Page 12 of Now Comes the Mist

I look at our joined hands and run my thumb slowly across the side of his palm. He swallows hard, a lump moving down the length of his throat. I lean closer to him, imagining the taste of his neck on my lips and tongue. I know that he, too, is envisioning my kiss from the hungry way he is watching my mouth, though he tightens his hold on my waist to keep usa decorous distance apart. There is a fierce possessiveness in his eyes that both inflames and repels me. I want to fling myself into his arms and feel him against me. But I know that to do so would be to become what society demands of me: the property of a man, even if that man is Arthur. Even if I have dreamed of belonging to him since October.

“Lucy,” he says, very low, and then the music ends.

I pull away, letting go of his hand. I feel as though I cannot take in enough air.

“Lucy,” he whispers, looking straight at me. It is far too easy to imagine us alone in a room together, and Arthur murmuring my name against my ear. I can imagine the weight of his ring on my finger and the warmth of his body on mine. He will know every freckle on my skin and every corner of my heart and my dark, dark mind. He will discover that I am not the bold, brilliant, laughing girl he thought I was. When I take his hand and his name for my own, I will no longer be able to hide myself from him.

And if I let myself fall for this man—if I allow myself totrulylove him—he will become yet another person I must one day lose forever.

Arthur is not the one who is afraid. Not right now.

“Lucy?” His face is creased with worry. “I’m sorry. Have I said anything? I—”

I press a hand against my chest, struggling to breathe, and then I hurry away.

I almost run back to the safety of meaningless flirtations and long looks at men in whom I haven’t the slightest interest. My slippers carry me to the very farthest corner of the drawing room, where I stay away from Arthur, and we do not speak for the remainder of the night.

CHAPTER FIVE

The mist kisses my ankles as I move barefoot through the churchyard, searching for something. It is no physical entity I seek tonight, but rather a feeling, nebulous and dim. I burn with the need for something impossible to define, and underneath my thin lawn nightgown, my skin feels raw and alive. My hands reach out and find nothing but empty air.

I am angry, I think. Or very, very sad.

There is no moon tonight and no sound but my own breathing and dead leaves crumbling beneath my feet. I can barely see anything through the thick mist aside from the vague shapes of headstones, but occasionally, through the curtain of silver, I spy other wanderers, other hands outstretched, other faces in the night, and some of them are dead.

I am dreaming again, I think.This is just a dream.

But it feels real when the ground beneath me suddenly sinks into nothingness. I gasp and pull myself back, staring at the hole dug into the earth. I have almost fallen into an empty grave. No … not empty. At the bottom is a plush white bed, and a man and a woman lie upon it. They are not corpses, as I would expect, but are very much alive and entwined, their breath emerging fast on the cold air. She has long dark hair like mine, which cascades over them both as she pulls herself on top of him. His hands slide up her thighs to grip her bottom, hard enough to bruise.

I am on fire.

My feet stumble around the open grave only to find another, and another, and another, all of them filled with beds shaking and tongues meeting and hands pressing. Silk and lace slipping above tangled haunches. My heart races in a rhythm of frustrated longing. Every nerve in my body is alight with the desire to join one of these graves, to feelhungry welcoming arms and starving wet mouths on my naked skin. But it is so very far to fall, and I know I would not be able to climb back out again.

Suddenly, a man is standing behind me. I lean into his broad chest and feel the line of his jaw on top of my head. His long, elegant hands span the width of my waist. And in the way of dreamers, I know that it is Jack Seward without having to turn around.

Why Jack?I think, dazed. I remember another man’s hazel eyes in ballroom candlelight, another man’s walnut hair, another man’s hand holding mine. Red camellias and a melancholy waltz. I know instinctively that it is neither he nor Jack I seek in the mist, but I am electric with yearning, and I will settle for whichever one of them appears. I turn around in Jack’s arms.

All at once, the churchyard vanishes and we are in the conservatory at the Stokers’ ball, alone in a dome of glass that shows the night sky. Somewhere beyond us, I hear laughter and conversation, violins and tinkling glasses. Leafy green plants and trailing vines conceal us from view, but someone could still walk in from the ballroom at any moment and discover us.

Jack’s brown eyes are liquid with desire, but when I tilt my face up to his, his arms slacken. “Kiss me,” I command, trying to hold him close, but he shakes his head.

“Not up here,” he says, pulling my hand. “Down there.”

An open grave yawns behind him, somehow—in the shaky logic of dreams—cut right into the fine stone floor. The bed at the bottom lies empty, waiting for us.

I let Jack lead me to the edge, but this grave is deeper than all the others. It would be like falling into an abyss. Jack’s grip is tight as I look around desperately, my bare feet slipping on the stone, fighting to remain above ground. The conservatory is neat and orderly, with perfect rows shaped by well-cut trees and precisely placed plants, but through the foliage, on the other side of a monstrous orchid, black as death, I see a path almost hidden from view.

I yank my hand free of Jack’s and run to the secret path. It is lined with sharp, lethal brambles and thorns thirsty for the blood of anyone brave or foolish enough to wander off the neat brick aisles of the conservatory. Other women would not risk their skin and their gowns being torn to wander off into the darkness. But I have never been one to flinch from danger.

As soon as my foot touches the path, I am rewarded. The brambles draw back and bow as though for some lost queen. Sinuous strands of mist beckon me into a garden beneath the night sky. Marble statues, towering and elegant, reach for me. Here, a woman arching her back, cold breasts exposed. There, a man whose robe slips down the line of his hips, his gaze feral. I touch hands and limbs like ice, all the while aflame in my own skin.

And then, in the center of these silent marble people, I find a man.

He wears the mist like a cloak and stands so still that I take him to be another statue at first. I cannot make out his features in the moonless dark, but somehow I feel I know him, and that I would recognize his face. I sense him watching me, surprised that I am there. The mist outlines his form—that of a big, powerfully built man, slightly taller than Arthur, broader than Quincey Morris. He has a quiet, thoughtful presence, tipping his head to one side as he studies me with eyes I cannot see.

My longing thrums harder in my chest, for I have found that which I was seeking.

“Lucy.” His velvet baritone is like the music of a cello, warm and rich and dark. Never has my name been spoken with such unfettered yearning, not by any man who has ever wanted me. I want to sink into the depths of that voice and all the promise it holds. “Lucy.”

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