The Taker

THIRTY-TWO

The highway to Quebec City runs two lanes in each direction and is as dark as an abandoned airstrip. The leafless trees and featureless scenery remind Luke of Marquette, the tiny town in the lonely upper corner of Michigan where his ex-wife settled. Luke has been up once to see his girls, right after Tricia moved in with her childhood sweetheart. Tricia and Luke’s two children now live in her boyfriend’s house, on a cherry farm, and his son and daughter stay with them a couple of nights a week, too.

During the visit, Tricia seemed to Luke no happier with her sweetheart than she had been with him, or maybe she was just embarrassed to be seen by her ex in a run-down house with a twelve-year-old Camaro in the driveway. Not that Luke’s house in St. Andrew was much better.

The girls, Winona and Jolene, were unhappy, but that was to be expected; they’d just moved to town and knew no one. It almost broke Luke’s heart to sit with them in the pizza place where he’d taken them for lunch. They were silent and too young to know whom to blame or be mad at. They sulked when he tried to draw them out, and he couldn’t bear the thought of taking them back to their mother, saying good-bye when all of them were so raw and hurting. He also knew it couldn’t be helped: what they were going through couldn’t be solved in a weekend.

By the end of his time there, as he was saying his farewells on the cement steps in front of Tricia’s front door, things had improved for him and the girls. Their panic had subsided, they had found some solid ground under their tiny feet. They cried when he hugged them good-bye and waved as Luke pulled away in his rental car, but it still tore at his heart to leave them.

“I have two daughters of my own,” Luke blurts out, overcome by the urge to share something of his life with Lanny.

She looks over at him. “Was that their picture, at your house? How old are they?”

“Five and six.” He feels a tiny glow of pride, all he has left of fatherhood. “They live with their mother. And the guy she’s planning to marry.” Someone else was taking care of his daughters, now.

She shifts so she faces him. “How long were you married?”

“Six years. We’re divorced now,” he adds. “It was a mistake to get married, I see it now. I’d just finished my residency in Detroit. My parents’ health was starting to fail and I knew I’d be coming back to St. Andrew… I guess I didn’t want to come back alone. I couldn’t imagine finding someone there. I knew everybody, since I had grown up there. I think I saw Tricia as my last chance.”

Lanny shrugs, an undercurrent of discomfort in her frown. Uncomfortable with too much honesty, Luke decides, whether she’s the one being honest or not. “What about you? Have you ever married?” he asks and his question prompts a laugh from her.

“I didn’t hide myself away from the rest of the world all this time, if that’s what you think. No, I came to my senses eventually. I saw that Jonathan would never commit to me. I saw it wasn’t in him.” Luke thinks of the man in the morgue. Women would throw themselves at a man like that. Never-ending come-ons and propositions, so much want and desire, so much temptation. How could you expect a man like that to commit to one woman? It was only natural for Lanny to want Jonathan to be faithful, but could you blame the man for disappointing her?

“So you found someone else and fell in love?” Luke tries to keep the hopefulness out of his voice. She laughs again.

“For a man who married in desperation and ended up divorced, you sound like a hopeless romantic. I said I was married, I didn’t say I fell in love.” She twists so that she’s facing away from him again. “That’s not true, exactly. I loved all of my husbands, just not the same way I loved Jonathan.”

“All of them? How many times have you been married?” Luke again gets the uncomfortable feeling he had in Dunratty’s, looking at the mussed bed.

“Four times. A girl gets lonely every fifty years or so,” she says, smirking, making fun of herself. “They were all nice, each in their own way. They took care of me. Accepted me for what I am, however much I could share with them.”

These glimpses into her life make him wish for more. “How much did you share with them? Did you tell any of them about Jonathan?”

Lanny tosses her head and shakes out her hair, still hiding her face from him. “I’ve never told anyone the truth about me before, Luke. You’re the only one.”

Is she just saying that for my benefit? Luke wonders. She’s trained herself to know what people want to hear. It’s the kind of skill you have to develop if you’re going to survive for hundreds of years and not be found out. All part of the subtle art of weaving people into your life, binding them to you, getting them to like you, maybe even to love you.

Luke wants to hear her story, to know all about her, but can he trust her to tell him the truth, or is she just manipulating him until they are safe from the police? As Lanny settles back into thoughtful silence, Luke drives on, wondering what will happen when they arrive in Quebec City, if she will disappear and leave him with only her story.

THIRTY-THREE

I had planned my trip back to St. Andrew with the enthusiasm customary for a funeral. Using a sack of coin from Adair, I booked passage on a cargo ship sailing from Boston to Camden, and from Camden onward, I would travel in a specially hired coach with a driver. The only transportation to and from St. Andrew had traditionally been the provisioner’s wagon, which brought fresh goods for the Watfords’ store twice a year. I planned to arrive in style, showing up in a handsome trap complete with cushions softening its hard benches and curtains over the windows, to let them know I was not the same woman who’d left.

It was early fall, and while Boston was only chilly and damp, the passes on the approach to northern Aroostook County would already have snow. I was surprised to be nostalgic for the snow of St. Andrew, the high, deep drifts and landscapes of unbroken white, the scalloped edges of pine trees peeking out from under thick coats of snow. As a child, I’d look out the frosted windowpanes of my parents’ cabin and watch the wind blow horizontal sprays of snow as fine as dust, and be grateful to be inside the cabin with the fire and five other bodies keeping me toasty warm.

So that morning, I stood in the Boston harbor, waiting to board the ship that would take me back to Camden in completely different circumstances than when I’d arrived: two trunks of beautiful clothes and gifts, a purse with more currency than the entire village saw in five years, and luxurious travel accommodations. I’d left St. Andrew a disgraced young woman with no prospects and was returning as a refined lady who’d stumbled across a secret provenance and lucked into riches.

Obviously, I owed Adair much. But it did not make me less sad about what I was doing.

While at sea, I hid in my cabin, still overcome with guilt. In an attempt to blunt my emotions, I sat with a bottle of brandy and, with drink after drink, tried to convince myself that I was not a traitor to my former lover. I was coming to present an offer to Jonathan on Adair’s behalf, a gift one could only dream of: the ability to live forever. Any man would readily accept such a gift-even pay a fortune for it-if it were presented to him. Jonathan had been chosen for admittance to an unseen world, to learn that life as we knew it was not all there was. He could scarcely complain about what I was bringing him.

Yet I knew that this other plane of existence came with a price. I just didn’t understand what that price was yet. I didn’t feel superior to mortals, as I didn’t feel like a god. If anything, I felt I’d left the sphere of mankind and crossed to a realm of shameful secrets and regret, a dark underworld, a place of punishment. But surely I was not entirely lost. Surely there was a chance to make up for one’s sins, for atonement.

By the time I’d arrived in Camden, hired the carriage, and started my solitary trip north, the idea of rebelling against Adair began to creep into my head again. After all, my surroundings were so unlike Boston that Adair seemed so far away. I bargained with myself: if, after arriving in St. Andrew, I saw that Jonathan was happy in his life with his overbearing family and his child bride, I would spare him. I could take the consequences on myself: I would slip away and make my own way in the world, because I could never go back to Boston without Jonathan. Ironically, Adair himself had given me the means to flee: I had more than enough money to get off to a good start. These fantasies were short lived, however; I couldn’t forget Adair’s warning to do as I was ordered or suffer at his hand. Adair would never let me leave him.

In this unhappy frame of mind, I steeled myself to roll into St. Andrew that October afternoon, to face the surprise of my family and my acquaintances for being alive, and their eventual disappointment at what I had become.

I arrived on an overcast Sunday. I’d been lucky that the season wasn’t as punishing as it could be and the snow along the route had been passable. The trees were bare against a gray flannel sky and the last leaves clinging to the branches were a dead color, shriveled and curled, like bats hanging from their roosts.

The church service had just let out for the day and the townspeople spilled from the broad doors of the congregation hall onto the common. The parishioners stood conversing despite the cold and the wind, reluctant as always to forgo companionship and return home. No sign of my father; perhaps with no one to accompany him, he’d taken to going to the Catholic mass for convenience. But my eyes found Jonathan immediately, and my heart rose on seeing him. He stood on the far edge of the common where the horses and carriages were tethered and was climbing into his family’s buggy, his sisters and brother waiting in a row for their turn. Where were his mother and the captain? Their absence made me anxious. On his arm was a young woman, white with fatigue. Jonathan helped her into the front seat of the buggy. There was a bundle in her arms-a baby. The child bride had given Jonathan something I could not. At the sight of the baby, I nearly lost my courage and told the driver to turn around.

But I did not.

My carriage swept into this scene, and was immediately an object of curiosity. At my signal, the driver pulled the horses up and, heart in my throat, I sprang from the carriage into the crowd that had gathered.

My reception was warmer than I’d expected. They recognized me, despite the new clothing and styled hair and hired carriage. I was encircled by people I’d always suspected cared little for me-the Watfords, Tinky Talbot the blacksmith and his soot-smudged brood, Jeremiah Jacobs and his new bride, whose face I recalled but whose name escaped me. Pastor Gilbert bustled down from the congregation hall steps, his vestments twisted by the wind, as my former neighbors whispered around me.

“Lanore McIlvrae, as I live and breathe!”

“Look at her, all fancied up!”

Hands reached from the crowd to offer a handshake, though I saw from the corner of my eye the clucking tongues and shaking heads on the fringe. Then the crowd parted for Pastor Gilbert, who arrived red faced from exertion.

“Dear lord, is it you, Lanore?” he asked, but I scarcely heard him, I was so preoccupied by his appearance. How Gilbert had aged! He’d shrunk and his portly belly had slimmed, but his old face was wrinkled like an apple forgotten in the cold cellar and his eyes were rheumy and red. He clasped my hand with a mixture of affection and trepidation. “Your family will be so happy to see you! We’d given you up for”-he blushed, as though about to let slip the wrong word-“lost. And here you have returned to us-and in such obvious good fortune.”

At the mention of my family, the expressions of the onlookers shifted, though no one said a word. Good God, what had happened to my family? And why did everyone seem so much older? Miss Watford had streaks of gray in her hair I did not recall. The Ostergaard boys were fully grown and bursting out of their hand-me-down clothing, wrists protruding from the too short sleeves of their jackets.

The crowd parted again at a commotion in the back, and into the circle stepped Jonathan. Oh, how he’d changed. He’d lost the last of his boyishness, the carefree sparkle in his dark eyes, his swagger. Handsome still, he had an air of sobriety about him. He looked me over, taking in my obvious changes and seeming saddened by them. I wanted to laugh and throw my arms around him to break his somber mood, but I didn’t.

He layered my hand between his two. “Lanny, I didn’t think we’d see you again!” Why did everyone keep saying this? “By the looks of things, Boston has been good to you.”

“It has,” I replied, offering nothing yet, wanting to pique his curiosity.

At this point, the young lady holding the infant edged through the crowd and hovered at Jonathan’s elbow. He reached back and ushered her forward.

“Lanny, you remember Evangeline McDougal. We married shortly after you left. Though there’s been enough time since your departure for us to have our first child, I daresay!” He laughed nervously. “A girl, can you believe my first child would be a girl? No luck, I say, but we’ll get it right the next time, won’t we?” he said to a red-cheeked Evangeline.

Logically, I knew that Jonathan would be married and that it was possible he’d have a child by now. Seeing his wife and daughter, however, was more difficult than I would have imagined. My lungs felt constricted. I went numb, unable to mumble congratulations. How could everything have moved so fast? I’d been gone only a few months.

“I know it seems so soon, fatherhood and all,” Jonathan said, looking down at the hat in his hands, “but old Charles was determined to see me established before he passed away.”

My throat tightened. “Your father is dead?”

“Oh yes-I forgot, you haven’t heard. Right before my wedding. It would be two years ago, I think.” He was dry-eyed and calm. “He’d become ill right after you left.”

More than two years since I’d left? How could that be? It was unreal, like something from a fairy tale. Had I fallen under a spell and slept while the rest of the world went about its business? I couldn’t speak. Jonathan squeezed my hand, breaking my trance. “We shouldn’t keep you from seeing your family. Do plan to come to the house for dinner, soon. I would like to hear what adventures prevented you from returning to us until now.”

“Yes, of course.” My mind was elsewhere: if all this change had been visited on Jonathan’s family, what of my own? What misfortune might have befallen them? And, judging from what Jonathan had said, two years had elapsed since I’d left town, though this made no sense. Did time move more quickly here, or had it passed more slowly in Boston, in the swirl of nightly parties and the languor of Adair’s rooms?

I asked the driver to stop the coach up the road from my parents’ house. The cabin had changed, there could be no denying it. Modest to begin with, it had grown shabby while I was away. My father had built it himself, like the other first settlers (the only exception being the captain, who’d brought carpenters up from Camden to make his fine house). My father had made a single-room log house designed to be built onto later. And build on he did: an alcove behind the main room to provide sleeping space for Nevin, a loft for us girls, where for many years we’d slept three abreast, like dolls on a shelf.

The house sagged like a good horse that has aged. Chinks of wadding had fallen out from between the logs. The roof was missing a few shakes. Debris had piled up on the narrow porch and the bricks in the chimney had loosened. I saw dots of reddish hide between the trees beyond the house, which meant cattle still grazed in the pastures. My family had retained at least part of the herd, but judging from the condition of the house, something drastic had happened to their fortunes.

I studied the house. The family was home from church-the wagon stood empty by the barn and I could see the ancient chestnut gelding grazing in the pen-but there was no activity around the house, just a ragged plume of smoke rising from the chimney. A mean fire on a cold day. I stole a glance at the woodpile. Neglected. The firewood barely stood three rows high with winter coming on.

Finally, I asked the driver to pull up in front of the house. I waited for a sign of movement within, but getting none, I drew up my courage, climbed out of the carriage, and approached the door.

Maeve answered my knock. Her mouth agape, she took me in from head to foot before shrieking and throwing her arms around my neck. We managed to waltz over the threshold and into the house, her happy voice filling my ears.

“Dear lord, you’re alive! Darling Lanore, we thought we’d never see you again!” Maeve wiped tears from her cheeks with the edge of her apron. “When we didn’t hear from you… the nuns wrote to Mama and Papa and told them you were most likely lost.” Maeve blinked.

“Lost?” I asked.

“Dead. Murdered.” Maeve gave me a clear-eyed look. “They said it happens all the time in Boston. Newcomers arrive in the city to be spirited off by brigands to their deaths.” Her eyes gazed up at me, rapt. “If you were not lost, sister, then what did happen? Where have you been? It’s been nearly three years.”

Nearly three years! Again, the lost time rattled me. Outside of my time in Adair’s company, the rest of the world had been like a train keeping to its own timetable, not about to slow down for me.

I was saved from making an explanation at that moment when my mother shuffled up from the open trap door to the root cellar, her apron gathered to cradle a few potatoes. She dropped everything at the sight of me, turning white as sheeting.

“It can’t be!”

My heart squeezed to a standstill. “It is, Mother. It’s your daughter.”

“Back from the dead!”

“I am no ghost,” I said through clenched jaw, trying to hold back tears, and as I hugged her, I felt the reluctance in her wiry old muscles melt away. She hugged me back with all the strength left in her, which was considerably less than I remembered.

As we spoke, she, too, wiped tears from her eyes. She looked over her shoulder at my sister, and nodded. “Fetch Nevin.”

My stomach clenched. “Must you, so soon?”

My mother nodded again. “Aye, we must. He’s the man of the house now. I’m sorry to have to tell you that your father is gone, Lanore.”

You can’t predict how you will react to news of that sort. As angry as I’d been with my father and as much as I had begun to suspect that something dire had happened, my mother’s news knocked the wind from me. I fell onto a chair. My mother and sister stood around me, hands clasped.

“It happened a year ago,” my mother said, soberly. “One of the bulls. A kick to the head. It was very sudden. He didn’t suffer.”

But they had, every day since: it was apparent in their hardened faces, the shabbiness of their clothes, and the house’s disrepair. My mother caught my eye roving discreetly.

“It’s been terribly hard on Nevin. He’s taken it on himself to run the farm, and you know it’s too big a job for one man.” My mother’s once gentle mouth had developed a hard set, her way of dealing with the merciless circumstances.

“Why don’t you hire some help, a boy from one of the other farms. Or rent out the property. Surely someone in town is looking to expand,” I said.

“Your brother won’t hear of such a thing, so do not be so reckless as to mention it to him. You know how proud he is,” she said, turning her head so I wouldn’t see the bitterness in her expression. His pride had become their misfortune.

I needed to change the subject. “Where’s Glynnis?”

Maeve flushed. “She’s working at Watford’s now. She’s stocking shelves today.”

“On the Sabbath?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Working off our debt, truth be told,” my mother said, her confession ending in an irritated sigh as she fussed with the potatoes.

Adair’s money weighed in my purse. There was no question that

I wouldn’t give that money to them, and deal with the consequences later.

The door swung open and Nevin stepped into the dim cabin, a hulking dark figure silhouetted against the overcast sky. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust and for me to see Nevin himself. He’d lost weight and gotten hard and sinewy. He’d cut his hair so close to the skull it might as well have been shaved, and his face was filthy and nicked with scars, as were his hands. He had the same scorn for me in his eyes that he’d had the day I left, fueled by his own self-pity at what had befallen them since.

He made a sound in the back of his throat at the sight of me and ducked past to the wash bucket, plunging his hands in.

I stood up. “Hello, Nevin.”

He dried his hands on a bit of rag before taking off his battered coat. He smelled of cattle, dirt, and fatigue.

“I’d like to speak to Lanore in private,” he said. My mother and sister exchanged looks, then began to head for the door.

“No, wait,” I called after them. “Let Nevin and I go outdoors. You stay where it’s warm.”

My mother shook her head. “No, we have chores that need doing before supper. You have your talk.” She shepherded my sister in front of her.

In truth, I was afraid to be left alone with Nevin. His dislike of me was like a sheer rock face; he gave me not an inch in which to begin. I’d be better off walking away, his defiance seemed to say, than to try to find a way into his heart or head.

“So you’re back,” he said, cocking an eyebrow. “But not to stay.”

“No.” There was no point in lying to him. “My home is in Boston now.”

He gave me a superior look. “I can guess from your fancy clothes what you’ve been doing. Do you think your mother or me want to know what shameful thing you’ve done with yourself? Why’d you come back?” The question I’d been dreading.

“To see everyone again,” I said, my tone pleading. “To let you know I wasn’t dead.”

“Such news could have been put in a letter. It’s been a long time with no word from you.”

“I can only apologize for that.”

“Were you in prison? Is that why you could not write?” he asked, mocking.

“I didn’t write because I wasn’t sure if it would be welcome.” What could I have said? I had been certain it was best that they never heard from me again and that was as Alejandro had advised. It’s a conceit, or a failing, of the young to think you can excise your past and it will never come looking for you.

He snorted at my excuse. “Did you ever think what effect your silence might have on Mother and Father? It very nearly killed Mother. It was the reason Father died.”

“Mother said he was killed by a bull-”

“That was how he died, for certain. His skull split open by a bull, his blood pouring into the mud with no way for us to stop it. But did you ever know Father to let his guard down around the livestock? No. It happened because he was sick at heart. After he got the letter from the nuns, he was not the same. Blamed himself for sending you away-and to think he’d be with us still if you’d let him know you were alive!” He smashed his knuckles into the table.

“I told you I was sorry. There were circumstances that prevented me-”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses. You say you weren’t in prison. You come back looking like the richest whore in Boston. I’ve some idea how difficult the years have been for you. I’ll hear no more.” He swung away from me, nursing his bloodied knuckles. “I forgot to ask-where’s the babe? Did you leave it behind with your procurer?”

My cheeks were hot as embers. “You’ll be happy to know that the child perished before it was born. A miscarriage.”

“Ah. God’s will, as they say. Punishment for your wickedness, accommodating that devil St. Andrew.” Nevin glowered, pleased with my news, happy to make his judgments. “I never could understand how a smart girl like you could be blind to that bastard. Why didn’t you listen to me? I’m a man, same as he, I know how a man thinks…” He trailed off, exasperated. I wanted to wipe the smug grimace off Nevin’s face, but I couldn’t. He might have been right. Maybe he could see into Jonathan’s mind and understand better than I, and all those years had tried to protect me from temptation. My failure had been his failure.

He wiped his knuckles again. “So, how long are you planning to stay?”

“I don’t know. A few weeks.”

“Does Mother know you’ve not returned for good? That you’re going to leave us again?” Nevin asked, with pleasure in his voice that I would break our mother’s heart again.

I shook my head.

“You can’t stay too long,” he warned, “or you’ll be snowed in till spring.”

How long would it take to convince Jonathan to come to Boston with me? Could I stand a winter sequestered in St. Andrew? It made me claustrophobic, the very thought of the long, dark winter days snowbound in the cabin with my brother.

Nevin dipped his bloody fist into the water bucket, tending his self-inflicted wound while he spoke to me. “You can stay with us while you are visiting. I’d rather toss you out on your ear, but I’ll not be a source of gossip to the neighbors. But you must behave the entire time, or it’s out you go.”

“Of course.”

“And you’ll not bring that bastard St. Andrew around here. I’d say you’re not to see him while you’re staying under my roof, but I know you’d go to him anyway and lie to me about it.”

He was right, of course. For now, though, I had to pretend to be contrite. “Whatever you say, brother. Thank you.”

THIRTY-FOUR

That first evening home was difficult. On one hand, I can’t recall a more joyful dinner. When Glynnis arrived home from her day at Watford’s, we had the opportunity for one more reunion, which sparked our hearts anew (except for Nevin, who would never be forgiving). While the biscuits baked, I brought their presents from my trunk, handing out gifts as though I were Father Christmas. Maeve and Glynnis waltzed around with the Chinese silk held up to their bodices, planning the fancy dresses they would make with it, and my mother nearly wept tears of joy over the shawl. Their delight only made Nevin angrier; thank goodness I’d not brought anything for him (knowing he’d only throw it in the fire) or he probably would have boxed my ears and tossed me out on my ass.

