The Blonde Samurai. Jina Bacarr
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the London town house of the Viscount Aubrey. An evening of fun and gaiety was in play until I entered the room and all heads turned. Curious, questioning, some envious, for arousing tales about my powerful and masterful samurai lover had preceded me. Word passed quickly among the sanctimonious ladies of Mayfair. “That Carlton woman has arrived,” they whispered. They couldn’t take their eyes off me, scrutinizing my gown, my figure, my jewels, for I had dared to leave my husband and seek my own life among the samurai. In the eyes of the British aristocracy there was no greater sin.
I shall not spoil the story if you are unfamiliar with the newspaper accounts of the scandal, but suffice it to say I’ve left unnamed those of you living in London who are innocent of any wrongdoing. And though the exclusive upper class is well represented in my story, be advised their names have been changed. ’Tis a spicy tale, dear lady reader, replete with the words and phrases known to and used by the male sex. Before we begin, you may wish to open your reticule and remove your smelling powders. You will need them. I warn you, you may be shocked by my story, but never bored.
Tomorrow I sail for Yokohama from the port of San Francisco aboard the SS Oceanic. By the time you read this, I will be home, for that is what Japan is to me now. Hearth and home. There I have known the joy of a passionate love, the pain of suffering a great loss and the importance of duty if one is to survive. I count the heartbeats until I arrive back in Japan, but first I shall send off these final pages by post to my solicitor in London, Mr. Robert A. Brown, to give to my publisher. I wish to thank him for his unending support during these long months of writing and deliberating over whether or not I should pen this memoir. He has given me the courage to do so and made it possible for me to secure a contract with the best publishing house in London. In many months hence, this book will be in your hands. Then it will be up to you, dear lady reader, to decide its fate. I realize your fascination with reading my memoir lies in making your heart beat faster by recalling with me my romantic interludes with my handsome samurai. Fear not, in due course, I shall set into motion the frightening incident in Japan, which thrust me into his arms. But first I shall sketch the previous acts of the drama that make up the fabric of my story, beginning with my wedding night and what followed so you shall understand all the events that transpired, be they sensual, provocative or tragic.
If when you come to the end of my story you accept my words as truth, then I have succeeded. Shintaro will live not only in these pages, but in your heart, as he does in mine.
Lady Carlton née Katie O’Roarke
1
Mayfair, London
26 August, 1872
My extraordinary journey to embrace the way of the warrior began in a posh town house in Mayfair.
On my wedding night.
It was a London society affair replete with the trappings of engraved wedding invitations, cascades of floral abundance adorning the church pews and lavish gifts whose glitter dared not be anything but gold. And me with a diamond tiara atop my head ornamented with so many pear-shaped stones I creaked my neck trying to sit like a swan, though I was more the Yankee ugly duckling. Did I mention we had a bishop among the clergy presiding?
I can hear you groaning at my description, ready to toss the book aside before we land upon the silken earth of the Orient, fearing you have chanced upon the prim meanderings of a young matron lost in romantic illusions before she takes to her bed while her husband visits his mistress. I assure you this is no such missive. ’Tis fire and passion I reaped when I dared to abandon a life of privilege and taste for the way of the warrior. Riding the wind to meet the gods, slashing through the rain, my arms bending from the weight of the heavy steel sword in my grasp, a dirk nestled between my breasts near my heart. But I’m allowing my passion for this life to raise a fever in me and deliver me from the memory of what happened on my wedding night. It was a different instrument of pain that made me twitch and moan. An item worn and smooth and without the sharp point of the sword but just as accurate to reach its mark.
A black riding crop.
I shall never forget what should have been a night woven with satin threads and romance, wanton kisses and honeyed sighs. Instead, I was shocked to see my new husband racing up the stairs after a saucy redhead and whipping her plump backside. I ran and hid in a teak garderobe that smelled of whiskey and snuff and mold. A strange desire awakened in me, making me want to know more about this suggestive, mysterious world that disturbed me, stimulated me.
Are you shocked? Insulted? You’re a young woman of good breeding, I hear you say, modest, shy. I’m Irish-American and proud of it, though too often my fiery race is dismissed with a cutting glance meant to be a public snubbing by stony-faced termagants suffering from the social disease of snobbery. I ignore them. I don’t care about their political citadel with its perfunctory restrictions and bloodless debutantes in their swinging crinolines keeping their suitors at arm’s length. I grew up riding bareback, my hands and face often gritty from digging into the wet, soggy bowels of the earth to feed our empty bellies before my father made his fortune.
I come from a hardworking, God-fearing family and never had it in my mind that I’d live in a posh house. But here I am, Thomas O’Roarke’s daughter, Katie, hiding and holding her breath as she watches the intoxicating scene played out before her in this Mayfair town house. Not what I expected married life to be when I attended Miss Brown’s School for Young Ladies, where I was bred to become a grand lady by the headmistress herself, Miss Herminone Tuttle. I wanted to please my mother (who so desperately wanted one of her daughters to make a successful marriage), so I dabbled in the folly of silks and corsets, gossip and scented notes, singing and drawing lessons, all necessities coveted by a girl of my nouveau riche status to furnish her female arsenal. Day after day Miss Tuttle lamented about my chatty nature, spurred on by my insatiable curiosity to question everything. Not wise, I discovered, for a girl born in a white frame house in the Pennsylvania woods, a plain girl with more brain than bosom who linked her dreams with her emotions and sensibilities. No wonder I was rejected by every eligible bachelor approved by the Knickerbocker Society matrons.
But it was my mother, dear soul that she is, who established my power base of teachers and dressmakers and embarked with me to London with one goal in mind: husband hunting. She emphasized to my suitors I had money and plenty of it. (My father is a railroad tycoon, a self-made man with more guts than schooling. He’s a grand da, always encouraging me to be the inquisitive lass that I am. “Katie, me girl—” my father is fond of saying when we spar over a political issue “—you have more fighting spirit in you than any man I’ve met.” How I love him.) But I had no real path, no realm laid out to pursue my dreams. I often asked myself, What is to become of me? We Irish often find ourselves taking up the more unsavory professions, such as following the life of an actor, or worse yet, a writer. ’Tis the gift of words bestowed upon us by the rulers of the heavens, and I be no exception. I find myself more oft than not in trouble because of it, but I can’t keep my thoughts to myself. I speak before thinking, making my observations with a keen, dry wit and at times without tact, which is why I kept neither beau nor my mother’s faith I’d ever make a match. No amount of primping and lavender water could take the smell of horses and hay out of this girl who crossed the Atlantic to find a husband among the British aristocracy.
To my mother’s dismay, more than one London suitor complained I was too quick with the sassy remarks and too eager to express my opinion. She chided me for my boldness, emphasizing that eligible males were more interested in the sway of a girl’s body than the wit of her words. Here again, I failed the test. I was taller than the fragile English girls paraded around the circuit for three months out of the year. Thin as paper doilies they were and each one cut from the same curlicue pattern. I was fair-haired and blue-eyed and cut a good figure with a small waist, though I had boyish hips.
Then the forces of nature took it upon themselves to present a delicate rearrangement of destiny (also known as the exchange of a great deal of money), and I received a proposal of marriage. As was more the custom than not in these hasty marriages, I went to the altar knowing little about my husband, save he had a title and a manner of looking at me that made