Her Dark Curiosity (22 page)

But Montgomery loved Balthazar, and I didn’t blame him for sparing his life and continuing to give him treatments. It wasn’t so different from how I was risking so much to help Edward. But what fate was there for an ungodly creation like Balthazar, kind though he was?

At last we turned onto Dumbarton Street. The moon cast light over the wide street and sidewalks. My feet moved faster the nearer to the door—and safety—that we grew. How strange it felt to have Montgomery real by my side, when for months he’d been nothing but a daydream.

I glanced at him sidelong. His body was here, but where was his heart?

My feet slowed when the brownstone came into sight. Every light was blazing, which made it stand out unnaturally from its neighbors. I scanned the ground, looking for Sharkey, hoping he’d returned after I’d lost him, but he was nowhere to be found. My muscles still felt weak, but Montgomery’s serum had helped, and I ran the rest of the way and pounded on the brass horsehead knocker.

The door flew open, with Elizabeth’s worried face filling the space. At the sight of me she let out a strangled cry of relief and pulled me into her arms. I heard shuffling footsteps on the stairs and saw the professor descending, a dark red dressing gown over his pajamas.

“Thank god you’re home,” he said. “Elizabeth told me what happened at the Radcliffes’. We feared you’d disappeared in the panic and we’d never find you again.”

His big hands kneaded my shoulder, as his eyes searched mine behind his wire-rim spectacles.

“I’m quite all right, just a bit shaken,” I said. “And I’m relieved to see you made it back safely, Elizabeth.”

“I scoured every inch of the ballroom looking for you. I found Lucy, and she told me a young gentleman had practically dragged you to safety.” Her eyes slid to Montgomery, taking him in with an analytical stare. “I assume we have you to thank for this, young man.”

“This is an old friend,” I said. “He is—”

“Montgomery James,” he introduced himself with a cordial nod, and then took my hand in his own, which hardly seemed proper, and pulled me next to him so he could wrap one arm around my shoulders.

“I’m Juliet’s fiancé.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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TWENTY-FOUR

H
IS HAND TIGHTENED OVER
my shoulders. If I looked surprised by his words, it was nothing compared to the professor’s and Elizabeth’s faces.

The professor made as if to speak, but no words came out. Elizabeth’s beautiful blue eyes scoured every inch of our hand-holding, my muddy dress, Montgomery’s loose hair. Both of their mouths were folded hard, their deep-set eyes peering at us like a pair of birds from the cuckoo clock.

“It seems this evening’s surprises just keep coming,” she said. “Perhaps you should come inside, Mr. James.”

“There is one other thing,” Montgomery said, and looked over his shoulder to where Balthazar stood half hidden in the shadows. The moonlight had a way of highlighting the deformity of his back and darkening the shadows under his eyes, so he looked the very picture of a monster.

“I have a friend with me,” Montgomery continued. “We’ve been traveling together for some time, and I’d be much obliged if he could warm himself by your fire.”

As Balthazar lumbered up to join us on the front stoop, Elizabeth’s eyes went even wider. The professor seemed ready to slam the door in his face.

“Good evening,” Balthazar said with his lopsided grin.

The professor remained speechless. It was only after Elizabeth cleared her throat and mumbled something about good manners that he let us inside.

Though the cuckoo clock chimed one in the morning, we soon found ourselves sitting in the library around a pot of tea Elizabeth had insisted on making. Montgomery sat next to me on the loveseat, his hand tightly around mine. He hadn’t let go for a moment since making the announcement.

“Just play along,” he’d whispered as we’d settled on the sofa. “I have my reasons.”

The cuckoo clock ticked, and the steam rose from the pot. I think as shocked as they were by Montgomery’s announcement, it was Balthazar’s presence that had truly rendered them speechless. Now he sat awkwardly on a too-small stool near the fireplace, half cast in shadows, so quiet he might very well have fallen asleep.

“Well. The tea.” Elizabeth broke the silence at last and stood to pour. She eyed Montgomery carefully. “You’ll imagine our surprise to see you, Mr. James. Juliet neglected to tell us you were in London, nor news of any engagement.” Her eyes slid to mine, and I shifted uncomfortably.

