The Shadow and the Star (33 page)

Lady Kai obeyed her with the dignity of a clergyman preparing mass. They lined a funnel and put it into a bottleneck. The deep reddish-gold liquid poured inside, sparkling in the sunlight through the window.

"Look at that." Lady Kai sighed in rapture. "That's magnificent."

"Exquisite," Leda said reverently.

"Breathtaking," said another voice, masculine and familiar.

Lady Kai turned around and squealed. "
Mano
!"

Mr. Gerard took off his hat, just in time to catch her as she flung herself at him. He stepped back and lifted her as if she were a child, giving her a boost in the air and a welcoming grin. Cold sunlight through the doorway sparkled on his hair.

Leda had forgot; in five months she had forgotten the impact of him, forgotten how potently, improbably beautiful he was. In the mixture of sun and deep shadow from the boxwood hedge, he shone with his own austere radiance.

She felt light-headed, looking at him. She felt giddy. There was a poem…

Tyger, tyger, burning bright… in the forests of the night…

Blake, that was—savage and stunning in two simple lines. Like him. She couldn't recall the rest of it. Her mind did not seem very nimble at the moment.

It seemed strange to see him standing so freely. She'd forgot that, too—that he would heal, of course. Not a crutch, not a walking stick, not even a limp as he came into the room.

"Oh, Mano!" Lady Kai hung on to his shoulders, resting her head on his chest and swaying from side to side. "I've missed you. We're having a smashing time."

Leda picked up her skirts in a curtsy, wobbling a little as she straightened. "Welcome back."

He looked up at her over Lady Kai. Leda pushed back the lock of hair that had fallen loose from her chignon. The whole coiffure seemed in danger of coming down, but she could not seem to think what to do about it.

He smiled. Leda felt such a flood of warmth and pleasure that she almost wanted to weep. She blinked her eyes closed, and the room seemed to spin around her.

"We're making Miss Myrtle's cherry brandy," Lady Kai announced. "You must have a—cherry."

She let go of him and scooped one into her spoon. He caught her wrist and steadied it before she dropped the fruit. With a kind of fascination, Leda watched as he looked down at the spoon—she found it amazing that he could focus on it so easily, when everything seemed so wayward to her.

He brought the spoon within a few inches of his mouth, took a breath, and said, "My God."

"Please do not swear, Mr. Gerard," Leda intoned reprovingly. And began to giggle.

He looked up at her. She clapped her hands over her unruly mouth. Then she gathered her pride and her scattered wits and said earnestly, "Do try one. There's only a drop of brandy in it. I think it will quite animate you, after your journey."

"I don't doubt that," he said.

He swallowed the cherry. They could not, however, coax to take more than one. He did not wish to ruin his dinner, he explained gravely.

"Dinner! What time is it?" Lady Kai blurted. "Is it after three?"

"Four-ten," he said.

"I must go." She dropped her spoon on the table. "Oh, Miss Leda—look at this! How will we ever… Mano,
will
you help Miss Leda to finish? She can't possibly do it all alone, and I promised—"

She did not say what she had promised, but only grabbed her shawl around her and ran out the door, banging against the jamb and bouncing off as she went.

Leda was not really sorry to see her go. Vaguely, she knew that she ought to be; that she should not be here alone with Mr. Gerard—but she was rather happy to be alone with him. She was so glad he'd come back. She could not keep herself from Smiling when she looked at him.

But as he stood by the door, she remembered why he would have come at all. Not to greet herself, of course. And Lady Kai had run away to find Lord Haye after less than five minutes of welcome.

She felt a little angry with Lady Kai. Mr. Gerard had come so far; he was in love with her; he wished to marry her—how could she be so thoughtless as to go away just now?

Leda did not want him to be hurt. She thought of sending him after Lady Kai… but then he would only find her mooning about Lord Haye, who was a perfectly acceptable gentleman, if one had a preference for foxhounds, but nothing and no one next to Mr. Gerard.

Leda could not understand it. She did not believe she was thinking clearly. But she did know that she wanted Mr. Gerard to smile at her again.

Toward that endeavor, another cherry seemed like an excellent notion. She took up her spoon and licked daintily at the single fruit balanced on the tip. Mr. Gerard turned from the door. She tilted her head and looked up at him beneath her lashes. With her tongue tasting the hot sweetness of the cherry, she gave him a tentative smile of her own as encouragement.

The preoccupied expression left his face. He looked back at her as if he'd just then seen her standing there.

Leda took the cherry into her mouth and let it slip down her throat. She licked her sticky fingers. "You don't need to help, if you don't like to," she said shyly. "But it's great fun."

He didn't say anything. He just stood there, gazing at her lips as she sucked at a tacky spot on the tip of her little finger. When he met her eyes, there was the most peculiar tautness about his face: not a smile at all.

