A Most Extraordinary Pursuit

by Juliana Gray

  “You are, of course, fatally in love with him.”

  I pushed myself away from the rock and turned to the sea. “I will admit to a certain personal inclination, but that is easily overcome.”

  “How? For what purpose? What else are you to do with your life?”

  “I will continue to work for the Duke of Olympia, of course, if he will have me.”

  Her feet landed on the ground behind me. “Impossible!”

  “Impossible? Why?”

  “How can you ask such a thing? You have seen what he is. You have seen the immeasurable danger of this power he possesses.”

  Her footsteps crunched over the dirt and gravel toward me. I looked down at the tossing white foam below, the perilous sharp edges of the rocky shore.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  She came to stand next to me, though her image exuded no living warmth, no breath of any kind. “Of course you know what I mean. We cannot ignore what occurred here.”

  “But that’s the thing,” I whispered. “I don’t know. I don’t understand what happened at all.”

  “I think you do, however.” Her voice was unexpectedly kind. “You saw for yourself that he summoned a man through an abyss of time.”

  “But it’s impossible! The duke cannot have been the agent of his appearance!”

  “Miss Truelove, I doubt that Almighty God much cares what a single, overclever young woman believes is possible or impossible. In any case, you’re better off washing your hands of the entire affair, even if such an escape requires you to unite yourself in marriage to one of the most cheerfully promiscuous reprobates in England.”

  I made a sound of frustration.

  “Come now,” she went on. “You have seen for yourself the continual jeopardy in which this agency places the poor fellow. The moral burden he bears, to say nothing of the lust other men harbor for the immeasurable power he controls. Why, you were nearly killed yourself.”

  In spite of the growing warmth of the sun, I began to feel chilled in the core of my belly. I drew together the ends of my cardigan and folded my arms under my breasts. The wind, picking up strength, blew against my ears.

  “And yet he has done good,” I said. “The joy that now belongs to Tadeas and Desma, it is almost beyond bearing.”

  “Of course he can do great things. That’s the marvelous thing about power. But there is a price, Miss Truelove; there is always a price. To the duke himself, and to anyone who shares his life.”

  I bowed my head.

  “Well?” said the Queen. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know which is worse.”

  She stood by my side, without speaking. I believe she only reached so far as my shoulder, and yet her presence cast an enormous shadow over me, as if to smother me with a will that was not my own.

  I don’t know how long we hung there, poised over the sea. I lost count of the beating waves, the cries of the dirty seagulls, and I remember thinking, I might be anywhere; there is nothing here that anchors me to the century to which I belong, no sign that it is 1906 and not a thousand years past, or a thousand years in the future, so perhaps I too have passed into another time.

  “Hullo there,” said Lord Silverton.

  By good fortune, he had put his hand out to touch me, or I might have fallen over the brink. I leaned into his arm for an instant, regaining my balance, and straightened. The Queen had gone.

  “Not as bad as all that, is it?” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You looked as if you meant to jump.”

  The most cheerfully promiscuous reprobate in England, the Queen had called him, and yet he hadn’t acted like a reprobate at all during the past nine days. He had held us all together, as if rescuing ancient Greek heroes from the clutches of fate was all part of his life’s work. While the rest of us staggered in shock, he had sorted out every practicality, limping about with his cane and his battered face. He had taken Tadeas in hand, man-to-man, and found the two travelers a cottage of their own, and hunted down a doctor, and calmed down Mr. Higganbotham into the proper spirit of inquisitive cooperation. Once the duke had recovered from the physical enervation that had rendered him almost helpless in the immediate aftermath of the fateful event, to say nothing of the several burst stitches in his right shoulder, Silverton had taken him out for a long and apparently merry night at the taverna in Molos, in order to recover him spiritually.

  I remembered hearing them arrive back at our hostelry, roaring with song, and how I lay on my bed and smiled at the ceiling.

  The next morning, I had asked Silverton how he did it. How he had known exactly what to do, how he hadn’t seemed surprised or wrong-footed for even an instant. Why, training, Truelove, was his answer, tapping his temple. Expect the unexpected, that’s what they pound into our skulls.

  Expect the unexpected, I thought, and I smiled a little, because I could smell him now, that curious combination of pipe tobacco and soap and sunshine, as unexpectedly pleasurable as the scent of my bedroom at home.

  I said, “I assure you, my lord, I am not the sort of person who leaps off cliffs.”

  “My lord? Just what have I done to deserve that?”

  “Nothing.” I turned to face him. His height came as a surprise after the short Queen; my gaze traveled for some time, up his chest and neck until I reached his unsmiling face. A trace of fear tingled my nerves at the sight of this unaccustomed gravity, and I asked if something were amiss.

  “No, no. Have just been making my farewells to the happy couple, who seem to have accepted their miraculous lot with remarkable fortitude. Higganbotham was there, administering another lesson in Modern Greek. I don’t believe they give a tinker’s damn at the moment, but I daresay he will keep trying until it sinks in.”

