Fifty Words for Rain(117)
Akiko’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, little madam. He’s your son. Don’t you want to touch him?”
Nori managed a small smile. “Maybe tomorrow.”
* * *
With Akiko busy looking after the baby, it was her daughter, Midori, who attended Nori through most of her recovery.
She was a pleasant girl who liked to chatter about fashion and movies. She looked at Nori with a glazed expression, her cheeks flushed with hero worship.
“You’re so pretty,” she gushed one day as she brushed out Nori’s hair at the vanity.
Nori smiled. “So are you.”
Midori shrugged. “The boys at schools don’t think so.”
“The boys at school are stupid.”
Midori giggled. “Maybe. But I’ll never get a boyfriend at this rate.” She hesitated and looked away. A question was written in her downcast gaze.
Nori inclined her head. “What is it?”
The younger girl blushed. “Nothing. It’s not my place. Mama says I talk too much.”
“It’s okay,” Nori said gently. “You can ask me.”
Midori shifted from foot to foot. “You . . . you had a boyfriend. A fiancé, I mean. You were going to marry him?”
Nori felt her stomach twist. She tried not to wince.
“Yes.”
“And he’s . . . the baby’s father?”
The pain intensified. “Yes.”
“But you can’t be with him,” Midori concluded, “because you have to marry someone respectable and have a legitimate child. That’s what Mama says.”
Nori pushed back her irritation. “Yes, that’s right.”
“But why?” Midori blurted out. “Why can’t you do as you like? Once Okugatasama dies, won’t you be in charge?”
Nori took a deep breath and looked at her strained face in the mirror. She had to remind herself that the dark machinations of her family dynamic were lost on this naive girl.
Just as they had once been lost on her.
“That’s not possible,” she said bluntly. “Firstly, I’m going to have a difficult time being accepted as it is. The right husband, with the right name, is my only chance. I can’t marry where my heart lies and keep power. If I married a foreigner, we’d both be turned out in a heartbeat.”
Midori scrunched up her nose. “But can’t you keep a lover? If it makes you happy?”
Nori raised a dubious eyebrow. “No. I’m not a man. I can’t do that. They’d name me a whore—if they haven’t already—and no one would listen to me. And besides . . .” Her voice cracked. “They might hurt him.”
Midori gasped. “They would do such a thing?”
Of course they would. They’d slit his throat before breakfast and go on with their day. And then, after dinner, they’d slit mine.
“Better not to risk it,” Nori responded. She forced herself to smile. “Besides, my Noah would never agree to sit in the shadows and watch me marry another man, watch me have another man’s children. He’d never be able to watch my inheritance skip over our son—and any man I marry would insist that it does. Otherwise there is no point marrying me at all.”
She closed her eyes. “And Noah deserves better. If you only knew him, you’d know he deserves . . .”
Everything.
Midori’s lower lip quivered. “That’s not fair. If you have power, you shouldn’t have to lose what you love. That’s the whole point.”
Nori dug her nails into her palm. “I wish it were like that. But I have no power if I’m not respected. And I can’t be respected if I don’t play by the rules. Some of them, at least.”
“And the rest?” Midori asked quietly.
Nori met her gaze. “I’ll make my own rules.”
“But can you do that?” Midori asked doubtfully. “Will they let you do that?”
“I have to,” Nori said simply. “I made a promise.”
Midori looked near to tears. “But you still love him?”
Nori went very still. For a moment she was in another place. A tiny church, with fragrant honeysuckle blossoms all around, and warm hands in hers. “I do.”
Midori blinked, clearly trying to look cheerful. “But you love your family more?”
Nori could smell something else now. Fresh rosin. Lemons. And wasabi. Always too much wasabi.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I love my family more.”
* * *
The wheel turned in earnest then. Nori rose from her childbed a few weeks later to find that the world had not waited for her to recover.
Yuko had wasted no time in arranging banquets and parties for all of Kyoto, perhaps even all of Japan, to meet the family’s mysterious new heir.
The going lie was that she was the long-lost daughter of Seiko Kamiza and Yaseui Todou, Akira’s father.
Nobody believed it, but nobody cared. The friendship of the family was something everyone wanted. With the proper husband at her side, no questions would be asked.
As it turned out, it made no difference to them who wore the coronet. They were all out for themselves anyway.
Stacks of classified papers were delivered to her room, and she pored over them. The amount of money soon to be hers was truly staggering. By her calculations she could buy several islands and not run out. There were dozens of other houses, some here, some abroad. There was money tied up in several Kamiza-owned businesses, legal and otherwise. Among them was the brothel she’d once been sent to a lifetime ago.