We sat around the table after the plates were scraped clean and the candles drew low, my mother and sisters filling me in on everything that had happened in the village while I was gone: failed crops, illnesses, one or two new arrivals. And, of course, deaths, births, and marriages. They lingered over Jonathan’s wedding, expecting I’d want to know all about it, what fancy food was served (not knowing the exotic delicacies I’d consumed), what business associates of the St. Andrews made the arduous trip to attend.

“So sad, the captain didn’t live to see it,” my mother said.

And the baby! The way my mother and sisters spoke of it, you’d think the baby was a joint product of the town. Everyone, except for Nevin, seemed to have a parochial interest in the infant.

“What did Jonathan name her?” I asked, dipping a last crust into a smear of beef fat.

“Ruth, just like his mother,” Glynnis said, eyebrows raised.

“It’s a good Christian name,” my mother chided. “I’m sure they wanted a name from the Bible.”

I waggled a finger around the table. “Not Jonathan, nor Evangeline, I’ll wager-it was all his mother’s doing. You can quote me.”

“Maybe the idea of having a child as soon as possible, maybe that was Mrs. St. Andrew’s idea, too.” Maeve held her breath momentarily, looking at her sister for encouragement, before she continued. “It was a terribly difficult birth, Lanore. They almost lost Evangeline. She’s so wee-”

“And young-”

Nods all around. “So young,” Maeve sighed. “I heard the midwife told her not to have any more babies for a while.”

“It’s true,” Glynnis added.

“Enough!” Nevin hammered the end of his knife into the table, making the women jump. “Can’t a man eat his evening meal in peace without having to listen to gossip about the town dandy?”

“Nevin-,” my mother began, but he cut her off.

“I’ll hear no more about this. It’s his own fault for marrying the girl. It is scandalous, but I expected no better from him,” Nevin grumbled. For a scant moment, I could almost believe that he’d scolded my sisters and mother in order to spare me further talk of babies. He pushed away from the table and headed for the chair by the fire, the place where our father used to sit after dinner. The sight of him in that chair, with Father’s pipe, was strange to my eye.

Judging from the position of the moon in the sky, it was near midnight when I climbed down from the loft, unable to sleep. The remains of the fire decorated the walls with a dancing, lambent glow. Restless, I couldn’t remain boxed up in the cottage. I needed company. Usually at this time of night, I would be preparing for a night in Adair’s bed, and I found, sitting on the settle, that I was hungry-no, ravenous-for physical comfort. I dressed and slipped out as quietly as I could. My driver was sleeping in the barn, kept warm by a mountain of blankets and the heat of a dozen cattle packed with him under the roof. I wasn’t about to saddle the family’s chestnut gelding, rouse the poor old thing from its deserved rest, so I went off on foot in the only direction that came to mind: to town. For anyone else, even a trip this short on foot would be suicidal. The temperature was below freezing and the wind brisk, but I was impervious to the weather and could walk at a smart clip without fatiguing. I reached the houses on the edge of town in no time.

Where was there to go? St. Andrew was hardly the big city. Few lights were visible through cabin windows. The town was asleep but Daniel Daughtery’s public house was still open, light shining through its single window. I hesitated by the door, wondering if it would be wise to be seen about at this hour. Few women went into Daughtery’s, and none would go in by herself. Word could easily get back to Nevin and fuel his conviction that I was a common whore. The lure of those warm bodies inside, the low rumble of talk, the occasional bright spark of laughter was strong, however. I knocked the mud from my shoes and went in.

There were only a couple of customers in the small space: a pair of axmen in Jonathan’s employ and Tobey Ostergaard, poor Sophia’s brutish father, looking like a corpse himself, his skin gone gray and his dead eyes staring at the back wall. Every head turned in my direction as I entered, Daughtery giving me an especially ugly leer.

“A draft,” I called out, though it was unnecessary, as there was only one beverage on the bill of fare.

The public room had once been part of Daughtery’s home, partitioned off (over the objection of his wife) to accommodate a bar keep, one small table, and assorted stools slapped together from odd pieces of wood, one leg shorter than the other two on each and every one of them. In the warmer months, there were games of chance and sometimes cockfighting in the barn, which was separated by a muddy path from the main house. Most patrons didn’t stay but picked up a hogshead of brew to consume at home with meals, as brewing beer was a messy business and Daughtery, it was generally agreed, was the best of anyone in town.

“I heard you was back,” Daughtery said as he collected my coin. “From the look of it, Boston has treated you well.” He made a naked appraisal of my clothing. “What did a country lass such as yourself do to buy such fine apparel as that?”

Like my brother, Daughtery must have guessed-they must all have guessed-what had happened to make a wealthy woman of me. Daughtery was the first to accuse me outright, showing off for his customers. Still, what could I do under the circumstances? I gave him an unreadable smile over the rim of the mug. “I have done what countless others have done to better their lot in life: I have associated myself with people of means, Mr. Daughtery.”

One of the axmen left shortly after my arrival but the other came over to ask me to share his table. He’d overheard Daughtery’s mention of Boston and was anxious to speak to someone who’d been there recently. He was young, perhaps twenty, sweet-tempered and clean looking, unlike most of the St. Andrew hired hands. He told me he came from a humble family who lived outside of Boston proper. He’d come to Maine for work. He made good pay but the isolation was killing him; he missed the city, he said, and the options for entertainment. His eyes teared as I described the public garden on a sunny Sabbath and the shiny black surface of the Charles River under a full moon.

“I’d hoped to leave here before the snows,” he said, gazing into his mug. “But I heard St. Andrew needs hands to stay on through the winter and will pay well. Them that have stayed for the winter shift say it’s terrible lonely, though.”

“I suppose it’s a matter of perspective.”

Daughtery banged a mug against the maple counter of the keep, startling us both. “Finish up. Time to go to your respective beds.”

We stood outside Daughtery’s bolted door, huddled together to cut down the wind. The stranger brought his mouth close to my ear so the heat of his words made the tiny hairs on my cheek stand at attention, like flowers stretching toward the sun. He confided in me that he’d not had the companionship of a woman in a long time. He confessed to having little money, but asked if I might be willing nonetheless. “I hope I’m not being presumptuous about your profession,” he said with a nervous smile. “But when you came into Daughtery’s by yourself…” I couldn’t protest: he had me dead to rights.

We stole into Daughtery’s barn, the animals so used to nighttime visitors from the bar that they made no fuss. The young axman adjusted his clothing, unbuttoning the fall of his breeches and placing his cock in my hand. He melted at my ministrations, soon lost in his own thick cloud of unbearable pleasure. It must have been the return to St. Andrew and seeing Jonathan again that made my blood rich with passion. The axman’s hand might have been on my flesh but it was Jonathan who was on my mind. I was reckless, letting myself think of Jonathan, but that night, the combination of flesh and memory gave me a taste of what it could be like and made me hungry for more. So I pulled the young man to me and settled one foot on a bale of hay, the better to give him access under my petticoats.

The young man rocked into me, sweet firm flesh and gentle hands, and I tried to pretend he was Jonathan, but I could not make the illusion stick. Maybe Adair was right, maybe there was something to be gained in making Jonathan one of us. A terrible hunger told me I had to try or be dissatisfied for the rest of my life-that is to say, eternity.

The axman stuttered a sigh as he came, then drew out a handkerchief and offered it to me. “Pardon my bluntness, miss,” he whispered hotly in my ear, “but that was the most amazing fuck I have ever had. You must be the most talented whore in Boston!”

“Courtesan,” I corrected him gently.

“And I don’t pretend to be able to compensate you in the manner to which you are undoubtedly accustomed…,” he said, rooting in a pocket for his money, but I placed a hand on his arm to stop him.

“Never mind. Keep your money. Just promise me you’ll not say a word of this to anyone,” I said.

“Oh no, ma’am, I won’t-though I will remember it for the rest of my life!”

“As shall I,” I said, though this sweet-faced boy would be only one of a succession of many-or perhaps the last one, to be replaced by Jonathan and only Jonathan, if I were lucky. I watched the young axman stumble out into the night, heading toward the road that led to the St. Andrews’ property, before I wrapped my coat tightly and started off in the opposite direction. His warmth trickled down the insides of my thighs and I felt a familiar stirring in my chest as well, the satisfaction I felt whenever I’d held a man helpless in sexual thrall. I looked forward to experiencing that pleasure with Jonathan and to surprising him with my newly acquired skills.

My route took me by the blacksmith’s shop, and by force of habit, I glanced down the path in the direction of Magda’s cottage. A brightness was visible behind the shawl she tacked over the one window, so I knew she was awake. Funny how I’d once envied her her cottage-but I suppose I envied it still because I felt a little fillip in my heart upon seeing it, remembering the homey treasures that had so impressed me as a girl. Adair’s mansion may have been ornate and filled with luxurious things, but once you crossed the threshold, your freedom was gone. Magda was the mistress of her own home and no one could take that away from her.

As I stood at the top of the path, the front door swung open and out popped one of the axmen (thank goodness, for I would have been mortified to see one of my neighbors finish up his business with Magda). The old girl herself came out behind him and for a moment they were caught in the light falling out the open door. The two were laughing, Magda wrapping a cloak around her shoulders as she ushered her customer down the stairs with a wave good-bye. I jumped back into the shadow to spare the axman the embarrassment of being observed, but not before Magda noticed.

“Who’s there?” she called out. “Let’s have no trouble, now.”

I stepped out of the darkness. “None from me, Mistress Magda.”

“Lanore? Is that you?” She craned her neck. I trotted past the trundling axman and up the stairs for an embrace from Magda. Her arms felt more fragile than ever.

“Goodness, girl, they told me you were lost to us,” she said as she whisked me inside. The room was close because of the heat thrown from the tiny fireplace and the two bodies that had recently been at work (the musk still hung in the air; those axmen weren’t too fastidious about bathing and could grow quite rank), so I slipped off my cloak. Magda spun me around by my shoulders to get a better look at my fancy dress.

“Well, Miss McIlvrae, by the sight of you, I’d say you have done well for yourself.”

“I can’t say it’s work I’m proud of,” I said.

Magda looked reproachfully at me. “Am I to imagine that you came by your good fortune in the usual way for a young lady…?” When I didn’t answer, she shook out her cloak with a snap. “Well, you know where I stand on this subject. It’s hardly a crime to take up the only avenue open to you and make a success of it. If God didn’t want us to make a living being whores, he’d give us another means to support ourselves. But he doesn’t.”

“I’m not a whore, exactly.” Why did I feel compelled to clarify my situation for her? “There is a man who provides for me…”

“Are you married to each other?”

I shook my head.

“Then you are his mistress.” She poured gin into two tiny glasses, cloudy with age, and I told her about my life in Boston and Adair. It was a relief to tell someone about him-an adulterated version, of course, omitting the parts of him I would change if I could: his violent fits of temper, the mercurial rise and fall of his moods, the occasional male companion in his bed. I told her he was handsome, wealthy, and taken with me, and she nodded at my good news. “Good for you, Lanore. Make sure you put by some of the money he spends on you.”

In the candlelight, I could see Magda’s face more clearly. The years of my absence had left their passing on her. Her delicate skin sagged around her mouth and throat, and her black hair was almost half white. Her once pretty stays were now grayed and tattered. Whether she was the only prostitute in town or not, she wouldn’t be able to continue in her trade for much longer. The younger axmen would stop frequenting her and the older ones who would still pay for her services were apt to be unkind in their treatment of her. Soon she would be a friendless old woman in a town where life was harsh.

I wore a discreet pearl brooch, a present from Adair. My family knew nothing about jewelry and so I’d worn it openly in their presence, but Magda had to know that it was worth a small fortune. At first I thought that I should give it to my family, they had more right to it than a woman who was only my friend, but I’d resolved to leave them money, and not an insubstantial amount. So I unpinned the brooch from my clothing and held it out to her.

Magda cocked her head. “Oh no, Lanore, you needn’t do that. I don’t need your charity.”

“I want you to have it-”

She waved off my outstretched hand. “I know what you’re thinking. And I am planning to retire soon. I’ve saved quite a bit of money during my time here-Charles St. Andrew should have sent the wages of some of his men straight to me, for all the time they spent in this cottage, and spared them the job of carrying their pay in their pockets for a day or two,” she laughed. “No, I’d rather see you save it for yourself. You may not believe me now, since you are young and beautiful and have a man who values your company, but someday all those things will be gone and you may wish for the money that brooch would bring.”

Of course I couldn’t tell her that that day would never come for me. I forced a little smile as I pinned the brooch back in place.

“No, I am planning to move south in the spring. Somewhere near the coast,” she continued. She looked about the room wistfully, as though she planned to leave tomorrow. “Perhaps I will find a nice lonely widower and settle down again.”

“I’ve no doubt fortune will shine on you, Magda, in whatever you choose to do, because you have a generous heart,” I said and got to my feet. “I should let you retire for the evening, and I should get back to my family. It was good to see you, Magda.”

We embraced again and she rubbed her hand warmly on my back. “Take care of yourself, Lanore. Be careful. And whatever you do, don’t fall in love with your gentleman. We women make our worst decisions when we are in love.” She escorted me to the door and sent me off with a wave. The truth of her advice weighed on my heart, though, and I headed for the woods less buoyant than before.

The trip home found me even more restless and as I thought on it, I saw that it was because I’d lied to Magda about Adair. It wasn’t just that I’d hidden his secret-our secret-from her. That was understandable. However, if anyone in St. Andrew would forgive Adair his peculiarities, it would be Magda, and yet I chose to lie to her about him and about my relationship with him. A woman wants above all things to be proud of the man in her life, and obviously I was not. How could I be proud of what Adair had drawn out in me-that he had known just by looking at me-that I shared some of his dark appetites. As frightened as I was of him, there was no denying that I’d responded to him, too, that I’d accepted every sexual challenge he proposed. He brought out something in me I could not deny but was not proud of. So perhaps it was not Adair I was ashamed of: perhaps I was ashamed of myself.

These dreadful thoughts filled my mind as I pulled my cloak tight against the wind and hurried down the path to my family’s cabin. I couldn’t stop from remembering all the terrible things I’d done or thinking how I’d found such delight in dark pleasures-it is no wonder that I questioned whether I hadn’t slipped beyond redemption.

THIRTY-FIVE

When I woke the next day, I heard my mother and Maeve whispering to each other in the kitchen so as not to wake me. To them, I must have seemed a lazy layabout, wasting the most productive time of the day, sleeping until noon-though this was still the earliest I’d risen in a long time.

“Aye, look who is up now,” my mother called from the fireplace when she heard me groan from above.

“I imagine Nevin had a few words to say about my sleeping habits,” I replied as I climbed down the ladder.

“It was all we could do to keep him from dragging you out by your feet,” Maeve said, handing me my clothing, which had been laid over a chair by the fire to take off the chill.

“Yes, well, I was restless last night and took a stroll into town,” I admitted.

“Lanore!” My mother nearly dropped her knife. “Have you lost your mind? You could have frozen to death! Not to mention that something worse might have happened to you,” she said, exchanging a look with my sister-both of them knowing I had little virtue left to protect-which took the sting out of her voice.

“I’d forgotten how cold it is at night this far north,” I lied.

“And where did you go?”

“Not to church, I’d wager,” Maeve said with a laugh.

“No, not to church. I went to Daughtery’s.”

“Lanore-”

“A little companionship at a lonely hour, that’s all that was wanted. I’m not used to such quiet and early hours. My life is quite different in Boston. You’ll have to bear with me.” I drew the tape ties of my skirt about my waist before making my way to my mother, and kissed her on the forehead.

“You are not in Boston now, dear,” my mother chided.

“Do not let it worry you much,” Maeve said. “It’s not as though Nevin isn’t seen at Daughtery’s from time to time. If menfolk get to do it, I don’t see why you cannot, at least on occasion”-here she cast a glance at our mother, to see if she would react-“and we shall just get used to it.”

So Nevin went to Daughtery’s-I would have to be careful. If he found out about my nocturnal dalliances, things would go badly for me.

At that moment, we were interrupted by a knock at the door. One of the St. Andrews’ servants extended an ivory-colored envelope with my name written on it. Inside was a note in Jonathan’s mother’s meticulous handwriting, inviting my family to dinner that evening. The servant waited at the door for our reply.

“What shall I tell him?” I asked, though it was easy enough to guess their response. Maeve and my mother danced about like Cinderella upon learning she was going to the ball.

“What about Nevin? Surely he’ll refuse to go,” I asked.

“Undoubtedly. On general principle,” Maeve said.

“I do wish your brother had a better head for business,” my mother muttered. “He could use this opportunity to talk to Jonathan about purchasing more regularly from us. Half the town makes its livelihood off that family. Who else will buy our beef? Them, with all those men to feed…” She probably thought the St. Andrews miserly for feeding their hired hands venison caught on the property.

I went back to the door, addressing the servant. “Please tell Mrs. St. Andrew that we would be happy to accept the invitation, and that there will be four for dinner.”

Dinner that evening was surreal to me, to be surrounded by both our families. It had never happened in the whole time Jonathan and I had been friends as children, and I would have been happy that evening for dinner to have been limited to just the two of us at a table before the fire in his study. That would not have been proper, though, now that Jonathan had a wife and child.

His sisters had already slipped into early spinsterhood and had developed owlish airs, observing my more lively sisters as though they were monkeys set loose in the house. Poor slow-witted Benjamin sat by his mother, eyes fixed on his plate, lips pursed, willing himself to remain still. Occasionally, his mother took Benjamin’s hand and petted it, which seemed to have a calming effect on the poor boy.

And, to Jonathan’s left was Evangeline, looking like a child who’d been allowed to sit at the adults’ table. Her pink fingers touched each piece of her place setting as though not familiar with the uses of all the pieces of the fine silverware service. And every so often, her gaze would flit to her husband’s face, like a dog reassuring itself of its master’s presence.

Seeing Jonathan surrounded this way, by the family who would always depend on him, made me feel sorry for him.

After the meal-a rack of venison and a dozen roasted quails, resulting in plates ghoulishly heaped with deer ribs and tiny birds’ bones, picked clean-Jonathan looked around the table, nearly all women, and invited me to withdraw to his father’s old study, which he’d now claimed for himself. When his mother opened her mouth to object, he said, “There’s no man here to join me for a pipe, and I would like to speak to Lanny alone if I may. Besides, I’m sure she would be quite bored otherwise.” Ruth’s eyebrows shot up, though his sisters did not seem to take offense. Perhaps he was trying to spare them the awkwardness of my company-I’m sure they presumed I was a whore, too, and Jonathan had probably wangled my invitation over their protests.

Once he closed the doors, he poured us whiskeys and packed two pipes with tobacco, and we settled in chairs drawn close to the fire. First, he wanted to know how I’d come to disappear in Boston. I told him a more detailed version of the story I’d given my family, that I was in the employ of a wealthy European, hired to act as his American interlocutor. Jonathan listened skeptically, debating whether to question my account or simply enjoy the story.

“You should consider moving to Boston. Life is so much easier,” I said, holding a flame to the pipe. “You’re a wealthy man. If you lived in a big city, you could avail yourself of the pleasures in life.”

He shook his head. “We can’t move. There’s the timber to harvest, it’s our lifeblood. Who would run the logging operations?”

“Mr. Sweet, as he does now. Or another foreman. That’s how wealthy men handle their properties. No reason for you and your family to suffer through the deprivation of the terrible winters here.”

Jonathan stared into the fire, drawing on his pipe. “You might think my mother would be eager to return to her own family, but we’ll never get her out of St. Andrew. She’d not admit it, but she’s gotten used to her social position. In Boston, she’d be just another well-off widow. She might even suffer socially for having spent so long in ‘the wilderness.’ Besides, Lanny, have you thought what would happen to the town if we left?”

“Your business would still be here. You’d still need to pay the townspeople to do whatever it is you pay them for now. The only difference is that you and your family would have the type of life you deserve. There would be physicians to see to Benjamin. You could enjoy Sunday socials with the neighbors, go to parties and card games every night as one of the city’s social elite.”

Jonathan gave me an incredulous look, dubious enough for me to think that what he’d said about his mother might be an excuse. Perhaps he was the one afraid to give up St. Andrew, to leave the only place he’d ever known, and become a small fish in a large, well-stocked pond.

I leaned toward him. “Shouldn’t that be your reward, Jonathan? You’ve worked with your father to build this fortune. You have no idea what is waiting for you outside these woods, these woods as thick as prison walls.”

He seemed hurt. “It’s not as though I’ve never left St. Andrew. I’ve been to Fredericton.”

The St. Andrews had business associates in Fredericton as part of the timber trade. Logs were floated down the Allagash to the St. John River and were processed in Fredericton, sawed into boards or burned into charcoal. Charles had taken Jonathan on a trip when Jonathan was still in his teens, but I’d heard little of it. Now that I thought about it, Jonathan seemed to have no curiosity about the world outside our tiny town.

“Fredericton is hardly Boston,” I chided. “And besides, if you come to Boston, you would have the opportunity to meet my employer. He is European royalty, practically a prince. But more to the point, he is a true connoisseur of pleasure. A man after your own heart.” I tried to smile cunningly. “I guarantee he will change your life forever.”

He eyed me. “‘A connoisseur of pleasure’? And how do you know about this, Lanny? I thought you were his interlocutor.”

“One can act as an intermediary on another’s behalf for many things.”

“I admit, you’ve made me curious,” he said, and yet his tone was that of complacence. Part of me mourned Jonathan having been brought to heel by his new responsibilities and not being in the least curious about the temptations I offered him. I was sure, however, that the old Jonathan was in there; I had only to roust him.

Jonathan and I spent most evenings together after that. I quickly saw that he had not cultivated any other friends. I wasn’t sure why, since there couldn’t have been any shortage of men willing to enjoy the social status and possible financial benefits that would come with being Jonathan’s closest ally. Still, Jonathan wasn’t stupid. These were the same men who, as boys, had resented his good looks, his position, and his wealth. Resented that their fathers were beholden to the captain for wages or rent.

“I shall miss you when you leave,” Jonathan said to me on one of those evenings spent locked behind the study doors, burning good tobacco. “Would you consider remaining? You don’t have to return to Boston, not if the issue is money. I could give you a job, and then you would be here to help your family now that your father is gone.”

