Falling Through Glass

by Barbara Sheridan

  “Thank you, Saitou-san,” Kaemon said, bowing.

  Emmi did likewise and took a long deep breath in an effort to slow the thudding of her heart. When she straightened, Kaemon was staring at her. His deep, dark eyes burned with an intensity that both frightened and attracted her.

  Without a word, he tore a thin strip from the towel-like cloth and tucked the end into the waist of his hakama. Using his fingers as a comb as he had the night before, he smoothed through her damp hair and drew it up into a high ponytail similar to his own. He wrapped the cloth strip around her hair to secure it in place.

  “Now you’ll appear to be my servant.”

  “Hey!”

  “Would you rather look like my courtesan?”

  A servant or a hooker? That was a no-brainer. Emmi shook her head and followed him outside, slipping into the sandals left for her, also courtesy of Yamanami-san. At least people were generally smaller in this time, and she wasn’t stuck trying to wear huge men’s shoes that would fit someone like her father or Jake.

  Emmi kept looking toward the ground. She tried to ignore the pointed glances and suppressed snickers of the men milling around the compound. Emmi’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment when Captain Harada approached and clapped Kaemon on the back, leaning in to whisper something about the bathhouse.

  For all their fame in the history books as dedicated warriors, the Shinsengumi bunch wasn’t that far removed from the jocks back home who liked to tell tall tales in the gym locker room.

  “Shouldn’t your unit be on patrol, Captain Harada?” Hijikata Toshizou called loudly from the porch of the building across the way.

  “Understood, Hijikata-san!”

  Emmi glanced at the vice-commander and followed Kaemon toward him slowly, not anxious to be in the ever-irritated man’s presence.

  Chapter Eight

  When they stepped inside the vice-commander’s quarters, Emmi bowed far lower than Kaemon. After all, when confronted with angry men who brandished sharp, dangerous objects, it seemed wise to push aside one’s modern pride and grovel.

  Especially after one had dumped a pot of pee on them.

  However, Emmi didn’t expect the oppressive silence that sprang up between Kaemon and the older man. This reminded her very much of some Wild West showdown at high noon on the main street of Dodge City.

  The tension grew oppressively thicker until finally Hijikata said, “Who do you serve, Fujiwara-san? For whom would you give your life in battle?”

  “I serve the emperor as you do, through Governor Matsudaira-sama.”

  Emmi glanced at the two men still staring each other down. She hoped this would end soon, mainly because her modern, American-born legs and ankles were beginning to go numb from sitting in the traditional kneeling seiza position. She really should have paid more attention to her father’s and Jake’s mind-over-matter meditation lessons.

  At last the standoff ended when Kaemon took a small, silk-wrapped bundle and slid it across the tatami mat. “Accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused you. I would be honored to have this accepted in return.”

  He bowed, and Emmi did likewise because it seemed the best thing to do.

  Hijikata’s reply was a curt “Hn” sound, but Emmi was quick to note that he wasted no time in scooping up the bundle, which made a distinctive metallic clink.

  “I trust this will be your last such imposition, Fujiwara-san?”

  “Hopefully,” Kaemon said, offering a quick bow of his head. “Thank you again for your help.”

  The forced politeness of the words hit Emmi hard, and she was not at all pleased to see the gleam of superiority in Hijikata’s hard gaze.

  The older man merely nodded, and, thankfully, Kaemon took his leave and Emmi trailed behind. A young man who’d been waiting outside handed Kaemon a cloth sack with something wrapped in paper. It might be her mirror. She hoped it was. Kaemon slung the strap of the sack over his chest and positioned it so the weight hung across his back.

  Biting back a ‘Take it easy with my ticket home, bud,’ Emmi hobbled along behind him until the pins and needles subsided in her feet and ankles. She stopped when she saw the kindhearted vice-commander, Yamanami Keisuke, a short distance away and veered off in his direction.

