The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(76)
Emma looked straight at him, disturbed and upset by his sudden change of tone. And then, something happened: it was as though a fissure had opened in the young woman’s dark pupils, and, like peering through a hole in a wall, Murray glimpsed through the flutter of eyelids a small girl gazing back at him with pleading eyes. That angry, sad girl had black ringlets, wore a yellow dress, and was clutching a strange scroll of paper tied with a red ribbon. Startled, the millionaire wondered who this was. Was he seeing Emma as a child? But how could that be? Or was he simply imagining her as a little girl? But if so then how could he conjure her up in such vivid, precise detail? Her hair, her dress, the strange scroll . . . Murray had no idea, yet he sensed he was in communion with Emma’s soul, that some form of miracle or magic was occurring between them, making the impossible happen, allowing him to see her as she really was. The illusion vanished as quickly as sea foam left by the waves. Yet, before the little girl sank back into the shadows, before the fissure in the eyes staring at him closed up once more, Murray was able to know everything about her: he knew that she was not happy, that she could not remember ever having been happy, and that, in truth, she was not sure she ever would be happy. And above all he knew that that little girl was afraid, terribly afraid, because the woman in whose body she was trapped was slowly smothering her, and that soon there would be nothing left of her. That glimpse lasted only an instant, but it was more valuable to Murray than a lifetime’s acquaintance. When the little girl vanished, and Emma’s pupils recaptured their intense arrogance, Murray averted his gaze, shaken to the roots of his being. That little girl had been pleading for help, and he knew, with absolute certainty, that he must save her. That only he could prevent her from disappearing forever.
“Well, Mr. Gilmore,” he heard Emma say, as though speaking to him from a dim, distant place, “since you are so keen to know what I want, I shall tell you in plain English, and hope that you mean it when you say you only desire my happiness.”
Murray looked up slowly, still overwhelmed by that peculiar, unexpected communion he had experienced with the girl from whom Emma appeared so estranged. He must make the glimpsed girl smile so that the woman whom she was trapped inside could also smile. He had to show her how wonderful the world was, the myriad reasons it contained for making its inhabitants happy, even though he himself had doubted this. Yet what did the real world matter when he had enough money and imagination to create any world she desired, a world where everything was perfect, and whose laws she alone would decree.
“I want you to stop courting me,” Emma said brusquely. “That’s what I want. I shall never reciprocate any of your sentiments, and I’m afraid that, unlike many women, I wouldn’t be capable of pretending something I don’t feel. So, you may keep your precious time, Mr. Gilmore, and I suggest you put it to some better use than trying to attain something that, although your pride prevents you from recognizing it, is beyond you.”
Murray smiled at her and shook his head gently.
“If I stop courting you, Miss Harlow, it will be the first time in my life I don’t achieve what I want. And depuis notre rencontre, vous êtes mon seul désir,” he concluded.
Emma looked at him, incensed by his rudeness. With a sigh of frustration, she turned and strode off, leaving him standing alone on the bridge. Murray watched her walk away, still smiling despite her response. It was true that he had always achieved what he wanted, yet the thing he desired now, for the first time in his life, had nothing to do with his own happiness, but with hers. Consequently, all of a sudden, he no longer felt any urgency, no burning, selfish need to fulfill his desire. And that was his advantage over Emma’s other suitors: he could spend his life waiting for her, because his life was no longer his own. He belonged to her. And Emma would be his because he had all the time in the world to wait for her to accept him. His whole life. He would love her for as long as necessary, ceaselessly, and with the same intensity. He would love her from afar, without any need to touch her, as one might admire a star or the stained glass windows in a cathedral. He would love her as they grew old, watching her live out her life from a distant shore, like a thousand-year-old tree that time had given up on, in the hope that she would at last turn toward him and open her arms, whether because she was disillusioned, curious, widowed, cuckolded, fickle, or for any other reason, and then he would show that lost little girl what happiness was.
? ? ?
MURRAY REALIZED AT LAST that Emma had gone there with the sole purpose of beating him at his own game, of ridding herself of him in a manner as polite as it was refined: by asking him for something he could not possibly achieve.
Emma’s visit to his house for tea had made it clear to him that she only valued actions, that in order to marry her he had to reproduce the Martian invasion in H. G. Wells’s novel.
Him, again. The man he hated more than anyone in the world.
And now, strolling around the abandoned warehouse, he wondered whether he could re-create the Martian invasion. But he was a past master at such challenges, he told himself. Gazing at the time tram with which he had penetrated the future, he was filled with an almost aching happiness. For on August 1, Emma Harlow, the most beautiful woman on the planet, would agree to become his wife. And then she would fall in love with him. Yes, of that he was certain. For he was Gilliam Murray, Master of Time.
And he could achieve the impossible.