I wondered if Jonathan had given any thought to his offer or if it had come to him spontaneously. Even if he found some kind of position for me, his mother would object to having a fallen woman working for her son. He was right about this being an opportunity to do right by my family, though, and inwardly I squirmed. But I was also riddled with a nameless fear at the prospect of not obeying Adair’s orders.

“I couldn’t give up the city now that I know it. You’d feel the same.”

“I’ve already explained to you-”

“You needn’t make a decision on the spur of the moment. After all, to move your entire household to Boston is no small thing. Come back with me for a visit. Tell your family that you’re making a business trip. See if the city suits your taste.” I had deftly cleaned the pipe stem with a wire-a skill picked up from maintaining Adair’s water pipe-and tapped the bowl against a little salver to clear the ash. “It could be advantageous to you from a business position, as well. Adair will show you around, introduce you to the men who own the timber mills and such. He’ll take you out in society, too. There’s no culture here in St. Andrew! You have no idea of the things you’re missing, plays, concerts. What I think you’ll really find fascinating”-I leaned forward, our heads bowed close for the utmost secrecy-“is that Adair is much like you when it comes to a gentleman’s pleasure.”

“You say.” His expression begged me to go on.

“Women throw themselves at him. All types of women. Society women, common women, and, when he tires of such company, there are always the does.”

“Does?”

“Prostitutes. Boston teems with prostitutes of all kinds. Fancy brothels. Streetwalkers. Actresses and singers who would gladly be your mistress for the price of handsome rooms and spending money.”

“Are you saying I have to go to an actress or a singer to find a woman who would abide my company?” he asked, then glanced aside. “Do all men in Boston pay for a woman’s company?”

“If he wants her affections exclusively. These women tend to be better versed in the arts of love than most,” I said, hoping to whet his curiosity. It was time to share one of Adair’s gifts. “A present from my employer,” I said as I handed him a small bundle wrapped in red silk: the deck of ribald cards. “From one gentleman to another.”

“Entertaining,” he said, as he looked intently at each card in turn. “I’d seen a deck like this when I went to Fredericton, though not as-imaginative.” When he went to pick up the red silk to rewrap the cards, a second gift tumbled out, one I’d forgotten I’d brought.

Jonathan drew his breath in sharply. “Good God, Lanny, who is this?” He held a miniature painting of Uzra in his hands, a shimmer of enchantment in his eyes. “Is she a phantasm, the creation of some artist’s mind?”

I didn’t care for the tone of his voice-no gentleman would speak that way in front of a woman for whom he claimed to care-but what could I do? The portrait was meant to tempt him, and clearly it had done the trick.

“Oh no, I assure you, she exists in flesh and blood. She is my employer’s concubine, an odalisque he brought with him from the silk trade route.”

“Your employer has a curious domestic arrangement, it would seem. A concubine, kept openly in Boston? I wouldn’t think they’d stand for it.” Jonathan looked from the painting to me, brows knitted. “I don’t understand… why would your employer send gifts to me? What is his interest? What in the world did you tell him about me?”

“He is looking for a fit companion and senses you might be a kindred spirit.” He was suspicious, perhaps fearing that any interest from a man he didn’t know had to be tied to his fortune. “To tell you the truth, I think he is disappointed by the Boston crowd. They are quite a dour lot. He’s been unable to find a Bostonian with a spirit similar to his own, a willingness to indulge in whatever fancy intrigues him…”

But Jonathan didn’t seem to be paying attention to what I’d said. He studied me so closely that I feared I’d inadvertently said something offensive. “Whatever is it?” I asked.

“It’s just that you are… so much changed,” he said at last.

“I won’t argue with that. I have changed completely. The question is, are you disappointed in the change?”

He blinked, a shadow of pain in those dark eyes. “I must say-yes, perhaps a little. I’m not sure how to say this without hurting your feelings, but you are not the girl you were when you left. You are so worldly-you are this man’s mistress, aren’t you?” he asked hesitantly.

“Not exactly.” A term came to me from years earlier. “I am his spiritual wife.”

“His ‘spiritual wife’?”

“We all are. The odalisque, myself, Tilde…” I thought it best to leave out Alejandro and Dona, having no notion how Jonathan would respond to that arrangement.

“He has three wives under one roof?”

“Not to mention the other women he entertains…”

“And you do not mind?”

“He may share his affection however he wishes, as may we. What we have is unlike anything you’ve heard of, but… yes, this arrangement suits me fine.”

“Goodness, Lanny, I can scarce believe you are the girl I kissed in the church cloakroom those many years ago.” He cast a shy look in my direction, as though not quite sure how to behave. “I suppose, given all this talk of freely sharing your affections, it would not be unseemly if I were to ask you for-another kiss? Just to assure myself that you truly are the Lanny I once knew, here with me again?”

It was the opening I’d hoped for. He rose from his chair and leaned over me, grasping my face in his hands, but his kiss was hesitant.

That hesitancy nearly broke my heart. “You must know I thought I’d never see you again, Jonathan, let alone feel your lips on mine. I thought I would die from missing you.” As my eyes searched his face, I realized that the hope of seeing Jonathan again was the only thing that had kept me sane. Now we were together and I would not be cheated. I rose and pressed into him and, after a second’s hesitation, he drew me into his arms. I was grateful that he still desired me, but everything about him had changed since the last time we’d been together, even the scent of his hair and his skin. The reserve in his hands as he grasped my waist. The taste of him when we kissed. All changed. He was slower, softer, sadder. His lovemaking, though sweet, had lost its ferocity. Maybe it was because we were in his family’s house, his wife and his mother just beyond the locked door. Or he might have been consumed with regret for betraying poor Evangeline.

We lay on the settle together after Jonathan had finished, his head lying between my breasts cupped in fine silk stays, beribboned and trimmed with lace. He was still between my legs, lying on a crush of skirts and petticoats hiked to my waist. I stroked his hair while my heart thrummed with bliss. And, yes, I felt the secret thrall of having made him give in to his desire. And as for the wife waiting dutifully on the other side of the door-well, hadn’t she stolen Jonathan from me to begin with? And a deed of marriage meant little when he still wanted me, when his heart belonged to me. My body quivered with the proof of his desire. Despite all that had happened to each of us in the years we’d been apart, I was convinced more than ever that the bond between us was unbroken.

THIRTY-SIX

Luke stops at a diner close to the exit from the highway, needing a break from the endless gray ribbon of road. Once they’ve slid into a booth, he borrows Lanny’s laptop to catch up on news and check his email. Besides the usual queue of emails from the hospital administrators (“Employees are reminded not to park in the east parking lot, as this space will be used for snow removal…”), no one has written to him. No one seems to have noticed his absence. Luke makes the cursor scurry aimlessly around the desktop in his distraction, but there is nothing to double check. He is about to power down the computer when he hears a chime. Somebody has sent him an email.

He expects it to be spam, another cheerful but impersonal invitation from his bank to open a CD or something similarly worthless, but it’s from Peter. Luke feels a pang of discomfort for having taken advantage of his colleague’s good nature. Peter is more of an acquaintance than a friend, but since there are few anesthesiologists in the county and Luke is an emergency room physician, they saw more of each other than most of the other doctors. Luke’s latest series of misfortunes had made him less friendly than usual, but Peter was one of the few doctors still speaking to him.

“Where are you?” the email reads. “I didn’t think you were planning to be gone with the car so long. I tried calling but you’re not answering your cell phone. Everything okay? Haven’t been in an accident? Not hurt? Worried about you. CALL ME.” Then Peter listed all of his phone numbers and his wife’s cell phone number.

Luke closes Peter’s email, his jaw clenched. He’s afraid I’m cracking up, Luke realizes. He’s aware that his behavior is odd, to say the least, and the people in town hold their breath around him, afraid to mention either Tricia and the divorce or his parents’ deaths. They don’t think he can handle the abundance of unhappiness in his life. It’s not until that moment that Luke realizes that leaving town with this woman has distracted him from his misery. He hasn’t not been miserable in months. This is the first time he’s been able to think of his daughters without wanting to weep.

Luke takes a deep breath and lets it out in a long stream. Don’t jump to conclusions, he tells himself. Peter is being nice, patient. Hasn’t threatened to call the police. Peter is the most well-adjusted person in Luke’s life right now, but Luke realizes this is probably because Peter is new to St. Andrew. The young doctor hasn’t been infected yet with the town’s inherent strangeness, its cold standoffishness, its Puritan addiction to judgment.

For a moment, Luke is tempted to call Peter. Peter is a tether to the real world, the world that existed before he helped Lanny escape from the police, before he listened to her fantastical story, before he slept with a patient. Peter might be able to talk Luke down from this ledge. He takes another deep breath: the question is, does he want to be talked down?

He reopens Peter’s email and hits Reply. “I’m sorry about your car,” he types. “I’ll leave it somewhere soon and the police will find it and get it back to you.” He considers what he’s written and realizes what he’s really saying is that he’s gone and he won’t be coming back. He feels tremendous relief. Before he hits the Send button, he adds to the email, “Keep my truck. It’s yours.”

Luke stops in the restroom before getting into the SUV and sees that Lanny is already in the front seat, staring straight ahead with a humorless smile. “What’s wrong?” Luke asks as he turns the key in the ignition.

“It’s nothing…” She drops her gaze. “When I went to pay the bill, when you were in the restroom, I saw they had liquor for sale behind the counter, so I asked for a bottle of Glenfiddich. But she wouldn’t sell it to me. Said I had to wait for my father to come out of the restroom if he wanted to buy a bottle.”

Luke starts to reach for the door handle. “I’ll go in if you want-”

“Don’t. It’s not about the scotch; it’s just that… this happens all the time. I’m sick of it, that’s all. Always being mistaken for a teenager, treated like a kid. I may look like a kid but I don’t think like one and sometimes, I just don’t want to be treated like one. I know looking young also helps me get by, but God…” She holds her head, shaking it, then throws her shoulders back. “Let’s give her a show. Really blow her mind.”

Before Luke can answer, Lanny grabs his jacket by the collar and pulls him to her. She locks her mouth over his and gives him a long kiss, grinding against him. The kiss goes on and on, until he gets dizzy. Over Lanny’s shoulder, he can see the woman frozen behind the cashier’s counter, her mouth formed into a horrified circle and her eyes widening.

Lanny releases him, laughing. She slaps the dashboard. “Come on, Dad, let’s go find a hotel so I can fuck your brains out.”

Luke doesn’t laugh with her. Without thinking, he wipes his mouth. “Don’t do that. I don’t like being mistaken for your father. It makes me feel…” Like I’m a terrible person, and I’m not, he thinks but doesn’t say.

She quiets right down, flushes with shame, and looks helplessly at her hands. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” she says. “It won’t happen again.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

That blissful reunion on the settle was not to be our last time together. We contrived to meet as best we could, although the circumstances were inconvenient, to say the least-a hay barn on the edge of the pasture, fragrant with dried alfalfa (but then we had to be diligent to brush every seed and stalk from our clothes), or the horse barn off the St. Andrews’ house, where we’d lock ourselves in the tack room and quietly grind against each other amid dangling reins and harnesses.

During these times with Jonathan, even as I inhaled his breath and drops of his sweat fell on my face, I was surprised to find Adair creeping into my thoughts. Surprised that I felt guilty, as though I was wronging him, because we were lovers, in our way. There was an undercurrent of fear, too, of the punishment Adair would exact from me, not for swiving another man but for loving another man. Why should I feel guilt and fear if I was only doing what he wanted?

Maybe because in my heart I knew it was Jonathan I loved, only Jonathan. He would win out every time.

“Lanny,” Jonathan whispered, kissing my hand as he lay recovering in the hay after an assignation. “You deserve better than this.”

“I’d meet you in the woods, in a cave, in a field,” I replied, “if that were the only way to see you. It doesn’t matter where we are. All that matters is that we are together.”

Pretty words, the words of lovers. But as we lay together in the hay and I stroked his cheek, my mind could not help but wander. And it wandered to dangerous places, poking into matters best left undisturbed, such as the circumstances surrounding my abrupt departure years earlier, and Jonathan’s silence on the event. Since I’d returned to town he hadn’t asked me once about the child. He wanted to question me; I sensed it whenever there was a moment of strained silence between us, when I would catch him looking at me sideways. When you left St. Andrew… but the words remained on his tongue. He must have assumed I’d aborted the babe, as I’d said I would that day in church. But I wanted him to know the truth.

“Jonathan,” I said softly, catching and slipping tendrils of his black floss through my fingers, “did you ever wonder why my father sent me out of town?”

I felt him hold his breath, a hesitation in his stillness. After a bit, he replied, “I didn’t know you’d gone until it was too late… It was wrong of me not to seek you out earlier, to see that you were not in trouble or if something more sinister had happened to you…” He began to fiddle absentmindedly with the lacing on my stays.

“What excuse did my family make for my being sent away?” I asked.

“They said you were being sent to care for a sick relative. They were very closed after you’d left and kept to themselves. I asked one of your sisters once if they’d heard from you and if they might give me an address so I could write to you, but she rushed away without responding.” He lifted his head from my sternum. “Is that not the case? Were you not caring for someone?”

I could have laughed at his naiveté. “The only one who needed care was myself. They sent me away to have the child. They didn’t want anyone here to know about it.”

“Lanny!” He pressed a hand against my face, but I shook it off. “And did you-”

“There is no child. I miscarried.” I could say those words without emotion now, without a quiver in my voice or a knot in my throat.

“I am so sorry for all you have been through, and by yourself…” He sat up, unable to take his eyes off me now. “Does this have anything to do with how you ended up with this man? This Adair?”

I’m sure my expression became very dark. “I don’t wish to talk about it.”

“What trials have you been through, poor brave Lanny? You should have written me, informed me of your situation. I’d have done anything for you, anything within my means…” He went to hold me-for which my body longed-then seemed to think better of it and pulled back. “Have I lost my mind? What-what are we doing? Haven’t I wronged you enough? What right have I to start up with you again, as though it’s a game of some sort?” Jonathan held his head in his hands. “You must forgive me for my selfishness, my stupidity…”

“You didn’t force me,” I said, trying to calm him. “I wanted this, too.” If only I could take my words back; it had been a mistake to bring up the child, dead and gone. I cursed myself for giving in to my petty nature. I had wanted Jonathan to know I had suffered and to acknowledge his part in the ill that had befallen me, but it had backfired.

“We cannot continue like this. This is the last-complication-I need in my life.” Jonathan rolled away from me and got to his feet. When he saw my shocked and hurt expression, he continued, “Forgive my frankness, dear Lanny. But you know full well I have a family, a wife, an infant daughter, obligations I cannot forsake. I cannot jeopardize their happiness for the sake of a few stolen moments of pleasure with you… And there is no future for us, there cannot be. It would be hurtful and unfair to you for us to continue.”

He doesn’t love me enough to stay with me-the truth cut my heart like a blade. I gulped for air. Anger flamed up inside me at his words. Could he be realizing this only now, after we had started up our illicit affair again? Or was I hurt because he was forsaking me a second time for Evangeline? I must admit the first thought that came to me, as I sat dumbfounded, was of revenge. I can see how scorned women swear themselves over to the devil; in such a moment, the need for revenge is strong but the ability to extract it insufficient. If Lucifer had appeared before me at that second, promising the means to make Jonathan suffer the everlasting torments of hell in exchange for my soul, I would have accepted it, gladly.

Or perhaps there was no need to summon the devil, to draw up the fiery contract, to sign my name in blood. Perhaps I already had.

I was at a loss, now, for how to carry out Adair’s plan, and the realization that I might fail made me sick with fear. I’d thought I’d lure Jonathan to Boston with my love and sexual favors, but I’d failed. Remorse made my lover swear off me, though he promised he would be my friend and benefactor, if need be, forever. I waited to see if Jonathan might change his mind and come back to me, but it became clear as the days progressed that he would not. A visit, I begged him; come to Boston for a visit, but Jonathan resisted. One day his excuse was that his mother couldn’t be trusted not to upset village affairs in his absence, and on another day it was that a complication had arisen that required his attention.

In the end, though, it was always his wife who kept him from agreeing to leave. “Evangeline would never forgive me if I left her alone with my family for a long spell, and she’d never make the trip with the baby,” he said to me, as though he really was at the mercy of his wife and an infant-as though he’d never put his own wishes ahead of theirs, dutiful husband and father that he was. Such excuses might have been believable for another man but not for the Jonathan I knew.

The approaching snows were pressing my departure, however. I sensed that if I remained in St. Andrew for the winter, something terrible would happen. Adair, enraged that I’d defied him, might descend on the town with his hellhounds, and who knew what the blackhearted fiend might do to the innocents of St. Andrew, cut off from the rest of the world? I thought of the stories Alejandro and Dona had told me about Adair’s barbarian past, leading raids on villages and slaughtering inhabitants who resisted. I thought of the maidens he’d raped and the way he’d drugged me and used me for amusement. Moving within Boston society ensured that Adair’s brutal tendencies remained somewhat in check; there was no telling what would happen in an isolated, snowbound town. And I’d be the one responsible for bringing this plague on my neighbors.

I was mulling over my predicament one evening at Daughtery’s, hoping to run into the tenderhearted axman I’d met early in my visit, when Jonathan walked in. I’d seen that expression on his face before: he had not come into Daughtery’s restless for companionship. He was flush with contentment. He’d come from an assignation.

He started at the sight of me, but, having seen me, could hardly leave without acknowledging my presence. He took the stool across the lone table, his back to the fire. “Lanny, what are you doing here? It’s hardly the place for a lady to frequent on her own.”

“Oh, but I’m not a lady, am I?” I said, bitingly, though I regretted my bitterness immediately. “Where else can I go? I can hardly drink in the company of my mother and brother; I can’t abide their disapproving faces. You, at least, can always go back to your big house for a nightcap. Better quality of drink, at any rate. And anyway-shouldn’t you be home at this hour with your wife? You’ve been up to something this evening, I can smell it on you.”

“Considering your position, I wouldn’t think you’d be so quick to judge me,” he said. “All right-I’ll tell you the truth since you demand it from me. I have been with another woman. Someone I was seeing before you returned so unexpectedly. I, too, have a mistress. Anna Kolsted.”

“Anna Kolsted is a married woman.”

He shrugged.

I quivered with fury. “So you haven’t ended your affair with her, even after the pretty speech you gave me the other day?”

“I-I couldn’t leave her as abruptly as that without explaining what had happened.”

“And will you explain that you’ve had a moral epiphany? That you’ve resolved not to see her again?” I demanded, as though I had any right to.

He remained silent.

“Do you never learn, Jonathan? This cannot end well,” I said icily.

Jonathan pressed his mouth into a frown, long-simmering resentment bubbling up. “That seems to be what you always tell me, isn’t it?” Sophia’s name hung in the air between us, unspoken.

“It will end the same. She’ll fall in love with you and want you for herself.” Fear and sorrow rose up in me as it had the day I’d found Sophia in the river. I wouldn’t have thought, after everything I’d been through, that her vision still had the power to affect me-maybe it did because I sometimes wondered if I’d have done well to follow her example. “It’s inevitable, Jonathan. Everyone who knows you wants to own you.”

“Do you speak from experience?”

His sharpness silenced me for a second, but I couldn’t leave it be. I said sarcastically, “Those who have you tend to rue their good fortune. Perhaps you should ask your wife about that. Have you thought how your affair with Mrs. Kolsted will affect Evangeline should she find out?”

Anger overtook Jonathan quickly, like a storm front. He checked over his shoulder to make certain Daughtery was engaged and no one was listening, then gripped my upper arm and drew me close. “For Christ’s sake, Lanny, have pity on me. I’m married to a child. When I took her to our conjugal bed, she cried afterward. Cried. She is frightened of my mother and dumbstruck around my sisters. I have no need for a child, Lanny. I need a woman.”

I pried my arm out of his grip. “Don’t you think I know that?”

“I wish to God I’d never given in to my father and married her. He wanted an heir, that’s all he cared about. Saw a young girl with many breeding years ahead of her and made a deal with old McDougal, as though she was a broodmare.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You’ve no idea of the life I must live now, Lanny. No one to run the business but me. Benjamin is still as helpless as a four-year-old. My sisters are ninnies. And when my father died, well… all his worries were foisted onto my shoulders. This town depends on my family’s fortunes. Do you know how many settlers bought their land with loans secured by my father? One harsh winter, or if they’ve no talent for farming, and they will default on their obligations. I can foreclose, but what use have I for another failing farm? So you’ll forgive me, I pray, for taking a mistress and having some small measure of escape from all my responsibilities.”

I cast my eyes down.

He continued, wild eyed. “You can’t imagine how tempting your offers have been. I’d give up everything to be free of my obligations! But I cannot, and I think you understand why. Not only would my family be lost, but the town, too, would fail. Lives would be ruined. You may have caught me in a moment of weakness when you came back, Lanny, but the past few years have taught me hard lessons. I cannot be so selfish.”

Had he forgotten that he’d once told me he wanted to leave them all behind, his family and his fortune, for me? That he once wished his world was just he and I? A more levelheaded woman would have been happy to see that Jonathan had accepted his responsibilities, and was shouldering obligations that might break a weaker man. I cannot say I was happy or proud.

But I understood. I loved the town, in my way, and had no desire to see it falter. Even if my own family was already in difficulty, even if the townspeople had treated me shabbily and gossiped behind my back, I couldn’t take away the linchpin holding the town together. I sat opposite Jonathan, grim and sympathetic to the plight he’d just shared with me, yet inside, panic bloomed from my feet to my head. I was going to fail Adair. What in the world would I do?

We drank our brew in dismay. It seemed clear enough that I’d have to give up on Jonathan and needed to concentrate on my own plight: what to do next? Where could I go that Adair wouldn’t be able to track me down? I had no desire to reenact the excruciating torture I’d already been subjected to.

We paid for our drink and went out to the path, each of us silent with our own thoughts. The night was again cold, the sky clear and bright from the moon and stars, thin clouds slicing through the silver light.

