The Lost History of Dreams

by Kris Waldherr

  “Your Dodo confessed you were leaving tomorrow.” His teasing words didn’t match his tone.

  “I don’t want to see you.”

  “Yet you allowed me in. And you’re alone.”

  Hugh’s footsteps drew closer and closer. She didn’t dare turn from her mirror to acknowledge him. Nor would she look at his reflection in the glass, as if this would excuse the scandal of being alone with him in her room. She remembered the stories Missus Dido had told her: the women Hugh had seduced, the one who’d committed suicide, the duel . . .

  The door clicked shut.

  Ada could stand no more. She turned. Her eyes widened and breath tightened as she made out Hugh only a few steps away in the dusky gloom. He was silhouetted against the white-painted door, the carved lintel with its swirls of acanthus oddly delicate above his head. Despite the shadows, she saw he was outfitted like he’d just returned from a walk along the shore; his greatcoat looked dashed with damp, his ruddy hair curling. Ada could smell the salt rising from him, a tang that reminded her of sweat on a horse.

  “I know I shouldn’t have come to you,” Hugh said, “but I was concerned.” Another step. “I had to see you, to reassure myself you hadn’t taken ill”—two steps—“and that’s why you were leaving. I feared if I didn’t come to you—”

  “We’d never see each other again,” Ada finished, her mouth dry.

  He nodded, his gaze never leaving hers. Now he was beside her. Perhaps it was the late hour, but Hugh appeared older than she remembered at Canterbury. Tired. He no longer resembled the hero who’d rushed in to rescue her after her sparrow became tangled in briars, or the gentleman offering a mate to her dove. Nor did he resemble the seducer her guardian described. He was a man weighed by loss. A man bearing tangible concern.

  For her.

  “You must go,” she said, her voice catching.

  He drew closer, picking up her brush. She grew light-headed.

  “Your hair. May I?”

  Ada’s nod came before she could reconsider.

  He gently scooped up her hair from her neck, parting it deftly about her shoulders. She closed her eyes, bit her lip as he pulled a bit too hard with each stroke of the brush against her hair. She didn’t stop him. How many other women’s hair had he brushed?

  Her hair gave way to the brush; she heard it crackle, smooth. “There,” Hugh pronounced. “Now you’re presentable. Do you want me to plait it? I’m not your Dodo, but I’ll do my best.”

  She nodded, her stomach fluttering with a new warmth. How many other women had he plaited hair for?

  But he didn’t plait it. Instead, he sank to his knees before her chair, the brush still wrapped in his hand. Ada grew conscious of her feet shoved into her slippers, her bared flesh. His fingers brushed against her ankles.

  She trembled with fear and yearning. With a shamelessness she hadn’t known she possessed.

  He gazed up at her, his eyes warm. He was asking permission. For what, she was uncertain—she was too innocent to know. Despite all those suitors, Ada remained unawakened. Hugh’s poem returned to her, the one he’d recited after they’d traveled to Canterbury like pilgrims of old. “We are so afraid of living that we live as though dead . . .”

  Her heart pounding in her bosom, she ran her thumb against the scar on his brow, his lips. He drew a sharp breath. His lips felt soft, warm. But he didn’t kiss her, as she’d hoped. Instead, he swooped down to embrace her ankles as though she were a saint. For him to touch her like this . . . he must feel as she did.

  The remembrance of Lucian and Adelaide moldering in the Kynnersley graveyard returned, the sun lacing the soil. Would she offer Hugh sun? Or suffering? But then her hands fell to her sides as he wrapped his arms about her. She clenched the arms of the chair, her fingers pressing into the velvet upholstery. Ada remained silent, fearful that if she gave any sign of encouragement—a breath, a murmur—Dido might overhear them. Or worse, Hugh might leave.

  Unable to stop herself, she took his hand in hers, holding it as though it were all she possessed in the world. Her heart raced as she rubbed her thumb against the heart of his palm three times. One time for each of the three words she dare not say aloud. The same words that had doomed her parents.

  I love you.

  Her gaze locked with his.

  Do you understand?

  “I do,” she thought he answered.

  He pulled away, locking his hands against the curve of her hips—“How thin you are!” he whispered—before rising from the floor to settle his mouth on hers.

