,” Leda said shyly, “I should think it must be very wonderful to have a mother like you.”
“Well.” She sat up more briskly. “If I have my way, Samuel will most likely wish me at Jericho, and you, too. Will you stay, and give him a chance to do as he ought?”
The thought that Mr. Gerard would wish her at Jericho—or worse—was not soothing. The idea that he might really “do as he ought” seemed so implausible, and so painfully disheartening, that Leda’s shoulders drooped. “I think I should go away, ma’am.”
“Leda…do you not care for him at all?”
She turned away, to hide her face. “He loves your daughter.”
“That is over.”
“Only yesterday—the necklace—”
“Please do not make me cross by underestimating Kai. My daughter is your friend, Leda—even if she wished to do so, do you suppose she would become engaged to him, knowing that he’d failed you? If she loves him, the first thing she will expect of him is the same thing I expect—that he will do his duty by you. To believe less of him would be an insult.”
“Do his duty.” Leda’s voice was dull.
“Yes. I suppose that isn’t a very pretty way to put it.” She sighed. “But this is not a dreamworld, love. However innocently you did it, you’ve done a real thing that has real consequences. There might be a child. Have you thought of that?”
Leda stood stock-still. She stared at Lady Tess. A tiny noise of denial escaped her.
“This is where babies come from.” Lady Tess nodded toward the bed. “I’m afraid the stork and cabbage leaf are fiction.”
Leda spread her fingers wide, as if she could push the idea away from her. “Are you certain?”
“About the stork, yes.” She smiled briefly. “Quite certain. As to whether you will have a baby as a result of last night—no, I can’t be certain of that. It’s only a possibility”
“Oh, ma’am!” The world blurred. “How do I find out?”
“It will be several weeks. If you miss your monthly courses, that is a fair sign.”
Leda began to breathe very rapidly. A darkness crept over her vision.
“Leda!” Lady Tess’ sharp voice and supporting hand caught her before the dark mist engulfed her. Leda found herself in the chair, bent over her lap. “There now, there…” Lady Tess murmured in her ear. “Don’t panic, love. Don’t terrify yourself. Hush, my brave girl…hush now…don’t cry. He will take care of you, Leda; you’re not alone.”
Samuel stared into the mirror. He should have been able to see his face as contour and shade; potential: capable of conforming to any role required of him. Falsehood and illusion were tools of his discipline. He should never be lost between what was real and what was deceptive.
Seishin. A whole heart. He kept seishin-seii.
He closed his eyes and opened them again. He saw no truth. No wholeness. He saw nothing but himself, his mouth set with rage, his jaw stiff, his eyes glittering in the shaft of light from the dressing-room window.
In his past, they’d called him beautiful. A beautiful amusement. A handsome, tempting cub.
After all of Dojun’s brutal training, no cut had ever left a scar. No bruise remained. Nothing marred him.
He loathed his own face.
With an abrupt move, he turned away, sweeping up cuff links from the dresser. The secret things he carried always with him were already transferred to his morning coat; the discarded comfort of his Oriental clothing lay in a dark lumpy heap—his “exercise costume,” as the maids called it belowstairs.
The scent of her, and himself, still clung to it. He stood over it a moment, breathing in that incense. His body grew taut.
It was worse, now that he knew. Now that there was memory, fresh and vivid, to fuel the blaze. Desire had its own life and will: the thought of her filled him with elation.
He would pay her to go away. That, at least, he knew was required. A liberal douceur, he’d heard it called. Cheap irony, to label a payoff “sweetness.” How conveniently French.
He seized the pile of midnight gray, tossing it over the back of a chair. His hand tangled in the cloth. Leda, he thought, but his mind could not seem to think beyond her name.
The pleasure was like pain inside him, like a torture at the base of his throat.
He had to control this. He had to speak to her, arrange everything, find some semblance of command over the situation. How he could have slept as if he had been doped, as if he were blind and deaf, how he could have heard nothing, felt no danger, allowed…
Lady Tess…
His who
le body flushed with shame.
He heard a jolting crack. He realized that he’d moved—and looked down to find the chair frame split all the way down to the floor along a fracture of raw wood. He let go of it as if it burned his hands. It tilted drunkenly on three legs.
“Chikushō.” He swore softly, calling himself a beast.
And he was. God. He was.
