“I don’t understand what the matter is with you tonight, Alaric,” Lizzie said, batting him none too gently with her fan. “I’ve never seen so many people turn up simply to watch a man they rarely see blow out the candles on a cake.”
“It was all Ellen’s doing,” he said gruffly, downing yet another glass of champagne. He grimaced. The damned stuff was watered, as if they were all a pack of giddy debutantes. No doubt Ellen was trying to wean him before the wedding she still seemed to believe would take place. “You know how she loves a spectacle.”
Lizzie tilted her head quizzically. “Is everything alright between you?” she said, lowering her voice. “She gave me to understand that there was to be a very interesting announcement tonight.”
“Only if she forces me to announce in front of everyone she has ever known that I would rather marry one of the scullery maids than tie myself to her for the rest of my life.”
Lizzie’s mouth fell open, and she grabbed her brother’s arm, dragging him to the edge of the room where the crowd was thinnest. “You don’t mean that. All this dillydallying, and then you mean to jilt the poor girl? It’s scandalous, Alaric. I didn’t think you had that sort of meanness in you.”
“I never offered for her,” Alaric said mutinously, tossing his glass on the heavily laden tray of a passing footman. He glanced at his sister’s bewildered face, and sighed, his shoulders deflating. “Though it’s true, I have behaved very wrongly. I should have sent her away years ago. I just didn’t … care very much, one way or the other. I thought if I ignored the situation long enough, she would get exasperated with me and go of her own accord. I didn’t want to be unkind. But she never did, and I realize now that I was being very unkind to her indeed. Though you must believe that was never my intention.”
“So you have never bedded the girl?” Lizzie queried seriously. “All of Society thinks you have, you know.”
“God, no!” Alaric said, more loudly than he meant to. “I would never do such a thing. And even if I would, she wouldn’t.”
Lizzie lifted a pale blond eyebrow. “Do not be so sure of that, brother. She may seem innocent, but our dear Ellen is a calculating bit of muslin.” She tapped her nose knowingly. “Women sense these things about each other, much more so than men do. That being said, Ellen would make an excellent wife, Alaric. I’ve always thought so. She would be able to … to …”
His sister colored uncharacteristically, and Alaric laughed deprecatingly. “Manage me beautifully, the way I cannot seem to manage myself?”
Lizzie lifted her chin. “Precisely,” she said crisply. “You know you need it.”
“What I need is to take hold of myself,” Alaric told her. “An entirely different method to achieve the same end, which I agree is sorely overdue.”
Lizzie smiled, clearly relieved. “Why, what brought this on?”
Alaric said nothing for a moment, and then told the truth. “Love.”
Lizzie’s eyes widened, a bloom of gleeful anticipation creeping over her face. “Why, Alaric! You sly thing! Who is she?”
Alaric sighed, and shook his head. “No one you will ever know,” he said. “I cannot be with her. But she has changed my life for the better. From now on, I will actually live it, instead of moping about, drinking, and waiting for it all to be over.”
Lizzie frowned, and opened her mouth to say something, but instead gazed about inquiringly as a rush of murmuring seemed to sweep through the crowd.
Alaric scanned the room half-interestedly. He saw nothing but the crush of people in their wilting finery, the dazzle of diamonds round the ladies’ damp throats as they whirled in the arms of their partners, and the bobbing plumes of ostrich feathers as the ladies who weren’t dancing gossiped behind their rapidly whirring fans. The glower of jack-o’-lanterns amid swathes of harvest-inspired decorations on the punch table and the glare of fully lit chandeliers drew his eye momentarily. Everything was as Ellen arranged it. Nothing was amiss. What could possibly have fascinated everyone so much that they had all stopped guzzling champagne, dancing, and gossiping? It was as if the clockwork that controlled their bodies had wound down at once. Even the bloody string quartet had come to a standstill, the musicians in their fine black coats gaping like schoolboys staring into a sweetshop window.
Alaric frowned. What the devil was going on?
And then, suddenly, he saw her—Laura, standing across the room, just inside the doorway.
His whole body flooded with relief. Alaric had never felt so glad to see another person in his life. He was so overwhelmed with joy that he nearly laughed out loud, hysterically. Like an exhausted child on its birthday, Alaric was helpless with emotion. All he could do was gaze at her hungrily at her as she made her way through the crush.
The other guests seemed to give way before her without realizing it. They gaped at her, as he did, but for different reasons. To their eyes, she looked fantastical, so … out of place. She was dressed in a red gown of diaphanous silk that barely clung to her shoulders and didn’t even try to hide her knees. She glimmered all over with glass beads sewn into a wild pattern on her dress, and her shorn hair was sleek and complexly waved, tucked behind one ear. Her lips were coated lavishly in Laura’s signature blood-hued lip-rouge, and she smiled softly, looking all around her, as though she couldn’t quite believe what she saw.
