cannot. Revolutions must be bloody. You may condemn me for a monster, but the men who have allied with the revenants are willing to endure suffering for their cause, and so there is no other way. I have set things in motion, and we are now powerless to stop what we have begun. We have no choice but to flee from its destruction.”
How much of this was metaphor or speculation or sheer nonsense? Lucy did not know. Mary did not lie to her—she believed that—but she withheld much when it was convenient, and Lucy was tired of being manipulated and moved about like a game piece. It was time to make her own decisions.
With hardly a thought of what it would mean, Lucy leapt up, hurled open the door of the coach, and threw herself out onto the grass. She landed more violently than she would have expected, and she felt the sharp scrape of something cut against her cheek. Her arm struck something hard, and she heard herself cry out in pain as she rolled, and then she rolled again. The world passed by in a nauseous blur of grass and tree and rock, and Lucy understood that she had jumped out upon the top of a hill. From some unfathomable distance she heard Mary shouting and then horses crying out their complaints, but Lucy was tumbling—tumbling fast and hard and with terrifying speed; the gray of the sky rolled past her eyes as she gained momentum and a strange calm came through her. She thought she was at the center of things and that all roads began and ended with her, and yet here she was, about to have her head broken open by a rock and a tree.
And that was when she landed into the nearly frozen stream of water. She opened her mouth to cry out, but water filled her lungs. She thrashed, hardly knowing which was up or down, but managed, owing to the shallowness of the stream and nothing else, to lift out her head and find cold, welcome air. She cried out in relief and confusion, only to realize her head lay only inches from a horse’s hoof.
Lucy raised her head to see a great black and brown stallion, and atop it, smiling without humor, sat Mr. Olson. Then Lucy’s world went dark.
Lucy awoke feeling surprisingly warm. Her dreams were filled with cold water and mud, but now she was dry. She felt aches in her arm, her back, both her legs. Her face stung, and she remembered leaping from Mary’s coach. And she remembered Mr. Olson.
She opened her eyes.
It could well be that Lucy possessed some sort of expectation of what she would find when she opened her eyes, but whatever it was, surely this was not it. She sat in a rough-hewn wooden chair near a fire in a rude cottage with a dirt floor and nothing upon the walls. She could see through the windows that it remained gloomy outside, and in the cottage all was dim and shadowy. Her gown was dry and brittle, much stained and caked with hard mud. So was her skin. Her hands were clotted with dirt, making them hard to move. They were also bound behind her back.
Across the cottage, at a long table, sat Mr. Olson, wearing a mud-splattered riding coat. He sat working at a piece of wood with a knife, but sensed that she gazed upon him. He set down the wood, but not the knife, and looked at her. Even in the dimness of the cabin she could see his face was set in something like anger. He was red-eyed and haggard, and had three or four days’ worth of beard upon his face.
“You woke up,” he said in a heavy voice, deep and scratchy.
Fear thudded in her chest. She needed to get free. She needed herbs and plants and a pen. She needed to make a charm and escape. It almost made her smile to think how magic was now the first thing she thought of in a crisis.
“Please, Mr. Olson,” she said. “I am hurt, and I must go. I must be in London as soon as I may.” Time was running out, and she was stuck here, with Mr. Olson who appeared not himself. Lucy gritted her teeth with anger. She would not cry. She would find a way out of this. She was at the center of things, and she would find a solution.
Mr. Olson pushed himself from the bench by the table and stood menacingly over her. “I am shocked by your behavior. Lady Harriett summoned me to her home, and when I arrived, I saw the damage you had done. Breaking her door, killing her dog. All was chaos. You had only just departed, and Lady Harriett just returned, but she made everything clear. I understood that I had to go after you. I was so tired, but I had to have you, Lucy, and now I do. At last, you are mine.”
“I am not yours,” said Lucy, trying hard to sound both determined and reasonable. He did not seem the cold, unfeeling, methodical man she had known. There was something unrestrained about him, darkly passionate. He seemed like a madman. “I do not wish to be here. Whose cottage is this?”
“As to that, I have no knowledge. I found it, and so it is mine, as you are.”
“Listen to me,” said Lucy. “You must let me go at once, or there will be consequences.”
“What consequences can there be?” He looked about the small house, straining his neck theatrically in a grotesque mimicry of humor. “Soon we shall be married, and that shall be the end of it.”
“You said you did not want me,” said Lucy, hating the desperation in her voice. “You said your feelings were altered.”
He shook his head and grinned like a panting dog. “I never said that. I only dreamed I did.” He placed his hands upon her shoulders and then reached around and began to unlace the ribbons of her frock. “We must wait to be married in law, but not in deed.”
Lucy pushed herself back into the chair, but there was nowhere to go. She pulled against her restraints, but they would not be moved. She had thought herself powerful and mighty, but there was no magic, there were no charms, that could help her now. And this was truly happening. Mr. Olson, vile and mad and under Lady Harriett’s monstrous spell, was undressing her, and she could not stop it.
There were three ties, and the first two went easily. His clumsy fingers struggled with the third. He grunted rudely and pressed his body against hers as he pulled at the ribbons, trying not to make the knot tighter. Finally, it came loose, and he grunted in appreciation.
He pulled at the shoulders of her gown so that it hung loose upon her, but it yet hung. “Has any man before seen you? Has Byron?”
“Please,” Lucy said. She strained against the bonds holding together her hands. She felt them rub her skin hot and raw. She felt blood trickle down her hands, and yet she fought though she knew it would do no good. It would only cause her more pain, but she fought because she could not be a woman who did not fight. “You must let me go. It is not too late. Nothing is done that cannot be undone. You must see reason.”
“Are you a maid or aren’t you?” he asked, now sounding angry. “Did you give yourself to that man you ran away with, or did you whore yourself off to Byron? I should not be surprised. It will go better for you if you are a maid. I shall not forgive you if you are not, but you shall be mine all the same.”
Lucy could find no words. She felt paralyzed and cold and distant from herself. Everything was about to end. The life she knew would be blasted out of existence, and she would be something else, something lesser, something violated. Even when she escaped from this fiend, and she had no doubt she would do so soon enough, she would be filthy and used. She would be contemptible, and none of it was her fault. She wanted none of this, and she would pay the price for his crimes.
She thought of the pages newly acquired from the
“You won’t answer? Well, I’ll have answers soon enough. Now, let’s have a look at you.” He reached to the front of her gown, and sucked in a deep breath as he prepared to pull away the gown.
And then Lucy heard the voice behind her.
“Olson, you have never been so close to death as you are at this moment. Step away from the lady.” Byron stood at the door with a pocket pistol drawn. Lucy strained her neck to see him, but she wanted to see his beautiful face, set in determination, blazing with anger and perhaps exertion. He looked wild and demonic and angelic all at once.
“I must thank you for giving me an excuse to shoot you,” Byron said. “I’ve wanted one, so I shan’t ask again.”
Mr. Olson turned to Byron and made a low, gurgling sound in the back of his throat. “She will never be yours. She is mine.”
