I hesitated. I’d intended to warn her away from Edward, but it seemed Edward had already kept his promise and done my work for me.
“That must have been hard for you, but perhaps it’s for the best. You used to swear that Henry bored you as much as the others.”
She flicked an impatient glance at me. “Yes, but you know me. I can’t possibly admit when I actually do care. And Henry was different. I enjoyed his company, quite a lot.”
I swallowed back my guilt for not telling her the truth that Henry—Edward—was right this moment in my attic chamber.
She turned on me a little abruptly. “We’re like sisters, aren’t we? We tell each other everything. You came to me with that awful business about Dr. Hastings, so it makes sense that I should reciprocate, if there was something bothering me as well. Something I wasn’t certain how to handle.”
There was something tense in her movements that I hadn’t seen before. She kept toying with her ribbons, watching me carefully.
“Are we still talking about your suitors?” I asked slowly. “Or is this about something else?”
She paced a little before the full-length mirror, which reflected the sharp angles of her face, her dark hair coiled intricately in pins atop her head. “It’s…” She paused. “Well, it’s nothing really. Just some business with my father, some investments he’s made that I worry about. But what do I know about business?”
She was trying to turn her tone back to playfulness, but there was something in her eyes I rarely saw. Fear.
My voice dropped. “Lucy, what exactly is going on?”
But she silenced me with a curt wave as footsteps sounded outside the heavy curtain. One of the seamstresses drew back the fabric and asked us if everything was going all right, and if we’d like more biscuits.
After we’d dismissed her, Lucy smiled tightly and said, “Never mind, it’s nothing. Papa’s business isn’t why we’re here, is it? You listen to me rattling on about men so much, the least I can do is help you pick out a dress. Don’t you dare try to come to the masquerade in one of those old-maid dresses the professor usually buys for you. Mother and Papa want you to be a guest of honor. Go on. Peel those clothes off.”
I tried to conjure a smile to match her tone, but it wouldn’t come.
“Don’t just stand there,” she said. “Take off that awful coat and throw it into the rubbish bin. Those stockings, too, while you’re at it; they look like they’re from the last decade. I’ve picked out a gown for you, behind the dressing screen.”
The gown hung on a wooden hanger, red satin, low lace collar, and sleeves that floated like clouds. I touched the fabric tentatively between thumb and forefinger, afraid my presence alone would stain it. I didn’t deserve this—not the gown, and not her kindness.
I came out from behind the screen, frowning. “It’s too fine for me.”
“Goodness, how many times must I tell you that you aren’t a maid any longer?”
“It’s just that all this isn’t really my world anymore.”
“Of course it is!” She rested her hands on her hips, frowning, but then her face lit up. “I know what this is about. You’ve no one to take you to the masquerade. Well, I’ve refused John, and Henry’s left me, so I haven’t anyone either. I’ll be your escort.” She smiled so broadly that I hadn’t a clue what to say. I couldn’t help but feel her joviality masked the pain from Henry’s rejection and the questions she had over her father’s business.
“Lucy, don’t be silly.”
“I’m perfectly serious! Come on, you’d have half the men in London after you if you weren’t so dour. That’s why this masquerade is so perfect for you. The whole point is to be someone else.”
Her lips curled, and this time I did manage to smile back. The idea of being someone else certainly had its appeal. Not daughter to a madman. Not jilted by Montgomery. Not a girl who found a flower laced with blood and kept it pressed in a heavy book.
Lucy slid her arm in mine and led me back around the dressing screen. I touched the lace trim of the red silk dress, imagining its feel against my skin.
“Try it on,” she said. “And then decide.”
I rolled my eyes but at the same time slid off my coat, then started with the long row of buttons down the back of my dress that followed the line of my scar. “Shall I have an alias, then?” I asked. “Perhaps an Italian heiress?”