  Kaemon was halfway to the front gates before he noticed that Emiko had gone to speak with Yamanami-san. Kae could see the immediate effect her presence had on the older man. He always seemed preoccupied and morose, but when Emiko spoke to him he stood straighter, and a rare smile curved his mouth. When she placed a swift kiss on Yamanami’s cheek, the man fairly shone with a fleeting moment of happiness.

  Kae knew exactly how he must feel.

  He forced his memory to stop replaying their kiss when his body responded. Perhaps he had been wrong in his conclusion the previous night. Perhaps she wasn’t simply a temptress sent to leech secrets and information from him. Maybe she was some type of demon with the power to enchant and capture the souls of men.

  Emmi rushed back toward Kae and said, “I’m sorry, but I had to say goodbye and thank him for being so kind to me.”

  “It’s all right,” Kae said, heading toward the gates once more.

  Something odd or almost sad lingered in the depths of the samurai’s eyes, and Emmi rushed to keep up with his quick pace. He seemed quite surprised when Emmi gripped his haori to stop him.

  “Are you sure something isn’t wrong? Back there you looked…I don’t know, like a lost little boy.”

  Kaemon said nothing but turned away quickly. He kept walking, taking long strides so that Emmi had to hurry to keep up with him. Lovely. Just what she needed—she’d left the lair of one big, bad wolf only to be stuck with another.

  “Where are we going?” she asked when they had to stop and step aside as two large wagons loaded with bulging rice sacks blocked the street.

  “To the military governor.”

  “But I don’t know anything about anything military.”

  “What you know or don’t know is not the issue. We have to go because Hijikata has his spy watching to see that we arrive at the offices of the governor.”

  Emmi whipped her head around. “Spy? Who? Where?”

  “It doesn’t matter, but there is one nearby,” Kaemon said, beginning to walk again. “I know Hijikata, and I know I’d send someone to check my story if I were him.”

  Emmi sighed to herself and kept trotting along with her attention focused on keeping up with the cranky samurai as he led her through every side street and grungy back alley in Kyoto. Just her luck—she was in the company of a man who was tall for the era, a man who had a long, fast stride and took full advantage of it.

  And he’s a good kisser. Don’t forget the kissing part, her brain added on its own.

  Emmi wished he’d slow down for a minute, or change his route so she could at least see some of nineteenth-century Kyoto. She’d gotten more of a tour out of Uncle Jake’s quick spin around the movie backlot before they started filming yesterday.

  Unfortunately, Kaemon didn’t slow until they were confronted with another knot of people. Emmi caught her breath and massaged her side to ease the stitch she’d gotten from the unaccustomed hike. Looking around, she realized they were on the edge of a bridge that spanned a wide moat.

  Emmi shifted and stood tiptoe to see clearly over the heads of the people in front of her. Finally, she saw something familiar. Up ahead was a massive front gate set in the high stone walls surrounding the Nijo castle compound. They’d passed Nijo on the way from the airport to the hotel, and although she’d only gotten a quick glimpse, Emmi was certain that this was the same place.

  It seemed to take forever to reach the main gate then pass through to another. Kaemon explained why he was there to the guards and produced some type of identification paper for the men to inspect. Emmi took the time to look around and admire the workmanship of the entrance to the rambling palace complex containing the shogun’s official Kyoto residence and various offices and official m
eeting rooms.

  Incredible barely described it. The dark wood of the gateway’s massive support beams was a sea of majestic decoration. Lifelike carved cranes flew amid intricately carved flowers, all of it surrounded by a myriad of golden chrysanthemums and set into golden scrollwork cartouches. Why the shogun would have ordered so much of the emperor’s chrysanthemum crest to be incorporated, as if it was his own, was beyond Emmi, but she couldn’t deny the beauty or commanding impression it gave.

  The bottleneck at the gates eased considerably once they were inside the courtyard. Emmi didn’t have much of a chance to examine her surroundings as Kaemon grabbed her sleeve and propelled her forward.

  It seemed as though he led her around and through each of the palace’s interconnected buildings twice. The place was bustling with men rushing here and there, most carrying handfuls of scrolls, stacks of ledger books or wooden boxes. She noticed that the majority of men knew Kaemon. The guards stationed throughout the place waved him through with curt bows, as though his face was the only ID he needed inside.

