The Hero Strikes Back

by Moira J. Moore

  I hated boys. They were all monsters.

  “Then he would come again,” Karish went on, “a good while later, and he would tell me he was going to come back the next day, to take me outside. Take me out for a ride on a horse, or to go swimming. I’d never done either, I didn’t really understand what they were, but he made them sound so exciting. And it didn’t really matter whether they were or not. All that really mattered was that he was going to take me.” For a moment his voice lifted, as though he were once more experiencing the excitement he’d felt as a child. “But then, he wouldn’t come back.” He whirled the wine around in his goblet. “He never came back. Or so it felt. Only he would. Months later. With another toy. Or more promises that he forgot. And sometimes he shouted. Sometimes he lifted me off my feet, shaking me. I hated that, but then . . . it was the only time he ever touched me. The only time anyone but the maids touched me.” He pulled in a long breath. “Every time he came, I was so excited. And every time he came, I was so scared.” He paused for long moments, just breathing and rubbing my hand. “Because I never knew what to expect. I never knew whether he was going to be angry or kind. I think that’s what made it so hard. The unpredictability of it. Of him.” I felt him shiver. “But I was overreacting,” he said after another pause, trying to make his voice stronger and calmer, but it cracked. “I know that now. He never did me any harm. But you know Sources. Always overreacting to things.” He smiled, a pathetic wobbly effort.

  As I had often told him. And no doubt countless others as well. And yes, sometimes he did overreact. But this was different. And perhaps this was not the worst story I had ever heard. Perhaps there were people with much grimmer childhoods. But did it matter? This was his experience. And it was cruel enough.

  “The academy must have been a shock.”

  “Huh.” He smiled again, more genuine, but sad. “All of a sudden, there was all this activity. I got all these new clothes and a trunk and all this extra attention from the staff. They were giving me all these instructions on how to behave. They cut my hair for the first time that I remembered.” He slowly reached back and pulled the tie out of his hair. The dark locks slid down, softening his features. “I thought it meant something. I thought maybe I was old enough to join the family. I thought that was what it all meant, that when you’re young you’re kept out of everyone’s way, but once you’re old enough, you’re allowed to be with people.”

  Only instead he’d been bundled into a carriage and sent away. And I remember him telling me that no one had told him why he was being sent away. How much effort would it have taken to explain things to him?

  “It was all so exciting. I was leaving my room. I was leaving the house. I was taking a ride in a carriage. It was all so new. And even though it was a servant in the carriage with me, not my brother or father or mother, I thought wherever I was going to be would be with them. I thought maybe it was some kind of vacation or something.”

  I didn’t understand how anyone could be so cavalier about a child’s feelings. He was their son. How could he not matter to them?

  I didn’t want to hear any more. I could imagine it all too well. The exultation any child would feel when they knew they were leaving one stage of their life and entering a new one. And this one, thinking he was finally going to be receiving the time and attention and affection of his family, only to find himself dumped in an unfamiliar place surrounded by strangers, with his family nowhere to be seen. He must have been crushed.

  He cleared his throat. “Of course, you know the rest,” he said briskly. “It was the academy. I never saw my father or my brother again.” He raised my hand to his lips, kissed the back of it. “I don’t actually have a memory of my father. I don’t know that I’ve ever met him. I only know what he looks like through portraits. He was . . . very blond.” A frown flickered over his features and disappeared.

  “People at the academy thought I was so odd.” That surprised me, almost as much as the other revelations I’d suffered that night. I’d assumed he’d been adored at the Source academy. “They laughed at the way I spoke, my accent, the way I behaved.” Bastards. “I’d never been around so many people before. It was noisy and crowded and I never knew what to do. I had to be told to leave my room, to eat and to go to class. They thought I was impossibly spoiled, because I expected everything to be brought to me.” He laughed softly, and I mentally kicked myself for every silk sheet comment I had ever tossed at him. “It was years before I was able to leave my room on my own, on a whim, for no reason, without feeling guilty about it, without worrying someone was going to get angry at me for being out.”

  I didn’t think I had ever been so angry, at so many people, all at once, in my life.

  “But people liked me there, I think. Once I learned how to behave.”

  “Of course they liked you.” How could they not? “Not everyone is as blind as your family.”

  He chuckled. “There’s no of course about it, Lee. You don’t know what I was like back then. I had trouble paying attention through an entire class. My mind always ended up drifting away.” Well, of course it had. He’d never had lessons before, he hadn’t known how to keep his mind on one thing for any significant length of time. “I never had anything to say. I scowled all the time.”

  “You had plenty of reasons to scowl,” I interrupted him, though I did have a difficult time imagining him as anything significantly different from the way I knew him.

  “No no, not like that, Lee. You’ve said yourself that people shouldn’t be imposing their negative feelings on other people all the time, that we all have a duty to be calm in public. You’re right.”

  Not when you’re a child. Not when you’re in real pain. I never meant that.

