“Tell him the truth,” said Mr. Morrison. “With any luck, it shall not matter.”
Lucy gathered at once that Martha feared Mr. Buckles. “I would take you with me if I could, Martha, but where I go is far more dangerous than here. When … when all this is finished, I shall take you then, if you like. I shall save you.”
Martha laughed. It was a bitter, barking sound. “Save me. How shall you do so? You have no money, Lucy.”
“I have other resources.”
“If you want shelter,” said Mr. Morrison, “or if you want money to go where none may find you, then you need but ask. I shall never again neglect to be a friend of your family.”
Martha stared at them. “You have set yourself against Mr. Buckles, haven’t you?”
“Lady Harriett has made herself my enemy,” answered Lucy. “She has, in ways I cannot begin to explain, inflicted terrible harm upon both of us, and she has used Mr. Buckles as her instrument. I am sorry to say this. I do not wish to speak ill of your husband, but it is so. I have not set myself against him, but he has chosen to follow a mistress who has declared me her enemy. I hope you will recollect that I act not against him, but to defend myself. To defend all of us.”
Martha shook her head. “I wish you would say what you mean, what you really mean, instead of speaking in riddles all the time.”
Lucy smiled. “When there is more time, I shall tell you all.”
Martha turned away. “I have this terrible idea in my head that Mr. Buckles will not survive what is coming. Am I all but a widow?”
“Is the wife of the condemned man a widow before he hangs?” asked Mrs. Emmett.
Martha let out a gasp.
Lucy gave a harsh glance at Mrs. Emmett, who only smiled in return. She turned back to her sister. “I do not know what is going to happen. I know only that everything I’ve done, everything I will do, is for you and your child. I beg you to believe that.”
Martha rose and hugged Lucy. “I am afraid.”
Lucy returned the hug and stepped back. “For yourself, you have nothing to fear.” She did not know that it was true. But it would all be over soon. Lucy would find those final pages, and then all would be set right.
“You sound so sure of yourself,” Martha said. “What do you have to fear?”
Lucy forced a smile. “Everything.”
It was to be a long and awkward ride to Nottinghamshire. They would necessarily have to travel slowly once it grew dark, and so be vulnerable to highwaymen, but they dared not stop until morning. There was too much at risk. Both Mr. Morrison and the coachman primed pistols, and they began their long and slow trek that would probably not bring them to their destination until after dark the next day.
They were silent for some time. As was her habit in the coach, Mrs. Emmett fell into a deep sleep at once, snoring in a loud, rasping manner. Lucy did not believe she would be able to sleep so easily. She lay awake and still and frightened she knew not how long. She had presumed Mr. Morrison to be asleep when he, at last, spoke.
“They change,” he said.
“I beg your pardon.” It came out too clipped and formal, for he had surprised her.
“The revenants. They are not what they once were. They are not the people they were before their alteration. It is why I cannot love her, nor she love me. That part of us is lost.”
“I am sorry,” Lucy said. She recalled what Mary had told her about the revenants—that mortality is a fundamental part of humanity. Lucy had no notion at the time that Mary had been speaking of herself.
“What is she like now?” asked Mr. Morrison. The strange flatness of his voice betrayed a pain Lucy could not contemplate.
“She was lovely to me—kind and patient and understanding. She always said what I most needed to hear. Even now, when I consider all I have seen and done, the places I have gone, the enemies and dangers I have encountered, I know that I could have done none of it had she not prepared me.”
“Then you trusted her? You trust her yet, though you know she deceived you?”
“I do not know,” said Lucy. “Perhaps she had her reasons, but I have come to see that, for all her goodness to me, she is cold and calculating and ruthless. She is, in some ways, unknowable.”
“I understand you,” he said. “We spoke once, you know. After she returned.”
“Mr. Morrison, you do not need to tell me these things. I can hear in your voice that it is painful for you. I thank you for your consideration, but you owe me no candor in this manner.”
He laughed. “You are a sweet girl. I cannot imagine how you have come so far and remained so innocent. I do not tell you these things because I wish to unburden my heart. I tell you what you may need to know if you are to survive what comes. You can have no illusions about Mary Crawford, as she now styles herself. It may come to pass that we must destroy her.”
“I will not destroy her,” said Lucy. “Though she lied to me, she is my friend.”
“She has been good to you, and she may even, in her own way, care for you, but she will not be your friend if it is not in her interest. She knows better than all of us that death is not the end, and she will not hesitate to send you on your journey should she believe the situation requires it. Some part of her hates you for your mortality, that you can move on and she cannot.”
“I don’t know that I believe you.”
“I think you had better learn to believe me,” he said. “I cannot go in with you if you are not willing to destroy her if you must.”
For a long time, he said nothing more. In the dark she heard him stir, as if trying to grow more comfortable. He coughed softly, the sound muffled by a handkerchief. Somewhere outside the cart they heard the lonely howl of a dog.
“You cannot know how I loved her,” he said. “At first what I felt for her was more moderate. It was time for me to marry, and she was suitable in so many ways, and I suppose what I felt for her was love, after a species. She loved me, and I hoped that would be enough.”
“She told me of her husband, though she was certainly vague. But she said that he’d been in love with someone else.”
Mr. Morrison said nothing for a moment. “When I met her, I thought I would never love again. I was heartbroken, but I came to love her more than I can say. She was clever and witty, and she understood me better than anyone I had known. And she loved me. Only someone utterly coldhearted could be so adored and unmoved by it. And, of course, she was beautiful. Now she is even more beautiful than she was. Her hair, her eyes, her complexion—they are different, as I am told sometimes happens. Her new nature fairly radiates something so compelling that when we were reunited I was all but lost in an instant, but she did not want me to be lost. When she spoke to me—I know not how to describe it. For all that she resembled my Mary, for all she retained her beauty, and that beauty had grown, it was as though I spoke to the dead. She is not soulless, but the soul is no longer human. I saw in her eyes that she felt nothing for me, that she could hardly remember having felt anything for me. And I knew that my feelings were for someone who was gone forever.”
“How did she come to be what she is?” Lucy asked. “One does not simply … return.”
“No,” he said. “The tale is strange and terrible. It is hard for me to speak of it, so you will forgive me if I pause from time to time to collect myself. I would rather not say any of these things, but I have already withheld too much for too long. You must know everything.”
Mary Crawford had come from Northamptonshire with her brother Henry. They had been before in London, but circumstances had required a move, and there Mary had, if not quite fallen in love with a neighboring gentleman, at least imagined she was in love for a while. Then that gentleman had thrown her over for his penniless cousin, something of a simpleton, and Mary’s brother had become involved in a scandalous affair. The whole business was unpleasant, and at times sordid, and when it reached its conclusion Mary found herself unhappy and vulnerable.
It was then that she met Mr. Morrison, who was also unhappy and vulnerable in his own way, and at once she fell in love. They had met at a mutual friend’s house in London and, before they had parted ways on that first occasion, Mr. Morrison believed he wished to marry her. He saw something in her, in her soul, perhaps.
Soon enough they had married, and relocated to Mr. Morrison’s estate in Derbyshire, though they returned to London for the season, and it was there that the trouble began. Mr. Morrison and his wife came to be acquainted
