Now Comes the Mist

CHAPTER EIGHT

T his time, when I walk to the churchyard, I am wide awake. Though it is spring, there is still a touch of winter in the night breeze, and I wrap my shawl tightly around my shoulders as I pass through the gate. I am beginning to ponder the wisdom of sending Arthur an urgent message to meet me here. Instead of waiting for him to speak, I have shown my hand. I have crept out of the house to speak to him unchaperoned, and such audacity might lose him to me forever.

“But I must know,” I whisper, following the moonlit path.

This meeting will determine both our fates. I will know, irrevocably, whether he loves me enough to claim me. And if he does not … I bite my lip, wondering what I will do if he rejects me and turns me away for my impropriety. Or worse, if he does not come at all.

“Lucy,” a hoarse whisper sounds out in the still air.

I close my eyes and exhale. “Arthur, you came.”

“Of course I did.” He hurries toward me, panting as though he has run from his carriage. He looks as genteel as ever: elegant coat, beautifully knotted cravat, gold cufflinks gleaming at his wrists. The image of a future lord even on a secret midnight tryst. His eyes widen as they take me in. If he is the image of a gentleman, I am afraid to say I am not much the image of a lady.

Beneath my shawl, I am wearing a white satin wrapper over my nightgown, the lacy hem of which can clearly be seen. I could have worn my dinner dress and appeared as pure and virginal as anyone could wish … but where would be the fun in that?

And how fun it is , I can’t help thinking with glee, watching him swallow hard.

“Your urgent message worried me so,” he says. “I thought something was amiss. Are you unwell? Is your mother—”

I shake my head. “All is well. I am sorry to alarm you. I did not consider the prudence of sending you such a message. I only wished to see you so much.” I look down, then back at him.

His expression softens. “Lucy,” he says, very low, with such affection that I want to melt against him that instant. “I will come whenever you call me.”

“Do you mean that?”

“I am here now, am I not?”

I am desperate to throw myself into his arms, but I remain where I am. Arthur is like the deer he and his friends hunt—easily spooked, requiring a light step or he will be lost. I turn away, facing the direction of my family’s mausoleum, and catch sight of a statue beside an opulent grave. The marble glows in the moonlight, stirring the dying embers of a memory in my mind: a pair of long white hands, a garnet ring, and a voice caressing my name like dark music. It must have been a dream, strange and feverish. I shake my head to clear it.

“Is anything wrong?” Arthur asks.

“Mamma invited Dr. Seward to dinner tonight.”

In my peripheral vision, I see him go absolutely still. “Dr. Seward?”

“He is a favorite of hers, after the close friendship he had with Papa. He brought a doctor friend with him. A kind and lovely man, still young and … I was sad to hear, a widower.” I have no designs whatsoever on poor dear Dr. Van Helsing, but Arthur does not need to know that. He moves toward me, barely breathing, and my eyes find his in the gloom. “I talked and laughed. I enjoyed their smiles and compliments. But all I could think of was you.”

Arthur’s expression changes, reminding me of his unexpected laugh when we had danced at the party. But he is not smiling now. There is clarity in his eyes and determination in the set of his jaw. He stops an arm’s length away, and I can feel the warmth of him through the air.

“You thought of me?” he asks.

“Yes.” I face him, my heart surging with hope. He will speak at last, and I will accept my fate as happily as I can because it will be shared with him. I wait, but he says nothing. “Arthur, do you not have something to say to me?”

My frustration builds as he remains silent, though his eyes on me are full of longing. We are in an empty churchyard on a dark spring evening. There is no one to watch, no one to listen, no one to say what is proper or not. I am in my night clothes, tendrils of hair soft against my face and dark eyes shining up at him. But still, he refuses to speak. Still, he will not propose.

“Arthur?” I ask.

He tenses and opens his mouth, but then closes it again.

My chest tightens like twisted wire as tears of shame and disappointment blur my vision. I know that he cares for me, but now I also know that it will not be enough for him to claim me. “I am sorry for taking up your time. Good night.” I hurry past him, stumbling in my slippers.

His hand finds my elbow. “Please don’t go,” he whispers, anguished.

I turn my head to hide my tears, but he takes my waist and turns me to face him, his touch scalding hot through my robe. He is so much taller than I am that I must tip my head back to look at him. My breath comes in choked gasps, and I am shaking—not from cold, I realize, but from aching, uncontrollable desire. And I am not alone in this, for his hands tighten on my waist.

“You know all that I cannot find the words to say,” Arthur says gruffly.

Hope knifes through my despair. “Then do not say it with words.”

I do not think. I do not hesitate. In one step, I close the distance between us. I press all of me against all of him and pull his mouth down upon mine. His soft, warm lips taste of both sugar and salt, an intoxicating combination that stokes my hunger. I feel the delicious rough scrape of his chin and smell pine and brandy and cigars. His heart drums against my palm and I wonder if he can feel mine thundering, too. I lean into his long, solid frame and gasp him in like air. He wraps his arms around me, locking me tightly against him as we kiss with starving desperation.

I have never been kissed like this outside of my dreams, and as his silken lips move hungrily on mine, I regret all the time I have spent on this earth not kissing. I feel slick and wet and formless, a bank of snow melting in the heat of his mouth. I am grateful for his arms around me, for my legs seem unable to hold up my body. I need more. I clench the lapels of his coat, deepening the kiss, and slide my tongue into his mouth like he is a confection for the tasting. And my elegant and reserved Arthur utters a growl deep in his throat as his tongue meets mine. My hands move to the burning skin above his cravat. His blood is rushing, and his pulse is racing, all for me. For me . I wrap my fingers around his neck. In this moment, he is once again powerless. In this moment, he is mine.

And then he ends the kiss.

One second, we are exploring the lining of each other’s lips, and then the next, he is a full ten feet away with his back turned to me, shoulders heaving and hands clenched into fists.

I hug myself, shivering from the chill of his absence. “Arthur? What is it?”

He lifts his trembling fists to either side of his head and breathes in and out.

“What happened?” I ask, moving toward him.

At the sound of my feet on the path, he darts even farther away. I glimpse his flushed face, eyes pinched shut as though in pain and distress. “No,” he says shakily. “Don’t come any closer, Lucy. I’m not myself. If we go on, I wouldn’t be able to … we shouldn’t …”

Hurt knifes through my gut. I offered myself to him freely. I gave him the honor of my first kiss when there were dozens of other men who would have promised me the moon for it.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Arthur says in a low voice, as though to himself. He shakes his head. “You and me. This is not the way it should be … not like this.”

“You don’t want me,” I whisper.

His eyes pop open. “Lucy.”

“You don’t want me,” I repeat, my eyes stinging with tears for the second time tonight.

“Lucy, you know this isn’t right. We are not meant to—”

I back away, struggling to breathe. The pain in my chest is almost unbearable. “You don’t feel for me as I do for … oh, Arthur!”

“Please wait,” he begs, his hands clasped as though in prayer. “Just hear me—”

“I wanted to see how you truly felt about me tonight,” I say, and under my desolation is a rising wave of shame. “And now I know for certain.”

“Lucy, wait,” he says despairingly.

But I am no longer willing to stay with a man who does not want me. “Goodbye, Arthur,” I say, unable to see his face through the haze of tears.

And then I turn and run.