Her Dark Curiosity (26 page)

Balthazar nodded his agreement. “That’s good, miss. No one should be alone. Not a girl. Not a dog, either.”

At last I set Sharkey down and went upstairs to my room, where I locked the door and climbed onto my silk bedcover, then opened my journal to the page with the pressed white flower. I picked it up by the stem, afraid to touch the delicate dried petals. Edward had warned me that his transformations were coming more frequently and unpredictably. I had been so arrogant to think I could cure him of an illness so insidious.

I replaced the flower and closed the journal angrily. If only I’d just told the professor everything, this might not have happened. He might not have been home alone, or opened the door for a stranger.

But it was too late.

I feared it was too late for Edward as well. Montgomery and I would find him. If we couldn’t strangle the Beast out of him, if there was no way to separate the two, then I’d kill him myself.

The only thing I was certain of was that the beast inside Edward Prince would not have another chance to kill anyone I loved.

I
WAS USED TO
long, sleepless nights, but that was one of the longest of my life. Inspector Newcastle finished and came to the kitchen to bid me farewell, startled by the sight of Balthazar and his strange deformities. The police removed the professor’s body, and Mary came to clean the bloodstains on the floor, crying soft tears into the parquet floor. It wasn’t until the cuckoo clock chimed midnight that the house was ours again. Elizabeth made us a pot of licorice tea and we retired to the library—none of us wanted to be anywhere near the study with the reminder of the professor’s unblinking eyes.

Elizabeth had changed into a simple white lace dress with a housecoat, elegant as always. The only clue to the night’s horror was her hair, which now hung limp down her back, instead of in its usual curls. I thought of her petting the wooden cuckoo bird, and my heart clenched all over again.

“Well, drink,” she said, as none of us took our cups. “The man loved a good licorice tea. You’re doing his memory a disservice by letting it go cold.”

Montgomery cleared his throat and took a cup with the awkward manners of a former servant who wasn’t used to being served himself. “Very grateful, madam.” He’d pulled his hair back and unbuttoned his shirt a few buttons, and he looked quite possibly like the most handsome man I’d ever seen.

“Now that the professor is gone, your guardianship falls to me, Juliet.” Elizabeth paused, as though there was something more she wished to say. But her eyes flashed to Balthazar in the corner, and she shook her head, changing her mind. “It’s been a long night. We should all get as much sleep as we can.”

She pressed her lips to my forehead and whispered a prayer I couldn’t make out.

As soon as she was gone, I slumped in the chair, exhausted. Montgomery asked Balthazar to take Sharkey into the kitchen for a cup of water, with a mind to spare his friend the conversation I knew we were fated to have.

The fire crackled, and the room smelled like licorice, and all I could picture was blood.

“It was the Beast,” I whispered.

Montgomery ran a hand over his face. “I know.”

“He killed the
professor,
Montgomery. He has to be stopped.”

“I’ve been scouring the city. He hasn’t left a single track.”

I swallowed. He hadn’t left a track because I’d told him his previous room at the brothel wasn’t safe and then warned him about Montgomery following him, and this is what my warning had gotten us—the professor, murdered.

“He was staying in a lodging house in Shoreditch, the attic room, for a time,” I said softly. “Though you’ll never find him there now; he wouldn’t dare return after this, nor to the room he kept before. But I know how we can find him. Wait here.” I ran upstairs and retrieved the pressed white flower from within my journal, then returned and set it on the tea table. “He leaves these at his crime scenes. They’re very rare; he must be getting them from somewhere.”

Montgomery took the flower from the table, and my stomach cringed to see such a delicate thing in his graceless hands, afraid he’d crush it. My anguished heart didn’t know what to make of all this. Edward had never betrayed me, and yet now I forsook him in cold blood. But what choice did we have?

When I opened my eyes, Montgomery’s blue eyes held a strange sort of look, almost as though I was a stranger to him. He had only looked at me that way once before, when I had frantically climbed into the wagon on the island as the compound had burned—only seconds after I had helped kill my father. To this day, I still didn’t know if he had seen how I’d helped Jaguar enter the laboratory.