  She closed her eyes.

  He tasted saline, like the sea. She imagined she tasted metallic, like her disease. She parted her mouth, astonished by how easily she offered herself to him. That her body had not protested, like it had with those suitors and their attentions. She remembered how it felt to stroke his hand with her thumb those three times, once for each sacred word. How the web of bone and cartilage comprising his palm felt a sacred thing she couldn’t explain. The pulse she’d felt rising from beneath the translucent skin.

  As they kissed, she felt a moistness—was it her? was it his tongue?—press inside her mouth. She wouldn’t stop him. She even sighed. She felt herself open to him in a way she’d never experienced. Yearning for something, though she did not know what. Her thumb against his palm. Those three strokes. The yearning heightened the emptiness within her. An emptiness that needed to be filled.

  She clenched her eyes shut tighter still. Hugh pulled away. His hand lingered against her cheek, caressing the softness. Frustrated, Ada pressed against his palm, the only way she could think to communicate without crying out her eagerness. Hadn’t he understood her? She’d thought he had.

  Fearful, her eyes remained closed tight, as if her lack of sight meant there was no substance to their encounter. Nothing to destroy her should he abandon her.

  His hand fell from her face.

  Ada heard the drape of his coat shift. The creak of his boots against the floor. Was he standing then? He was going to leave her, like everyone important in her life.

  Silence passed, heavy. Impenetrable. Ada listened to see what would happen next.

  Footsteps. The click of a door shutting.

  By the time she opened her eyes, Hugh de Bonne had left her room.

  Ada coughed as she took a deep breath. Her hands shaking, she drew the hem of her nightdress down over her feet. She couldn’t bring herself to wipe the moisture from his kiss from her mouth, or to stare at her hand that had grasped his. She ignored the last candle on the vanity sputtering out.

  You dreamt this, she told herself as she looked around her darkened room, but she knew this wasn’t so. In that moment, Ada felt more alive than she ever had.

  IV.

  Isabelle rose, just as she did at the conclusion of each night’s story. But, instead of leaving the library as Robert expected, she began to pace, her finger hooked beneath her chin. Robert’s pencil remained on the page. He didn’t dare reread what he’d just written; his body felt warm.

  Isabelle paused in her pacing, her brow furrowed. “How quiet you are, Mr. Highstead! There you are, night after night, scratching away in such a diligent manner.”

  “Isn’t that what you expect from me?”

  “I suppose. Though sometimes I wish you’d interrupt my story.”

  “Our contract, Miss Lowell,” Robert reminded, eager for a reason to remain silent; he shouldn’t have spoken of Sida. Nor was he ready to confess he’d be leaving in the morning, or of Missus Dido. As the night had passed, he’d grown weighed by the awareness he’d most likely never see Isabelle again. Never know the truth of her story.

  “Fie the contract,” she muttered under her breath. “I find myself in need of a walk, Mr. Highstead. Bring the journal with you.”

  She handed Robert his walking stick and gathered a candle from the table.

  Too startled to refuse, he followed her out the library and down the corridor, which was colder than he recalled. Her s
tep was quick enough that her bombazine skirts swished about her limbs, and he struggled to keep pace; now that they’d left the library, she seemed to have gained vigor. Her pale hair glowed against her dark gown, the darkness of the corridor. Robert remained silent. He feared speaking. Feared she’d change her mind and dismiss him; if this was to be their last night together, he yearned to learn all he could.

  Instead of taking him downstairs to the rose garden as he expected, Isabelle’s steps slowed before one of the velvet curtains lining the walls of the passageway.

  “Hold this.” She handed Robert the candle, the scent of beeswax wafting in the chill air.

  She drew a slender set of keys from her skirt pocket. For the briefest moment, their hands brushed and eyes met, hers revealing an unexpected vulnerability.

  “Perhaps it’s best to return to the library, where it’s warmer,” Robert said, concern overruling curiosity.

  “I want to show you something,” she said. “The east wing.”

  “Mrs. Chilvers said the east wing was abandoned.”

  “Mrs. Chilvers hasn’t been up here in years.”

