The riverside at Chelsea Embankment was a promenade under plane trees heavy with leaves, visible only as dark clouds above James’s head, their wet trunks illuminated by the ghostly globes of the cast-iron lampposts that lined the river’s edge. The Thames, beyond the river wall, was barely distinguishable in the thick fog: only the sound of a petrol-powered police boat chugging past and the gleams of a bobby’s lantern on its wake betrayed the river’s presence.

James was early. He started walking slowly toward the arch of Battersea Bridge, trying to quell his impatience and worry. Grace. He recalled their kiss in the park, the inchoate agony that had risen up inside him. As if he were being stabbed through with a needle. A premonition of demons, perhaps, the unknown danger so close, the shadow realm just touching this one. It was hard to know, but then it was hard to know anything that had to do with Grace. There were times when he thought of her that he felt such pain that all his bones seemed strung on a single wire, and he imagined that if the wire was pulled taut, it would kill him.

“How much is love meant to hurt?” he had asked his father once.

“Oh, terribly,” his father had said with a smile. “But we suffer for love because love is worth it.”

Suddenly she was there, as if she had appeared between one moment and another, standing beneath an ornate triple-headed lamppost at the near end of the bridge: a small, misty figure in the fog, dressed as she always was in light colors, her face a pale moon in the lamplight. James broke into a run, and she dashed down the steps of the bridge toward where he stood on the embankment.

When they reached each other, she threw her arms around him. Her hands were cool against the back of his neck, and he felt dizzy and assailed by memories: the crumbling walls of Blackthorn Manor, the shadows in the forest where they’d sat and talked together, her hand fastening the silver bracelet around his wrist.…

James drew away enough to look down into her face. “What happened?” he said. “Your letter said you were in danger.”

She dropped a hand now to circle his wrist, her fingers sliding over the band of metal as if to make sure it was still there. Her fingers pressed against his pulse point. “Mama is mad with rage. I don’t know what she will do. She told Charles—”

“I know what she told Charles,” he said. “Please tell me you were not worried about me, Grace.”

“You came to the house to see me,” she said. “Did you know that Cordelia was there?”