Chapter 5
It is the dream that ruins everything that night. Like an ocean tide it sweeps over me as I sleep, drawing me deep into the shadows of my mind. I’m in the sea, weighted and immobile, floating on a song that ebbs and flows beneath my back as I swim in it.
My sweetheart, come along,
Don’t you hear the fond song,
The sweet notes of the nightingale flow?
This song—like a ghost from the forgotten past it flows naturally, word after word falling from my lips. I squeeze my eyes shut against this place that vibrates with the familiar—warm sun on my skin, gulls calling, my body floating on salt-tinged water.
Don’t you hear the fond tale
Of the sweet nightingale,
As she sings in those valleys below?
So be not afraid
To walk in the shade,
Nor yet in those valleys below,
Nor yet in those valleys below.
Something flicks my leg and my eyes shoot open as I flail, struggling to stand in the shallows, and I glimpse the world I’d left behind.
Looking out over the water, a castle stands in the distance—a sprawling gray stronghold pockmarked with tiny windows rising out of a pile of rocks.
Light from its windows is cast over the beach, making the wet shells and rocks sparkle.
It’s a treasure trove. A fairy kingdom where broken pieces shine like diamonds.
My voice falls over these crystalline shards as they wink and glimmer.
Movement to the right. Then my traitorous gaze drags along the horizon to a figure.
A man. I know him. I squint to see better.
Black trousers, suspenders over a white shirt open at the collar and flapping in the breeze.
What’s his name? The tide swirls around my calves as he approaches in the distance.
A little closer.
Let me see your face.
Please be a brother or a cousin.
Wind whips his dark hair, blows sand over smooth drifts of shore as he strides over them, and at last he looks up.
He is remarkable—those crescents of eyes that study the world with quiet pleasure, taking great meaning from everything and spinning it into art.
I am standing in the presence of a great man.
Then he spots me and his face melts into a smile, his neat mustache bending up at the corners.
You know me.
Oddly…I know him, too. Oh, how my heart ricochets in his presence, sticking in my ribs and swelling until it aches. He stands before me and turns my right hand up, slipping something into it—a small round disk like a coin—and closing my fingers around it.
I look down. A tarantula agate. No, that’s not right. A turritella agate, made from the beaches here. Right here.
“For you. A piece of the seashore, to keep with you always.”
I lift my gaze to his face and my breath catches.
“You are my forever.” He blurs suddenly, voice tunneling as if he speaks into a cone. Then it grows distant. “Forever.” It’s a breath. A hiss of steam.
I fight to hold on to the dream. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m desperate to understand.
A tightness in my chest. A great sucking sensation, and I fight it. Squeeze my eyes against the dawning reality.
The man holds out one hand—waving goodbye or trying to hold on to me.
You nasty little ingrate! A voice echoes from some distant world.
The paradise swells and narrows with a powerful sucking feeling, then with a final jolt I’m blinking in the muffled stillness of Lady St. Laurent’s house, a stiff couch beneath me.
Tight corset. Slippers that pinch. Muscles stiff with tension.
My mind is racing, as if waiting for a blow from some unseen danger.
It’s too quiet. Too empty here.
I squint at the grandfather clock—half past eight in the morning. I jolt awake. I’m leaving today, by nine.
Yet…I must not leave. I cannot remember why, but I cannot—must not—leave.
The voice that interrupted my dream echoes through the house. “How can you be so disgusting?”
I scramble to sit upright, still fully clothed in the guest suite where I was meant to spend my wedding night.
I escaped the festivities last night for a lie-down when my head felt it was splitting open, and here I remained the entire night, apparently.
Without AJ. He maintained his promise concerning our marriage, it seems, and kept to himself.
But where has he gone?
Shaking out my skirts, I hurry up the stairs to my tiny sanctuary with the brass bed to pack, but the dream weights my movements. My heart still simmers. Yet it’s time to live in the present. I’ve made an irreversible choice.
I pause, standing over my open trunk and swaying with tiredness. No ring. I wore no ring. My head buzzes. If he wanted me, whoever he is…he’d have come for me.
But as I dress I can taste the sea on the air. And my toes know the feel of sand. Of rock shards and seashells beneath my feet. Some part of it has to be real. But which part?
