Star's Crossing

13: Too Curious, Too Clever

Mare was up again before dawn. The sun rose adamantly as summer advanced, loping over the sea like some beast of the heavens, light lashing across the skies before any but the farmers dared open their eyes.

Mare had a great task ahead. With a mere three days before the first summer picnic, where she'd undoubtedly cross paths with Camden Doores as well as Teddy and Geoffrey Bridge-not to mention the dozens of curious boys who'd been prompted to don roses in their lapels the night of the ball-Mare had to be prepared.

No. She thought of Lilith and her cold calculations, her steady gaze, her sharp words. I must be lethal.

She drew back the drapes above her writing desk, a German import, gifted from her father on her sixteenth birthday, and settled before the window. Though the gold ribbon of dawn had only just begun to unwind across the horizon, Mare was dressed, dark curls braided, with a cup of steaming tea beside the lamp upon her desk. Already she'd slipped past the maids to recover her precious chest from the shed.

As in any great mystery, Mare sensed this was where she ought best to begin: the beginning. She had no sleuthing skills to speak of and no experience beyond the reading of this Shakespearean mystery or that, and in such cases, of course, most evidence relied heavily on the placement of romantic props and ostensible, if carefully-timed, eavesdropping.

Mare had no such tools. She had only the evidence of his own hand, her mystery writer, who, for the most mysterious of reasons, had failed to claim her.

This was the wound, she realized. This was the void from which her rage rose, a continuous ebbing tide, highest at midnight beneath a full moon. She'd dreamt of it twice now: reading his letters and looking up to find his face blank as a new sheet of parchment.

After five years of writing, five years of falling in love, sharing desperate desires and dark truths, there was but one answer. Between his final note and his arrival, something had changed. But what? Was what Camden said true? Had someone stolen his letters? And to what avail?

And if this was the reality...was Camden Doores Mare's future husband?

The thought turned her stomach now, as she sifted through his pages. Camden was cruel. He'd been so handsome all his life, born into the best riches. He'd flirted with the lovelier, wealthier girls. He'd even flirted with Mare in school.

She recalled one particular Christmas, when both were freshly sixteen. He'd returned from Almagest for the holiday ball, and seemed quite troubled.

This, of course, meant nothing to Mare and had nothing to do with her. But during the dance, when she'd stepped out onto the pavilion for a breath of fresh air, she'd found Camden hunched over the railing, smoke trailing from his father's pipe between his fingers.

He'd said something odd, she remembered. What was it? Something of prisons or being trapped-and she'd been not only surprised at the words, but a bit enraptured. Of course, Mr. Doores had partaken of too much drink, which now in hindsight brought a triumphant smirk to Mare's lips, and seemed less interested in whom he spoke to rather than speaking itself.

There was more to him, then, than cruelty and arrogance. Mare traced the signature at the foot of a recent letter: a similarly troubled soul. Troubled. That night, two years past, Camden had indeed seemed troubled.

At this last ball, hadn't Mare experienced a strange sensation in Camden's presence? A pretense of safety, a moment of synchrony?

Her cheeks heated as she recalled the way he'd steadied her fingers with his own, wine rippling within her glass. There was such sincerity in his eyes when he'd stepped near, such understanding. You're shaking.