  At last he slowed his quick pace, and her aching feet gave thanks. Emmi noticed the squeaking of the floorboards as they, and the few people that passed them, moved along the corridor.

  “What, Tokugawa can’t afford a decent carpenter?” Emmi murmured.

  Kaemon stopped short. Emmi almost ran into him and had to grip his waist to steady herself. Her hand seemed to burn from the feel of muscle beneath his silk clothing, and Emmi snatched it away but gave him what had to look like a guilty smile.

  “You truly don’t know anything at all, do you?”

  “What?”

  He glanced down. “You claim to be a Maeda, and yet you don’t know about the floors. Are you so far removed from the main branch of the clan that none of your people have ever been here?”

  “It’s been a long time for them, if that’s all right with you.” Stupid nervousness making her spit out the stupid carpenter comment. Of course she knew the floors were supposed to squeak like an old school burglar alarm. She prayed Kaemon wouldn’t press the issue.

  He shook his head and surveyed his surroundings. He then stretched as if he too had finally tired of this wild goose chase. He returned the greeting of two men who came out of a side room. Once they disappeared around a corner, Kaemon gave her a hard look.

  “Time for your questioning,” he said, grabbing her hand.

  A cold chill ran through Emmi when he dragged her to a silk tapestry set into an alcove on the left.

  Before she could finish saying “What the hell are you doing?” Emmi found herself pulled behind the tapestry, through a sliding panel, and into another corridor, which was lit only by thin bands of sun coming through slits in the ceiling.

  “Do you know every secret passage ever created in Kyoto?”

  “No. Only the ones in Shimabara, here and those in the Imperial Palace,” Kaemon said matter-of-factly.

  “The Imperial Palace, as in where the emperor lives.”

  “It’s also where my father, I and a host of other people live as well.”

  “Bu—”

  Her words were cut off when Kaemon shoved her against the wall and held her in place with his muscular body.

  “You know all that, though, don’t you, Maeda-dono?” he sneered, saying the name and honorific as though it were the biggest exaggeration in the world.

  Emmi shivered. Her pulse raced, and a thin sheen of sweat formed on her face following the unmistakable scrape of a weapon being drawn from its sheath. She sucked in her breath when he placed the blade of a long dagger almost against her throat.

  “Those men we just saw will be gone for hours, and they’re the only ones in this part of the residence during the day. I could torture you, and no one would hear your screams well enough to know where they came from. And, even if they did investigate, I assure you I can convince them that you tried to kill me first.”

  Emmi trembled and prayed that she wouldn’t shake enough to bring her throat closer to the blade in his hand.

  “W-what is wrong with you? Why are you doing this?”

  He snorted his contempt. “What did you drug me with? What did you put into the sake that I couldn’t detect?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear I don’t.”

  Kaemon smirked and tilted the blade so that what light there was glinted off its edge and hit her in the eye.

  “I will get the information out of you,” he said in a menacing whisper. “I’m sure such a drug would be useful to my father.”

  Emmi clutched her hands into fists so tightly her nails dug into her palms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t give you any drug. Maybe it was Yamanami. He gave you tea, I gave you nothing.”

  Kaemon pressed the flat edge of the blade against her throat. “Do not play the fool with me,” he ordered. “At the brothel. The sake was drugged. You led me to believe that you were trapped within the mirror and made me think I pulled you free.”

  “No, I didn’t—”

  “Do. Not. Lie.”

  Emmi winced when the very tip of the blade pressed on her neck, and, though she clamped her eyes shut, she could feel the tears slide from beneath her lashes as drops of blood trickled down her neck.

  “I didn’t. Kill me if you want, but I swear on my life that I didn’t drug you or trick you.”

  Kaemon was again reminded of the courtesan, Koyuki, who had so loved his father and had been like a mother to him. He’d been playing with his cousin and hiding in a chest in his father’s room. Father and Koyuki had come in arguing—she protesting her innocence in betraying him with another man and he insisting that his informant was beyond the reproach of a whore no matter how noble of birth she was. His father had been as close to severing Yuki’s head as he himself was at this moment with this woman.

