We had left Byron's chateau on Lake Geneva a week or so before, a move I had welcomed at first. I had imagined that once we were outside that horrible house, things between Shelley and myself might return to normal, that he would stop trying to peer through my eye sockets into my soul and take a new interest in my body. But this was one of the many times I underestimated our host. The poets saw the glow of heaven in every drop of sunshine, smelled death on every breeze, and these concerns consumed them and made them one, leaving no room in the fire for me or any other female and therefore lesser creature. My cousin passed her days in a stupor of laudanum and remembered bliss after her nights in Byron's bed, but I had no such drugs to calm me. By day I struggled to see the world as Shelley saw it, to catch a glimpse of the spirits that beguiled him, but all I saw was his friend, this devil whose tongue prattled divinity but whose smile spoke of the beast ... but that is not part of this story. On this page, I only write the night....

I first saw him in a common room at the inn where we had stopped, somewhere in Italy, I think — everyone's hair was black. But something about this young man's locks captured my attention ... so wild. He was like one of Blake's angels, a being not of this world, the dark, thick hair falling around his shoulders, making a mockery of the ordinary fineness of his coat. His large, black eyes captured mine as we passed, a gaze so deep and beautiful I turned full around to preserve it, twisting away from my husband's arm linked in mine. Clare made some rude remark, suggesting I ask him to join us if I found him such a treat, and I looked away, blushing, and wouldn't look back at him again. But I could feel his eyes on me all through the evening as the men drank and my cousin devolved into the mindless creature Byron could make her with the simplest touch. She slipped off the bench to her lover's feet, and I blushed again, imagining what he must be thinking, this watching angel.

"I am going outside," I announced, pushing away from the table.

Shelley turned to look at me, blinking, as if surprised to find me at his side. "It's so dark," he said stupidly, a child's response.

"Yes, take a lamp," Byron suggested with his hateful smile. "And be careful you don't lose your way."

"Come with me, Clare," I suggested, looking down to where my cousin was wrapping herself cat-like around Byron's boots.

"No," she said through the laugh I had come to despise. "I am afraid of the dark."

Would that that were true, I thought, but I said nothing more, only left.

The moon was a cradle in the sky, its orange glow both soothing and exciting me as it seemed to rock just over the tips of the trees. I walked with purpose from the dooryard and across the road into a meadow beyond, imagining I could hear footsteps just behind me on the spongy turf. By the time I stopped, I could no longer hear anything else — the sounds of the world of the inn were lost in the whispers of the night, a symphony that seemed to come more from inside my own mind than from Nature.

"I knew you would come," I said aloud, uncertain if I expected a response.

"I know," he answered. "I knew you wanted me to come."

I turned to face him, a thrill I recognized as the seed of love shaking me like the cold wind I could hear in the trees. Shelley had made me shiver once with no more than the sound of his voice, saying things I had never dreamed, much less heard. But even that had been different from this, this flash of fire in a moment's recognition.

"I only saw you for a moment," I protested weakly.

He smiled, the expression seeming strange on his beautiful face — angels were serious creatures. "Sometimes that's all it takes." He took a step closer, and I turned away again, frightened, wishing to be pursued. "Your lover called you Mary."

"He isn't my lover." I laughed, a bitter little bark. "He is my husband." His hands slid over my shoulders, a touch from a dream — what real man would dare such a thing? "What manner of creature are you?" I whispered as he kissed my throat.

"What do you imagine me to be?" he answered as he moved around me, his hand cradling my jaw, tilting my gaze up to his. "A man?"

"No," I answered at once, feeling the charge of electricity I had felt before race through me again. "Your touch...." I laid my hand over his, feeling the shape of it, my fingers sliding between his, lacing us together palm to palm as he let me take his hand from my face. "You feel cold."

"I was dead," he said, lifting my wrist toward his mouth. He pressed a kiss to my pulse, and his lips were cold as well, though his expression was warm with affection, almost worship of my pitiful little hand. Why should he so revere my person, look at me with such longing in his eyes, when my own husband accounted me for naught? "Do you understand what I mean?"

"No," I answered again. "How can a dead man kiss my hand?"

His reply was to draw me closer, to enfold me in his arms. My eyes were open until the last possible moment, drinking in the beauty of his face as it loomed and fell over mine, and I kissed him fervently, clinging to him with all my strength. But his embrace was cold, and pressed to his breast, I could feel no beating heart. As dearly as I wanted him in that moment, I knew I held a corpse.

I made some sound, a stifled cry, and he drew back again. "What is it, Mary?" he asked gently, caressing my cheek. "Why are you afraid?"

"Because you didn't lie." I touched his mouth, felt cool breath on my fingers. "What do you want of me?"

He said nothing, only gasped once as if in shock. Leaning down, he kissed me again, softly, first my mouth, then my cheek, then my brow, the kiss of a guardian angel blessing his heaven-sworn child. I closed my eyes and reached out for him, but my hands found only empty air.

I opened my eyes, but he was nowhere to be seen.