The Twelfth Enchantment: A Novel by David Liss Page A

sounded.
    “I am, in truth, very selfish, and because I am selfish, I cannot deny myself the company of a young lady as captivating as you.”
    Lucy looked away to hide her flush of embarrassment. Her life had not taught her how to respond to praise with good graces. Byron was making his intentions clear, was he not?
    “Have I told you that I am a poet?” His voice suggested only boredom with his own accomplishments.
    “No,” she said, not quite sure what to make of this new information.
    “Yes, my
Poems on Various Occasions
is very pretty, I think, though nothing more. I created a bit of controversy three years ago with my satiric work
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
. It was a clever piece, but there is no shortage of men who can write cleverly. I am now preparing for publication the first portion of a long poem I call
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
. I wrote much of this while traveling in Greece. Remarkable country, and I think the sublimity of the experience is reflected in these excellent verses. The world, I do not doubt, will notice this effort.”
    “I am glad,” said Lucy, still uncertain what Byron wished to convey to her.
    “I do not tell you these things to boast. I don’t believe in false modesty, and I know what I am. I am an exceptional man, and so I know of what I speak when I say that you are an exceptional woman. You see, I recall everything now.”
    The first thing Lucy thought of was the mill, and those voices calling out for her to gather the leaves, just as Byron had. Might he be able to tell her the meaning? “Do you know why you said those things to me?” she asked.
    “No, not that. I remember what you did. I remember how it was you alone who could find the curse that was upon me. And then there was that
thing
, wasn’t there? That dark thing. I remember lying frozen with terror, fearing
—knowing
—that … that … whatever it was … was going to reach out and clutch me with its … I don’t know what. Not hands, but something. And then you stepped before it, defying it, and it feared your defiance. It was only an instant, and yet in that instant how many hours of terror did I experience. But you, Miss Derrick, had the courage of a lion. They may hold you cheap here, but I know better.”
    Lucy did not wish to deny what he said. She wished him to heap his praise upon her and bask in his attention, but she was also frightened, for what she had seen both with him and at the mill had all been real. She desperately wanted it all to be the product of her heated imagination, but if he had seen these things too, then how could she deny the truth?
    They walked in silence for some minutes, but as they approached the center of town, Byron turned to Lucy. “I cannot say how I knew to warn you, but I must agree with my more distracted self. You cannot allow yourself to marry this Olson.”
    Her first impulse was to say,
Then I have delightful news, for I have rejected him!
Lucy knew better, however. She wanted to tell him everything she had done, and why, but she could not. She needed him to make his intentions clear. She yearned for it. She felt the need for it twist into a knot inside her, and the fact that he did not made her want to scream with frustration.
    “You do not know him,” Lucy said at last, pleased with her vague response.
    “I know he is not worthy of you.”
    All at once, Lucy was angry—at herself and at Byron. She felt foolish. Who was he, a peer with an estate and a seat in the House of Lords, with his poetry and holidays in Greece, to tell her what she was free to do or not do? He knew she was not an independent gentlewoman. Unless he offered her some alternative, it was unconscionable of him to advise her against marrying Olson. Jonas Morrison had been much the same in his easy dismissal of the chains that bound her to propriety. She had been a child when she’d allowed herself to be persuaded by him, but she was a child no longer, and was furious with