Free Dream of a Spring Night (Hollow Reed series) by I.J. Parker Page A

take her.   She came back and crept into her corner like a beaten dog.
     

A Daughter’s Duty
     
     
     
    When Lady Sanjo informed Toshiko of her visitors, she was so happy that she forgot the woman hated her.   She mistook the satisfied smirk for kindness, the glittering eyes for empathy, the rapid steps for eagerness to see Toshiko’s pleasure.
     
    All she could think of was that her father and brother had come.   As yet she dared not hope they that had come to take her home with them.   No, that would be a joy too great to bear.   But they had come to see her.   It was enough.   In her grief and homesickness, she had grown afraid that she would never see them again, that in time she would even come to forget what they looked like and the sound of their voices.   She had felt abandoned and as if she were dead to them.   Now life stirred again in her veins.
     
    As she hurried after Lady Sanjo to the distant room where visitors were taken, she thought of the letter to her mother.   She had broken a rule that one time only, because of her great fear that her mother was ill and dying.   That nightmare had been so dreadful that she had moaned in her sleep.   When Lady Shojo-ben touched her shoulder, she had woken drenched in perspiration and with tears running down her face.
     
    She still saw every dreadful detail: her mother’s emaciated form, the feverish eyes, the horrifying spots on her skin – spots of decomposition as in those frightening pictures of the dead that the local temple would put up at year’s end -- spots that suppurated and grew larger until her beloved mother was no longer recognizable.
     
    She stopped in sudden fear and cried to Lady Sanjo’s back, “My mother?   Oh, please don’t tell me my mother is dead.”
     
    Lady Sanjo turned her head.   Some of the anger was back in her face.   “Nonsense.   Nobody is dead.   Come along.”
     
    Instantly joy returned -- and with the joy, gratitude to the young man who had taken her letter and thus perhaps reminded them of her.   How kind he had been with his warm voice and those beautiful gentle hands.   Oh, he was even more handsome than her brother Takehira.
     
    And dear Takehira had come with her father.   Oh, what happiness!
     
    Lady Sanjo pushed back the door to the visitors’ room and said, “Your daughter.”
     
    Toshiko brushed past her with a small cry and fell to her knees, touching her forehead to the boards.   “Father, dear Father, I am so glad to see you.”   As she bowed, she was astonished that they were wearing armor.   To be sure, at home her father wore his armor on official occasions, but here?   No one wore armor here except perhaps the guards on duty at the gates.
     
    She followed the deep bow to her father with a smaller one toward her brother and sat up.   They looked well but neither spoke nor smiled at her.   She realized that something was wrong, that her father was fiercely angry.   His eyes blazed and his brows and beard seemed to bristle.   Takehira’s face softened a little as his eyes rested on her beautiful gowns, her painted face, her glossy hair.
     
    But her father’s face was implacable, every muscle taut and his lips compressed.
     
    “Father?” she whispered, feeling tears rise.   “Is something wrong?”
     
    “You have shamed me.”
     
    Just that.   Clipped and as fierce as his eyes.   She bowed again, keeping her head down so he would not see her tears.   Tears were weak.   As was a show of happiness.   She had offended by expressing her joy at seeing them.   She had lost her self-control.
     
    After a long time, during which she tried very hard to restrain her tears, her father said, “The female in whose charge you are says that you are unsuitable and that we must take you home.”
     
    Home?   For a moment she allowed herself another weakness.   The desire to leave this dark and stifling place and to see her mother again was so great that even her