As the last few chortles rumbled through his chest, he took up the reins and urged the horses forward. Eyes on the road ahead, he reminded her that she had been the one to suggest this outing. “I believe you mentioned last night that you had something important you wished to discuss?”
The plan. The plan to offer him a way out of the engagement. But the echo of Nicholas’s laughter still rang in her ears. Surely a monster could not wear such a charming mask. She could not quite bring herself to divulge her scheme just yet. “Mmmm. Well, whatever it was, I have quite forgotten it. I suppose it was not all that important after all.”
Today she would enjoy her ride through Hyde Park. Tomorrow would be soon enough to ruin her reputation forever.
Chapter Four
The dream was always the same, the events unfolding slowly, vividly…and inevitably.
Nicholas stood on a broad, flat boulder, with his feet bare and the cuffs of his breeches turned up, the waves licking at his toes as they crashed upon the shore. Sometimes he stood there as a grown man, other times he was a boy of seven, but he always stood upon the same rock, staring out at the same point on the horizon, trying to catch sight of a ship’s sail that he thought he had seen from the cliff above. And his left leg was always whole.
Suddenly, a noise behind him made him turn and look up to the top of the cliff. Every time he had the dream, he tried to identify the sound that caught his attention. A loose pebble skittering down the cliff face, perhaps? A crab clicking its way across a rock? Or a more distant sound, such as the report of a hunting rifle echoing across the moors? Every time he had the dream, he tried to identify that sound, as though it might hold the key to changing the course of the dream, but he could never quite make it out.
His attention now directed landward, he caught a glimpse of fluttering white, and he raised his head to see his mother standing at the top of the cliff, black curls a wild tangle about her head, the morning sunlight behind her surrounding her with a haze of light.
She looked like an angel.
Even from the rocks below her, Nicholas saw that her eyes were closed, the expression on her face rapt, prayerful. She raised her hands, in supplication or offering, and for a moment, her face was obscured by shadows. In that moment, he knew, with the certainty that comes only in dreams, exactly what his mother felt. He experienced her loneliness as acutely as if it were his own, felt the betrayal of time and the gnawing ache of jealousy.
And then she was looking right at him. Her eyes were infinitely sad, but a joyous smile spread across her face.
It made no sense, but dreams seldom did.
“Nicky!” She called down to him, and some trick of the wind brought her words to him clearly, as though she were standing right beside him. And the wind brought another sound, little more than a dream within the dream, his father’s voice, edged with panic, calling his mother’s name.
She spread her arms to either side and arched her back in sheer abandon. The sound of her laughter surrounded Nicholas.
“Nicky, darling, look at me. Mother can fly!”
But, of course, she could not.
He took a startled step toward the cliff, as though he might be able to do something, stop her descent, halt time and undo her mistake. But, instead of helping his mother, he slipped on the rock, slick with sea spray, and fell himself, his left ankle catching in a crevice and the leg wrenching brutally, bone snapping and shattering.
Nicholas awoke, his mother’s laughter—just beginning to turn to a startled scream—still ringing in his ears, blending with his own cry of pain in a macabre harmony.
He knew from experience that sleep would elude him for the rest of the night, so he got out of bed, swearing softly as his left leg buckled briefly, and he lit a lamp.
In the yawning pre-dawn silence, his mother’s words and laughter echoed over and over in his mind. Remarkable what jealousy can drive a person to do. Remarkable and horrible.
He wrapped himself in his dressing gown and made his way to his father’s study, where he knew the best port was kept.
As he opened the study door, a voice from the shadows startled him. “You’re awake,” his father commented.
“As are you,” Nicholas replied. He poured himself a glass of port and joined his father in the pair of leather chairs set before the low-burning fire.