Just now, she wasn’t being interviewed for all available information in her possession on any topic whatsoever because Samuel had telephoned again. He was on his way to take her on a tour of her new home, and while they waited, Mrs. Richards had found her this hiding place behind the bougainvillea.
“This way,” she said, “you’ll get off more speedily when he arrives, because if there’s someone here visiting you, you’d never be able to move for an hour or two, you know, and I know how keen you must be to see it. It’s away up the valley—three showers up, that’s what we say, because no doubt it will rain on you that many times before you get there. But you mustn’t mind—you’ll dry out before you know it. Ah! There he is!” She sat back with a sigh as Samuel walked out through the open lobby, carrying his summer straw under his arm. “He is the most romantically dashing man! It’s positively indecent to be that good-looking. Not that anyone blames him; he never encouraged any girl in the slightest, I assure you, but you can’t imagine how many hearts he’s broken, Mrs. Gerard.”
Leda half-suspected that Mrs. Richards’ heart might be one of them, but she only smiled and nodded.
He greeted her so pleasantly that her spirits rose on the instant. No one wore gloves, on account of the tropical climate, and it felt strange and yet familiar to have his bare hand beneath hers as she stood up. For the time that it took to pass with him down the curving stairs to the lawn and waiting fringe-topped carriage, held by a barefoot Hawaiian in an otherwise immaculate uniform, Leda walked on air.
As Samuel drove them out of the hotel grounds, though, a delicate silence prevailed between them. Leda gazed at the king’s palace across the avenue, a handsome, modern building with towers at each corner and deep stone verandas. They plunged into the shade, of overarching trees, with the sunlight flashing down through.
“What is that?” Leda asked, staring at a tree that looked as if it had dozens of white trumpets hanging downward from all its branches.
“A trumpet tree,” he said.
“Oh.” She fiddled with her closed parasol, and then pointed at a tree covered with gorgeous clusters of golden blossoms. “What’s that one?”
“It’s called a gold tree.”
“Oh.” Somehow, the obviousness of the names made her feel foolish for asking. He didn’t expand on the information. Obviously, his earlier friendliness had been for Mrs. Richards’ benefit—naturally he wouldn’t like it to appear to his manager’s wife that there was anything irregular about his marriage.
He would be thinking now that it should have been Lady Kai whom he was escorting to her first view of her new home. He would be thinking of his plans and dreams. He would be wishing that it was not Leda in this carriage with him.
The air held all the scents of gardenias and lilies and roses. Beyond the somewhat tipsy white fences, houses lay in deep shade, under bowers of flowering vines. She caught glimpses of open rooms beyond the ubiquitous wide verandas.
“Is everything satisfactory?” he asked abruptly. “The hotel is all right?”
“Oh, yes.”
“You have a decent suite?”
“It is an excellent suite. Perfect.”
“Mrs. Richards is taking good care of you.”
“Indeed, she has been everything that’s kind. It’s all lovely!”
He clucked to the horse. It picked up a quicker trot, splashing through a mud puddle. Leda pretended to watch the raindrops that suddenly cascaded from nowhere out of a blue sky, bright drops with sunlight glistening through them.
Lovely, she thought dismally. Perfect
It was the shower that caused the watery shimmer in her vision. She was not undignified. She was not weeping.
“This is the upstairs parlor,” Samuel said. He glanced back to see that Leda had reached the top of the stairs. His footsteps echoed on the polished wood of the central hall.
“Oh, no.” She shook her head as she walked past him through the doorway where he’d stopped. Light filtered in the shuttered French doors, laying bars of white glitter across the floor. “No, on the plan, you told me it was to be your study. You remember that we measured the partners’ desk, to see that it would not interfere with these doors.”
“I can put the desk in my office downtown.”
He watched her stop, the light blue dress she wore trailing out behind her on the wood. She’d already abandoned the padded bustle. Few women wore that kind of thing here—because of the heat, he supposed. She held her white parasol tip propped on the floor. With her wide-brimmed hat and pensive downward look, she seemed something out of an elegant painting.