Lucy’s nose wrinkled. She helped me with the highest buttons, then together we peeled off my thin dress and layers of underskirts. “You’d never pass as an Italian. Your mother was French. How about a French baroness, fleeing the Radicals? Oh, the men will love it! They’ll all want to save you.”
I laughed for real this time. “Or swindle me out of my supposed fortune.”
“Either way, it’ll fill your dance card. What’s more,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows, “I hear Papa has invited a very eligible contract attorney.”
“Oh, an attorney,” I said, pretending to swoon. “What a dream. Do you think he has a friend for you? Maybe someone dashing, like a public registrar?”
As we laughed together, I stepped out of my final underskirt and stood in the dressing room in only my combination, like Lucy. My braid was loose and curly like hers. My smile not quite as wide—after all, my laughter hid pain, too.
The only other time I’d been so friendly with a girl had been Father’s young maid, Alice. Days later she’d been murdered. I pictured Lucy in Alice’s place, cold body dead on the tile floor, white feet dripping with blood.
That won’t happen to Lucy. I won’t let it.
But the thought conjured visions of bodies torn apart by razor-sharp claws, and flowers stained in blood, and a murderer hidden in my attic chamber.
Lucy gave me a devilish grin, banishing my troubled thoughts. “Don’t worry, Juliet. This is going to be quite a memorable party.”
I tried to smile back. Memorable was watching Alice’s blood pool on the floor. Memorable was learning my father had betrayed me. Memorable was a white flower spotted with fresh red blood.
I wasn’t looking for a memorable party. I’d have settled for a perfectly forgettable one, but ever since Edward had returned to London, I had the feeling nothing would be forgettable ever again.
THIRTEEN
THAT NIGHT I WAS sleepless with wracking pain. My knuckles popped in their sockets; my head ached in a low, dull way. I could feel each bone in my body as though it moved of its own accord. I had been taking my injections daily, and yet the fits were only getting worse. I lay in bed for an hour, sweating into the sheets, until at last the illness passed.
Elizabeth and the professor had long since retired, so I stood shakily and broke the new lock on my bedroom window with more hydrochloric acid, praying I could find another lock to match Elizabeth’s so she wouldn’t know it was gone. I eased the window up as quietly as I could. The snow fell in thick flakes, but the wind was mild for once—a small blessing. I crawled to the end of the overhang and then down the trellis into the garden with limbs that were still sore, and made my way along streets that grew noticeably more run-down until I arrived in Shoreditch.
I paused at the entrance to the lodging house. The fresh air and movement had eased my symptoms, and without the distraction of pain my mind could focus on bigger questions. Edward claimed he would never hurt me, but how much control did he really have over his other half?
My hand fell to the weight in my coat pocket. When I’d replaced my bedroom lock months ago, I’d ordered several extra padlocks from the blacksmith’s, a few small ones to lock my serum and journal in private boxes, but also a heavy lock I’d intended to put on the attic door. Edward had said the Beast sometimes broke the lock on his chains—surely he couldn’t break this one. But would a padlock really stop a monster? If only Montgomery were here. He was young too, unprepared too, but he’d always helped me figure out what to do. I felt at times as though his memory was fading around the edges like an old photograph.
�
�What should I do?” I whispered into the night.
Montgomery was far away, but I didn’t need his voice in my ear to know that he would tell me to do everything I could to prevent Edward from hurting more people—and from hurting me.
I drew my knife and hid it in the folds of my coat, in case I needed it quickly. As I climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, a strange thrill plucked at my ribs, toying with my body like another symptom of my illness. The door was locked, so I knocked hesitantly.
Edward was quick to answer. The shock of the door suddenly opening and him standing there robbed me of any fears that he might hurt me. There was only concern in his dark brown eyes. I squeezed the knife harder to remind myself he was still dangerous.
“You should have asked who it was before answering,” I managed to say.
