She removed her apron and smoothed her dress. “I’m glad you’re getting married sooner. All the festivities will be a pleasant distraction for Hensley, until we can get that cell in the basement built.”
I fiddled with the ring on my finger, and she noticed.
“Are you nervous?” When I didn’t answer, she added, “It’s natural to feel anxious before one’s wedding. I attended your parents’ wedding, you know. I haven’t thought about that day in years.” She leaned back on the counter. “Your mother was nervous. She was almost as young as you are now, and I thought her foolish for tying herself to a man so young, even a man as intriguing as your father. He was quite the catch back then. Handsome, clever, wealthy. And your mother was the most beautiful girl of the season.” Elizabeth sighed. “She was so caught up in his charm that she hadn’t taken the time to get to know him. It’s different with you and Montgomery. I can tell it’s a deeper love.”
I swallowed and looked down at my clasped hands. Did I truly know Montgomery?
Elizabeth sensed the sudden change in my mood and rested a hand on my forehead. “You aren’t feeling ill, are you? Don’t tell me you’ve started wearing one of those dreadful corsets again.”
“It isn’t that.” Did I dare tell Elizabeth that there were secrets between Montgomery and me? About the mysterious letter he’d burned? About how I’d reanimated a rat and told him nothing?
“I’m worried about Radcliffe,” I said, though that wasn’t entirely the truth. “I fear he’ll have a surprise up his sleeve, something we haven’t thought of. It bothers me that we haven’t heard from Jack Serra since you sent him to London. It’s been over a week.” I took a deep breath, toying with a scalpel on the wall. “Perhaps we’re foolish to hold a wedding during such a time.”
She came around the table. “We would only hear from Jack this soon if it was bad news. I assure you, there’s no way Radcliffe can trace this place to us. No one in London knows this manor is in my family. Besides, even if he did discover your whereabouts, this place is a fortress. The original structure was attacked by Vikings in the thirteenth century, and again by marauders in 1790, and revolutionaries in 1880. It’s never been breached.” She squeezed my arms. “Or is it something else you’re worried about, perhaps the wedding night?”
My cheeks burned crimson.
She gave her crooked smile. “I might not be married but I’m no saint when it comes to the bedroom. If you need any advice, I hope you’ll come to me.”
“I don’t,” I said quickly. “Need any advice, I mean. I’m more worried because it’s been months since life has been normal for any of us. I was starting to think I was cursed, and so was anyone I tied myself to. That this wedding will only end in tragedy.” I looked down again, feeling foolish to hear my own fears spoken aloud.
She patted my arm. “Oh, I doubt that. I haven’t told you about Victor Frankenstein’s wedding night, have I? It was here in this very house. He was to wed his cousin Elizabeth, my namesake, but it never happened. He had promised his creation he would create a female like him—a reanimated bride—but at the last moment changed his mind and destroyed the body. The creature was furious, so he took away Victor’s bride in return. He murdered her only moments before the wedding, here in this same room.”
My eyes went wide. “How awful!”
She gave me a crooked smile. “Indeed. Whatever happens on Friday, it can’t be as bad as that, can it?”
“I suppose not.” I toyed with my engagement ring, still uneasy.
“Blast,” she said, “I’ve gone and been too morbid again. I forget not everyone has spent their lives with the ghosts of my ancestors. Don’t worry, my dear. Radcliffe can’t reach the house. I’ll get Hensley under control. No one’s going to be murdered on your wedding night.” She handed me the jar of dead rats and Moira’s unblinking eye. “Now be a dear, and throw these out for the foxes before dinner.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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TWENTY-FOUR
IT WAS MESSY WORK, disposing of dead animals and leftover body parts. I followed the path behind the manor as it meandered among the sulfurous bogs. Night was falling, and my stomach grumbled with hunger despite the morbid contents of the glass jar.