  “It was so embarrassing. A teacher noticed me drifting during a class and got sick of it. He said no one was going to put up with my aristocratic airs just because my family never bothered to teach me proper manners, and I’d better shape up or I’d find myself working as an administrator or something after I was Paired. I didn’t know what exactly that meant, but from everyone’s reaction I knew it wasn’t good.”

  “You have incredible focus now,” I murmured, wondering had he’d managed to develop so far from such an unpromising beginning.

  He shrugged. “I wanted to be good at something.”

  It didn’t seem to be much of an explanation, it seemed too simple. But not everything had to be complicated. And maybe that was the reason why Lord Shintaro Karish had gone out of his way to learn how to cook and how to fix cracks in the ceiling. After a childhood of not being permitted to do anything, he had wanted to learn to do something, and do it well.

  “And I learned to smile.”

  “You had to learn?”

  “Well, no, I guess I just had to learn the effect a smile could have.” His voice took on a tone of bemusement. “If I smiled at someone, they would like me.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t just because of that.”

  But he didn’t seem to hear me. “Someone could be angry at me, could be shouting at me or arguing with me, and sometimes if I just smiled at them, even though it didn’t make sense for me to smile right then, it just seemed to stop them, and they’d smile back.”

  That was because he had a killer smile, which was just bloody unfair.

  “There was a skill to it, of course. The timing, what kind of smile, but I learned. Once I learned how to behave with people, they seemed to like me. It was only at the beginning of my time at the academy that things were . . . difficult.”

  I got the feeling he was trying to reassure me. Instead he was disturbing me. I didn’t like what I was hearing. “You don’t have to put on an act to get people to like you.”

  “I know that,” he snapped.

  I didn’t think he did. Not all of him. There was a part of him that believed people only liked him when he smiled, when he laughed, when he, to use words he’d uttered on more than one occasion, played the fool. And I’d had no idea. I was s
uch an idiot. And I didn’t think that was something I could fix. At least, not with words. It was something I’d have to think about. Later. “I’m glad to hear it,” I said. “Though sometimes I have my doubts. Because it made me crazy when we first met, when everything was a joke and you were always using that smarmy smile—”

  “Smarmy!” he protested. I couldn’t tell whether he was genuinely offended or not.

  I plunged on anyway. Even anger was better than defeatism. “All that play acting kept me from seeing that you were fine and decent and full of all the traits I admire in a person.” So fine, from such barren beginnings. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Who had taught him what a person should be?

  And unbidden from the back of my mind came a name. Professor Saint-Gerard. An elderly professor from the Source Academy to whom Karish still wrote. It looked like there was someone I needed to thank.

  “Careful, Lee, you’ll be making me arrogant.” And he finally looked at me. He frowned. He put his goblet down on the coffee table and stroked a fingertip below one of my eyes. “You’re crying.”

  I drew away from him sharply. I touched my cheek and felt moisture. Holy hell. When had that happened?

  “You pity me,” he muttered. “Brilliant.”

  “Oh, yes, poor boy,” I retorted, injecting as much disbelief into my tone as I could. “The celebrated Shintaro Karish, famously talented and adored by all.” Though I did pity him. Not for the person he had grown into, but for what he’d had to endure. How could I not feel pity for that?

  But I knew better than to tell him that. I was glad he didn’t like the idea of being pitied. No one who was balanced did.

  “Not adored by you.”

  Did he honestly believe that? Where had he been? “I do adore you. Just not for your smile.” Though it was nice to look at.

  So he smiled, the non-smarmy version. He leaned down to kiss my forehead. Then my cheek. Then my mouth. Just a peck.

  But then, immediately after, he kissed me on the mouth again. Not a peck. Again, a lingering touch. And I thought he was getting too used to that.

  So was I. Bad, bad sign. Too much familiarity was never a good thing. Getting too comfortable when other people touched me encouraged them to take things a step further, and made me lax enough to allow them.

  That’s what I told myself, anyway.

  His lips opened against mine, one of his hands spearing into my hair. I gasped into his mouth, heat flooding through me. Sweet, sweet danger.

  Oh, he was in a fine state, his mouth desperate and fervent. It felt good. And gods it was so tempting just to let it go on. A maelstrom of sensation would be just thing to wipe out the turmoil created by the events of the evening.

  And create a whole new set of problems. I pulled away. “Not good.” The words came out weak and sharp as I tried to slow my rapidly beating heart. Idiot. Moron. Just what were you thinking?

  For a moment his eyes were blank. Then they sharpened into focus, and he flushed a brilliant red. “Oh, Zaire! Oh, Lee! I’m so sorry.” He disentangled his hand, caught between the desire for haste and a reluctance to rip my hair out of my head.

  Once he was free, I nodded. Blank face, blank face. “Perfectly forgivable, under the circumstances.” This was so humiliating. I wanted to crawl under the sofa. I couldn’t believe I’d been so careless. Did I want to ruin everything?

  Calm down.

  “It wasn’t the circumstances!” he snapped.

  I raised an eyebrow. How had I managed to tick him off this time?

