Page 43 of Dark Embrace
Elinor’s face took on a mutinous expression, but Sarah refused to let her friend say or do anything rash on her account. “Go on. I will be fine, Ipromise.”
She watched Elinor walk back into the ward then went and gathered her cloak and left thebuilding.
A thick fog had rolled in, heavy and damp. Caught in the gray blanket of cloying mist that clung to her skin and obscured the way, she could see little of what layahead.
Footsteps sounded from behind her, heavy andquick.
She turned but could see little more than a tall form in a dark over-garment. Of King’s College, there was no sign; the fog had swallowed it whole. She backed up several steps, then lifted her hem, preparing to flee, but a voice hard and angry called out, “MissLowell.”
She froze. The voice was vaguely familiar. “Miss Lowell,” he said again, as though he knew she was nearby, but could see her no better than she couldseehim.
The form stepped forward to reveal a long black coat, black-gloved hands, and a blacktophat.
With a gasp, she fell backanotherstep.
Her pursuer lifted his head and she gasped again when she recognized one of the apprentices from the hospital, Mr.Watts.
For an instant, she couldn’t move, couldn’t think, fear icing her mind, herlimbs.
Then anger crept in, and with it, the recollection that she was not helpless. She was armed. She wasprepared.
“Why are you following me, Mr. Watts?” she demanded, surreptitiously pulling her cudgel free of hercloak.
She glared at him, studying his expression, his posture, watching for any clue that he might attack. Something nagged at her. Something not quiteright…
He glared back. “I have words I need to saytoyou.”
“Words? You could have spoken to me at the hospital. At any point over these many months, you could have spoken to me. Instead, you chose to follow me, terrorize me, steal into my home in thedarkness—”
“What? No—” All anger drained from his face, replaced by confusion. “I neverdidthat.”
“Never followed me? Your presence belies thatclaim.”
“No, I did follow you, but… I mean—” He shook his head. “I have followed you twice. Just now, and last night. Not over the course of months. And I neverterrorizedyou.”
Sarah kept her cudgel at the ready. “Last night you stole into my chamber when I was not there and then stalked me through St. Giles, called my name, chased me through thealleys.”
Mr. Watts lifted his gloved hands before him, palms forward. “I did not.” He shook his head. “I most certainly did not. I saw you walking on Great Russel Street last night. You were brisk, almost at a run. I was concerned so Ifollowed.”
“That is a lie,” Sarah said. She could read it in hisexpression.
He sighed. “I did see you on the street. But I did not follow out of concern. I followed because I finally worked up the courage to tell you…” Whatever courage he had possessed last night failed him now, because his voice trailed away and he did not confide what it was that had driven him to seek her out lastnight.
His hands dropped to his sides and his expression darkened. “I saw you with him. Mr. Thayne. I watched you. I saw you lead him inside.” He paused. “I thought you were a different sort. I thought you…me…we…” His lips formed a bitter twist. “I was mistaken. I was there this morning when you made your sordid admission. You are not the woman I imagined you to be.” The last was said with a mixture of accusation andderision.
His explanation took a moment to become clear in her thoughts, and when it did, she was both startled and dismayed. “You mean to say that you built a dream of—” she gestured back and forth between them “—some sort of intimacy between us. Without ever having so much as a conversation with me? And now you are angry in your newfound realization that no such intimacy exists? That I am not the image you created in your secret fancy?” She drew herself up. “How dare you? How dare you follow me now to berate me in this manner? You have no say over myactions.”
At her words, Mr. Watts deflated, his shoulders slumping, his head hanging forward. He pulled his hat from his head and turned it in his hands, over and over. She stared at the hat in his hands and realized what it was that had nagged at her when he first emerged from the mist. The hat was wrong, a top hat, whereas her pursuer the previous evening had worn a low crowned hat. Too, as she looked at him now, she realized that while Mr. Watts was tall, he was not broad enough and he carried himself like a boy inhabiting the body ofaman.
He spoke thetruth.
He was not the man who had stalked her all thesemonths.
Sarah turned away. “Go back to the hospital,” she said. “We have no further words that need beexchanged.”
He called after her but she walked on, past the graveyard, the stones obscured from view under their blanket of fog. She did not look back, but she knew he did notfollow.
She reached Coptic Street without further incident. Sounds echoed around her, the distant creak of a wheel, the jingle of a bridle, but the coach in possession of both was veiled from sight. It was eerie and unsettling; the entire world had been swallowed bythefog.