Her Dark Curiosity (11 page)

I had almost made it when two hands grabbed me under the arms and hauled me roughly the rest of the way.

I would have screamed if I’d found a voice. As it was I fought and clawed, but the figure dropped me unceremoniously on the kitchen floor, where my knees banged on the hard stones and made stars flash in my eyes as I winced in pain. I reached for my knife, but my coat and skirts tangled around me as my hair spilled loose. I was able to push my hair back just in time to see a dark figure moving toward the kitchen table and striking a match.

The match flared to life, showing the face of a woman. My hand paused above my boot, more in surprise than anything.
A stranger,
I thought at first, but no, that wasn’t right—I recognized something in her long, loose blond hair, the fine set of her features only starting to show the first signs of wrinkles around her deep-set eyes, her Germanic ancestry evident in her face, just like the professor’s.

“Elizabeth,” I said in a stunned whisper.

She lit the hurricane lantern calmly, as though it didn’t trouble her in the least that I was collapsed in a bruised pile on the kitchen floor. She took a seat at the table and motioned to the opposite seat.

“Miss Moreau, a surprise to be meeting again like this. Though I imagine you won’t mind if I call you Juliet, seeing as formality flew out the window when you crawled through it.”

I scrambled into the seat, rubbing my elbow from where I’d banged it. Ten years had passed since I’d last seen her, and yet little wear showed on her features. Her hair was just as beautiful as ever as it tumbled to her waist in soft waves that glowed in the lantern light. She was still dressed despite the late hour, in a pale red dress that was quite simple, though even a rag would look elegant on her. She gave me a smile that was slightly off balance, the only quirk in an otherwise perfectly proportioned face, and it looked so much like the professor’s that I started.

“When did you arrive?” I stuttered.

“Shortly before lunch. The professor had fallen asleep in the library, and asked me to check on you in your bedroom and say hello. Imagine my surprise when I found the room empty and the window lock broken.”

“I’m sorry about that.” I swallowed thickly. “And about sneaking back in through the kitchen window. I didn’t want to worry the professor.”

“I didn’t wish to worry him either, which is why I told him you weren’t feeling well and were not to be disturbed for the remainder of the day.”

“He doesn’t know that I wasn’t here?” I said, feeling a coil of hope.

“I kept your secret,” she said, flashing those shrewd blue eyes at me. “For the time being, at least.”

“Don’t tell him, please. I was only—”

She held her hand up, silencing me. “Whatever you’re going to tell me won’t be the truth, but we’re all entitled to our secrets. I remember what it meant to be a young woman in a city like this. In a
life
like this, where everyone is watching your every move. The professor told me you were clever, and that broken lock on your bedroom window seemed to support that theory, so I left the kitchen window cracked after he went to bed and hoped you had the good sense to climb in through it. It’s what I would have done.” She leaned forward. “You’d be wise to never sneak out of this house again, or else you had better get far craftier at it, because if I catch you another time I won’t hold my tongue.”

I nodded, unable to look her in the eye. Now I’d disappointed the professor’s niece, too, before I had barely met her. She stood and crossed to the still-open window, which let in slips of cold air that left me shivering, and slid it closed. When she took her seat at the table again, the sternness had eased from her face, and a deep concern knotted her brow in its place.

This is how a mother might look,
I thought, and the idea filled me with a sense of loss and longing.

“Now that we’ve gotten that behind us, you aren’t in trouble, are you?” Her eyes had a way of reaching somewhere deep inside me, beyond my past and my indiscretions and focusing instead only on my well-being. Such care from a stranger made my chest tight with emotion I didn’t know how to process.

I shook my head quickly. “No trouble. It was only a silly lark, sneaking out to see a friend.”

She raised an eyebrow, uncertain whether to believe me, but then jerked her chin toward the top of the stairs, dismissing me. I gathered my skirt and hurried up, still shaken, and closed myself in my room.

I didn’t know what I had been expecting from Elizabeth’s arrival. Perhaps just one more person to lie to. I certainly hadn’t expected a woman who thought like I thought, who anticipated my every move.

Who would lie
for
me.

