Fallen - Lauren Kate [0]
WITH GRATITUDE AND LOVE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Enormous thanks to everyone at Random House and Delacorte Press for doing so much so quickly and so well. To Wendy Loggia, whose easy generosity and enthusiasm have spurred me on from the beginning. To Krista Vitola, for a hugely helpful behind-the-scenes job. To Brenda Schildgen at UC Davis, for the background and inspiration. To Nadia Cornier, for helping get this whole thing off the ground. To Ted Malawer, for his sharp, graceful, and funny editorial guidance. To Michael Stearns, former boss-man, now trusted colleague and friend. You are, simply, a genius.
To my parents; my grandparents; Robby, Kim, and Jordan; and my new family in Arkansas. Words fail when I think of your unwavering support. I love you all.
And to Jason, who talks to me about characters as if they are real people until I can figure them out. You inspire me, you challenge me, you make me laugh every day. You have my heart.
But paradise is locked and bolted…
We must make a journey around the world
to see if a back door has perhaps been left open.
—HEINRICH VON KLEIST, “On the Puppet Theater”
IN THE BEGINNING
HELSTON, ENGLAND
SEPTEMBER 1854
Around midnight, her eyes at last took shape. The look in them was feline, half determined and half tentative—all trouble. Yes, they were just right, those eyes. Rising up to her fine, elegant brow, inches from the dark cascade of her hair.
He held the paper at arm’s length to assess his progress. It was hard, working without her in front of him, but then, he never could sketch in her presence. Since he had arrived from London—no, since he had first seen her—he’d had to be careful always to keep her at a distance.
Every day now she approached him, and every day was more difficult than the one before. It was why he was leaving in the morning—for India, for the Americas, he didn’t know or care. Wherever he ended up, it would be easier than being here.
He leaned over the drawing again, sighing as he used his thumb to perfect the smudged charcoal pout of her full bottom lip. This lifeless paper, cruel imposter, was the only way to take her with him.
Then, straightening up in the leather library chair, he felt it. That brush of warmth on the back of his neck.
Her.
Her mere proximity gave him the most peculiar sensation, like the kind of heat sent out when a log shatters to ash in a fire. He knew without turning around: She was there. He covered her likeness on the bound papers in his lap, but he could not escape her.
His eyes fell on the ivory-upholstered settee across the parlor, where only hours earlier she’d turned up unexpectedly, later than the rest of her party, in a rose silk gown, to applaud the eldest daughter of their host after a fine turn at the harpsichord. He glanced across the room, out the window to the veranda, where the day before she’d crept up on him, a fistful of wild white peonies in her hand. She still thought the pull she felt toward him was innocent, that their frequent rendezvous in the gazebo were merely … happy coincidences. To be so naïve! He would never tell her otherwise—the secret was his to bear.
He stood and turned, the sketches left behind on the leather chair. And there she was, pressed against the ruby velvet curtain in her plain white dressing gown. Her black hair had fallen from its braid. The look on her face was the same as the one he’d sketched so many times. There was the fire, rising in her cheeks. Was she angry? Embarrassed? He longed to know, but could not allow himself to ask.
“What are you doing here?” He could hear the snarl in his voice, and regretted its sharpness, knowing she would never understand.
“I—I couldn’t sleep,” she stammered, moving toward the fire and his chair. “I saw the light in your room and then”—she paused, looking down at her hands—“your trunk outside the door. Are you going somewhere?”
“I was going to tell you—” He broke off. He shouldn’t lie. He had never intended to let her know his plans. Telling her would only make things worse. Already, he had let things