He felt a need to sound decisive, so that she could not see how this cost him. “The desk was all you’d already ordered for my use, wasn’t it? Just furnish the room as a parlor. I won’t—need it. You don’t have to make it a study.”
She remained looking away at some spot on the floor for a moment, then picked up her parasol and walked slowly toward the opposite door. He couldn’t tell what she thought, if she understood what he was trying to offer her.
“It’s not necessary that I spend a lot of time here,” he said.
She passed into the next room. He heard her measured footfalls.
He followed her, found her standing before a door, the shutters opened onto the second-floor lanai. She stood looking out at the view.
He walked behind her, stopping in the middle of the empty room. Beyond her figure, he saw the tops of trees on the slope below, then the vast sweep of the island and the sea. The Kaiea lay in her berth, her white decks toylike at this distance. A half-formed rainbow hung in the air over the lower slopes and the red crater of the Punchbowl.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
For a long time she didn’t speak. Then she said, without turning, “It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.”
He felt relief—and pain, slow and deep inside him. He could not look at her without thinking of touching her.
This room, at the corner, with a breeze flowing down from the green cliffs and the waterfalls behind the house—it was marked on the plans as Kai’s bedroom. When they’d been building the place, he’d never even imagined himself in it, only thought of how to make it pleasant for Kai.
But now—now all he thought of was what it would be like to sleep here with Leda in a broad bed, with the cool air of the mountains on his back and her body warm beneath him.
“You might like to plant fruit trees,” he said. “Mangoes, or something.”
“I had a mango last night.” She made a small sound that might have been a laugh. “It was messy.”
“Papaya, then. Or maybe just something with flowers.” He would have liked her to commit to a tree, as a sign that she saw a future here. “Plumerias grow fast.”
“Do you like them?”
“They bloom a lot. The flowers have a nice scent.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “Yes, but do you like them?”
He didn’t give a damn about them one way or the other. He wondered—if he went closer to her, would she move away? They were alone now, with no appearances to keep up. There was nothing to stop her from avoiding him.
He felt paralysis start at his feet and spread up through his body: his arms and hands, his throat.
And at the same time, a violent desire.
She still looked at him, over her shoulder, an inquiry on some topic that he’d forgotten already. Powder-blue and white, with the deeper sky behind her. Faintly, so faintly that he didn’t know if it was his imagination, he saw the lithe outline of her legs beneath the muslin. And her breasts, the rosy aureoles—he knew that was fantasy—
“Sir?” she murmured.
He could not move. He saw her with her hair falling back, her shoulders bare and her throat exposed. She turned toward him—a supple, feminine sway of her hips beneath the dress.
He could not move. He could not; he would not. His body had turned rock-hard.
And then he did; he caught her shoulde
r; he pressed her to the bare whitewashed wall. She had no chance to shun him; he didn’t give her time. The hat, with its ribbons and feathers, fell askew between her shoulders and the wall.
He kissed her. He imprisoned her against the surface. He couldn’t look at her as he did it. He buried his face in her neck, pulling her skirts up, hating himself, loving her, the sensation of her, the softness.
Thrust to the wall by his urgency, she made a faint gasp, like a wordless sob. Petticoats, lace, mysteries, everything she was to him: fresh muslin, sweet bared skin beneath, his hands finding the round supple shape of her buttocks, the eyelet that released intricate female garments. The fire came over him like a fountain as he felt her soft hips, her waist, the light fabric crushed in his fingers.
He didn’t stop to caress her. He was afraid; afraid that as she spread her hands against his shoulders she would push him away. He kissed her roughly: no words, he wouldn’t let her say it. He caught her hands, shoved them off. Amid the yards of cotton he jerked at his strained buttons; he lifted her against the wood, sinking between her thighs, gripping her with his hands beneath her, his mouth and his tongue at her throat. She inhaled sharply as he entered her.