T
HE NEXT DAY
L
UCY
and I had an appointment at Weston’s Dressmakers to be fitted for gowns for the masquerade ball. Elizabeth insisted that Ellis take me in the carriage and wait outside the store, because of all the Wolf of Whitechapel panic in the city. As the carriage rolled down the Strand, I heard the call of at least a dozen newspaper boys yelling out headlines, all of them about the Wolf. I pushed back the curtain and watched the swarms around the boys, everyone hungry for news of the city’s latest mass murderer. Signs had been pasted on the sides of buildings and alleyways with his nickname in thick red ink. I even saw two men and a portly older woman wearing metal breastplates not unlike Inspector Newcastle’s, as though the murderer might leap out onto the busiest street in London and try to rip their hearts out right there. I let the curtain fall back, disgusted. This city hungered for violence nearly as much as the Beast did.

As I climbed out of the carriage, the sound of tense words caught my ear. A few paces from the dress shop doorway, Lucy and Inspector Newcastle stood arguing while his police carriage waited in the street with the door still open. On instinct my stomach tightened, but I took a deep breath and tried to remember that he wouldn’t arrest me. In fact, having a police officer close to Lucy while Edward was in the city might be the most fortunate thing that had happened to me in a while. As I approached them, I caught the tail end of the inspector’s words.

“I’m only saying that your father knows best. No one’s heard of this man’s family. How can you be certain he isn’t trying to take advantage of your father’s money?”

“Of course no one knows him; he’s from Finland!”

“Darling, Henry Jakyll is a complete stranger. You might think yourself infatuated with him, but your father has barely even met him, and—”

“Father’s
the one who wants to keep me from Henry? Not you?”

As I approached, Inspector Newcastle caught sight of me. He straightened and smoothed his jacket over his breastplate. “Miss Moreau, a pleasure to see you again.”

Lucy’s head turned to me too, but her scowl didn’t leave. “Good, you’re here. John was just
leaving.”

“Lucy, darling—” he started, but stopped as the scowl on her face deepened. He leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, but she pulled away and stormed into the dress shop with a wild clatter from the bell.

The inspector stared at the doorway, looking disheveled and lost.

“I’ve upset her, I’m afraid,” he said, and then gave a deep sigh. “And not for the first time.”

He looked crestfallen, and I searched for words but could only keep staring at his breastplate and thinking of the preposterous fervor I’d witnessed downtown. “You’ve started a fashion trend,” I said. “It seems quite a few people have adopted your penchant for protective garments.”

He gave a humble shrug. “They think because I’m leading the investigation, I must be a good example to follow. Well, it doesn’t hurt anyone. Perhaps it might even save someone’s life.” I raised an eyebrow doubtfully, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“You haven’t reconsidered my offer, have you?” he asked. “I truly would like to close the case on your father. A promotion would help Lucy see me in a . . . more favorable light. Especially such a personal case. It might give you some peace of mind, too, Miss Moreau.”

I pulled my hood higher. “I’m sorry. I appreciate your concern, but I really can’t help you.”

He looked as though he might say something more, but then changed his mind and opened the door for me. I slipped past him into the dress shop.

A pair of seamstresses looked up as the bell chimed, as did Lucy, flipping a little angrily through a book of sewing patterns. I sat on a peach-colored chaise, while one of the seamstresses brought me a book of cloth swatches and a tray of biscuits. I halfheartedly felt the various samples of velvets, muslins, silks—they all felt itchy to me.

“John proposed,” Lucy said at last.

“Oh my.”

Her eyes flickered to the seamstresses, and she pulled me through the silk curtains into the privacy of a small dressing room that smelled of French perfume, with a screen and a stuffed ottoman, which she now flopped onto.

“He came around last night and told me he’d asked Papa for permission. I turned him down, and Aunt Edith spilled about Henry coming over for tea, and you should have heard the row.” She shuddered at the memory.

“Lucy, I’m so sorry. Are you quite certain you don’t care for him? He seems . . .” I fumbled for an appropriately pleasing word. “Responsible.”

Drat.
Responsible
would never sway Lucy.

