Now Comes the Mist

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

H e calls for me every night, and soon all of July bleeds into heady, dazed half memories, languorous and incoherent. I begin to feel that the daytime is the dream, that walks into town and dinner parties with Mamma are the confused visions of a sleeper, while my evenings, sharp and clear and bright, are the true reality. My conversations with the stranger are all-encompassing, and at times the breadth and intricacy are enough to render me to tears.

Starved for knowledge, I beg him to discuss history and law and philosophy, all the subjects that have been kept from me until now, and he obliges, taking pleasure, I suppose, in the shaping of my sheltered mind. I am certain he is teasing, yet when his musical baritone lingers on a particular note—whether a rapturous description of Florence during the Renaissance or the burning seventeenth-century shores of a Dutch-occupied South Africa—I can almost believe that this man had been there, that he had actually lived and breathed and loved in those lost centuries.

My rational mind understands that everything he knows is what I know. Perhaps I have gleaned more from the books I have read and the years I have spent under Mina’s tutelage than I thought. But I wonder how I could have possibly forgotten so much, only to recall it vividly in my sleep. Perhaps it is another disquieting quality of my dreams, this suspension of logic.

“Let us say, for the sake of argument, that you did see the forests of the Amazon in 1502,” I say one night after he mentions the beauty of the South American continent.

A smile plays at the corners of his mouth. “1582.”

“I still don’t believe you,” I say in the playful tone I would use with a suitor. “But if I did, and you have lived for five hundred years, I imagine such a long life would be a burden.”

“Burden?”

“Yes. It would grow tedious. The world is only so big, is it not?”

He laughs. “In some ways, you are right. Humans are tiresome. The same mistakes and the same wars, only with different people. Civilizations rise and fall and rise again. But there is always some novelty, some new path to trace … such as this one that takes me to England and to you.” As always, one of my hands is cradled in his. His skin is so cold that it feels more like clay than flesh and blood, but I find it more soothing than unpleasant.

“If a person could live five hundred years, and assuming no one else can,” I venture, “I think it would be lonely, observing the world in solitude.”

The man looks at me, and the light that was briefly in his eyes when he laughed is gone. “Do I seem lonely to you?” he asks quietly.

“You have spent night after night talking to a strange girl,” I point out.

“Then by that definition, you also are lonely.”

“I am. I have no one I can talk to the way I talk to you.”

The stranger sighs. “Tell me. If you had five hundred years, what would you do first?”

My answer comes at once, without hesitation. “I would go to Vietnam to learn more about my great-grandmother. I should like to see the place where she first met my great-grandfather. His uncle was a French minister in the emperor’s court.”

The man touches the green jade stone upon my finger. “As was I and many men in my family. I know the court well. I am familiar with a lady of that country.” I sense a dark and bitter melancholy settle over him and surmise that the lady meant— means? —something to him. But he does not elaborate, and I tactfully change the subject.

“And with the remainder of my five hundred years, I would spend half a century living on each continent,” I say. “I would learn every language, read every book, study every culture.”

“You would be a scholar like me. A kindred soul, as I have said.” He strokes my palm with an icy fingertip. My hand looks like a leaf in his, easily crumbled between his powerful wrists. I close my eyes as he touches the pulse fluttering in my wrist. “You were right. I am lonely. And I am glad to have met you and to see, on your lovely hand, a long life … if you wished it. I wonder if this hand would take mine if I offered it.”

My eyes fly open. I know by now what a proposal of marriage sounds like. But then the stranger brings my palm to his mouth and traces its lines with his tongue, dissolving any rational thought. Electricity ripples through me, making my bones feel formless and liquid as his lips close around my thumb. He licks circles around the tip, and then a long, slow stroke down the base, as though drinking honey from it. All the while, his eyes are on me, blazing and intent.

I am burning where I sit. Somehow, I can also feel his freezing tongue on my lips, breasts, and between my legs and gasp at the delicious impropriety of my own mind. I tense as his mouth moves rapturously down to my wrist. Never before have I dreamed of kisses like these. My desperate longing to be touched has grown feverish indeed.

“Would Arthur kiss you like this?” the man murmurs.

“No,” I gasp, only half recognizing the name.

He presses his knowing smile against the tender inside of my arm, but then stops. When he lowers my hand, I actually whimper in desperation. It is not a sound I have ever made in the whole of my life, but I am not ashamed. I want more. I want him.

“In time,” he says with a quiet laugh. “I have much to teach you, my beautiful and willing Lucy. The waves are carrying me to you now on the ship called Demeter .”

I choke in air, trying to calm my racing heart.

“A strange name for a ship. Demeter,” he says matter-of-factly, as though I am a dinner guest and not a woman who had practically just begged him to ravish her. “The Greek goddess of the harvest and all things that grow. It is not quite fitting for me … but then Demeter was the mother of Persephone. You know the story, of course?”

