Sir Carew doubled my workload and kept me in his sights at nearly every waking moment. I was only able to put my plan into practice after a full week, and I feared I may have missed my chance. I didn’t know it was possible to detest Sir Carew more than I already did, but as it turned out, there was no cup my hatred of him could not fill.
I wrote a letter and sent it to Henry’s home, only for it to be returned to Miss Laurie’s boardinghouse days later, unopened.
On an afternoon when Sir Carew fell ill and took to his bed, I was given a reprieve and used it to walk the streets surrounding Leicester Square. I saw Dr. Jekyll many times, coming and going from the family home sometimes by carriage, sometimes on foot. It occurred to me that my behavior was obsessive, maybe even inappropriate. I told myself that if I could catch a glimpse of Henry, if I could see him smiling, that I would leave him to the choices he’d made, regardless of how my heart ached.
When I finally saw Henry emerge from the front door of his residence, trailing behind his father, his woolen coat pulled up around his neck, my heart leapt into a furious rhythm. But my excitement quickly turned to anguish as I took in Henry’s sad state.
Even under the many layers of his clothing he was thinner than I had ever seen him. His face was gaunt, his eyes downcast. It took everything in me not to call out to him as I stepped from my hidden spot in the alleyway. He climbed into the carriage and it disappeared into the gloaming, and I was left standing alone in the street, unable to breathe.
Sir Carew was, much to my delight, still incapacitated the following day, and so I again made my way to Leicester Square in the early hours of the dim evening. A patchy fog had settled in, and as I stood like a sentry in the dark, a light went on in the room I knew to be Henry’s. His bedroom was on the second floor, his window overlooking the street below. I pressed my back against the damp brick and held my breath as a figure moved to the window. The silhouette was familiar to me. Henry. He was so close and all I wanted was to see his face.
The curtains drew back and I braced myself, preparing to see Henry’s gaunt face. But instead I was met with a pair of shining eyes, a shock of white hair—
Hyde.
A wave of nausea swept me up like the tide to thrash me against the rocks. I staggered back. Hyde was in Henry’s bedroom. Lanyon must have been right.
I leaned forward, resting my hands on my knees. This was what I’d been searching for—answers to an unending avalanche of questions. I had them now, and I hated myself for seeking them out in the first place. Henry’s letters should have been enough.
I was a fool.
I turned to leave when across the road in the alleyway immediately next to Henry’s home, the rear door opened. I glanced back up at the window to find Hyde gone and the light put out. As I leveled my eyes, dappled candlelight from the open door illuminated the alley, and a figure emerged from the gloom like a ghost. My heart beat against my ribs like a bird trying desperately to escape its cage.
Hyde strode across the street, his gait wide and just a bit off-balance. He stopped a few paces from me, and his wide dark eyes found me in the bleak night fog.
“Good evening,” he said, his voice low and hollow.
I didn’t know what to say. The heat of embarrassment rose in my face, and a heavy cloak of shame wrapped itself around me. I shouldn’t have been there. I should have respected Henry’s wishes. Now, I was crouching in the alley like the fool I was. I let my gaze wander to the ground.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I shouldn’t be here.”
“Where else should you be?” Hyde asked, stepping closer.
I lifted my head to meet his eyes. I expected to find anger there, perhaps even resentment, but I found something oddly comforting in his gaze.
“I’ve been trying to see Henry for some time,” I said.
He studied my face in silence for several moments. “He wrote to you.”
My heart cartwheeled in my chest. “He told you that?”
Hyde tilted his head. “He didn’t have to. I know him very well. It seems like the kind of thing he would do. He asked you to forget him, didn’t he?”
A carriage rumbled past and cloaked the already shadowy alleyway in total darkness. For a moment I was alone in the gloom with this strange young man, and I thought I saw his cheek lift, like he was smiling. The carriage moved on down the street, and the dim light filtering through the dense fog illuminated the alleyway once more.
Hyde was another step closer to me. I hadn’t heard him move.
The hair at the nape of my neck lifted, and a cold sweat slicked my palms. “You—you know Henry well, then?”
“Better than he knows himself,” Hyde said.
I huffed, feeling the green envy slip under my tongue and color my words. “How is that possible? You haven’t known him long enough.”
“Oh, I know him. And I know he can’t see past his own fear.”
I was about to question him further when Hyde suddenly glanced down the alley. “You were here when those men were chasing me,” he said in a voice that sounded like the rustle of leaves caught in the wind.
I’d nearly forgotten the trampling incident. “Yes. Why were they after you?”
Hyde rose his hands high over his head and spun in a circle, then bowed low, pretending to tip a hat he wasn’t wearing.
I didn’t know if I should laugh or run.
“I was in Hyde Park. It was my very first time there.” He paused and gave another little spin. “The trees and the grass and my god—even the birds and the insects. Everything was alive and shifting and I—I love to dance.”
I tried to hide how utterly confused I was. “What does that have to do with the men who were chasing you?”
