Her Dark Curiosity (10 page)

And yet I offered him love,
I thought blackly.
I chose him, but he didn’t choose me.

Edward closed the grate and rubbed his hands together in front of the fire with a boyish grin. I didn’t even consider trying to smile back. My heart was too shaken.

“Where did you get those clothes?” I asked. “They aren’t cheap, and neither is that gold pocket watch.”

He came to the cabinet, where the lantern tossed pools of light over his face. “The Beast keeps a room at a brothel in Soho—I wake there sometimes. He steals clothes and things from the wealthy patrons, always finds men close to my size . . . very thoughtful of the Beast.” The hints of a smile played on his mouth.

“This isn’t a joking matter.”

He swallowed. “I’m sorry—I don’t mean to make light of it. I’ve been staying in the Beast’s room and selling the stolen goods. I know it’s hardly proper, but a brothel’s good cover—I don’t know where else to go. People tend to overlook the screaming when I transform. . . .”

I shuddered at the thought. “You can’t go back there,” I said. “Sooner or later one of the patrons will report the theft, and if Scotland Yard comes to investigate and catches you, it’ll be all over the newspapers, and not long before Father’s mystery colleague gets his hands on you.” I nodded toward the bed, looking away before my cheeks warmed. “You can stay here.”

He nodded, and silence fell around us. He took out his pocket watch, toying with it just to fill the quiet. He wandered to the worktable, where I’d left the laboratory equipment in perfect order, the boiler and beakers and glass vials arranged in descending order of height. It wasn’t a vial he reached for, though, but one of the grafted rosebushes. I’d bound a single white rose to a bush of red, and he touched it as gently as a caress.

“You made these?”

I didn’t answer, afraid he’d point out how similar it was to father’s work, and how the placement of my laboratory equipment mirrored Father’s exactly.

“Yes,” I said at last.

“They’re beautiful.”

A surge of pride swelled in my heart. The kettle started whistling, and I nearly tripped over the dog to fetch it, along with my single mug. I poured him a cup and handed it to him, trying not to think about his compliment. “I’m not used to guests here. I’ve only the one cup.”

“Much obliged,” he said, taking the tea, and only then acknowledged the equipment. “And all of this?”

“I have to have it,” I said quickly. “The serum I take is failing. Father designed it for me as a baby, and as I get older, it’s less effective. I’m trying to cure myself, just like you are.” I let my hand fall over a crystal beaker. “That’s why I offered to help you.”

“Have you had any success?”

“Not yet,” I said, though my voice caught as my eyes fell on the cupboard shelf. A book glowed there in the faint lantern light. It was one of many books I kept on anatomy, and botany, and philosophy, but this one was special. It stood out like a temptation, or maybe an accusation.

It was my father’s journal.

I’d found it the day after Montgomery set me adrift from the island. He must have stowed it there along with the water and food and other supplies. For a while, I had resisted opening it. And yet once I discovered that his serum was failing me, the temptation to look had been too strong. I had opened that leather cover and read his notes—some scrawled, most in his painstakingly precise handwriting. I’d flipped through the pages, desperate for some clues about how to cure myself. And yet the journal hadn’t proven anything, half of it little more than lines of nonsense words and numbers strung together.

I touched Father’s journal delicately, but didn’t dare pull it out. “Father made most of his notations in here, before he transferred everything to the files he kept in his laboratory. There’s a formula for my serum, and the one he used on the islanders, and I’ve been trying to adapt it to my current situation.” I let my hand fall away from the book. “No luck so far. Much of what he says in there is nonsense, anyway. He must have used a personal shorthand when he was writing in a hurry, and I haven’t been able to make sense of it.”

Edward’s eyes didn’t leave the journal. When he spoke, his voice held a quiet sort of hope. “Does it say anything about me? He used cellular traits from human blood to make me. I never found out whose blood it was.”

His fingers were flipping the pocket watch over nervously, and I understood. To Edward it wasn’t just blood in a test tube. That human blood was his only tie to another person—to a family, in a sense.

I shook my head. “It doesn’t say. I’m sorry.”