That’s when I realized the look in his eye was fear. He was afraid of the things I was capable of. He was afraid of
me.
My heart surged again in worry, and I bit my lip nearly hard enough to taste blood. Did he know my greatest secret? Had he seen what I’d done that night on the island?

Would he still love me if he did?

“We’ll find out where the flower’s from,” he said carefully. “And then we’ll do what needs to be done.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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TWENTY-EIGHT

T
HE FLOWER SHOP WHERE
I sold my grafted rosebushes was one of London’s finest, owned by a Middle Eastern couple who imported their flowers from countries I’d scarcely even heard of. As I made my way toward Narayan Flowers & Wholesalers, I clutched my satchel with the journal inside. It had taken some time to convince Montgomery that instead of coming with me, his time would be better spent eavesdropping on the King’s Club members.

I entered the flower shop, jumping as the bell tinkled above the glass door. A dark-skinned middle-aged woman in a bright orange scarf leaned over the counter. She held a broom in her hand as elegantly as a parasol’s handle.

“Ah, Miss Moreau. How are those roses coming?” She set the broom aside and brushed clippings off the counter-top, sending dancing pollen into the hazy morning sunlight. It smelled of summertime here, amid the flowers that watched from every corner with perfect and still attention.

“I hope to have a few more finished before New Year’s, Mrs. Narayan, but I actually came today to ask you a question. Do you know anything about tropical flowers?”

She gave me half a smile. “Where do you think we import most of these from?”

I took a hesitant step forward, clutching my journal through the satchel’s stiff leather. I dared a glance at the street outside, nervous about revealing the flower, which by all rights should have been logged into Scotland Yard’s evidence file.

“Would you take a look at a flower to see if you can identify it?” I asked.

“Of course. Let’s see it,” she said, nodding to the counter.

I slid the flower from my journal’s pages and set it on the counter. “I’d like to know where one can buy them in town. It’s quite important.”

She stooped down, eying the flower almost nose to nose. A tiny, feathered white seedpod drifted across the room to settle on my coat sleeve. I pressed it between my fingers as if it might grant a wish.

To find Edward,
I wished on impulse.
To be wrong about him, and learn the professor’s death was caused by something else, someone else. . . .

It was a silly wish, and I let the seedpod fall on the floor.

Her drumming fingers stopped suddenly. When her eyes shot to mine, they no longer looked cheerful. “Where did you get this flower?” she asked.

I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I found it on the street. I . . . thought it quite lovely and wanted to buy more.”

She thrust the flower back at me. “It’s called
Plumeria selva.
You won’t find this flower for sale in any shop, not even the most exotic stores. It wouldn’t last long enough out of water to import it, and it isn’t valuable enough to grow in a commercial greenhouse.” She spoke her next words very carefully. “Which is exactly what I told Scotland Yard, when they came around asking if we sold them.”

She leaned forward, dropping her voice to a whisper. “You’ve read the newspapers, haven’t you? That flower is the calling card of the Wolf of Whitechapel. If you found one in the street, it might be important to their investigation. You must turn it in to the police.”

I stowed the flower back in my book. “Of course,” I lied. “I’ll head there straightaway.” I slid the journal into my bag, but hesitated. “Just out of curiosity, if the murderer didn’t purchase them from any shops in London, where do you think they came from?”

Mrs. Narayan picked up her broom again, fingers drumming on the handle, reluctant to dwell on such grisly topics. “He must grow them himself, though I have no idea why. Perhaps he lives outside of the city with enough space for a hothouse or a winter garden. It would have to be someplace warm and humid, and even then he would have to be a master gardener to grow tropical flowers in England.”

Edward certainly had no private hothouse, nor was he any type of gardener.
Somewhere hot and humid,
I thought, mind turning back to the island. It struck me then—the one place that always made me feel as though I was back on that sun-drenched slip of land.

The Royal Botanical greenhouse.

