Fists throbbed like hearts at Leia's hips as she walked, driving a red surge through herself. With her rage the wind rose; the power that had let him inveigle her close on Silver Street. The wind that had helped Han Solo reveal, like a winning hand, qualities Leia had loved in him: cavalier decency, impulsive others said, that he was capricious, venal, arrogant– whatever he had been guilty of, even with her– Leia couldn't have believed, until five this morning, that Han would treat her dismissively.
Not his Sweetheart, Leia thought savagely. Her fingernails severing voile glove-threads at the memory of that soft gravel voice. Not his Princess.
This past year she'd dreamed, with urgent frequency, that Han appeared under her campus window. Calling until she pushed up the sash. Leia. Leia. Please. Leia woke feeling, still half-asleep, that somewhere Han yearned for her. Sweetheart. Come down to me.Now Leia knew, for certain, that this had been delusion. Han was a con, shrewdly polishing his bashfulness, flashing it just enough. She'd not been beloved, but novelty: a distraction from habitual boredom.
If he'd loved her as he'd claimed, Han's face could not have been so closed up there on his ridiculous railing. No– erased, as if he'd dragged vulcanized rubber over his features, leaving only public requirement. How he touched his hat and grinned, hard and white–Miss. An address of distance, diminishment. Like Han's expression had never been open to her. Shy, even. Pleased and soft in the private evening, all those drives, humming approval as she kissed–
No! Such sentiments weakened Leia to pinkness. She would not think them. It was over. Never again would Leia grieve Han Solo.
The blast of plains August heat blew her before it, tough little kite, layers rippling at her compact form. And as she turned into her gate, Leia was again stunned into stillness. Sitting on the peeling porch swing was her closest childhood friend. Eyes closed, hands laced, using his valise as a footrest; face mild as Han's had been brutally remote. Luke Skywalker, listening to a meadowlark.
Leia was so relieved to see him, her eyes misted. It was then that she recalled the unread postcard, tight cylinder in her fist.
XXXXXXXXX
"Luke," Leia swung giddily in his embrace. "What are you wearing?"
He laughed, kissed her cheek, unaffected by her teasing. Luke wore a poncho, tight suede trousers. His dreamer's idea of Western garb.
Even at Bradford, Luke assumed other selves. Young Luke and Leia made makeshift costumes, rifled onionskin volumes for inspiration: novels, plays, myths. Luke was generous in pretending, uninhibited by gender. Leia could play Arthur, Luke would play Ophelia, Oliver Twist, Athena's owl. All souls interesting, all bodies worth being, all lives attractive to Luke's empathetic imagination.
Son of the fearsome Bradford dean, Luke was brave. Kind. At Bail Organa's funeral, Luke left Anakin's side to hold Leia's hand. He begged his father not to send Leia away– horrified by the plan to board Breha on as professor, but not her stepdaughter. To be taken into domestic service at a decent house was suitable for a penniless orphan girl, Anakin decreed. Breha, enraged, refused this offer. Quit, returned with Leia to Whiskey Knot, to the stern harbor of her sister, Rouge. Luke cried as he bid Leia goodbye. As though it was all his failing.
They'd reconnected last year when Leia limped back to Boston. Luke a brotherly balm in the raw wake of Han. Banished by his father when he became an actor, Luke had inherited from his heiress mother; he shared his freedom liberally with Leia. In Luke's posh downtown rooms they got tipsy together, talked, laughed, read forbidden French poets aloud. Leia always safe to experiment with him. Their closeness never took the physical form it had with Han– deep warmth but never heat, between Luke and Leia, never that pull into kiss, whisper, ache. It was, somehow, unthinkable to each.
When Breha died and Leia was again forced to abandon her education, Luke pledged Leia's tuition, rent. He hadn't known until then that Leia received schooling in partial trade for domestic work. Leia refused him. Not only was accepting such charity unacceptable to her pride, her independence, by now Leia didn't want scholarship, either. She enjoyed study but she wanted no parchment to frame alongside the diplomas of Bail and Breha. Writing papers bored her, tedious discourse numbed her, it all seemed to lead to the grave. As ever, Leia craved freedom.
XXXXXXXXX
"In vino veritas," Luke intoned, after supper. A poor rendition of Dr. Skywalker's famously sonorous voice. Luke could become anyone but his father.
