Page 27 of Now Comes the Mist

He stops the kiss, panting, but does not move away. We look into each other’s wet eyes, and he holds me even tighter against him until I am pulled to the edge of the bench. I wrap my arms around his neck and over his shoulder, I see Mamma and her friends beaming at us through the windows of the house. Behind them are the other guests, Jack and Quincey among them, now fully realizing why I did not accept them. They are gentlemen, and they will toast Arthur and me with genuine congratulations even through their disappointment.

I think of how Mina will squeal and hug me when she finds out about my engagement.

With my acceptance, I have made so many people happy.

But am I happy?I wonder as I stroke Arthur’s hair.

I look up at the stars in the darkening sky with a sorrow and a longing for something I cannot name.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Are you going out, dear?” Mamma asks, glancing up from the rosewood desk in the parlor. “Could you send this letter for me if the post office is on your way?”

I take the envelope. “I am going in the opposite direction, to the cliffs, but I would be happy to take a detour through town.”

Sunlight streams through the window beside the desk, making my mother’s fair hair glow. Her eyes are clear in the light, and she looks so sweet and pretty in her lavender gown that I bend down and kiss her cheek impulsively. She laughs and takes my hand, gazing up at me as though trying to untangle the thoughts in my head. It is a skill at which she has never been adept in all the years of being my mother. “Are you happy, my Lucy?” she asks gently. “Trulyhappy?”

I squeeze her hand. “Of course I’m happy. It is June, and it is a beautiful day, and I am in Whitby with you. Why shouldn’t I be happy?” My tone is light, but her question sends a thrill of recognition through me. Perhaps Mamma sees more than I think.

She looks down at the gold ring on my hand. The small perfect gems—a diamond with an emerald on either side—were a family heirloom given to Arthur’s mother, Lady Godalming, for her engagement, and had been taken out of the vault for me. “I worry that in my hope to see you settled and cared for, I’ve pushed you out of the nest too soon.”

I wrap my arms around her, and she leans her greying head against me. “I turn twenty in September, which is too old to be in a nest anyway. But I love you more than anything, and I want you to come and live with us. I can’t stand the thought of you all alone, and our house will have ever so much space. The servants will prepare a suite of rooms for you.”

Mamma looks up at me, amused. “Live with a pair of newlyweds? Your husband-to-be may not be happy with that arrangement. And shouldn’t you ask for his permission first?”

“Arthur adores me. He will do whatever I want.” I brush a tendril of hair off her forehead, thinking of the letters he and I have exchanged since I left for Whitby.

It has been two weeks to the day since our engagement. That night, he and I had returned to the house to great cheer, and Jack and Quincey had toasted us with all the generosity of spirit I knew they would have. Later, when the guests had departed, Mamma had knowingly left Arthur and me alone in the parlor to say goodbye. He had written me the first letter and had posted it before I had even left. He insists that he is awkward when it comes to romance, but I find his love letters winsome and appealing in their simplicity. Nothing would mar my happiness but for the guilt and dread that fill me whenever I read his words. He is so earnest, so devoted, so innocent of anything that could stain me or our marriage.

“Mamma, thereissomething I would speak to you about.” I sit on a chair upholstered in sky-blue silk. We have taken the same lodgings every summer since I was born, and over time, the rooms have become as much a reflection of Mamma’s delicate tastes as our London home. “I don’t know if you will understand, but I am nervous about Arthur knowing everything about me once we marry. He will see it all, won’t he? Not just the good.”

Mamma chuckles and holds up the hand that still bears her wedding ring. “Let me remind you that I, too, have been married. It’s natural to worry about your husband finding out your faults.” Her eyes twinkle. “My mother called mewild. She believed no man could tame me and I would join the circus, riding horses for a cheering crowd and bringing shame upon our name. But then I met your dear papa, and he loved me … all of me, as Arthur will love all ofyou.”

