Now Comes the Mist

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

D o you have everything you need for the night, miss?” Harriet asks, standing in the doorway with a bundle of laundry in her arms. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, thank you. I will be fine,” I say impatiently, for she has been stalling her departure from my bedchamber for half an hour now. “Good night.”

I have been in a flurry of distraction all day, thinking about the man and the dream I can remember in vivid detail. I burn with the need to see him again and to relive last night on the windy cliffs. Mamma wished me to pay calls with her all afternoon, and at each acquaintance’s home, I dropped a glove, lost track of a conversation, or spilled my tea. My mother believes I am coming down with a summer cold, and I am in no hurry to convince her otherwise.

Harriet is still lingering by the door. “Miss Lucy, I don’t think I should leave you alone.”

“We’ve already discussed this,” I tell her. “I am in no danger whatsoever.”

“But how can you be so sure?” The poor maid looks as though she would like to wring her hands had they not been full of my clothing. “I don’t think Madam would want—”

“You promised ,” I say sharply. “You gave me your word you would not tell Mamma.”

“I know, miss, and I will keep it. But I don’t like the idea of your wandering alone on the cliffs at night. I would blame myself if anything happened to you.”

“You are not to be blamed for anything,” I say in a gentler voice. “You brought me home last night and have taken good care of me since. You have done well.”

“But perhaps if we put a chair against the door? Or if I slept on this sofa and—”

I throw my hands up. “Harriet!”

She leaves in a hurry, closing the door behind her.

Sighing, I nestle against my pillows. My room is darker tonight, as the clouds that covered the sun all day have remained to obscure the moon. In preparation for any stroll I might take this evening, I am in bed with my slippers on, a light robe tied over my nightdress, and my hair in a plait. If I am to meet the man in my dreams again, I will at least look more presentable.

I lie on my side, gazing up at the night sky and thinking about him. Even after waking up from our encounter, I had felt as though a part of me were still with him. The memory of his kisses and his hands on my body fill me with both frantic desire and the need to giggle like an enamored schoolgirl. I have never been alive until now. I have never been awake until he awakened me. Somehow, in the most remote recesses of my unconscious mind, my frustrated longing has created this man—this delicious escape from reality.

I twist Arthur’s ring on my finger. All day, I have berated myself for betraying the man I love, and yet … I have done nothing wrong. My meeting with the stranger took place inside my head, the natural result of my loneliness and unsatisfied yearning for Arthur.

I glance at my dressing table, where the flower the man tucked over my ear has been steadily wilting all day. I know that I put it in my own hair as I dreamed of him. The encounter was not real. My mind knows this, and yet my heart, my soul, and my skin—which now knows the touch of his hands—wants desperately to believe that it had taken place, against all reason.

I can explain my deep connection to this man no more than the stars can express why they hang aloft in the heavens. It is as inevitable as the pull of the moon upon the tides. I think of his warm voice, his sympathetic gaze, and how he had held me as I had always longed to be held, and I am suddenly so cold and so sad at the certainty that a man who could so thoroughly understand me, who could see and accept everything that I am, cannot possibly exist. But it is better to have him only in dreams, I tell myself, than not at all.

It takes me a long time to fall asleep … or at least, I assume that I sleep.

One moment I am in bed, thinking these puzzling thoughts, and the next, I am climbing the cliffs and smelling the clean scent of the ocean once more. It is as though my mind has glided from one place to the next without any connecting memory in between, and that should disturb me. But instead, I am elated and hurry up the path beneath the spreading midnight sky.

The wind is stronger tonight. The heavy clouds have heralded the coming of a storm, and I smell rain in the air as I run with my heart in my throat. I do not linger by the old abbey tonight but make directly for the stone bench like an arrow loosed from a bow.

I see at once that my hopes have not been in vain.

He is standing, waiting for me beneath the willow tree with an eager welcome in his eyes. I feel no shame, no embarrassment, no concern for propriety as I run straight into his arms and he gathers me close to him. I know that one cannot love a stranger. What I feel for this man as he strokes my hair, the two of us sheltered by the whispering leaves of the tree, is sharper, more desperate and immediate. It is a need, a recognition so powerful that it steals the breath from me as he lifts me off the ground, my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.

“Good evening, Lucy,” he whispers in my ear, and I smile into his neck, my fingers tangled in his dark waves of hair. The rumble of his voice against me is already familiar, like a soft blanket I can wrap myself in. He has no scent, or perhaps he shares that of the ocean and the night. The mist rolls in off the sea, enveloping us in its tender embrace.

“I wish you were really here with me now,” I say softly.

He pulls away to look at me, nose to nose. The blue-green of his gaze is deeper tonight, as though the sea of his eyes is mirroring the ocean ahead of the storm. “Am I not?”

“You are only a dream,” I say, and he laughs. “Aren’t you?”

His arms tighten around me, his hands respectfully on my back. But respect is not what I want from his hands. So when he asks, “Why don’t you find out?” I mold my mouth to his, my lips and tongue starving for the taste of him, and he laughs again and rewards me by laying his fingers along my hip and thigh. He gently ends the kiss. “Enough now, or I will think you have come here only for this and not my sparkling conversation.”