He couldn’t open his eyes. He just did it, forced himself on her with her hips against the wall and her body crammed to his. The position drove him deep. In hard thrusts he took her. She made no sound; there was nothing but his impassioned breathing and the impact of the solid wall and the rising thrill, the crisis.
He came to the peak with a visceral groan that echoed in the empty room.
Pleasure and guilt, release.
Ruin.
He knew it the instant he knew anything. For once the dizzy relaxation of climax did not roll over him. Instead, it was wholesale loathing.
He leaned against her, his forehead resting on the wall, drinking air and fresh paint and the light salt of perspiration below her ear. Slowly, he released his hands from their tight grip on her, realizing at the same time that she held his shoulders just as tightly, as if she were afraid of falling.
Her feet touched the floor. The tangle of dress and petticoat was still between his fingers, her lacy linen a disorder that slid out of his hands.
He shoved away. He didn’t look at her face. The white parasol lay spread in a feather-edged triangle on the floor. He picked it up, using that and his coat as cover to adjust his clothing, hide himself, his back to her.
He stared out at the vista.
After a moment, he heard faint rustlings behind him. He imagined her restoring her skirts and linen, smoothing and brushing, trying to erase the vestiges of what he’d done. He closed his eyes, expelling a long breath.
“I’m sorry.” It came out harshly, nothing of what he felt, the despair, the dread of having to turn and see what was in her face.
She didn’t speak. He heard a footfall. He thought she was leaving; he had to turn at last, but she only stood leaning against the wall, holding her hat over her flattened skirt like a little girl, her face lowered. She plucked at the brim.
“I’ll take you back to the hotel.” He bent and retrieved his own hat. “You may wish to know—the Kaiea sails tomorrow afternoon for San Francisco.”
She looked up, with shock in her face.
He shrugged. “We’re efficient. The turnaround for this load is fifty-two hours.”
Still she looked at him, as if the very thought of it dismayed her.
“I’ve promised you that you have my support. If you want to go, you still have it. Your account is open in London. You only have to tell me what you need beyond that.”
The hat fell from her fingers. It settled at her hem, feathers nodding gently. “You wish me to go back?”
“I don’t wish anything.” He walked to another door, unlatched it, flung it wide. A brisk breeze carried the scent of water past his hot face. Around the edge of the lanai, the steep rise of the mountain showed a drift of mist across the green. “It’s your decision. If you would rather stay, and live in this house, and—keep up a conventional appearance, I promise you that I won’t—make any demands on you.” His mouth curled. “I’ve been trying to say that, but—” A curt laugh escaped him. “God! I suppose I can hardly expect to convince you now.”
“You should not swear,” she said in a very small voice.
“I’m sorry.” He leaned his hand on the door frame. Then he lifted his face to the mountains. “So goddamned sorry,” he said through his teeth.
When he looked at her again, she was standing straight. She had picked up her hat. She took two steps, to the middle of the empty room.
“It is my decision?”
He could hear the tears behind her shaky words. Tears. He had a burn in his throat and chest that seemed to suffocate him. “Certainly,” he said in a tight voice.
“Then I wish to stay here,” she said. “And live in this house. And keep up a conventional appearance.”
Thirty-two
When you bow, Dojun had taught him, you must not bow casually, as if it were some aimless gesture. The beauty of it must be complete, the motion whole: the two hands, palms open, placed together smoothly and slowly, fingertips raised to the proper zenith. The whole body bending from the waist, powerfully: form and force—mind composed, back straight, weight even and firm on the ground—then rise with hands still together and stand naturally.
In this way, Dojun said, you show respect. For your master, for your opponent, for life.
In the light from a single oil lamp in his office, at three A. M., Samuel bowed to Dojun. He prevented his shadow from falling on the window shade. The encounter was unusual in its place and timing—that Dojun would seek him out, set a meeting on Samuel’s territory, was unprecedented.