Laura walked in a way Alaric had never before seen a woman walk who wasn’t naked—a slinky strut, like a panther. He realized that it had something to do with the fact that she wasn’t trussed within a whalebone cage, the way the rest of the women were. She wore no voluminous layers of petticoats and drawers. She was naked beneath her clothing. She was utterly free, and yet she had allowed herself to become his. She had dared to do what Alaric had never allowed himself to dream: she had come for him.
If she was aware that she was causing a sensation by appearing nearly naked in front of a crowd of Devonshire’s finest families, Laura didn’t let it show. She smiled and nodded to the people who stared at her and murmured volubly as she wove her way through the crowd, which parted before her as though making way for royalty. For that is what she seemed to Alaric: a queen in red, graceful and sensual, in complete command of every inch of her body. Perhaps that was how all women were in the future. If so, it was a damned wonderful improvement on the current model. Alaric felt a trickle of shame creep up from his stomach. He knew it was largely, if not completely, due to male conventions and control that women were the way they were. They were caged literally—in tightly laced corsetry—and they were caged in spirit. He himself had been keeping a woman in a cage for over a decade, a woman he didn’t even want. All of his anger and sense of righteous indignation toward Ellen melted away. Alaric aimed it toward himself, where it belonged.
And then, he pushed the guilt away. He could think of nothing but Laura.
He opened his arms, and in front of everyone who thought they knew him best, he gathered the half-naked woman into his arms. The gasp was audible. Not only that, it was tactile. Their collective shock and disapproval washed over him in a wave, and he let it. Laura held him steady. He was safe in her arms.
Her gaze swept downward, and he saw the shimmer of cosmetic dust clinging to the creases of her eyelids. They looked like the wings of a moth, fluttering. He wanted to kiss them, and every part of her face, from brow to the tip of her chin. In the distance, he heard a clock chime midnight. His lover had never felt more solid in his embrace. He pulled her close, inhaling the maddening elixir of her perfume as if breathing in her very essence. “Dance with me,” he whispered.
She nodded, and Alaric raised his hand to signal for music. The dance floor emptied as the scandalized guests made way for the pair, their chatter very nearly swallowing the delicate strains of the waltz. The customary twinge of pain Alaric always felt when engaged in such exertions seemed to fade completely, and he danced as he did before the war had ruined him. For the first time in his life, he realized that a thing could be unruined, if only the correct analgesic was applied.
“Laura,” he said simply, gazing down into her flushed face. “That was the bravest thing I have ever seen. And I love you for it, even more than I loved you before. Thank you.”
She smiled, her adorably crooked teeth gleaming like a row of imperfect pearls. “I was wrong to leave you like that last night,” she breathed. “Or rather, sixty years ago. Or … whenever it was. I was afraid.” She squeezed him, pulling him closer. “Not for myself. For you. For the mess I had made of your life.”
“Clearly, it was a mess I wanted,” he said. “After all, I left Stonecross for you. I had planned to visit my solicitor on Monday, to change my will. Did I do it?”
“You did. And it was still there when I got back.”
“And then what happened? What made you change your mind?”
She shook her head. “I’ll tell you all about it sometime. All you need to know is that it was love. I love you, and it made me come back.”
“I know the feeling,” Alaric said. He scooped her up, and danced her about, her feet dangling as he drew her lips into a deep kiss. “Let’s dance all night,” he murmured between breaths. “Whatever happens, hold onto me until …”
“Until I go.”
“Yes.”
And she did. They clung to each other like the sole survivors of a shipwreck. The room receded, and there was nothing but the two of them swirling about on an eddy of music, weightless, timeless, eternal. Their eyes never left each other’s. Their arms were an unbroken lock holding each other fast. They were one person. They were one soul.
Until Ellen stormed into the room, eyes blazing, her face breaking like a clap of thunder. She grabbed Alaric by the arm, nearly colliding with the pair as she dragged them to a stop.
“What do you think you are doing?” she hissed. “I thought this little tart of yours was gone for good, or at least hiding in one of the unused wings. I never thought you would actually bring her as a guest to the party I gave for you! How could you humiliate me like this after everything to which we agreed last night?”
Alaric frowned, pulling Laura closer, one arm around her holding her snugly against his side. She wrapped her own arm about his waist and held him tight, squeezing him with reassuring strength. “We agreed to nothing, Ellen,” he said in a low voice. “You threatened us, and thought it would be enough to force me to go through with this farce of a marriage. You were wrong.”
