The Incense Game by Laura Joh Rowland

engaged?”
    “She accepted it. Or so we thought.” The maid peeked out the door and continued in a whisper: “A few months later—the day before the wedding—we found out that Kumoi was with child. The father was her sister’s fiancé.”
    Reiko’s mouth opened in shock.
    “Kumoi confessed that she and the young lord had been secretly meeting. Oh, you should have heard the uproar! Lord Hosokawa scolded Kumoi. Lady Hosokawa called her a whore and blamed Tama for not raising her properly. Tama had a fit because Kumoi had ruined herself. Myobu cried because Kumoi had seduced her fiancé. And Kumoi begged Lord Hosokawa to let her marry the young lord. She said he wanted her for his wife, not Myobu.”
    “I never heard this,” Reiko said, amazed because something this big, involving two such important clans, should have created a scandal.
    “It was hushed up,” the maid whispered. “The young lord’s parents forced him to marry Myobu, even though he didn’t want to. Lord Hosokawa sent Kumoi to the countryside to wait for her baby to be born.”
    At least her family hadn’t disowned her, as often happened in cases when a woman became pregnant out of wedlock. Reiko said, “So Kumoi was allowed to come back home to live afterward.”
    The maid nodded. “Tama couldn’t bear to be parted from her. And Lord Hosokawa loved her too much to cast her off.” She added, “Lady Hosokawa didn’t like it, though.”
    Reiko could imagine. “Why didn’t they find a husband for Kumoi?” That was the common, practical solution.
    “They tried. A lot of people want to marry into the Hosokawa clan. They didn’t know she was spoiled goods. And she was beautiful. She got lots of proposals. But whenever she had a miai , she acted rude and ugly. She chased all the men away. She didn’t want to marry anyone except the young lord.”
    “But she knew she couldn’t have him.”
    “Well, she did have him, in a way. She was his concubine. She lived with him and Myobu, in their house in town. He still loved her. He barely paid any attention to Myobu.”
    “I see,” Reiko said. The contentious relationship between Lady Hosokawa and Tama had been reenacted by their daughters.
    “Where is Myobu’s husband?” Reiko asked. Sano would want to talk to him.
    “In Higo Province. He helps take care of things there while Lord Hosokawa is in Edo. He’d been there four months. A message was sent to tell him that Myobu and Kumoi were missing. I don’t know if it got through.” The maid blinked away fresh tears and hugged the little boy. “He’ll have to be told they’re dead.”
    His absence cleared him of any role in the crime except furnishing a possible reason for it. Reiko remembered Sano telling her that the sisters had sneaked out of the Hosokawa estate to go to their fatal incense lesson. “What were Myobu and Kumoi doing here on the day of the earthquake? Why weren’t they at their own home?”
    “They lived here when Myobu’s husband was away. They couldn’t be alone together—without him to keep them under control, they’d have torn out each other’s throats.”
    “What became of Kumoi’s baby?” Reiko expected to hear that it had been given to a family retainer to raise.
    “He’s right here.” The maid bounced the little boy on her lap. He chortled. “Myobu adopted him. She got back at Kumoi for taking her husband, you see. She became the baby’s mother. When he got older, he would have been told that Kumoi was his aunt.”
    What a cruel revenge! Reiko was appalled.
    “Myobu didn’t do it just to be mean, though,” the maid went on. “She couldn’t have a child of her own, because her husband never touched her after their wedding night.” He’d have had relations with her then, to consummate the marriage and make it legal. “He needed an heir, the boy was his, and she wanted a baby. Adopting the boy was the best thing for everybody.”
    Reiko tried to imagine a rival stealing her child. She felt a