Page 40 of Now Comes the Mist

She moves to sit close to me, leaning her cheek on my back. “Do you remember what your father used to tell you? That you must be above reproach at all times?” she asks, stroking my hair when she feels me go still at the mention of Papa. “I think about that advice often because it is howIlive my life, too. I know you think I am a coward—”

“I think nothing of the sort,” I say, shocked.

“Overly careful, then. For hiding in the safety of rules.” Mina presses a kiss to my back, her lips warm through my nightdress. “My family never had money or status. I was never going to make a grand match like yours. I would never have even seen high society if not for you.”

I close my eyes. My heart is still beating a rhythm of displeasure, but I am listening.

“I want to be a credit to Jonathan. I want us to be respected and admired, tobelong. To be above reproach … even if my true thoughts, deep inside and known only to you, are not.” I feel her smile against my back. “Things are changing. A new century is almost upon us, my Lucy, and we will see the world alter, bit by bit, until the next generation of women is freer than we are, and the next, and the next. But change doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, just as you and Arthur must. And won’t it be sweeter to wait for something so special?”

“Let’s just go to sleep,” I say shortly, lying back down. “I’m exhausted.”

Mina wraps her arms around me, cuddling close. When her breathing is as steady as the tide, I slip away to her room and into her cold,abandoned bed. In my agitated state, it takes much longer to fall asleep, and I begin to fear that I will toss and turn uselessly until dawn.

But between one breath and the next, I am on the cliffs beneath the night sky once more. A massive bank of clouds shrouds the moon, revealing jagged pale veins of light that bleed over the ocean. The wind is restless, turbulent, and cold, and I hug myself as I hurry up the path.

The stranger is on the bench as usual, but he does not greet me with a smile or open arms tonight. His rigid posture cuts through the curtain of mist, and he keeps his eyes fixed on the raging waters below as I take a seat beside him. “It is very late. I was beginning to think you would not answer my call tonight,” he says, his voice clipped and as chilly as the wind.

I shiver in my thin nightdress. “I was delayed.”

“Were you?”

I glance at him, never having heard him speak so coldly to me. The wind blows a fold of my nightdress over his knee, and he gets up abruptly, as though he cannot bear to be touched by any part of me. He goes to stand near the fence with his back to me.

“Delayed by what or whom?” he asks. It is clear he expects some sort of apology or justification from me for being tardy to my own dream.

“What can it possibly matter? I am here with you now,” I say, irritated, to which he remains silent. The air hangs heavy with his expectation.

My annoyance rises as I watch the waves churn, beaten by the powerful wind. The roiling clouds move to reveal a corner of the moon. In the dim light, I see a sea bird struggling against the gale, and I feel angrier than ever that a mindless wild creature might understand me better than the people who profess to love me. I am in no mood tonight to be treated like a willful child.

The man turns and starts walking away from me, his broad shoulders stiff with anger.

“Where are you going?” I demand, rising from the bench. He ignores me. “If you refuse to give me even your name, then I can’t be expected to tell you every detail of my day.”

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know that I have made a terrible mistake.

The wind stops gusting, the waves freeze their frenetic stirring, and the clouds halt their uneasy movement across the sky. A strange, thick, heavy silence settles over us, and I am suddenly seized by the absolute certainty that I will be struck dead by lightning where I stand.

The man stops walking but keeps his back to me. “I see that my company has become distasteful to you,” he says, his soft deep voice carrying an undercurrent of wrath. “Perhaps it is time we stopped meeting if you feel you do not wish to continue the friendship.”

“Why are you saying this?” I ask, my anger shifting at once into the panic of never seeing him again. “I have come to you gladly, willingly, every night you have called to me. Whenever I am not with you, I long to be. Of course I wish to continue the friendship.”

He turns around, his face impassive and his eyes fixed on a point above my head, as though I am invisible. “I want this to be clear, Lucy. You cannot hide anything from me.”

I stare at him. Mina had said those exact words to me as we lay in bed together earlier—though how different her meaning had been from his. As her face appears in my mind, I feel an odd sensation akin to needles prickling at my consciousness. Somehow, I can sense my thoughts being violently sifted through, and every thread of everything I have ever thought being ripped from the seams of my brain. I gasp at the sudden pain, my hands flying to my head.

Colors flash before my eyes, buried memories and scenes that have long passed. Mina’s golden hair flying as she runs on the beach, laughing; her cheek pressed against mine as we stand before the mirror, dressed for a party; her sky-blue eyes sparkling at me from across a crowded ballroom; our hands clasped, our lips meeting, as wild and reckless as the summer wind.

Every word, every look, and every touch I have ever shared with Mina has been laid bare, plucked from my mind like a bleeding tendril of a vein from my skin.

“You could have saved us all of this trouble had you only told me why you were late,” the man says quietly. “All I wanted was an answer.”

The pain in my head subsides as though it had never been there, but I keep my trembling hands on my temples, afraid it will return. Tears leak from my eyes as I take in gasps of air. “I thought you were my friend,” I whisper. “I trusted you. Why would you hurt me like this?”

“Because you hurt me first,” he says, and his voice is as gentle as it has always been. He looks at me for the first time tonight, his gaze full of sorrow and regret, and pulls me against him, stroking my hair just the way Mina had. “You made me feel that I am not important to you.”

I am crying in earnest now from the pain, confusion, and relief of being once more what I had been to him. “I thought of you all day,” I murmur into his chest. “I missed you all day.”

He hugs me tighter to him, bending his head protectively over mine. “I thought of you, too. I was waiting for nightfall just so I could see you again, my little Lucy, my kindred soul,” he says longingly, and with his words, the wind gusts, the sea crashes against the rocks, the clouds resume their swirling, and I feel that I can breathe deeply again.

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