Now Comes the Mist

CHAPTER TWO

I am the moth, and Mina is the candle.

That has never been clearer to me than tonight in my room, dressing for her engagement party. She stands before the full-length mirror with her lips pursed in contemplation, examining every inch of her gown. The silk envelops her figure and trails behind her in a gleaming cascade of sky blue, a perfect match for her eyes. I knew it would be when I chose the material for her. She is studying the rippling sheen of the fabric, but I am distracted by the way the candlelight dances in her pale gold hair, gathered at her nape with one of my diamond pins.

“Lucy, I can’t accept this dress,” she says for the thousandth time.

“I told you, it’s not from me, silly,” I reply, also for the thousandth time. “I arranged the dressmaker, but the gown is an engagement gift from Mamma.”

“Nevertheless …” Mina runs a hand down the bodice, from which her round shoulders and bare arms emerge like snowy marble. “You’ve done so much for me already, both of you. Throwing this party, ordering the flowers and champagne, sending out the invitations.”

I laugh and stretch luxuriously across my bed, the bones of my corset pressing into my torso with the movement. “We thrive on spoiling you. You know that,” I tell her and catch sight of my own reflection in the glass. I am the picture of ease and languor, lounging back on my elbows, my long, glossy midnight hair splattered across the pristine coverlet like spilled ink. My eyes, dark and tilting at the corners, sparkle in the light, and my pale olive throat glows above the expensive French lace that barely contains the plump, warm half-moons of my breasts. I shift my weight and the hem of my short chemise rides up a few inches.

If Mina is the angel in every man’s hopes, then I am the devil in every man’s dreams.

The sky-blue silk rustles as Mina turns to face me, her eyes darting to the expanse of naked thigh between my chemise and the lacy edges of my stockings. Her cheeks flush, and for a moment, I wonder if she, too, is remembering our kiss that sun-dappled day by the sea. “Lucy,” she says in a playful, scolding tone, picking up my abandoned cream-colored drawers from the floor, “aren’t you ever going to get dressed?”

I gesture at myself. “Whatever would be the point? I would catch a husband much more quickly as I am.”

“You wouldn’t have trouble with that even if you wore a potato sack,” she says, laughing.

“Men are so easy to manipulate.” I take the drawers and reluctantly step into them. “Wear a low neckline, flutter your lashes, stroke your finger over their hand, and they call you a charming girl . There’s no trick to it. No beauty or wit required.”

“Though it certainly helps that you have both.”

“I never said it didn’t.”

We laugh as Mina helps me into my gown of pale blush pink silk. “How wonderful you look in this color. I’m the one getting married, but you will be the one they all look at tonight,” she says without a trace of envy.

“Only because no one has entrapped me yet, as Jonathan has you.” The moment his name leaves my lips, I regret it. Her gaze turns inward at once, to thoughts and hopes and memories that have nothing to do with me. She twists the simple gold band on her finger, and it gives me a childish degree of satisfaction that the tiny sapphire Jonathan chose is nowhere as near the color of her eyes as the silk I picked for her.

“I don’t know what I’ll do with myself when he goes away this spring. He expects to be gone almost a month, and we’ve never been apart that long,” she says, her eyes downcast. In the soft light, she looks like a painting I would keep on my wall, if I could not keep any other part of her with me. “You must think I’m silly. I spent almost twenty years thinking of him as a friend and have loved him for only three. But he seems as irreplaceable to me now as my own heart.”

I feel her love and pain like splinters in my skin. They embed themselves in me until I can no longer tell whether I am moved by Mina’s passion or jealous that she will go into that blissful unknown before me, and with someone else. I imagine the soft, sibilant promise of the bedroom door closing, cotton and lace slipping down her body to pool at her feet, and her heavy sunlit hair tumbling down her smooth bare back. I see her walking to the bed where Jonathan sits, his eyes afire with want, and sliding a knee on either side of his lap.

Jonathan.

The first time I met Jonathan Harker, I had assessed him with one glance and found him wanting. Rather tall, but what man of our acquaintance wasn’t? The slight, quick build of a fencer. The unmarked hands of a man who shuffles paper for a living, a lawyer’s clerk with money of his own and rising in his employer’s estimation every day. Dark gold hair, a sloping nose, and a smile that appeared suddenly, when least expected. Even his conversation was too clever, too interesting for my liking. And the way he gazed at Mina, his grey eyes warm and soft on her, as though afraid she would vanish if he looked away.

