The Twelfth Enchantment

9

TRUE TO HIS WORD, BYRON CALLED UPON LUCY THE NEXT MORNING. In the hopes of seeing him, she’d worn her best day frock, white with purple flowers, fitted perfectly to her form, with a plain low front. Seeing his coach arrive, Mrs. Quince stood near the door with her arms crossed so as to block Lucy’s way. “You’ll not go anywhere.”

A week ago, Lucy would have retreated, but things were now different, and she would not obey. She could not even conceive how she might step into her previous timidity, and because retreating would do her no good, there was no direction but forward Lucy moved to push past Mrs. Quince.

Astonished, the serving woman lashed out and grabbed Lucy’s wrist, digging in with her fingernails and drawing blood. Mrs. Quince yanked hard at Lucy’s arm, attempting to knock her off balance, possibly to make her stumble. It was not a new maneuver, however, and Lucy was prepared for it. She stepped into the momentum, and then, stopping suddenly, she took hold of Mrs. Quince’s arm, pulled hard, and then suddenly let go. Mrs. Quince fell upon her back, striking her head against the hard floor. And she lay there motionless, her face puckered with anger.

“I think,” said Lucy, “that I shall go out.”

By the time Lucy reached the door, Mrs. Quince was already upon her feet, but she did not approach. “What do you think you shall be when you are alone and without money or home?”

“I cannot know,” said Lucy. “Could it be worse than what I am now?”

She stepped out into the street and met Byron at the door. Again, his appearance, his mere physical presence, astonished her. She had thought of him over and over during the night, she had dwelt upon how handsome he was, and yet, now that she gazed upon him, his beauty staggered her, as if she’d had no idea of it before. His dress was remarkably like that of the previous day, but the familiarity made him no less magnetic. He led her down the stairs, holding out his arm for her to take. “I fear I must leave in the morning, and I wished to call to see if you had survived the meeting of the Star Chamber.”

“There is no longer any doubt,” said Lucy, forcing herself to sound at her ease. She felt a trickle of blood on her wrist, but she did not inspect it, lest Byron see it. It would heal soon enough. Instead, she concentrated on the feel of his arm under her touch—warm and muscular and confident. “Mr. Olson has made his intentions clear. We are to marry in six weeks.”

Byron sharply turned his face toward hers. “You must not do it.”

“What choice have I?” asked Lucy, offering Byron the opportunity to provide her with an alternative. “I haven’t the means to assert a preference. At least as Mrs. Olson I have some chance of a measure of independence.”

“But no chance of happiness.”

Lucy let go of his arm, for she found she was quite angry. “You go where you like,” she said. “You visit with whom you like. You may marry whom you like or marry no one at all. I have none of those choices, so what right have you to tell me what I must or mustn’t do?”

“It is the right of justice, Lucy,” he said, unconcerned with her tone, and using her Christian name for the first time. “I have nothing but contempt for Olson now that I have seen him. I think anything must be preferable than a life shackled to that dullard.”

“If you see an option that I do not, I pray you will tell me. Otherwise, I must ask you not to speak of what is not your concern.” Lucy kept her voice even, her tone sharp, with no hint of the coquette, and yet, there could be no doubt that she now challenged him.

At that moment they passed by an alley, narrow and empty and so protected from the sun that it was gloomy. Without signaling his intentions, Byron turned in, taking Lucy’s hand and pulling her along with him. She staggered slightly, and he righted her by taking hold of her shoulders, and then her waist. A sensation of the most pleasant confusion came over her, as if she did not know which way was up, as if she were tumbling gently through space. She felt the heat of his nearness, the masculine scent of his body, the sweetness of his breath, and that warmth that grew within her, within her very core, and spread out like a fanned flame. And then, he was kissing her. His lips were on hers, and his hands moved down to her hips, and she tasted coffee and licorice on his breath.

It took Lucy a moment to notice that she was kissing him back. Her hands were around his neck, and her tongue was in his mouth, and she was trying to taste every bit of him. She felt sure of herself, as though this were not something entirely new and utterly unexpected. She felt in control. She felt vibrant and alive. She had not kissed anyone since Jonas Morrison, who had claimed to love her but had only sought her ruin. His kisses has been tentative, gentle, even timid. Byron’s were greedy and urgent. He radiated raw desire. It coursed through his body, and through hers.

This kiss was a kind of madness, but Lucy was not mad. It had to end before they were seen, before he pressed for more, right there in the alley, because she did not know that she could refuse him. It had to end, but not yet, not for another moment, because Lucy could not know that she would ever kiss him again, and she wanted to feel it, to burn the sensation into her mind that she might always cling to the memory.

It was Byron who broke off the kiss. He gently pushed her away and looked at her, his expression full of both tenderness and mischief. He touched her face with the back of his fingers. “You must come with me to London.”

Lucy felt light-headed. It was all happening as she had imagined, and the collision of reality with fantasy overwhelmed her. It was what she had dared to hope for, but only in the foolish way girls hope for what cannot be, and now it had come to pass. She felt surprise and terror and delight, all in equal measure. “You must speak plainly. Do you ask for my hand?”

Byron met her eye and grinned with pleasure. “I am asking you to come be with me in London. We do not need to live by their rules, Lucy. We can live by our own and in glorious defiance. There is no limit to what we together can accomplish.”

She could still feel the warmth of him on her lips, but now suddenly she was ashamed. She was a fool. She hardly knew this man, and she imagined he was the prince and she the princess in a child’s fairy tale. Of course he would not marry her. She could bring him nothing. He was beautiful and he had a title. He would hold out for a young lady with a fortune to trade. And yet, for all that, she could not condemn herself entirely. He had misled her. He had made her believe he had a different kind of offer for her.

“You ask me to be your whore,” Lucy said, her voice calm but dangerously brittle.

“Do not style it so,” he answered. “That is the world’s judgment, not our own. I can see you are no ordinary woman. Can you not see that I am no ordinary man? I cannot—we cannot—live the way the world demands. We must live according to our own law, or we shall be suffocated by their damned rules.”

The selfish stupidity of his proposal infuriated her so that it was difficult for her to form words. She stepped out of the alley without troubling herself to see if he followed, hoping he wouldn’t and hoping he would. When she heard him directly behind her, she stopped and spun around to face him. “You know nothing of me if you think I would stoop to such a thing. I am vulnerable enough living with my uncle. If I were to do what you propose, setting aside the propriety of the situation, for I know you hold that in contempt, I should be even more defenseless than I am now. What happens when you tire of me?”

“I will be your protector. While I live, you will want for nothing and fear nothing.”

“While you live. And if you are taken ill or trampled by a horse? Your proposal insults me, sir, and I wish you had not made it. I wish—I wish I had not seen you more.”

He reached out and took her gloved hand in his. “I want only that you rise above what these little fools demand of you. If I were as rich as your uncle, I would give you money to live independently. I would do this gladly because the world would be better for you living in it free and unfettered. I do not have such money, but I offer you what I can. I offer you a life with me.”

“I must go,” said Lucy, pulling her hand away.

She turned and walked hurriedly. Byron called out her name two times. He did not call out a third. She hardly had time to feel the pain of another avenue of escape closing itself to her, to make sense of her sadness and disappointment and disillusionment, when Lucy felt a hand fall hard on her shoulder. She turned to face Mrs. Quince who grimaced at her in mad delight.

“Now comes the reckoning,” she said, and led Lucy back to her uncle’s house.