I nod, still taking air into my straining lungs.

He tightens his hold on my hand possessively. “In a way, because she gave birth to her, you could say that Demeter brought Persephone to Hades. But in our case … in yours and mine, the Demeter will bring Hades instead.” He chuckles and strokes my cheek. “I will see you soon, my Persephone. Very soon.”

I wake up on the bench, cold and alone and aching with unfulfilled desire.

“Lucy, how tired and slow you are this morning,” my mother scolds me, coming over with a frown. Her dress of light grey mousseline de soie rustles as she bends to examine me.

I look up languidly from the sofa. “I’m all right, Mamma.”

“You look pale, and you’ve seemed distracted for weeks. Perhaps we ought to call the doctor. And my goodness, these dark shadows beneath your eyes.”

“I’m fine.” She lays her cool hand upon my forehead, and my cheeks flood with heat, remembering other icy fingers touching me. I grab my mother’s hand and press it harder against my face, giggling. “I feel wonderful. And so, so happy.”

Her worried expression deepens at my wild laughter. “Arthur has written again, then?”

It takes a minute for me to place the name. “Oh, Arthur. There is a letter from him almost every day,” I say listlessly. “He should not write so often if he wants me to miss him more.”

“Lucy, he isn’t just another lovelorn admirer. Are you writing him back?”

A sharp prickle of conscience bursts through my haze of languor. I sit up and smooth my hair. “Of course. I have already begun a very long letter to him, which I will finish tonight for the morning post. So do stop ruffling those dear feathers of yours.”

“You won’t have time tonight. Have you forgotten? Mina’s train will be here soon.”

I blink slowly. “Mina. Of course. Can it really be the eighth of August already? How easy it is to lose track of time in all this heat.”

Mamma’s face softens. “It has been uncomfortably hot, hasn’t it? But there is a lovely breeze off the ocean today. Wouldn’t you like to walk into town and wait for Mina’s train?”

I recognize a command masquerading as a suggestion when I hear one. Sighing, I stand and straighten my skirts. My head feels light, like a dandelion ready to blow away with one puff of wind. I collect my hat and gloves as Mamma looks on, her lips pursed with concern. But the minute I step outside and the salt-laced breath of the sea touches my face, I feel more awake. I will never again see, hear, or smell the ocean without thinking of my evenings on the cliff with the stranger. He occupies every corner of my thoughts as I wander distractedly into town.

At the station, I sit down to wait for Mina’s train. I have not decided if I will tell her of the nameless man in my dreams. She would be shocked if I confessed the things he has done to me in these secret, burning reveries. But she knows me too well, and even if I stay silent, surely she will still be able to see that I am different—that these encounters of lust and connection and conversing about history and philosophy have irrevocably changed me.

When she steps off the train, however, she only hugs and kisses me as if I were the same Lucy she has always known. I breathe in the familiar floral scent of her hair and skin and hold her tightly against me. The comforting warmth of her arms clears my dazed mind at once. “How splendidly Whitby has treated you,” she says, pulling away to look at me. “That color in your cheeks! Though you do look a bit tired.”

“Only because I was sleepless with excitement for your arrival,” I say, trying to sound as cheerful as always. “I’ve been desolate without you.”

Mina’s eyes sparkle. “Now that is a lie. I can tell you’re happy. Arthur writes daily?”

“Like a great big grandfather clock, punctual to the minute. He even paid us a surprise visit in June and rode the train in just to stay an hour.” I feel a sudden pang of yearning for Arthur and his smile and his simple, uncomplicated self. Perhaps seeing Mina and remembering my life at home in London has made me realize how much I miss him. Since he left, his letters have been even more loving and tender, reassuring me that he eagerly awaits our wedding day.

“Oh, Lucy, what a lucky and loved girl you are.” A shadow passes over Mina’s face, one that might go unnoticed by someone who loved her less. But before I can ask her what is wrong, a porter approaches to take her bag. “Thank you. Would you point us to a carriage, please? I know the walk isn’t long, but I don’t feel quite up to it today,” she adds, glancing apologetically at me. For the first time, I notice the circles under her eyes and the peeling of her lips, as though she has been chewing nervously on them.

I slip an arm through hers. “You look even more tired than I feel. Whatever’s the matter?”

In the carriage, Mina confesses, “I have not heard from Jonathan in two months. He left in May and last wrote to me at the beginning of June, and his letter was so cold and curt. I’ve been torturing myself, imagining him hurt or lost or … or worse.”

I frown. “That doesn’t sound like him, not when it comes to you.”

“He warned that this trip might take longer than expected,” she says, and my heart aches at the pain in her eyes. “The route is difficult, and one can’t simply take a train and be there, the way I’ve come to you. He promised he would write often, so why hasn’t he kept his word? And why was his letter so short and formal? Oh, Lucy!”