Dojun came dressed in shabby clothes, as any plantation laborer might dress, carrying nothing that was visible to an untrained glance. He returned Samuel’s bow with a slight one, and said, in Japanese, “You’ve been with a woman.”
Thus was Samuel’s shower, his scrubbing of himself, rendered futile,
“I’m married,” he said.
There was a deep silence, with only the obscure, endless sound of the surf far off over the reef beyond the harbor. Samuel couldn’t even hold Dojun’s dark gaze, but looked at the barren shadows in the corner beyond his desk.
“Ah. The Lady Catherine would have you?”
Of course. Of course, Dojun would know what he’d planned for years, though never once had Samuel spoken of it. It was the faint sense of disapproving surprise in Dojun, of an invisible eyebrow raised at the idea that Kai would accept his proposal, that brought blood to Samuel’s face.
“I never asked Kai.” He felt hideously exposed, unable to keep his mind free enough, attentive enough, to cope with an attack should Dojun launch one. “I married no one of importance. She’s English.” He moved to change the atmosphere, nodding toward the fragrant pot on his stove. “I’ve warmed sake for you. It’s nothing special, but please accept it anyway.”
He spoke of it that way, politely, even though it was the best tokubetsuna grade available, and both he and Dojun knew it.
“Itadakimasu.” Dojun received the drink as Samuel poured it for him from its little ceramic carafe. They sat together on the floor, sipping from the miniature wooden boxes that he’d prepared by placing salt on the lips.
“You know that there are questions asked about you,” Dojun said.
“Yes.” Samuel had already heard that report. For several weeks, apparently, there had been particular inquiries into who and what he was in both Honolulu and San Francisco. The source was vague, not traceable beyond talk in Chinatown so far. “I don’t know who.”
“Nihonjin desu,” Dojun said, looking at him over the fumes rising from his drink.
Japanese. Japanese investigating him. Samuel thought instantly of the sword mounting sealed beneath his stove.
“Why are they asking, Samua-san?” There was a coolness in Dojun’s voice. Samuel knew his own rapid connection
had been detected—Dojun was that good, that he might read Samuel’s mind if he allowed it. Too late to say that he had no idea why Japanese might be interested in him. Too late to appear as if he had nothing to hide.
He stood up, brought the tiny carafe to Dojun and offered it, bowing deeply again. After Dojun had held up his cup to be refilled, Samuel spoke in English. “With my apologies, Dojun-san. It’s my problem.”
Dojun regarded him. He sipped slowly at his sake. “You’re too thoughtful. I’m an old man, and you think to indulge me. But we’ll share this problem, nē?” He kept to his own language in spite of Samuel’s switch, indicating many things—his position, that he would direct the conversation, that what he wished to speak of was subtle and not to be misunderstood. “Tell me why these men ask about you.”
“I stole something.” Samuel kept his back straight as he sat cross-legged. “From the Japanese embassy in London. Perhaps they’re looking for it.”
Dojun gazed at him. Unfathomable.
“I’ll see that they get it back,” Samuel added.
Dojun’s face had changed indefinably. His eyes were black and potent. “What do you have, little baka?”
Samuel did not allow his body to stiffen at being called a fool. “A kazaritachi.”
Dojun made a sound like a controlled tempest. Not anger, but a sound of pure energy. He stared at Samuel. “Where is it?”
There was no need to tell him in words. Samuel had only to think it, and Dojun looked directly at the place where Samuel’s careful seal of horsehair lay unbroken over his secret cache beneath the stove.
“You might have done worse.” Dojun shook his head, smiling strangely. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
Samuel waited. He would get no explanation if he asked. Or if he didn’t. Only if Dojun chose to give him one.
“Tell me the names of the five great swords,” Dojun demanded.
“The Juzu-maru,” Samuel said. “Dōjigiri, the DōjiCutter. Mikazuki, the Sickle Moon. O-Tenta, Mitsuyo’s Masterpiece. Ichigo Hitofuri, called Once in a Lifetime.”