He turned to the chemistry set, looking through my beakers and vials of supplies. Science, math, literature—these were the things Edward was comfortable with, things easily learned from a book. He made a good show at social interaction, using lines and scenes from obscure plays no one knew, but I didn’t think it ever came naturally to him.

“We can figure it out together,” I said softly. “We’ll cure both of us. It’ll just take time.”

“Time is something I don’t have much of, I’m afraid,” he said. “The longer I’m with the Beast, the more alike we become. I can feel him bleeding into me, trying to take over. I can still delay the transformations, but I’m not sure for how much longer. He could only hold his form minutes at first, a half hour at most. Now he can hold it for two hours.” His eyes met mine over the flickering burner flame, and again I thought about how much darker they looked. “In another month, maybe less, I’m afraid he’ll take over completely.”

My lips parted. This was why he seemed bigger to me, and darker, and stronger. The Beast was melding with him. “Edward . . .”

“I can’t let it get to that, Juliet. He’ll terrorize everything. If he would let me take my own life, I would. I’ve tried a dozen times, but he prevents me.” He paused. “Montgomery nearly killed me, once.” He looked away from the flame. “You shouldn’t have stopped him.”

“Don’t say that,” I whispered.

His flickering eyes found mine. “You know it’s the only possible end for me. I was never meant to exist.”

“But you do exist, Edward. We’ll find the missing ingredient, and we’ll get rid of the Beast.” I realized how desperate my voice sounded. Desperate for him, or desperate for me, now that I had someone in my life who shared my secrets?

“Juliet . . . ,” he muttered, and cupped my cheek with his hand.

Warmth bloomed where he touched my skin. For an instant I leaned into it, as starved for human contact as he was, and wicked temptations whispered in my head before I could twist away in shock of my own response. I’d been lonely, that was all, especially for someone I could talk to freely.

He killed Alice,
I reminded myself, thinking of my father’s sweet young maid.
He could kill you, if you get too close.

“How did you survive the fire?” I asked, as though we could pretend that touch had never happened.

“The Beast is strong. He heals fast. I came to and was able to crawl out before the barn collapsed, and then I salvaged what I could from the house. The letters, for one.”

“I want to see these letters.”

He nodded. “I’ll go back to the brothel and collect them. I must return anyway for the chains I use to bind myself and some changes of clothes.”

I chewed on a fingernail, pacing. “I want to help you, Edward, truly, but not if . . .” I swallowed, thinking of those drained bodies. “Not if you keep killing people.”

“I’ll fetch the chains in the morning. He’s weaker early in the day. If he has the choice, he prefers to emerge at nighttime.”

“And tonight? Can you promise me no one else will die tonight?”

A flash of Annie Benton’s face, Sir Danvers Carew, the red-haired thief girl.

He went to my worktable and searched through the vials, coming back with a heavy dose of sedative. “Give me this, then,” he said.

“That much could kill you.”

“You underestimate how strong I’ve gotten. It’s only for one night. Tomorrow I’ll have the chains.” He held it out to me, and I took it hesitantly. I’d gotten it from a veterinarian who had told me it was used to sedate animals for transportation. If it would stop a lion, it would stop Edward.

“Give me your arm. You’ll fall asleep in ten minutes, twenty at most.” He held it out to me and I inserted the needle into a vein, telling myself there was no choice, that I was doing this so we wouldn’t wake up to any more bloody headlines in the newspaper. I rolled his sleeve back down gently. “One more thing. Promise me you won’t see Lucy again. You’re putting her in danger by being around her.”

He nodded. “I’ll send her a note.”

I felt the weight of the unfinished conversation, and finally asked, “What happened to Montgomery?”

There was the pain again, sharp and quick, in my side, as though when Montgomery had shoved the dinghy away with his boot, he’d kicked in my heart instead. I recapped the syringe, biting the inside of my cheek.

Edward didn’t respond right away, and my mind filled with answers he wasn’t saying. Perhaps he’d killed Montgomery, or one of the beast-men had. Or Montgomery was still there, on the island, content never to see me again.

