The Shadow and the Star (52 page)

He grinned and wrapped his arms around her, leaning back against the bulkhead. She thought it rather an improper pose, but no one paid them any mind, everyone else being busy with their seafaring business.

Once the tugboat dropped away and the course was set, the deck settled into a quieter routine. As Samuel had business with the captain, Leda decided to take advantage of Mr. Vidal's offered escort to the first-class lounge. From the shelter of Samuel's balancing embrace, she shook the captain's hand and complimented him upon his work, to which he responded, "Well, you're a sailor, ma'am! That you are."

Flushed with this commendation, she made her way down the treacherous outside stairs, and in the lounge found out just how true the statement was. All the rest of the hundred-odd passengers had confined themselves to their cabins. There was no one in the saloon at all but one seasick schoolboy, who sat in a plush velvet chair with his shoulders hunched and his mouth squeezed into an awkward line.

Mr. Vidal asked him if he didn't wish to join his parents in their cabin, and was informed in a miserable whisper that the boy was traveling alone, and he'd been sick in the basin in his cabin, and it smelled so awfully that he couldn't stand it. And then he began to cry.

Leda took his hand. "Come up to my stateroom directly," she said. "It doesn't roll so there. You may lie down, and in a little while you'll feel better."

His fingers curled around hers gratefully. Shepherded by Mr. Vidal, they made their way by the inside stairs to the master stateroom, with the boy's hand growing tighter and tighter on hers, his tearstained face growing whiter and whiter as they went. Just as they reached the parlor, and Leda sat him down on the sofa, he leaned over his lap and vomited into his trousers.

"Oh, my!" Leda wrinkled her nose. "Let us take those off instantly, and you may lie down."

But the boy sobbed and pushed her hand away. "I can't—I can't… you're a lady!"

"All right, dear. Don't worry a moment. Mr. Vidal!" She stood up and turned. "Please see to his trousers. I'll wait in the passage—hand them through the door and I'll take them away."

"Yes, ma'am. Just drop them down the stairway for the time being. I'll get him a blanket."

Leda stepped into the hall and took the offending trousers when he thrust them out the door. She grabbed the railing and made her way to the stairs. She couldn't quite bring herself just to pitch the soiled garment, so she only rolled it up and tucked it at the top step before she turned back to the cabin.

Outside the door, she was startled to hear Samuel's sharp voice inside—unintelligible—with a ferocity in it that jolted her. She started to push open the door, just as something slammed into it from the other side. Leda seized the passageway railing; the door bounced wide with Mr. Vidal hanging onto it. He stumbled back, grabbing the handle for balance.

Samuel stood in his dripping rain gear, just inside the outer door, staring at the steward. "Keep your stinking hands off him." His words grated, like an animal's warning. Cold poured past him from the open door. "Get out of here. Before I kill you."

A gust of wind banged the outer door shut. Leda blinked at him, and at Mr. Vidal. The steward's blue jacket was ripped at the collar. The boy lay propped up in the corner of the couch, wide-eyed, his mouth half-open and a blanket clutched over his bare knees. He looked as if Samuel were some unexpected monstrosity from the deep.

"Samuel! What on earth—" Leda clung to the door frame with the roll of the ship. The steward's ripped collar and the expression on Samuel's face frightened her.

"What did I do?" Mr. Vidal stood rubbing his shoulder, utterly bewildered. "Sir, I—what did I do?"

Samuel didn't move. She could see the pulse beating in his throat from where she stood.

And it dawned upon her, with a slow falling together of one thought after another—the boy half-dressed and weeping, the other man, Samuel's rigid face…

"Oh, Samuel! It's not what you think," she exclaimed. "I asked him here. I asked them both. The child was seasick; he ruined his trousers. Mr. Vidal was helping me."

The ship swayed. On the sofa, the boy worked himself upright, dragging the blanket fully across his bent knees. She saw the crystallizing of reason in Samuel's eyes: a moment of comprehension, and then a rush of deep color in his throat. He glanced at the boy, and at Mr. Vidal.

He looked at Leda. And then: distance. All trace of emotion left him.

With a methodical motion, he began to take off his wet gear. Just as if nothing had happened, he handed the oilskins toward Mr. Vidal. The steward hesitated.

"Are you hurt?" Samuel asked, in a quiet voice.

Mr. Vidal's jaw twitched. "No, sir."

"Will you accept my regret?"

"Sir." The other man stood to his spindly height. "What did I do?"

"Nothing." Samuel's face was stony. "I'll speak to the captain about compensation to you, if you wish."

"Well, if I've done something to deserve—"

"Thank you, Mr. Vidal," Leda interrupted. "That will be all, except that you may bring a fresh set of the boy's trousers back. What is your name, dear, and your cabin number?"

"Dickie, ma'am. B-5." The boy spoke in a small, hoarse voice. "Ma'am? Could I have my own pillow? It's on my bed."

"And his pillow," Leda said. She turned back to him. "Are you feeling better?"

