The Shadow and the Star

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Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven

Praise for

The Shadow and the Star

"Pure magic.

From beginning to end

THE SHADOW AND THE STAR
enchants the reader.

a compelling story filled with power and poetry-peopled with characters so real, they break your heart, and heal it again."

Nora Roberts, author of
Genuine Lies

"Laura Kinsale has done it again!

THE SHADOW
AND THE STAR
is a heartstopper-mystical, tender, and sensual, with a hero who will live in your heart forever."

Mary Jo Putney, author of
Uncommon Vows

"Brilliant, intriguing…

establishes Ms. Kinsale in the forefront of the… romance genre…"

Kathe Robin,
Romantic Times

Praise for

The Prince of Midnight

"… one of the most powerful and unique voices in romance today…

Elizabeth Kary, author of
Midnight Lace

"Laura Kinsale has managed to break all of the rules of standard romance writing and come away shining."

Angela Russ, San Diego Tribune

Other Avon Books by

Laura Kinsale

Midsummer Moon

The Prince of Midnight

Seize the Fire

Uncertain Magic

And Be Sure To Read

The Hidden Heart

A Prequel To

The Shadow and the Star

Which Tells Tess and Gryphon's Story

THE SHADOW AND THE STAR is an original publication of Avon Books. This work has never before appeared in book form. This work is a novel. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

AVON BOOKS

A division of

The Hearst Corporation

1350 Avenue of the Americas

New York, New York 10019

Copyright © 1991 by Amanda Moor Jay

Inside cover author photograph by Constance Ashley. Inc., Photographer

Published by arrangement with Hedgehog, Inc.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-92037

ISBN: 0-380-76131-9

First Avon Books Printing: October 1991

Printed in the U.S.A.

Mother, Daddy, Cindy, Ubba, Grandma, Grandad, Elva, Tootsie, Bud, Frances, Sue, Georgia, Auntie, Christine—

Okage sama de
: I am what I am because of your kindness.

No alien land in all the worid has any deep strong charm for me but that one, no other land could so lovingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surfbeats is in my ear; I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud rack… in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.

Mark Twain

E lei kau, e lei ho 'oilo i ke aloha.

Love is worn like a wreath through the summers and the winters.

1887

In a place of dark and stillness he suspended thought
. He let the vast chatter of humanity slip away, let the sound of the light wind in the curtains fill his mind. He stared at his dim reflection in the mirror until the face there became a stranger, a set of features without expression in the silver eyes and impassive mouth… and then less than a stranger, only an austere mask… then something beyond even that: not human, but elemental shapes. Only a spectrum of dark and light, substance seen and unseen.

With reality before him, he set about transforming it to his own purpose. To conceal the gold of his hair, he borrowed a prop from the
kabuki
theater, the black hood worn by
kuroko
as they slipped furtively into a scene to change the set. To shroud his face, he rejected paint or soot as inadequate: too difficult to remove quickly, too flagrantly illicit should he be perceived. He tied a mask across his face instead, covering all but his eyes with cloth the color of charcoal shadows, a soft, supple fabric like the loose coat of deep midnight gray that he belted around his waist. Within his dark clothing he carried the means to scale a wall, to hurl a lightning bolt, to escape or wound; to kill. He chose pliable
tabi
in place of shoes, in order to walk silently and close to the earth.

Earth… water… wind… fire … and the void. He sat cross-legged on the floor. With his ears, he listened to the soft wind that no man was mighty enough to hinder. With his bones, he felt the vast heavy strength of the earth below him. With his mind, he accepted emptiness. Immobile, he blended with the night: unseen in the mirror, unheard in the breeze.

With locked fingers entertwined, he invoked the power of his intention to change the world as it existed.

He rose to his feet and vanished.

London, 1887

Leda came awake suddenly in the depth of night. She
had been dreaming of cherries. Her body made the jerk of transition, an unpleasant startle that sucked in air and twitched muscles and left her heart pounding as she stared into the dark and tried to get her breath—to make sense of the difference between sleep and reality.

Cherries… and plums, had it been? Cobbler? Pudding? A receipt for cordial? No… ah—no… the bonnet. She closed her eyes. Her brain swam dreamily over the question of whether it would be the cherries or the plums to trim the ready-made, gable-crowned Olivia bonnet that she could buy directly, at the end of the week when Madame Elise paid out for the day work.

She felt instinctively that the bonnet was a much safer and more agreeable topic for contemplation than the one that she knew she ought to be contemplating—which was her dark room and the various even darker comers of it, and what disturbance it might have been that had woken her from a sound and much-needed slumber.

The night was almost silent, except for the tick of her clock and the soft
breeze that flowed into the attic window, carrying the scent of the Thames
tonight instead of the usual smells of vinegar and distilling. Queen's weather,
they were calling this early summer. Leda felt it on her cheek. The celebrations
of Her Majesty's Jubilee had made the evening streets noisier than usual, what
with the crowds and commotion of the entertainments, and perfectly outlandish foreigners from every corner of God's earth walking about, wearing turbans and jewels and looking just as if they'd got right down off their elephants.

But the night was quiet now. In the open casement, she could just see the outline of her geranium, and the cloudy pile of pink silk that she'd finished at two a.m. and laid across the table. The ball gown was to be delivered by eight, tucked and ruched and the embroidery in the train completed. Leda herself had to be dressed and at Madame Elise's back door before that, by six-thirty, with the gown in a wicker basket so that one of the workroom girls could try it on for faults before the porter whisked it away.

She tried to regain her precious slumber. But her body lay stiff and her heart kept thumping. Was that a noise? She wasn't certain if it was a real sound she heard or only the pump of her own heart. So, naturally, her heart just beat all the harder, and the idea, which had been floating nebulously at the edge of admission, finally took full control of her brain that there was someone in the small room with her.