I lay my hand on top of his, touching the garnet that rests there like a drop of blood. One of his fingers has a rough callus that I recognize as belonging to someone who writes often; I have felt them on Papa’s and Mina’s hands as well. I squeeze lightly, and the hand squeezes back.

He sets me down on his side of the bench, where he had sat the night before, and takes a seat on my side. Already, I am thinking of his side and my side. “I don’t want your feet to get wet. It has rained here,” he says, carelessly putting his polished shoes into the puddle as though defying its disrespect toward me. We look out at the ocean, which is as agitated tonight as I feel.

I touch the cool surface of the bench, and my fingers find a crack in the stone. “This is the most vivid dream I have ever had,” I say as my robe flutters around my legs in the wind and an errant leaf sinks to the grass, wet with rain. “It all feels real. You feel real. But it is not possible.”

The man tilts his head. “Why not? Is it so impossible that you are a dreamer and that I am also a dreamer, and somehow, in our dreams, we have found each other?”

“You would have to sleepwalk as I do. And you said last night that you were not even on English soil.” A sigh escapes me. Such a lack of logic is irrefutable proof that I am dreaming.

The man seems amused. “I think you will find that not even I can walk across the sea. But perhaps I am both here and not here. Perhaps my body is on a ship headed to these shores and I am dreaming from the safety of her hull. Perhaps I am with you in every way that matters.” Last night he had seemed more guarded, but tonight, he turns to look at me with openness, his beautifully accented English smooth and free. In recent memory, the only acquaintance I have met who speaks with an accent is Dr. Van Helsing. Perhaps my subconscious mind recalled the softening of his English, and indeed, I hear shades of German in the stranger’s speech.

“Where do you sail from, then?” I ask playfully. “Amsterdam, perhaps?”

“A port in Bulgaria. It has been a long and tiresome journey, with no good company on board, so I am grateful for our conversation.” The man looks sideways at me with gallant charm.

“Are you Bulgarian?”

He laughs, displaying strong white teeth as he takes my hand, studying it as though reading something written upon it. “Bulgarian, French, German, Russian, and everything in between. I am connected to almost every noble house in Europe. I simply chose a Bulgarian port for convenience.” He sighs. “The Demeter has a provincial crew and no passengers with whom I can hold educated congress. And so I dream to pass the time, especially at sunrise and sunset.”

“Sunrise and sunset?”

“The times when I rest. When I am most vulnerable.” He looks thoughtful but does not explain further, and I do not press him. Somehow, I sense I would not be able to, and it is both interesting and disturbing, this feeling that I can only ask what he will permit me to. As though he is steering me the way a captain is steering the ship he is on. “I dream to explore the land I will soon call home. I am moving to England for a time and have just purchased a property outside of London, in Purfleet.”

I blink in surprise. “That is not far from my own home. I almost lived there myself.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Almost?”

“I know a gentleman who is a doctor,” I say, blushing. Clearly, Jack Seward still lingers in my mind, even after my engagement. “He works at an asylum there.”

Again, the stranger seems to hear everything I am not saying. “Ah, I see! So this gentleman might have brought you to live with him in Purfleet, had it not been for the noble Arthur. Well, I am glad my property will not be far from you. We will be almost neighbors.”

I laugh at the wonder and the absurdity of this dream. “Do you think we shall meet in person?” I ask, playing along. “Outside of dreams? It will be strange.”

He turns my hand over, still examining it. “Strange? How so?”

“Well, we have already met, and it would be a lie to pretend otherwise. Though it would be highly inappropriate to admit the circumstances under which we became acquainted.”

“A lie? Why not say a secret?” The man’s eyes shine at me, the lashes long and thick, giving his stern face a hint of softness. “A delicious secret shared by two friends.”

I smile, for being called his friend and sharing a secret with him feels oddly like an honor.

“Perhaps I will call upon you here in Whitby,” he says, squeezing my hand. “Perhaps I will find you in town and you will invite me in for tea, since we are in England, after all. And we will converse as though we are newly acquainted, not as kindred souls who have met before.”

My heart leaps. “Do you believe me to be a kindred soul? I feel that about you. I feel that I can talk to you about anything, the way I cannot with many people in my life.”

He puts an arm around me, and I lean against him. His presence gives no warmth, and yet the gesture is comforting and natural. “I am glad for your confidence in me. It is good to have a friend one can speak to without fear, and I shall be that for you.”

“Have you ever spoken to other dreamers?” I ask lazily. “Do others dream of you, too?”

“Sometimes. When I call to them.”

“Have you called to me, then?”

“Perhaps unwittingly. You and I are like-minded souls, and our paths seem destined to cross.” He rests his head on top of mine. “Are you glad we have met? Or does it frighten you?”

“I’m not frightened,” I say at once. “I am glad I can be myself with you. In the waking world, there is no circumstance under which I could sit with a man after dark like this. But here in my dream, I have complete control over what I do. It feels like traveling, in a way.”

