“You must understand the difficulties of a young lady in my circumstances—”
“The devil take your circumstances!” he cried, and flung his goblet against the wall. The glass shattered, and the wine sprayed out like blood. He went to the mantel above the fireplace and swept away all the pottery in a wild, angry thrust, sending a wave of ragged pieces washing across the floor. “The devil take you. Do you think the ladies who queue up at my house trouble themselves about their reputations? No, but Lucy Derrick will not be moved by love.”
Lucy was too astonished even to speak. Could it be that he really thought this so? Could he really not understand what motivated her? How self-absorbed, how childish he must be to condemn her. It was horribly shameful that this drama must play out before Mr. Blake, and Lucy dared a glance at him, but he only continued to smile blankly.
“I’d thought better of you, Lord Byron,” she said quietly.
“Oho! I’ve disappointed you, have I? Tell me, why did you come here today? Did you wish to see me, to spend time with me, as I begged you to? I think not. Or rather, did you wish to ask me to take you somewhere, accompany you on another of your adventures?”
“That is why I came,” said Lucy, her voice betraying her uncertainty.
“That is why you came,” he echoed. “You wished more from me. After all I have done, what have I received in return? Nothing!”
“Lord Byron—” Lucy began.
He would not let her speak. “Nothing!” he cried again. “I have done and done and done for you, and you have only trifled with my feelings. Those women who come to my house ask for nothing in return. I cannot imagine why I should not enjoy their company rather than enduring yours.”
Lucy’s face was now set hard. “Because you claim to care for me. Because a gentleman ought to aid a lady he cares for without demanding she turn whore in compensation.”
“It is a convenient arrangement for you, I’ll wager.”
Lucy turned to Mr. Blake. “Come sir, let us go.”
Mr. Blake rose and smiled at Byron, but it was a chilling smile.
They left the house, Lucy tense with rage. Could she have been so wrong about Byron? Had she allowed herself to misunderstand his beauty as goodness? She did not know. She only knew that now, other than Mr. Blake, she was utterly without allies in London.
31
MR. BLAKE WAS A REMARKABLE MAN. THERE WAS NO DENYING that. He saw things and knew things that no ordinary man could see or know, but he was old and eccentric and, Lucy believed, somewhat unpredictable. She would hate to ask a man of his age to accompany her on a dangerous adventure, and all the more so when she could not know if she might rely upon him. All of which meant that she now did not know how to proceed. Mr. Blake said Lucy’s father wanted her to seek pages of the Mutus Liber at Harrington, her childhood home, but she could not go alone. She had not the money to travel, and she could not ask Mr. Blake, who was poor, to help her in that regard.
That night, after Lucy had picked at her dinner of roast chicken and parsnips, she sat by the fire with Mr. Blake. Mrs. Blake had gone to bed, and now Lucy sat with the engraver opposite her, also with his side to the fire. Across the room, Mrs. Emmett sat with her head slumped, snoring noisily.
Lucy stared at the flames while Mr. Blake told her about the curious mythology that spread throughout his many books. He told her stories that seemed dreamlike and allegorical and yet, strangely not, filled with curious names and a pantheon that evoked classical sources as well as the Bible. Lucy could not keep the names or the struggles clear, but the stories were infused with the themes that preoccupied Mr. Blake: the fight of the human spirit against the oppression of cruel and unnatural law and custom, and the struggle of divine truth against satanic reason. Even if the details eluded her, Lucy took pleasure in the enthusiasm in Mr. Blake’s voice, and she admired, even envied, his excitement at his own creation.
It was a testament to Mr. Blake’s comforting presence, not a sign of failure as a storyteller, that Lucy found herself drifting toward slumber in the comfortable armchair by the fire. She was not quite asleep, but in a state where Mr. Blake’s words took on strange and unpredictable meanings, and she drifted slightly away from herself.
Then Mr. Blake was silent, and Lucy snapped awake. There was another person in the room, sitting in a chair once empty, directly across from Lucy and Mr. Blake, and farthest from the fire. Lucy blinked twice, unable to credit what she saw, for it was Ludd himself. She had not before seen him so clearly or so directly. The room was well lit, and he did not seem to twinkle in and out of existence as he had the previous times she’d gazed upon him, and yet he did not seem to be entirely there either. He was not transparent or insubstantial, the way one might suppose a ghost to look. It was more that looking at him was like looking into a fire. She could not look long, for it strained and clouded her eyes, and she found it was most comfortable to look at him from the corners of her eyes.
Mr. Blake appeared to have no such difficulty. Lucy could see that he stared at him directly, and he blinked in wide-eyed astonishment.
Mrs. Emmett was awake now, and she too had no trouble gazing upon him. “Look at that,” she said, as though observing a dog doing a remarkable trick. “How unexpected.”
“All depends upon you,” Ludd said to Lucy.
“Can you think I don’t know it?” she answered. The bitterness of her own voice surprised her.
“I hope you do,” Ludd said in his unaccountable, shifting voice. “I hope you comprehend what happens if you fail. I may fail. You may not.”
“We do not stand for the same cause,” said Lucy. “You arranged for Mr. Perceval’s death. You hoped to cause the death of hundreds more in rebellion and unrest.”
“We thought it necessary,” Ludd said. “We failed. Now your role is even more important.”
“What shall happen if Miss Derrick does not stand with you?” asked Mr. Blake.
“Death,” said Ludd. “Blood. Machines. Enslavement. An end to everything you love. An end to all that tempers Lady Harriett and her kind. An end to England as any of us have understood it.”
“There must be another way,” said Lucy. “A way for the machines and the magic to coexist.” She did not know how strongly she believed this until she spoke it. “That is my cause. Peace and compromise. That is the third way.”
“There can be no peace while Lady Harriett lives,” Ludd said. “You must destroy her for there to be peace, and if you compromise, how can you destroy her?”
“Then what do you suggest I do?” asked Lucy.
She asked it to an empty chair.
Lucy was on her feet in an instant, walking about the room as though Ludd might somehow, absurdly, be hiding somewhere.
“Damn them!” Lucy cried, hardly caring how wanton she sounded. Then, after a moment, she said, “Forgive me, Mr. Blake.”
“No forgiveness is required,” he answered with his customary ease.
“I am so frustrated!” Lucy cried out, feeling like a petulant child. It was the unfairness of it all that drove her mad. “Why can they never speak plainly? Why can they never tell me what must be? Why are they always so opaque and vague and maddening?”
Mr. Blake smiled at her. “You must be patient with them, Lucy. Our world is as difficult for them to see as theirs is for us. That creature did not seek to vex you. It struggled mightily to be clear, but you were just as slippery and evasive to it as it was to you.”
This notion startled Lucy, but it also comforted her. It made her feel better to know that at least Ludd was not toying with her.