The Madman’s Daughter (25 page)

“You’re wondering if your treatment is similar.”

“Is it?”

My bluntness caught him off guard. He clicked his bag shut. “No. It’s nothing at all the same.”

“No one’s ever heard of my treatment. The chemists look at me like I’m mad.”

“Your father designed it specifically for you. He tried to produce it for the public, but the medical board shut him down.” He picked up the bag and leaned closer. A strand of hair worked its way loose and fell into his eyes. Nothing about him could be tamed for long.

“Your mind is racing,” he said softly, his voice caressing my worries. “You’re looking for problems where there are none. I’ve known you from the time you could barely walk. I’d know if there was something … unnatural.” His gaze shifted to something behind me in the courtyard. His jaw tensed.

Father strode toward us from the main building. I knew that anger on his face. But it was Montgomery he was after, not me. Still furious that Montgomery had lied about Ajax being alive.

My hand twisted into a fist. I leaned in to Montgomery and whispered before Father could hear. “Come to my room tonight. I need you to see something.” I slipped around the worktable just as my father stormed up with all the cold rage of a coiled snake.

N
IGHT HAD SETTLED WHEN
Montgomery finally came to my room. The air hung with the promise of rain. He’d spent all afternoon beyond the compound walls, digging graves for the deceased. Shadows stretched over his face, handsome still after such grim work.

He stopped in the doorway. His blue eyes glowed in the soft light, lashing my heart like a string. But warning was written in them, too.

“Why am I here, Juliet?” he asked. We both knew there would be trouble if he was caught alone in my room, especially while Father was in a rage.

“Just come in for a moment,” I said. My nervous hands drifted to my blouse’s mother-of-pearl buttons.

His lips were sunburned. He glanced around to make sure no one watched from the courtyard. But there were always eyes, somewhere.

He shook his head, reluctant to cross Father. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt, hard buttons and crisp linen, and pulled him gently inside. His eyes still held warning, but
there was something else there now. Desire. Seeing it stilled the breath in my lungs. I closed the door behind him.

The oil lamp cast a warm glow over the whitewashed walls. In the semidarkness, his presence blazed even more.

“You’ve been digging graves,” I said.

A spot of sandy dirt clung to his right ear, missed in his bath. “Eight dead so far. That we know of.”

“Did Jaguar really kill them?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. A year ago I’d have said you were crazy. But things are different now.” He stepped closer. His hair was still damp from the bath. Lye soap mixed with the smell of coming rain. “Don’t worry. You’re safe here.”

He thought I wanted reassurance that whatever killed them wouldn’t kill me. But no one could make that promise. “That’s not why I asked you here. I need you to look at something.”

He brushed his hair behind one ear, just missing the patch of sand. An urge overcame me to wipe it off with my thumb. But my hand would have shaken, knowing what I was about to ask him to do. I tangled my hands in the folds of my skirt instead.

“What is it?” he asked.

I took his hand and led him into the corner, where we couldn’t be seen from the window. His tired feet dragged, but his eyes were alert.

“I want to know why my medication is so similar to theirs.”

He let out a pent-up breath. “Is that what has you worried? I told you, it isn’t the same.”

“Close enough to make me need more proof.”

He touched my shoulder tenderly, like he’d done to Alice. “It’s impossible. You look too much like your mother to have been created in a laboratory.”

I tried to read the unspoken words in the lines of his face. His concern was deep and genuine and honest. He didn’t believe I was anything like the creatures. But he could be wrong.

“It’s more than that,” I said. “I feel odd sometimes. Like there’s something not entirely right about me, as if I’ve inherited some of Father’s madness. Only now I wonder if it’s something more.…”

His thumb rubbed small circles against my shoulder. “Everyone feels like that at some point or another. A little mad. Besides, your mother would know if you came from her own womb. She wouldn’t have lied to you about that.”

Thunder rumbled outside. The sky was on the verge of spilling open. I twisted a lock of hair, unused to having it long and loose. His fingers tightened, pulling me almost imperceptibly closer. He was right about Mother. She may have believed in denial, but her strict morals wouldn’t have let her lie outright.

“And you’re forgetting,” Montgomery continued. “That was sixteen years ago. He’s only recently been able to make anything close to the human form. And you’ve seen them. They look abnormal.” His eyes glowed. “You look … perfect.”