“I’m afraid I worried what you’d say. Montgomery is the one who took me to Father’s island last year.”

“A servant!” the professor said suddenly, but there was no disdain in his voice. “That’s where I recognize you from, yes, of course. You were a servant for the Moreau family.”

Montgomery nodded.

The professor settled back into his chair. “I recall you as a quiet boy. Loyal. Hardworking. Though I can’t say I approve of your proposing to Juliet without first seeking permission from her guardian.”

“I apologize for that, sir,” Montgomery said. “I proposed the moment I returned to London. I’m afraid in my haste Juliet’s opinion was the only one I could think of.”

“Is this why you’ve been so cagey and slipping away?” Elizabeth said suddenly, twisting her head at me so that she nearly spilled over the tea. Equal amounts admonishment and relief mixed in her voice. She had been so worried the night I’d climbed through the kitchen window. To know I was just meeting a secret fiancé must have come as a considerable relief.

“Yes,” I lied. Now would have been the time to give Montgomery an adoring look, or playfully apologize for worrying them, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Acting the part of Montgomery’s sweetheart now, when I’d only just seen him again and still had the feel of Edward on my skin, was a role I wasn’t ready to play.

It didn’t seem to matter. The others took my stiff reaction as nothing more than lingering tension from the masquerade, perhaps.

“And what are your intentions, Mr. James?” the professor asked.

“I have some medical skill. I’d like to apprentice myself to a doctor, perhaps in a rural village, and have Juliet join me there as my wife.”

I glanced at him, wondering if this was the truth, or just some story to appease the professor. He was normally so painfully easy to read, and yet none of his usual tells were showing, which left me feeling deeply curious and even a little suspicious. He’d broken my heart once; I wouldn’t give it so easily to him again.

He’s keeping secrets from you,
Edward had said.

Montgomery glanced at me and smiled.

The cuckoo clock chimed that another hour had passed, and Elizabeth glanced at the professor’s drooping eyelids. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. James, but you understand our shock at this news. I think we’d all like more sleep, and tomorrow you can explain more.”

The professor roused himself. “Yes, and in the meantime, you and your companion—if he wakes from that chair—may sleep in the guest room on the third floor.”

His words had an obvious edge to them, as his pointed stare went between the two of us. Engaged we might be, but not married yet. There would be at least one floor separating us until that day.

We bid him and Elizabeth good night. She paused at my bedroom door, a candle in hand, as the others continued upstairs.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” she whispered.

“I wasn’t certain you would approve of his former position, nor his association with my father.”

“We were all associated with your father, Juliet. By that logic each of us is guilty.”

I looked at my hands and nodded.

“Do you love him?” she asked.

I felt that pressure to play the part again. And yet as I struggled to sort out my feelings and provide Elizabeth with a satisfactory answer, I found it wasn’t that easy.

“He’s a good man,” I said.

I left out the hundreds of reasons why love between Montgomery and me wasn’t simple. How he’d abandoned me, and had helped my father, and how I’d made love with another man. I could still feel the tangle of all those things choking me like summer vines.

She gave me a somewhat pitying smile. Elizabeth had never married, and I’d overheard her telling the professor that she though marriage was a trap meant to keep women in the bedroom and kitchen. If she pitied me that fate, she didn’t know me very well. I couldn’t be a sweet, obedient wife if I’d wanted to.

She left, and without her presence the room took on a cavernous, lonely feel. I changed out of the stiff silk ball gown with the mud on the hem into a shift. I closed my eyes and listened for the sounds of the house settling. Everything was silent save the wind pushing at the windows.

I pulled on my house slippers and padded silently to the door. Montgomery’s room was on the same floor as the professor’s, but the old man slept as though in death, and I’d learned how to be silent on the island.

I twisted the doorknob, ready to sneak out. To my surprise, Montgomery was already waiting on the other side. He’d beaten me to it.

His eyes met mine, and they were the deep blue of a flame.

“May I come in?” he asked.