A flash of orange-red darted between two bushes. I stopped. A fox’s keen black eyes watched me through the branches. Deciding I was far enough away from the house, I emptied the jar’s contents on the ground, then stepped back to watch the foxes make dinner out of Moira’s eye. Something crunched under my boot and I looked down to find a bone, long ago picked clean. It was part of a human hand. The wrist bone had been cut unevenly, as though someone had almost changed their mind halfway through the job.
Was it the bleached bones of Valentina’s hands that she had cut off herself? She had wanted ownership of this manor so desperately that she’d crippled herself for a chance at ingratiating herself to Elizabeth. And I had sauntered in and been named heir without even wanting it. Was it right that I got everything so easily while Valentina met such a terrible end?
I looked at my own hands, thinking of my mother. If she were here, she would tell me that this was a sign. I shouldn’t just accept being the heir to Ballentyne lightly—I should embrace it and work as hard as Valentina would have, educating the girls and making improvements to the house.
I turned back to the building looming in the twilight. On the second floor, lights were just coming on as the servants prepared dinner.
Anyone would want to oversee such a place, and yet I felt only hollowness in my chest. I wished Jack Serra were back, with his cryptic predictions.
Was running Ballentyne truly my fate?
A fox howled behind me, reminding me that I was alone and that night was falling. I wrapped my sweater tight and jogged back to the manor just in time to change clothes and get ready for dinner with the staff. On Sundays Elizabeth forwent tradition to let the servant girls dine with us at the grand table. I loved having them there. They drilled me with questions about the wedding, what type of flowers I liked and what my dress looked like and if they could try it on when it arrived and pretend they were to be brides as well.
Lucy’s seat, however, remained empty.
Halfway through dinner, I leaned toward Montgomery. “Do you know where she is?”
“Balthazar said she wasn’t feeling well and skipped dinner.”
After the meal, I wrapped some cold chicken in a napkin to take to her room, but when I opened the door, no one was there.
A strange feeling trickled down my back. Lucy had been acting odd since Edward’s death, first slaughtering the Beast with that wild look in her eye, and then appearing dry-eyed at his funeral and throwing herself so fully into work. Thinking back on it, it didn’t make sense. Lucy hated work. And she wasn’t the type to fall so deeply in love as she had with Edward, only to watch dry-eyed at his funeral.
Maybe my worries were more than just suspicions.
I hurried down the hall, peeking in keyholes, not finding her anywhere. I went to Elizabeth’s laboratory, but it was locked and I knew Lucy didn’t have a key. I scoured the observatory and the winter garden, and finally went down to the cellar.
I found her there. She was leaning over Edward’s body, head bent in prayer. My heart faltered for a moment. This must be where she was disappearing to when she’d been claiming to work or that she was ill. She came here to mourn in private, so she could appear strong in public. My heart ached; I’d do anything to take away her pain.
“Lucy,” I whispered.
She jerked upright, breathing hard in the cold air. “Juliet! Are you trying to make me die from shock?”
I took another step closer. A book was open on the floor. I had assumed it was a prayer book, but on closer inspection I saw anatomical drawings. She scrambled to shut the book and picked up various instruments, including the missing scalpel
from Elizabeth’s laboratory.
“Lucy, what are you doing?” My voice was harder now.
Her face went white. She tried to block Edward’s body from my view, and alarm bells went off in my head. I pushed past her and stopped short.
It wasn’t Edward.
It was the body of one of the vagrants, a boy about Edward’s height and age. The shroud had been drawn back to reveal his bare chest, which was marked in dotted lines following the anatomy book. A line of cut flesh ran down his center. There was little blood—the body was too frozen. The cut line was unsteady and imprecise, made with hands that had never done such work before and were hesitant to try.
I lost the feeling in my fingertips. “Lucy, what have you done?”
She jumped up and pressed her hand over my mouth as though she feared I might scream. “Shh, Juliet,” she whispered, face even whiter. “I was just . . . I thought I might try . . .”
She was normally so good at lying. I’d seen her lie effortlessly to suitors and to her own parents. But now she stared at me, blood drained from her cheeks, without a single explanation as to why she was cutting open a stranger’s body with a stolen scalpel.