“But there are anomalies,” I said, trying hard not to confuse the reason we were alone in my bedroom. My hands
drifted to the back of my blouse that hid the puckered scar. “Like Jaguar. You said Father did something to his brain that he hasn’t been able to replicate. Couldn’t the same thing have happened to me? A fluke?”

Montgomery touched a calloused hand to my cheek. Outside, lightning cracked. The smell of coming rain swelled. “This is nonsense, Juliet. You’d at least have scars. But you’re beautiful.”

His thumb brushed my burning skin. The tops of my breasts rose and fell quickly beneath my blouse’s tight bodice.

“That’s just it.” I swallowed, trying to keep my reason. “I do have scars.”

The wind blew in the first drops of rain, and I pulled him deeper into the corner away from the window. “You know his work better than anyone,” I said, breathless. My fingers drifted to the fabric covering the base of my spine. “I have a scar on my back from surgery. He says I was born with a spinal deformity. I can’t help but think …”

He shook his head, almost laughing at my worry. “This is ridiculous.”

“Just look!” I said. Too loudly. We both glanced at the door. I dropped my voice to a whisper. “
Please
. Tell me if it looks like the procedure he uses on them.”

I started to untie the ribbons at the back of my skirt, but he grabbed my hand with an iron grip. “Don’t,” he said. “I shouldn’t even be here.”

“We aren’t in London anymore. Who’s going to gossip?” I hissed. “The birds?”

“If your father finds out—”

I shook off his hand and pulled the ribbon loose. I stepped out of my skirt and began unbuttoning my blouse. “I’ll only lower my chemise’s collar in the back.”

He started to object, but voices came from the other side of the wall and I pulled him closer, resting a finger over my lips. We waited until the voices passed. I finished the last button and removed my blouse, setting it over the chair. My fingers trembled. I told myself it was a medical examination, not some secret tryst. But I’d never taken my clothes off in front of a man before. And Montgomery wasn’t just some nameless doctor in a cold examining room.

“Can you help me with the corset laces?” I asked, turning around. I gripped the back of the chair to keep steady.

“Juliet—”

“Please. I need to know.”

He tugged at the laces with the ungraceful hands of a man. At last they loosened. I dragged the chemise’s wide collar down over one shoulder. I kept my arms folded, holding the corset against my chest.

“Just look,” I whispered, feeling exposed. His hand brushed the hair off my back, sending shivers along either side of the scar. I hugged the corset tighter. Bit my lip. Worries drove me mad.
Mother lied. I am some creature, a cat, or a wolf, or …

He withdrew his hands. I pulled up my chemise, feeling the warmth rise to my cheeks. He loosely retied the laces of my corset. I smoothed a hand over the whalebone ribbing, waiting.

“Well?” I asked.

“You’re crazy,” he answered. His face broke with the traces of a smile. “It’s just as he said. A spinal deformity fixed by surgery.”

My eyelids sank with relief. “Are you sure?”

“Beyond doubt.” He wet his parched lips. “I know you, Juliet. You’re no monster.”

I studied him closely. The sand still clung to his ear, and I reached up on impulse and brushed it off. His heartbeat sped at my touch. I wanted to believe him. But even if he was right, I knew that one didn’t have to be a creation to be a monster. My own family history proved that.

For a few moments he stood a breath away. His fingers found my wrist and traced along the edge of my arm. He cleared his throat and looked ready to say something, but then he shook his head.

“Good night, Juliet.” He left slowly, as if he had to pry himself away before he did something improper. A growing part of me wished he’d stayed.

F
ATHER AND
M
ONTGOMERY LEFT
at dawn the next day. The set-in clouds threatened a storm, but Father was convinced the murderer was Ajax and must be hunted down and brought to justice, despite the weather.

The clouds broke and heavy rain stretched into the afternoon, driving the rest of us indoors. Edward kept to his room with complaints of a headache, a throwback to his time in the dinghy. I spent the day helping Alice hang laundry to dry under the portico’s covered eaves. She was quiet, but that suited me.

We heard the horses stamping outside in late afternoon. Alice brushed the hair out of her face with the back of her hand. “They’ve returned.”

