Chapter 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

J ulian moved through the deluge as though he were swimming. Sheets of water fell from the sky. His waxed Ulster clung to him like a second skin, water streaming steadily from the brim of his wide hat, pooling on the slick cobblestones beneath his boots as he walked in Harper's footsteps along the wharf.

The weather suited him.

The darkness of the sky, the violence of the torrent, and the hush it seemed to enforce through the sheer volume of its impact. He felt as though he should be drenched to the skin. That he should be icy and numb. It was his lot in life. It was the world of darkness and cold shadow that the curse had abandoned him to.

Harper had the boarding papers for the cutter that would take them to Liverpool. He knew the berth number and led the way. Julian was content to follow. That had been the way of things for what felt like eternity. Had it been a week? A month? Since the curse had struck and he had removed himself from Loughton Grange. In that time, he had become numb.

"It is not much further, Your Grace," Harper shouted over the deafening roar of the rain. "Are you sure that we should not take a carriage? This weather cannot be good for your health."

Julian barely turned his head. "Do not concern yourself, Harper. Lead on as you have done. I put myself in your hands because I lack the will to take a direct hand in my own destiny."

Harper glanced back, a flicker of something in his eyes, though he was wise enough to suppress it. "Yes, Your Grace."

"And you should know that you are my sole servant now. A heavy responsibility. The others have been dismissed."

"I am very grateful for that, Your Grace. It is a privilege," Harper replied.

Julian gave a nonchalant nod, though the words barely registered. They felt distant, like a faint echo in a long, empty corridor.

A gust of wind tugged at the brim of Julian's hat and rain whipped his face. He reached up to tug the brim down. His hand was gloved, the leather shiny and slick with rain. His gaze lingered on the black leather for a long moment. It had been part of him for so long, his entire life, in fact. Yet now, the brief period in which he had been free of it, seemed to be the longest time.

The mental image of that hand flailing in dark, freezing water, searching for the drowning woman came to him. The glove being stripped away and the bare hand tangling in hair that would be revealed to be bronze. Hair that he would never touch again. Never see again. The loss was a frigid hole within him, a void that could never be filled.

"We are here, Your Grace," Harper's voice cut through the storm, bringing Julian's thoughts back to the present.

Julian lifted his gaze. They stood at the head of a series of narrow, steep stone steps. A large rowing boat was tied up at the foot of the steps, some passengers already seated, waiting to be ferried to the ship which lay at anchor in the Severn Estuary. Julian stared, unseeing at the waiting boat.

"How did I do it, Harper?" he asked in a voice that his servant had to lean close to hear.

"Do what, Your Grace?" Harper asked.

"How did I live alone for all those years?" Julian's voice was hollow. "How did I remove myself from everyone by shutting myself away with the curse? I cannot remember how I did it. It seems impossible now."

Harper hesitated, unsure whether his master expected an answer. "…In all honesty, I do not know, Your Grace. Is this about Miss Fairchild? Of course it is. Are you sure that we should not send for her? I can have a letter taken to Loughton Grange before the ship sails."

Julian shook his head. "I cannot take the risk. Sooner or later, she will succumb, and I will be responsible. I know that now. This is the only way. There is one last thing I must ask of you. After this, you are free to pursue alternative employment. I will see to it you have a glowing reference and year's salary to ease your way."

Harper began to shake his head but Julian raised a hand to silence any protests. He knew the man would protest, had gained the measure of him during the last couple of months.

"I know you now, Harper. You were in the employ of a rogue and forced to carry out his orders with the threat of unemployment as your payment for disobedience. I do not hold you accountable for what you were made to do. But I will give you one last command. When the time comes... when Ester eventually..." Julian's voice broke.

Words were suddenly impossible.

Emotion had him by the throat, choking words and breathing together. Harper's face creased in concern.

Julian stumbled, reaching desperately for the metal handrail of the stairs. His gloved hand slipped on the slick metal and he fell to one knee. Harper grabbed his elbow, preventing him from falling. Julian hung for a moment over the steep, almost vertical staircase.

Below, the black water lapped against the tarred, barnacle-encrusted piles of the harbor. For a heartbeat, he considered throwing himself forward with all his strength, the darkness of it calling to him like a siren. It would be so simple, so easy, to give himself to that oblivion.

But then, his eyes alighted on the large boat that bobbed on the storm-churned waters at the foot of the steps. On one of the passengers sitting in the boat. She looked up at him from beneath her hat, face pale and eyes wide. It was… Ester?

The sight of her was an unfathomable jolt to his senses. He staggered to his feet, shaking off Harper's steadying hand as though it singed him. Through the curtain of rain and the storm's relentless fury, he saw her—Ester, rising from her seat in the boat, her lips shaping his name in the wind.

Though the rain stole the sound of it, he felt the shape of her name on his lips.

"I cannot," Julian murmured, dazed, as Harper tried once more to steer him back toward the waiting ship.

"Your Grace, everything has been arranged. All of your possessions have been shipped. Theydon Mount is empty. If we do not take this ship, there is not another to Liverpool for a week."

But Julian could scarcely hear him. He had backed far enough away from the edge of the wharf that he could no longer see her. That he even doubted that he had seen her.

"Your Grace," Harper persisted, "the sailing is a matter of three days. She is bound for Cheshire, along the river Mersey most likely. We will be taking a ship north for the Cumbrian coast. Three days ."

Julian's heart twisted painfully in his chest, tearing him in two. He longed to be with Ester, to look upon her, look into her eyes, touch her... Yet he also wanted her as far from him as the earth would allow, safe from his very touch…

Gritting his teeth, he shook Harper off with a rough, determined shove, his resolve breaking and mending all at once. Stepping toward the edge of the wharf once more, he looked down.

