Passion

SIX THE WOMAN IN WHITE

By the time Daniel got to Helston, he was angry.

He recognized the setting at once, as soon as the Announcer ejected him alone onto the shingle banks of the Loe. The lake was still, reflecting big tufts of pink cloud in the evening sky. Startled by his sudden appearance, a pair of kingfishers took off across the field of clover and came to rest in a crooked moorland tree beside the main road. The road led, he knew, into the small town where he’d spent a summer with Lucinda.

Standing again on this rich green earth touched a soft place inside him. As much as he worked to close every door to their past, as much as he strove to move beyond each one of her heartbreaking deaths—some mattered more than others. He was surprised at how clearly he still recalled their time in the South of England.

But Daniel wasn’t here on holiday. He wasn’t here to fall in love with the beautiful copper trader’s daughter. He was here to stop a reckless girl from getting so lost in the dark moments of her past that it killed her. He was here to help her undo their curse, once and for all.

He started the long walk toward town.

It was a warm and lazy summer evening in Helston. Out on the streets, ladies in bonnets and lace-trimmed gowns spoke in low, polite voices to the linen-suited men whose arms they held. Couples paused in front of shop windows. They lingered to speak with their neighbors. They stopped on street corners and took ten minutes to say goodbye.

Everything about these people, from their attire to the pace of their strolling, was so infuriatingly slow. Daniel could not have felt more at odds with the passersby on the street.

His wings, hidden beneath his coat, burned with his impatience as he waded through the people. There was one fail-safe place where he knew he could find Lucinda—she visited the gazebo in his patron’s back garden most evenings just after dusk. But where he might find Luce—the one hopping in and out of Announcers, the one he needed to find—that, there was no way of knowing.

The other two lives Luce had stumbled into made some sense to Daniel. In the grand scheme, they were … anomalies. Past moments when she had come close to unraveling the truth of their curse just before she died. But he couldn’t figure out why her Announcer had brought her here.

Helston had been a mostly peaceful time for them. In this life, their love had grown slowly, naturally. Even her death had been private, between just the two of them. Once, Gabbe had used the word respectable to describe Lucinda’s end in Helston. That death, at least, had been theirs alone to suffer.

No, nothing made sense about the accident of her revisiting this life—which meant she could be anywhere in the hamlet.

“Why, Mr. Grigori,” a trilling voice called out on the street. “What a wonderful surprise to find you here in town.”

A blond woman in a long patterned blue dress stood before Daniel, taking him utterly by surprise. She held the hand of a pudgy, freckled eight-year-old boy, who looked miserable in a cream-colored jacket with a stain underneath the collar.

At last it dawned on Daniel: Mrs. Holcombe and her talentless son Edward, whom he’d given drawing lessons to for a few painful weeks while in Helston.

“Hello, Edward.” Daniel leaned down to shake the little boy’s hand, then bowed to his mother. “Mrs. Holcombe.”

Until that moment, Daniel had given little thought to his wardrobe as he moved through time. He didn’t care what someone on the street thought of his modern gray slacks or whether the cut of his white oxford shirt looked odd compared to any other man’s in town. But if he was going to run into people he’d actually known nearly two hundred years ago wearing the clothes he’d worn two days ago to Luce’s parents’ Thanksgiving, word might begin to travel around.

Daniel didn’t want to draw any attention to himself. Nothing could stand in the way of finding Luce. He would simply have to find something else to wear. Not that the Holcombes noticed. Luckily Daniel had returned to a time when he’d been known as an “eccentric” artist.

“Edward, show Mr. Grigori what Mama just bought you,” Mrs. Holcombe said, smoothing her son’s unruly hair.

The boy reluctantly produced a small paint kit from a satchel. Five glass pots of oil paint and a long red wooden-handled brush.

Daniel made the requisite compliments—about how Edward was a very lucky little boy, one whose talent now had the proper tools—while trying not to be obvious about looking past the pair for the quickest way out of the conversation.

“Edward’s such a gifted child,” Mrs. Holcombe insisted, taking hold of Daniel’s arm. “Trouble is, he finds your drawing lessons just a little less thrilling than a boy his age expects. It’s why I thought a proper paint set might allow him to really come into his own. As an artiste. You understand, Mr. Grigori?”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Daniel cut her off. “Give him whatever makes him want to paint. Brilliant plan—”

A coldness spread through him and froze his words in his throat.

Cam had just exited from a pub across the street.

For a moment, Daniel churned with anger. He’d been clear enough that he wanted no help from the others. His hands balled into fists, and he took a step toward Cam, but then—

Of course. This was Cam from the Helston era. And by the looks of it, Cam was having the time of his life in his fancy striped tapered slacks and Victorian smoking cap. His black hair was long, cascading just past his shoulders. He leaned against the pub’s door, joking with three other men.

Cam slipped a gold-tipped cigar out of a square metal case. He hadn’t seen Daniel yet. As soon as he did, he would quit laughing. From the beginning, Cam had traveled through the Announcers more than any of the fallen angels. He was an expert in ways Daniel never could be: That was a gift of those who’d thrown in with Lucifer—they had a talent for traveling through the shadows of the past.