Guests were leaving, though none of them seemed to be in very much hurry about it. In the front hall, three suitcases and a trunk sat gathered in one corner. A buffet lunch had been laid out in the breakfast room. Though it was well after two in the afternoon, spirit lamps still glowed beneath the silver dishes of ham and ptarmigan, giving out a sharp bouquet as Samuel walked in. Haye and Robert pottered among the chafing dishes, filling plates.
“Gerard.” Lord Haye gave him a brief nod of recognition.
Robert just held his half-filled plate and regarded Samuel, as if he couldn’t quite decide who he was. Then he looked down and popped a chunk of cheese into his mouth. “Got to talk to you,” he said. “Privately.”
Samuel governed his motion with care. Robert never wished to talk to him privately.
The sounds of guests and servants gathering in the hall provided an excuse to turn away. The Whitberrys were taking leave; Robert grimaced, put down his plate, and went out to see them off.
Samuel served himself and sat down at the big table. He and Haye ate in silence, with the full length of the white cloth between them. There had never been more than cool courtesy between them—this morning, Samuel could not even manage the basic requirements of civilization.
The oldest Goldborough girl stood in the door of the breakfast room, bending over and peeking in. “We’re come to say good-bye, and Merry Christmas.”
Haye and Samuel stood up. While the other man made gracious small talk about the weather and the journey to the station, Samuel murmured the most commonplace salutation within his power. He wished them all to hell.
What did Robert want to speak to him about?
The two younger Goldborough daughters came, wrapped in thick coats, carrying rabbit muffs. He bowed to them, kissed their hands when they held them out expectantly, leaving him no choice. They looked at him with the same wide-eyed expressions of giggly awe with which they’d looked at him since he’d been introduced to them.
Haye left the breakfast room with them. Samuel stood for a moment, and then abandoned his plate unfinished, leaving by the door into the deserted drawing room instead of the hall. He wandered to the billiards room. It was empty. He went up the back stairs and stopped in the hall outside Miss Etoile’s room.
No one answered his light knock. He couldn’t risk lingering there. As he turned and walked on, Kai met him coming down from the nursery.
She carried Tommy on her shoulder. The baby looked red-eyed and disgruntled, as if he would rather be asleep than thrust into Samuel’s arms, as he was, without ceremony.
“Kai—” Samuel said, and was cut off by a rising wail.
“There—doesn’t he want you, Tittletumps?” she crooned in baby talk. “Come back to me, then. Come back to me. There, now, there.” She hefted the baby. As the wail subsided to a thin sob, she gave Samuel a sideways look. “Is it true?”
Everything inside him froze.
She patted Tommy’s back, watching Samuel with her eyebrows lifted.
“Is what true?” He did not know how he found the power to speak.
She hugged Tommy. “Everyone is saying that you and Miss Leda—”
She went on, but he didn’t hear her words. He heard nothing but his heart pounding in his ears: the silent, impossible sound of his life disintegrating.
“No.” He denied it. He would not let her believe it. The sound of that one violent syllable died away in the hall; he heard the echo, as if someone else had said it.
Tommy snuffled, wrapping his fist around her collar, snuggling his face into her shoulder. The soft sound of birds murmured from the foliage in the central hall.
She bit her lip, her face troubled. “I thought it was a terrible rumor—I told Miss Goldborough that it was. But Manó, you would not…you would tell me the truth, if it were so?”
He gazed at her.
“Manó—you would not lie to me?”
His eyes dropped. He looked away.
“Oh…” Dismay drifted in her voice. “Manó.”
“Kai—it means nothing. It’s—” His jaw grew taut. “God, you don’t know!” he said fiercely. “You can’t understand.”
“It doesn’t mean anything?” She stared at him.
“No.”
Her voice rose. “Are you saying that it’s true, and it doesn’t mean anything?” A transformation came over her face. “What about Tommy? What about Miss Leda? You can’t possibly—why, I don’t believe it of you! You can’t say it means nothing!” Tommy began to cry again, his raspy wails rising above her vehemence, but she did not stop. “Would you have left them in the streets? Just abandoned them? Or—or—” Her eyes widened and her chin went up. “I see! You are not so very cruel. You have brought them here, and expected us to wash your dirty linen for you, while you won’t even acknowledge it!”