There she was. Ester.

She had risen from her seat, trying to push her way to the steps, the very steps he stood above. A crewman reached out, trying to restrain her as the boat pitched dangerously in the black water.

"Unhand her!" Julian bellowed. His voice cut through the roar of the storm like a cannon blast.

He soared down the steps, covering three in a single bound. The uniformed shipman jerked his head at the sound, startled, and then paled at the sight of Julian's fury.

"She'll have the boat over, sir—" the shipman stammered, his voice cracking with nerves. He had a firm grip on Ester's upper right arm, but she tore herself free before he could finish the thought.

Julian leaped onto the boat with a force that reverberated through the wooden planks. The young shipman gulped and hastened back to his seat by the oars. Harper was making his way down the steps, considerably slower and more carefully than his master. Helen smiled cautiously at Julian. The other passengers, of which there were four, grumbled but fell silent when Julian's fierce glare swept over them.

It was then that Julian saw that the remaining empty seats on the boat were directly opposite Ester and Helen. He sat, as did Ester, opposite him. Their knees brushed with the sway of the boat. Her eyes moved from his face to the gloves he wore. Her gaze lingered there, and the sadness in her expression cut through him like a knife.

His fists clenched atop his lap, leather creaking under the strain.

"Did you expect anything different?" he growled, meant for her ears alone. The storm raged around them, the rain hammering the wooden deck, pooling dangerously at their feet.

Over the noise of the torrent, it would have been difficult for anyone else to hear their conversation.

"You are still convinced then?" Ester murmured.

"Utterly," he replied, though the word tasted bitter on his tongue. "It was foolish of me to believe otherwise. How is your father's condition?"

"Much the same. He and Mother have already boarded the ship," she said, her tone lighter now. "Father was rather excited at the prospect and wished to board as soon as the Sprinter was at anchor."

Ester offered a tentative smile and Julian responded with his own. At first, it was merely the twitch of a muscle—an instinct, nothing more. But then her eyes met his, and something flickered to life within him, a warmth he thought long buried. His smile deepened, softened, until he caught himself.

"I am glad," he managed, his voice quieter, tender now. "And you?"

That was the question which was hardest of all to ask. The question that twisted his heart with dread.

"I am in perfect health," Ester replied.

Relief immediately flooded him, though it was bittersweet and tinged with melancholy. Ester had not yet succumbed and he prayed she would not for a long time. Perhaps there was something in what Harper had said concerning those of pure heart lasting longest against the darkness of the curse. Lasting longest but eventually succumbing.

For it was inevitable.

Julian couldn't tear his eyes away from Ester's face. He felt as though he needed to imprint every line and curve onto his memory. Her cheeks were wet—whether from tears or rain, he could not tell. The deluge had soaked through her dress, making it cling to her form in a way that revealed more than it hid, but Julian couldn't bring himself to take in the sight. It seemed vulgar and cheap in such a moment. For her part, Ester's eyes seemed to rove over his face as though she, too, sought to commit as much of it to memory as possible. Beside them, Harper made innocuous small talk with Helen—their words were a meaningless hum, fading into the background with the rain.

Ester's foot shifted as though to lift it from the growing puddle in the boat's bottom to rest it on one of the wooden ribs that crossed its width. By accident or design, her shoe ended up beside Julian's boot. She exerted some pressure, pressing the outside of her right foot against the instep of his. Julian pressed back. Their eyes never left each other as the boat was cast adrift and the two sailors in the stern began to row them out towards the waiting ship.

"You are bound for Cumbria?" Ester asked.

"Yes, and you for Cheshire," Julian replied.

He found himself watching her lips as she spoke. Memories of kissing those lips and being kissed flooded his mind so strongly, he could almost taste her sweetness. Could almost feel the soft, warm pressure against his mouth. His lips tingled at the memory of her tongue, cautiously probing. Beneath the hat, he saw the bloom across her cheeks and knew her thoughts were wandering along similar lines.

"Do you intend to return?" she asked.

"No. My time here is at an end. Windermere is where I should have been all along. Much would have been prevented had I forced myself to go there—to face my past, after my father died."

"Much would have been lost too," she murmured. "We would never have met."

"And you would be safe from the curse..."

"And dead, floating on the surface of the Theydon Mere," she finished curtly.

Julian didn't respond. Her words were a dagger. He savored the pain that arose at the thought of a world without Ester in it. He deserved the pain. It was his lot. His fate.

"You gave me life and gave my family the means to return to our home," she began again.

"For how long will that life last?" Julian rasped.

Her flushed cheeks made her emerald eyes shine with such radiance—she became a goddess.

Ester lifted her small toe out of her shoe to press it against Julian's calf, drawing her foot down as she did in a stroking motion. The contact was both thrilling and inadequate. The layers that separated them were frustrating. As thin as shoe leather and fabric, but as impenetrable as armor.

"I might die in a shipwreck. Or from a fever. Or falling from my horse. Nothing is certain."

"But I have made your death certain," he replied, a hint of anger directed at himself but also at Ester's refusal to see. She laughed and he gritted his teeth behind closed lips.

"Do you think yourself a god now? My death was always certain. It is the only certainty in life."

The air between them felt charged. As though it crackled with energy. The rain could have been sizzling where it fell between them. Julian gripped at the material of his coat hard. He wanted to touch her, to strip away his gloves and caress her bare skin.

"Do not play with words," he said harshly, "when it eventually comes, it will be my touch that will have killed you."

"Then it will be a worthy death," she breathed. "I would die a thousand times over for that touch."

The boat bumped against the larger hull of the Sprinter. Julian tore his eyes from Ester's and rose, preparing to board. He resolved not to look back.