One look at Daniel would tell this Victorian Cam that his rival was an Anachronism.

A man out of time.

Cam would realize that something big was going on. Then Daniel would never be able to shake him.

“You’re so very generous, Mr. Grigori.” Mrs. Holcombe was still nattering, still had Daniel gripped by his shirtsleeve.

Cam’s head began to swivel in his direction.

“Think nothing of it.” The words rushed out of Daniel. “Now, if you’ll excuse me”—he pried her fingers loose—“I’ve just got to … buy some new clothes.”

He made a speedy bow and rushed through the door of the nearest shop.

“Mr. Grigori—” Mrs. Holcombe was practically shouting his name.

Silently, Daniel cursed her, pretending he was out of earshot, which only made her call more loudly. “But that’s a dressmaker’s, Mr. Grigori!” she shouted, cupping her hands over her mouth.

Daniel was already inside. The glass door of the shop slammed behind him, the bell that was tied to the hinge ringing. He could hide here, at least for a few minutes, in the hopes that Cam hadn’t seen him or heard Mrs. Holcombe’s shrill voice.

The shop was quiet and smelled of lavender. Well-heeled shoes had worn down its wooden floors, and the shelves along the walls were stacked to the ceiling with bolts of colorful fabrics. Daniel lowered the lace curtain over the window so he’d be less visible from the street. When he turned, he caught a glimpse in the mirror of another person in the shop.

He swallowed a moan of surprised relief.

He’d found her.

Luce was trying on a long white muslin dress. Its high neck fastened with a yellow ribbon, bringing out the incredible hazel of her eyes. Her hair was tied back to one side, clipped with a beaded floral pin. She kept fidgeting with the way the sleeves fell on her shoulders as she stood, examining herself from as many angles as she could in the mirror. Daniel adored all of them.

He wanted to stand there, admiring her forever, but then he remembered himself. He strode toward her and grabbed her by the arm.

“This has gone on long enough.” Even as he spoke, Daniel felt overcome by the delicious feel of her skin against his hand. The last time he’d touched her was the night he thought he’d lost her to the Outcasts. “Do you have any idea what a scare you gave me? You’re not safe here on your own,” he said.

Luce didn’t start arguing with Daniel, as he’d expected. Instead, she screamed and slapped him smartly across the face.

Because she wasn’t Luce. She was Lucinda.

And, what was worse, they hadn’t even met yet in this lifetime. She must have just come back from London with her family. She and Daniel must have been about to meet at the Constances’ summer solstice party.

He could see all of that now as the shock registered on Lucinda’s face.

“What day is this?” he asked desperately.

She would think he was insane. Across the room, he had been too love-struck to note the difference between the girl he’d already lost and the girl he had to save.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. This was exactly why he was so terrible as an Anachronism. He got completely lost in the smallest of things. One touch of her skin. One look into her deep hazel eyes. One whiff of the scented powder along her hairline. One shared breath in the cramped space of this tiny shop.

Lucinda winced as she looked at his cheek. In the mirror, it was bright red where she’d slapped him. Her eyes traveled to meet his—and his heart felt like it was caving in. Her pink lips parted and her head cocked slightly to the right. She was looking at him like a woman deep in love.

No.

There was a way it was supposed to happen. A way it had to happen. They were not supposed to meet until the party. As much as Daniel cursed their fate, he would not disrupt the lives she’d lived before. They were what kept her coming back to him.

He tried to look as uninterested and scowly as possible. Crossing his arms over his chest, shifting his weight to create more space between them, keeping his eyes everywhere but where they wanted to be. On her.

“I’m sorry,” Lucinda said, pressing her hands over her heart. “I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never done anything like that.…”

Daniel wasn’t going to argue with her now, though she’d slapped him so many times over the years that Arriane kept a tally in a little spiral notebook marked You’re Fresh.

“My mistake,” he said quickly. “I—I thought you were someone else.” He’d already interfered with the past too much, first with Lucia in Milan, and now here. He began to back away.

“Wait.” She reached for him. Her eyes were lovely hazel orbs of light pulling him back. “I feel almost as if we do know one another, though I can’t quite remember—”

“I don’t think so, I’m afraid.”

He’d made it to the door by then, and was parting the curtain on the window to see if Cam was still outside. He was.

Cam’s back was to the shop, and he was making animated gestures, telling some fabricated story in which he was surely the hero. He could turn around at the slightest provocation. Then Daniel would be caught.

“Please, sir—stop.” Lucinda hurried toward Daniel. “Who are you? I think I know you. Please. Wait.”

He’d have to take his chances on the street. He could not stay here with Lucinda. Not when she was acting like this. Not when she was falling in love with the wrong version of himself. He’d lived this life before, and this was not how it had happened. So he had to flee.

It killed Daniel to ignore her, to go away from Lucinda when everything in his soul was telling him to turn around and fly right back to the sound of her voice, to the embrace of her arms and the warmth of her lips, to the spellbinding power of her love.

He yanked the shop door open and fled down the street, running at the sunset, running for all he was worth. He did not care at all what it looked like to anyone else in town. He was running out the fire in his wings.