Slowly Sano lifted his hand and touched her soft cheek. Their breath mingled for a long, tense moment. Then suddenly she twisted out of his grasp and ran from the room.
“Reiko. Wait!” Sano called.
Her rapid footsteps receded down the passage. A door slammed. His emotions in chaos, his body still engorged with desire, Sano stood frozen, hands holding the emptiness she’d left behind.
In the sanctuary of her private chamber, Reiko latched the door and breathed a tremulous sigh. Her heart still beat wildly in her breast; her muscles quaked. Feverish in her agitation, she hurried through the outer door and stepped onto the veranda.
A lopsided ivory moon poured soft illumination over the garden’s trees, boulders, and pavilion. Crickets chirped; dogs barked. Somewhere in the night, guards patrolled the estate and castle; footsteps, hoofbeats, and low voices carried through clear, cold air that smelled of frost and charcoal smoke. In chilly solitude Reiko paced, trying to sort out her tumultuous feelings.
How she hated Sano for disregarding her wishes, for mocking her intelligence and abilities! And how angry she was at herself for badly handling the situation. She should have taken things more slowly, playing the submissive wife and winning his affection before pleading her cause. But she sensed that it wouldn’t have made any difference. Sano was like all other men, and she’d been mad to think otherwise.
“Pompous, ignorant samurai!” she muttered, seething with anger. “Ordering me around as if I were a servant, or a child.” Beneath her anger was the leaden misery of disappointment. How naive and foolish seemed her dream of solving crimes and achieving glory. “Better that I should have committed seppuku than ever marry!”
As Reiko paced, a warm trickle of moisture slid down her inner thigh. Thinking she’d begun her monthly bleeding, she felt under her skirts. Her hand came up smeared with a clear, musk-scented secretion: the fluid of arousal, her body’s involuntary response to the confrontation with Sano. Horror gripped Reiko as she became aware of a heaviness in her lower abdomen, the dull, hot pulse between her legs. Crouching on the veranda, she faced the sum of her fears.
She didn’t fear beating, the common punishment for unruly wives- martial arts training had given her a high tolerance for pain-and she knew instinctively that Sano wasn’t the kind of man who would hurt a woman in anger. Yet she dreaded the sexual act, a battleground where nature had made her vulnerable to a man’s violation. And desire could make her the thrall of the husband who already owned her, destroying her precious independence.
Even so, she was terrified that Sano would divorce her. If he did, everyone would blame her for the marriage’s failure; no other man would have her. She and her family would suffer public humiliation. The specter of a bleak future as a disgraced spinster living on the charity of relatives loomed before Reiko. And despite her anger at Sano’s tyranny, she didn’t want to leave him. She wanted to experience love’s dangerous pleasures. Body and spirit yearned for it, even as her mind recoiled at the prospect of a life of domestic seclusion and boredom.
Reiko watched the branches of a tall pine capture the rising moon. Through the tangle of conflicting emotions she identified one certainty: She must make the marriage work-but on her own terms.
She went inside her chamber and knelt before her writing desk. On a shelf above it lay the swords she’d retrieved that afternoon. Reiko ground ink, readied paper, and took up her brush. Desperation strengthened her resolve. She would prove to Sano that a wife could be a detective. She would show him that it was in his best interest to make her a partner in his work instead of a glorified house slave. She would make him love her for herself, not for his idea of what she should be.
With her tongue touching her chipped tooth, Reiko began listing plans for her secret inquiry into the murder of Lady Harume.
Alone, Sano reluctantly decided against going after Reiko: In his current state of anger, confusion, and unsatisfied desire, he would only make things worse between them. He finished eating, though the food had grown cold and he’d lost his appetite. Wearily he rose, went to his room, and shed his clothes. In the bathchamber he scrubbed, rinsed, soaked in the tub, then wrapped himself in a cotton robe. He walked down the corridor, past the empty suite where he’d planned to spend his first night with his bride. Next door, the paper wall of her private chamber glowed with lamplight. Sano paused outside.
Reiko’s hazy shadow moved, shrugging off garments, combing her hair. She evidently intended to sleep there. Desire welled in Sano’s loins. Fierce possessiveness enflamed his anger. Despite their quarrel, she was his wife. He had the right to command her presence in the marriage bed. Sano grasped the door handle…
… then let his hand fall away, shaking his head as reason tempered angry lust. He could not subdue Reiko through physical strength, because he didn’t want a resentful mate who obeyed him only because society decreed that woman must submit to man. He still yearned for a union of mutual love. It had been a long, difficult day, probably no less for Reiko than him. They’d gotten off to a bad start, but tomorrow they would begin again, after a good night’s sleep. He would show her every kindness. She would realize that her place was in their home, not in a murder investigation. And she would learn to love him as her husband and superior.
Reluctantly Sano went to his bedchamber, but with his mind replaying his argument with Reiko and thinking of what he should have said, he felt too tense to sleep. Amid the folds of discarded clothing on the floor lay the diary he’d taken from Lady Harume’s room. Sano picked it up with a sigh. There was nothing like work to take his mind off domestic troubles, and he might actually learn something useful from the murdered concubine’s record of her life and private thoughts. He lay down on the futon and pulled the lamp near. Propping himself on his elbow, he opened the diary’s mauve-and-green, clover-printed cloth cover and turned to the first page.
The text was written in an awkward hand, with lots of crossed-out mistakes. Like many women, Lady Harume had been barely literate. Maybe this was for the best, Sano thought, considering how Reiko’s superior education had fostered her contrary nature. However, as Sano scanned the diary, Harume’s natural flair for descriptive prose emerged:
I enter the Large Interior. The guards lead me through the corridors like a prisoner to her cell. Hundreds of women stand and watch. They stop chattering as I pass, and they’re staring at me: such disdain! Staring, staring-greedy, caged animals wondering if the newcomer’s arrival means less food for them. But I hold my head up. I may be poor, but I’m prettier than anyone I see. Someday soon I will be the shogun’s favorite concubine. And no one will dare disdain me again.
None of the entries was dated, but this first one must have been written just after the New Year, eight months ago, when Harume came to Edo Castle. Sano skimmed passages describing the routines and irritations of the Large Interior, Harume’s various amusements, and her increasingly frequent visits to the shogun’s bedchamber.
This place is so crowded that we must eat and bathe in shifts. There is always someone bumping into me whenever I move, always someone in the privy when I have to go, someone’s finger in my business, someone’s stink in my nose. The bathwater is always scummy by the time it’s my turn, and the noise never stops, even at night, because someone is always talking, snoring, coughing, or weeping. But although I long for solitude, I am dying of loneliness. The others treat me as an outsider, and I don’t like them either. And there’s nothing to do except the same things. Every day is like the last, and we don’t get to go out often enough.