David Liss - The Twelfth Enchantment - A Novel

“I will be your protector. While I live, you will want for nothing and fear nothing.”

“While you live. And if you are taken ill or trampled by a horse? Your proposal insults me, sir, and I wish you had not made it. I wish—I wish I had not seen you more.”

He reached out and took her gloved hand in his. “I want only that you rise above what these little fools demand of you. If I were as rich as your uncle, I would give you money to live independently. I would do this gladly because the world would be better for you living in it free and unfettered. I do not have such money, but I offer you what I can. I offer you a life with me. ”

“I must go,” said Lucy, pulling her hand away.

She turned and walked hurriedly. Byron called out her name two times. He did not call out a third. She hardly had time to feel the pain of another avenue of escape closing itself to her, to make sense of her sadness and disappointment and disillusionment, when Lucy felt a hand fall hard on her shoulder. She turned to face Mrs. Quince who grimaced at her in mad delight.

“Now comes the reckoning,” she said, and led Lucy back to her uncle’s house.

10

L UCY REMAINED IN HER ROOM, NOT COMING OUT FOR DINNER, and not for breakfast the next morning, though by then she was famished. She did not want to face her uncle or Mrs. Quince. She felt ashamed for having kissed Byron, and yet she could not regret it. He was a wretched man, selfish and destructive, she understood that now, but she had kissed him before she knew that, and it had been wonderful. She could not, therefore, be sorry. Not entirely.

She remained hidden because she did not want to hear herself upbraided. She did not want to be called a slut. She did not want to listen to the story of her near elopement with Jonas Morrison recounted once more, revealed as the foreshadowing of all of Lucy’s mistakes yet to come. Most of all, she did not want to be made to feel the full extent of her powerlessness.

An hour or two after she awoke, she heard Mrs. Quince’s footsteps outside her door, and then the scrape of something being set down. Once she was sure no one awaited her in the hallway, Lucy peered out to discover a tray with some bread and old butter and dried prunes, along with a cup of cold chocolate. Lucy brought the tray into her room and stared at it for a long time, deciding if eating what Mrs. Quince had brought would amount to a capitulation. Eventually hunger won out, though resentment and helplessness dulled all pleasure the food might have otherwise provided.

Lucy set the tray out when she was done, and lay on her bed all day, staring at the cracks in the plaster and wishing Miss Crawford would arrive with news of her impending independence. Nothing of that sort happened. At dinnertime, Mrs. Quince left another tray, which Lucy retrieved, ate from, and then set out again. The same transpired in the morning, and Lucy began to realize that she was not so much avoiding an upbraiding as making herself a willing participant in her own imprisonment. Her uncle and Mrs. Quince now had from her precisely what they most wanted—to keep her locked away, passive and helpless, until the time of the wedding was upon her.

Knowing that she was complicit in her uncle’s plans was not the same as knowing what to do about it, and Lucy attempted to devise some strategy that did not involve her sitting in her room waiting to be dragged to the altar or rescued deus ex machina by a timely message from Miss Crawford—or perhaps heroic intervention by a contrite Byron, ready now with an offer of marriage. These fantasies did not alleviate her suffering, but only rubbed salt in her wounds.

There was nothing to do but wait and hope for the best. It had not been so very long ago that she had been resigned to marry Mr. Olson. Would doing so now really be so terrible? If she did not account for the will, the inexplicable warnings, and the interest, however inappropriate, of Byron, then perhaps hers was not the worst imaginable lot. Maybe Lucy simply had to learn to look at things as she had been used to doing before. Certainly, if she remained in her room for the next six weeks she would go mad. She was therefore resolved to go downstairs and face her uncle and Mrs. Quince. She would endure the awkwardness of the first conversation, and then she could return to her old life—at least until she devised an alternative.

Much of the morning and early afternoon passed in efforts to screw up her courage, and then she heard a carriage rolling to a stop before her uncle’s house, and then there were the sounds of voices below—distant and muffled.

Her uncle had so few visitors, and Lucy understood that a rare opportunity presented itself. If she were to face him and Mrs. Quince before callers, then surely their ire would be hidden, or at least dampened. And then, once these visitors left, the first encounter would already be over. Wanting to take advantage of this opportunity, Lucy dressed herself, tended to her hair, and made herself look as well as she could without aid, and went downstairs, a smile plastered to her face and feeling like an idiot.

When she walked into the parlor, a spike of dread pierced her. Sitting with her uncle and Mrs. Quince, both of whom appeared to be exceedingly uncomfortable, was Mr. William Buckles, her sister’s husband, as well as that man’s patroness, the widow Lady Harriett Dyer.

“Ah, yes, Miss Derrick,” said Mr. Buckles, rising to his feet. He bowed deeply and awkwardly, for he was a towering, pear-shaped sort of man. He was dressed, as she had always seen him, in his clerical black and a white cravat, which always appeared out of sorts somehow with his perpetually red complexion. This, combined with his breathless way of speaking, gave the impression that Mr. Buckles had just come from running up several flights of stairs.

“Yes,” he said, gasping for breath as he returned to his seat. “Yes, it is Miss Derrick. The young lady we’ve come to see.” He took out a handkerchief and ran it along his high forehead—for his browning-apple-colored hair was receding like an army in full flight.

“Has Martha come?” Lucy asked, forgetting all manners, and not caring that she did so. “Have you brought the baby?”

“No,” answered Lady Harriet, in her clipped voice. “ We have business with you. Not your sister, and so she has been left at home to tend to the child.” She did not rise when she spoke to Lucy.

Lucy did not trouble herself to hide her disappointment. She could not imagine why Mr. Buckles would come without Martha, and nothing could have cheered Lucy so much as a visit from her sister. But here, instead, was Lady Harriett, who owned an estate not ten miles from the home in which Lucy had grown up. Mr. Buckles had been Lady Harriett’s curate before he had inherited Lucy’s father’s house, and in exchange for these attentions, he was slavishly devoted to her.

Lady Harriett looked well enough for a woman of her age, which Lucy supposed to be fifty or thereabouts. She was trim and fine-boned, with a sharp nose and tiny eyes that were penetrating for all their smallness. Her skin was white and vaguely waxy, and her lips extraordinarily red. Lucy always supposed she must have been pretty as a young woman, though she also supposed her unkind spirit must have dampened her attractiveness considerably. Adding to her sour demeanor was a black gown and headdress, full widow’s attire that might have been in the mode some time before the final quarter of the previous century. Lady Harriett had worn widow’s black since her husband, Sir Reginald, had died a few years earlier. The precise details of his demise were unknown to Lucy, as it had happened when she was in mourning for her sister Emily.

Now here was Lady Harriett, glaring at Lucy with inexplicable contempt. Contrary to all logic, Lucy looked to her uncle for guidance, but he appeared nothing but uneasy, like a man who had released his dogs and now feared they would devour him. Mrs. Quince, for her part, sat with a look of smug satisfaction.