Another glittering branch danced overhead, hopping from cloud to cloud, searching for an outlet. It was absolute madness to remain out here. I scurried back to the stairs as the sky opened up, raining torrents down upon me. I was soaked through in an instant.
I hurried down the stairs, clinging to the wooden handrail. It was much darker in the smoking room now. The skylights glowed faintly overhead but it wasn’t enough to lift the gloom. Rain pounded down on them, a painfully loud cacophony.
“No Frederick, no boat,” I told Alex, rubbing my arms against the flurry of shivers racing down them. “Are there lights in here?”
Several hurricane lamps were positioned throughout the room, but we couldn’t find any matches. With so much rain coming down the open stairwell, a growing puddle inched its way into the room, heading for a drain.
“You said the dome glows at night, didn’t you?” I shouted, trying to be heard over the chaos. Another crack of thunder rumbled, shaking the bottles of liquor at the bar.
Alex held his hands over his ears. “What?”
“Gas lights. In the dome?”
He nodded and turned back for the tunnel, wheels racing. At the entrance to the dome, he found a little brass plate and flipped its toggle.
Several lamps came to life, brightening the green murkiness. With a cry of relief, I sank down on a bench tucked between Gerard’s flowerbeds. Water dripped from my hair, setting my teeth to chatter.
A sharp thud from the glass made me jump away.
The water around the dome came to life in a frenzy as dozens of carp pressed themselves to the windows, drawn to the light and wild from the storm. They bashed against each other, mouths gaped open.
Their bodies were disgusting, strangely muscled and too great in size. They looked like something from a fevered dream come to life.
“Do you think they can break through?”
Alex studied the windows as more fish hurled themselves at the dome, churning the water into a brown murk, mouths puckered and tails swishing with madness. “No…the framework was engineered to hold up against the constant pressure and weight of the water. The carp don’t stand a chance against that, no matter how hard they try.” One hit higher up on the dome and it sounded like cannon fire. Alex winced and gestured toward me. “Why don’t you come over here, though, just to be safe? I don’t…I don’t think they can see us in the center of the room.”
“They see the light,” I said, nodding toward the glass orbs. “It’s drawing them in.”
He glanced up at the room’s zenith, dubiously studying the amount of light coming through the water. “Should we…should we turn them off?”
There was another crack against the glass and I nodded.
Alex flipped the switch, plunging the dome into blackness.
For a moment, it was too dark to see but my eyes adjusted. Dim green light cast strange filters over us, barely limning our edges.
“You’re shivering,” Alex noticed, rolling in close. He took off his jacket and handed it to me.
“Thank you,” I murmured, slipping it on. It was still warm from his body heat and smelled of him.
“Can you help me from the chair? It seems we’re going to be here for a while… We might as well be comfortable.” He flipped the latches that would hold the wheels in place, then talked me through how best to help him out. Once Alex was on the floor, I pushed the chair away, letting him stretch long, and then shyly sat beside him. My skirts, once so boisterous and full, now looked like a sad tulip, pummeled by a rainstorm, limp and listing.
We watched the shadowy bodies of the carp wriggle and squirm, fighting for things they could no longer see. Eventually, they lost interest and swam off to other parts of the lake, looking for things to scare. I wanted to cheer as the last of the beasts left us and the dome’s silence was restored.
“I’m so terribly sorry, Verity,” Alex said quietly.
I turned to him. He was staring down at his hands, his face drawn with remorse.
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything. I wanted to give us this amazing moment, show you how surprising and wonderful life with me could be, and now we’re sitting at the bottom of a lake, waiting out a thunderstorm, and I’ve ruined your dress. I’ve ruined the day. I…” He muttered something too low to hear.
I leaned in. “What did you say?”
A sigh escaped him. “I ruin everything.”
“Alex…that’s not true.”
He laughed. It was bitter and barbed and held no trace of amusement. “My entire life…the line of the Laurent family, the ducal seat, it’s all in jeopardy, just because I fell down a set of stairs as a child.”
“That wasn’t your fault. Things happen. Accidents happen.”
“Tell that to my father.”
My mouth fell open, aghast. “Gerard has said he blames you for that?”
“Never to my face but I’ve heard him in his study at night, when he thinks everyone has gone to bed. Crying. Screaming. Bemoaning the waste of it all.”
“Alex, that’s awful. I…I’m sorry you heard that, but you must know it’s not true. You’re going to become a wonderful duke. You’ve so many ideas, so many big, good ideas for change. For improvements.”
“I could be the greatest leader this province has ever seen but none of it will matter if I can’t carry out the one task every duke is meant to perform.”
“What task?”
He paused for such a long moment, I wondered if he hadn’t heard me. Then, another sigh. “Heirs.”
“Oh.” A second later, the full implication of his statement bloomed over me, a drop of ink in a pool of water, spreading its tint, changing everything around it. “Oh.”
We sat together in the dark, heads full but lips still.
I certainly understood where heirs came from. I’d helped Camille through all her pregnancies and had to assist in Annaleigh’s delivery just last year when she went into labor early during one of my visits to Hesperus.
“Do you…do you know if…” Words utterly failed me, turning me into a stammering, rosy mess.
“It’s not as though I’ve ever had cause to try,” he admitted. “I…I think everything works as it should, but…” He exhaled sharply. “This is absurd. You’re the one person in the world I ought to be able to speak with about this without feeling embarrassed or ashamed but I—” A small sob cut off his words. “I’m so scared I’ve failed you already.”
“Alex.”
I covered his hands with mine, trying to offer him some little bit of soothing comfort, but he jerked them away, crossing his arms over his chest.
“You’ve not failed me. You’ve not failed your family. We…we’ll find out soon enough if…”
“If,” he agreed sadly.
I sighed myself. “We’ll make it work, however it goes.”
“But I don’t want you to have to make it work. I don’t want you to deal with disappointment. I want, I so badly want, to be the man who can give you everything. Who can give you the world. But I can’t. And this”—he gestured broadly across the darkened dome—“this just shows it. I can’t even propose to you without mucking it up.”