Her Dark Curiosity (34 page)

“And your role in all of this?”

“To control the police force, of course. To hunt down Moreau’s creation under the guise of an investigation for a mass murderer.” He took one final puff of his pipe. “And some of the more distasteful tasks, I’m afraid. I’m the newest member—it was part of initiation.”

“What was?”

He set his pipe down. “Murdering your guardian.”

I cried out, lunging for his pipe with the intention to bash it through his nose into his brain. But he’d anticipated that, and held me back against the soft velvet seat.

“I admire your bravery, but I will need you to reconsider. I would hate to kill such a pretty young thing. Lucy would be inconsolable.”

I dug my nails into his fine velvet seat, ripping the fabric. “You’re as mad as my father was!”

“I’m determined. There’s a difference.”

With a panicked whinny from one of the horses, the carriage jerked to a sudden halt.

I heard a shuffle outside, followed by a quick yell from the driver. The cab jolted, then rocked back and forth, the lantern flickered wildly. Newcastle was thrown against the opposite bench.

The door flew open.

“Balthazar!” I cried as his hulking figure filled the doorway. Newcastle’s eyes went wide at the sight of him. That pause was all I needed for Balthazar to haul me, still wrapped in Newcastle’s coat, out of the carriage. My bare feet touched frozen pavement, where Sharkey yipped with his tail wagging. Newcastle reached after me, but Balthazar caught his arm and wrenched him from the carriage, knocking his head cleanly against the door. The inspector slumped to the pavement next to the equally unconscious driver.

Balthazar pointed a meaty finger to Sharkey. “He came to the house. Montgomery didn’t understand what he wanted, but I did.”

“He led you to us.”

“Yes,” Balthazar said, bending down to pat the little bug-eyed dog. “Good dog.”

“Indeed. I owe you both my thanks, but now we must run,” I said. “I’ve a place in Shoreditch that Newcastle doesn’t know about. Will you take me there?”

Balthazar picked me up in Newcastle’s thick coat, since I could hardly walk the frozen streets barefoot, and with Sharkey trotting alongside us, carried me through the snow.

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THIRTY-SEVEN

I
HADN’T RETURNED TO
my attic chamber since the night I warned Edward about the King’s Club. Once there, I sent Balthazar back to tell Montgomery what had happened. I was left alone in the quiet room, only my memories for company. I used to long for solitude like this.

Without Edward or me here to care for them, the roses had wilted, filling the room with an earthy scent of sweet decay. The threadbare quilt was pooled on the dusty floor, and I knelt to shake it out and draw it around my frozen shoulders, then crawled into the single bed still dressed in my clothes, where for once I slept a dreamless sleep.

It couldn’t have been more than an hour or two before a frantic knock woke me with a jolt. I was terrified until I heard Montgomery’s voice. I threw open the door, and he pulled me into his arms.

“Balthazar told me what happened,” he said. “I came immediately, and Balthazar, too. He’s going to sleep on the landing downstairs, keeping guard.” His cheek nuzzled my own. “I’ll murder that bastard Newcastle myself.”

I pulled him inside and closed the door. “It won’t do any good. He isn’t working alone. If you killed him, you’d have half the police force in London after you.” I sat on the bed again, amid the traces of lingering warmth.

“Newcastle will likely send more officers to arrest you,” Montgomery said. “Elizabeth has a plan to set it up so it appears you’ve fled. We’ll sneak you back into the professor’s house once it gets light.”

“And Edward?”

“He was unconscious when I left.”

His eyes fell to the bed. With the sheets twisted in knots, it was all I could do not to think about that passionate night Edward and I had spent together. From the way Montgomery’s hand balled into a fist, it seemed he was thinking the same.

“How long was he staying here?” he asked.

I fumbled with the corners of the quilt. “A few weeks. It was before the masquerade.”
Before you.
“He had better control of himself then.” My fingers drifted to my shoulder, where the scratches had all but faded.

“I’d rather not think about that. About him.” He sat on the bed, rubbing my shoulders through the quilt. “All I want is to be with you.” He drew my hand to his lips and kissed the silver ring, sending my heart pounding.