No, I have never liked Jonathan Harker.

Mina looks up from the ring. “You will understand very soon, my Lucy,” she says lovingly, “what it is to care about someone in this way.”

I smile at her, my lips closed so that the words I can never say will not escape. Carelessly, I gather up my long black hair and affix it to my head with snowy pearl-tipped pins. My maid would have done a neater, more thorough job, but I prefer it recklessly windswept, as though I’ve been walking through the London gale. Or someone has just run his rough hands through it, his lips burning on my neck. “Well,” I say lightly, stepping back to look at my full reflection in the glass, “you’ll still have me when Jonathan is called away to business.”

“And I’m glad of it.” Mina rests her chin on my shoulder. We are the same height, both of us small and dainty, and she presses her cheek against mine as I adjust the simple jewelry I always wear: a gold locket embedded with jet, which holds Papa’s photograph, and a ring with a stone of green Vietnamese jade that had once belonged to my great-grandmother.

“Where on earth is he going again? The plains of Africa? The steppes of Asia?”

She laughs. “Not that far east, I’m afraid. His client lives in the wilds of Austria-Hungary, along the edge of the empire. He’s an elderly nobleman with a castle somewhere in the Eastern Carpathians, in a region translated roughly as the Mountains of Deep Winter. Isn’t that poetic?”

“You are the writer, not I. People speak of me as the useless one and of you as the talented one, with your daily diaries and gift for observation and knowledge of shorthand.”

“Nonsense. I write more than you do, that’s all. I keep it up so that I may be useful to Jonathan in his work. I hope he won’t always have to travel so far.” Mina sighs. “The mountains sound beautiful and full of history. I’m not certain why the client wants to move here to London when he lives, as Jonathan tells me, on a peak above a deep blue river.”

Her words bring to mind my dreams of plummeting into raging water, the visions dark and disturbing and endlessly seductive. I close my eyes as Death whispers to me. I envision emerald peaks dotted with villages and forests blooming in the shadow of old stone towers, and I feel an envy that is almost hatred. “I’d give anything to trade places with Jonathan.”

Mina wraps her arms around me, smiling. “Why? So you can leave me, too?”

“No. So I can marry you, of course,” I say, with just enough gaiety to make it a jest. “And travel the world and see all those glorious sights. Can you imagine sitting on a steam train, watching foreign castles pass outside your window?”

“He won’t be taking a train the whole way,” she points out, ever the practical one. “The geography won’t allow it. It will have to be hired carriages after a certain point. I’ve marked his journey with a red ribbon pinned to a map and read about all the places he’ll go. I suppose I know more about the history of that region than any self-respecting governess ought to.”

I give a dismissive wave. “Carriages, trains. It doesn’t matter. Just to go somewhere, anywhere , and see new faces and hear new voices. To order tea in a foreign hotel or sit in a dark theater full of strangers or send telegrams home from far-off cities. That’s freedom. That’s living , my Mina. You could be anyone you wished to be, and no one would be any the wiser.”

“That does sound nice,” she admits.

“Can you imagine rambling around some strange country?” I lift my hand to her neck and trail my fingertips over her porcelain skin, feeling her shiver slightly against me. “Seeing the sights, exploring? Sleeping in a dark room, in a bed you don’t know?”

Mina pulls away, leaving my shoulder cold. “Perhaps Jonathan will take me one day.”

“I don’t mean traveling with a husband ,” I say impatiently. “I mean traveling the way that men do. Alone … or with a friend.”

She laughs. “Alone! Fancy going anywhere alone, without protection.”

“And why not? What do we need protection from?”

“I don’t know,” she says helplessly. “Dangerous men. Thieves, rogues, murderers?”

“Maybe they need protection from me .” I feel the sudden, furious urge to rip the pearl-tipped pins from my hair. “I could be dangerous, too, out there on my own. I just don’t know it because I’ve never been given the chance, and never will. I haven’t the faintest idea who I am.”