“I have no aspirations for the circus,” I say, and she smiles. “But I find it difficult to have to give up so much. Dancing at parties, for instance. You know a ballroom is my favorite battleground. But now it will not be appropriate to dance or even speak with another man for long.”

“But you wouldn’t wish the ballroom to be a battleground forever, would you? Now that the war has been won, and Arthur is yours?”

“I suppose not.” I sigh. “And I will not have time for books or walks or daydreaming anymore, as mistress of the Holmwood estate. Not with a household to maintain, servants to instruct, and guests to entertain. AndI will have to give up Papa’s jasmine tea and incense entirely, as Arthur cannot abide strong smells.”

“Neither can I, though I endured them when Papa was alive,” Mamma admits. “I know you want to honor your father and ancestors, my love. But Arthur will be a lord with a proper English household. Surely it will not be such a sacrifice to please him, will it?”

I shake my head slowly and turn to gaze out of the window. Unlike our bedchambers, the parlor does not overlook the sea but the garden instead, where climbing honeysuckle vines perfume the air with their fragrance. Still, I can sense the presence of the ocean beyond: the tang of its salt, the waves crashing onto the shore, and the yearning emptiness beneath all that water. Arthur is the garden and I am the sea. They can exist together in harmony, but the sea will always have depths that the flowers cannot begin to fathom.

“Well, thank you for the advice, Mamma.” I rise with all the gaiety I do not feel. “I will be back in time for tea. Tell Agatha to serve those cakes I love with the sugar rosebuds.”

“I told her to buy them for you as soon as I woke this morning,” Mamma says fondly.

I blow her a kiss and slip on my pale flowered hat as I walk into town, the image of a carefree young woman of leisure taking in the picturesque sights of Whitby, with its winding cobblestone streets and the North Sea glittering beyond. Carriages clatter up and down, and ladies in summer frocks walk arm in arm, looking in shop windows and blushing at passing gentlemen.

I post Mamma’s letter, enjoying the admiring glances from passersby. Even outside of a London ballroom, and with the expectations of what it means to be a woman of my family ever so slightly relaxed, I will still welcome smiles and compliments and gallantries. I stroll out of town exactly as people see me: a happy-hearted, light-footed girl relishing summertime.

But all of it slips from me, bit by bit, as I climb the one hundred and ninety-nine steps to the cliffs and the old ruined abbey atop them. I am grateful for my light lawn dress, for the air is heavy with heat even at this early hour. On such a sunny June morning, there are fewer people up here—most of them preferring to walk by the water, where the breeze brings the strongest relief—and I feel free to dream and wander without scrutiny. The sea sparkles with such manic light that it is almost painful to look at, and the deep blue of the water blends into the paler azure of the sky, unmarred by clouds. The air smells of salt and beach grass, tinged with the fragrance of the roses that grow just out of reach of the sand. I fillmy lungs with the breath of Whitby as I take the path fringed with thick yellowy grass and blue and white flowers.

I study the crumbling grey stone skeleton of the abbey, surrounded by willows bending their heavy heads over shady benches. In the shadow of the ruins is a graveyard overlooking the cliffs that plunge down to the ocean. My nursemaid often took me here as a child to run off my energy and give my parents a rest, and I have come back every summer since, sometimes with Mina when she was my governess. But today, I am deliciously alone, free to stare out to sea for hours, wander among the graves and read the names that have become familiar to me, or stroll around the towering hollows of the abbey without anyone to interrupt.

Here, I can be completely myself.

I settle myself in my favorite spot, a stone bench beneath an ancient willow, and forget the oppressive heat as I lose myself in the view: glittering water as far as the eye can see, dotted here and there with white sails or grey boulders, all hugged by a strip of gold sand. The grass beneath my feet ends a short distance away, where a low wooden fence has been installed to keep people from tumbling to their deaths. Just on the other side is a steep drop hundreds of feet high, where the cliffs pour their stone tears down to the water’s edge. My bench is set at an uphill angle from this drop, and it is exhilarating to imagine it lifting and tipping me over the side.

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