Jonathan put a hand on my arm. “Forgive my outburst and forget my troubles. You have every right to despise me for what I just said. The last thing I want is for you to take on my burdens. My horse is in Daughtery’s barn. Let me give you a ride home.” But before I could tell him it was unnecessary and that I preferred to be left with my thoughts, we were interrupted by the crunch of snow at the top of the path.

It was late and near freezing, unlikely for anyone to be about. “Who’s there?” I called to a figure in the shadows. Edward Kolsted stepped into a sliver of moonlight, a flintlock in his hands.

“Be on your way, Miss McIlvrae. I’ve no quarrel with you.” Kolsted was a rough young man from one of the poorer families in town and posed no competition to Jonathan for anyone’s affections. His long face had been disfigured by smallpox, as many had been in youth, and for a young man, his brown hair was already thinning, his teeth falling out. He leveled the rifle at Jonathan’s chest.

“Don’t be stupid, Edward. There are witnesses: Lanny and the men inside Daughtery’s… unless you plan to kill them, too,” Jonathan said to his would-be murderer.

“I don’t care. You’ve ruined my Anna and made a laughingstock of me. I will be proud to be known as having avenged myself against you.” He lifted the rifle higher. A complete dread chill seized me. “Look at you, you fancy peacock,” Edward sneered down his rifle at Jonathan, who, to his credit, stood his ground. “Do you think the town will mourn when you’re dead? We’ll not, sir. We despise you, the men of this town. Do you think we don’t know what you’ve been up to, bewitching our wives, putting them under your spell? You took up with Anna for a bit of fun, and in the bargain stole the most precious thing I had. You’re the very devil, you are, and this town would be better rid of you.” Edward’s voice climbed, high and defensive, but regardless of his words, I felt sure that Kolsted would not go through with his threat. He meant to frighten Jonathan, to humiliate him and make him beg for forgiveness, and that would give the cuckold a measure of dignity. But he didn’t have the resolve to kill his rival.

“Is that what you want of me, to be a devil? That would suit your purpose, exonerate you of blame.” Jonathan lowered his arms. “But the truth is, your wife is an unhappy woman, and this has little to do with me and much to do with you.”

“Liar!” Kolsted shouted.

Jonathan took a step toward his assailant and my gut twisted, unsure if he had a death wish or if he couldn’t let Kolsted hide from the truth. Perhaps he felt he owed it to his lover. Perhaps our argument in Daughtery’s had brought about some resolution. But his angry countenance was misleading and Kolsted might be convinced that Jonathan was enraged because he loved Anna. “If your wife were happy, she wouldn’t seek my company. She-”

Kolsted’s old rifle fired, a blue-white burst of flame at the muzzle, which I caught from the corner of my eye. It went too fast: a crack like thunder, a flash like lightning, and Jonathan staggered backward, then dropped to the ground. Kolsted’s face contorted, captured in the moonlight for an instant. “I’ve shot him,” he muttered, as though reassuring himself. “I’ve shot Jonathan St. Andrew.”

I dropped to my knees in the half-frozen mud, pulling Jonathan onto my lap. His clothing was already soaked through with blood, all the way to his greatcoat. It was a deep wound and serious. I wrapped my arms around Jonathan and looked balefully at Kolsted. “If I had a rifle, I would shoot you where you stand. Get out of my sight.”

“Is he dead?” Kolsted craned his neck but wasn’t brave enough to walk up to the man he had shot.

“They’ll be out in a second, and if they find you here they’ll lock you up forthwith,” I warned, hissing through my teeth. I wanted him to flee: stirring could be heard within Daughtery’s and someone would be out shortly to see who had fired the shot. I had to conceal Jonathan before we were discovered.

I didn’t have to prompt Kolsted twice; whether it was from fright or sudden remorse, or because he wasn’t ready to be taken into custody, Jonathan’s assailant drew back like a spooked horse and ran. Locking my arms around Jonathan’s chest, I pulled him into Daughtery’s barn. I peeled back his greatcoat, then his frock coat, until I found the wound in his chest, blood spilling out from a hole near where his heart should be.

“Lanny,” he wheezed, searching for my hand.

“Right here, Jonathan. Be still.”

He wheezed again and coughed. There was no help to be had, judging from the distance of the shot and the location of the wound. I recognized the expression on his face: it was the strained look of the dying. He fell into unconsciousness, sinking in my arms.

Voices floated in from the other side of the worm-eaten boards, men from Daughtery’s out on the path. Finding no one, they drifted away.

I looked down on Jonathan’s beautiful face. His body, still warm, weighed heavily in my lap. My heart clamored in panic. Keep him alive. Keep him with me at all costs. I hugged him tighter. I couldn’t let him die. And there was only one way to save him.

I eased his body to the ground, spread open his coat and waistcoat. Thank God he was unconscious; frightened as I was, I’d never have been able to do the cursed deed otherwise. Would it even work? Perhaps I remembered it wrong or there were special words I needed to recite to make such potent magic work. I had no time for second guessing, however.

I fumbled at the hem of my bodice, searching for the vial. Once I’d located the tiny silver vial by feel, I ripped out the stitches and pulled it from its hiding place. My hands shook as I pulled the stopper from the vial and separated Jonathan’s lips. There was only a drop in there, less than a bead of sweat. I prayed it was enough.

“Don’t leave me, Jonathan. I cannot live without you,” I whispered in his ear, the only thing I could think to say. But then Alejandro’s words came to me, the thing he’d told me that day I’d been transformed-I prayed it would not be too late. “By my hand and intent,” I said, feeling foolish even as I spoke, knowing I had no power over anything, not heaven, hell, or earth.

I knelt in the straw, Jonathan propped in my lap, and brushed his hair off his forehead, waiting for a sign. All I remembered from the ordeal was the sensation of falling and a fever sweeping through my body like a fire, then waking much later in the dark.

I hugged Jonathan to me again. He’d stopped breathing and was growing colder. I pulled his coat around him, wondering if I could get him all the way to my family’s farm without being noticed. It seemed unlikely, but there was nowhere else to take him, and someone would search Daughtery’s barn sooner or later.

I saddled Jonathan’s horse, amazed to find I was afraid of the devil stallion no more. With strength I didn’t know I had, born of necessity, I threw Jonathan over the horse’s withers, swung into the saddle, and sprang out of the open barn doors, streaking through the village. More than one villager would later claim to have seen Jonathan St. Andrew ride out of town that night, throwing theories about his disappearance into disarray, no doubt.

When we reached my family’s farm, Jonathan’s body cradled in my lap, I went straight to the barn and woke the hired driver. We had to leave St. Andrew that night; I couldn’t risk waiting until morning, when Jonathan’s family would come looking for him. I told the driver to hitch the horses quickly; we were heading out immediately. When he protested that it was too dark to travel, I told him the moonlight was strong enough to light his way, then added, “I’m paying your wages, so you listen to me. You’ve fifteen minutes to harness those horses.” As for my trunk of clothing and other things, they’d all be left behind. I couldn’t risk waking my family by returning to the cabin. My only thoughts at that moment were of spiriting Jonathan out of town.

As the coach rattled down the snow-crusted road, I peeked out the curtained window to see if anyone in the house had heard us, but no one stirred. I imagined them waking to find me gone, wondering-heartbroken-why I would choose to leave this way, my departure as mysterious as my years of silence. I was doing a great injustice to my mother’s and sisters’ kind hearts, and it struck me to my core, but the truth was, it was easier to disappoint them than to lose Jonathan forever, or to disobey Adair.

Jonathan lay on the bench across from me, wrapped in his coat and a fur lap robe, my cloak balled into a pillow, his head propped at an awkward angle. He made no movement, there was no rise and fall of his chest with breath, nothing. His skin was pale as ice in the moonlight. I kept my eyes trained on his face, waiting for the first sign of life, but he was so still I began to wonder if I had failed.

THIRTY-EIGHT

We put miles between us and the village in the hours before dawn, the carriage rattling down the rough and lonesome forest trail as I sat vigil over Jonathan. It could have been a funeral trap, with me acting the widow accompanying her husband’s body on the journey to his final resting place.

The sun had been out for a while by the time Jonathan stirred. By then, I’d almost come to the conclusion that he was not coming back; I’d sat trembling and sweating for hours, on the verge of vomiting, hating myself. The first sign of life was a twitch of his right cheek, then a flutter of an eyelash. As he was still white as a corpse, I doubted my eyes for a moment, until I heard the low moan, saw his lips part, and then both eyes open.

“Where are we?” he asked in a barely audible rasp.

“In a carriage. Lie still. You’ll feel better in a bit.”

“A carriage? Where are we going?”

“To Boston.” I didn’t know what else to tell him.

“Boston! What happened? Did I”-his mind must have gone to the last thing he could remember, the two of us at Daughtery’s-“did I lose a wager? Was I drunk, to agree to go with you-”

“There was no agreement about it,” I said, kneeling next to him to tuck the robe around him more tightly. “We are going because we must. You can no longer stay in St. Andrew.”

“What are you talking about, Lanny?” Jonathan was vexed and tried to push me away, though he was so weak he couldn’t make me budge. I felt something unpleasant under my knee, like a sharp pebble; reaching down, my fingers found a shot of lead.

The shot from Kolsted’s flintlock.

I held it up for Jonathan to see. “Do you recognize this?”

He tried hard to focus on the small dark form in my hand. I watched as the memory caught up to him, and he recalled the argument on the footpath and the flash of powder that had ended his life.

“I was shot,” he said, his chest heaving up and down. His hand went to his pectoral, the torn layers of shirt and waistcoat, stiff with dried blood. He felt his flesh under the clothing, but it was whole.

“No wound,” Jonathan said with relief. “Kolsted must have missed.”

“How could that be? You see the blood, the tears in your clothes. Kolsted didn’t miss you, Jonathan. He shot you in the heart and killed you.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re not making sense. I don’t understand.”

“It’s not something that can be understood,” I replied, taking his hand. “It’s a miracle.”

I tried to explain it all, though God knows I understood precious little myself. I told him my story and Adair’s story. I showed him the tiny vial, now empty, and let him sniff its last foul vapors. He listened, the whole time observing me as though I was a madwoman.

“Tell your driver to stop the carriage,” he said. “I’m going back to St. Andrew if I have to walk the whole way.”

“I can’t let you out.”

“Stop the carriage!” he thundered, rising to his feet and pounding a fist on the carriage’s roof. I tried to make him sit down, but the driver had heard him and pulled the horses up.

Jonathan flung open the tiny door and bounded out into the knee-deep virgin snow. The driver turned, looking down on us doubtfully from his high perch, his mustache frosted with his own breath. The horses shuddered for air, exhausted from pulling the carriage through the snow.

“We’ll be back. Melt some snow to water the horses,” I said in an attempt to distract the driver. I ran after Jonathan, my skirts slowing me in the snow, and grabbed his arm when I finally caught up to him.

“You’ve got to listen to me. You can’t go back to St. Andrew. You’ve changed.”

He pushed me away. “I don’t know what happened to you since you’ve been away, but I can only surmise that you’ve lost your mind…”

I held on to his cuff fiercely. “I’ll prove it to you. If I can make you see that I’m telling the truth, do you promise to come with me?”

He stopped but looked at me as though he expected a trick. “I promise you nothing.”

I held up my hand, releasing his sleeve, signaling for him to wait. With my other hand, I found a small but sturdy knife in the pocket of my overcoat. I tore open my bodice, exposing my corset to the frigidly crisp air, and then, grasping the knife’s handle in both hands, I plunged it into my chest to the hilt.

Jonathan nearly dropped to his knees, but his hands reached for me reflexively. “Good God! You are insane! What in God’s name are you doing-”

Blood welled around the hilt, quickly soaked up by my clothing, until a huge sunburst of deep crimson spread across the silk from my belly to my sternum. I pulled the blade out, then grabbed his hand and pressed his fingers to the wound. He tried to pull away but I held him fast.

“Touch it. Feel what is happening and tell me you still don’t believe me.”

I knew what would happen. It was a parlor trick Dona performed for us when we gathered in the kitchen to wind down after a night on the town. He would sit before the fire, toss his frock coat over the back of a chair and roll up his voluminous sleeves, and then cut deep into his forearms with a knife. Alejandro, Tilde, and I would watch as the two raw ends of red flesh would crawl toward each other, helpless as doomed lovers, and sew up in a seamless embrace. An impossible feat, done over and over, as sure as the sun rises. (Dona would laugh bitterly as he watched his own flesh re-join, but re-creating his trick myself, I saw that it had a sensation all its own. It was pain we sought but couldn’t re-create, not exactly. We came to want an approximation of suicide, and in its stead we would have the temporary pleasure of inflicting pain upon ourselves, but even that was denied us. How we hated ourselves, each in our own way!)

Jonathan’s face went pale as he felt the pulpy flesh move and shudder and close.

“What is this?” he whispered in horror. “The devil’s hand is there, surely.”

“I don’t know about that. I have no explanation. What’s done is done and there’s no running away from it. You’ll never be the same again and your place is no longer in St. Andrew. Now come with me,” I said. He went limp and stark white and he didn’t resist when I placed my hand on his arm and guided him back to the carriage.

Jonathan did not recover from shock for the entire trip. It made for an anxious time for me, as I was eager to know if I would get my friend-and my lover-back. Jonathan was always the confident one and it made me ill at ease to be the leader. It was foolish for me to expect anything different; after all, how long had I sulked in Adair’s house, withdrawing into myself and refusing to believe what had happened to me?

He kept to the tiny cabin during the sailing to Boston, not stepping on deck once. That whetted the crew’s and other passengers’ curiosity to be sure, so even though the seas were smooth as well water, I told them that he had taken ill and did not trust his legs to be up and about. I brought him soup from the galley and his ration of beer, though he no longer had the need to eat and his appetite had deserted him. As Jonathan would soon learn, eating was something we did out of habit and for comfort, and to pretend that we were the same as ever.

By the time the ship arrived at the Boston harbor, Jonathan was a strange-looking creature from his many hours in the semidarkness of the cabin. Pale and nervous, with eyes rimmed pink from lack of sleep, he emerged from his cabin dressed in the set of ragtag clothes we had purchased back in Camden from a tiny shop that sold second hand goods. He stood on the deck, enduring the stares of the other passengers, who doubtless had wondered if the unseen passenger had died in his cabin during the journey. He watched the activity on the pier as the ship was secured in its berth, eyes widening at the crowds. His incredible beauty had been dampened by his ordeal, and for a moment, I wished that Adair would not see Jonathan looking so poorly for their first meeting. I wanted Adair to see that Jonathan was everything I’d promised-foolish vanity!

We disembarked and had gone not twenty feet up the pier when I saw Dona waiting for us with a couple of servants. Dona wore a funereal outfit, black ostrich plumes in his hat, and he was bundled in a black cape and leaned on his walking stick, towering over the ordinary people like the grim reaper himself. An evil leer crept over his face as he spied us.

“How did you know I was returning today? On this ship?” I demanded of him. “I sent no letter on ahead to tell you of my plans.”

“Oh, Lanore, you are laughably naive. Adair always knows such things. He felt your presence on the horizon and sent me to fetch you,” he said, brushing me off. He lavished all his attention on Jonathan, not attempting to disguise that he was inspecting him from head to toe and back again. “So, introduce me to your friend.”

“Jonathan, this is Donatello,” I said, curtly. Jonathan made no move to acknowledge him or return the greeting, though whether it was because of Dona’s bald appraisal or because he was still in shock I couldn’t say.

“Doesn’t he speak? Has he no manners?” Dona said. When Jonathan didn’t rise to the bait, Dona brushed off the snub by turning to me. “Where are your bags? The servants-”

“Would we be dressed like this if we had anything else to wear? I had to leave everything behind. I barely had the money to make it to Boston.” In my mind’s eye, I saw the trunk I’d left behind in my mother’s house, inconspicuously tucked in a corner. When they inspected it-waiting until curiosity got the best of them before they’d violate my privacy, even though they’d know I was not coming back-they would find the doeskin pouch fat with gold and silver coins. I was happy that the money pouch had been left behind; I felt I owed my family that much. I considered it Adair’s blood money, paying my family for the loss of me forever, much as he’d assuaged his guilt by leaving money for his family centuries earlier.

“How consistent of you. The first time, you came to us with nothing. Now you bring your friend, both of you with nothing.” Dona threw his hands in the air as though I was incorrigible, but I knew why he acted peevishly: even in Jonathan’s current state, his exceptional nature was obvious. He would become the apple of Adair’s eye, the friend and compatriot against whom Dona could never compete. Dona would fall from grace with Adair; there was nothing to be done for it and that was clear to Dona from the moment he laid eyes on Jonathan.

If only Dona had known, he wouldn’t have wasted his envy. Our arrival that day was the beginning of the end for all of us.

Jonathan came back to life on the carriage ride to Adair’s mansion. For this was his first trip to a city as big and varied as Boston, and through his eyes, I got to relive my arrival three years earlier: the masses of people on the dusty streets; the proliferation of shops and inns; the amazing houses made of brick, towering several stories high; the number of carriages on the street drawn by well-groomed horses; the women in fashions of the day, revealing décolletage and long white throats. After a while, Jonathan had to sit back from the window and close his eyes.

Then, of course, Adair’s mansion was as overwhelming as a castle, though by this point, Jonathan had grown numb to the novelty of grandeur. He allowed me to lead him up the stairs and into the house, through the foyer with the chandelier swaying overhead and the liveried footmen bowing low enough to inspect Jonathan’s crusted shoes. We went through the dining hall with its table set for eighteen to the double-bowed staircase, which led to the bedchambers upstairs.

“Where is Adair?” I demanded of one of the butlers, eager to get this part over.

“Right here.” His voice rose behind me, and I whirled around to see him walking in. He’d dressed carefully, with a studied casualness, his hair tied back with a ribbon like a European gentleman. Like Dona, he eyed my Jonathan as though considering a fair price for him, rubbing together the fingers of his right hand. For his part, Jonathan tried to be indifferent, glancing at Adair and then looking away. But I felt a charge in the air and a recognition pass between them. It could have been what mystics claim as the bond between souls destined to travel throughout time together. Or it might have been the dance of rival males in the wild, wondering who will come out on top and how bloody the battle will be. Or it might have been that he was finally meeting the man who kept me.

“So this is the friend you told us about,” Adair said, pretending it was as simple as having an old friend down for a visit.

“I am pleased to introduce to you Mr. Jonathan St. Andrew.” I did my best impression of a doorman but neither man was amused.

“And you are the…” Jonathan fumbled for the word to describe Adair from my fantastic story, for indeed what would you call him? Monster? Ogre? Demon? “Lanny told me about you.”

Adair raised an eyebrow. “Did she? I hope Lanny did not make too much of a mess of it. She has such a grand imagination. You shall have to tell me what she said, someday.” He snapped his fingers at Dona. “Show our guest up to his room. He must be tired.”

“I can take him,” I began, but Adair cut me off.

“No, Lanore, stay with me. I’d like to speak to you for a moment.” It was then I realized I was in trouble: he simmered with anger, hidden for the sake of our guest. We watched as Dona led a sleepwalking Jonathan up the winding staircase, until they disappeared from view. Then Adair whirled on me, striking me hard across my face.

Knocked to the floor, I held my cheek and glared at him. “What was that for?”

“You changed him, didn’t you? You stole my elixir and you took him for yourself. Did you think I wouldn’t find out what you’d done?” Adair stood over me, huffing, shoulders trembling.

“I had no choice! He had been shot… he was dying…”

“Do you think I am stupid? You stole the elixir because you had intended from the beginning to bind him to you.” Adair reached down and grabbed me by the arm, hoisted me to my feet, and shoved me against the wall. In his hands, I felt the terror of the episode in the basement, strapped in the diabolical harness, helpless in the face of his violence and drowning in panic. Then he hit me again, a stinging backhand that dropped me to the floor a second time. I reached up again to my cheek and found it smeared with blood. He’d split the skin open, and pain was radiating through my face even as the wound’s edges began to knit back together.

“If I meant to steal him from you, would I have come back?” Still on the floor, I scrabbled backward like a crab to get out of Adair’s reach, slipping on my own silken hem. “I’d have run away and taken him with me. No, it’s exactly as I told you… I took the vial, yes, but as a precaution. It was a feeling I had, that something bad was going to happen. But of course I came back. I am loyal to you,” I said, even though there was murder in my heart, fury at being struck, for being helpless to do anything about it.

Adair glared at me, questioning my declaration, but did not strike me again. Instead, he turned and walked away, his warning to me echoing in the hall. “We will see about your professed loyalty. Do not think this is over, Lanore. I will crush the tie between you and this man so completely that your bond to him will be as nothing. Your thievery and your scheming will come to naught. You are mine, and if you believe I cannot undo what you have done, you are mistaken. Jonathan will be mine, too.”

I remained on the floor, holding my cheek, trying not to panic at his words. I couldn’t let him take Jonathan away from me. I couldn’t let him sever the tie to the only person I cared about. Jonathan was all I had and all I wanted. If I lost him, life would be meaningless, and unfortunately, life would be all that was left to me.

THIRTY-NINE

It is near midnight when they arrive in Quebec City. Lanny directs Luke to what appears to be the best hotel in the old part of town, a tall fortresslike building with parapets for a crown and flags fluttering in the cold night wind. Grateful to be driving the new SUV instead of his old truck, Luke hands the valet the keys and then he and Lanny walk empty-handed into the lobby.

The hotel room is about the most luxurious place he’s ever stayed; it puts the hotel where he spent his honeymoon to shame. The bed is a plush affair with feather bed, a half dozen pillows, and Frette sheets, and as he settles into its voluptuousness, he levels a remote at the flat-screen television. The local news programs should be on in a few minutes and he’s anxious to see if there is any mention of the disappearance of a murder suspect from a hospital in Maine. Luke hopes that St. Andrew is too far away and inconsequential for the story to be carried in Quebec.

His gaze wanders to Lanny’s laptop, at the foot of the bed. He could see if there’s anything online, but Luke is struck by a sudden irrational fear that if he searches for their story online, he will give them away somehow, that the authorities will be able to track them down through the combination of an internet connection and the use of suspicious key words. His heart pounds even though he knows this isn’t possible. He has made himself almost dizzy with paranoia when he’s not sure there is any reason for it.