“Oh, Lucy,” Mina says, distressed.

I move to the window and yank aside the plum silk drapes. It is dark outside, but beyond the reflection of Mina and me, I can just barely see a deepening winter sky that weeps lacy flakes of snow. “There’s a whole world out there we will never see,” I say, and the familiar despair—urgent, immediate, overwhelming—almost chokes me. “Castles and mountains and forests, and so much more. Is this truly all there is? Silk dresses and engagement rings? It seems to me there is more freedom for us even in death. At least it would be a choice we make for ourselves.”

“Dearest, you are in one of your moods again,” she says gently. In the light of the streetlamps, we can see carriages pulling up in front of the house and people stepping out into the snow. A few curious, eager male faces turn up toward my bright window, and Mina reddens even though we are both fully dressed. She pulls the curtain shut and puts a hand on either side of my face. “This is only youth and high spirits talking. The excitement of the evening. Soon, you’ll be downstairs with your usual parade of admiring beaux, and you’ll forget all of this.”

This is the foundation of our friendship: I produce a wild, unsanctioned idea, always and forever inappropriate for a young lady of my station, and Mina willingly stretches her hand out to meet it—but then always pulls back. Back into safety, into the smothering cloisters of traditional womanhood and all the expectations that bar the way out. And then, to keep from upsetting her, I retract the thought and hide it deep within me once more.

This was exactly how we kissed, that day I was bold enough to try.

I am so tired of hiding.

“My beautiful Lucy. My beloved, my sister, my friend,” Mina says, still holding my face between her hands. “This is partly grief, too, I know. You still miss your father, who told you all about the world. This need to be free is only your longing for him, don’t you see?”

I touch the locket at my neck and turn away, both because she sees far too much and because not even she is allowed to speak of Papa. I am saved from having to think of a response by a light knock at the door. “Who can that be?” I ask, too brightly, too gaily, and sail over to it.

Harriet, my maid, stands outside with her arms full of fragrant flowers. “Begging your pardon, Miss Lucy, but these bouquets just arrived for you and Miss Mina.”

“Bouquets!” I repeat, still in that overly delighted tone. I drag Harriet into the room and run my fingers over an ostentatious bunch of scarlet roses, red as the devil. Mina is watching me warily, all too knowledgeable about my moods. “Exquisite. Who could they be from?”

“This one is from Mr. Jonathan Harker, for Miss Mina.” Harriet hands my friend a small cluster of forget-me-nots. I note smugly that, like Mina’s engagement ring, their shade of sky blue does not even remotely match her eyes, but she still brings them to her nose, beaming.

The maid gives me the huge bouquet of roses. “And this is from Dr. Jack Seward.”

“Jack Seward!” Mina says, astonished. “Doesn’t that man work every hour of every day? And yet he took the time to send you such lovely flowers, Lucy!”

“Don’t excite yourself. It’s likely he got his assistant at that dreadful asylum to send these,” I say offhandedly, though I am certain he did make the effort himself. That brief interlude with him at the Stokers’ autumn ball, the two of us alone in the conservatory while everyone else was in the drawing room, tells me so. Otherwise, I never should have expected the serious, dark-eyed young doctor to harbor such intense passion beneath all his mundane talk of psychology and human nature. His desire is evident, too, in the flowers he has gifted me tonight, each lurid, luscious rose so full blown as to be almost obscene, the petals readily yielding and opening to my touch. “They are stunning, though, aren’t they?”

“Oh, Lucy, he must be in love with you. Red roses mean adoration, of course,” Mina says, her eyes shining. “To think you might soon be a doctor’s wife!”

“Now I think you’re being silly,” I tell her indulgently and look at the third and final bouquet in my maid’s arms. “And who on earth are those from?”

Harriet hands me the picturesque bunch of old-fashioned camellias, each soft rounded flower a warm, rich red. “The Honorable Arthur Holmwood, miss.”

“Arthur? Are you quite sure?” I ask, dropping Dr. Seward’s roses on the dressing table.

“Yes, miss. He handed them to me himself as he came in just now.”

“You may leave us, Harriet,” I say, inhaling the scent of the camellias as she curtsies and closes the door behind her. “Arthur Holmwood, early to a party? This must be another man of the same name. The Arthur I know hardly dares to speak in my presence, let alone attend a large gathering of strangers.”