  “Look at me.”

  Emmi opened her eyes. More tears slid down her cheeks, but she shakingly met his gaze.

  He tilted the blade of the tanto away from her throat and stared into her eyes. He’d killed traitors before, and he’d seen the deceit lingering in the backs of their eyes even as they professed their innocence. The woman who’d lied to his father about Koyuki had had that look of betrayal in her own eyes before his father had killed her.

  Even through the sheen of watery tears, Kae knew the look in the depths of Emiko’s eyes was nothing like those of the true betrayers. He put the tanto away then gently wiped away her tears with the pads of his thumbs.

  Maybe I am Alice stuck in a topsy-turvy world, Emmi thought when Kaemon kissed the spot where he’d nicked her throat. First he wanted to kill her, now he wanted to comfort her. It made no sense, but, for the life of her, Emmi couldn’t push him away.

  When he leaned in to kiss her, she didn’t even try to make sense of it anymore. All that mattered was the fire that seeped into her blood when his lips met hers. She’d never been kissed like this. This was a man’s kiss, not the kiss of the boys back home who were too intimidated by her father to ever dare take possession of her mouth the way Kae was doing.

  He broke the kiss long enough to gaze into her eyes before he captured her lips with his again. He slid his mouth from hers to kiss a trail to her chin then down her neck. He licked the small cut he’d given her.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered before teasing her with featherlight kisses up and down her neck.

  Emmi breathed a long soft sigh and arched into his touch when he slid his hands along her midriff. He drew back to look at her again, and Emmi melted inside from the intensity of his gaze. She shifted, and the boards beneath her feet creaked softly. They creaked again when Kae changed his own stance and removed the sack holding the mirror.

  He set it on the floor beside her and gripped her waist, his hands snaking inside the side slits of the hakama she wore.

  Emmi whimpered when he cupped her rear through the soft fabric of the yukata and again when he pulled her hips toward his. She could feel his erec
tion but was too lightheaded from the pleasure to consider the consequences.

  “You must be some type of oni,” he said before kissing her neck again. “What magic do you use to make me behave this way?”

  “I-I’m not—”

  He chuckled, and Emmi felt embarrassment flame her cheeks. The instant he peered intently into her eyes, the heat coursing through her body settled itself deep within her center, and she shivered.

  He grinned, and Emmi was certain she heard a muffled growl rumble in his chest. He claimed her mouth with his once more. His tongue sought out hers, teasing her, coaxing her, while he slipped his hands inside the hakama again to part the thin yukata.

  Emmi shivered again when Kaemon’s rough fingers glided over her belly and hips. She barely noticed the squeaking of the floorboards as he strummed a gentle rhythm over her burning flesh. He hesitated when his fingers brushed the stretch lace of her panties, but then he slipped his fingers beneath the thin fabric. With slow precision he stroked and caressed, pressed and prodded her sex until she was quaking beneath his experienced touch.

  Common sense screamed that this was a bad idea, but she was powerless to resist. Maybe he was the demon who had her under a spell. She barely heard the creaking boards any longer, never paid attention to the sound of the hidden panel sliding open until Kaemon stiffened and stopped dead.

  “Why am I not surprised to find my son here?” an annoyed male voice asked from behind Kaemon. “So your taste is running to young pages these days, is it? This is exactly why I told you not to befriend Takeda Kanryuusai and the rest of that Mibu-ro trash.”

  Kaemon sucked in his breath and Emmi tried to shrink back into the wall. Her father and brother had had a couple of standoffs like this, and they hadn’t been pleasant.

  “My tastes are as they have always been,” Kaemon said curtly before turning. “I don’t understand why you dislike the Shinsengumi. They’ve quelled more disturbances than any other force in Kyoto.”

  “They’re nothing but farmers with swords. That will never change, no matter how many rebels they slay or favors they’re granted.”