Lanny comes out of the bathroom on a cloud of warm, damp air. She’s swimming in the hotel bathrobe, which is huge on her, and has a towel over her shoulders, her wet hair falling in tendrils over her eyes. She fishes a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket. Before lighting up, she offers one to Luke, but he shakes his head.

“The water pressure is heavenly,” she says, sending a stream of smoke toward the sprinkler heads embedded discreetly in the ceiling. “You should take a nice long, hot shower.”

“In a minute,” he says.

“What’s on television? Are you looking for something about us?”

He nods, twitching his stockinged feet at the plasma screen. A flashy logo for the news program flits across, then a serious-looking middle-aged man begins reading headlines while his coanchor nods attentively. Lanny continues to sit with her back to the screen, toweling her hair. Seven minutes into the program, a head shot of Luke flashes behind the anchor. It’s the posed personnel photo they took at the hospital that appears every time his name is mentioned in the hospital newsletter.

“… is missing after treating a murder suspect for the police at Aroostook General Hospital yesterday evening, and the authorities fear that something may have happened to him. The police are asking anyone with information on the doctor’s whereabouts to call the crime hotline…”

The entire story lasts less than sixty seconds, but it is so alarming to see his face on the television screen that Luke can’t absorb what the anchor is saying. Lanny takes the remote out of his hand and turns it off.

“So, they’re looking for you,” she says, her voice breaking his paralysis.

“Don’t they have to wait forty-eight hours before they can consider you a missing person?” he asks, weakly indignant, as though an injustice has been done to him.

“They’re not going to wait; they think you’re in danger.”

Am I? he wonders. Does Joe Duchesne know something I don’t know? “They read my name on the air. The hotel…”

“No reason to worry. We registered in my name, remember? The police back in St. Andrew don’t know who I am. No one is going to put two and two together.” The girl turns away and blows another long stream of smoke. “It’ll be okay. Trust me. I’m an expert at escaping.”

It feels as though Luke’s brain squeezes against his skull, as if in a panic it is trying to get out. The enormity of what he has done hits him: Duchesne will be waiting to talk to him. Peter undoubtedly has told the police about the SUV and the email, so there’s no way they can continue to use it. In order to go back to his home, he will have to lie convincingly to the sheriff and repeat that lie to everyone back in St. Andrew, maybe for the rest of his life. He closes his eyes and fights for breath. His subconscious led him to help Lanny. If he can only fight through the alarm clamoring in his head, his subconscious should tell him what it is he really wants, why he walked out on his life and went tearing down the road with this woman, bridges aflame behind him. “Does that mean I can’t go back?” he asks.

“If that’s what you want,” she says carefully. “They’ll have questions, but nothing you wouldn’t be able to handle. Do you want to go back to St. Andrew? To your parents’ farm, the house full of their belongings, the absence of your kids? Back to the hospital to take care of your ungrateful neighbors?”

Luke’s uneasiness grows stronger. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Listen to me, Luke. I know what you’re thinking.” She slides across the bed to sit next to him, close, so he can’t turn away from her. He smells the faint perfume of soap, warmed by her skin, rise from under the bathrobe. “You only want to go back because it’s what you know. It’s what you have left. The man I saw walk into the ER looked overwhelmed and tired. You’ve been through a lot with your parents and your former wife, losing your children… There’s nothing there for you anymore. It’s a trap. You go back to St. Andrew and you’ll never leave. You’ll just grow older, surrounded by people who don’t give a damn about you. I know what you’re feeling. You’re alone and you’re afraid you’re going to be alone for the rest of your life, rattling around in a big house, no one to talk to. No one to help with the burdens of living-no one to eat dinner with, no one to listen to stories about your day. You’re afraid of old age-who will be there for you? Who will take care of you the way you took care of your parents, who will hold your hand when it’s your turn to die?” What she’s said is brutally true and he can barely stand to listen to it. She puts one arm around Luke’s shoulder and when he doesn’t push her away, she pulls him closer.

“You’re right to be afraid of dying. Death has taken everyone I’ve known. I’ve held them in my arms up to their last moment, comforted them, cried when they’ve gone. Loneliness is a terrible thing.” The words are incongruous coming from this young woman, but her sadness is palpable. “I can be here for you always, Luke. I won’t go away. I’ll be with you for the rest of your life, if you want me to be.”

Luke doesn’t pull away, but he thinks about her words. She’s not proposing love-is she?-no, Luke knows that, he’s no fool. Though it’s not exactly friendship, either. He doesn’t flatter himself into thinking that they have taken to each other like kindred souls: they’ve known each other for less than thirty-six hours. He thinks he understands what this pretty young woman is offering. She needs a companion. Luke has followed an instinct he didn’t know he had and has done well by her. She sees it can work. And in exchange, he can walk away from his old, complicated life without having to do so much as cancel his account with the electric company. And, Luke won’t ever be alone again.

He remains in Lanny’s arms, letting her stroke his back, enjoying the feel of her hand. It clears his mind and brings Luke peace for the first time since the sheriff escorted her into the emergency room.

He knows that if he thinks too hard, the fog will roll back in. He feels like a character in the middle of a fairy tale, but if he stops to think about what is happening, if he resists the gentle tug of her story, confusion will set in. He’s tempted not to question Lanny’s unseen world. If he accepts what she says as true, then what he believes about death is a lie. But, as a doctor, Luke has witnessed the end of life, stood by as life dribbled out of a patient. He accepted death as one of his world’s absolutes and now he’s being told that it’s not. Exigencies have been written into the coda of life in invisible ink. If death isn’t an absolute, then of the thousands of facts and faiths he’s been fed in his life, which other ones might be a lie?

That is, if this girl’s story is true. Even though he’s been following her in a compliant fog, Luke still can’t shake the suspicion that he’s being deceived. She is obviously skilled in manipulation, like many a psychopath. Now is not the time for such thoughts, however. She’s right: he is tired and overwhelmed and afraid of coming to the wrong conclusion, making the wrong decision.

He leans back into the pillow, faintly scented of lavender, and nestles against Lanny’s warm body. “You don’t need to worry. I’m not going anywhere just yet. For one thing, you haven’t told me the rest of your story. I want to hear what happened next.”

FORTY

We went out that night, Jonathan’s first night in Boston. The event was a sedate one-a musicale, with a piano and a singer of no renown-but still I wouldn’t have thought it a good idea to take him out while he was in shock and his mind too unsettled. Secrecy was Adair’s byword-he’d impressed that on us all with tales of being suspected of witchcraft and barely escaping violent mobs, fleeing on horseback by moonlight, leaving behind a fortune that had taken decades to amass-and who knew what Jonathan might say in the state he was in. Adair would not be dissuaded, however, and we were dispatched to search through the trunks for a suite of evening clothes for Jonathan. In the end, Adair commandeered Dona’s gorgeous French frock coat (Jonathan being as tall as Dona but broader through the shoulders) and had one of the maids slave for a few hours on alterations as the rest of us powdered, perfumed, and dressed to introduce Jonathan to the city.

Only he couldn’t go forth as Jonathan, could he? “You must remember to introduce yourself by another name,” Adair explained, as servants helped us don capes and hats under the chandelier in the foyer. “We cannot have word getting back to your little hamlet that Jonathan St. Andrew has been seen in Boston.”

The reason was obvious: Jonathan’s family would be looking for him. Ruth St. Andrew would refuse to accept that her son had simply disappeared. She’d have the entire town searched, the woods and river, too. When the snow melted in the spring and still no body was found, she would deduce that Jonathan had left on his own and she might cast an even wider net in an attempt to find him. We couldn’t leave a trail of crumbs behind, clues that could bring someone to our door.

“Why do you insist on taking him out tonight? Why not let him recover first?” I asked Adair as we clambered into the carriage. He regarded me as he might a simpleton or a noisome child.

“Because I don’t want him cloistered in his room, brooding over what he has left behind. I want him to enjoy what the world has to offer.” He smiled at Jonathan, though Jonathan only stared moodily out the carriage window, oblivious even to Tilde’s hand playing provocatively with his knee. Something about Adair’s answer didn’t sit right with me, and I’d learned to trust my instincts about when Adair was lying. Adair wanted Jonathan to be seen in public, but for what reason, I couldn’t determine.

The carriage took us to a tall, stately house not far off the Boston Common, the home of a councilman and attorney whose wife had gone mad for Adair, or I should say, had gone mad for what he represented: European aristocracy and sophistication (if she only knew that, in truth, she was entertaining the son of an itinerant field hand, a peasant with blood as well as mud on his hands). The husband left for their farm to the west of the city whenever the wife hosted one of these parties and it was just as well, as he would have died of apoplexy if he’d known what went on at these events and how she spent his money.

In addition to hanging on Adair’s arm for much of the evening, the councilman’s wife also tried to interest him in her daughters. Despite the fact that America had recently won its independence and thrown off a monarchy in favor of democracy, some were still enamored of the idea of royalty, and the councilman’s wife probably secretly wished to have one of her daughters marry into a title. I expected that when we arrived, she would descend on Adair in a flurry of taffeta skirts and curtsies, ushering in her daughters to stand a little closer to the count, until he could peer down their décolleté with no trouble.

When Jonathan stepped into the ballroom, there was a hush and then a twitter ran through the gathering. It would not be an exaggeration to say all eyes turned to him. Tilde had taken his arm and now ushered him to where Adair stood, speaking with the hostess.

“Allow me to introduce you,” Adair began and then gave the councilman’s wife a name to remember Jonathan by, Jacob Moore, deceptively common. She looked up, momentarily speechless.

“He’s my American cousin, would you believe it?” Adair threw an arm affectionately around Jonathan’s neck. “Through family in England on both our mothers’ sides. A distant branch of my family…” Adair trailed off when it was apparent that no one-for the first time since he’d arrived in America-was listening to him.

“Are you new to Boston?” the hostess asked Jonathan, her eyes never leaving his face. “Because I would remember if I had seen you before.”

I stood by the punch table with Alejandro, watching Jonathan stumble through an explanation, needing Adair to rescue him. “I suspect we won’t be long here, tonight,” I said.

“This will not be as easy as Adair thinks.” Alejandro lifted his cup in their direction. “You cannot hide that face. Word will get around, maybe even to your wretched village.”

There was a more immediate concern, I thought, as I observed Jonathan and Adair together. The women flocked not around the European aristocrat but the tall stranger. They stared at him from behind their fans; they stood blushing at his elbow, waiting to be introduced. I’d seen those expressions before, and I realized at that moment that it would never change. Wherever Jonathan went, women would try to possess him. Even if he didn’t encourage it, they would always pursue him. As trying as the competition had been in St. Andrew, now Jonathan would never be mine alone. I would always have to share him.

Tonight, Adair seemed content to let Jonathan be the center of attention; indeed, he appeared to pay close attention to the partygoers’ reactions. But I wondered how long that would last. Adair did not seem the type to live in someone else’s shadow, and there never was any choice but to let him be the star. Jonathan himself had no choice.

“I fear there will be trouble before too long,” I murmured to Alejandro.

“With Adair, there is always trouble. It is just a matter of how bad.”

We stayed longer than I thought: the night was starting to surrender to the purple bloom of dawn when we returned to the mansion in quiet exhaustion. I saw that, despite himself, Jonathan appeared to have come out of his shell a little. High spots of color-an excess of drink?-spotted his cheeks and he was definitely less tense.

We climbed the stairs in silence, the sharp report of our heels on the marble floor echoing through the great, hollow house. Tilde tugged at Jonathan’s hand, trying to direct him to her room, but he slipped from her grasp with a shake of his head. One by one, the courtiers disappeared behind the gilded doors to their bedchambers until it was only Jonathan, Adair, and myself. I was about to escort Jonathan to his room, to share a few words of reassurance and, with any luck, be invited to keep him warm under the covers, when I was stopped by an arm thrown around my waist. Adair reeled me in close to him and, in full view of Jonathan, ran his free hand over my bodice and my derriere. He kicked open the door to his private chamber.

“Will you join us tonight?” he said with a wink. “We should make this a night to remember, to celebrate your arrival. Lanore is quite capable of pleasing both of us; she’s done it many times before. You should see for yourself: she has a gift for loving two men at the same time.”

Jonathan blanched and stepped back.

“No? Another time, then. Perhaps when you are more rested. Good night,” Adair said, as he pulled me in behind him. There was no mistaking his message: I was a common whore. This was how Adair meant to kill Jonathan’s affection for me, and I realized in that instant that I’d been a fool to doubt Adair’s ability to make good on it. I barely looked at Jonathan’s face-shocked, hurt-before the door slammed shut.

In the morning, I gathered my clothing in my arms, and in my shift and bare feet, stood outside Jonathan’s bedchamber, listening for signs that he was awake. I craved in the strongest way to hear the quotidian noises of his morning ritual-the rustle of bed linen, water splashing in the basin-thinking that would make everything right. I had no idea if I could face him. I wanted the kind of reassurance a child gets from a parent’s face after he’s been punished, but I lacked the courage to knock. It didn’t matter: it was completely still within, and given the long, complicated day he’d had, I shouldn’t have doubted he’d sleep a full twenty-four hours.

Instead, I washed in my room and dressed in fresh clothing, then made my way downstairs in the hope that, despite the early hour, the servants would have set a pan of coffee brewing. To my surprise, Jonathan sat in the small dining room, steaming milk and dry bread on the table before him. He looked up at me.

“You’ve risen,” I said.

He stood and pulled out the chair opposite his. “I’ve kept farmer’s hours my whole life. Surely you remember that about St. Andrew. If you slept past six in the morning, the entire town would be talking about you by noon. The only thing for it was to be on your deathbed,” he said wryly. A sleepy young man carried in a cup and saucer, splashing coffee clumsily over the edge, then set it at my left hand, nodded, and left.

Although I’d thought all evening of how I might explain myself to Jonathan, I’d come up at a loss. I had no idea how to start, so I fumbled with the delicate handle of the cup. “What you saw last night…”

Jonathan held up a hand, a strangled look on his face, as though he didn’t wish to speak but knew he had to. “I don’t know why I reacted the way I did last night… You’d told me your circumstances plainly in St. Andrew. If I seemed shocked, it’s because, well, I didn’t expect this Adair to make the offer he did.” Jonathan cleared his throat. “You’ve always been a good friend to me, Lanny…”

“That hasn’t changed,” I said.

“… but I would not be speaking the truth if I said his words didn’t shake me. He doesn’t seem the sort of man a woman should allow herself to love.” It seemed to bother him greatly, to say that much to me. He kept his gaze on the table. “Do you love him?”

Could Jonathan think I could love anyone but him? He didn’t sound jealous, though; he was worried. “It’s not about love,” I said grimly. “You must understand that.”

His face shifted, as though a thought had just come to him. “Tell me that he doesn’t-force-you to do these things.”

I blushed. “Not exactly.”

“Then you want to be with him?”

“Not now that you’re here,” I said, and he squirmed, though I wasn’t sure why. At that moment, I wanted to warn Jonathan about Adair’s possible intentions toward him. “Look, there’s one thing I must tell you about Adair, though you may have guessed it now that you’ve met Dona and Alejandro. They’re-” I hesitated, unsure how much of a shock Jonathan could take after all he’d been through in twenty-four hours.

“They’re sodomites,” he said plainly. “One doesn’t spend one’s life around men like the axmen, who have only other men for company, without picking up something about it.”

“They consort with Adair. You’ll see, Adair has a most peculiar nature,” I said. “He is mad for fornication in any form. But there is nothing loving about it, or tender.” I stopped short of telling him that Adair used sex as punishment, to exert his will over us, to make us obey him. I said nothing because I was afraid to, just as Alejandro had been afraid to make me aware of the truth.

Jonathan looked at me directly, a frown firmly creased across his mouth. “What have you gotten me into, Lanny?”

I reached for his hand. “I’m sorry, Jonathan, I truly am. You must believe me. But… though you may not wish for me to say this, it is a comfort to have you with me. I’ve been so alone. I’ve needed you.”

He squeezed my hand, though reluctantly.

“Besides,” I continued, “what was I to do? Kolsted had shot you. You were bleeding to death in my arms. If I didn’t act, you’d be-”

“Dead, I know. It’s only that… I hope not to be in the position, one day, of wishing that were so.”

That morning, Adair sent for the tailor. Jonathan needed a wardrobe, Adair decreed; his new guest could not continue to be seen in public in mismatched, ill-fitting costumes. As every member of the household was a clotheshorse and had enriched the tailor greatly, Mr. Drake rushed over before the breakfast things were even cleared away, bringing with him a train of assistants carrying bolts of fabric. The latest woolens and velvets, silks and brocades, from European warehouses. Tea chests filled with expensive buttons made of mother-of-pearl and bone, pewter buckles for a pair of slippers. I sensed Jonathan did not approve and didn’t want to be indebted to Adair for an extravagant wardrobe, but he said nothing. I sat on a stool at the fringes of the activity, ogling the lovely fabrics, hoping to get a dress or two out of the fitting.

“You know, I could use a few new things,” I said to Adair, holding a strip of pink satin to my cheek to see if it suited my complexion. “I left my entire wardrobe behind in St. Andrew when we fled. I had to sell my last piece of jewelry to make passage on the ship to Boston.”

“Don’t remind me,” he said drily.

Mr. Drake had Jonathan stand on his tailor’s box in front of the biggest mirror in the house and began taking his measurements with a length of string, clucking to himself over Jonathan’s impressive proportions. “My, my, you are a tall one,” he said, running his hands up the length of Jonathan’s back, then over his hips, and finally-nearly causing me to swoon-up his leg to measure an inseam. “The gentleman dresses left,” Drake murmured, almost lovingly, to the assistant scribbling down the numbers.

The order for the tailor was long: three frock coats and a half dozen pairs of breeches, including a pair of the finest doeskin for riding; a dozen shirts, including a very fancy one with lace for gala events; four waistcoats; at least a dozen cravats. A new pair of field boots. Silk and woolen stockings and garters, three pairs of each. And that was just to meet the immediate need; more would be ordered when new shipments of fabric arrived. Mr. Drake was still writing up the order when Adair placed a huge ruby on the table in front of the tailor; not a word was spoken but, by the smile on Drake’s face, he was more than happy with his compensation. What he didn’t know was that the gem was a mere bauble, plucked from a box containing many more, the box itself only one among many. Adair had treasure dating back to the sacking of Vienna. A gemstone that size was as common as a field mushroom to Adair.

“A cloak, too, I think, for my associate. Lined with heavy satin,” Adair added, spinning the ruby on its faceted end like a child’s wooden top.

The ruby attracted everyone’s eye, and I was the only one to see Adair take a long, appraising look at Jonathan, from his shoulders down to the graceful dip at the small of his back and over his trim buttocks. The look was so naked and heavy with intent that it froze my heart in fear for what lay ahead for my Jonathan.

As the tailor packed his things, a stranger arrived for Adair. A somber gentleman with two ledgers and a portable writing kit-ink-well, quills-tucked under his arm. The two went immediately to the study without a word to anyone else.

“Do you know who that man is?” I asked Alejandro as I watched the study door close.

“Adair’s taken a solicitor while you were gone. It is understandable: now that he is in this country, he has legal matters to attend to regarding his property overseas. These things come up from time to time. It is of no consequence,” he answered, as though it was the most boring thing imaginable. And so I paid no more mind to it-at the time.

“It is nonsense,” Jonathan said when Adair told him an artist was coming to the house that day to make sketches of him for an oil painting.

“It would be criminal not to have your likeness captured,” Adair argued back. “There are far homelier men who have immortalized themselves for posterity, lined the walls of their familial mansions with their sorry likenesses. This very house is a case in point,” Adair said, gesturing to the walls of portraits that had been rented with the house to provide a ready-made pedigree. “Besides, Mrs. Warner told me about the artist, quite gifted, and I want to see if he is worth the accolades that are being heaped upon him. He should thank God to get such a subject, I tell you. Your face may well establish this man’s career.”

“I don’t care to make anyone’s career,” Jonathan retorted, but he knew the battle was lost. He sat for the artist but was not exactly cooperative; he slumped in the chair, leaning with his cheek against his hand, face sullen, like a schoolboy being kept after class. I perched on the window seat for the entire session, seeing his beauty anew through the artist’s quick charcoal sketches. The artist clucked to himself throughout, undoubtedly pleased at his good fortune to be working on such a striking figure and getting paid for the privilege.

Dona, once an artist’s model, sat with me for an afternoon, ostensibly to study the artist’s technique. I noticed that he seemed to observe Jonathan more than he bothered with the artist.

“He’s going to become quite the pet, isn’t he,” Dona said at one point. “You can tell by the portrait-Adair only has likenesses done of his favorite. The odalisque, for instance.”

“And what does that mean, to be his favorite?”

He gave me a sly look. “Oh, don’t pretend. You have been Adair’s favorite for a short while. In some ways, you still are. And so you know, it’s onerous. He expects your attention all the time. He’s very demanding and easily bored, especially when it comes to sex games,” Dona said, lifting a shoulder archly, as though to say he was happy he was no longer pressured to come up with new ways to bring Adair to climax. I looked closely at Dona, studying his features as he spoke: he was a handsome man, too, though his beauty had been forever ruined by some unhappiness he carried inside. A secret malice clouded his eyes and twisted his mouth into a sneer.

“And he’s only had portraits done of these two?” I asked, taking up the conversation again. “Only Uzra and Jonathan?”

“Oh, there have been a few others. Only the stunningly beautiful. He’s left their paintings in storage in the old country, like the faces of angels locked away in a vault. They’ve fallen out of favor. Perhaps you’ll see them one day.” He tilted his head, studying Jonathan with a critical eye. “The paintings, I mean.”

“The paintings…,” I repeated. “But the fallen ones-what has become of them?”

“Oh, some have left. With Adair’s blessing, of course. No one leaves without it. But they’re scattered like leaves in the wind… We rarely see them again.” He paused for a minute. “Though you have met Jude, now that I think of it. No loss, his departure. What a diabolical man, to pass himself off as a preacher. A sinner in saint’s clothing.” Dona laughed, as though it was the funniest thing he could conceive of, one of the damned masquerading as a preacher.

