The Madmans Daughter

by Megan Shepherd

Page 16

  Author: Megan Shepherd

  Edward stood over me. He rolled his shirt cuffs slowly, first one, then the other, preparing for surgery. A reference book lay open on the table next to him. I tried to lift my head to see the diagram, but something held my head down, too. I tried to jerk free. His gold-flecked eyes slid to me.

  “Don’t struggle,” he whispered. “It won’t do any good. ”

  He turned to the table, sorting through instruments that clanked with the familiar ring of steel. I should have been frightened. But, strangely, I felt only an abnormal calm and the suffocating weight of the chains.

  “Remain still, Juliet,” he said.

  The swinging kerosene lamp above the table lit up the tool in his hand. A dented old bone saw, rusted and flaking. A butcher’s tool, not a surgeon’s. I noted this calmly, wondering what a bone saw was doing in my father’s old laboratory.

  Edward’s other hand flickered ghostly, fingers fading in and out, but when he brushed the hair off my face, he felt solid enough. He traced a hand down my cheeks, tilting my head, examining my face. I thought he might speak, but he didn’t. Instead he raised the saw.

  I felt a jolt, somewhere near my feet where I couldn’t see. Then came the awful squeal of metal. He was sawing, I concluded. But a bone saw wouldn’t cut through chains. You’d need at least a crosscut-tooth hacksaw for that. It was most perplexing.

  The squeal and groan of metal continued. I wanted to cover my ears, but my hands were immobile. Edward came back into view. The bone saw was gone. His hands were covered in blood. I frowned, trying to deduce its source. Had he cut me? I mentally inspected my feet, my legs, my chest, my arms. I didn’t feel pain. But I didn’t feel anything else, either, except the strangling chains.

  His fingers wrapped around something next to my head. He pulled with straining forearms. Sweat poured off his forehead. The rim of something metal came into the edge of my sight. The sharp edge sliced into his fingers, breaking the skin. The blood on his hands was his own, I realized.

  The more he peeled back the metal, the more I could move my head. At last I twisted so I could see. He’d cut off a metal bonnet with a copper flower and a ribbon of steel and then peeled it back with his bare hands.

  Very peculiar.

  Edward moved to my chest. Another squeal of metal. Straining muscles. Blood dripping onto the table. I could breathe at last. Air rushed into my body, waking my senses. I sat up, shaking off the cold detachment, breathing in lungful after lungful of air. I nearly cried when I saw what he’d freed me from. A metal corset, and below that a metal skirt, already peeled back. There’d never been any chains, I realized. What held me down was a metalwork dress. And Edward, with a butcher’s saw and bloody hands, had painstakingly undressed me.

  Beneath the steel dress I was naked, and I covered myself with my hands, still trembling with the feeling of air and freedom and something else, earthy and corporeal. It was as if I’d woken from a harsh London night into an Italian painting, where the world was lush and warm and passionate.

  I swung my legs off the table. Sweat and blood dripped off Edward’s brow. His hands were latticed with cuts. He didn’t look at my naked body, but instead he inspected my face. He brushed my hair back, studying my features, his eyes dark and unreadable.

  Without the restriction of the clothing, I was filled with a constellation of sensations. I was aware of the smell of cologne mixed with his blood, the rough feel of his trouser fabric grazing against my legs, his desire that seeped from the cuts in his hands, staining the floor.

  He slid a hand behind my waist, his fingers like ice. My bare skin was flush against his bloodstained clothes. His hand brushed through my hair.

  He pressed his lips to mine.

  Coldness flooded into me like a splash of springwater on a winter morning. I gasped with the sensation, feeling suddenly painfully hungry.

  I kissed him back, breathless, wanting so much more.

  Fourteen

  I WOKE BURNING WITH sweat. The dream was still fresh in my mind, so fresh I touched my lips with shaking fingertips. I told myself I’d had the dream because of the almost kiss with Montgomery, I told myself. It had nothing to do with Edward. And now it was daylight, at least midmorning. Mottled sunlight and the distant sound of waves filtered through the bars on my window.

  I’d slept through dinner and all night. I might have slept for days, for all I knew. I wiped my damp palms on the bedcovers. When had I crawled under the sheets? I was wearing a nightdress I didn’t recognize, something expensive with lace at the collar. But when I’d fallen asleep, I’d still been wearing my dressing gown.

  Someone had undressed me.

  I pushed back the sheets as if they were on fire. The memory of the dream flooded back, making me dizzy. Edward’s hands on my naked body. The crisscross of cuts on his hands from peeling back the metal dress. Had Edward undressed me? Was that why I’d dreamed of him?

  No, surely not. He was a gentleman and so shy he’d barely look at me. But then who? Had one of Father’s beastly servants removed my clothes? The thought made the fibers of my stomach shrink.

  I threw open Mother’s trunk, looking for something plain, and found a simple blue dress. I unlaced the unfamiliar nightdress hurriedly, but a breeze from the window made me pause.

  Whispering. The rising and falling cadence of words, carried on the wind, spoken in a language other than human.

  I drifted to the window, watching the trees. Beyond the jungle the sea stretched forever. There were no curtains, making me feel suddenly exposed in only the half-unlaced nightdress.

  I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. My arms and face were tan. The meager food and harsh weather on the Curitiba had stolen the softness from my face. I slipped the nightdress off my shoulder, turning to see my back in the mirror.

