"To my betrothed," he toasted. "May I make her happy for years to come." Sarah looked up to see a secret smile play across his face. "Now, I am due at my laboratory."
There were cries of "No" and "You can't leave your betrothed at a moment like this."
But George shook his head, smiling, and captured Sarah's hand in his. "This is the life of a doctor's wife, my dear. Many doctors hardly ever see their wives except over the dinner table. You will have to get used to it, for I must go when duty calls."
Sarah smiled bleakly as he kissed her hand and made his way to the door.
Madame started forward. "Come back to the fire, cherie. All this excitement," she murmured as she drew Sarah to a seat in front of the crackling logs, away from the crowd.
Sarah hardly moved during the rest of the afternoon. She spoke only to murmur thanks for parting congratulations as guests took their leave. It had grown entirely dark outside. Melton came in with more wood for the fire. Finally, there was only Sarah staring into the fire, and Hester Piozzi and Madame Gessande. Sarah glanced up to see the two old women looking at each other decisively. She had seen Madame look that way before. What were they about?
"Ah, the announcement of a betrothal always takes me back to the great romance of my own life." Mr. Piozzi sighed, peering at Sarah. Sarah turned back to the flames. "Everyone thought that I ought to marry Samuel Johnson when my Mr. Thrale died."
"You had been friends for years," Madame pointed out. "It was natural to think so."
"But he was not my soul mate," Mrs. Piozzi said with decision. "Yes, I know." She waved her glass of sherry to ward off interruptions. "He was a great man. His intellect was fascinating. He will be remembered far longer than I will be, or my poor Gabriel. And I liked him very well. But none of that mattered in the end. I am sure I scandalized everyone in Bath by marrying Gabriel instead of Mr. Johnson. Gabriel was my daughter's Italian singing teacher, you know, younger than I was and poor," she said as an aside to Sarah.
Sarah sipped her sherry. Her attention shifted to Mrs. Piozzi's animated old face, lit from without by the fire and from within by a passion for living. "Bath did not matter in the least to Gabriel and me." Mrs. Piozzi fairly glowed. "We were in love. We left for the Continent, and lived in Venice for a time. It was so exciting."
"You left Bath altogether?" Sarah asked in a small voice.
"It is a large world, my dear, much larger than Bath. You should know that. You have been to the Continent. Where we were did not matter so much as the fact that we were together."
"May I ask a question, Mrs. Piozzi, if I am not impertinent?" Sarah searched her face.
"Nothing is impertinent to one as old as I am." Mrs. Piozzi smiled.
"Did the difference in your ages bother you?"
"What you mean is, was I afraid that he would get tired of an older woman?" Sarah nodded slowly. "Well, child, that was always a possibility. I like to think I would have had the courage to break it off if it had come to that. But it didn't. We had fourteen wonderful years together. He died, you know, of consumption." She said it wistfully. "That was hard."
Mrs. Piozzi sipped her sherry. "Vivienne, you have had passion in your life and tragedy."
"I lost a family to the guillotine." Pain still drenched Madame's voice, though it must have been fifty years since her loss. "It was a horrible time. I loved them very much."
"Did you never love again?" Mrs. Piozzi asked.
"I did, twice."
"Any regrets?"
"Only one. The first came too soon after my family's death. He was the younger son of an Austrian baron. But I was still grieving. It seemed disloyal to my family to marry again." It was Madame's turn to stare into the fire. "I rejected his suit. But in spite of my grief, I know I loved him." Madame took a shuddering breath. "He shipped off to Brazil with the consul general."
"So you regret that he was lost to you," Sarah mused.
"He wasn't lost. That was my mistake. When I finally woke to the fact that there is a difference between grief and penance, and that I loved him, my regret is that I did not chase off to Brazil," Madame replied tartly. "Of course, much later Jacques Gessande found me and my young diplomat faded. I loved Jacques, too, in a way. But it was not the same."
"You must forgive old women their reminiscences, Lady Clevancy. But passions light one's life, and deserve to be remembered."