  Isabelle pulled the curtain aside, revealing a hidden set of doors. They were painted in what seemed a forest green; Robert couldn’t be sure beneath candlelight.

  She twisted the lock. The doors swung open on a huge octagonal room, far larger than any Robert expected Weald House held. Unlike the west wing, which overlooked the woods, the east faced onto the moors—even in the dead of night its rolling expanses unfurled before them, endless and star-filled. Seven of the eight walls held tall windows, most of them cracked in some way; the wind hissed against their glass, persistent and remorseless. The wood floor was undulated from moisture.

  “This had been the conservatory?” Robert asked. If it had been, it no longer held any life. What little furniture remained was camouflaged beneath snowy-white sheets.

  “A long time ago.” Isabelle let out a shaky breath; it plumed in the icy air. “Ada would bring me here as a child on her good days. She loved the view. As do I.”

  “Who broke the glass?”

  “The ravages of time, Mr. Highstead.” Her mouth pursed with an unexpected wistfulness. “The conservatory was never used much, but when Ada became ill, one of her guardians decided it was unhealthy and cleared it out.” She stared out toward the moors. “Sometimes I come here when it storms, just to watch rain leak onto the floor and know nothing can be done about it.”

  “Why not?”

  She offered a half smile. “Because then Mrs. Chilvers would learn my secret. Everyone should have a secret, don’t you think?”

  Before Robert could answer, Isabelle took the candle from him and pointed at the white-draped silhouettes.

  “There’s wicker beneath, a whole set. Fancy too—supposedly Lucian bought it as a wedding gift for Adelaide. Ada used to nap on that settee over there on sunny days. Now, covered in all that white, they look like ghosts, don’t they? Though of course, it’s a matter of perception—if one was to remove the sheets, the illusion would vanish.”

  “I suppose, Miss Lowell.” He felt a twinge of unease, thinking of Sida.

  Isabelle set the candle on the floor, and yanked a cover off a chair. It wasn’t as dusty as Robert expected.

  “If you can write here, I think the view will help me tell Ada’s story. Do you mind, Mr. Highstead? I know it’s quite cold.”

  Robert blew on his hands to warm them.

  * * *

  In the morning, Ada woke when Missus Dido brought in her breakfast tray. She pointedly ignored her guardian, especially after she saw the letter tucked beneath the pot of chocolate. No pinpricks this time; the letter was sealed with green wax in three places.

  Missus Dido looked sharply at the letter, taking in the overcompensation of security. “Another poem from Mr. de Bonne?”

  Ada refused to answer.

  She held the letter under the table, and broke the seals with a butter knife crowned by crumbs.

  Miss Lowell, Hugh wrote—her stomach twisted with a peculiar lightness at the sight of his hand.

  I must apologize for my behavior last night—you were too kind to receive me as you did. I am writing to assure you I will bother you no more. I must return to London. I pray you give my regards to the doves . . .

  This wasn’t all she found inside the letter. He’d also placed her handkerchief, which he must have kept from their first encounter at Weald House when her sparrow met its death.

  Once she unfolded the handkerchief, she noticed the dried blood dotting the lace hem. The blood looked as brown as her morning chocolate. As dark as dried menses. It reminded her of those fairy tales she’d read with Wilhelm while a child. How did it begin? Once there was a girl as white as snow with lips as red as blood . . . Whether the blood on the linen was from her coughing or from a cut on her lip when she’d fallen, it didn’t matter. The blood remained, a reminder of what had transpired and what was lost.

  Hugh was gone.

  Ada pressed the handkerchief against her eyes, not caring whether her wretched guardian noticed. She recalled Hugh’s mouth locked against hers, their hands entwined. The three strokes of her thumb against his palm. Those three unspoken words.

  * * *

  After Ada pushed away the rest of her breakfast, Missus Dido refused to leave just yet. “It’s our last morning here, and I want to view the sea a last time. You look peaked—you need air. I won’t allow you to say no.” Ada suspected the real reason for their outing was a last chance for Missus Dido to flirt with gentlemen who weren’t farmers.

  They went outside, where a mule-drawn open carriage awaited. Missus Dido tucked the thick wool blanket over Ada’s lap as if she were a child. Again, Ada yearned to slap her.