  The puckered flesh of a scar I’d carried since I was an infant ran the full length of my spine. When I was a child, Mother dressed me only in high-collared shirts to keep it hidden. She said it reminded her of my difficult birth and deformed back. My father’s gifted hands had put it right, but not even he could operate without leaving scars.

  Mother was long gone, but not her spirit. Keep it covered, she seemed to whisper. I hurried out of the nightdress and into a chemise, then pulled the blue dress over my head and tucked the collar high around my neck. I’d have to skip a corset. Mine was filthy, and Mother’s were so old-fashioned that I couldn’t lace any of them without assistance. Without it I felt strangely light, and I touched my ribs, thinking of the metal dress in my dream.

  Someone knocked at the door. I squeezed the strange latch, expecting Father or Montgomery or one of the natives.

  But it was Edward.

  “Oh. ” The one word was all I could manage. Seeing him brought back the dream with a powerful rush. I bunched my hands in the soft fabric of my skirt to remind myself I was dressed. This wasn’t a dream. He wasn’t some shifting specter. I closed my eyes and leaned in the doorway, dizzy.

  “Juliet? Are you well?” Concern crinkled the skin around his eyes. He took my arm and led me to the desk. He poured water from a pitcher into a glazed glass. “Sit down. Have some water. ”

  I took the glass with shaking fingers.

  “I came to see if you were awake. You’ve been asleep nearly eighteen hours. ”

  “My carpetbag. In the corner. Bring it here, please. ”

  He picked up the ragged thing and set it on the desk without question. I dug through it for the stamped wooden box that held my medication. I opened it and removed one of the glass vials and the syringe. His eyebrows raised, curious.

  “It’s a chronic illness,” I said. “A glycogen deficiency. I have to take a daily injection or . . . I get dizzy. ” I left out the part about the coma. Edward had his secrets. I could keep a few of my own.

  “I’ve never heard of that. ”

  I set the tip
of the needle against the vial’s opening. “It’s rare. ”

  He watched, fascinated, as I punctured the vial lid and drew in twenty-five milligrams of the treatment. My hands knew the movement by habit, but I’d never injected myself with someone watching.

  I concentrated on the needle. When it was full, I set it aside and unbuttoned my shirt cuff, rolling it slightly past my inner elbow. Edward shifted closer. I cleared my throat, the dream still too fresh.

  I pressed the tip of the needle to my elbow, above the ghostly blue vein just below the skin. I slid it past the surface, barely flinching, and pierced the vein. My thumb depressed the lever, and the treatment melted into my blood. I let out a sigh.

  Edward watched from the corner of his eye. I withdrew the needle, wiped it carefully, and put it back in the box.

  The sunlight flickered over the walls. Clouds were forming.

  “You spoke with Father yesterday,” I said. “What did he say?”

  The flecks in Edward’s eyes glowed. He didn’t answer.

  “Did he apologize for nearly drowning you at least?”

  His gaze drifted, cataloging every item in my room. “He strikes me as the sort who’s never apologized for anything. ”

  “You are perceptive. ”

  “We worked out a bit of an . . . arrangement. I don’t think he has any intention of murdering me in my sleep, if that’s what you’re asking. ”

  I rolled down my sleeve and fastened the button. The treatment was already making me clearheaded. I peered at Edward, the flesh-and-blood young man in my room, not the dream specter. Whatever he and Father had spoken of, he wasn’t going to tell me.

  “Well, I’m sorry. If I’d known that’s how he would react—”

  “Don’t. It’s hardly your fault. ”

  I ran my fingers around the worn box edge. “I suppose you’re going to tell me your suspicions were right. That only a madman would live out here. ”

  His fingers traced circles on the desk. “It’s not just him, Juliet. They carry an arsenal just to step outside. What are they so afraid of?”

  I drummed my fingers on the box nervously. Remembering how in my dream the light from the swinging kerosene lamp lit his face as his hands traced over my naked skin.

  “Did you undress me last night?” I asked bluntly.

  He couldn’t hide his surprise. He ran his hand over the tangled hair on the back of his neck. “Undress you?”

  I squeezed the box, feeling foolish, like I had tested a theory too early. “Never mind,” I said quickly.

  “Why would you think . . . ?”

  “I woke up in a nightdress I didn’t put on. ”

  For a moment his eyes searched mine, trying to peer into my head. Studying the sound of our silence. His lips parted, asking a question without ever saying a word.

  Would you want me to undress you?

  He’d hinted at his interest, but how could he expect me to think about such things at a time like this, when I’d just met my father after years apart? And there was Montgomery to consider, and that near kiss, and Edward didn’t even begin to know me. If he knew some of the things I had done, the dark things I sometimes thought, he’d change his mind.

  “I didn’t undress you,” he said, and the silence that came next was heavy between us.

  Breath slipped from my lips, pressed by some invisible force. A connection was growing between us, pulsating between us, in time with the beating of my heart. That might not be my last dream about Edward Prince, I realized. And the next one might not be unwelcome.

  Fifteen

  WE LEFT MY ROOM and found Father and Montgomery in the main building. The entire ground floor was one large, high-ceilinged room with wide shutters angled to let in air but keep out the sun. A dinner table sat behind a seating area with a fireplace and stone mantel. A simple staircase led to a second-floor landing with two more shut doors, and another door on the ground floor that might have led to the kitchen. The furnishings were an eclectic mix of fine but threadbare Rococo-style furniture and a few crudely handmade wooden chairs and tables. In the corner was a piano, its black wood dented and one leg broken, but polished to a high gleam. A sigh slipped from my lips. A breath of elegance whispered here that I hadn’t expected to find.