Sarah glanced from one to the other, stricken. Mrs. Piozzi leaned forward and patted her knee. "Oh, you were a little uncomfortable today with all the congratulations, but that will pass. Don't think of the formalities, my dear, they mean nothing. Think of the passion."
"It was a very public commitment," Sarah said slowly. Her gaze drifted back to the fire.
"It is the private commitment that counts," Mrs. Piozzi said, rising. "Without it, all else is nothing. Call my carriage, Vivienne, before I sink irretrievably into sentiment."
Madame accompanied her to the hall, leaving Sarah by the fire. What were they saying? That difficulties didn't matter? It was all very well to say that passion was everything. They couldn't understand her situation. Sarah wandered into the hall, dazed.
"One cannot but make a push to avert disaster. That goose Amelia will never do so," Mrs. Piozzi was saying briskly as she pulled on her gloves. What did she mean? Sarah searched Madame Gessande's face, but she saw only kindness and a trace of self-satisfaction.
"It is time I was going too, Madame. I have imposed upon you long enough."
"Very well, child. Perhaps Hester can save you a walk." Madame kissed Sarah on the cheek. She talked to Mrs. Piozzi about small inconsequential things until the carriage came; then she shushed them both out into the night.
By the time she got into bed that night, Sarah's nerves were frayed and raw. The numbness she had cultivated for the past fortnight deserted her. Curse those two old women, she thought, as she tossed and turned. Before their stories of passion, she had reconciled herself to the fact that Julien was gone from her life. She'd thought her life over, too. It had been a matter only of walking through the rest of the years. That was why she'd accepted George, knowing full well he would despise her when he found she was "tarnished goods." What did it matter, when there was no love between them?
But now possibilities clattered about in her brain like a child's game of marbles. What should she believe? That Julien was gone for good? That she could never be immortal? That having to drink another's blood would kill her or drive her mad? That she should many George? She had committed herself to George publicly tonight. But even here, Hester Piozzi seemed to say that conventions did not matter. She and Madame Gessande had as much as told her that she should follow her passion, regardless of the cost. Hester Piozzi had nursed her lover through the terrible sickness of consumption. Was Julien's disease really so much worse? Had she really shouted "yes" to opportunity, merely by taking one night with Julien?
Her resolve had been shaken further upon her arrival in Laura Place. Somehow, Amelia had already heard the happy news. She was so effusive, so obviously grateful that Sarah was to be safely wed that her congratulations were only oppressive.
"I could hardly believe my ears!" she kept exclaiming. "Now we have the happy end in sight. Why I could not help imagining just how it would be, with both of us ensconced at Beldon House with Lady Beldon, taking the waters every day, and you the young doctor's wife."
Sarah could imagine it, too.
Now as the night lengthened, she found herself a trembling mass of doubts and fears. Everything was in chaos. She just couldn't go back to quiet and predictable. But did she love Julien enough to sacrifice her mortality, to become a hateful thing herself? Handy stores of fresh blood were wishful thinking. She would have to face the drinking of blood. No, she wouldn't. He couldn't want her after she had rejected him. If he accepted her, he would tire of her, immortal or not, she was still sure. Were a few years together enough to justify sacrificing everything?
She felt herself sinking once again i
nto that state of distraction that had consumed her a fortnight ago. Sarah shook herself, mentally. She couldn't follow Corina's path to madness. She had to take some hold on herself, however tenuous. But how to decide what she wanted?
It was five in the morning when she sat straight up in her bed and knew the place she must be, the place that would help her decide. It was the only thing she knew for certain.
The horse slowed to a walk up the steep hill. The wind tore at Sarah's hair under her black felt bonnet. The afternoon sky was alive with clouds and wind. When finally she reached the top, she sprang out of the hired gig and led the horse inside the ruined abbey walls to graze.