He snuggled down into the blanket, still gazing in awe at Samuel. "Some. But my mouth tastes awful. And my nose burns. And I'm thirsty. How come he threw him at the door, if he didn't do anything wrong?"

"It was a misunderstanding," Leda said.

"I'll bring a pitcher of lemonade, ma'am," Mr. Vidal said. He gave a stiff bow, little more than a nod, and left the cabin.

"It was an awful big lick," the boy said. "He flew all the way from here to there."

Leda took a breath. "I'm sorry you were startled, but it was an unfortunate error."

"I don't think it was, ma'am. He just come in here and grabbed him and there he went! And he said he'd kill him. Did you hear that?"

She pressed her lips together.

Samuel said nothing. He grasped the handle on the door and opened it into the wind. The gale took it and slammed it behind him—shutting him out, leaving Leda and Dickie alone in the parlor.

Rain matted his coat against the back of his neck. He thought only of the stairs beneath his feet, the wind at his back, the roll of the ship as she crashed down through the next wave. The empty deck stretched in front of him with rain swash sweeping along it, white ripples over silvered wood.

In a door bay, he took shelter. He leaned back against the steel surface, gripping the handrail on either side of the door, his fingers already aching in the wet and chill.

For a long time, an endless time, he watched the sea surge past. He began to shake, uncontrollably.

It was the cold; he told himself he was shaking with the cold.

"Oh, shit," he mumbled. "Oh, shit."

He dropped his head back hard against the door, welcoming the pain of it. He ground his teeth and slammed his head back again. It hurt; it hurt all down his chest and arms and legs.

How could she know?

He'd looked right in her eyes and he'd seen it. Nobody sane would have done what he'd done; nobody normal. Jesus, Vidal hadn't even caught it; Samuel had hurled the man across the room by the collar, and the steward couldn't figure out why.

Leda had.

Chikusho
. Beast. Beast! He wasn't even rational. Why hadn't he stopped for the instant it would have taken to realize there was nothing wrong? How could he betray himself like that?

Oh, Leda, oh, Leda, you shouldn't know, you can't know, you can't.

The ship rose and fell, a slow pendulum working against the blow. Three quarters of a million dollars of engine and steel; he owned every inch of her: his name was on the papers. Six hundred people got paid every month with checks drawn on his accounts; profits of four hundred thousand a year went right back into a bank with his name on the door of the biggest office.

His name—that he'd had to choose out of a book.

The Origin of Norman Surnames
. He remembered it; it had been all he could find in the school library for a source. So he'd made himself a Norman, looked into the mirror and decided he had a Germanic nose, and his gray eyes were Norse; he'd imagined a family and a past, how his ancestors had come with the Conquest, how his real grandfather had been killed in the charge of the Light Brigade, had lived in an ancient and noble castle, but a crooked land agent had cheated him of all his money, and someday, someday, a letter would come that would say it had all been a mistake; that what Samuel remembered had been the fiction, none of it had happened; Lady Tess and Lord Gryphon kept him safe until his real parents could find him again.

Fantasies. Dreams and smoke. Leda! In his heart he'd felt how he hung in thin air, with safe ground yards behind him. The same way he'd known, at fourteen, or fifteen, or thirteen—who knew how old he'd been, or was?—that no real family looked for him.

His arms were shuddering, his muscles hard with holding on. His hands and the brass rail felt as if they'd become the same thing.

She shouldn't know.

She shouldn't! He stared at the sea, with cold moisture dripping down inside his collar. It wasn't possible that she knew, that from her own experience she could comprehend. She'd married him, bound herself to him, let him touch her. She could not have known.

God—there on the bridge, he'd felt it and not understood—the way she'd stiffened against his arms around her.

Oh, Jesus. Leda. He dropped his head back, clenching his jaw.

And an intuition came to him. The guess became a foreboding… then a certainty so terrible that he wanted to howl with the anguish of it. She hadn't known.

She'd been told.

Those letters that had come. Tess had written her, and told her.

For an instant, it seemed a treachery too deep to conceive. But then he realized. It was him, his own fault; Lady Tess would never have betrayed him if he hadn't given in to what he was. If he hadn't forgotten everything that Dojun had taught him and gone to Leda and lain down with her and let the darkness have him.

His fault.

He had done this, as he'd lost Kai, and lost everything he'd worked to become.

The way that kid had looked at him in the cabin. At
him
, as if he were the one to be afraid of.

He smashed his head back against the steel. Black sparks of pain danced in his eyes.

He had to drag the pieces of his soul back together. He hadn't admitted to himself how much he'd let go, floundering in this sea of emotion. Dojun would perceive it instantly. Samuel couldn't arrive in Hawaii like this.

You're a warrior
, he thought.
Your heart is a blade
.

He pressed his head back against the door, freezing cold, breathing hard, shaking and laughing.

Dojun. Samuel had to find his balance. The frigid wind cut him—clean and mindless and pure. In the gale and the waves was the impersonal justice of the universe. Dojun had given him eyes to see it, resolve to endure it, strength to ride it. Patience, endurance, perseverance—and a thousand ways to hide in shadow.