“Hush,” I soothe her. “I’m sure there is a good reason.”

“Sometimes I think I love him so much, I can feel everything he feels.” Mina presses her white knuckles to her mouth. “I know something is wrong. I know it. Somehow, I feel that he is worried and afraid. But why doesn’t he tell me, when he has always told me everything?”

She begins to weep despite the presence of the carriage driver. For my ladylike Mina to cry before a stranger, she must be distraught indeed. I rock her gently and stroke her hair, wondering if Arthur and I are connected the way she believes she is to Jonathan.

I give her my handkerchief. “This is the first journey his employer has entrusted to him, is it not?” I ask, and she nods, blowing her nose. “Perhaps the client keeps him so busy that he had time to send only a quick note. I am certain he wrote you a longer letter afterward, perhaps several, and they were delayed by a bad storm of some sort. That would explain his unease. What was the region called in English again?”

“The Mountains of Deep Winter,” she says, looking a bit relieved. Where crying makes me red and blotchy, tears brighten the vivid blue of her eyes and the delicate softness of her face. “He did tell me they tend to have snowstorms there. I had not thought of that.”

“And you notified the post office that you would be on holiday in Whitby,” I remind her. “You gave them my address here, so that is yet another layer through which a letter must pass. I wager that soon you will be overwhelmed by a packet of fifteen letters, all come at once!”

She squeezes my hand. “I hope you’re right. I’m so glad you’re here. When I’m alone, I think all sorts of horrible things.” She glances at the carriage driver and lowers her voice to a whisper. “I have even imagined that he has forsaken me for someone else.”

I can’t help laughing at that absurdity. “Have you lost your mind, Mina?”

“Such things happen. Devoted husbands go astray. Men are not like us. I often think they are weaker-willed and less steadfast.” She hesitates. “Sometimes I worry Jonathan is only marrying me out of habit and only wants me because I am comfortable and familiar to him.”

I stare at her in disbelief. I have never seen her in such doubt, not when it comes to her beloved Jonathan. “How can you say that? Surely you can hear how wrong that sounds.”

Mina gazes out the window. “We’ve known each other almost twenty years,” she says softly. “I was six when I came to live with Aunt Rosamund and met her neighbor Mr. Hawkins and his adopted son. To me, Jonathan was never just the boy next door.” A smile touches her lips. “We were like-minded from the start. He knew he would be a lawyer one day, and he never scoffed at my intention to find a living as a governess, the way other men might have done.”

I roll my eyes. “Yes, indeed. How dare you hope to earn money and secure independence for yourself, Mina? I should hope Jonathan never scoffed at something so logical!”

“You know how traditional some people are,” she says, smiling again at my irreverence. “They do not hold such modern ideals for women as you and I do. I have my aunt to thank for that. She never married and taught me to be self-sufficient whether or not I found a husband.”

“And you listened and came to me, and I would still be a mannerless hoyden if not for you. But now you have found a husband, one who loves you not because you are familiar, but because of all you are: kind and good and true. I think you know I’ve never liked Jonathan as much as you would wish. I am jealous that he will take you from me, but even I know that he would never forsake you. Why allow a few delayed letters to bring you such pain and doubt?”

“I can’t tell you why,” Mina says quietly. “I can’t explain this dread. This fear that I may never see him again and that our kiss goodbye was our last.”

“Wait and see,” I reassure her. “In a month or two, when we are dancing at your wedding, I will remind you of this and we will laugh.”

She brightens a bit. “Perhaps it will be at your wedding.” Her eyes hold such hunger for Jonathan, and for the safety and comfort of marriage and children. I think of how everything she desires is what repels me most, and my heart feels a tug toward the cliffs and the bench in the shadows, but I pull myself back. I must be here, in this moment, for her sake.

I take my handkerchief back and gently dab at her face. “Jonathan will do everything in his power to come home to you. I know it as surely as I know my own name. He would fight any danger with his bare hands, despite being the soft, coddled lawyer’s clerk he is!”

But instead of smiling, Mina takes my comment seriously. “He did not go without protection. He brought a weapon with him—a kukri knife that his explorer father had carried back to England and left him when he died. Mr. Hawkins and I laughed when Jonathan packed it, but perhaps he had a presentiment … perhaps he sensed that the journey would be difficult.”

“I would have laughed, too,” I say as brightly as I can. “Were you and I to travel, we would think of packing warm scarves or hardy boots, but here your Jonathan brings a knife that was likely stolen from some poor man in South Asia who needed it.”

This time, she does smile, but I know it is only to humor me.

“Cheer up, darling,” I say as the carriage pulls up in front of our lodgings. Mamma is already at the door, waiting for us. “I promise that his silence is not for lack of loving you.”

Mina only has time to give my cheek a grateful kiss before stepping into my mother’s embrace. I follow her, heavy with the weight of all we have said … and left unsaid.