Glancing up at the broken walls, she hurried to the corner tower that held the stairway. The hole gaped and the great flat stone lay to one side. Julien's invitation to her. She stood on the edge of darkness and looked down. The stone stairs were wet from recent rains. She resolved not to think about what she might be starting here, but plunged into the crypt. At the bottom of the stairs, a torch was laid carefully upon a low stone bench cut into the wall, clearly visible in the weak light leaking from above. A striker lay next to it. She lit the torch and held it high. She had never been here alone. Fear crept up her spine.
Fear of what? Sarah chided herself. How could she fear death? Was it not what she had chosen instead of immortality? The dead must surely be lucky in her eyes for her to want to join them so badly. She started off across the dusty floor, under the Romanesque arches. She spared not a glance for the gaping coffins, but pressed on to the next staircase.
Julien was all around her. His spirit still inhabited this abbey—his for so many centuries. Now it was hers. The ruined stone walls, the crypts and coffins, the winding stairs, all belonged to her. In some small way, she was joined to him through the land. She came to the second stairwell, twisting into the darkness below. She closed her eyes. Was she capable of descending to the next level? That was really the question. She blinked and took the first step.
She could not go wrong, for the tunnel led only to one place. The door to the storeroom was unlocked, as he had meant her to find it. She pushed it open and lifted her flaming brand to light a companion torch set in a wall socket. The storehouse was empty, except for dust and a small lumpy stack under a canvas in the center.
She lit another torch and another. The room danced in light and shadow. She threw back the canvas. The melancholy companion to Dona Lisa stared up at her. I understand unhappiness, it said. Sarah put her hand up to her mouth to stop the tears that threatened her. The painting seemed an accusation. I brought it on myself. All choices might have led to unhappiness, but I chose the one way sure to devastate my life.
She knelt and touched the book beside the painting. Paradise Lost, of course, the book that painted Julien as Satan. And, carefully wrapped in paper, the iridescent goblet of Roman glass she had first seen in the stone coffin with Corina. A small chest filled with mint-new coins of many nations winked gold. To anyone else they would have meant a secure future. Once, they would have achieved her dreams. Pressed into the mound of coins was a note in Julien's distinctive hand. A single scribbled line leapt out at her. For the upkeep of the abbey, Love. Adieu. She breathed in melancholy with the dust.
Finally, behind the chest, she saw the little model of the flying machine. As though man could fly! Why had Julien left a reminiscence of a man who believed in the impossible? She clutched the book to her breast, tears streaming down her cheeks. He had left her a fortune in coins that no longer had value for her, a book that was a symbol of his outcast state, a painting of melancholia incarnate, and a little flying machine that spoke of hope against all odds. And then there was the chalice. A vessel intended for ceremonial drinking, surely. What did it mean?
All her emotions, all doubt and fear came together in an explosion inside her mind. She knelt in the flickering torchlight, small and mortal, shaking and streaming tears. But as she raised her head, her thinking was blasted clear. She knew what he meant. She had been right. Here, in this place, she could decide.
One had to try. That was all there was. That sentiment defined who she was, as it turned out. Had always defined her. One had to try. Fear didn't matter. It didn't matter if one's chance of success was infinitesimal. It didn't matter that one was not worthy, or what the cost would be. It did not matter if what one sought was ephemeral, and lasted but a single moment.
She gasped for breath. She knew, finally, who she was. She was a woman who took risks, who cherished life, whose body knew how to love, and whose soul was made to be made whole by loving. It wasn't sin. It was destiny, a larger destiny than the small souls of Bath could comprehend. Madame knew this truth, and Mrs. Piozzi. Sarah knew it now, too. And she would act on it. Julien still offered it, or he would not have left the marvelous glass chalice, an invitation, surely, to the drinking of blood. There were new experiences ahead, not necessarily sins, and she would descend the staircase Julien had built for her. Had there not been a treasure at its end?