  He lowered his forehead against mine. “I like your gown,” he drawled, anger dissipated as quickly as it had flared up.

  “Aye, you would.” Please give me some space. I really need it.

  He sighed and pulled back. “I should go.”

  Yes, he should. I didn’t think less of him for seeking comfort in sex, but it was not the kind of comfort I could provide. And I, I was ashamed to admit, was too rattled to be of any use to him in my usual capacity. Whatever that was. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Why break a trend?” He rose to his feet.

  “Taro,” I chided him, standing and catching his hand. “Only I am allowed to insult you.”

  “Aye, but you’ve been failing in your duty tonight.”

  “Yes, I have.” I let that woman tear a strip off my Source. I didn’t know how I could have done things differently, how I could have participated in events without making things worse, but it galled me that that woman had felt free to come into what was temporarily my mother’s home and treat any other guest, whether he was her son or not, in such an appalling fashion.

  “Don’t start.” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked about the living room. “I’m sorry I turned this evening into such a disaster.”

  “Hey, stop trying to usurp all the credit. We all did our part to make this evening as uncomfortable as possible.” He smiled, but it was another sad effort. I pulled his head down and kissed his cheek to show him that all—all—was forgiven. “I mean it, Taro. None of us can be proud of our behavior tonight. Don’t be thinking you deserve special punishment. And don’t be too wild tonight. All right? Take care.”

  He looked down at me curiously, but I could see he was relaxing a little. The lines of tension about his form were easing slightly. I wasn’t sure why, but it was good to see. “Lee, what do you think I do when I’m not with you?” And he grinned, something closer to his usual self. I could have hugged him.

  “I don’t think about it,” I said. Major lie.

  “I don’t participate in orgies, you know.”

  “Of course not.” Actually, that was a shocker. I would have bet money that he did. Though, really, I didn’t tend to think about it. Much. But what was the point of being the Stallion if you didn’t indulge in indiscriminate sex?

  “I don’t smoke drugs.”

  “I never thought for a moment that you did.” And that was the honest truth.

  “I don’t get smashed and hijack public carriages and get . . . smashed.”

  Hell, I never even considered that possibility. People did that? That explained some of the driving I had seen. Was that legal?

  He chuckled, the evil bastard. “Take a look in the mirror, gorgeous.”

  “Huh?”

  “Have a good evening, darling. Pass my apologies on to your mother.” With a wink and a graceful turn he grabbed up his cloak and was out the door.

  I pulled in a long breath and blew it out again. What a hellish evening. Should have known that would happen when it turned out I needed so much work to be considered acceptable. Anything you couldn’t do as yourself was likely to blow up in your face.

  I never wanted to see that woman again. I didn’t want Taro to ever see her, either. But there was still that hassle with the title to be endured.

  I swallowed down a spurt of resentment. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone? The resentment surged up again.

  All right. Calm down. Wouldn’t help Karish. Breathe.

  Wine. I grabbed up my untouched goblet and drained half of it. Red wine—blech!—but it would do the job, especially as I had eaten so little all day. Already I could feel it easing my nerves and loosening my muscles. Aye, needed more than that. I took the bottle and goblet with me when I went to my mother’s bedchamber to change. And I took Karish’s advice. I looked in the mirror.

  Hideous black tracks had been drawn down my cheeks. The result of tears running through the black eye paint. I looked a complete mess.

  What a bastard.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “He’s toothsome.”

  “Hair’s too long. It doesn’t suit his face. I like that one.”

  “Hm. Delicate. You do like the type, don’t you? But he’s firmly and exclusively playing for the other team.”

  “Ah.”>

  “Now that one looks good with his hands.”

  “I’m sure his wife thinks so.”

  “Hell.”

  A mug of mulle
d wine was plunked down in front of me with a thud. Some of the contents splashed over the rim. I didn’t even bother glaring at the server. There was no point.

  Risa wasn’t so passive. “Hey!” she shouted, but the server gave no indication of having heard, though those at nearby tables turned their heads. “Insolent little bag,” she muttered.

  I shrugged and raised the mug to my lips. Then I paused before taking a sip. I’d heard stories of some of the things some servers did with food and beverages before bringing them to patrons they disliked.

  I put the mug to one side, the wine untasted.

  “So,” said Risa, “Why are you here with me scoping the scenery instead of . . . uh . . . dancing with my gorgeous brother?”

  “Mm.” This was why I had been a little reluctant to participate in this outing. “Risa, about Erin, there’s really nothing there. I mean, he’s very nice but . . .”

  “He’s a pompous ass, aye, I know.”

  I felt my eyebrows rise and tried to control that. Not exactly what I’d been planning to say. It was true though.

  She chuckled. “I know, I know,” she said. “I love him, and really, he’s a good man where it counts. But he’s just got this way about him that makes you want to hurt him. That he knows everything that’s worth knowing. And aye, it’s aggravating. But I thought, of all the women I know, you could handle him. Your aren’t easily ruffled.”