Page 21 of Now Comes the Mist

Hope knifes through my despair. “Then do not say it with words.”

I do not think. I do not hesitate. In one step, I close the distance between us. I press all of me against all of him and pull his mouth down upon mine. His soft, warm lips taste of both sugar and salt, an intoxicating combination that stokes my hunger. I feel the delicious rough scrape of his chin and smell pine and brandy and cigars. His heart drums against my palm and I wonder if he can feel mine thundering, too. I lean into his long, solid frame and gasp him in like air. He wraps his arms around me, locking me tightly against him as we kiss with starving desperation.

I have never been kissed like this outside of my dreams, and as his silken lips move hungrily on mine, I regret all the time I have spent on this earthnotkissing. I feel slick and wet and formless, a bank of snow melting in the heat of his mouth. I am grateful for his arms around me, for my legs seem unable to hold up my body. Ineedmore. I clench the lapels of his coat, deepening the kiss, and slide my tongue into his mouth like he is a confection for the tasting. And my elegant and reserved Arthur utters a growl deep in his throat as his tongue meets mine. My hands move to the burning skin above his cravat. His blood is rushing, and his pulse is racing, all for me. Forme. I wrap my fingers around his neck. In this moment, he is once again powerless. In this moment, he is mine.

And then he ends the kiss.

One second, we are exploring the lining of each other’s lips, and then the next, he is a full ten feet away with his back turned to me, shoulders heaving and hands clenched into fists.

I hug myself, shivering from the chill of his absence. “Arthur? What is it?”

He lifts his trembling fists to either side of his head and breathes in and out.

“What happened?” I ask, moving toward him.

At the sound of my feet on the path, he darts even farther away. I glimpse his flushed face, eyes pinched shut as though in pain and distress. “No,” he says shakily. “Don’t come any closer, Lucy. I’m not myself. If we go on, I wouldn’t be able to … we shouldn’t …”

Hurt knifes through my gut. I offered myself to him freely. I gave him the honor of my first kiss when there were dozens of other men who would have promised me the moon for it.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Arthur says in a low voice, as though to himself. He shakes his head. “You and me. This is not the way it should be … not like this.”

“You don’t want me,” I whisper.

His eyes pop open. “Lucy.”

“You don’t want me,” I repeat, my eyes stinging with tears for the second time tonight.

“Lucy, you know this isn’t right. We are not meant to—”

I back away, struggling to breathe. The pain in my chest is almost unbearable. “You don’t feel for me as I do for … oh, Arthur!”

“Please wait,” he begs, his hands clasped as though in prayer. “Just hear me—”

“I wanted to see how you truly felt about me tonight,” I say, and under my desolation is a rising wave of shame. “And now I know for certain.”

“Lucy, wait,” he says despairingly.

But I am no longer willing to stay with a man who does not want me. “Goodbye, Arthur,” I say, unable to see his face through the haze of tears.

And then I turn and run.

CHAPTER NINE

Hours later, I am still tossing in bed in a frenzy of embarrassment and frustration, unable to calm myself. When sleep finds me at last, I am suddenly standing in a grove of trees with no notion of how I got there until I see the mist swirling around my ankles, a garden of white marble statues, and moonlight glinting on a great glass-domed conservatory. I am dreaming again. My chest is tight, and my breath comes fast. I amfuriousand I cannot remember why.

“Lucy!” Arthur calls.

The revelation comes with both pain and relief. It isArthurwith whom I am enraged. I stay motionless beneath the trees, petulant even in my dreams.

“Lucy, come here,” he pleads. “I have something to say to you.”

He sounds so desperate that I reluctantly follow his voice to the conservatory. The mist is cold upon my feet as I wend my way through the headstones in the grass. A chill light illuminates the building, which is humid and warm and choked with a jungle of twisting plants. Gaping wide in the center of the stone floor is an open grave, next to which Arthur is waiting for me.

He looks remorsefully at me. “I’m sorry, Lucy. I’m sorry I didn’t drink the tea.”

A table stands in the corner. The steaming teapot releases coils of rich, fragrant jasmine.

“Will you forgive me?” Arthur holds out his hand. He looks like a lost little boy and his eyes are strange tonight, black and ringed with thick spider leg lashes. “Jump with me.”

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