M
ONTGOMERY ADDED ANOTHER PIECE
of wood to the small fireplace in my bedroom. I watched him working, remembering how he’d laid my fires for me when I was a little girl. He’d been so quiet back then. He was still quiet, and yet impossible not to notice. It wasn’t just how he’d grown into a powerful young man, but also a certain stillness to the air around him, as though even the fire springing to life in his hands knew he could be trusted.

He brought the fire to a roar, spilling flickering light over the bedroom’s soft curtains and thick duvets bursting with goose-feather down. I wondered if I looked the same to him, against such an elegant backdrop, when he had fallen in love with me amid jungle vines and the crashing sea.

“It was a rash decision,” he said. “But it was the best I could think of in the moment. If I’d shown up at your door after midnight, with your dress torn and muddied, they’d have thought me a villain at worst. If they’d allowed me time to explain I’d rescued you from the masquerade and escorted you home, I’d be a polite stranger, and they’d have thanked me profusely and dismissed me. Telling them we were engaged gives us the ability to be alone, to travel together, to explain why we sometimes sneak off just the two of us.”

“I understand. It only came as a considerable shock. I haven’t seen you in months. For all I knew you were dead. And I’ve already lied enough to the professor, when he’s done nothing but show me kindness.”

He tucked back a loose strand of blond hair. “Is it that far from the truth?” he asked quietly.

I let the roaring fire fill the silence. On the island, I’d never wanted to be apart from him. But now there was a rift between us wide as the ocean I’d passed through, alone and wounded. He’d shown up at the masquerade amid the swirling masks and looked at me as if nothing had changed.

But everything had changed.

I’d shared a bed with Edward the night before. I’d made love to a
murderer,
while I’d blindly thought I was safe in his company. I’d been worse than a fool.

“Why didn’t you come for me sooner?” My whispered words blended with the crackling of the fire.

He settled on the bed next to me, amid the silk sheets and sea of pillows that were a million miles away from the sparse simplicity of the island where we’d fallen in love. Then he took my small hand in his much bigger one, and ever so slowly brought it to his lips.

My heart roared to life just like the fire. The memories of him pushing me away in that dinghy were still so tender, and I wasn’t certain I was ready for this again. I’d spent months healing from the sting—such deep wounds didn’t patch over in a day.

“It was complicated,” he said, keeping his voice low. “When I followed Edward here, of course I thought of you. I wanted to come find you every day, and apologize for parting the way we did, and say that I’ve thought of you constantly.” His hand tightened in mine, not letting me drift away like that dinghy’s rope had so many months ago. “And yet every time I thought of a life together, there was too much in the way. At first it was the fate of the beast-men; if I had left them there alone, I would have never forgiven myself.”

“The beast-men are gone, now,” I whispered.

“Yes, but now Edward stands between us. I want a simple life, Juliet. No monsters in our closets, no jumping at shadows. Before I could have that life with you, I wanted to resolve the question of Edward. Then I planned on finding you, and having that life.” He’d moved quite close on the bed now, as my pounding heart was all too aware. He reached up and cupped my chin in his hand. “I never stopped loving you. I never will.”

There on the satin duvet, in the quiet intimacy of my bedroom, logic seemed to have left me. He’d wounded me so deeply, and yet he was still the young man I’d fallen in love with. Could I throw away a lifelong friendship over an old wound?

“I missed you,” he muttered.

His lips brushed against my cheek. I asked myself if I could forgive him so easily. But the answer was simple, as we sat in the intimacy of my bedroom. Yes, yes,
yes.
I’d forgive him anything.

I leaned in to him, and he kissed me. I had dreamed of seeing him again for so long that it hardly felt real. I pressed my lips to his again and again, dizzy in the moonlight streaming in from the high windows.

“Juliet.” He whispered my name against my cheek like a caress. The feel of his warm skin woke me as if from a dream, as if I’d merely been sleepwalking through life since leaving the island.

I pulled his head down, kissing him again. Not softly this time. My breath started coming fast, my pulse pounding. He returned it just as passionately. I wanted to kiss him forever, never let him leave me again.

His thumb found my dress’s neckline, running along the place where the fabric ended and skin began. As he trailed kisses down the length of my neck, he pulled the fabric over my shoulder, replacing it with his lips.