“You said only some have left. What of the others? Has anyone left without Adair’s permission?”

Dona gave me a thinly malevolent smile. “Don’t pretend to be stupid. If it were possible to leave Adair, would Uzra still be here? You have been around Adair long enough to know that he’s neither careless nor sentimental. You either leave in his good graces or, well… he’s not about to leave someone behind to take revenge on him and reveal him to the wrong people, is he?” But this was the last Dona would say about our mysterious overlord. He glanced down at me and, seeming to think better of divulging anything more, swept out of the room, and left me to ponder all that he’d told me.

About this time, there was a commotion across the room, Jonathan rising abruptly from his chair. “I’ve had enough of this nonsense. I can bear it no longer,” he said, following Dona and leaving the disappointed artist to watch his good fortune walk out of the room. In the end, there never was a painting done of Jonathan, and Adair was forced to settle for a charcoal drawing that was subsequently framed under glass and kept in the study. What Adair didn’t know was that Jonathan was to be the last of his favorites to be immortalized in a portrait, that all of Adair’s peculiarities and schemes were about to be upended completely.

FORTY-ONE

After the success of the first night, Adair took Jonathan with him everywhere. Besides the usual evening diversions, he began finding things for the two of them to do together, leaving the rest of us on our own. Adair and Jonathan went to horse-racing meets in the country, dinners and debates at a gentlemen’s club, and attended lectures at Harvard College. I heard Adair took Jonathan to the most exclusive brothel in the city, where they picked a half dozen girls to attend to them both. The orgy seemed a sort of ritual meant to bind the two together, like a blood oath. Adair impatiently introduced Jonathan to all his favorite things: he piled novels on the nightstand beside Jonathan’s bed (the same ones he’d had me read when he’d taken me under his wing), had special meals prepared for him. There was even talk of going back to the old country so Jonathan could experience the great cities. It was as though Adair was determined to create a history for the two of them to share. He would make his life Jonathan’s. It was frightening to watch, but it did distract Jonathan. He hadn’t spoken of his fears for his family and the town since we left, though it had to be on his mind. Perhaps he was doing me a kindness by not speaking of it, since there was nothing we could do to change our situation.

It was after a little time had passed in this way, the two men spending much of their time in each other’s company, when Adair pulled me aside. The household was lounging in the sunroom, the three others teaching Jonathan the intricacies of betting in faro, Adair and I sitting on a divan watching like a contented father and mother admiring their brood at harmonious play.

“Now that I’ve been in the company of your Jonathan, I’ve come to form an opinion of him… Would you care to know what that is?” Adair said to me in a low voice so he wouldn’t be overheard. His gaze did not leave Jonathan as he spoke. “He’s not the man you think he is.”

“How do you know what I think of him?” I tried to sound confident but could not keep the quaver out of my voice.

“I know you think someday he will come to his senses and devote himself entirely to you,” he said sarcastically, indicating how little he cared for the idea.

Forsaking all others… Hadn’t Jonathan already vowed as much to one woman, for all the good it did? He probably hadn’t remained faithful to Evangeline for a month after they were wed. I settled a curdled smile on my lips; I wouldn’t give Adair the satisfaction of knowing he’d wounded me.

Adair shifted his weight on the divan, insouciantly crossing one leg over the other. “You shouldn’t take his inconstancy to heart. He’s not capable of such love, not for any woman. He’s not capable of putting anyone else’s needs before his own wants and desires. For instance, he told me it troubles him that he makes you so unhappy-”

I dug my fingernails hard into the back of one hand, but there was no pain to divert me.

“-but he is at a loss as to what to do about it. Whereas, to most men, the remedy would be obvious: either give the woman what she desires or break off with her entirely. But he still craves your company and so he cannot be done with you.” He sighed, a bit theatrically. “Do not despair. All hope is not lost. The day may come when he will be capable of loving one person, and there is a chance, however slight, that that person may be you.” And then he laughed.

I longed to slap him. To throw myself on top of Adair, circle his neck with my two hands, and throttle the life out of him.

“You are angry with me, I can feel it.” My impotent anger seemed to amuse him, too. “Angry with me for telling you the truth.”

“I’m angry with you,” I replied, “but it’s because you’re lying to me. You’re trying to crush my feelings for Jonathan.”

“I’ve managed to make you quite upset, haven’t I? Granted, I’ll allow that you can usually tell when I’m lying-and you’re the only one who seems to have that skill, my dear-but I’m not lying to you this time. I almost wish I was lying. Then you would not be so hurt, would you?”

It was too much to bear, being pitied by Adair at the same moment he was trying to turn me against Jonathan. I looked over at Jonathan as he peered over his cards to the pot in the middle of the table, absorbed in the faro game. I’d begun to find Jonathan’s presence a great comfort, like a resonant hum within me. Of late, though, I’d noticed a melancholy undercurrent from Jonathan, which I’d assumed was sadness for having left Evangeline and his daughter. If what Adair said was indeed true, might he not be melancholy for the unhappiness he caused me? It made me wonder for the first time if the obstacle to our love-the defect, as it were-lay with Jonathan and not me. For it seemed almost inhuman to be unable to give yourself over wholly to one person.

A trill of feminine laughter interrupted my thoughts, as Tilde threw down her cards in victory. Jonathan flashed a look back at her, and in that look, I knew that he had slept with her already. Slept with Tilde though he didn’t find her particularly alluring, though he knew to be wary of her, though he knew if I found out, I would be devastated. Despair lit up in me like flash paper, despair for what I was helpless to change.

“Such a waste.” Adair was at my ear instantaneously, like the serpent in the Garden. “You, Lanore, are capable of such a perfect love, a love like nothing I have ever seen. And why you choose to waste it on someone as unworthy as Jonathan…”

His whisper was like perfume on the night air. “What are you saying? Are you offering yourself up as a more worthy object of my love?” I asked, searching for the answer in his wolfish eyes.

“Would that you could love me, Lanore. If you really knew me, you would see I am unworthy of your love. But one day, perhaps you will look on me as you look on Jonathan, with the same favor? Impossible, it would seem, given your devotion to him, but who knows? I’ve seen the impossible happen, every once in a great long while,” he said slyly, but when I tried to ask him to explain himself, he merely wrinkled his nose and laughed. Then he rose from the divan and called to be dealt in on the next round of faro.

Ignored, I went into the study to find a book with which to divert myself. As I passed Adair’s desk, the light from my candle fell across a sheaf of papers left on the blotter and my eye went as though by magic to Jonathan’s name, written in Adair’s hand.

Why in the world would Adair be writing about Jonathan? A letter to a friend? I doubted he had a friend in the world. I held the pages closer to the candle.

Instructions for Pinnerly (the solicitor’s name, I’d learned).

Account to be established for Jacob Moore (Jonathan’s false name) with the Bank of England in the sum of eight thousand pounds (a fortune) transferred from the account of… (a name I did not recognize).

The instructions called for several other accounts to be set up in Jonathan’s false name, drawn from the accounts of other strangers in Amsterdam, Paris, and St. Petersburg. I read it over twice more but could make no sense of it, and left the page as I’d found it on the table.

It appeared Adair was so smitten with Jonathan that he was taking steps to provide for him, as though adopting him. I admit I was slightly jealous and wondered if a fund had been set up for me somewhere. What would be the point, if Adair had never told me as much? I had to wheedle and beg him for spending money, as did the others. It seemed only another sign that Adair had taken a special interest in Jonathan.

Jonathan seemed to accept his new life. At least, he didn’t object to being made to share Adair’s indulgences and vices, and he didn’t bring up St. Andrew. There was only one vice Adair hadn’t shared with his new favorite yet, one that Jonathan would not decline if it were offered. That vice was Uzra.

Jonathan had been living with us for three weeks when he was introduced to her. Adair asked Jonathan to wait in the drawing room, as I clung jealously to his side, and then Adair brought Uzra in with a flourish, the odalisque dressed in her usual swath of winding cloth. When he released her hand, the fabric dropped to the floor to reveal Uzra in her glory. Adair even had her dance for Jonathan, swaying her hips and twisting her arms as Adair sang an improvised tune. Afterward, he had the hookah brought down and we reclined on cushions thrown on the floor, taking turns sucking on the carved ivory mouthpiece.

“She’s lovely, isn’t she? So lovely that I haven’t been able to part with her. Not that she hasn’t been trouble: she’s a devil. Thrown herself out windows and off rooftops. Thinks nothing of giving me fits. Still burns with hatred for me.” He traced a finger down her nose, despite the fact that she looked as though she’d bite that finger off if given the chance. “I suppose that’s what’s kept her interesting to me over the years. Let me tell you how Uzra came to be with me.” At the mention of her name, Uzra tensed visibly.

“I met Uzra on a trip to the Moorish states,” Adair started, unaffected by Uzra’s distress. “I was in the company of a noble who was negotiating for the freedom of his brother, who had foolishly tried to steal some treasure from one of their leaders. I had by that time a fair reputation as a warrior. I had fifty years’ experience with the sword, more than most men. I had been bought, as it were, to help this nobleman, my loyalty paid for in coin. That was how I came to be in the East and stumble upon Uzra.

“It was in a large city, in the marketplace; she was following behind her father, and draped as custom demanded. All I could see of her were her eyes, but that was enough: I knew I had to see more. So I followed them to their encampment on the outskirts of the city. Speaking to some of the men tending the camels, I learned that the father was the leader of a nomadic tribe and that the family was in the city so that she could be given to some sultan, some indolent prince, in exchange for her father’s life.”

Poor Uzra was completely still now. She had even stopped drawing on the hookah. Adair wrapped a tendril of her fiery hair around a finger, gave it a tug as though reprimanding her for her aloofness, then let it fall.

“I found her tent, where she was attended by a dozen women servants. They formed a circle around her, and thinking she was hidden from view, helped her out of her robes, slipped the fabric from her cinnamon skin and unfurled her hair, their hands fluttering all over her body… Chaos broke out when I burst into the tent,” Adair said with a throaty laugh. “The women screamed, ran, fell over each other trying to protect themselves from me. How could they think I would settle for one of them when this mesmerizing jinn stood naked before me? And Uzra knew I’d come for her, from the look in her eye. She barely had time to cover herself with a robe before I swooped down on her and carried her away.

“I took her to a place in the desert where I knew no one would find us. I took her over and over that night, heedless of her crying,” he said, as though he had nothing to be ashamed of, as though he had as much right to her as he had to water to slake his thirst. “The sun came up the next morning before my delirium started to subside and I was sated with her beauty. In between our pleasures, I asked her why she was being given to the sultan. It was because her tribe held a superstition about a jinn with green eyes who would bring pestilence and suffering. They were fearful, the idiots, and they petitioned the sultan. The father was ordered to hand her over or be killed himself. You see, to break the curse she had to die.

“I knew that I was not the first man she had been with, so I asked who had taken her virginity. A brother? A male relative, no doubt-who else would be able to get close to her? It turned out to have been her father. Can you believe that?” he asked, incredulous, snorting as though it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. “He was the chief, a patriarch used to having his way. But by Uzra’s fifth birthday, he could tell by the girl’s coloring that he was not her father. The mother had been unfaithful and, by the green of the child’s eyes, had consorted with a foreigner. He said nothing, merely took the mother out into the desert one day and returned without her. By Uzra’s twelfth birthday, she had taken her mother’s place in his bed; he told her that she was the daughter of a whore and no blood relation to him, so it was not forbidden. She was to tell no one. The servants thought it charming that the girl was so affectionately disposed toward her father that she could not bear to be apart from him.

“I told her none of it mattered. I was not going to give her to that superstitious sultan. Nor would I send her back to her father so he could force himself on her one last time before handing her over, like a coward.” Over the course of Adair’s story, I had managed to take Uzra’s hand and squeezed it, from time to time, to let her know I commiserated with her, but I saw in her dead green eyes that she had taken herself to another place, away from his cruelty. Jonathan, too, was quietly embarrassed for her. Adair continued, heedless of the fact that he was the only one enjoying his tale. “I decided to save her life. Just like the others. I told her that her long ordeal was over. She was to start a new life with me and she would stay with me forever.”

Once the opium had had its effect on Adair and he’d fallen asleep, Jonathan and I crept away. “Good God, Lanny, what am I to make of that story? Please tell me he was being fanciful, that he was exaggerating…”

“It’s odd… he said he saved her life, ‘just like the others.’ But she’s not like the others, not from the story he just told.”

“How so?”

“He’s told me a bit about how the others came to be with him, Alejandro, Tilde, and Dona. They had done horrible things before Adair met them.” We slipped into Jonathan’s room, which was next to Adair’s but smaller, though it did have a good-size dressing room and a view of the garden. And a door that led straight into Adair’s chamber. “I think that’s why he picked them, because they’re capable of doing the bad things he requires. I think that’s what he looks for in a companion. A failing.”

We shed a few layers of clothing to get more comfortable before lying on the bed, side by side, and Jonathan draped an arm protectively over my waist. The opium was affecting us, too, and I was on the verge of falling asleep. “It makes no sense… Why would he choose you, then?” Jonathan asked drowsily. “You’ve never hurt anyone in your life.”

If ever there was an opportune time to bring up Sophia and how I’d driven her to suicide, this was it. I even drew in a breath to ready myself but… once again, I could not. Jonathan thought me innocent enough to question my place here. He thought me incapable of evil and I couldn’t spoil that.

And, perhaps as telling, he didn’t ask why he had been selected, what Adair saw in him. Jonathan knew enough about himself to believe something evil lurked within, something deserving of punishment. Maybe I knew it, too. We were both failed, in our way, and chosen for a punishment that we deserved.

“I meant to tell you,” Jonathan muttered, sleepy, eyes already closed. “I will be going on a trip with Adair soon. He told me he wished to take me somewhere… I forget where, exactly. Perhaps Philadelphia… though after that story I can’t say I’m looking forward to going anywhere alone with him…”

As I pulled his arm tight against me, I noticed through the thin gauze of his shirt a mark on his arm. There was something sickeningly familiar about the dark mottles veiled by his sleeve, so I pulled the loose garment back to see thin black lines incised on his inner arm.

“Where did you get this?” I asked, sitting up in alarm. “It was Tilde, wasn’t it; she did this with her needles?”

Jonathan barely opened his eyes. “Yes, yes… the other evening, when we’d been out drinking…”

I studied it closely; it was not the heraldic shield, but two spheres with long, fiery tails, interlocked like two fingers hooked together. It might have been different from the one I bore, but I’d seen it before-adorning Adair’s back.

“It’s the same as Adair’s,” I managed to say.

“Yes, I know… He insisted I wear it. To signify that we are brothers, or some such nonsense. I did it only to end his badgering.”

Touching my thumb to the tattoo, I felt a coldness ripple through me; that Adair had put his mark on Jonathan signified something, but I could not figure out what that might be. I wanted to beg him not to go away with Adair, to disobey him… but I knew the inevitable outcome of that folly. So I said nothing and lay awake a long time listening to the steady, peaceful rhythm of Jonathan’s breathing, unable to shake the premonition that our time together was coming to an end.

FORTY-TWO

Luke wakes to the sound of human misery. He is disoriented, as he always is when waking from a nap, and his first thought is that he has overslept and is late for his shift at the hospital. It isn’t until he nearly knocks the alarm clock-never mind that it’s not ringing-off the nightstand with a wild grope that he realizes he’s in a hotel and there is only one person with him, and that person is crying.

The door to the bathroom is closed. Luke knocks gently and, when there is no answer, pushes the door back. Lanny sits hunched in the bathtub, fully clothed. When she looks over her shoulder at him, Luke sees that her eye makeup is streaked down her face in black daggers, like a frightening clown in a movie.

“Hey, you okay?” he asks, reaching for her hand. “What are you doing in here?”

She lets him help her out of the bathtub. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“That’s what I’m here for.” He leads her to the bed and lets her curl up in his arms like a child. “I’m sorry… I’m just starting… to realize…,” she says in ragged bursts between sobs.

“That he’s gone,” Luke finishes for her so she can continue crying. It makes sense; up until now she has been concentrating on getting away, not being discovered. Now the escape is behind her, the adrenaline subsides, and she remembers how she got here, that she now has to deal with the fact that the most important person in her life is gone.

He thinks of the many times he walked past someone crying in the hall at the hospital, someone who had just been given bad news, a woman hiding her face in her hands and a man standing beside her, numb and struggling. Luke cannot count the times he’s stepped out of the operating room, pulling off his gloves and mask, shaking his head as he walks to the waiting spouse, stony in the face of her stubborn expectation of good news. He learned to build a wall between himself and the patients and the next of kin; you couldn’t let yourself be drawn into their pain. You could nod your head and share their sorrow, but only for a moment. If you tried to take on their burdens, you wouldn’t last a year on the hospital floor.

This girl shaking in his arms, her sorrow is endless. She will fall in her pit of grief for a long time, tumbling down with no way to stop. He supposes there is a formula for how long it takes for the pain to lift, but it’s probably tied to how long you’ve known the deceased. Of course, there is no relief coming for her. How long will it take for Lanny to tolerate the daily pain of Jonathan’s absence, let alone live with the fact that she was the one who dispatched him? People have become unhinged over less, carried away by sadness. There’s no guarantee of surviving something like this.

He’s going to help her. He has to. He thinks he’s uniquely equipped for this situation. With his training (“Mrs. Parker? We did everything we could for your son, but I’m afraid…”) he hopes her sorrow will shed off him like water off Teflon.

She’s eased up on her crying and is rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Better?” Luke asks, lifting her chin. “Want to go out and get some air?” She nods.

Within fifteen minutes they’re walking hand in hand into the dusky horizon. Lanny has scrubbed her face clean. She leans into Luke’s arm like a girl in love, but on her face is the saddest smile the world has ever seen.

“How about a drink?” he asks. They step off the street into a dark bar and he orders scotch neat for both of them. “I’ll be able to drink you under the table,” she warns him and they clink glasses as though they are celebrating. And sure enough, after one shot, Luke feels the warmth that comes at the beginning of drunkenness, but Lanny has had three shots and has only a half-tipsy smile.

“There’s something I want to ask you. It’s about-him,” he says, as though by not speaking the name, the question will hurt less. “After everything he put you through, how could you keep loving him? It doesn’t sound like he deserved you…”

She picks up her empty shot glass by the rim, like a chess piece. “I could make all kinds of excuses, like how that’s the way it was back then, that wives expected their men to fool around. Or that it was just the kind of man Jonathan was and I had to accept it. But that’s not the real reason… I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve always wanted him to love me the way I loved him. He did love me, I know he did. Just not the way I wanted him to.

“And it’s not so different for a lot of people I’ve known. One partner doesn’t love the other enough to stop drinking, or gambling, or running around with other women. One is the giver and one is the taker. The giver wishes the taker would stop.”

“But the taker never changes,” Luke says, though he wonders if this is always the case.

“Sometimes the giver has to let go, but sometimes you don’t. You can’t. I couldn’t give up on Jonathan. I seemed to be able to forgive him anything.”

Luke sees the ocean well up in her eyes and tries to distract her. “What about Adair? From what you’ve said, it seems that he could have been in love with you…?”

“His love is like the love fire has for wood.” She laughs ruefully. “He confused me for a while, I’ll give you that. One minute he was charming me, the next minute he’d humiliate me. It was all games and tricks with him. I think… he just wanted to see if he could make me love him. Because, I think, no one had ever loved him.” She becomes still, hands knotted in her lap, and the glassy surface of her eyes ruptures. “Look what you’ve done… I’m going to start crying again. I don’t want to cry in public. I don’t want to embarrass you. Let’s go back to the hotel room. We can smoke some pot.”

Luke’s face lights up, remembering the big plastic bag, the resinous high. “I’m prepared to smoke that entire bag with you, if that’s what it takes to cheer you up.”

“My hero,” she says as she tucks her arm under his. They weave up the street toward the hotel, a brisk wind slapping their faces. Luke wishes he could give Lanny a shot of morphine to dull her pain. He’d give her a tranquilizer injection to bring her peace daily, if he could. He clears his mind with a shake of his head. He feels like he’d do anything to make her happy again, but he doesn’t want to become the valet to her misery.

“What was it about me… will you tell me the truth? Am I unworthy of being loved?” she blurts out once they are in bed.

Her question takes Luke aback. “I can’t tell you why Jonathan didn’t love you back, but for what it’s worth, I think he made a huge mistake.” Jonathan was an idiot; only a fool would squander such devotion, Luke thinks.

Her look at him is disbelieving, but she smiles. And then she falls asleep. He pulls her against him, wrapping his arms around her sylphlike body, gathering up her elegantly splayed limbs. He can’t recall feeling like this, except for that miserable time in the pizza parlor with his daughters, when he wanted to bundle them into his rental car and take them back to Maine. He knows he made the right choice by not giving in to his sadness then-the girls are better off with their mother-but he will be haunted forever by the act of driving away from them. Only a fool squanders such love.

And Lanny. He is willing to do anything to protect this vulnerable woman, to fix her. He wishes he could draw the poison out of her, like a leech with blood. He would take it on himself if he could, but knows all he can do is be with her.

FORTY-THREE

An ashy light tugged at my eyelids, waking me from sleep one evening. Uzra appeared next to my bed, a small oil lamp swaying in her hand. It must have been very late, for Adair’s house was still as a crypt. Her eyes implored me to get out of bed, so I did.

She glided out of the room in her usual silent way, leaving me to follow behind her. The sound of my slippered feet on the carpets was scarcely a whisper, but in that quiet house, the sound echoed down the halls. Uzra shielded the lamp as we walked past the other bedchambers so we threw as little light as possible, and we were undiscovered by the time we reached the stairs to the attic.

The attic was divided into two sections, one made into the servants’ quarters and a smaller, unfinished space for storage. This was the area where Uzra hid. She led me through a maze of trunks that acted as her barrier against the world, and then down an impossibly narrow corridor to a diminutive door. We had to crouch and twist to fit through the door and emerged inside what looked like a whale’s belly: rafters for the ribs, a brick chimney instead of a windpipe. Moon-light seeped in from uncovered windows, allowing views onto the unadorned path to the carriage house. She chose to live in this hollow space to get away from Adair. It was a sad place to live, too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, and lonely as the moon.