The smell of roses and camphor spilled out around him. I could hear the woodstove crackling and the tea kettle rattling on top, beckoning me in. My stomach felt suddenly very hollow, and I was overwhelmed with the idea that the only place I truly belonged was this little room, with this boy who knew me so well when no one else did, and I was immediately ashamed of those thoughts. What would Montgomery have thought of that?
“I know your footsteps,” he said. “Or rather, the Beast does. I don’t share all his memories, but a few things bleed through. Information that relates to you, most of all.”
He stood back to allow me entrance, and I came in almost feeling like a stranger in my own home. Edward seemed to fit so perfectly among the twisted rosebushes and frosted glass windows that it was hard to believe he had only been here a day.
I caught a glimpse of Sharkey curled on the hearth, fast asleep and dreaming, and that place in my stomach felt a little less empty and yet even more hollow at the same time.
“I’ve been working on the serum,” Edward said, nodding toward the worktable. He picked up some yellowing pages that still had the earthy smell of the island. “These are your father’s letters that I took from the compound before it burned. I doubt you’ll find anything useful; he was careful to hide his tracks.”
I devoured the letters in a matter of minutes. My father’s handwriting felt so alive that it was hard to imagine I’d never see him again. They discussed bank transfers and lists of surgical equipment, a few philosophical ramblings, but Edward was right—nothing concrete to tell me who Father had been working with here in London.
I set down the letters, and as if sensing my disappointment, Edward said, “I’ve gone through your father’s journal and pieced together what I could. I performed two variations on the formula, but neither held longer than a few seconds. The phosphorous salts you’re using are quite old. I thought I might go out and get a new batch.”
“No!” It was my instincts speaking. “No, don’t leave. I’ll get the salts. You promised me you would stay here.”
“Stay near the chains, you mean.” There was a certain edge to his voice.
“Well, yes. Can you blame me? Edward, you’re a murderer.” I pulled the heavy padlock out of my pocket. “I had this made at the blacksmith’s. It’s created after one of Father’s designs. Call him what you will, but he was a genius when it came to mechanical locks. No matter how strong the Beast gets, he won’t be able to break through that.”
I set it on the worktable with a thud. He picked it up quickly, as though its mere presence disturbed him, and stashed it in a drawer.
As I watched him, it struck me how truly handsome he was, despite the scar beneath his left eye. How could Lucy not have fallen in love with him? He was another creature entirely from her other stuffy suitors, who all dressed alike, spoke alike, made her the same tepid promises. Everything about Edward spoke of a different world, one richer in detail somehow, as though the waking world was merely a dream and he the only thing clear in it.
I cleared my throat and pulled out the worktable chair. He dragged over a stool, and together we started working on the serums. We spoke little, because little needed to be said. He and I had an understanding that didn’t need words. I’d gesture to the salts and he’d hand them to me. He’d make a notation in the original formula and I’d take the pencil and tweak the amounts.
The chair had a rigid back, and I found myself constantly shifting so the stays of my corset didn’t dig into my skin. After an hour of this, Edward glanced at me. “Is it the cold bothering you? I can add more wood to the fire.”
I had another fork buried in the seams of my dress to scratch beneath the corset, and I paused. Edward watched me keenly, seemingly unaware that scratching oneself with dinnerware was frowned upon. That was one good thing about his limited past—he never seemed to know, or care, how strange my actions could be.
“The temperature’s fine,” I said, setting the fork aside and focusing instead on measuring the draught before me. “It’s this awful corset. Be glad you’re a man and don’t have to deal with anything more constricting than a pair of socks.”
I finished measuring the amounts, though from the corner of my eye I could still feel his attention on me. I shifted again.
“Why don’t you take it off?” he asked. I turned to him in surprise, but his face was blank. “If it’s bothering you, I mean. Take it off.”
Take it off. As though removing such an intimate undergarment in a room alone with a young man was as commonplace as making a cup of tea.
“I can’t,” I stuttered. “There isn’t even a changing screen.”