He stood rigid, with the full extent of the disaster dawning upon him as she spoke. “There is nothing to acknowledge,” he said tightly.
“Nothing!” In her passion, she pushed Tommy at him. “Does he seem like nothing?”
Samuel had to take the baby or allow it to fall; Tommy arched his spine awkwardly and screamed at the clumsy transfer, one screech after another.
“Why, he has your eyes!” she said with scorn. “I don’t know why I never remarked it!”
“You never remarked it because it is nothing but imagination.” That much he managed to say, barely grinding out the words. He could not reason with her now. Temper stiffened all his movements; fury at fate and at himself. He moved past her toward the nursery with the shrieking child.
She came after him; he felt her hand on his arm and turned—but her eyes were shining with furious tears. She snatched Tommy from him and whirled away, kicking out her skirts with the force of her stride as she fled up the hall toward the nursery stair.
“Samuel.” Lord Gryphon’s voice stopped him cold at the door. The evening lay in a frigid mist on the drive and lawns, swallowing the last carriage headed for the railway station.
“Yes, sir.” Samuel did not turn around.
“Going out?” The question was soft, almost lazy, with infinite implications.
Samuel closed his eyes briefly. “Yes, sir.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Yes, sir.” He yanked on his gloves. “If you wish.”
They walked out together. Lord Gryphon moved silently alongside Samuel, his hands in his pockets, breathing frost. The gravel drive curved away from the house, leaving warmth and light behind.
Samuel had wanted isolation. He had not wished to encounter anyone, not after his confrontation with Kai. He’d secluded himself while the rest of the guests finally departed, watching from a window as Kai went out on the front steps to see Haye off. She had stood in the drive and waved until the carriage disappeared.
Samuel’s hands tightened in his leather gloves at the recollection. He’d no mastery of himself, could find nothing but jealousy and outrage in his heart.
The trees showed dark shapes through the mist. They seemed to float slowly past, while the crunch of his and Lord Gryphon’s footsteps filled up the quiet. A set of steps that led to the formal gardens loomed, darkly silvered with the damp.
“What do you intend to do?” Lord Gryphon asked.
He gave the question no context. Samuel stopped. He took a deep breath. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“The hell you don’t.” The words were mild. Lord Gryphon kicked a stone to the side of the drive. He looked off into the mist and smiled grimly.
Samuel’s mute endurance broke. “I’ll send her away,” he snapped. “I’ll never lay eyes o
n her again. I’ll give her money enough to live like a princess for the rest of her natural life. I’ll cut my throat—is that good enough?” He tilted his head back to the empty sky with a wordless sound of torment. “What would be good enough?”
The other man leaned against a stone pedestal, crossing his arms. “Good enough for what?”
Samuel met his cool stare.
“I’m not requiring absolute pristine virtue of you.” Lord Gryphon watched him steadily. “I’m no particular saint myself, but when I found the woman I loved, I didn’t lay a different one.”
Samuel’s throat was dry, the air cold in his lungs.
“Do you understand me?” Lord Gryphon asked softly.
Don’t. Samuel closed his eyes against it. Don’t do this to me.
The quiet voice was inexorable. “I retract my consent. I won’t let you hurt my daughter. Or my wife.”
Samuel turned on him, walking away. He stopped and looked back through the vapor. “I would kill myself first.”
“Yes.” Lord Gryphon uncrossed his arms and pushed off the stone. “So I thought.”
The footman held out the note on a silver tray. Samuel recognized the handwriting before he touched it. He pulled off his gloves, reduced to such small and pointless evasions for postponing the inevitable.
Lady Tess waited in the music salon to see him.
That was all it said. Samuel had been beaten once, bludgeoned in the back by a barroom stool, in the days when he’d been learning what it meant to be hit. It had arrested his breath, centered all his consciousness on exploding pain, annihilated him—and he had had to go on, to keep fighting, to move when his body was paralyzed.
He did it now. He functioned on discipline and nerve alone. He knocked on the door, opened it in response to her voice, and closed it behind him.
White and pink orchids nodded gently from the mantelpiece and reflected from the black glaze of the grand piano. She sat on the bench, fingering a sheet of music. As he entered, she set it back on the rack.
“I was never a musician,” she said. “Kai could play—” She stopped, and looked embarrassed. “Never mind that. Samuel, I…”