Tears rose to her eyes. This clarity of vision would fade. She drank in the feeling of it, the sureness, as deeply as she could, so it might last her through all the disappointments, all the fear ahead. From some core of strength, a laugh rose up through her throat into a shout that echoed about the ancient storeroom and laughed back at her. She filled the room, she and Julien. She whirled about the dusty stones in a crazy waltz; the book waved above her head in triumph. She might not find him. He might reject her. It might not work between them for more than a moment, even if all else succeeded. If he gave her immortality it would be bought by sharing his disease. She would drink the blood of the living from the chalice he had left her, and they would give it willingly, a sexual revelation for them as well as her. She could not understand the life that loomed ahead, not yet. It did not matter. Nothing would take this moment from her.
As she drove the gig home, she laid feverish plans for detaching herself from her society. She might be gone for a long while. Who knew where Julien had gone? He had been to China and to India, to Mother Russia. Perhaps he had gone to the Americas. And she was far behind him. It had been more than a fortnight since he had departed. He knew where he was going and she did not, so he would gain ground on her at every turn. But as she sat in the freezing carriage, the euphoria of her dervish waltz in the villa storeroom stood her in good stead. It did not matter if it seemed impossible. And she just might know a way to focus her search.
She was still euphoric when she arrived home and stunned Amelia by telling her she was going abroad. Amelia wailed, Amelia moaned. But Sarah was impervious. Amelia would have all her creature comforts. Julien's cache of coins would see to that. A predictable round of small social engagements would suit Amelia much better than playing chaperone to a headstrong young niece likely to drag her reputation through the mud at any moment.
Finally, with a night behind her filled more with packing than with sleep and a household in uproar, she strode along Upper Borough Walls coming away from Monmouth Street and Mr. Lestrom's office. Last night sleet had coated the town with wet in time for the freezing temperatures just before dawn. Now, though it was nearly nine o'clock, everything was coated in a translucent ice that made the town shine in the sun peeking through the clouds. She felt she could melt the ice herself, just by her passage, she burned so with energy. Don't put on your best face for me this morning, Sarah told the city sternly. I see just what you are behind your shining surface. You are comfort. You are George and Amelia and Lady Beldon. And I am not for you.
Mr. Lestrom was stunned by the king's ransom in strange coins. She told him they were from her villa and arranged to have him sell them slowly and to manage Amelia's allowance. He would send Sarah funds when he received direction from her.
She walked to Beldon House. George was in the breakfast room, finishing his coffee.
"Sarah," he exclaimed, rising as the footman showed her in. "Where have you been? I called twice in Laura Place only to have your odious but
ler tell me you were not at home."
"He was right, George. I was not at home." Sarah sat in the chair George pulled out for her, and waved away coffee. "I was up at Clershing."
"I should think you would tell me, love, when you going out of town." George appeared uneasy as he sat back again to his breakfast. "After all, we are betrothed."
"Actually, George"—Sarah mustered her resolve—"I wanted to discuss that with you."
"My mother has delightful plans for the wedding. The announcement will appear today in the papers. We have not been idle while you have been gallivanting about," he teased.
Sarah's heart sank. Things had gone so far already!
"We both think we should wait for the ceremony until the weather is assured of being fine," George continued. "I proposed May to Mother, and she thought that would do nicely." He talked around a mouthful of toast.
Wasn't it strange? The fact that George talked about their wedding with his mouth full stiffened her resolve. One couldn't acquiesce to life with such a man, simply because there was some embarrassment involved. "George, I cannot marry you," she said, not trying to dress it up.
His coffee cup stopped in midpassage from saucer to lip. "What?" he asked.
"I can't marry you," Sarah repeated.
"But it's all arranged. You cannot cry off now." George gathered himself for anger.
"You may be angry all you like, George. I deserve that."
His eyes flicked about the room. He looked desperate. That was odd. "You must marry me. I said I would make you happy. What more do you want?"
"George, you and I would never suit."
He became stem. "You will never be received in Bath if you call off this marriage."
"I intend to leave England, George." She hoped her tone of voice conveyed that she did not care whether Bath received her. She rose to go. "I am truly sorry."
"But what about my career?" George practically shouted. Suddenly, his eyes narrowed in an ugly look she had not seen before. "You're going to him, aren't you?"
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