We passed what I assumed was her nest, curtained off by the iridescent winding sheets of organza she wore as sarongs, hung from the rafters like laundry on a line. The bed itself was made of two blankets from the parlor, twisted together in a circular pattern, not unlike a bed made by a wild animal, frenzied and makeshift. A heap of trinkets was piled next to the bed, diamonds the size of grapes, a veil of thin gold mesh to wear with a chador. But there was also bric-a-brac, things a child might covet: a cold, lovely dagger, a memento from her birthplace, its serpentine blade like a snake in motion; a bronze hand mirror.

She brought me to a wall, a dead end. Where I saw nothing, though, she dropped to her knees and pried a pair of boards away, revealing a crawl space. Taking the oil lamp, she plunged fearlessly into the darkness like a rat used to tunneling between walls. I took a deep breath and followed.

After traveling on hands and knees for about twenty feet, we emerged in a windowless room. Uzra held up the lamp so I could see where we were: it was a small finished space, part of the servants’ suite, with a tiny fireplace and a door. I went to the door and tried it, but it was held fast by some means on the outside. The room was dominated by a large table covered with bottles and jars and an array of odds and ends. There was a hutch, and it, too, was stocked with containers of all sizes and shapes, most covered with waxed cloth or stoppered with cork. Baskets tucked under the table were filled with everything from pinecones and branches to inscrutable parts of various animals’ bodies. A few books, ancient and crumbly, were tucked between the jars. Candles stood on plates on the edge of the table.

I inhaled deeply: the room held close myriad smells, spices and forest and dust, and others I couldn’t identify. I stood in the center of the space and looked around, slowly. I think I knew immediately what the room was and what its existence meant, but I didn’t want to admit it.

I took one of the books down from its shelf. The cover was stretched blue linen embellished with handwritten letters and intricate diagrams of symbols within symbols. Turning the heavy pages, I saw there wasn’t a printed page in the entire book: every bit was done in a careful script, annotated with formulas and illustrations-the proper bit of a plant to keep, for instance, or an ornate dissection of a man’s internal workings-but all in a language I didn’t recognize. The drawings were more telling, for I recognized some of the symbols from childhood as well as from the books in Adair’s libraries-pentagrams, the all-seeing eye, that sort of thing. The book was a wondrous piece of work, the product of hundreds of hours of labor, and it reeked of years spent hidden, of secrets and intrigue, and had undoubtedly been coveted by other men, but its contents were a mystery to me.

The second book was older still, with wooden slabs for covers, laced together with a leather thong. Inside, the pages were loose, not stitched together, and by the variety of the papers it seemed to be a collection of notes rather than a tome. The writing appeared to be in Adair’s hand, but again in a language I didn’t know.

Uzra shifted, restless, shaking the tiny bells on the chain around her ankle. She didn’t like being in this room and I didn’t blame her. Adair had locked it from the outside for a reason: he didn’t want anyone to stumble across it. But as I reached up to return the second book to its place, Uzra stepped forward and grabbed my wrist. She held the lantern close to my arm and when she saw the tattoo-that I’d long since forgotten-she let out a moan like a dying cat.

She thrust her arm under my nose, palm turned up. She bore the same tattoo on the identical place, a slightly larger version but executed more crudely, as though the artist’s hand was not as sure as Tilde’s. Her look was accusatory, as though I had done this to myself, and yet there was no mistaking her meaning. Adair had chosen to brand us in the same way. His intentions for me could not be far from his treatment of her.

Holding the lantern high, I took in the contents of the room one more time. A description I had heard from Adair’s own lips came back to me-that of the room within the physic’s keep that had been the prison of his youth. There was only one reason he would need a room like this and hide it away in the farthermost corner of the house. I understood what this place was and why he kept it, and a chilly wave passed through me. The woeful tale Adair had spun of his capture and indentured servitude to the evil physic came rushing back to me. Only… now I wondered which of the two men I had been with, these many months; who was the man whose bed I had taken and, indeed, to whom I had given the life of the man who meant most to me in the world? Adair wanted his followers to believe that he was a wronged peasant boy who had vindicated himself and was merely enjoying the reward of having deposed a cruel and inhuman tyrant. When in fact, inside that handsome youth was the monster from the story, the collector of power and the despoiler of lives, able to move from body to body. He’d left his own decrepit husk behind, sacrificed it to the villagers-no doubt-with the peasant boy trapped inside, as he spent his last minutes in terror, paying for the physic’s cruelties. This lie worked well with his monstrous design and appeared to have hidden him for hundreds of years. Now that the truth was known to me, the question was, what would I do?

It was well and good to suspect Adair’s deceit, but I needed proof: to drive home the horrible truth to myself if to no one else. With Uzra tugging at my sleeve to leave, I snatched a page out of one of the ancient books and took a handful of some botanical from one of the dusty jars standing on the table. There could be a terrible penance to pay for stealing these things-I had heard the story from Adair’s own lips, hadn’t I, the one that ended with a poker wrapped in a blanket and a shower of blows-but I had to know.

I started with a trip to visit a professor at Harvard College who I had met at one of Adair’s parties. Not just any afternoon tea party or salon to fete intellectuals; no, I’d met this man at one of Adair’s parties of a special variety. I tracked down his office in Wheydon Hall, but he was with a student. When he saw I was waiting in the hall, he dismissed the young man and came out to fetch me, the most charming smile on his devilish old face. Perhaps he was half afraid I’d come to blackmail him, since the last time I’d seen him, he was astride a rent boy even younger than his students and crowing proudly. Or perhaps he was hoping I was delivering an invitation to another party.

“My dear, what brings you here today?” he said, patting my hand as he led me into his office. “I am so seldom blessed with visits from fair young ladies. And how is our mutual friend, the count? I trust he is in good health?”

“As fine as ever,” I said truthfully.

“And to what do I owe this happy visit? Perhaps word of another soirée…?” His eyes glinted with the sharpest of hungers, his appetite whetted from too many afternoons gazing over fields of fresh young boys.

“I was hoping I might impose on you for a favor,” I said, reaching into my drawstring purse for the page I’d stolen. The paper itself was unlike any other I’d seen, thick and coarse and nearly as brown as butcher’s wrap, and now that it was freed from the press of its wooden cover, had begun to curl into a scroll.

“Hmm?” he said, clearly surprised. But he accepted the paper from my hand and brought it close to his face, lifting his eyeglasses to inspect it. “Where did you get this, my dear?”

“From a bookseller,” I lied. “A private bookseller who claims to have a trove of ancient books on a subject dear to Adair’s heart. I thought I might purchase the books as a present for Adair, but the language is unreadable to me. I wished to verify that the book is as the dealer claims. You can never be too careful.”

“No, you cannot,” he muttered as he examined the page. “Well, the paper is not of local manufacture. Not bleached. Possibly made by an individual for his own use, as it were. But it is the language you came to me about, isn’t it?” He smiled modestly over his spectacles; he was a professor of ancient languages, that much I’d remembered from our fleeting introduction at that party. Exactly what languages, I couldn’t recall.

“Prussian, I would think. Similar, at least. Very odd, possibly an archaic form of the language. I’ve not seen the likes of it before.” He reached back to a shelf and pulled down a fat, heavy book and began flipping through its onionskin pages.

“Can you tell me what is being talked about? The subject?”

“What do you expect it to be about?” he asked curiously, still flipping pages.

I cleared my throat. “Magic. Of some kind.”

He stopped what he was doing and stared at me.

“Alchemy?” I said, more weakly this time. “Something to do with transforming one thing into another?”

“Oh, my dear, it is most certainly about something magical, possibly a spell or incantation of some sort. Exactly what, I can’t tell you. Maybe if you left this with me for a few days…?” His smile was coy. I knew enough of the work of scholars to suspect what he might do with this paper left in his care: he might try to stake a career on it, using it as the basis for this or that study, and I’d never see it again. Or, worse yet, if Adair were to find out that it was missing, given over to our randy professor friend, well… to say it would go badly for me was an understatement. He lifted an eyebrow in expectation, but I leaned over his desk and snatched the paper back.

“No, I couldn’t, but thank you for your kind offer. What you’ve told me is sufficient,” I said, leaping from the chair and opening the door. “And please, do me the favor of not mentioning this to Adair if you should see him? When it comes to gifts, he is a difficult man to please. I do want to surprise him with the books.” The old professor looked faintly surprised himself as I bolted from his office.

Next, I went in search of a midwife.

She was hard to find. They were becoming scarcer in cities such as Boston; physicians had almost taken over the job of delivering babies, at least for those who could afford them. Nor was I looking for just any midwife. I needed one like those you’d find in the country, one who knew all about curing and healing with plants and such. The ones who, a hundred years earlier in this very same town, might have been called witches by their neighbors and met their deaths pressed beneath the board or hanged.

Street whores told me where to find the midwife, since she was the only help the prostitutes could afford to cure their clap or help with unwanted pregnancies. I felt a shiver run down my back when I crossed the threshold of this woman’s tiny room: it smelled of dust and pollen and old things kept close to rotting, not unlike the secret locked room in Adair’s attic.

“Sit down, dearie, and tell me why you’ve come,” she said, motioning to a stool on the other side of the hearth. She was an older woman with a hard, pragmatic cast at the center of her gaze, but an expression of understanding on her face.

“I need to know what this is, ma’am. Have you ever seen it before?” I took a handkerchief from my purse and opened it for her to see. The pinch of botanical I’d stolen had been roughed up in transit, separating into tiny stems and slivers of brittle, broken brown leaves. She held a leaf up to her eye, then crushed it between her fingers and sniffed.

“That is neem, my dear. Used for a great variety of illnesses. Not exactly common in these parts, though, and in this natural state, rarer still. Mostly you see it in tinctures and the like, watered down to its most diluted to make it go as far as possible. How’d you come across it?” she asked, matter-of-factly, as though she might be in the market to purchase some. Perhaps she thought that was why I’d sought her out. She dusted her hands over the fire and let the fragments of leaf fall into the flame.

“I’m afraid I cannot tell you,” I said as I pressed a coin into her hand. She shrugged but accepted it, tucking the money into her pocket. “Here is my second request. I have need of an item… I need you to fix something to bring on a very heavy sleep. Not necessarily a peaceful one. It must render the person unconscious as quickly as possible.”

The midwife gave me a long, silent look, wondering perhaps if I really meant that I wished to poison someone, for how else could you interpret that request? At last, she said, “It can’t be coming back to me, if the authorities are called into this matter for some reason.”

“You have my word.” I put five more coins into her hand, a small fortune. She looked from the coins to me, then closed her fingers around the gold.

In the carriage on the ride back to the mansion, I sat and peeled back the handkerchief from the lump the midwife had given me. The lump was stony hard and white, and though I didn’t know it at the time, deadly white phosphorus, probably purchased from a matchstick maker, who in turn had stolen it from her place of employment. The midwife had treated it gingerly, as though she didn’t like to handle it, and instructed me to grind it in a mortar and mix it in some wine or spirits, adding laudanum to help the concoction go down. “It’s very important to dilute it for medicinal effects. You could use laudanum alone, but it takes a while to be effective. Phos will do the trick quickly, but… if a body was to take this amount of phosphorus, the result would be bad indeed,” she said with an unmistakable look in her eye.

I’d already settled on a plan, a very dangerous plan, but as I took my leave, I could think only of the true Adair. My mind was full of pity for the unfortunate peasant boy, without even a grave because there was no corpse to give back to the earth. His handsome form was the possession of the man who had overtaken his body through the dark arts.

As for the last bits of the physic’s story-well, it was beyond me to know how much was true. Maybe he’d visited Adair’s family and left a tribute out of guilt or in thanks for giving him their son, for handing over such a fine body. Or maybe that part was a lie, told to make the story palatable and tragic, to influence the listener’s heart in his favor, to deflect suspicion. And the loss of his kingdom? A calculated risk… but maybe it was worth it, in the end, to gain a fine new vessel to hold his miserable old soul. But if I didn’t stop this terrible man, he would take the dearest thing in the world from me-Jonathan.

Handsome, strong, and able, with a fearsome manhood, the peasant’s body must have seemed like a godsend to the physic. But here in the new world, the peasant’s body had its limitations. Or rather, the limitations were with the face: it was disconcertingly exotic, olive toned, framed by wild, wiry hair. I saw it in the expressions of the Brahmins when they met Adair, by the wrinkle to their brows, mistrust flitting across their eyes. Here, among descendants of the British, Dutch, and Germans, who had never seen a Turk or an Arab and for whom the hair was not unlike that of their slaves, the peasant’s body was a liability. Now I understood Adair’s cold, appraising eye as he studied the beautiful but clubfooted scholar Tilde had fetched, and his hungry appreciation for Jonathan’s flawless beauty. He’d sent his hellhounds out into the world scouting for the perfect vessel; he even had Jude scouring the countryside for a replacement. But here in Boston, time had run out for Adair and he needed a new body, one that would be amenable to the tastes of the masters of this new environment.

He wanted Jonathan. He wanted to slip on Jonathan like a disguise. People were drawn to Jonathan like bees to sugar, dizzy and powerless with this unknowable attraction. Men wanted to befriend him, orbit him like planets around the sun. Women gave themselves up to him wholly-and none knew this better than I. They would forever crowd around him, open themselves up to him, not realizing that the spirit inside was evil and waiting to exploit them.

And because no one knew Adair’s secret, there was no one to stop him. No one except me.

FORTY-FOUR

I arrived at the mansion to find the household in an uproar. The servants were scurrying down the stairs like water rushing downhill, down to the cellar, hiding in storerooms, away from the ruckus coming from above. Fists pounded on doors, latches rattled. The muffled voices of Tilde, Dona, and Alejandro echoed from overhead.

“Adair, what is going on?”

“Let us in!”

I ran up the stairs to find the three huddled helplessly at the foot of the attic stairs, unwilling to interrupt whatever was happening beyond the closed door. We heard terrible noises: Uzra crying out, Adair roaring in response. We heard the flat sound of flesh striking flesh.

“What’s this about?” I demanded, whirling on Alejandro.

“Adair went looking for Uzra, that’s all I know.”

I thought of Adair’s story-the physic’s fury over things stolen from his table. “We must go up there! He’s hurting her.” I reached for the doorknob, but it refused to budge. He’d locked the door. “Get an ax, a sledgehammer, anything. We must break this door down!” I shouted but they only looked at me as though I’d lost my senses. “You don’t understand what he’s capable of-”

Then the sounds ceased.

After a few minutes, the key turned in the lock and Adair emerged, pale as milk. Uzra’s serpentine blade was in his hand and his cuff was stained bright red. He dropped the knife to the floor and pushed by us, retreating to his room. It was only then that we found her body.

“You had something to do with this, didn’t you?” Tilde said to me. “I can see the guilt on your face.” I didn’t answer. Looking down on Uzra’s body, my stomach lurched. He had stabbed her in the chest, and also slit her throat, and that must have been the last thing he did because she’d fallen to the ground with her head thrown back, some hair still twisted where he had held it in his fist. The words “by my hand and intent” echoed in my mind-the same words that had given her eternal life had been uttered again to take it away. Thinking of them now sent a shudder through me, as did spying the tattoo on her arm, thrown carelessly to her side. In the end, his mark upon her body meant nothing. He would retract his troth when it pleased him.

The fight could have been about anything and I would never know for sure, but the timing made it unlikely that it could be about anything other than the secret room. Somehow, Adair must have discovered that things had been taken, and blamed her. And she hadn’t disabused him of his assumption. She had either wanted to protect me or-very likely-welcomed this, her best chance at release through death.

I had taken those things knowing what the penalty might be. I just didn’t think it would lead back to Uzra. Nor did I think he would kill any of us, least of all her. It was far more in his character to deal out a brutal physical punishment and to keep his victim within his grasp, shivering in terror, wondering when Adair might decide to do it all over again. Never in a million years did I dream he would actually kill her, because I thought that, in his way, he loved her.

I dropped to the floor and held her hand, but it had gone cold already, the soul perhaps fleeing the body more quickly in our cases, so eager for release. The terrible thing was that I had been planning my escape, mine and Jonathan’s, but hadn’t given a thought to taking Uzra with us. Even though I knew how desperately she wanted to flee, it hadn’t entered my mind to help this poor girl who had borne Adair’s sick obsession for many years, who had been so kind to me and had tried to help me navigate this house of wolves. I had taken her for granted, and the cold recognition of my selfishness made me wonder if I wasn’t Adair’s soul mate for sure.

Jonathan had followed the commotion upstairs and, on seeing Uzra’s body on the floor, wanted to burst into Adair’s chamber and have it out with him. It took both me and Dona to restrain him. “To what end?” I shouted at Jonathan. “You and Adair could pummel each other from here to the end of time and never settle it. However much you might wish to kill each other, it’s not within the power of either of you.” How I wanted to tell him the truth-that Adair wasn’t who we thought he was, that he was far more powerful and dangerous and remorseless than any of us could know-but I could not risk it. I was afraid as it was that Adair would intuit my fear.

Besides, I could not tell Jonathan my true suspicion. I knew it all, now. Those soft looks Adair gave my Jonathan, it wasn’t because Adair was planning to bed him. The covetousness he had for Jonathan ran much deeper. Adair wanted to touch that body, to fondle and stroke, to know every dip and bulge and crook not because he wanted to swive Jonathan, but because he wanted to possess him. Possess that perfect body and be known by that perfect face. He was ready to inhabit a body that truly could not be resisted.

Adair sent out instructions: we were to clear out the fireplace in the kitchen and set up a bier. The scullery girl and the cook fled as we commandeered the kitchen, and Dona, Alejandro, and I took the cooking things from the hearth of the huge fireplace. We scrubbed its blackened walls and swept out the ash. The bier was made of wooden trestles laid with wide planks and we built a pyre in the space between the trestles, dry twigs and pinecones slathered with beef tallow for kindling, compacted straw and cured firewood for fuel. The body, wrapped in a white linen shroud, was laid on the planks.

A torch was put to the kindling, which lit easily enough. The logs took some time to catch and it was almost an hour before it had built into a great leaping bonfire. The heat in the kitchen was tremendous. Finally, the body caught fire, the shroud consumed rapidly, the fire dancing across it in streaks, the fabric curling like skin, black ash catching on the draft and spiriting up the chimney. The smell, alien and innately frightening, made everyone in the house restless. Only Adair could bear it, and he sank into an armchair pulled before the fireplace and watched the fire devour Uzra in stages: her hair, her clothing, then the skin of her downy arm before biting into the flesh. Finally, the body, heavy with moisture, began to sizzle and roast, and the smell of burning flesh filled the house.

“Imagine the stink rising over the house, out in the street. Does he not think the neighbors will smell it?” Tilde said tartly, eyes watering.

We huddled in the doorway to the kitchen, but eventually Dona and Tilde slinked off to their rooms, muttering darkly, while Alejandro and I remained outside the door to the kitchen, sunk to the floor, watching Adair.

By the time the sky outside started to lighten, the fire had burned itself out. The house now was filled with a thin gray smoke, which hung in the air, its perfume the acrid smell of wood ash. Only when the hearth was cool did Adair rise from his chair, touching Alejandro on the shoulder as he passed. “Have the ashes swept up, and scatter them on the water,” he commanded in a hollow voice.

Alejandro insisted on doing this himself, crouching inside the still warm firebox with a small willow broom and dustpan. “So much ash,” he murmured, oblivious to my presence. “All that wood, I suppose. Uzra herself cannot account for more than a handful.” At that moment, the brush touched something solid and he reached down, searching among the silt. He found a charred nugget, a piece of bone. “Should I save this? For Adair? Someday he may be glad to have it. Such things make powerful talismans,” he mused, turning it over like a rare specimen. But then he dropped it in the pail. “I suppose not.”

Adair withdrew from the rest of us after that. He stayed in his room and the only visitor he would receive was the solicitor, Mr. Pinnerly, who rushed in the following day with a profusion of papers exploding from his overstuffed satchel. He emerged an hour later, his face as red as though he’d run a country mile. I intercepted him by the door, proclaiming concern for his flushed complexion and offering to fetch him something cool to drink.

“Most kind,” he said as he gulped down some lemonade, mopping his forehead. “I’m afraid I cannot stay long. Your master has rather high expectations of what a mere lawyer is capable of accomplishing. It’s not as though I can command time and make it dance to my tune,” he harrumphed, then noticed the papers threatening to fly out of his satchel and attended to tucking them in place.

“Oh, really? He is the demanding sort, but I daresay you seem clever enough to be able to pull off whatever task Adair has set before you,” I said, flattering him shamelessly. “So, tell me, what miracle does he expect of you?”

“A series of complicated transfers of money, involving European banks, some in cities I’ve never heard of before,” he said, then seemed to think better of admitting any shortcoming to a member of his client’s household. “Oh, it’s nothing, pay me no mind. I am merely frazzled, my dear. It shall be done just as requested. Never you worry your pretty head about such matters.” He patted my hand in such a patronizing manner that I wished to slap his hand away. But that would not get me what I wanted to know.

“Is that all? Moving money around? I would think a clever man like you would be able to do such a thing with just your little finger.” I punctuated my words with an obscene little gesture that involved my own pinkie finger and an insinuation of the mouth, a gesture I had seen made by rent boys that sent an unmistakable message to most men and was certain to capture his attention. Which it did. Discretion seemed to run out of his ears like sawdust from a ruptured child’s toy and he gazed at me with his jaw dropped open. If he didn’t already suspect this was a household of bum-licking harlots, he knew for sure at that moment.

“My dear, did you just-”

“What else did Adair ask of you? Nothing, I’m sure, that will keep you busy far into the night. Nothing that would keep you from, say, entertaining a visitor…”

“Tickets on tomorrow’s coach for Philadelphia,” he said, hastily, “which I told him was quite impossible. And so I am to rent him a private livery…”

“For tomorrow!” I exclaimed. “He is leaving so soon.”