It struck me that he and I would be alone all night, a night when anything could happen. We were engaged, after all. I knew that proper young ladies didn’t sit in bed with brooding young men, even those they were engaged to, yet I had long ago stopped caring about society’s opinion regarding my chastity.

I stood and went to the door, needing a moment to breathe, and double-checked the lock. I lingered there, resting my forehead against the door as I tried to get my trembling nerves under control.

When I turned around, Montgomery was bent over to unlace his heavy boots. His strong hands worked fast. His blond hair had strayed from its tie and fell over his eyes. By the time he finished and looked up at me through those fair strands, I was helpless.

I had made love to Edward in a rush, and now regretted it. I didn’t want the same to happen with Montgomery.

Blast regret,
I thought.
I want him.

I would have stumbled across the room to him if he hadn’t stood first and dragged me back to the bed. My lips found his as I shrugged the quilt to the floor.

“Take off this dress,” he whispered. “It smells of Newcastle’s tobacco.”

My hands fluttered to the buttons. Was I supposed to act a certain way? Try to entice him? From the look of it, he didn’t need any enticement. He looked ready to tear my dress off himself if my hands moved any slower.

He pulled at the fabric, eager to get it off. Then there was the matter of my winter petticoats. Each one was a frustrating process of untangling cords and peeling them off, one by one. As the pile of my underclothes grew on the worn floor, our hands only moved faster. I kept imagining what his rough hands would feel like against my bare skin.

I paused. As much as I wanted him, it still felt wrong like this. Too sudden. This was no desperate act of loneliness, not like before.

“Montgomery, I think . . .” But my words faded, breathless.

He grabbed me around the hips and pulled me onto the bed. I thought of all the things we should say to one another—asking permission to touch here or there, crawling under the sheet for modesty’s sake, discuss the lengths we intended to take this. But as soon as his lips were on mine, those thoughts vanished. Words? I could barely think. All I could do was feel, and each one of my senses was so flooded that I doubted I could even manage that for much longer.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he whispered, surprising me. “We can wait until we are properly wed. I won’t rush you. But I don’t want to be away from you, Juliet, not now. Please.”

I wasn’t certain if I was relieved or not. Part of me longed to feel him; another part of me felt it was best to wait. As we kissed in my old wooden bed, I thought of how society said intimacy was supposed to be gentle, and quiet, and tender. There was nothing tender about the way Montgomery had his lips all over mine.

And yet he was good to his word; and so was I. I fell asleep in his arms, still dressed in my combination and he in his trousers, and for those few hours it didn’t matter that I was being hunted by Scotland Yard; it didn’t matter that my fate was as uncertain as Edward’s, it didn’t matter that I was parentless once more.

Montgomery and I had each other, and our love could survive anything.

W
HEN
I
WOKE IN
the morning, Montgomery was already packing my collection of scientific equipment into a crate to take back with us. “We should be able to sneak back into the professor’s now,” he said. “Balthazar’s waiting outside.”

I untangled my limbs from the old quilt and dressed slowly, taking my time to notice all the little details of my attic I’d taken for granted: how the window let in warm rays of light, and how the woodstove looked like a squat old gnome.

“I’ll never return here, I imagine,” I said.

I let my fingers run over the bedpost, worn though it was, and trail along the cabinet where I’d stored the mint tea that had warmed my bones after many a long night’s walk to get here. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend nothing had changed: Sharkey curled by the warm flames at the hearth, pot of tea ready to boil, the old chair waiting for me.

The professor had given me everything a girl could desire—a sea of pillows, forests of silver candlesticks, mountains of books. So why did my heart clench at the thought of leaving this broken-down little room?

I glanced over my shoulder at Montgomery, who knew nothing of the war raging in my heart. He had told me that these odd tendencies were a symptom of my illness. Once I was cured, no longer would I have such strange sentiments.

I went to the worktable, where Montgomery tucked my canisters of phosphorous salts into the crate. My finger ran along the spine of Father’s journal.