He glanced around the room as though the impropriety of his proposal hadn’t dawned on him, then turned back to his work with a shrug. The longer I sat there, barely able to breathe, the more I recognized that just because society said something was one way hardly meant it was right. Perhaps Edward’s innocent comment made far more sense. This was my attic, after all. I could do what I liked here. Be who I liked.
“Dash it,” I said. “You’re right.” I pushed myself up and reached for the buttons down the front of my dress, but paused when his eyes fell on the small triangle of exposed skin at the base of my throat. “Don’t watch,” I said. “Turn around.”
His eyes darkened as a hint of desire flickered over his face, and it left me breathless despite myself. He turned back to his work, and as I stared at the back of his head, I undid the buttons with unsteady fingers down to my waist, and then turned my back and unhooked the corset. Air rushed into my lungs, though it was mixed with my fluttering nerves. I glanced over my shoulder to make certain he wasn’t watching, then put my dress on again, which felt loose without the corset, and rejoined him at the table.
“I don’t understand why women wear those,” he muttered, keeping his eyes on his work. “It isn’t natural. It’s hiding who you are.”
Now only the thin layers of my chemise and dress covered me, and it was both thrilling and unsettling all at once. “You should understand,” I said. “Your whole life is about hiding who you are.”
“I’m not hiding anything. This is who I am: these hands, this face. I might have named myself but that’s still who I am—Edward Prince.” He paused. “The Beast is something else entirely.”
My eyes slid to him, curious. “You believe you’ve two souls in the same body? That you and the Beast have nothing in common?”
“I’m not certain,” he said thoughtfully. “Not two souls, exactly. He and I are the same, and yet we’re not. Two sides to the same coin, perhaps.” His voice had wandered, and at my silence he cleared his throat. “You needn’t fear me, though. Not you. The Beast loves you too much to hurt you.”
My lips parted, as I found myself torn between ending this conversation and a desperate sort of fascination for it to continue. What did he mean when he said the Beast loved me? How could a monster love anything but destruction?
“What does it feel like when you become him?” I asked in a whisper.
His eyebrow raised, and his nervous fingers found his gold pocket watch. “It’s painful. The physical transformation itself, I mean. Aside from that, it feels a littl
e bit like drowning. Sinking into something that you can’t come back from, and knowing you’re still there, and still alive, but that there’s something more powerful than you. I’ve no memory of what he does, only pieces like forgotten dreams, and sensations. Sometimes the sensations can be quite strong, depending on what he does.”
“When he murders someone, you mean?” I whispered, riveted and horrified by the idea of it all. “Can you feel him doing it? Do you ever enjoy it too, just a tiny part of you, the part where the two of you meet? If you’re the same person, I don’t see how you can’t.” I stopped short, licking my dry lips, and found Edward watching me with a strange expression.
“No, I don’t enjoy it,” he said firmly. The edge to his voice had returned. “And you shouldn’t ask me such things. Nor should you be interested in him, Juliet. He’s a monster.”
I blinked as though he’d shaken me, yet he hadn’t laid a hand on me. I flushed deeply, mortified. I’d merely been curious, and curiosity was nothing harmful in and of itself, was it?
Edward slammed the book closed, still upset, and paced slightly as he replaced his pocket watch in his vest. “I’m going out for the phosphorous salts. You needn’t worry about me killing anyone; I have him under control. I’ll be back in a half hour.”
I listened to his footsteps, followed by the door closing with a loud thwack. I thought about what he’d said, wondered why I was so fascinated by the Beast, told myself it was only because of my love for science, nothing more. I opened my journal, forcing myself to focus on the chemistry at hand and not our conversation.
I read over my formula once more:
• 1 DRAM CASTORIUM
• 80 MG GLYCOGEN EXTRACT
• 30 MG PHOSPHOROUS SALTS
• 30 MG EXTRACT OF HIBISCUS
• 10 MG EACH WHITE HOREHOUND, GOLDENSEAL, AND BITTER MELON
Her Dark Curiosity Page 9