In the last two years, since Japan had agreed to allow plantation workers to emigrate to Hawaii, Dojun was no longer so solitary and remote in his house halfway up the mountain. As often as not when Samuel came there was some Japanese visitor drinking tea or sake, a game of go in progress. The guests were reticent with Samuel, polite but wary, finding him a strange beast that fit no pattern: a rich haole who owned ships, who spoke their language and read kanji ideographs and Japanese script.
As Dojun became more sociable with the world, he seemed to become more brusque with Samuel. They had seldom trained together in the last years. Samuel did the physical work on his own, the constant conditioning and practice, but he still went up the mountain nearly every day. Dojun sometimes wished to speak of his art, sometimes only greeted him and went back to his conversation and game of go, more often just sat in silent concentration, offering nothing. Or attacked with the random frequency that never quite let Samuel rest.
There was no indulgence given for injury, as Samuel had known there would not be. The path did not end because he’d broken something; nothing stopped and waited for his limitation. Let go, Dojun-would say, let go of limitations. Give yourself wholly to the day. Every day. Live as if a sword hangs over your head—because it does.
Not only in a metaphorical sense. The ceremonial sword he’d stolen was hidden where Samuel hoped to God Dojun would not stumble on it. About that, he never intended his teacher to know. There were days he did not even go to visit—avoiding danger altogether—and then had to double his watchfulness on his own ground, because Dojun would not hesitate to strike him there.
It would not have been so difficult, except for the distraction, the fate that had taken all the floating, chaotic energy of shikijō and fused it on her. Samuel thought of her with her white shift pulled up over her bare legs, drinking tea and arching her feet in a delicate motion like a dancer; he thought of her head bowed, all that shining hair, her hand poised over her notebook and the soft skin of her nape above the demure turned-down collar. He could not keep his center; he kept falling from the way, losing zanshin, the vigilant unattached mind, and with it years of exercise and discipline.
To combat it, he spent long night hours sitting silently, trying not to want, attempting to shed all conscious desire, and still she crept into his mind like a slow heat. He sat peacefully, facing a wall, thinking of nothing…and out of nothing the essence of her formed, the image of her brushing out her hair over naked shoulders, the curve of her back, the white roundness of her hips as she bent to step into her skirt.
He could not go to Dojun with this. The political currents, his contracts, his strategies and plans—those things they could discuss. Even when he was never quite certain whether Dojun was for him or against him in a particular goal, it was good to talk and listen, to expand into possibilities and consider outcomes and intent—like a game of go, an infinite potential of combinations in the white and black stones on the board.
Rumors of counterrevolution rose and faded and rose again. Samuel had his sources on both sides; he watched the reformers and sugar planters press to cede Pearl Harbor to the United States, while the king fought to keep the harbor sovereign. He watched the September elections ratify the reformed constitution and bind the king hand and foot. He watched men posture and shout and indulge in petty vindictiveness, but the current ran inexorably in favor of money and power—there was no doubt in Samuel’s mind that it was the reformers and their American connections who would prevail in the end.
It seemed an ugly thing, but he understood power and the battle to maintain it. He understood fear. He understood the frustrations of an intelligent, cordial, all too jovial and extravagant monarch. For all of his adult life he’d dealt with the ambitions of businessmen, Western and Oriental, and seen the bewildered islanders slowly stripped of land and potential, shoved into a game with rules made by more cold-blooded men. He understood all of this—whether he approved or objected was immaterial; the important thing was to understand, and predict, and know when and how to move.
He’d built his enterprise for Kai, not for money or influence, not to dance at the palace or topple governments. He’d lent himself to neither side, but kept his intention pure. One future. One task. To be whole and untouched. To make himself more than the sword mounting, more than coarseness inside a fine facade. To forge away what he had been from what he was now, as the anvil forged impurity from iron to create fine steel.
To be worthy of the things he wanted.
To be what she would love.
His heart was a blade…and flawed…flawed…
This weakness dragged him back to the dark, had floated within him for years, never purged. It crystallized now, falling in on itself. It made an opposite pole—on one side Kai and honor and everything he would be; on the other, this warm beckoning darkness that he despised and craved to drown in.
Two years ago, he had bought a four-acre lot high up beside the Nuuanu Valley. In his present restlessness he had plans drawn for the house to be built there. He envisioned Kai in every room: one for her piano, one for the dining table he would build her, a wide lanai because she liked the breeze, a stable for her horses. He interviewed builders and ordered teak and monkeypod and paulownia wood. Just after the September election, the ground was cleared and construction commenced.
When he stood in the mud amid the new foundations, he only leaned lightly on a cane. Where there had been a mass of brushy vegetation, he could see out over the ocean now. He thought of names, of christening the place in Hawaiian Hale Kai—Sea House—and decided that was too obvious.