“He’s alive,” Edward said, but I could tell he was holding something back. “He hunted me for weeks on the island. I left him notes, trying to get him to give me a chance to explain. . . . I thought maybe he could help me with the cure. But he was only interested in hunting me down, and I knew sooner or later he’d have his chance, and he wouldn’t win. The Beast is too strong. So I left, to come here and find a cure before I killed him.”

I toyed with one of the silver forks in the pile of stolen silverware, watching the glints from the lantern. He stepped closer, dropping his voice. “Forget him, Juliet. He abandoned you. He was keeping secrets from you.”

I glanced up from the fork. “Secrets?”

“That he was helping your father, that he’d made some of the creatures himself, and worst of all . . .” He stopped and looked away.

“What secret?” I asked. When he didn’t answer, I let the fork clatter to the floor and grabbed his suit lapel a little roughly. “What other secret was Montgomery keeping from me, Edward?”

“It doesn’t matter. You loved him, and he left you. I’d never do that to you. I’d sooner cut off my own hand than do anything to cause you pain.” My fingers were still coiled in the stiff fabric of his lapel, and he whispered, “If you’d only give me a chance . . .”

But I stepped back toward the cabinet, away from his promises and his offers. My breath was coming fast. The world was an upside-down place when Montgomery James was keeping secrets from me and Edward Prince telling me the truth.

But Edward was right—Montgomery
had
lied to me. He had left me.

I grabbed my coat before he could say another word, and said, “The professor will have half the city out looking for me. It’s so late . . . I must get back. I’ll leave Sharkey here with you; the drugs will put you to sleep in a few minutes, so lock the door behind me. If you aren’t too groggy tomorrow, go through Father’s journal—maybe you can make sense of it. I’ll come back tomorrow night with fresh supplies.” I squeezed the doorknob, afraid to let go. Terrified to leave him, terrified that I still might read of fresh murders tomorrow in the newspaper. Sedatives might not be enough. Chains might not be enough. I had seen what the Beast could do. I’d have to make something even stronger to contain him until we could find the cure.

As I slid into my coat, my eyes darted around the room. Edward, so handsome as he checked his pocket watch, stood amid the twisted rosebushes, with Sharkey curled on the hearth and a warm fire churning away. Almost a sweet scene, if it wasn’t so terrible. I threw on my coat and shut the door, heart pounding.

I leaned my head back against the worn wood of the stairwell, eyes closed, uncertain if I was making the biggest mistake of my life by helping a murderer, or if I had found the one person in the world who understood me.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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TWELVE

W
HEN
I’
D LEFT THE
house that morning, the professor had been so distracted by that Isambard Lessing’s visit that he hadn’t asked when I’d be home. By now he must be worried sick, and I imagined every light would be blazing, a search party gathered on the front steps.

But as I approached the brownstone on Dumbarton Street, not a single light shone in the windows. The professor’s routine was predictable to a fault; brandy after dinner and a book until nine, then at the chime of the cuckoo clock, he retired to his bedroom on the third floor. But even as a man of habit, would he have dismissed Mary for the day and gone to bed without me home? Could he have been so distracted over his argument with Isambard Lessing that he’d forgotten to look in my room?

My mind turned back to that historian, and with a sharp stab I remembered that the professor had introduced Lessing as a King’s Man. Could the professor have never left the King’s Club at all? Could Edward have possibly been right, that he was the secret colleague?

Fears stirring, I slunk past the iron gate and tiptoed through the snow to climb the garden trellis. When I reached my bedroom window, shivering in the cold, I discovered that the window wouldn’t move. I shoved my weight against it, but it held fast. I squinted through the glass. The padlock had been substituted with a fresh one.

Blast.
This didn’t bode well.

I climbed back down and jumped into the garden, hesitant to knock on the door and wake the professor if it could at all be avoided. Fortunately, as I skirted the house, I found that Mary had left the kitchen window open a crack, and I silently thanked her forgetfulness. I gracelessly hoisted myself onto the window ledge and slid my stiff fingers into the crack, opening it as silently as I could.

The kitchen was dark, the icebox and basin hulking shadows. I eased my head and shoulders in, kicking my feet to try to slide in further.