"Then what's in this?" Leia coughed, holding up her glass. "Fisticuffs? Unlawful congress?"
Luke chuckled into his own measure of the excellent scotch he'd brought. "What do you know about unlaws, Miss Organa?"
No sting in Miss, from Luke.
"I'm quite sure," Leia said in her crispest Eastern accent, "that your lodging with an unchaperoned maiden is lawless."
"Pfff. Look at this place. It's huge." Luke gestured around the sitting room, furniture eerie with dust-covers outside the circle of lamplight. "I am but a weary traveler, sheriff, and judged this for a boarding house." He blinked wide blue eyes. "What can they do, tar me, roll me in feathers?"
Bitterly, Leia smiled. "Oh no. Not the good folk of Whiskey Knot."
"Listen. Are you really worried?" Luke slipped his slim cardboard ticket from his money-belt, studied it. "I can stay in town until my train–"
"Absolutely not." Leia would not see Luke rooming over Lucky's. Not that Luke was naive, with his time spent backstage, clothed mostly in greasepaint. But that was not the seedy banality of small-town vice. She would not send Luke to the saloon, nor to–
The Marigold Mile loomed in Leia's mind.
Luke brushed blond fringe from his face to look. "…Leia?"
Drink did not normally render Leia inarticulate, nor cause such constriction of her throat. She shook her head.
"I don't know what–" Luke ventured. It was true: even over their conversations, Luke, ever-sensitive, had never asked. And he did not ask now, just touched her hand. "It was a man."
Leia's resistance eroded by alcohol, Han returned to her, searingly alive. His leather-cedar smell, lopsided smile. Hair, skin, singlet wet from the creek. Coarse thumb stroking her cheekbone, fingers weaving into her loosened hair. You can be. The husky wire in his voice. Certain of me. Gripping her unbound waist to draw her close. Green eyes fluttering shut into her kiss– Leia had taken his shaky breath for surrender.
Luke sat forward. "Leia. Tell me you wanted him. Or they'll be putting me up at the local jail." This was no role, Leia knew. This sense of justice was all Luke.
"I." She nodded, closing her eyes until Han's ghost faded. "I took my own liberty."
"Come with me," Luke said, at last. "To Bakersfield."
"To the theater?" Leia choked on her drink. And do what?"
"Not rot away here? I don't know–" Luke snapped his fingers at the dress dummy in the corner. "Make costumes!"
Leia laughed into the backs of her knuckles, thinking of the wings and crowns she and Luke had fashioned from pages torn from Breha's back issues of Scientific American.
"Oh, fine. Keep your iron spine, I love you for it but–" Luke leaned back into the fraying davenport, waving his ticket. "I'll be out there a year. More, if the run goes well. Wire me and I'll send passage for you, no questions asked."
Costumes. Well, she had certainly had worse jobs. Mending the bedclothes, for instance, of the Marigold Mile. Boiled, bleached before they reached her– and yet. Leia drew in a breath, looked at the mantel clock. Past ten. She rose, moved to the airing cupboard, collected Antilles sheets and pillows to make up the spare bed. Wholesome linens, still scented with Rouge's lavender. At the door she turned back to Luke.
"I'll think about it," Leia said. "If any fool ever buys this place."
XXXXXXXXX
Days into his visit, Luke grew cheerfully restless. They'd talked hours, played chess, walked Aldera along the river, baked molasses tassies. Leia shocked Luke into delight at target practice– with Rouge's old Sharps rifle, she hit tin cans, glass bottles, the heart of every shape Luke cut from newspaper.
All girls, Rouge had said darkly, should know how to hit a man before he got close. Leia enjoyed shooting lessons much more than cross-stitch. Now it came swiftly back to her: how to stroke the trigger rather than jerk, the match of eye to to the grip. How to fit the stock at the hollow of the shoulder, brace against the kick. Oh, how much better Leia felt, sinking into the calm and rhythm of breath, the control as she shattered bottle after bottle into blazing splinters.
But soon Leia had enough of exile herself. Perhaps it was the thought of Rouge, or how the rifle felt back in Leia's hands but damn it, she and Luke would go out together. An unwed lady, a male stranger. Let Whiskey Knot say what it liked. Leia already knew what it thought of her.
So they walked into town and wandered the boardwalk, sipping foamy root beer through striped paper straws. Luke bought a huge Stetson from the tack-shop, walked out with the cardboard tag still attached to his new tan trousers, the suede pants folded into Leia's crochet bag. Too tight for him anyway, he said.