Her graceful fingers toyed with the ribbons on her gown. I took a deep breath, poised to tell her I also didn’t trust Henry, and that she should stay away from him, when she stood up abruptly.

“Well. It doesn’t matter. Henry sent me a letter early this morning, telling me he was leaving town and I wouldn’t see him again.” I heard the sting in her voice, though she tried to hide it. “So I couldn’t have had him anyway, even if Papa had approved. That means it’s either John or some fat vicar’s son, I suppose.” Her face grew serious, which didn’t fit with the almost revoltingly cheerful atmosphere of the dressing room.

I hesitated. I’d intended to warn her away from Edward, but it seemed Edward had already kept his promise and done my work for me.

“That must have been hard for you, but perhaps it’s for the best. You used to swear that Henry bored you as much as the others.”

She flicked an impatient glance at me. “Yes, but you know me. I can’t possibly admit when I actually
do
care. And Henry was different. I actually enjoyed his company, quite a lot.”

I swallowed back my guilt for not telling her the truth that Henry—Edward—was right this moment in my attic chamber, and that he had always been far more interested in me.

She turned on me a little abruptly, and said, “We’re like sisters, aren’t we? We tell each other everything. You came to me with that awful business about Dr. Hastings, so it makes sense that I should reciprocate, if there was something bothering me as well. Something I wasn’t certain how to handle.”

There was something tense in her movements that I hadn’t seen before. She kept toying with her ribbons, watching me carefully.

“Are we still talking about your suitors?” I asked slowly. “Or is this about something else?”

She paced a little before the full-length mirror, which reflected the sharp angles of her face, her dark hair coiled in intricate pins atop her head. “It’s . . .” She paused. “Well, it’s nothing really. Just some business with my father, some investments he’s made that I worry about. But what do I know about business?”

She was trying to turn her tone back to playfulness, but there was something in her eyes I rarely saw. Fear.

My voice dropped. “Lucy, what exactly is going on?”

But she silenced me with a curt wave as footsteps sounded outside the heavy curtain. One of the seamstresses drew back the fabric and asked us if everything was going all right, and if we’d like more biscuits.

After we’d dismissed her, Lucy smiled tightly and said, “Never mind, it’s nothing. Papa’s business isn’t why we’re here, is it? You listen to me rattling off about men so much, the least I can do is help you pick out a dress. Don’t you dare try to come to the masquerade in one of those old-maid dresses the professor usually buys for you. Mother and Papa want you to be a guest of honor. Go on. Peel those clothes off.”

I tried to conjure a smile to match her tone, but it wouldn’t come.

“Don’t just stand there,” she said. “Take off that awful coat and throw it into the rubbish bin. Those stockings, too, while you’re at it; they look like they’re from the last decade. I’ve picked out a gown for you, behind the dressing screen.”

The gown hung on a wooden hangar, red satin, low lace collar, and sleeves that floated like clouds. I touched the fabric tentatively between thumb and forefinger, afraid my presence alone would stain it. I didn’t deserve this—not the gown, and not her kindness.

I came out from behind the screen, frowning. “It’s too fine for me.”

“Good lord, how many times must I tell you that you aren’t a maid any longer?”

“It’s just that all of this isn’t really my world anymore.”

“Of course it is!” She rested her hands on her hips. “I know what this is about. You’ve no one to take you to the masquerade. Well, I’ve refused John, and Henry’s left me, so I haven’t anyone either.
I’ll
be your escort.” She smiled so broadly that I hadn’t a clue what to say. I couldn’t help but feel her joviality masked the pain from Henry’s rejection and the questions she had over her father’s business.

“Lucy, don’t be silly.”

“I’m perfectly serious! Come on, you’d have half the men in London after you if you weren’t so dour. That’s why this masquerade is so perfect for you. The whole point is to be someone else.”

Her lips curled, and this time I did manage to smile back. The idea of being someone else certainly had its appeal. Not daughter to a madman. Not jilted by Montgomery. Not a girl who found a flower laced with blood and kept it pressed in a heavy book.

Lucy slid her arm in mine and led me back around the dressing screen. I touched the lace trim of the red silk dress, imagining its feel against my skin.

“Try it on,” she said. “And then decide.”