Puck opened the gate. Steam rose off the horses’ bodies. The riders looked like dark, unearthly creatures, covered in mud and black duster coats. They dismounted and crossed through the beating rain to the laboratory. Montgomery glanced at me from under the hood of his duster, a flash of
blue eyes and wet hair and unanswered questions.

Alice and I silently returned to the laundry, though we were both on edge. We were halfway through with the laundry when the laboratory door slammed open. I dropped the basket of wooden clothespins. Heavy footsteps echoed over the stone flags as I bent to pick them up. Two muddy boots stopped next to the last clothespin.

My father.

I had nothing to say to him. He was an old man with weathered skin and graying hair and dark impulses he couldn’t contain. Not a father.

“You should leave that work to the servants,” he said, raising his voice over the rain. Alice kept her head down as she wrung out a sheet. “Play the piano if you’ve nothing to do. Something proper for a young lady. Where’s that blasted Prince? Can’t he take you for a walk? Show you the view or some such nonsense?”

“Stop trying to push us together,” I hissed, wishing Alice weren’t overhearing. “Edward can make his own decisions, as can I.”

Father raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? I’m not so sure.” A bolt of lightning lit the sky as he continued to his apartment above the salon. I rested the basket on the side of the laundry bin, biting back words. He was a fool if he still thought he could tell me what to do.

After we finished the laundry, I went to the salon, curious whether Edward was up and feeling better. But it was empty save Puck, laying out dinnerware. The piano had been freshly polished, but I crossed to the bookshelves
instead. I admired the beautiful green binding of the Shakespeare collection, each book stamped on the spine with gold emblems. There was a gap where one volume was missing, though I didn’t recall which title had been there. I couldn’t imagine one of the beasts reading Shakespeare.

I ran my hand along the uneven shelf and thought of Montgomery, hammering it together years ago when he’d still been a boy. Father demanded perfection, but he’d still kept these shelves, crooked as they were. For as much as he ordered Montgomery about, I suspected he loved him in his own warped way. He’d always wanted a son. Lord knew he never cared about his daughter.

I pulled out the brandy stopper and sloshed a healthy dose into a cut-crystal glass. I drank the spicy-sweet liquid in several gulps. My throat burned. Puck stared at me, the silverware forgotten.

“What? Want to try some?” I asked, tipping the bottle toward him. He scowled as he hurried to finish laying out the place settings.

I took the bottle to the window, studying the falling rain outside. The warm smell of supper began to fill the room, drawing in Montgomery and Father, both scrubbed clean but looking grim.

Father tore the bottle from my hands. “This isn’t for a lady,” he snapped.

“Good. Then it’s perfect for me.”

Father replaced the stopper and returned the bottle to the bookshelf. “You’re determined to ruin yourself, I
see. You think you’re an adult and I haven’t control over you anymore. That is where you’re wrong.”

I bristled as spikes of anger twisted into my gut. He hadn’t seen me since I was ten years old. Hadn’t left me money or a home, just a crippling scandal. He didn’t get to dictate what was right and wrong. He didn’t get to tell me who I should marry.

Montgomery saw the look in my eyes and shook his head slowly, warning me. But I couldn’t go along with the charade like he could. “You think I care what you think,” I told Father. “And that is where
you’re
wrong.”

I turned before he could respond. My hands were shaking and I didn’t want him to see. Montgomery stood by the door, and suddenly my heartstrings tightened, needing a kind look from him, some reassurance. But Alice touched his arm and whispered something in his ear, and his attention was only on her. I turned my thoughts to the silverware, straightening the already straight knives, trying not to feel stung.

Edward filled the doorway, rubbing his temples. I went to him, in no small part to show Montgomery I had someone else to pay attention to as well. But when I saw the shadows under Edward’s eyes, Montgomery really did drift from my mind.

“How’s your head?” I asked softly.

“Do I look that awful?” Edward said.

I smiled. The scar down his face was now only a whisper of pain, reminding me of the first time I’d seen
him, sunburned and beaten by waves and straddling the line between the living and the dead. I hadn’t thought him handsome at the time, and yet the way he wore the bruises had intrigued me. Not complaining, not vain, but like they were an inescapable part of him.