He toys with my plaited hair, wrapping it around his wrist. “Do you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you have complete control over what you do here in the dream?” His voice is as gentle as ever, but there is a dark, sardonic amusement in it that reminds me of last night’s spells of unnatural drowsiness and my inability to ask questions. He must sense my rising uneasiness, for he quickly adds, “You say that dreaming is like traveling. Is travel something you aspire to?”

“It doesn’t matter. It is not possible for me.” I look at the raging sea, the waves stirring as though some great invisible hand has reached down from the sky to disturb them. “Arthur prefers to remain at home. He will inherit his father’s estate, and it will be a great deal of work for him, becoming Lord Godalming. A great deal of work for both of us.”

“You are not much alike, then,” the man says thoughtfully. “I prefer a couple to be like-minded. It is not comfortable to always be disagreeing and bickering.” He seems to speak from experience, as though there is—or possibly was —a woman in his life.

“Arthur and I will not bicker,” I say, a bit defensively.

“No,” he agrees. “You would defend your opinion when needed, but he is too well bred to argue. He might concede your point and then go and do whatever he thinks best. His word would always be final. How interesting. Yes, I see how these well-bred English gentlemen manage their women.” He chuckles. “But over time, Lucy, do you not think these little grievances will build up inside of you? Will they not gather in some dark recess of your mind, growing so large that they eventually topple out of the shadows?”

I stare at him, stunned.

“You think I am sowing discord between you and your lord-to-be,” he says, placing a hand over his heart in apology. “But I am only telling you what I have observed. I have lived many years and have seen much of human nature. Forgive my frank manners.”

I want to defend Arthur and insist that he would always agree with me, or if not, he would at least welcome my opinion. But I know that the stranger is speaking the truth; I can feel it.

His eyes on me are full of pity. “Tell me where you would travel, if you could.”

“Anywhere,” I say desperately. “Everywhere. I want to see mountains, walk through forests, ride trains through the countryside. There is so much world out there, and the thought that I can only ever experience it through books and hearsay feels like pretending to live. Soon I will have a husband and a herd of children, and it will be like losing a chance I never even had.”

The man is silent for a long moment. “I have traveled much in my life. I have been to the greatest concert halls of Europe, the plains of Africa, and even the Far East. I have done everything I have ever dreamed of doing, and I cannot imagine being shackled as you are.”

I listen longingly but without the envy I feel when I hear about Jonathan Harker’s travels. It occurs to me that perhaps it is not Jonathan’s freedom I envy, but the woman he will possess. Hastily, I push away the thought. My love for Mina is not something I wish to share with this all-knowing man, not yet—even if he is only just a dream. “What else have you done?” I ask.

“Everything.” The man traces the lines of my hand, his gaze turned inward to memories he has had the privilege to collect. “I have been a soldier and a statesman, waging wars and punishing enemies. I have been a leader, caring for my people and protecting our land. I have been a scholar of every subject: astronomy, philosophy, alchemy, religion. I have heard music that would thaw the coldest heart, seen artwork that would shape civilizations, and witnessed the most splendid architecture the human mind can dream up.”

“You cannot possibly have lived long enough to do all of that,” I say, smiling as I scan his unlined face. “You cannot be more than forty. You are teasing me.”

“I would not dare tease such a charming lady.” His dark ocean gaze finds me once more, as intent as though he is studying a portrait and not a person. “You really are very beautiful, Lucy, though you do not need me to tell you that.”

“I wish you were real,” I say with a pang of sadness. “Though I should be grateful you are only in my mind. I feel as though I have known you for a very long time. As though I could sit here and talk to you forever. But even dreaming of you is wrong.”

“Why?” he asks gently.

“I will be married soon. The wedding is in September, and sleepwalking away from my husband to have nice long chats with another man … that is something that the future Lady Godalming should absolutely not do.” My short, low laugh is full of aching sorrow. “As Arthur’s wife, I will need to be everything that is virtuous and admirable.”

The stranger looks down at our joined hands. My palm is as fragile and ephemeral in his as the white flower I plucked last night. “He isn’t what you really want. Becoming a fine lady will starve your soul. Trying to make him proud will take everything out of you that I so admire.”

“What alternative is there?” I ask bitterly. “There is nothing else for me, unless you can somehow step out of my imagination and take me on those marvelous journeys of yours around the world. Waging wars and visiting concert halls.” I meant for it to sound like a jest, but the earnest grief in my voice turns it into a serious plea.

“I could, you know.” He looks straight into my eyes. “I could take you away with me and make you forget him. I could make you mine.” He places a kiss upon my wrist, searing cold. His lips move down my arm to the crook of my elbow, where he drops another kiss.

I close my eyes as he leans his forehead against mine. I wish I could live for eternity in this dream, sheltered beneath the trees on a stormy moonless evening with this man.

“This is my advice to you, Lucy, from someone who has lived so much to someone who has not yet fully lived at all,” he says. “Be careful what you wish for, for you may just get it.”