Free Falling Through Glass by Barbara Sheridan Page B

Matsudaira coming in, and all of their retainers wanting to be fed, there isn’t enough time in eternity to get it all done, and you want to ask me favors.”
    “I didn’t say anything about favors,” Kaemon said, before that lost little boy look colored his expression almost as it had back at the Shinsengumi compound.
    Shinjuku-san clearly wasn’t buying it, and Emmi lowered her head to suppress a smile at the familiarity he allowed the older woman.
    “Well, there is a favor, but it’s a small, important favor,” Kaemon said, reaching around to grab the front of Emmi’s kimono and pull her forward.
    Shinjuku-san gave her a cursory look. “Do your problems ever not concern a girl?”
    Emmi shot the samurai a look, but he ignored it and addressed the older woman again.
    “Maeda-dono is a nice girl, but she hasn’t eaten today, and I must meet with my father. Or else.”
    “So you give me yet another mouth to feed. As if the two hundred I have now aren’t enough?”
    Emmi shook her head “I don’t want—”
    Kaemon interrupted. “But look at her—she’s small. She hardly needs to eat. You can give her the table scraps. Just let her stay here until I return.”
    Shinjuku-san’s laugh was clearly derisive. “Until you return from your father’s tonight or from Shimabara in a few days?”
    Anger stirred within Emmi, and she wanted to smack Kaemon not only for saying she deserved only scraps, but also for having the nerve to try to make her yet another one of his conquests.
    “Only until tonight. I promise.”
    Shinjuku-san dismissed it with a wave. “The sooner you leave, the sooner you return. Go.”
    Kaemon flashed a smile that reminded Emmi of what her father used to call Jake’s ‘ladykiller’ smile. She had no doubt Kaemon took full advantage of that smile’s effect whenever he could.
    “Stay out of the way. I’ll return for you soon,” he said to Emmi before rushing out the door.
    He left behind a bevy of sighing kitchen maids, an irritated matron and one very cheesed-off descendant of the legendary Toshiie Maeda.
    “Leave it to that boy not to even introduce you,” Shinjuku-san said pleasantly.
    Emmi looked at her, surprised by the friendly tone and the sudden warmth appearing in her brown eyes.
    “Having you wait here is no trouble, but I try not to encourage his bad habits.”
    “I take it that he has many bad habits?”
    Shinjuku-san grinned. “You haven’t known our Kaemon long, have you?”
    “No.”
    “His faults are many, but nothing more than those of any young man of wealth and power let loose in the world for the first time.”
    “I see,” Emmi replied flatly. She remembered the tales of arrogant stars and ‘suits’ that her father and Jake had had to deal with in Hollywood.
    Shinjuku-san laughed softly, and Emmi looked at her but didn’t reply. Instead, she simply followed the older woman.

Chapter Nine
     
     
     
    “You see, Toshi? Yamanami told you there was nothing to be suspicious of, and Yamazaki confirmed it,” Shinsengumi Chief Kondo Isami told his vice-commander.
    Their senior investigator had just left, after giving his report on Kaemon and the girl. Kondo lay sideways on the tatami, propping his head on his hand.
    “Fujiwara-san took the girl to the Shoshidai, left her, and then went to the Imperial Palace to report it all to his father.”
    “And his father is exactly what has me bothered,” Hijikata grumbled as he cleaned the blade of his katana. He rested his sword across his lap and looked at his lifelong friend. “The elder prince has never made a secret of his political leanings, not even when the shogun exiled him and confined him to that dilapidated outbuilding at the Shokoku-ji Temple.”
    “But he was released and allowed to return to life outside the Buddhist order.”
    Hijikata huffed and returned his katana to its sheath. “Have you forgotten that he was released only a year ago? And how many of his friends and supporters were exiled or