“That was your father’s,” Montgomery said in surprise.

The book found its way into my palm. I flipped open the cover carefully, tracing my hand down the worn paper. “I found it on the dinghy, among the other supplies. I assumed you’d put it there.”

“If I did, it was by mistake. I was in such a rush to pack that night. May I see it?”

I surrendered it to him hesitantly. He handled it rougher than I had, flipping through the pages haphazardly.

“Half of it doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “He used a personal shorthand I could never decipher.”

“Yes, I recall. Although it wasn’t shorthand; it was a code he’d developed. Blast if I could ever figure it out.”

“If we could decipher it, it might say something about a cure for Edward.” I paused. “Or for me.”

The idea seemed to energize him. He flipped through pages of nonsensical letters and numbers strung together, smiling almost fondly. “Your father used to curse like the devil when he was writing in code. Rambling on about church and religion. He would curse the books in order. ‘Goddamn Psalms! Blasted Proverbs! Cursed Ecclesiastics!’” He shook his head and closed the book, then stowed it in the crate and started to pack my burners.

I frowned and picked back up the book. “I don’t recall Father being religious in the slightest. I can’t imagine he would even spare a few words to curse it.”

“He was insane, Juliet.”

But the words nagged at me. I flipped open the journal to the coded letters and numbers, imagining Father writing them, thinking of the books of the Bible. His interest hadn’t been of a religious nature, so what use did he have for it?

A thought ruffled my mind like wind through dried leaves. “My god,” I said, as my heart began to thump. “That’s it. The Bible! He used a Bible cipher based on the books in the Bible because it’s the one volume every King’s Man would have in their home.”

“A Bible cipher?”

“Yes—look at these letters and numbers. They’re code for chapters and verses.”

Montgomery squinted at the writing in Father’s journal. “You may be right, but without a codex we’d have no place to start. It would take us ages to go through the books one by one and try to determine where he began.”

“What would a codex look like?”

“A grid of some fashion. A chart with the sixty-six books of the Bible and the corresponding—”

He stopped when he saw the look on my face.

“Lucy,” I murmured. “Lucy’s seen it. She read all the letters Father sent to Radcliffe, and she mentioned references to the books of the Bible. Father must have put his codex in his letters.” I couldn’t hide my thrill at the prospect of decoding Father’s secret journal pages.

“We can hardly just walk up to her front door,” Montgomery said. “Newcastle knows we’re onto him, and he’ll have alerted the rest of the King’s Club.”

“Then we’ll have to be a little more creative,” I said, and peered through the window at Saint Paul’s Church spire, which told me it was nearly ten in the morning. Balthazar was sitting on an old stone wall on the street below, tossing crumbs from his iced bun to the pigeons. I glanced at Montgomery. “How fast can we get to Grosvenor Square?”

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THIRTY-EIGHT

O
NCE MONTGOMERY AND
I finished packing everything we needed for the serums, I locked the attic and left a note to my landlady that I wouldn’t return, then let my fingers run one last time over the rough wood door. Downstairs, we gathered Balthazar and hailed a cabriolet to take us to Grosvenor Square, one of the wealthier neighborhoods north of the Strand. I had the driver let us off by an ancient church’s ivy-covered archway, where we could hide unnoticed.

I leaned close to Montgomery. “Lucy takes lessons three mornings a week at the Académie de Musique across the street. She finishes at half past ten and takes a carriage home from Lincoln Park. She’ll have to pass this way. I was thinking Balthazar could help. . . .”

Montgomery’s eyes went wide. “You mean to
abduct
her?”

“He’s very gentle. I know from experience.” I straightened and spoke louder. “Balthazar, we’re picking up a friend of mine. You remember Lucy Radcliffe, don’t you? I want to surprise her, so I’m going to need you to bring her here without making a sound. Can you do that and be very gentle?”

His head nodded enthusiastically.

We waited a few moments longer until a young woman in a hunting-green cloak with long dark curls emerged from the academy, violin case in hand.

“There she is,” I said to Balthazar.