“I had to keep hidden, even from you, because there are so many spies, and I was afraid that the news might reach Yanagisawa. As things turned out, he knew already, but my plan still worked.” Sano described how he’d confronted the chamberlain and secured his cooperation.

Reiko knew she should be glad of the plan’s success, but she was too deeply hurt. “You let me suffer because you didn’t think I could keep a secret. How could you trust me so little?”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you.” Sano clasped Reiko to him, a pleading note in his voice. “But I couldn’t take the chance that someone might guess the truth from your behavior.”

“I could have acted the part of a grieving widow well enough,” Reiko retorted, furious now. “Have you any idea what you’ve put me through?”

“I can guess,” Sano said contritely, “and I beg you to forgive me.”

His touch suddenly seemed repugnant to Reiko, his apology spurious. She pounded him with her fists, shouting, “Forgive you? Never! What you did was terrible and cruel.”

Sano looked stricken, then sad. “I deserve every bit of your anger. Please believe that I am truly sorry.”

“That’s not good enough!”

Reiko jumped to her feet and bolted away. Sano chased her. He locked her in an unrelenting embrace. She struggled to break free, screaming, “Go away! Leave me alone!” Then her anger dissolved into weeping; he held her tight.

“Shh,” he said, stroking her hair. “It’s all right.”

He eased her onto the floor, lying beside her. The warm pressure of his body ignited fierce desire in Reiko. She moaned, arching against him, and felt the hardness in his groin. Then they were tearing away garments, entwining in the dim bands of light from the windows. After the wild coupling that overwhelmed them both with pleasure, they lay still in a sweaty tangle of limbs and clothing. Bars of waning light striped their bodies; incense smoke drifted in on the cooling breeze.

Sano touched Reiko’s check. “Can you possibly forgive me?” he said softly.

Her body had already forgiven him; eventually, her heart would too. Basking in physical and spiritual well-being, Reiko murmured, “I never thought that love with a dead husband would be so good.”

They laughed at her joke, and she saw relief in Sano’s eyes. The joy of having him back was almost worth her ordeal.

There was a commotion outside, then a knock at the door. “Honorable Lady Reiko, are you in there?” called Fukida’s voice.

Rising, Sano donned his kimono and went to the door. He opened it a crack.

“Oh, good, you’re back, Sōsakan-sama.” Despite the relief in his voice, Fukida looked frantic with worry. The guards and Reiko’s maids stood in an anxious group behind him. “I regret to say that I’ve failed in my duty to protect your wife. She left the inn without telling anyone. We’ve all been out searching for her, but we couldn’t find her.”

“She’s here,” Sano said. “It’s all right.” He dismissed his staff, shut the door, and turned to Reiko. She was sitting up, wrapped in her white under-robe, uneasily watching him.

“Maybe now you’ll tell me where you’ve been,” Sano said.

“I went to the palace to ask Lady Jokyōden to help me solve the murder case,” Reiko said.

“What?” Sano exclaimed in alarm. “You saw Jokyōden, after you promised me you would stay away from her?”

“Yes, because I didn’t know you were still around to care about promises,” Reiko said defensively. “It seemed more important to find your killer and avenge your death.”

Sano realized that he should have expected Reiko to behave this way; not even his death would quell her determined spirit. Now he was disturbed to learn that his short absence had been too long to leave Reiko on her own.

“Are you mad?” he said, standing over her. “Didn’t you see that the second murder reduced the number of suspects and made Jokyōden even more likely to be the killer? Didn’t you recognize the danger of associating with her?”

“Of course I did. But the risk was worth it.” Rising, Reiko walked to the table, picked up her embroidered silk purse, and removed a fragment of paper, which she handed to Sano. “I found this in a house that Left Minister Konoe owned in the textile district.”

As she described the house, how she’d gotten there, and her idea that Konoe had used it for espionage, Sano barely glanced at the words on the paper. He said, "Lady Jokyōden took you to this place?”

Vexation crossed Reiko’s features. “We weren’t alone. I brought my guards with us. Please give me credit for some intelligence.”

“You believed what Lady Jokyōden told you about Left Minister Konoe purchasing the house? How did she know, anyway?”

“She didn’t say.”

An evasive note in Reiko’s voice signaled a lie. For the sake of peace, Sano chose to overlook it for the moment. “Look, I know you were upset and not thinking clearly, but even so, you should have known better than to trust a murder suspect. So far, there’s no evidence except Jokyōden’s word that the house belonged to Konoe, or that this paper is his. Jokyōden might have been misleading you to divert suspicion away from herself.”

“Well, yes, I was upset. Whose fault was that?” Reiko said sarcastically. “I did consider the problems you mentioned, but there must be a way to verify that Konoe owned the house and wrote the note. Besides, what I discovered next proves that it doesn’t matter whether or not I was thinking clearly, or what Jokyōden’s motives were for taking me to the house. I thought the note referred to spying that Konoe did on Lord Ibe. So I went there, and-”

“Wait.” Sano held up his hands. He had an ominous feeling that he was going to hear something else he wouldn’t like. “Slow down. You went where?”

“To the daimyo’s house in the cloth dyers’ district,” Reiko said patiently. "Lady Jokyōden gave me directions.”

“She did, did she?” When Sano had met Jokyōden, he’d thought her arrogant and contrary; now he liked her even less for abetting his wife’s misadventures.

“I asked Fukida-san to go with me,” Reiko said, “but he wouldn’t. He even took away my palanquin and guards. I realize now that he wanted to wait for you to come back before doing anything, but at the time I thought he was ignoring an important clue. So I went alone.”

Horror filled Sano. “You walked across town by yourself?” If he’d known what she would do, he would have risked letting her know the truth about his faked death. "Didn’t you think of what might have happened to you?”

“Nothing did, so there’s no need to worry now.” Reiko hesitated, then said, “I met a rough-looking man at Lord Ibe’s house. He wouldn’t answer my questions, and I was suspicious, so 1 sneaked through the back door for a look inside.”

She spoke as if she’d done the most reasonable thing in the world. Sano stared, dumbstruck.

“And guess what I found!” Animated with excitement, Reiko described an arsenal of weapons and a gang of samurai, gangsters, peasant ruffians, and an armed priest.

Sano was too upset by her daring to think about the implications of her discovery. He shouted, “I can’t believe you did that! You could have been killed! That was the most stupid, reckless, thoughtless, dangerous, foolhardy-”

“And the most important piece of evidence yet,” Reiko said.

“You shouldn’t have done it!”

“What’s done is done. Now please stop yelling and consider what this means to the case.”

“First I want you to promise you’ll never do such a thing again,” Sano said.

“Only if you’ll promise never again to trick me into thinking you’re dead.”

This was one of those times when Sano longed for a traditional marriage where the husband set the rules and the wife obeyed them, instead of this constant negotiation. “All right, I promise,” he said. “Do you?”

“Yes,” Reiko said, then hurried on: “I believe the gang is plotting to overthrow the Tokugawa regime, and that someone in the Imperial Court is behind the plot. One of the murder suspects must be arming troops in preparation to restore power to the emperor. Left Minister Konoe must have found out, and the murderer killed him to prevent him from telling the authorities.”