  Ada remained sullen as they drove along the wood-lined parade toward the new Clock Tower, ignoring the forced cheer of Missus Dido’s commentary: “See how cunningly close they built the Clock Tower to the sea? I heard it cost four thousand pounds. Four thousand pounds! Can you imagine? What I would do with such a sum! Someone told me they’re planning to build a chapel down by the pier.”

  Once they’d pulled up to the Clock Tower, Ada refused to leave the carriage. “I feel weak,” she lied.

  “Suit yourself. I’ll be back in a moment. Then we’ll sit over there.” Missus Dido pointed toward a bench on the edge of the parade, with a vantage of the sea. “No refusals.”

  Ada stuck her tongue out at her guardian’s back as soon as she disappeared inside the Clock Tower. Now alone in the donkey cart, Ada avoided meeting the coachman’s stare. She stifled a cough. She tried not to think of Hugh, of his presence in her room last night. She considered freeing her doves before leaving. She wished she’d brought a book.

  The tide was out, leaving abandoned sea creatures in its wake. One crab, caught belly-up, flailed at a seagull attacking it, desperate to preserve its life. The bird’s cry was as sharp as the stench rising from a mound of rotting sargassum. Beyond this, Ada’s gaze narrowed on a tall figure cloaked in black.

  Hugh. He’d lied—he hadn’t left after all.

  How alive he was, so strong despite his limp; she knew now it had arisen from passion, not accident. This made her love him all the more.

  Her heart gave a rude thump. She slunk down against the seat. Let him be. Best he not see her. Not speak to her. Again, she thought of her parents in the graveyard in Kynnersley. Yet she couldn’t resist peeking over the carriage side, in case she’d imagined him.

  There he was, walking along the shore.

  “I don’t care,” Ada said aloud. But she did.

  She blinked, her eyes hot. All of a sudden she had a vision of herself from above as a bird would. She lay there in the carriage, a dark-haired girl with dark-rimmed eyes—she’d barely slept after he’d left her room—her body curled against the dark blue cushions, her hands clutching her palms. In that moment, her life seemed comprised of only two choices, one that would tie her to her past and the other to H
ugh’s future. If she remained in the carriage, her life would remain the same, with naught but illness and death. If she went to Hugh, she’d offer only love and sorrow.

  What if he didn’t respond?

  A gull cried as though sending a message from above.

  Then that’s fate protecting him.

  Ada tapped on the coachman’s shoulder, her hands no longer trembling.

  “Can you help me down, sir?”

  Once Ada was set on the ground—she’d winced when the coachman’s hands encircled her waist a bit too eagerly—she pointed toward the Clock Tower. “When my companion comes out,” she said, offering a shilling—he rubbed his hands at the sight—“can you tell her you took me back to the hotel because I felt ill?”

  He nodded. And then Ada turned toward the sea. Toward Hugh.

  Her legs felt unsteady, her kid slippers flimsy; she sensed the outline of every rock jutting against her soles, every shell. She should have donned boots like Missus Dido had suggested, but had claimed they’d irritate her ankles.

  A few steps carried Ada to the edge of the wooden parade that ran along the coast. Once she reached the edge, she set her legs over the side and pulled her slippers off, dangling them by their ribbons. She hopped down onto the sand after casting a glance toward the Clock Tower. Missus Dido must have emerged, for the mule and carriage were gone. But Hugh was still there. Hugh who’d kissed her. Who’d understood what she’d meant when she’d pressed her thumb against his palm—or so she’d thought.

  She called out, “Mr. de Bonne!”

  He still looked out at the water.

  “Hugh!” She shouted so hard that her throat ached.

  Another gull swooped before her.

  Turn back, she told herself. It’s not too late. This is fate’s will.

  A third gull.

  He looked over his shoulder. Toward her.

  Too late.

  Her heart swelled as though it would burst from her body as she stumbled across the rocky shore, toward the ocean. Toward him.

  Hugh watched what Ada imagined was the spectacle of her approaching, her arms thrust out for balance. He later told her that she looked as though she intended to embrace the world, not just him. Whatever Ada’s intention, he took her awkward, stumbling embrace for what it was: an invitation to love her.