My fingers touch a small box in the dresser drawer. This part. I shake it and onto my lap falls the item I dreaded finding. Holding my breath I lift it by the chain, looking deep into the turritella agate, satiny black threaded with gold, and a haunting song shimmers in my mind.
Farewell to you, my own true love,
I’m bound for the land of the free,
And I’ll return to you some day,
If I can, to my own true love…
It swells in my head, weaving through the blocked memories, threatening to loosen them. It swells and swells.
I drop it. It was a dream. Only a dream. I’ve seen this necklace before, and my imagination must have pulled it into my dream. I am not losing my mind. I am perfectly sane.
“Out of my sight!”
The grating voice echoes again. It’s Sabine, and there’s only one person alive she ever speaks to that way.
A quarter of an hour left until nine. A thudding between my ears makes me wish to bury my face in a pillow. Instead, I knead my temples and head to the nursery, where Cecil is now alone. He flings himself at my legs.
I kneel. “It won’t be this way forever. Soon I’ll…”
A faint aroma catches my senses.
Oh no.
Bed linens are piled in the corner—he’s wet them again.
He outgrew these incidents long ago, but since the passing of Lady St. Laurent, they have begun again. Especially when his aunt Sabine stays over.
Then the snappish words that woke me return to mind in a sickening rush. Nasty ingrate. Disgusting! They were hurled by Sabine toward this toothpick of a boy with the longing eyes and the wise, tender face.
Cecil’s shaking now, poor dear. I’ll simply have to postpone the trip. Cancel it, perhaps.
I sit cross-legged and pull him onto my lap. How fragile his thin body seems. “What would you say to living with me?”
He pulls back. “Truly?”
I nod. “It was to be a surprise, but it’s such a nice one I cannot wait any longer to share it.”
This was the largest blow to Sabine. Not only had her mother named Cecil heir instead of Sabine, but she’d left control of Cecil’s trust—as well as a respectable allowance—to her lowly companion—me.
“You’re to live with me, you know. Only, it’s taking some time to clear the matter up.
When it’s over, I’ll come for you straight away. ”
“Promise?” His eyes are haunted with all he’ll have to bear in the meantime. Sabine has a passionate dislike for all men and she cares even less for the smallest ones. Especially those in need of some extra tenderness.
I pull his head against me, smoothing the erratic hair. “I rescued you once, didn’t I, little man?”
I’m a broken human. I live with that awareness every day. But broken rocks still make a foundation, and I am determined to be one to this boy. No one deserves a solid place to stand more than he.
Cecil nods against my shoulder. “You’ll do it again. I know you will.”
“Even if I have to knock you over a second time.”
He giggles. Snorts. I smooth his glossy hair.
The clocks in the house begin to ding in a glorious symphony. They’ll chime nine times, which marks the hour I’m to leave. I kiss the top of his head, aching to sweep him up and walk out the door. “Just a week or so, dearest. Then I’ll fetch you home.” Wherever home is.
He clings harder.
A horse whinnies and carriage wheels crunch.
We scramble to the window and below, a large, familiar carriage sits just outside the portico—the asylum transport.
I close my eyes and instantly see Cecil’s father on that day, his striped nightclothes hanging on his frame as they wrestled him into the wagon.
I yank the boy away from the window, but he’s seen it. I can tell by his face. “Who this time?” he asks.
He threw himself onto the gravel drive that day, begging them not to take his father.
Sabine had summoned them the moment an ailing Lady St. Laurent had informed us Cecil was to be her heir and Eric, his father, trustee of the boy’s holdings until he came of age. He’s as fit as a limp washrag, Sabine had told the staff, and of course no one had disagreed with her. No one ever dared.
Cecil had to be subdued with a tranquilizer normally reserved for the full-grown patients.
“Your father isn’t mad,” I whispered to the unconscious boy as I carried him up the stairs to the nursery with a pounding heart.
“Grief has merely tangled him up.” He’d lost his beloved wife—his lifeline—not six months prior.
But Sabine could have convinced you a bird should live in the ocean, if she’d seen fit.
I lay my hands on Cecil’s shoulders, kissing the top of his head. Surely Sabine wouldn’t send a child to the asylum—but I won’t chance it. “Go down to the mews. Stay with Gregory until I sort this out. Don’t let on you’re there, even if someone comes looking for you, understand?”