Ellen stared at them, furious, unable to speak. And then her face crumbled like that of a disappointed child. Alaric reached out reflexively, and stroked her cheek like a fond and baffled relative. “I’m sorry, Ellen,” he said, with genuine remorse. “I’ve treated you very badly, and you’ve always done your best to be good to me. You will make some man a fine wife, I’ve no doubt whatsoever. It just won’t be me.”
Ellen’s face cleared rapidly, though vestiges of a cold fury still remained. She nodded, threw back her shoulders, and reared her hand back to slap Alaric full in the face. The audible crack of her kidskin-covered palm reverberated through the room. Alaric’s head snapped back, and he touched his cheek in amazed silence.
“If you think I will sully myself in a marriage alliance with you, Alaric Storm,” Ellen said shrilly, tossing her head for dramatic effect, “you have quite mistaken me. I will be leaving in the morning. Do not attempt to follow or prevent me.”
The room erupted into a fresh din, and Alaric threw back his head and laughed as the entire mob surged forward to get a look at Ellen as she exited the ballroom in high dudgeon. “Lizzie was quite right,” he said, pulling Laura from the molten center of the crush. “That girl will land on her feet well enough. No doubt she will make a brilliant match before the Season even begins. And my name will be mud from here to Grosvenor Square.”
“Do you mind very much?” Laura asked seriously, as they slipped out onto the terrace.
“I could not possibly care less,” he said. “Now that I have you.”
Laura’s face was troubled as she gazed out over the water. “Yes, but for how long? And how much will you care once I have gone?” She lifted her hand to gaze at the volatile solidity she enjoyed. “I am only here because All Hallows makes it possible.”
“How do we know that, for certain?” Alaric said, turning her back round to face him. “It’s only speculation, really. We know we made more possible last night than we thought we could. I came through to your side, when you thought I wasn’t able to. And you stayed with me until it was almost daylight, when before, you faded almost as quickly as you appeared. I couldn’t even touch you.”
“Tess said …” Laura mused abstractly. “Well, she didn’t say anything really helpful, as a matter of fact. That woman is very keen on the cryptic. She simply said that the veils between worlds are thinnest this time of year, and that tonight they disappear. She was also in rather a lather to have me come here to be with you forever.”
“So it must mean that it is possible for you to do so, mustn’t it?”
Laura shrugged helplessly. “I had hoped so. But if I stay, how will we live? Everyone thinks I’m mad, and a harlot! No one will have anything to do with you after this.”
Alaric shrugged, unconcerned. “We will go away. Live abroad.”
“Where I will grow my hair out into a more womanly style, put on a corset and a bustle, and live like a submissive little Society matron?” Laura said, shaking her head. “No. I can’t, Alaric. Surely you must see that. I must be free. And if we were to have children, their grandchildren would only be caught up in the same war I barely escaped. I won’t have it. I just won’t.”
Alaric sighed, nodding. He gathered her up against him, and kissed her curls. They were sleek and oiled in a very strange way, and smelled of some kind of hair tonic. “You do have the oddest hair,” he murmured.
She smirked, and nuzzled closer to him. His long hair tickled her face. “So do you.”
“Laura?” he said, after a moment. “What on earth is a bustle?”
“There you are,” an exasperated voice trilled from behind them. Laura and Alaric jumped in alarm, turning about defensively to come face to face with Lizzie.
Alaric sighed in relief. “Lizzie, you startled the bloody hell out of me,” he growled. “You always were terrible for sneaking up on a fellow.”
“And you were always doing things you shouldn’t, forcing me to sneak about in an attempt at catching you out.” The woman with the bright, curious eyes inclined her head less than subtly in Laura’s direction. “Case in point.”
Laura flushed, and bit her lip, allowing Alaric to shield her with his arm. Alaric blushed himself, but then drew himself up. “Lizzie, this is Laura. The woman I love. She is … foreign. Laura, this is my baby sister, Lizzie.”
Laura reached out to grasp the other woman’s hand. “I am pleased to meet you,” she said, doing her best to look and sound like she was from somewhere far away—which wasn’t at all difficult.
Lizzie shook her hand enthusiastically, surveying Laura’s person with frank fascination. “Where exactly are you from, my dear? That is quite an … unusual—and daring—frock you’re wearing. I like it!”
Laura laughed, and smoothed her hand over the shining silk. “Thank you,” she said. “I … I was given to understand that it was a … fancy dress ball. This is what I wear when I want to feel like I am someone else, for an evening.” Which was true enough.
“I wish I had your nerve,” Lizzie said admiringly.
“Lizzie,” Alaric said, bringing them all back to the point at hand. “I don’t want you to be alarmed if I have to … go away for a while. Perhaps a long while.”
Laura threw him a penetrating look, but said nothing.
Lizzie gazed back and forth between them. She nodded briskly. “I understand. Or rather, I understand as much as I want and need to.”
