Fates and Traitors by Jennifer Chiaverini Page B

had kindled in hers. He would never cast her aside.
    Junius honored her request for time apart, but he wrote to her more frequently and more passionately than before, sometimes several letters a day, full of tender words about his love, the adventures they would share, the higher obligation they owed to true love than to any other mortal consideration. For Christmas he gave her a beautiful, leather-bound collection of Lord Byron’s poems that must have cost a small fortune. It was no simple matter to smuggle the ten volumes up to her bedchamber, but it was worth the risk to keep them nearby rather than leave them with her friend Molly for safekeeping. Byron’s provocative verses thrilled her, intoxicated her, and she perceived in each stunning, magnificent line the terrible beauty Junius wielded on the stage. When she dared not risk lighting the lantern she would rise in the middle of the night and read at the window by moonlight, committing entire poems to memory, climbing back into bed and reciting them in whispers until she fell asleep.
    On the second day of the New Year, her heart leapt when she spotted Junius watching her from across the Covent Garden square. She nodded to him, then lifted her chin to signal that their time apart had come to an end. It took him five minutes to make his careful, peripatetic way to her side, and as he offered a perfunctory nod and studied the contents of her basket, she said, “I have not yet decided. I only wanted to thank you for the wonderful gift.”
    He smiled briefly, bending to smell a rose, newly cut, nurturedtenderly from bud to blossom in her father’s greenhouse. “You said as much in your letter.”
    â€œMy letter could not express all I wished to say.” She was mindful of her clumsy way with words, her lack of even a small fraction of the genius possessed by Junius, by Byron. “When I read Byron’s poetry, when I see you on the stage, I feel—as if I am awake for the first time, and I live in despair of falling asleep again.”
    â€œI will tell Lord Byron you said so.” He straightened, his smile turning ironic. “Without offering your name, of course, for propriety’s sake.”
    â€œYou’re acquainted with Lord Byron?”
    â€œCertainly. He’s on the board of directors of Drury Lane. He counts himself among my admirers.” Junius spoke without so much as a hint of a boast. “Not long ago, as a token of his esteem, he sent me his portrait, a watercolor miniature on a small oval of ivory.”
    â€œOh, my,” Mary Ann gasped. “I should love to see it.”
    â€œI should love to show you.” His smile faded. “I embark on my tour in a fortnight. Tell me I won’t travel alone. Tell me you believe in free love, and that there is no greater sin than suppressing one’s passions, that there is no greater good than to pursue truth and beauty and love. This is what I believe; this is what Lord Byron believes. What do you believe?”
    â€œI believe—” Mary Ann’s voice faltered. “I believe I cannot so easily steal another woman’s husband.”
    â€œNo, Mary Ann,” he said earnestly, shaking his head. “Don’t adhere to that old, moribund doctrine that laws are holier than love. I’m not Adelaide’s to steal. Possession is not love. If I belong to anyone, it’s to you.”
    â€œOne more week,” she implored, “and I’ll give you my answer.”
    She needed only half the time she had requested to make up her mind. She and Junius served the greatest cause of all—true love. She deeply regretted hurting anyone, but she believed—she had to believe—that the grief and outrage her parents and Junius’s wife and son would suffer would be the birth pangs of a glorious new creation.
    On a cold, windy evening in the middle of January, Mary Ann quietly packed her trunk, wrapping the precious volumes