She had advised him not to be precipitate, and he trusted her in that.
He thought of her face, her throat, her supple hands and the curve of her breasts.
He stared at the horizon.
Put it aside, he thought. Put it aside.
Far below him, beyond the slope of the island, beyond the city, beyond the church spires and roofs glistening amid deep greenery, the tide was coming in, flooding the reefs and the sands.
He’d done this naming once before, thinking himself ingenious when he’d registered his own company as Kaiea—running together the Hawaiian words that meant water washing high on the land—thinking now that Dojun had made him inclined to be entirely too subtle. Kai had never caught the implication; never, for all he knew, even noticed her name in his endeavor.
He would be more straightforward with her. She was all honesty and candidness; it was his own tendency to conceal himself that hindered him. Perhaps he should name the house Hale Kai after all. Perhaps he should just go to Kai and ask her outright what she’d like.
What should I name this home I’m building for you, Kai? And by the way, will you be my wife?
He did neither. He watched the sun go down over the ocean in a glory of orange and gold. He couldn’t even hold the question of Kai clearly in his mind; he kept seeing her, the drifting softness of her hair in the clouds, the scent of her body in the rain-washed earth—damn her, damn himself, blind and deaf in his visions. Dojun could have killed him ten times over if he’d been there. A child with a grudge and a green coconut could have.
The tide came in, a slow and steady force, unstoppable. Kai ea, the water drowning the land.
He named the house in English. Rising Sea.
And did not understand himself, knowing that for the deepest folly of all.
Twenty-one
Leda was town-bred. The closest she had ever come to the Sussex countryside had been an excursion to Kew Gardens once, when she was eleven. Westpark seemed infinitely amazing to her: the fine old Georgian house, huge and yet somehow friendly, full of trees planted and flourishing in the very middle of the house, strange collections of all sorts of impossible objects, stuffed anteaters, dried leaves, glass cases displaying thousands of shells and insects and stones, photographs, jars of things she had no wish to identify. And the park! In spite of the jaguars, which really weren’t allowed to roam free as Lord
Robert had claimed, it was pure joy for Leda to walk in it, breathing clean country air, or simply to look out her window each morning and see nothing but lawn and trees as far as the distant hills.
There was a quaint lavender house at the end of the pleasure gardens, a little octagonal building of plaster, decorated by vines of autumn scarlet and half-hidden behind the boxwood hedge. Chased out of the stillroom off the kitchens, Leda and Lady Kai had taken it over as their own, pushing the dusty old funnels and vases for lavender oil aside, scrubbing up and commandeering the long benches and the table beneath the leaded glass window for their task.
The task was Miss Myrtle’s special cherry brandy. In August, when they’d first come to Westpark, the orchards had been loaded with the small cherries called brandy-blacks. Leda’s memory of the beverage, and her fond descriptions of the ceremonial filling of jars and pouring off of brandy for Christmas, excited Lady Kai into action. Nothing would do but they must pick their own cherries and make cherry brandy for the holiday with their own hands.
The first stage had been Leda’s and Lady Kai’s exclusive occupation for all of a week. Everything was done according to Miss Myrtle’s receipt, as recalled by Leda: the cherries picked and sorted, carefully cleaned, then pitted, the proper wide-mouthed jars washed, the fruit packed in and the sifted sugar with Miss Myrtle’s particular combination of spices layered on top—half the jar cherries, the other half sugar.
Lord Ashland was presented with an appeal concerning the required fine French brandy. After exacting a promise that he would be the first, not counting Leda and Lady Kai who reserved to themselves the critical tastings during the process, to sample this ambrosia, he agreed to provide spirits of the necessary caliber. Upon casting up the number of their jars, Leda and Lady Kai discovered that they had been most enthusiastic in their efforts, and fifteen gallons of brandy might just cover their output.
Lord Ashland had lifted his eyebrows and cleared his throat, rather as Miss Myrtle had been used to do when she took the first sip. But the brandy appeared as promised and the labor went forward, until the lavender house was finally locked up and left alone in early September with every horizontal surface lined by jars of deep reddish-black color steeping in rich gold.
Leda was pleased at the way the summer and autumn had gone. The Ashlands—her Ashlands, she was rather fond of thinking of them—had taken quite well in London. They weren’t precisely in the Marlborough House set, but Leda felt that level of society was entirely too fast for respectability in any case.
H.R.H. the Prince of Wales had, in fact, several times recognized Lady Tess by dancing with her at a ball, much to her consternation and puzzlement, for she seemed to have no notion of the Prince’s much-publicized predilection for beautiful married ladies. Leda did not enlighten her. Reportedly, the Prince had spoken very kindly to Lady Kai, and asked Lord Ashland if he was interested in horse racing. Since Lord Ashland was not, and had not been coached ahead of time in polite pretense, he’d simply said no.