  “It’s good of him to stay on and help them.”

  “On the contrary, I think he would have stayed on whether they agreed or no. He’s like a chap with a new bride.” Silverton paused to turn pink.

  “Yes,” I said. “About that.”

  “Don’t say it like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re about to tell me no.”

  The breeze was ruffling his hair, and the sun found his cheek. By now, the bruises had largely faded. Except for a few red marks left behind by the more serious lacerations, his beauty was back in possession of his face, thoughtlessly perfect. He wasn’t wearing his spectacles, and his eyes were blue and earnest, crinkled with worry at the corners. I reached up and brushed a speck of imaginary dust from his broad right shoulder.

  “I wasn’t about to say no,” I said. “But—”

  He caught my hand, just before it left his shoulder, and held my fingers against his chest. “But?”

  At the sight of his relief, and the warmth of his breath on my face, I had forgotten the substance of my conditional clause. “But I—but before we—”

  Silverton leaned closer. His hand tightened around mine. “Before we what, Truelove?”

  “Before you—that is, I think—”

  He lifted his other hand and touched his finger to my lips. “Oh, let’s not have any of this thinking business, Truelove. If you think any more, I daresay you’ll probably change your mind, and my last hope for earthly redemption will be shattered.”

  He is going to kiss me, I thought, and then, in wonder: And, by God, I believe I am going to let him.

  His hand moved to lie against my cheek, and such was the length of him, his fingertips rested on the crown on my head, while his wrist touched my jaw.

  “If you wish to remain untouched before your wedding night, Truelove,” he said, smiling a little, “you had better speak up now.”

  His head moved closer, while my ears sorted through his words. His eyelids sank, and I closed my own eyes. Just before his lips
touched mine, I heard myself say, “But I am not untouched.”

  Silverton paused, a millimeter away.

  A second passed, and another. I opened my eyes.

  “What did you say?” he asked softly.

  I don’t think I answered him aloud; I don’t think I was able to say the words again, not while his eyes were open, and mine, too.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “As I thought.”

  He did not release my hand, but he straightened away from the imminent kiss. A bird screamed overhead.

  “We should be getting back,” I said. “The ship leaves soon.”

  We were almost halfway back to the village before his lordship spoke again.

  “Listen, Truelove. I’m afraid something’s come up, and I’ll be parting ways with you in Athens.”

  I examined the toes of my dusty shoes as they descended the path. “What has come up, pray?”

  “A telegram from the duchess. I’m afraid I can’t say more.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “It’s just a routine little annoyance. I shall be back in England by the first of May at the latest.”

  “A routine little annoyance, is it? The sort of thing that happens all the time in your chosen profession?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  He swung his cane as he walked, a little flourish at each step, as if to disguise the slight limp that impeded his stride. The red-tile peaks of the village rooftops had begun to take shape over the next rise.

  “I see,” I said.

  Our footsteps crunched along the path, which was strewn with pebbles. The sun was now high and warm, and the smoke from the village chimneys mingled with the scent of the sea.

  “Can you tell me his name?” asked his lordship.

  “No, I will not.”

  He released a small sigh. “Very well.”

  In another half hour, we reached the door of the hostelry. Silverton opened it and waved me inside. “Aren’t you coming in?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “A few loose threads to tie together.”

  “Then I will see you on board the ship,” I said, and turned away.

  His hand found my arm. “Wait, Truelove.”

  “Yes?”

  He was frowning down at me, one foot lodged on the step below. “We will continue this conversation in England, when I return. Do you understand me?”

  From within, I heard the scraping of a chair leg against a stone floor. A voice called my name: “Ah, Miss Truelove! There you are at last. May I have a word with you?”

  “You’ll excuse me, Lord Silverton,” I said, withdrawing my arm from his lordship’s grasp. “The duke has need of me.”

  “Are you quite all right, Miss Truelove?” asked His Grace, when we were alone in the small and rustic chamber that had been allotted to him. “You’re rather pale.”

  “Quite all right, I assure you.”

  “Very good. I am sorry to call you into service at such a hurried moment, but I have been thinking a great deal about this institute, and about my uncle’s enthusiasm for the project, and your own capability.”

  “My capability?”

  “Yes, Miss Truelove.” He handed me a promised cup of tea from the tray on the table. “I should like to put a proposal before you. You needn’t answer at once, of course; I am happy to wait until the conclusion of our voyage before you make your decision.”

  The duke was looking much better than he had nine days ago, when we had carried him, half-dead, down the track by the seaside, and brought him to this very chamber. The next day, he had regained the better part of his senses, and the day after that, he had risen from his couch and begun, without the slightest suggestion of sentimentality, to assist Lord Silverton in making arrangements for Desma and Tadeas to live quietly together in Skyros. He had insisted on a ceremony of marriage, which the couple carried out in a kind of dazed bewilderment, and gave the bride away from his own arm. He had then immersed himself in the duchy papers, firing endless questions at me and then taking long walks of contemplation along the seaside, holding his injured limb stiffly at his side. He had avoided any turn of the conversation toward the events of that fateful day. On the morning after his night out with Silverton, he had woken at his usual hour and called me in to breakfast, and though his face was perhaps a trifle more haggard than usual, he betrayed no sign of indisposition.