“Blast,” she cursed, dropping her hand. “Don’t tell anyone. Not Montgomery. Certainly not Elizabeth.”
I looked around at the other bodies, noticed some of the other sheets disturbed, a few drops of congealed blood on the floor. This clearly wasn’t the first time she’d come down here with the scalpel and an anatomy book. And there was only one reason why she’d do something so gruesome: she was trying to teach herself basic surgery by practicing on the vagrants’ bodies. All in an effort to bring Edward back.
“Lucy, you can’t mutilate strangers, even if they’re dead!” I hissed, low and frantic. “Have you gone mad?”
“It’s the only way!” she pleaded. “You refused to help me, and Elizabeth has that oath of hers, and I know Montgomery wouldn’t do it. I don’t understand how you all can just let Edward’s body rest down here, knowing there’s a cure. He’s dead now—there are no more hurdles. No questions of morality. We could bring him back, Juliet.”
“No questions of morality?” I pressed my hand to Jack Serra’s charm beneath my dress. I had gotten to know my demons and been tempted to bring Edward back, but that was before I’d witnessed Hensley’s horrible show of violence. “What about Hensley? You’ve seen him. He’s hardly a normal child. There’s no telling if the procedure would even work, but if it did, who’s to say Edward wouldn’t be like Hensley, his mind as simple as a child’s, but his body able to kill so easily?”
“It isn’t the same thing at all,” she argued. “Hensley died and was reanimated as a child, so of course his mind stayed the same. Edward’s an adult. And besides, the professor was distraught when he brought Hensley back, so it’s only natural that he made mistakes.”
“And you think you wouldn’t make mistakes? Lucy, you’ve never done any of this before! This is highly skilled science. Only trained surgeons could perform such a procedure.”
“I don’t know what else to do!” She collapsed on one of the benches, burying her head in her hands. “I know I don’t have the skill, but I can’t sit around giggling about your wedding while the boy I wished to marry someday is cold and dead. He could be back with us, Juliet. Cured of the Beast. How can you say you don’t want that?”
I stared at her in the flickering electric lights, afraid of the look in her eyes, and even more afraid of how much sense she was making. Had I been heartless not even to consider bringing Edward back? What a fool I’d been, planning my own wedding, acting as though everything was fine and we’d all have a grand future together, when one of us was gone.
I sank onto the bench opposite her. Edward’s body lay between us, still shrouded, with Balthazar’s paper flower resting on the center of his chest. I dared to let myself peel back the shroud to get one final look at him.
His face was so familiar it made my chest ache. He’d survived days alone at sea. He’d survived the fire in my father’s burning island compound. He’d even survived an attempt to poison himself. He’d escaped death so many times that it didn’t feel real to see him like this, cold and lifeless.
I studied the lines of his face, trying to read his fortune, just like Jack Serra had read mine. The water charm felt heavy around my neck.
Lucy would never have the skill to bring Edward back, no matter how many bodies she practiced on, but I might. I had watched Elizabeth reanimate the rat, and the procedure was well documented in Frankenstein’s Origin Journals. I’d have to practice on other creatures first of course—Lucy had been smart on that count. I could start with the dead rats, then move to one of these cadavers. I wouldn’t bring it fully back—that would be too dangerous. But I could hook it up to the machines, test it out, and make certain I understood the procedure. As to fixing Edward’s broken body—repairing his heart, swapping out the diseased part of his brain, sewing back the incision mark across his throat—I had seen the medical notations Elizabeth made on all of her transplants. I’d watched her transplant Moira’s new eye. If I could get those notes, and the Origin Journals, I could study them.
It was possible—quite possible—that I could reanimate Edward.
I stood abruptly, scared even by how far I had let my own fantasies unfurl.
Lucy looked at me with wide eyes. “You’re considering it, aren’t you?”