“I love to dance,” Hyde repeated. “They, apparently, do not.”
There was something in his words that he was trying to convey, some other meaning that wasn’t entirely clear. He watched me intently, his gaze so piercing I had to look away.
“I don’t know how long I was out there,” he said, rubbing his arms as if the chill was starting to get to him. “Those men saw me and told me to stop acting like a fool. They seemed to take my happiness as some terrible offense.”
“Do you know them?”
“No,” he said.
I was still confused. “They were running after you like you’d committed a crime.”
Hyde huffed, and a cloud of white steam rippled out of him and mingled with the fog. “They treated me as if I’d been tried and convicted. They tried to accost me. None of them could move fast enough to catch me.”
Hyde suddenly took hold of my arms. His grip was terribly strong. “I walked away, but when my back was turned, they fell on me. Tweaked my leg, split my lip open, injured my eye. I ran. There is no shame in running.” He turned me around. “I think if you and your cousin Enfield had not been there, the punishment they would have liked to subject me to would have been far more severe. I suppose I have you to thank for that?”
Hyde was quite unlike anyone I’d ever met in my entire life. I could not pick apart what it was that made me feel this way. His prematurely gray-white hair was peculiar, but aside from that he didn’t look any different than anyone else I might have passed on the street. I searched his face for some mark or sign that would tell me why I couldn’t seem to look away from him, but found nothing.
“I’m well aware of the law,” I said, turning my attention back to the matter at hand. “And dancing in Hyde Park isn’t in violation of any of them, as far as I’m aware.”
“You’re well versed in the law?”
I stood a little straighter. “I am. I clerk for Sir Danvers Carew.”
Hyde stiffened. His reaction to the name was familiar to me.
“You know him?” I asked.
“No,” Hyde said, casting his gaze to the ground. “But I’ve heard of him, and not because he’s some pious vulture of the law. He has quite a reputation in the dark.”
I didn’t know where Hyde had been spending his time since arriving in the company of the Jekylls, but the description did seem to fit Sir Carew. I shuddered. I knew what was said about him in the light—that he was brilliant, merciless in court, and dogged in his pursuit of young men whom he could manipulate. I could only imagine what was said about him in the dark.
Hyde approached me and leaned in so close I could feel his breath in my face.
“You’re very close to Henry.”
I peered into his face in the growing darkness. His large brown eyes were familiar and strange all at once.
“He is dear to me,” I said. “It’s why I’m here. I’ve seen you coming and going, and it made me question the nature of your relationship with him.” I stopped myself from saying any more. I wanted to scream at him that it was killing me to see him so well received while I had been cast aside, forced to sulk in darkened, rat-infested alleyways, hoping to catch a mere glimpse of Henry. But I reminded myself of the promise I’d made—if this was what Henry wanted, I would accept it.
“I should not have come,” I said, feeling thoroughly defeated. “Please don’t tell Henry I was here. I’m embarrassed enough as it is.”
“I don’t think you have anything to be embarrassed about,” Hyde said. “You’ve come after the boy you love to try to assess the state of his heart. How could you or he find anything about that embarrassing?”
I was so completely awestruck by the ease with which he spoke about me and Henry. There was no hint of malice or jealously, no sense of judgment.
“As far as not informing Henry that you’ve been here, well, I’m afraid I don’t have a choice in that matter. I share everything with Henry.”
“Please.” Desperation grabbed hold of me. “He can’t know I was here.”
“Why?” asked Hyde. “Why can you not be honest with him? It’s clear that the two of you have left things unsaid for far too long.”
“He won’t see me,” I said. “You can’t understand.”
“Oh no?” Hyde asked. “You might be surprised.”
I shook my head; it wasn’t as simple as that. But I decided that if Hyde was going to say something to Henry, I couldn’t stop him. There was no sense in trying.
I turned and brushed passed Hyde, making my way out into the street.
I paused, glancing behind me. “If you tell him I was here, at least do me the courtesy of also telling him that I only wish to see him happy.” I turned away from him and stared into the fog.
Hyde’s footsteps approached me from behind, but I dared not face him; I didn’t want him to see the tears welling in my eyes. But I could hear his breaths coming in short, quick bursts.
And then suddenly his trembling hand was on my shoulder.
Let him see me at my worst, I thought. Let him see everything.
It didn’t matter. Whether he was close to Henry or not made no difference. He was a stranger to me. I turned to face him, and as I did he quickly stepped behind me. In the confusion of our switching places I lost sight of him and then heard his footsteps hurrying across the road and into the alley abutting the Jekyll residence. His coat collar was pulled up so far it obscured his face. He entered the rear door and slammed it shut, cutting off the dappled light and plunging the alley into gloom.
I merely stood there for a moment, as if my feet were cemented to the ground, rattled by his abrupt departure. The heaviness of a new sadness pinned me to that place, even when I wanted nothing more than to leave.
Finally I forced myself away from the house. At the end of the street, I turned to look back at Henry’s window only to find it dark. Empty.