  No sign, indeed, that his heart had been irretrievably broken.

  I stirred my tea and said, “What is your proposal, sir?”

  He propped himself on the table and picked up his own teacup. “Before the extraordinary turn of events here in Skyros, I confess I had approached this notion of an institute for the study of anachronisms with a certain degree of skepticism. I suppose I offered my cooperation only to appease my uncle, who had recently developed such a passionate interest in my work.”

  “Yes, I remember it well.”

  “Do you happen to have any idea why, Miss Truelove? I only ask because—well, because everything has taken on a different cast, now. Now that we know the truth.”

  I set my teacup in its saucer. “That you are the instrument of miracles.”

  He did not answer at first. He was sitting near the window, and the light struck the left half of his face in a white and almost smoky blur. Were his eyes always so grave and dark, I wondered, or had they acquired their gravity recently? But I had only known him a fortnight. The breadth and depth of him remained a mystery to me.

  I heard the Queen again, as if she had returned and stood now by my side: You have seen for yourself the continual jeopardy in which this agency places the poor fellow. The moral burden he bears, to say nothing of the lust other men harbor for the immeasurable power he controls.

  “Yes,” he said. “So it would seem. It explains a great deal—why, for example, Anserrat and his companions were so determined to gain control of me, though we can only speculate how they came to learn of this power, when I—at the time—had no idea of it.”

  “Have you any theory at all?”

  “None that makes any logical sense. And you?”

  The duke made this query without thought, as if asking my opinion were the most natural thing in the world. I fingered the handle of my teacup and said, “It seems to me—you will forgive me, sir, for I speak only from my own feeble intuition—it seems to me, as I look back on the encounter in Knossos, that these men did not . . .” I hesitated, looked at my lap, and looked up again. “They did not quite seem to belong to our own age.”

  “Ah. I confess, Miss Truelove, the same idea has lately occurred to me.”

  “Of course, it’s impossible, unless we suppose you are not the only man invested with this power. Or else how might they have found us, in our present century?”

  The duke swung his leg and glanced out the window. “I was thinking of something Anserrat said, just before the end. How he had proof of my power, and that it wasn’t something I had already done . . .”

  “It was something you would do.”

  “Yes.”

  The tea was finished. I set it aside. “Is there any news of the other man? The one we left tied up in the cave?”

  “No word at all. He appears to have vanished.” He turned to the papers on the table behind him and lifted a slip of paper. “And the only man among them to survive the attack on the beach has, I’m afraid, now died of his wounds.”

  He handed me the telegram, and I glanced over the words. “So we have no one left to interrogate.”

  “I’m afraid we must be content to live with the mystery, Miss Truelove, unless some solution presents itself in the future.” He paused to take back the telegram from my outstretched fingers. “Furthermore, I believe, for the time being, we must keep this knowledge strictly to ourselves.”

  “Sir, I have never considered otherwise.”r />
  “Of course not. I knew at once that I could trust you, thank God, which is why I have asked for your help in this matter.”

  “I will do whatever I can for you.”

  “No, don’t say that. You must not obey me out of a sense of duty, for God’s sake. You must enter into this partnership freely.”

  At the word partnership, my heart stopped. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I can think of no better person—no other person at all, in fact—to run this institute on my behalf, Miss Truelove, except you.”

  My heart resumed its course, except perhaps at an accelerated pace, as if to make up for lost ground. “I see. This is indeed a position of great trust.”

  His Grace set his cup and saucer on his knee and turned his head to the window. “You see, Miss Truelove, I have always been of a curious cast of mind, and when I encounter a problem of any sort, my instinct is to gather as much information as I can on the subject. And this—this problem of mine, it seems to me, is the reason God placed me on this earth. It is the great purpose of my life, and it is my duty to discover why, exactly, he has chosen me for this particular task.”

  “Of course. I quite agree.”

  The duke turned his gaze back to me. “I want you to give this a great deal of thought, Miss Truelove. It is no small task I have asked of you; you must perceive that.”

  I rose to my feet and carried my cup and saucer to the table, where I placed them on the tray. “There is no need for further consideration, sir. I am quite willing to devote myself to this mystery, in any capacity you require.”

  “There may, of course, be some danger involved in this position,” he said.

  “I am equal, I hope, to any challenge that may present itself.”

  He regarded me without expression. I was close enough to see the lines about the corners of his eyes, the bruised shadows beneath them, and my chest filled with compassion.

  There is always a price, Her Majesty had said, the duke was already paying it.

  “There is one other matter,” he said. “I hope I do not intrude on your privacy.”

  “Not at all.”