“But why can’t I have both the now and the later?”
“The very thing that makes me radiant and desirable will carry me away from you. I need to rove. I will sleep in castles on cliffsides and listen to the ocean crashing against rocky shores. I will watch the sun setting behind minarets. And I will carry my love for you to all the places I will go, but my love will never be yours alone. There will be many other women and probably a few boys, and I’ll love each of them as fiercely and wholly as I love you right now.”
“But if you really loved me, you would forestall your own selfish pleasure to protect me from pain.” She stepped backward again, into the far corner of the room.
I shrugged. “If you really loved me, you would not wish to deny me any pleasure. The minute you’re out of my sight, you’re no longer part of my now. The first time desire tempts me, I will succumb to it. My heart is an insect, drawn to the nearest flower by forces beyond its comprehension.”
“And as you flit to the next flower, I shall be left all alone to wilt and dry out and rot and die.” She crossed her thin arms over her breasts. “You’re not a poet or a lover or a drunk or a hero, Byron. You are none of the things you claim to be. You are a changeling. You are always playing a role. And you have assessed me frightfully well, preying upon my unspoken desires and stoking my romantic impulses while dismissing the solid virtues of Mr. Sedgewyck. It’s funny, the choice between a good man and a bad one ought not be so wrenching.”
I resisted the urge to tell her what I knew of Sedgewyck’s virtues. “I would not go so far as to say Mr. Sedgewyck is a bad man.”
She laughed. “You clown and jest, and you’re so quick with your magnificent tongue. But I’m sure you know that you are not the good man in this scenario.”
I circled around the bed and moved close to her. The wall was at her back, and she could retreat from me no farther. I touched her warm, pale cheek with my hand. “Why? Because I am imprudent? I am sure you know that a prudent man like Mr. Sedgewyck will never love you in a whole lifetime as much as I can in a single passionate embrace. It’s not that he doesn’t wish to; he is a sensible man, and loving you is a sensible thing to do. But he is incapable of my kind of ardor. He lacks the imagination to even realize such a thing could exist. You want me because passion is the opposite of prudence; its heat and its light attract you, though you know a thing so volatile can never endure.”
Her face rubbed against my hand, and she closed her eyes. “Is that the poet’s gift?”
“Yes, but not the only one.”
“What else have you got?”
I moved my hand from her cheek and caressed her long, white neck, bringing my thumb to rest in the indentation at the base of her throat. “My magnificent tongue has uses beyond jest and clowning, and I can fuck you until your thighs shake and your toes curl up,” I said.
“You have a high opinion of your abilities, Lord Byron.”
“In a thousand years of tongues and fucking, there’s never been anyone better.”
She pinched her eyes shut again, and exhaled with some force, and her breast heaved beneath my persistent caress. “That might be true. But I think I must decline your offer.”
“You think you must,” I said. “But what do you really want?”
“I don’t want to endure a lifetime of shame as penance for a single imprudent act, while you bask in your infamy and write mock-epic poems about your conquests.”
“The present slips away while you fret about the future. You must choose, dear Olivia, to seize your now. I know what you want. I can give it to you. And it’s better than you can possibly imagine. You need only to ask for it.”
A lingering silence passed between us. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to gather her in my arms, but the moment seemed wrong. Even with my confidence bolstered by drink, I knew that her desire was not tilting my way, and conquest was not at hand.
“Mr. Sedgewyck-” Olivia began. Her voice was soft and husky, and tears welled in her eyes.
“No, that’s not what you want,” I said, uninterested in hearing whatever she might have to say about that unpleasant gentleman. “Turn me away if you feel like you have to, but don’t ever lie to me.”
“Please, Lord Byron, you must let me speak.” Her tone was insistent, but her voice was so soft, it was barely audible. “Last week Mr. Sedgewyck visited my father and asked for my hand. My father gave his blessing. Mr. Sedgewyck is known to be well situated, and this match may ensure the future fortunes of my family. He intends to propose.”
“So, when he wandered into my home, uninvited, to insult me, he did so at your behest?”
“It was nothing so unkind as that. I think he was intimidated when he learned I was attending your party, and maybe he was trying to impress me.”
“He came into my home at your behest and insulted me in front of my friends. I was humiliated.” And then I realized something: “He asked your father for his blessing last week? Before the murder of Felicity Whippleby?”
“Yes. I don’t see what the one thing has to do with the other.”
“How long has Sedgewyck been courting you?”
“Several months.”
“While he was purportedly betrothed to Felicity?”
I’d assumed Sedgewyck was merely a bachelor on the hunt for a smart match, and that his pursuit of Olivia had been his pragmatic contingency when the possibility of union with Felicity was extinguished. The fact that Sedgewyck had made secret plans to marry Olivia when Felicity was still ostensibly his intended bride changed my entire perspective on the events of the previous two days, as did the fact that Sedgewyck had apparently concealed his simultaneous courtship of two respectable young ladies from me and from the investigators.
“His engagement to Felicity was, as you said, merely a pragmatic arrangement,” Olivia said. “It is not unusual to break off an engagement when an opportunity arises to make a smarter match.”
“Why didn’t he end things with her sooner, then?”
“His parents were infatuated with the idea of marrying into her good, old family. He was loath to disappoint them.”
“So he found a way to get rid of her that didn’t require him to spurn the bride his father had chosen for him.”
“Leif didn’t-he would never.”
“Killing her was a prudent thing to do, and Leif Sedgewyck is ever so prudent,” I said. “And you’ve chosen his prudence over my passion. The life he offers you is as cold and bloodless as the corpse of the last girl he was supposed to marry. You will never know what we could have had together.”
She collapsed onto the bed and began to weep. “On some level, I may resent Mr. Sedgewyck and my father for making this arrangement,” she said. “You’re right that I don’t love him, and you’re right that he isn’t passionate. I think that you have sensed within me some unspoken desire to undo the match, to wreck what’s been built, and your insect heart can smell a flower ripe for plucking. Or perhaps I’ve committed some seductive act to draw you in; I cannot absolve myself of all blame. But I must stop before I embark upon your spectacular folly. I cannot forsake my duty to my family’s interests merely to slake my own desire; not for something so fleeting as your limited promises of temporary passion.”
If I consider it in retrospect, I must admit that this new information didn’t connect Sedgewyck to Cyrus Pendleton or Violet Tower, and it didn’t explain how he could have attended my party, walked Olivia to her doorstep, and still had time to commit all the murders of the previous night. But I was full of fury at the discovery of the Dutchman’s duplicity.
Olivia, for her part, seemed to find nothing suspicious about her suitor’s strategic maneuvers. In the world where she traveled, one’s entire purpose was to pursue the optimal marriage. But she had deceived me nonetheless, and I wasn’t about to do her any favors.