Lucy smiled. “It is the most literal experience of inspiration I have ever heard.”
Mr. Blake looked at her, as if seeing her for the first time.
“Mr. Blake,” she said, “I am confused. You say these are your engravings, and yet you say you have not done them.”
“I am confused as well.” He appeared more amused than anything else. “I have never made these engravings, and yet they are unmistakably mine. I have no followers in my mode of engraving, and even if I did, no one could imitate my style so well that I would not detect it.”
“I was told,” she said, attempting to show no emotion, “that these drawings originate from the seventeenth century in La Rochelle.”
Blake examined them again. “I see nothing particularly French in them, but the paper is certainly aged. There is nothing in these to say that they are not from such a time and place.”
“Mr. Blake, I do not think you are near two hundred years old.”
“I thank you.”
“How is it, then, that these pages can be?”
“I cannot answer that. I can only surmise that at some point in my future, either I or my work shall be in seventeenth-century France.”
“That is nonsense,” said Lucy.
“No,” he corrected. “We know where the pages come from and we know they are my work. It is not nonsense. It is evident. You say it is nonsense because reason tells us that I cannot ever go to seventeenth-century France, but once again that is the reason of Locke and Bacon and Newton. That is the reason of Satan and hell. You cannot doubt your own experience of the world because your reason tells you that your own experience must be wrong.”
Lucy rose and looked out the window of the shop. The day was overcast but not gloomy. She had not yet been outside, and she suddenly felt cramped and constrained, as though she needed fresh air. She turned back to Mr. Blake to announce that she wished to take a walk, but saw that he was very much absorbed in one of the engravings.
“Tell me,” he said to her, “who is Mr. Buckles?”
For days Lucy had wanted to go to Byron, but she’d dared not. Now, it seemed, she did not have a choice, for she needed his help. Her father had made it clear to Bob that Lucy must journey to Harrington, her childhood home, for there were pages there. And he had made it clear that she must not travel alone. She would need an escort, and Mrs. Emmett would not do. She required a man who had proved himself, which could only mean Byron.
There was no one else to ask, so Lucy traveled to Byron’s house to beg him to take her once more to Kent, this time to the home of Mr. Buckles, where Mr. Blake insisted she might find more pages of the book.
Because her reputation had been damaged, and because she must be vulnerable if she entered his house alone, Mr. Blake agreed to accompany her. They arrived at Byron’s London house to discover a string of young ladies loitering on the walk, hoping to capture the baron’s attention. It was a beautiful spring day, sunny and bright, with enough of a breeze to offer comfort. There could be no better weather to stand outside a man’s home, Lucy supposed, though she could not imagine why they did so. Each of these ladies clutched her copy of an identical volume.
Lucy approached one of the women, a girl with heavy features and sallow skin, but whose eyes shone with bright hope.
“I want to see him,” she said to Lucy. “I want only to see him. His work has so moved me, if I may see him and impose upon him to speak to me, I know he will love me.”
“What has caused all this fuss?” asked Lucy, astonished.
“You do not know?” This lady seemed as confused by Lucy’s surprise as Lucy had been by the lady’s ardor. “You have not read it, then?” She held out her book.
Lucy took the book and examined it and discovered it to be the newly published volume of the poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. “He told me he thought it was remarkable. I see you think so too.”
“He told you,” the young lady repeated. “You know Lord Byron?”
“I know him well,” she answered, implying much if saying little.
“He will see you?” the lady asked.
“I believe so,” Lucy answered.
“Will you bring me inside with you?”
Lucy smiled indulgently. “It is not for me to invite strangers into his house.”
“You are wicked not to share him,” she answered.
“Would you share him?”
“I imagine not.”
Lucy pushed past the girls and rang the bell. In a moment, a fatigued-looking servant answered.
“Please tell Lord Byron that Miss Lucy Derrick desires a word. I am unlike these other ladies in that he knows me.”
The serving man appeared skeptical, but agreed to relay the message. He returned and allowed Lucy and Mr. Blake inside. They had remained in a sitting room for nearly an hour when Lord Byron at last appeared in a dressing gown, his hair looking quite wild. In one hand he held a goblet of wine which he swirled carelessly. He took another step, and Lucy observed his movements were stiff and controlled, like that of a drunkard attempting to disguise his impairment.
“Ah, Miss Derrick. You’ve come to call, and you’ve brought me an old tradesman. How thoughtful.”
Lucy felt shame wash over her. Mr. Blake’s expression did not change, but she could not endure that she had brought him here to be so thoughtlessly insulted. Byron was his own man and lived by his own rules, but he had never before been rude to her without cause.
Lucy took a breath to steady herself. Perhaps it was simply her imagination. Perhaps he was not being so cruel as it appeared or his drunkenness only seemed to her like rudeness. “Mr. Blake has been kind enough to attend me. I must ask something of you, Lord Byron.”
“Must you now?” he asked. He began to pace leisurely about the room. “You know, since we last spoke, the first portion of my poem has been published. It has proved very popular with the ladies.”
“I observed that,” Lucy said. The anger began to build inside her. He had no cause to speak to her this way. No cause, and after all the things he had declared. It was unforgivable.
“Yes, I have two or three of them upstairs just now, and there is an endless stream of new ones at the door. Some prettier than others, so one must be careful to choose wisely.”
Lucy’s cheeks burned with indignation. She might have, from time to time, allowed herself to believe that Byron was a more honorable man than her experience suggested. She may have, on occasion, indulged in the fantasy that he would reform and ask her to marry him. She had known these thoughts were flights of the imagination, and yet they had seemed close enough to reality that they had been worth indulging in. But even if she had not deceived herself, and she had never taken Byron for anything but what he so clearly was, this behavior would have been unforgivable. “I wish to know why you would speak to me in this fashion. Are you under another curse that makes you act so?”
He laughed theatrically, throwing back his head. “A curse? No. It is but literary success that makes me act as I do. I am free now to treat all as I like and as they deserve, and that includes you, though you would believe you are owed something out of the common way.”
“What have I done to deserve this rudeness?”
Byron coughed out something like a laugh. “What have you done? I asked you to come to me. I begged you, and you did not come. Do you think I beg others? You ignored me when I wanted you because it was not convenient for Lucy Derrick—the great Lucy Derrick—to call upon a mere mortal such as Lord Byron. I saved your life. I took blows for you—blows to the face—but does that impress you? Does that instill in you any sense of obligation? No, you are too busy with your gods and spirits and monsters to trouble yourself with me.”