“Don’t be so hard on him,” Mina chides me gently. “He’s just bashful. And I happen to know he is admired by many girls, even if you think nothing of him, dear.”

“I don’t think nothing of him. I simply never remember him when he is not in front of me,” I say to make her laugh at my incorrigible thoughtlessness. But it is a practiced thoughtlessness, one I have honed over the years to protect my innermost feelings.

Arthur Holmwood, indeed. His parents, Lord and Lady Godalming, are friends of Mamma’s, and it had been inevitable that their only son and heir be a part of my childhood. But among the acquaintances with whom I had spent many a summer, he had always faded into the background: a quiet boy with skinny arms, mousy hair, and a perpetual sniffle. Papa used to tease me about my lack of interest in Arthur and call me “Your Ladyship,” joking that one day, years hence, the awkward boy would grow up to be the handsomest man of our circle and sweep me off my feet.

Papa never lived to see his joke come true.

“I don’t believe you truly mean that about Arthur,” Mina says knowingly. “You told me he asked you to dance at the Stokers’ ball last October.”

That autumn ball, again, and another man who had changed my opinion of him there.

“He had been away at school for so long. And then his family went abroad for his father’s health.” I study the camellias. A soft gold radiates from the warm red center of each flower, like a secret tucked inside their hearts. “When I saw him at that ball, I almost didn’t recognize him. He looked so different. Stronger. More self-assured.”

Mina’s eyes glow with excitement. “You never told me this, Lucy,” she reproaches me. “You only said he looked like his mother had dragged him there kicking and screaming. Except he would have done it all silently because a peer of the realm never causes a scene, not even in his family’s private carriage.”

A startled laugh escapes me. “How on earth do you remember my insipid comments?”

“I remember everything you say. You were surprised when he asked you to dance because he could barely look you in the eye. He was always staring at your nose or chin.”

“Or something lower still,” I add with a dazzling smile.

Mina tries but fails to look stern. “You do know what camellias mean, don’t you?”

“Of course not. As my former governess and the expert on all things pertaining to etiquette, I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Camellias mean my destiny is in your hands . They are unutterably romantic. More so than roses, in my opinion. I’ve never liked roses. They always feel too bold.”

I look between the camellias in my hands and Dr. Seward’s bouquet on the table. “Are you trying to tell me something, my Mina?”

She leans over and kisses my cheek. “I wouldn’t dare. Besides, your mind is already made up one way or another, even if you don’t know it yet.”

Mina knows me so well that I wonder if she has guessed what else I did not tell her about that ball and that dance with Arthur. How the shyness I had once mocked had seemed endearing and gentlemanly in this tall, elegant almost-stranger. The walnut hair, hazel eyes, and quiet demeanor had still been there, but all else was different: the broadness of his shoulders beneath his suit jacket, the newly confident fluidity of his movements, and the low, soft timbre of his voice. And such hands! Tender and firm and big enough to envelop mine, applying gentle pressure on my waist to move me exactly how and where he wanted me. I wonder if Mina has guessed how I dreamed of those hands for weeks afterward, and what they did to me in the most secret recesses of my subconscious.

Arthur, however, had seemed calm and collected. He had thanked me for the dance and returned to his mother’s side without a backward glance. No passionate whispers, no straying touches, no notes slipped into my hand, like my other admirers. For the first time, I alone had been affected. A reversal of roles … or so I had believed.

I bring the camellias to my nose once more. My destiny is in your hands .

“Lucy?”

I realize that Mina has been speaking to me and I haven’t heard a word. “Yes?”

She tilts her head to one side thoughtfully. She has tucked a few of the forget-me-nots over one ear, and their soft azure is enchanting against the deeper blue of her eyes. “Which flowers will you wear down to the party?” She looks from Arthur’s flowers to Dr. Seward’s, and there is a coyness in her voice that tells me she will read a great deal into my answer.

But I am not one to easily satisfy, not even when it is my most cherished friend.

“Neither,” I say lazily and toss the flowers in an untidy heap on the table without bothering to get them any water. “Come, let us join the party. Mamma is expecting us.”