"It's more diverting when there are two to pour," she offered. She transferred the funnel to an empty bottle, grasping it by the neck when it did not want to stand in an orderly manner on the table. With both hands, she lifted the bowl of liqueur, but without someone else to hold the bottle, she couldn't rest her burden against the edge of the funnel. "Not so difficult, either," she said, looking around at him hopefully. "Would you mind just steadying the bottle?"

He came up behind her and lifted the bowl away from her with one hand. "Hold the thing," he said, nodding at the bottle in an abrupt way.

Leda curled her palms around the neck of the glass in front of her. He was standing quite close as he raised the heavy earthenware bowl full of liquid. He leaned nearer to her, regulating the flow as the liqueur cascaded in an even stream over the edge of the vessel. Leda watched the level rise in the bottle, and said, "There. That's enough."

She set the filled bottle aside and put the funnel into another. It was very nice to have him standing so close by. She drank in a draught of brandy-filled air and sighed deeply. He poured again. As the liquid ran into the funnel he cocked his thumb over the rim of the bowl, letting go with his other hand and leaning more over her shoulder to watch the brandy as he tipped the bowl high.

It filled the bottle just exactly. Leda closed her eyes with a sense of satisfaction. She rested back against him. He was so comfortably solid, when everything else had such tendency to revolve around its proper place.

One remembered Lady Tess standing with Lord Ashland in precisely this way. It was agreeable; it truly was, though Mr. Gerard didn't put his arms around her. He stood still. She could feel his breath in her hair, uneven, deeper than normal, as if he had just run a distance.

"Thank you," she murmured. She turned her head, so that her cheek brushed the front of his jacket. Her hair came tumbling loose at last as it had been threatening to do.

She didn't even care. She did not think she had ever been quite this content with the world before.

Samuel thought desperately of inner balance. Of discipline.
Rectitude
, he thought.
Courage, honor, loyalty
.

He felt none of those things in him. He felt only her hair beneath his jaw, a braid turned inside out and loosened. It fascinated him, because it was so soft; because he had seen her brush it out and coil it up and pin it. He could not move. If he moved he would plunge his hands into it, spread it and bury his face in it. He would pull her against him, into him; he would die on his knees, engulfed by that hot dark flood.

She tilted her head back, nestling closer to him.
Don't
, he thought.
For the love of God.
He lifted his hands, not quite touching her. Her body seemed velvety, pressing his along secret curves and paths. His own was hard in answer. His blood pulsed with arousal.

Remember this. Remember this as a particular weakness within you.

He gripped her elbows and firmly pushed her forward, away from him.

She turned. He expected… something—pique or indignation, that he would not give in to her enticement. But she leaned against the edge of the table and smiled radiantly at him, tilted her head like a kitten stretching in the sun, her throat exposed, her hair falling down behind her shoulders, lit by the window so that red and gold played amid the mahogany—a sight that exploded inside him, sent force and weakness to his fingertips.

While he stood paralyzed in black lust she pushed back her hair and stoppered the last two bottles. "I suppose we might… finish tomorrow," she said, with a cheerful, tipsy break in her voice. She gazed at the ranks of bottles and jars for a moment, then burbled laughter. "Really, I fear perhaps we made too much, don't you?"

He heard the faint, slurred innocence in her voice, but he did not want her to be innocent. He wished her like himself, wanted to pull her down onto the bare floor with him—beneath him, her smiling mouth on his mouth, her laughter and her body like warmth and satin smothering him. He wanted it and loathed it, and himself, not wishing pain, not wishing brutality, wanting only her smile and her laughter and afraid of what he would do if he let it have him.

He took up a cloth and wiped it hard over his hand, trying to clean away the stickiness. "If you'll excuse me," he said stiffly, making a bow without looking at her. He threw the rag onto the table, seized his hat, and strode out the door, breathing in clean, cold air and the musty odor of boxwood. He filled his lungs with it, and still was unable to escape the lingering scent of cherry brandy on his hands.

He did not even follow Kai. He could not, not now. He wanted no one to see him; not Kai, not her parents—no one who mattered to him to see.

Leda's head had rather a trick of pounding unpleasantly
when she woke. Her insides felt none too agreeable, either, and there was a recollection tugging at the edge of consciousness that did not seem as if it would be something she wished to remember at all.

She turned over, digging deeper into her pillow at the soft scratch on her door. But the maid entered anyway, whispering, "Miss! I'm so sorry, miss; it's that early, I know, but we don't know what to do and Mr. Gerard says you must come down, miss."

Mr. Gerard. The memory that she did not wish to admit sprang full-blown into her head.

She moaned and buried herself deeper, feeling utterly ghastly. "I can't." The words came out a mumble. "I'm afraid I'm—ill."

"Oh, miss—I do be sorry—but Mr. Gerard said; he said ye might not be just the thing, but you must come down anyway. He said to tell you that there would be tea a-waitin' for you."

Tea sounded… acceptable. But to face Mr. Gerard, to gather her muzzled perceptions and swallow down the roil inside her and actually, voluntarily, without being dragged by chains and strong beasts, put herself into his presence—she did not think that was possible.