“Well.” I gave her an unsteady nod. “I supposed I’d best be off to Scotland Yard.”

I hurried from the store with my heart clanging as loud as the bell.

I rushed back to the professor’s, heart thumping at what I’d learned. The morning sky was clouding over with a threatening storm, and shoppers hurried past, anxious to be out of the weather and tucked near a warm fire with their loved ones, singing “Silent Night” and “We Three Kings.”

When I arrived, I found Montgomery gone but Balthazar home, making licorice tea for Elizabeth, who sat in the library with an open book and those reading glasses that made her look so like her uncle. I stood in the doorway and observed her; she didn’t turn a single page, just stared at the professor’s old decanter.

“A man came by today,” she said, surprising me, somehow sensing that I was there. “A historian by the name of Isambard Lessing.”

I came in and sat on the brocade sofa opposite her. “Was he after your family’s journals again?” I asked.

Her head cocked as she regarded me strangely. “Journals?”

“He came to visit the professor several weeks ago, asking about the heirlooms and things.”

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “Is that what the professor told you? No, my dear, that’s not what Lessing was after at all. He was asking about
you.
I told him nothing, of course. Any interest an old man like him would have in a young girl can’t be good.”

I swallowed, uncertain what to make of this information. “What did he ask, exactly?”

“He wished to speak to you. Some nonsense about a trust the college had established in your father’s name . . . not a word of it true, I’m sure. I can smell a liar. I don’t even think history is his true profession.” Her forehead wrinkled in worry. “You must be careful, Juliet.”

The professor had lied to me, then. Lessing had come asking questions about me—on King’s Club’s orders, no doubt—and the professor had argued with him and then made up some story about heirlooms so I wouldn’t worry. One more thing the professor had done to improve my life, perhaps even save it, that I’d never be able to thank him for.

“Elizabeth—” I started, wanting to offer my condolences, but she cut me off.

“The funeral will be Thursday at Saint Paul’s. That’s where his grave plot is. He was well loved in this city; it’ll be a grand affair.” She wiped a thin hand over her face. “I wish I didn’t have to attend. I know that sounds terrible, but all those people, all offering their condolences when they hardly knew him. . . I don’t know how I’ll get through it.”

From the corner of my eye I saw ghosts of movement in the doorway, and looked up to find Montgomery returned from his errand. His face was deeply lined.

I gave Elizabeth’s hand a good squeeze, and then kissed her on the cheek just as tenderly as she’d kissed me the night before. “You won’t be alone. I’ll be with you.”

I met Montgomery in the hallway, where he motioned for me to follow him into my bedroom and close the door.

“What did you discover?” I asked.

The heavy set to his features told me whatever he’d found wasn’t good. He glanced toward the door and said, “Crates.”

“Crates?”

“Railroad shipping crates. You recall that we overheard the King’s Men mention Rochefort, the French ambassador, at the masquerade? I followed his carriage to Southhampton train station, where he met with Radcliffe and three station masters about constructing several dozen crates reinforced with steel beams. For automobile parts, they said, on a shipment to the French Ministry of Defense that Rochefort was negotiating for one week after New Year’s Day.”

I frowned. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“They were drilling air holes in the crates, Juliet.”

The realization hit me hard enough that I sank against the wall. “They’re going to ship the creatures,” I whispered, since the words were too terrible to voice aloud. “They’re going to make the creatures and ship them to France—to the Ministry of Defense. . . .”

Montgomery nodded gravely. “All they need is Edward.”

“We have to find him first,” I said, fumbling in my satchel for the journal. “I showed the flower to Mrs. Narayan. I know where he’s been getting the
Plumeria—the
Royal Botanical greenhouse; it’s the only place with the right climate. The professor used to take me to flower shows there on the weekends; the Beast must have followed me, and it reminded him of the island. It’ll be closed now for Christmas week. The perfect place for Edward to hide out.”

Church bells chimed, and I looked through the window to see the snow had started, soft flakes that fell over the holly branches, as a governess on the sidewalk struggled to get her three charges to stop catching them on their tongues.