She used all her restraint not to push ahead in the long queues waiting for tickets. For God’s sake, turtles could crawl to London faster than this line moved.
“I need to get on the next train to London,” she cried, when she finally reached the ticket window. “I have no luggage. I have nothing. I need to get to London as soon as possible. I’m desperate.”
The ticket agent was a young, unamused man with a critical gaze. “It leaves in thirty minutes,” he said. “Nine shillings.”
She opened her valise and dug deep into the folds and crevices searching for every last coin. Oh, had she not bought that toffee! “All I have is eight shillings and three pence. Is that enough? Please say yes.”
The ticket agent shook his head. “Sorry, miss.” He beckoned forward the somberly dressed elderly man and his wife in line behind her.
Lilith spread her arms and grabbed the counter, refusing to leave. “Oh, please, please, you must let me on that train. My life, Colette’s life, all depend on it. I’m Ellis Belfort…Lilith Dahlgren. I wrote Colette and the Sultan. I wrote it! I have to get back to Lord Marylewick. I really hurt him, you see.”
The ticket agent was getting that weary look in his eye, as if he were dealing with a made-up sob story from someone trying to board a train without paying full price.
“I’m not lying!” she cried. “I didn’t tell Lord Marylewick about Colette and the Sultan until it was too late. After I had fallen in love with him. He’s not a villain, he never was. I was the villain in a way, because I couldn’t see the truth.” The entire story tumbled out in an incoherent tangle of words, starting from Lilith’s father’s death and ending with the horrible night of the ball, leaving out, of course, the more intimate details. The others in the queue inched up to listen, as did the people in the next two lines. “So I ran away so he could have the life he wanted,” Lilith concluded. “But now he’s illustrated the entire story for everyone to see. He told the world that he loved me through his art. My God, man, is that not the truest, noblest love? I must tell him that I love him with all my being. He is my truth and beauty. Please give me a ticket. I beg you.” She was ready to climb over the counter and snatch away his tickets and stamper.
“I’m sorry, miss, the ticket remains nine shillings,” replied the heartless man. “I don’t set the rates. Perhaps you shouldn’t have run away from the marquess and caused all this trouble.”
“What!” Tears burst in Lilith’s eyes. “You cruel, unfeeling—”
The elderly man behind her set a shiny florin on the marble counter. “Young man, people in love don’t always act rationally.” He patted his wife’s arm. “One day you will learn that lesson. Now allow this young lady on that train.”
The people in line burst into applause.
George painted in his study as he waited for a word, any word, from Lilith. Beatrice sat quietly by a lamp reading a book, while Penelope took turns about the room. He scratched his chin where his beard was growing in, sipped black coffee, and then mixed in a little white paint to lighten the flesh tones along Lilith’s forehead. “It’s getting dark,” he said aloud to his sister as she paced by the window. “Are they still there?”
Penelope drew the curtain slightly and peered out. Even through the thick lead, he could hear a female cry, “I saw the curtain move. It’s him! It’s him! The sultan!” A chorus of female squeals rang out. The crowd of women had been gathering throughout the day, waiting for him to leave or open a window. Wild for any glimspse of him. No doubt the neighbors were not amused with the special edition McAllister had printed.
“I think there may be three dozen now,” Penelope marveled. “You’ve gone from a feared, dastardly villain to a desired hero in a matter of hours.”
Capital. Now if he could only attract the one woman he desired. If he could be her hero.
Penelope read his anxious thoughts. “It was published not twelve hours ago. Give her some time.”
“I can think of multiple scenarios to detain her,” said Beatrice in that cool, rational manner of hers. “She could be on the continent and a magazine won’t arrive there for another few days and then, perhaps, she won’t go to a store with English papers for a week or—”
“Thank you, Beatrice,” said Penelope. “I’m not really fond of that scenario. Let us try another.”
“She is in London and has seen the paper and decided not to come.” Beatrice closed her book and clutched the edges. “That is not a very good scenario either.”