Alaric smiled, and pulled her close. Laura backed away to stand at the balcony, alone. Alaric hugged his sister fiercely. “Whatever happens,” he said, “if, for some reason, I can’t come home, I want you to promise me you will look after Father.”
Lizzie blinked, surprised. “Of course I will, Alaric. You needn’t even ask.”
Alaric nodded, reaching out to take his sister’s gloved hand. “I know that, Lizzie. Thank you. You’ve always been a good sister to me. As for Stonecross, it will be Freddy’s, of course. The will remains as it was.”
“He would rather have his uncle,” Lizzie said, emotion finally flooding her voice. She hated to cry. She said it spoiled her looks, which were only as much as she could make of them. Eyes red from weeping never helped anyone.
“I know,” he said gently. “But I love Laura. I need to be with her. She is my one chance, Lizzie. Before I met her, I wasn’t living. I was simply existing.”
Lizzie nodded tightly, dabbing her eyes with a gloved finger. She patted Alaric fondly, stood on her toes to kiss him, and then crossed over to where Laura was pretending, with very little success, to be invisible. Lizzie surprised her by pulling her into a fierce embrace. “Be good to him,” she said, “Or I will want to know why. And leave me the name of your modiste.”
Laura laughed, and nodded. “I will. On both counts. Though she may not have what you want available for quite some time.”
Lizzie waved her hand as if it was of little consequence. “I have time. The Season doesn’t begin for ages.”
Alaric and Laura exchanged amused glances. Lizzie gave them a final wave, blew several kisses, and then left them alone.
Laura snaked her arms about Alaric’s waist, tilting her face back to be kissed. “We may not have much time,” she told him seriously.
“And we may have all the time in the world.”
“Either way, my love, what do you wish to be doing while we wait for the sun to come up?”
Alaric laughed, and smiled wickedly. He held out his hand. Laura took it, and they slipped back into the house and up the servants’ stairs to the bedroom that, in every possible era, was theirs. Their clothes came away, and they fell naked into the bed.
They made love.
They made every kind they could imagine. And they never let go for a single moment.
Later, when they had exhausted themselves, Laura lay in Alaric’s arms. “It’s far beyond midnight,” she commented, raking her fingernails over the taut flesh of his abdomen.
“Mmmm,” he murmured appreciatively.
“And I’m still here with you, as I was last night.”
Alaric nodded sleepily. “Yes. I can feel you.”
“But I don’t think I can stay,” she said in a small voice. “Not forever. Look at my hand.” She lifted it up before his face, and the watery light of the gibbous moon shone right through it.
Alaric grabbed it, and kissed it fervently, nipping at the tip of her thumb. “Can you feel that?”
“Yes. But it’s fading,” Laura said sadly. She struggled to sit up, and Alaric did the same. They held hands, sitting cross-legged like naked children depicted in a color plate inside a book of fairy stories. Laura grew paler while he watched helplessly.
“Take me with you,” he said.
“I can’t,” she said. “If I take you, your father will be alone. I haven’t even met him yet, but I cannot take his son from him. He needs you, Alaric. Especially now that Ellen will be leaving.”
Alaric didn’t argue. He knew it was true. Though there was Lizzie, she was not precisely the nurturing sort. He had always taken care of everything at home, as he should. She had agreed to bear the burden for Freddy until the lad came of age. Was it too much to ask of her? Uncertainty fluttered inside of him for a moment before biting decisively down.
“And you can’t just leave your family, your estate,” Laura said, as if reading his thoughts. “Your life is here, at Stonecross.”
“I want my life to be with you,” he argued. He felt the way she was sliding away from him in a way that had nothing to do with the physical. If he wasn’t careful, she would slip between his fingers like sand in an hourglass.
“Perhaps next year,” Laura said gently. “After you’ve had time to think, and to arrange things. And I can always appear to you, as I have. Perhaps not with the same solidity, but I can come to you, I know it. And then, next All Hallows, maybe …”
“Anything could happen between now and then,” he said mutinously.
“I wish Tess was here,” Laura said. “She could tell us. She sees all possible futures. It’s her gift.”
“Not yours?”
Laura shook her head. “No. I only see the dead.” And then she lifted her head, her mind whirring. “But Tess said something else, yesterday morning, when she found out I didn’t stay with you. She said, Just ask me, when the time comes.”
Alaric’s brow furrowed. “What do you think she meant?”
Laura lifted her hand. She could see Alaric through it, shimmering as if on the other side of a pane of antique glass. “I don’t know, but I think now would be a good time to ask her.”
Alaric leapt up from the bed, and flung his dressing gown at Laura as he hunted about for some clothing of his own. “Put this on,” he said. “Now. I’ll take you to her.”