David Liss - The Twelfth Enchantment

“I am curious,” said Mr. Morrison. “I long to know what you have learned from the Mutus Liber . What shall you do with your new knowledge and power? Do you have plans?”

“Do you ask this on behalf of the Rosicrucians?”

“No, on behalf of myself.”

“I have hardly even begun to decipher its mysteries,” she said, “but what I have learned so far is beyond wonder and astonishment. What I have been able to do staggers the imagination. As to what I shall do next, I should like to end the war with France.”

He studied her. “You believe you can do that?”

Lucy nodded. “I know I can, though it may take some time, and I may require the resources of an organization such as yours.”

“It is at your disposal,” he said, reaching into his coat. He handed Lucy a sealed envelope, thick with documents. “As is much else. I know you need not fear for your sister’s generosity, but it is good to be independent as well. Before she died, Mary Crawford initiated a series of costly legal investigations on your behalf. Apparently she also instructed her solicitor that if anything were to happen to her, I was to take up the cause. Perhaps she feared more funds would be required and knew I would be willing to pay. In any event, the matter has been brought to a close more speedily than anyone had expected, I believe because of documents that have surfaced following Mr. Buckles’s death.”

Lucy took the documents. “What is this?”

“Information relating to your father’s will, and proof that you were cheated. Your father’s library, and your share of your inheritance, is now yours. There will be some trips to London required to sort it all out officially, but the work is largely done.”

“I am so grateful to you,” she said.

He shook his head. “I am but the messenger, though I am happy to deliver such happy intelligence.”

They walked another few moments in silence, and then Mr. Morrison stopped. He took Lucy’s hand in his and gazed directly upon her. “Do you remember Mary’s last words to me, Lucy?”

Lucy nodded. “She said that you must not let the past stop you. I believe she was trying to tell you something important, though I did not understand the message.”

“I understood her, for even in her altered state she knew me well. I required time to recover in body and in spirit. I have done both, and find myself compelled to ask you, Lucy, if you could ever forgive me for what happened between us those years ago? I know deceiving you was inexcusable. I know I made you miserable and you had every right to hate me, but I hope—I have dared to hope—that you might see things differently now.”

Her face felt as though it were on fire. “You withheld the truth from me out of loyalty to my father and because you believed it was best for me to do so. You deprived yourself for my sake. I cannot blame you for doing what you thought was right.”

He fixed her hard with his eyes, as though attempting to take in every detail of her face. “You said shortly before we arrived in Newstead that you had come to hate me less than you had. I have dared to hope, Lucy, that your feelings were something more than a diminished hatred—that they had turned in an entirely new direction.”

She wanted to look away, to dissemble, to pretend that she did not understand him, but that was no longer who she was. She did not play such games. She looked at him and nodded. “They have.”

“I had convinced myself my love for you was gone, something never to be recovered. It was a lie, I told myself, because I could not endure the truth. But your courage and cleverness and beauty and spirit have awoken in me what I have tried so hard to keep dormant. Should you reject me, I must still always be in your debt for rekindling in me a sense of hope and wonder I never again thought I would feel. I pray you will not reject me, however. You are your own woman now and must depend upon no one. You are free to make your own choices without fear of want, and so I may ask you now what I have so wanted to ask, and know your answer will be dictated only by your heart. Lucy, I pray you will agree to be my wife.”

Lucy let go of his hand and stepped away from him. “Perhaps you don’t understand, but as a result of my actions in London, my reputation has suffered, and I could not ask—”

“I don’t give a damn about your reputation. You speak of ending the war with France, and yet you worry what the grocer whispers to the fishmonger? Or worse. You think I might care what gossips say! I care only for you and who you are and what I know you to be. I care for what I have seen with my own eyes and loved with my own heart, and I ask you again if you will marry me.”

Lucy stepped back toward him and took both his hands in her own. “Dear Lord, yes. I love you, and I will marry you.”

He leaned forward and kissed her. It was soft and sweet and tentative, as though he was afraid he might break her, and she loved him even more for his gentleness.

“We must marry soon,” he said.

“Very soon,” she agreed.

A tear formed in Mr. Morrison’s eye, and he turned away, gently released her hand, and then began to walk. However, he stopped at once and moved his neck back and forth in a curious fashion.

“Is something wrong?” asked Lucy, hardly able to conceal a smile.

He continued to move his neck, to twist his shoulders. “It is the ball from Byron’s pistol. The surgeon could not remove it, and I feel it always when I move, but I do not feel it now.”

“No,” said Lucy, grinning quite freely. “I don’t suppose you do.” She held out her fist and then opened it, palm upward, to show Mr. Morrison a compressed piece of metal, a flattened and blasted ball, glittering in the summer sun.

Mr. Morrison stared at it. “But how? How can it be possible?”

She could not suppress a grin. “The Mutus Liber has changed my notion of what is possible and what is not.”

Mr. Morrison opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and then tried again. “But how did you do it? How can it be?”

Lucy began to walk back toward the house. After a moment, she turned around to glance at the still motionless Mr. Morrison. Everything felt right to her, as right as it had in a very long time, and that unfamiliar sensation that washed over her was happiness, and something more. It was the feeling of living a life that was hers, of being herself, of being home. Things felt right , and she liked the sensation very much indeed.

Lucy laughed and then indulged herself a coquettish shrug, before turning away to walk, knowing that it mattered not where she went, for he would follow. “How?” she repeated over her shoulder. “Surely, you know the answer to your own question, Mr. Morrison. It is magic.”

A Spectacle of Corruption

The Coffee Trader

A Conspiracy of Paper

The Ethical Assassin

The Devil’s Company

The Whiskey Rebels

DAVID LISS is the author of The Whiskey Rebels, The Ethical Assassin, A Spectacle of Corruption, The Coffee Trader , and A Conspiracy of Paper , winner of the 2000 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. He lives in San Antonio with his wife and children.

The Twelfth Enchantment is a work of historical fiction. Apart from well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.