“Why don’t we all go to bed early,” suggested Penelope. “It is no use to stay up fretting. Maybe tomorrow we shall awake to find Lilith here, sharing breakfast with us in a ludicrous ensemble just to raise George’s ire.” Her small chuckle turned hollow and bittersweet, like remembering a funny story of someone dearly departed.
“Yes, yes, sleep,” said George. “A grand idea.” He set his brush down and wiped his hands with a damp cloth. In truth, he wanted to be alone with his worries, fears, and aching heart. He began herding the ladies to the door. “‘Sleep that knits up the raveled trouser leg of care’ or whatever Shakespeare said. Lilith would know.”
“Sleeve, not trouser leg!” corrected Beatrice. “‘Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care.’ It’s from Macbeth.”
“Very good,” he said. “You must know these important scholarly things when you go to Oxford, young lady.” He kissed her cheek. “Now off to bed. Let me do a little more work and then I shall follow suit.”
Penelope hugged him. “Don’t worry, brother. She will come. She loves you.”
She hurried and caught up with Beatrice, linking arms as they strolled down the corridor to the stairs.
He returned to his study, hung his head, and released a low stream of breath. What had he done by publishing that story? He had opened himself up to all of England for ridicule, yet she hadn’t come. No one would take him seriously anymore. He didn’t know if he could even take himself seriously. He glanced at the correspondence that his secretary said required his attention waiting on the desk. He couldn’t wallow in this pathetic hole of self-pity anymore. He had to put some semblance of order back into his life. He just couldn’t muster the strength at the moment.
She hadn’t come.
After he had told the world he loved her. After he had humiliated himself by letting out his artistic secret. He still couldn’t shake off the shame of his work. His father’s words and the slash of a leather whip echoed too strongly in his memory, and Lilith wasn’t there to silence them.
She hadn’t come.
Unthinking, he picked up his brush and added another dab of paint to Lilith’s forehead. If this painting had a name, it would be A Fading Memory of an Afternoon in the Park. He was already beginning to lose her precious details. He remembered the glorious sunlight dappled through the vivid leaves and the sensation of her sadness as she said that all she wanted from a husband was loyalty, kindness, and a home. But he didn’t recall how the sadness rested on her features, only that he’d felt it as she clutched her book to the bodice of her lavender dress, which dulled her earthy coloring. He had the oddest desire not to draw her face at all but leave it as a blur of emptiness and hurt contoured with harsh black lines. He cleaned his brush, dipped it in the black paint, and poised it a half inch from the canvas.
“I knew you would be a wonderful painter,” a familiar voice reverberated in the room. He hadn’t heard the door open, or footsteps. He didn’t move, afraid to turn and find she wasn’t there, that he’d imagined her voice.
“It’s beautiful and expressive,” she said.
“Lilith,” he whispered, still afraid to look.
“I remember that day.” The swish of a skirt and she was beside him. Her citrus and vanilla scent filled him, bringing back memories of holding her. He trembled, afraid she would disappear like a ghost. “I remember that I felt betrayed because Edgar and Frances had left me. But you saved me and forced me to walk in the park to lift my spirits. I was angry, but that was because I didn’t understand you then. I didn’t realize you were trying to take care of me as best you could. Or maybe I was taking care of you. Either way, that day in the park we, the sultan and Colette, struggled with so much we couldn’t fathom. See her faceless face.” She gestured to the picture. “And the vivid world around her, but she can’t see it, for she has no eyes to see outside herself. How you captured me then.”
He laced his fingers between hers. They were trembling.
“Poor Colette running from the very man who could save her.” Lilith lifted his hand and caressed it to her cheek. Her eyes sparkled with tears. “She didn’t realize…” Her voice broke.
“No, my love.” He kissed her falling tears, stopping them in their tracks.
“She didn’t realize that the man she despised, the most narrow-minded and starchy of men, saw the world deeper and vaster than she could imagine in her meager words. Inside him were beautiful palaces and lush gardens.”