I grabbed the anatomy book and the scalpel, wrapped it all in a sheet and hugged the bundle to my chest. I shook my head a little too hard. “No, Lucy. I couldn’t go against Elizabeth’s wishes. This is her house.”
“But you could do it, couldn’t you?”
I recognized that feverish look in her eye because it matched my own. Just like my father’s voice, urging me to do something remarkable instead of living a quiet life.
This is how you shall be exceptional, my father’s voice said. By defeating death to save a life.
I hurried from the cellar, afraid to face Lucy any longer. Upstairs I nearly collided with Montgomery in the kitchen. He frowned at the bundle clutched in my arms.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
I glanced at the table where our wedding cakes still rested, minus a few bites. They had tasted delicious at the time, but now all that seemed foolish.
“I think I might have caught whatever Lucy’s sick with.” It wasn’t a lie. My stomach threatened to turn at the sugary smell of the cakes. I hurried upstairs to my bedroom, where I twisted the key in the lock and let the bundle fall onto the floor.
A scalpel fell out, still caked with dried blood.
The idea had already latched into me, and it wasn’t as easy to dig it back out again. It was as addicting as a drug, beautiful and promising and so, so dangerous that I hesitated to even look at it directly. It was idea that could change everything.
Already my fingers were itching to try. Isn’t this what I’d been craving, deep down where I didn’t want to admit it? Since I first learned about Frankenstein’s science, since I first saw Hensley brought back to life. My father’s spirit was in my veins, urging me to do this. Suddenly the memory of the carnival I’d attended when I was a little girl returned to me: flashes of a man with skin like scales and a little boy with black fur covering his face. I’d gone to the freak show tent with my father. He’d given me a caramel apple and explained the monstrosities’ various afflictions.
No matter how much Montgomery pushed me to be like my mother, he was wrong. Only my father’s legacy could guide me now. Father had created man out of animal, but he’d never conquered death before. I could.
I took out Jack Serra’s water charm. Perhaps this was what his cryptic fortune meant: a stream and a river are made of the same substance, and yet the river has the potential to be so much stronger. The river always surpassed the stream—just as I would surpass my father. Only I’d use his science for good.
I closed my eyes, squeezing the charm. I felt like it was giving m
e permission, even pushing me, toward fulfilling my fate.
I snuck up to Lucy’s room and knocked silently. In the low light of a few flickering candles, our eyes met.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll bring him back.”
She threw her arms around me so tight I could hardly breathe. “I knew I could count on you to see reason.”
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TWENTY-FIVE
THE DAY OF MY wedding approached, and yet I could think of little else but bringing Edward back. All I had needed was permission, and that’s what decoding Jack Serra’s fortune had given me. I knew what Montgomery would say if I told him—that fortunes were only a way for us to impose our heart’s own desires—but so be it. If this was my heart’s true desire, I couldn’t deny it any longer.
Lucy conspired to help me sneak away from wedding planning whenever I could, tiptoeing into the hidden alcoves in the walls and reading every book I found in the library on anatomy and galvanism, though I already knew most of the information by heart. It was the Origin Journals I needed, the ones Elizabeth kept hidden.
“I know this is probably silly,” I told Elizabeth one evening after dinner, dropping my voice conspiratorially. “But Balthazar was telling me about some old journals he’d found while tidying up the manor. Said there was quite a bit of German in them. I know you keep the Origin Journals well hidden, but I thought you might want to make certain he hadn’t accidentally found them.”
Her eyes went wide for an instant, then she dismissed it with a wave. “He must have stumbled upon other old volumes. Lord knows there’s no shortage of dusty books around here.”
But there was uncertainty in her eyes, just as I knew there would be. That night, after the household went to bed, I crawled into the passages and peeked through all the spy holes until I found her in her bedroom. She climbed silently up the stairs to her observatory. I followed in the walls and watched through a small hole. She went to the globe with the hidden compartment where she kept her Les Étoiles gin, and knelt down and opened the bottom half—a second, hidden compartment.
A Cold Legacy Page 17