Free The Twelfth Enchantment: A Novel by David Liss Page A

foolish, but I had faith in my love for him. In the end, he came to love me as much as I could have wished, and our days together were wonderful before death separated us. I tell you this not to be maudlin, but so you will know that love is a strange thing.”
    Lucy said nothing. There was nothing to say, and she could not imagine why Miss Crawford had told her these things. Did she somehowknow about Lord Byron and wish for her to accept him on his own terms? Did she urge Lucy to marry Mr. Olson and learn to love him?
    Miss Crawford walked back over to her chair and sat, making a great show of smiling and smoothing her skirts. “But enough of that. There is something else I would discuss with you. It is regarding what transpired last night with this baron.”
    Lucy did not want to discuss curses and magic and beings made of darkness as though they were real things. As long as she did not discuss these subjects with Miss Crawford, as long as they were but her memories alone, then she might convince herself that what she had experienced had been but mistake and illusion and the self-deception of the moment. “I do not wish to be rude, but I have not the time,” said Lucy. “I must return, for I am not trusted to be gone long.”
    Miss Crawford scowled. “Why ever not?”
    On an impulse, Lucy decided to tell her, and it felt strangely liberating to say the words aloud, to own the story, and, for once, to not feel ashamed. “When I was sixteen, I ran off with a young gentleman. He said he wished to marry me, but in truth he did not. It would have been the ruin of me, and the humiliation of my family, had the plan not been disrupted, but in my absence—I was gone but only a day, but in that time …”
    Lucy did not know how to proceed, she did not know that she could. It occurred to her now that she had never spoken of the elopement to anyone. Everyone had always known about it. She had traveled north all day with Jonas Morrison, whose mood had become decidedly gloomy. He had always been wonderful with her—lively and witty and affectionate—but on their journey there had been no sign of that charming gentleman. There was no celebration of love, no kissing or hand-holding or eager chatter as they sat in the coach, and so as they drove, Lucy began to regret what she had done. Perhaps she would have regretted it anyhow, for it was one thing to dream of doing a naughty thing, to plan and make preparations for it, but it was quite another to act upon those desires.
    Jonas Morrison hardly looked at her, instead staring out the window,or scribbling with a pencil into a tiny black bound volume he kept in his waistcoat pocket. Lucy felt his silence like an accusation, and a hundred times she turned to Mr. Morrison to tell him that she had made a mistake, that she wished to return, but something in his look made her fearful to speak. For months he had been the man she had always dreamed she would marry, but at that moment he had become someone entirely different.
    It had rained that day, and the roads were not good. They made it only to Dartford before they had to stop for the night, but when they entered the inn, they found Mr. Derrick waiting for them. Lucy never discovered how he had overtaken them or known where they would stop, but he was there, standing by the fire, tears running freely, and she almost fainted as she thought that she had utterly broken her father’s heart. She’d stepped forward to hug him, to beg his forgiveness and explain that she had done nothing wrong and they could go back to the way things had been, but something stopped her. She took two steps and froze because she understood that those tears were not for her. All at once, she realized he had come on business far more serious than her elopement.
    “It is Emily,” he said before she could utter a word. “Our Emily. She—this morning, she never awoke. She is gone. You were both gone.”
    Much of what came next was lost to her. Perhaps she