In Miller's Dry Goods, Mary stopped Leia. The envelope had been left for her a month ago, but no staff had passed it along any time Leia was in. Mortified by the omission– both women knew, and did not say, that it was deliberate– Mary offered a credit voucher for her trouble, which Leia politely declined.
The invitation was from Constance Howard, as kind as her younger sister Eileen was vain. Constance eloped from teacher's college; Mayor Howard had threatened disowning until he discovered the groom's family was moneyed. Now there was to be a reception at Bright Oaks. Constance had added a personal inscription: Leia, I would so love to see you.
"Will you go?" Luke read the pretty vellum over Leia's shoulder.
The event was two weeks away, into September. Luke would be gone, and walking the pine promenade with a strange escort was one thing; a woman attending a party alone was quite another.
"That's absurd," came Luke's serene rebuttal.
"Maybe in your circles," Leia replied. "But here–"
"Do you want to go?"
"That's not the question."
"Dosh. It's the only question."
Leia chewed her lip. She was hardly popular, but the evenings alone on River Bend were long and fraught.
And then Leia recalled, in a flash of pain she told herself was scorn, Han at the winter dance. Leaning at the board wall of the meeting hall, outside all revelry. After their autumn drives, their conversations, Leia felt hurt by his remoteness. Perhaps the rides were merely a polite feature of her employment by the Solo family, and not a mark of Han's genuine interest. And so she had left– not dramatically, not with any sweep or flounce; she quietly removed herself. Not sure what she'd been hoping for.
Han caught up to Leia on the snowy boardwalk. Parties, huh? Tried his smile, ease belied by his missing coat. Waved his big ungloved hand in that way he thought was airy. Pah. Han was quiet a spell, pacing his long stride to hers and then he stopped, caught her wrist, confessed–Leia?–brusque rush visible in the freezing gaslit dim. Leia. Can I see you ho–
If one meant to avoid Han Solo and one's thoughts, the best thing to do was attend a social.
But. Leia looked down at her dress. Her second-best, faded with laundering. Her actual best a funereal black taffeta. She would not go gooseberry to a party, Leia muttered, and look a widow.
"I'll buy you a dress," Luke said, graciously accepting a stick of rock candy from the charmed Mary.
A ready-made frock? This was extravagance, such that Leia laughed aloud. But Luke was already perusing the shop's few finished dresses. Leia was tempted; she hadn't had store-bought clothing since Breha and Bail wed, when Leia was nine. And she knew Luke, there were no strings attached to his offer. But she could not accept. Luke shrugged, went on browsing.
Leia should have known refusal came too easily. Luke turned back to her, his smile cherubic, holding a book of the tissue-paper patterns. Just in from New York City, Mary added proudly. Smiling around his candy, Luke drummed his fingers on stacked bolts of silk. Leia rolled her eyes. Then cocked her head. Perhaps she would take that voucher.
XXXXXXXXX
Outside, she felt it, as she and Luke crossed the street. Not a sickness, too sweet for that, but it dizzied Leia to know it persisted. This signal indecently low in her middle– quivering buzz. She did not wish to look, but Leia's gaze slanted up. And there on the livery bench, knees wide around tangled reins, he was. Han Solo, stock-still and staring, length of leather wound over the spool of his shoulder.
Leia almost went to him. Almost ran to Han as she had dreaming, when she heard him calling from below. When she found herself running in nightdress, on her bare toes to be lifted into laughing, moonlit kiss. Into reunion so craved Leia's sleeping self demanded no explanation– how she got downstairs, why they'd been apart. The sacrifice of history, even of forgiveness, to the desperate wish of the heart.
But this was daylight. This was the harsh noontime of Silver Street, where Han Solo broke horses, hearts, promises. And so Leia pulled Luke into a hard, very public kiss. Luke, the actor, understood at once– when Leia let him go, his blue eyes were gently bemused, if shot through with some concern. Luke turned a quick look on the audience: the strapping fellow above, his scarred face lowering like thunder.
Leia raised her chin to Han. Watched his brow crease, tilted lips fall open– wounded, sneering, or seeking speech?– she would have once known by touch. But now, it was enough to have scribbled something on the blank sheet of Han's face. And seeing that, Leia turned her back, walked beyond the sphere of reach.