Leda thought that faux pas was probably the reason they hadn’t been inundated with invitations from the most glittering of the fashionable set, but there were invitations enough—more than enough—of a more suitable nature, and gracious acceptances to the house parties at Westpark which proved no one was about to cut her Ashlands cold. Even in early December, in addition to the new guests—which included Lord Scarsdale and his son the Honorable George Curzon, who were expected to arrive on the noon train—Lord and Lady Whitberry were staying on, and the Goldboroughs with their three daughters, and of course, Lord Haye.
Leda paused in her dusting of jars, glancing covertly at Lady Kai. Beneath the heavy shawl she wore against the sunny chill of the room, the other girl was dressed in a simple navy-blue wool with a white apron borrowed from the kitchen, humming and cleansing the funnels and strainers, laying them out over thg table beneath the window.
Lord Haye made Leda feel guilty.
Lady Kai liked him. She liked him very much. Even now no doubt they would have been having tea in the drawing room, conversing about fox hunting, if he and Lord Robert had not joined a party of guns intent upon pheasant at a nearby estate this morning.
Lady Kai had become a great enthusiast of riding to hounds, as long as the fox got away. In September, the first time Lord Haye had been invited to Westpark, he’d been present at Lady Kai’s maiden run with the local pack. Having pronounced her a bruising rider, he’d made it his particular business to explain to her all the etiquette of the field, advice which she took with good grace and cheerful common sense. He’d promptly accepted a second invitation to Westpark, and been present for a week.
The gentlemen weren’t expected back until late afternoon, so when Leda had announced that the time had come to pour off the cherry brandy, Lady Kai jumped up merrily. The Goldborough girls, though game to pour, were set by their mother to write letters to a great-aunt instead. Amid woeful protests, they dragged themselves to their rooms. Leda and Lady Kai had set to work alone in the lavender house.
“That’s ready,” Lady Kai announced, giving an earthenware colander a final pat with the towel. “What next?”
“Now we pour off one jar, and sample it. First we put it through the colander into that bowl.”
It took both of them to conveniently accomplish the job without bruising the fruit unduly. The familiar aroma of the brandy, spirit-sweet, filled Leda’s nose. “I do believe this will be an excellent batch,” she said confidently, just the way Miss Myrtle had always said it. “One cherry apiece from this jar.”
Solemnly, they each selected a cherry from the colander, holding them on the tips of their spoons. Before Leda could warn her, Lady Kai popped hers directly into her mouth whole.
She broke into a fit of coughing.
Leda patted her back, still holding her own cherry on the spoon.
“Oh, my!” Lady Catherine straightened up, spreading her hand across her breast. “It’s very strong.”
Their eyes met, and they both began to giggle. Leda put out her tongue and licked at the cherry on her spoon, allowing her mouth to become accustomed to the hot, spicy richness. “Eat it like this.”
She took the cherry between her teeth and bit down delicately, halving it. Then she allowed the liqueur from the fruit to slide down her tongue, swallowing the sample in stages.
Lady Kai took a second cherry and followed her example. This time, she only had to clear her throat and blow air across her tongue. “Well,” she said. “It’s turned out quite well, I think.”
“This jar is acceptable. We must sample every one, to make certain it’s ready. Sometimes the sugar hasn’t quite mixed.”
They looked at one another again, and at the ranks of jars arrayed across the tables. Leda put her hand over her mouth, patting her lips gently.
“I suppose we had better get started,” Lady Kai said.
By the time they were halfway through pouring off the jars, Leda’s hands and lips were sticky. The white cloth over the table was sprinkled with red drops. Lady Kai had put off her shawl, and everything seemed perfectly hilarious.
“Look at this cherry,” Lady Kai said, holding out a particularly shriveled sample. “I believe it resembles Lady Whitberry.”
Leda was determined not to laugh at anything so absurd as that. She accepted the cherry in a sedate manner. “A Lady Whitberry Cherry.”
They both dissolved into giggles.
“Do you know,” Leda said, opening another lid, “I really don’t believe Miss Myrtle ever made more than twelve jars at a time.”
“We’ve made twelve dozen,” Lady Kai said grandly, sweeping her spoon round the room. “Christmas will be legendary.”
Leda thumped the next jar down beside the colander. “There had to be enough for everyone.”
“Of course. It’s a big house.”
“A huge house.”
“A positively tremendous house.”
They spluttered. They fell back against the tables, laughing
.
Lady Kai put her arm around Leda’s waist, brandishing the spoon with her other hand. “You’re so much fun,” she said. “I’m so glad you came to us.”
“Thank you,” Leda said. “So am I. I think—I think—” She paused, trying to gather her spinning thoughts. “I believe we should begin to strain the liqueur into the bottles.” She frowned, concentrating hard. “Double this cheesecloth.”
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. “Manó!”
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.