“And not taking you with him, my dear. No. Have you ever been to Philadelphia? It is an extraordinary city, much more lively in its way than Boston and not the sort of place that, say, Mrs. Pinnerly would be apt to visit. Perhaps I could show it to you-”

“Wait! How do you know I’m not to travel with him? Did he tell you?”

The solicitor grinned at me most salubriously. “Now, don’t fret. It’s not as though he’s running off with another woman. He’s going with a man, the happy beneficiary of all these damned money transfers. If your master were to consult me, I would advise him to simply adopt this fellow, for it would be easier in the long run-”

“Jonathan?” I asked, wanting to shake the lawyer by the shoulders to get him to stop his prattling, to pull the name from his mouth like a reticent snail from its shell. “Jacob, I mean. Jacob Moore?”

“Yes, that’s the name. Do you know him? He’s going to be a very wealthy man, I can tell you that. If you don’t mind my saying this to you, perhaps you should consider setting your sights on this Mr. Moore before word gets around… umm…” With his assumptions of my intentions, Pinnerly had painted himself into a corner and I enjoyed watching him try to extricate himself. He cleared his throat. “That is not to say that I imagine for one second that you… and the count’s benefactor… I apologize. I believe I’ve overstepped the bounds of my position.”

I clasped my hands demurely. “I think you have.”

He handed me his glass and picked up his satchel. “Please believe me when I say I spoke in jest, miss. I trust you shan’t be going back to the count with any mention of… um…”

“Your indiscretion? No, Mr. Pinnerly. I am nothing if not discreet.”

He hesitated. “And I suppose the question of a midnight visit…?”

I shook my head. “Is out of the question.”

He gave me a strangled look, torn between regret and longing, and then sped out of the peculiar house of his most bizarre client, happy (I’m sure) to leave us behind.

It seemed that staggering sums of money were being transferred to accounts in Jonathan’s name and the fateful trip to Philadelphia would begin tomorrow. Adair was ready to make his move, which meant that time had run out for me-and Jonathan. I had to act now or spend the rest of eternity in regret.

I went to Edgar, the head butler, the one entrusted with overseeing the other servants and running affairs for the house. Edgar had a suspicious and larcenous heart, like everyone else who found a place in this household, from master through the servants, which is to say he could be depended on not to do his job very well, but only to the minimum degree necessary. It is a terrible trait in a servant if you wish to have a well-run household, but the perfect attitude for one in a house where convention and scruples have been flung out the door.

“Edgar,” I said, folding my hands primly before me like the proper lady of the house. “There is a repair needed in the wine cellar that Adair would like attended to in his absence. Please send someone to the mason’s and have a wheelbarrow of stones and a wheelbarrow of brick delivered to the basement this afternoon. I’ve already hired a man to do the job once the count has left on his trip.” When Edgar looked at me slyly-the wine cellar had been a crumbling mess the entire time we’d been in the mansion, why the rush now?-I added, “And you needn’t trouble Adair about it; he’s getting ready for his trip. He’s entrusted me with this matter in his absence, and I expect to see it done.” I could be high-handed with the servants; Edgar knew better than to cross me. With that, I turned and strode away, to put the next step of my plan in play.

FORTY-FIVE

The next morning, the household was consumed with preparations for Adair’s trip. He had spent the morning picking out the clothing he would take with him and then sent the servants to pack for him and load the rented livery. Jonathan had shut himself up in his room, where he was also supposedly packing for the trip, but I sensed that he couldn’t bring himself to go and that a fight loomed.

I hid in the pantry with the cook’s mortar and methodically ground the phosphorus into dust. As I laid out the things I needed, I was as nervous as I had ever been, sure that Adair would pick up on my emotions and be forewarned. In truth, I didn’t know the extent of his powers, if they could truly be called powers. I’d made it this far, though, and had no choice but to gamble with my life and Jonathan’s by going the rest of the way.

The house by then was still and it might have been my imagination, but seemed to be tense with unspoken emotions: abandonment, resentment, lingering anger with Adair for what he’d done to Uzra, uncertainty about what lay ahead for all of us. Carrying a tray with the doctored wine, I went past the shut bedroom doors to Adair’s room, which had been quiet for the hour since the servants had carted the trunks away. I knocked once and, not waiting for an answer, pushed the door back and slipped inside.

Adair sat in a chair he’d pulled close to the fire, which was unusual in itself as he usually reclined on a bower of cushions. Maybe he sat more formally because he was fully dressed for travel, that is to say, like a proper gentleman of the time and not bare chested as was his habit. He sat stiffly in the armchair in breeches and boots, a waistcoat and high-collared shirt, bound at the neck with a silk cravat, his frock coat hanging over the back of a second chair. His suit was made of dark gray wool with very little embroidery or trim, far more sedate than his usual attire. He wore no periwig, but had brushed his hair back and had it tied trimly. His expression was of sadness, as though he was forced to go on this trip under pressure and that it was not of his own design. He lifted his hand and it was then I noticed the hookah set up next to him, and that the room smelled of sweet opium smoke of the strongest variety. He drew on the mouthpiece, cheeks sucked in, his eyes half closed.

I put the tray on a table near the door and crouched on the floor next to him, gently lacing my fingers into the stray curls on his forehead, brushing them away. “I thought we might spend a minute together before you go. I’ve brought something to drink.”

He slowly opened his eyes. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been meaning to explain about this trip to you. You’re probably wondering why I’m going with Jonathan and not you.” I quashed the urge to tell him I already knew, but waited for him to go on. “I know you can hardly bear to be separated from Jonathan, but I’ll take him away from you for only a few days,” he said mockingly. “Jonathan will return, but I am going to do some traveling on my own. I may be gone for a while… I feel the need to be by myself. This need comes over me from time to time… to be alone with my thoughts and my memories.”

“How can you leave me like this? Won’t you miss me?” I asked, trying to sound coquettish.

He nodded. “Yes, I shall, but it can’t be helped. That’s why Jonathan is coming with me, so I can explain a few things to him. He will run the household while I am gone. He told me of his duties running his family’s business and keeping his neighbors’ debts from bankrupting the town; managing one household’s accounts should be easy for him. I’ve had all the money transferred to his name. He will be the one with the authority; you and the others will have no choice but to follow his orders.”

It almost sounded plausible and I wondered, for a second, if I had misjudged the situation. But I knew Adair far too well to believe that things were as simple as he made them out to be. “Let me get you a drink,” I said, rising to my feet.

I’d selected a heavy brandy, strong enough to mask the taste of the phosphorus. Down in the pantry, I’d carefully poured the powder into the bottle with a paper sleeve, added most of a small bottle of laudanum, corked the mouth, and swished the liquid around gently. The powder had released a few white sparks into the air as I handled it, and I prayed that it would not make itself apparent by sparkling with the residue glowing faintly in the bottom of Adair’s glass.

As I poured the concoction now for Adair, I noticed on the dresser a few things laid out, presumably for the trip. There was a scroll of paper tied with a piece of ribbon, the paper old and rough, and I was sure it came from the collection bound between wooden covers in the hidden room. Next to it was a snuffbox and a small flacon, similar to the sort used for perfume, holding about an ounce of a brackish brown liquid.

“Here.” I handed a full goblet to Adair. I’d poured a glass for myself, though I had no intention of drinking the entire amount. Just a sip to convince him that nothing was amiss. He seemed heavily sotted by the opium, though I knew the opium alone didn’t have the strength to put him to sleep.

I resumed my place near his feet and looked up with what I hoped could be taken for adoration and concern. “You’ve been upset for days now. It’s because of the trouble with Uzra. Don’t protest; it’s only right that you’re upset by what happened, you’d kept her with you for hundreds of years. She had to mean something to you.” He sighed and let me help him to the mouthpiece again; yes, he was eager for distraction. He seemed ill, slow moving and bloated. Perhaps he was suffering for having killed the odalisque, or perhaps he was afraid of abandoning this body for the next; it had been a long time since he’d done it last, after all. Maybe it was painful to go through. Maybe he was afraid of the consequences for another bad deed, added to the long list of sins he’d already committed, a list for which he would be held accountable someday.

After a couple more puffs, he regarded me through slitted eyes. “Are you afraid of me?”

“For killing Uzra? You have your reasons. It’s not for me to question. That’s how it is here. You are the master.”

He closed his eyes and resettled his head against the high back of the chair. “You have always been the most reasonable one, Lanore. They are impossible to live with, the others. Accusing me with their eyes. They’re cold, they hide from me. I should kill the lot of them and start over.” By the tone of his voice I could tell it wasn’t an idle threat; once upon a time he’d done that very thing to another group of his minions. Wiped them out in a fury. For having a life that would supposedly last an eternity, it was a precarious existence.

I had to keep from shaking as I continued to stroke his forehead. “What had she done to deserve her punishment? Do you want to tell me?”

He pushed my hand aside and sucked again on the mouthpiece. I fetched the bottle and poured another glass for him. I let him stroke my face clumsily with his murdering hands and continued to soothe his conscience with insincere assurances that he was within his rights to have killed the odalisque.

At one point, he took my hand from his temple and began stroking my wrist, tracing my veins. “How would you like to take Uzra’s place?” he asked, a bit anxiously.

The notion rattled me, but I tried not to let him see. “Me? I don’t deserve you… I’m not beautiful like Uzra. I could never give you what she gave you.”

“You can give me something she would not. She never gave in to me, never. She despised me every day we were together. From you I sense… we have had happy moments together, haven’t we? I would almost say there were times you loved me.” He put his mouth to my wrist, his fire to my pulse. “I would make it easier for you to love me, if you agree. You would be mine alone. I wouldn’t share you with anybody. What do you say?”

He continued to pet my wrist while I tried to think of a response that would not sound false. Eventually, he answered for me. “It’s Jonathan, isn’t it. I can feel it in your heart. You want to be available for Jonathan, if he should want you. I want you, and you want Jonathan. Well… there may yet be a way to make this work, Lanore. There may be a way to get us both what we want.” It seemed a confession to all I suspected, and the very idea made my blood freeze.

Adair’s keen ability to select damaged souls would be his undoing. You see, he had chosen me well. He had picked me from the masses, known I was the sort of person who, without hesitation, could pour drink after poisonous drink for a man who had just professed love for her. Who knows, perhaps if I had been by myself, if only my future were at stake, I might have chosen differently. But Adair had made Jonathan part of his design. Maybe Adair thought I would be happy, that I was shallow enough to love him and stay with him as long as I had Jonathan’s beautiful shell to admire. But Adair’s murderous self would be behind my beloved’s familiar face and would echo in his every word, and at the thought of that, what else could I do?

He dropped my arm, let the hookah slide from his hand. Adair was slowing, a windup toy that had spent its spring. I could wait no longer. For what I was prepared to do to the man, I had to know. I had to be absolutely certain. I leaned very close to ask, “You are the physic, aren’t you? The man you told me about?”

He seemed to need a moment to make sense of my words but then didn’t react angrily at all. Instead, a slow smile spread over his lips. “So clever, my Lanore. You have always been the cleverest one, I saw that right away. You were the only one who could tell when I was lying… You found the elixir. You found the seal, too… oh yes, I knew. I smelled a trace of you on the velvet… In all the time I have been alive, you are the first to solve my puzzle, to correctly read the clues. You found me out-as I knew you would.”

He was barely lucid and didn’t seem to know I was there. I leaned over him now, my hands grasping him by the lapels of his waistcoat, and had to give him a shake to get his attention. “Adair, tell me-what do you plan to do with Jonathan? You’re going to take possession of his body, aren’t you? That’s what you did to your peasant boy, the boy who was your servant, and now you’re going to take Jonathan. That is your plan?”

His eyes popped open and that chilling gaze of his settled on me, nearly breaking my composure. “If this were possible… if such a thing were to happen… you would hate me, Lanore, would you not? And yet I would be no different from the man you have known, the man for whom you have felt affection. You have loved me, Lanore. I have felt it.”

“That’s true,” I said to him, to assure him.

“You would have me still and you would have Jonathan, too. But without his indecisiveness. Without his carelessness for your feelings, without the hurt and selfishness and regret. I would love you, Lanore, and you would be certain of my feelings. That is something you cannot have with Jonathan. That is something you will never get from him.” His words jolted me because I knew them to be true. As it turned out, his words were also prophetic; it was like a curse Adair placed on me, dooming me to unhappiness forever.

“I know I shan’t. And yet…,” I murmured, still stroking his face, trying to gauge his wakefulness. It didn’t seem that a body could ingest so much poison and remain conscious.

“And yet, it’s Jonathan I choose,” I said, finally.

At those words, Adair’s glazed eyes lit up with only the faintest spark of recognition deep within them, recognition of what I’d just said. Recognition that something terrible was happening to him, that he was unable to move. His body was shutting down, even though he fought it, struggling in his chair like a stroke victim, spastic and tremulous, drool starting to drip from the corners of his mouth in bubbled threads. I leaped to my feet and stood back, avoiding his hands as they jabbed the air for me-and failed, then froze, then went limp. He grew still suddenly, still as death and gray as clouded water, and tumbled out of the chair onto the floor.

It was time for the final step. Everything had been laid in place earlier, but I couldn’t do this part alone. I needed Jonathan. I sprang out of the room and ran down the hall to Jonathan’s chamber, bursting in without knocking. He was pacing, but seemed prepared to go out, cloak over his arm and hat in hand.

“Jonathan,” I gasped, pressing the door closed, blocking his way.

“Where have you been?” he asked, an angry edge to his voice. “I looked for you but couldn’t find you… I waited, hoping you would come to me, until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I am going to tell him I have no intention of traveling with him. I’m going to tell him that I am breaking with him and then I’m going to leave.”

“Wait-I need you, Jonathan. To help me.” As angry as Jonathan was, he saw that I was upset and put his things aside to listen to me. I poured out the story, sure that I sounded like a madwoman because I hadn’t the time to think of a way to tell him without seeming delusional or paranoid. And inwardly I cringed, because now he would see me for what I was; capable of cunning evil, able to condemn someone to terrible suffering-still the same girl who had sent Sophia to kill herself, cruel and unyielding as steel, even after everything I myself had been through. Surely, Jonathan would denounce me. I expected him to walk out on me, that I would lose him forever.

When I’d told him the entire tale, of how Adair had planned to extinguish his soul and usurp his body, I held my breath, waiting for Jonathan to dismiss me or lash out, for him to call me a madwoman, waiting for the swing of the cape and the slam of the door. But he didn’t.

He took my hand and I felt a bond between us that I hadn’t known in a while. “You saved me, Lanny. Again,” he said, his voice cracking.

Upon seeing Adair on the floor, still as the dead, Jonathan recoiled momentarily, but then he joined me in binding Adair as securely as we could. We tied the monster’s hands behind his back, bound his ankles together, and gagged him with a soft cloth. However, when Jonathan went to lash the knots at Adair’s wrists to his feet, bowing our prisoner backward in a position of utter vulnerability, I recalled the inhuman harness. The feeling of helplessness came crushing down upon me and I could not do the same to Adair, even though he was my tormentor. Who knew how long he might remain bound like that, before he was found and freed? It seemed too cruel a punishment, even for him.

We then wrapped Adair in his favorite sable blanket, a solitary comfort. I slipped out first so Jonathan, if he ran into one of the others and was questioned, could pass off the bundle in his arms as me. And we planned to meet in the cellar to see my plan to its end.

I rushed ahead, taking the servants’ staircase to the cellar. As I waited at the foot of the stairs, resting against the cold stone wall, I worried for Jonathan. I’d let him take all the risk of spiriting Adair out of the room. Though the others had withdrawn, shell-shocked by Uzra’s death and the confusion of Adair’s departure, it was by no means assured that Jonathan would not cross paths with one of them. He could easily be spied by a servant as well, and one glimpse could undo our plan. I waited tensely until Jonathan appeared with the limp form in his arms. “Did anyone see you?” I asked, to which he shook his head.

I led him through the twisting labyrinth to the very lowest level of the cellar, to the cavelike room where the wine was stored. Here, the cellar was most like a castle’s dungeon, sequestered from the rest of the basement rooms, thickly lined with earth and stone to keep the temperature constant for the wine. I’d found a niche in the very back, a tiny windowless cell cut into the mansion’s massive stone foundation. It appeared to be an unfinished extension of the wine room, with bricks and wood lying about. Yesterday’s deliveries of bricks and stone were piled on the floor along with a bucket of mortar draped with a moistened cloth, nearly dry now. Jonathan looked at the supplies and then at me, surmising instantly the intent of the materials, and then dumped Adair’s body on the damp dirt floor. Without a word, he stripped off his frock coat and rolled up his sleeves.

I kept Jonathan company as he closed up the small gap that served as the opening to the cell. First brick, then row upon row of stone to make the opening disappear into the deep-set wall. Jonathan set about his task silently, settling the stones into place with taps of the trowel’s handle, drawing on work he had done in childhood, while I kept watch on Adair’s dark form, a mere lump of shadow on the cell’s floor.

At the hour when Adair had been scheduled to leave, I crept upstairs and sent the livery on its way, telling the driver that the travelers had changed their minds, but wanted the baggage sent ahead to their lodgings as planned. Then I mentioned casually to Edgar that the master had departed on his trip a little ahead of schedule in order to avoid fanfare, wanting to slip away. Adair’s and Jonathan’s empty rooms seemingly verified what I’d said, and Edgar merely shrugged and went about his duties and would, I suspected, tell the others if asked.

Jonathan continued to work, pausing whenever we heard any movement that sounded like it was coming our way. For the most part, it was exceedingly quiet this deep underground and we heard few stirrings from the occupied floors, but it was unlikely that we would, with storage rooms situated between the first floor and the wine cellar. Still, I was nervous, sure that the others might come looking for me. And I wanted this horrible act behind me. The man in the cell is a monster, I kept telling myself to ease my mounting guilt. He is not the man I knew.

“Hurry, please,” I murmured from my perch on an old cask.

“There’s nothing to be done for it, Lanny,” Jonathan said over his shoulder, never breaking his rhythm. “Your poisons-”

“Not mine, surely! Not mine alone,” I cried, jumping off the cask in agitation.

“The poison will wear off, eventually. The knots may loosen and the gag come undone, but this wall must not fail. It must be as strong as we can make it.”

“Very well,” I said, wringing my hands as I paced. I knew that the potion couldn’t kill him, even if it had been poison, but hoped that it might make him sleep forever or have caused damage to his brain, so he’d never be aware of what had happened to him. Because he was not a magical being, not a demon or an angel; he could not make the knots untie themselves or fly through walls like a ghost any more than I could. Which meant that eventually he would wake in the dark and not be able to take the gag from his mouth, not be able to scream for help, and who knew how long he might remain there, buried alive.

I waited a moment on our side of the fresh stone wall to see if I felt the familiar electric arc of Adair’s presence, but I did not. It was gone. Perhaps it was gone only because Adair was so deeply sedated. Maybe I’d feel him again when he regained consciousness-and what torture that might be, to feel his agony alive in me day after day and not be able to do anything about it. I cannot tell you how many nights I’ve thought about what I did to Adair, and there have been times when I almost think I would undo what I did to him, if it were possible. But at that time, I could not let myself think about it. It was too late for pity or remorse.

Jonathan slipped out that evening while the others were away at one of their usual pastimes. I had a taste of the struggles that were to come with Jonathan when, once he had stepped outside, he turned to me and asked, “We can return to St. Andrew now, can’t we?”

I drew in a breath. “St. Andrew is the last place we can go because there, of all places, we will be most quickly discovered. We’ll never grow old, never fall ill. All those people you’d return for, they’ll come to look at you with horror. They’ll come to fear you. Is that what you want? How would we explain ourselves? We can’t, and Pastor Gilbert will have us tried as witches for sure.”

His expression clouded over as he listened, but he said nothing. “We need to disappear. We must go where no one knows us and we must be prepared to leave at any time. You must trust me, Jonathan. You must rely on me. We have only each other, now.” He made no argument but kissed my cheek, and started toward the public house where we planned to meet the following day.

The next morning, I told the others that I was leaving to join Adair and Jonathan in Philadelphia. When Tilde raised an eyebrow suspiciously, I used Adair’s own words on her, explaining that he had no patience with their accusatory glances for what he’d done to Uzra and that while they might not be able to forgive him, I had. Then I went to see Pinnerly for the list of the accounts that had been set up in Jonathan’s name. While the lawyer was reluctant to hand Adair’s private papers over to me, a session of no more than ten minutes on my knees in his back room was sufficient to get him to change his mind, and what was ten more minutes of harlotry in exchange for a secure financial future? Jonathan would forgive me, I was sure, and in any case, Jonathan would never know.

The others said nothing outright against me but were clearly skeptical and wary, and gathered in corners and on dark landings to whisper among themselves. Eventually, though, they drifted off to their rooms or about other business, clearing the way for me to creep down to the study. Jonathan and I needed money to flee, at least until we could gain access to the funds that Adair himself had set aside-for his own future use, of course.

To my surprise, Alejandro sat slumped over the table, his head in his hands. He watched indifferently, however, as I socked money from Adair’s cash box into a pouch; it would be only natural that I might carry more funds to Adair to use for his trip. But Alejandro cocked his head in curiosity when I pulled the framed charcoal drawing of Jonathan down from the wall. It was the one item I couldn’t bear to leave behind. I pried the backing from the frame and, with a piece of tissue over the drawing and a chamois beneath it, I rolled the picture into a tight cylinder and tied it with a red silk cord.

“Why are you taking the drawing?” he asked.

“There’s a painter in Philadelphia; Adair plans to introduce him to Jonathan. Jonathan will never agree to sit for his portrait again, and Adair knows it, so he wants the artist to create a painting from the sketch. It seems like a lot of bother, I agree, but you know how Adair is, once he’s decided on something…,” I said blithely.

“He’s never done anything like this,” Alejandro said, abandoning his questioning with the despair of one accepting the inevitable. “It’s very-unexpected. It is very strange. I’m at a loss to know what to do next.”

“All things come to an end,” I remarked before slipping out of the study nonchalantly.

I waited in the carriage as servants brought down my trunks, securing them to the back. Then the carriage pulled away with a lurch, and I slipped into the Boston traffic, disappearing completely into the crowds.