A Cold Legacy

by Megan Shepherd

  My fingers smoothed over his bare chest. His tan had faded over the past weeks, but the story of the island was written in each scar and scratch on his skin. One day, after all this was over, the scars would be nothing but memories we could chose to forget.

  He pulled my hair lose from its braid and ran his fingers through it.

  “I can take care of myself,” I said. “I know how to use a knife and a pistol. You won’t lose me.”

  He paused, meeting my eyes. “There is more than one way to lose you.”

  Voices whispered to me of the King’s Club’s laboratory in London: how I’d brought the water-tank creatures back to life with a determination bordering on madness, and how I’d felt that same thrill in Elizabeth’s operating room with the reanimated rat. Had Montgomery known about the bond I’d felt with the Beast? Did he know that at the last moment I hadn’t been able to pull the trigger?

  I kissed him again. Not slowly this time. His hand found the curve of my waist, bunching the fabric. His other hand pushed the hem up to graze my knee. Ripples of electricity ran through me. My mind turned to things I’d only dared dream about late at night.

  “So much death,” he said. “All I could think about during the funeral was that any of us could be next.” He swallowed hard, and when he spoke next, his words were in a rush. “Let’s not wait until the spring, Juliet. I’ve wanted to marry you since I first saw you in London, standing in my room at the Blue Boar Inn, pummeling Balthazar with biscuits. Marry me sooner. Next week. It can be a small ceremony. Whatever you want.”

  My hand went slack against his chest. “Next week?”

  “With lives like ours, who knows what tomorrow will bring. We have to take happiness when we can.” He paused. “That is, unless you’ve changed your mind.”

  My heart softened. “I haven’t.”

  I looked down at the silver ring around my fourth finger. There was still so much Montgomery and I needed to work out before our relationship would be sound. The secrets that both of us kept, the madness that overtook me at the King’s Club massacre . . . and yet what was more important, our love for each other or our secrets?

  I twisted the ring. “Next week, then.”

  He kissed the ring on my finger. A grin cracked his face. “Then in a few short days, you shall be Mrs. Montgomery James.”

  His eyes scoured my body, lingering on my bare shoulder. Tomorrow we would announce the wedding and shed some happiness on the gloomy household. Beyond that the future was far too uncertain, but at least Montgomery and I would face it together.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ELIZABETH’S ATTENTION WAS CONSUMED over the next day with watching Hensley for signs that he was growing more violent. His body didn’t age, but it did deteriorate. Elizabeth admitted she had already replaced his failing liver twice and his heart once. Now it was his brain that concerned us—the flesh might be breaking down and making him act irrationally. After the Beast, the last thing we needed was another madman.

  The only piece of brightness in our lives was the impending wedding. No one was more excited than McKenna to hear of the change in date, and she flew into a flurry of preparations, telling the girls to search the moors for any pretty greenery, spending the morning baking us sample cakes.

  “I took the liberty of picking my three favorite recipes,” she said. “Not to mention the three with ingredients we can get this time of year. Go on, now. Tell me which you’d prefer for the big day.”

  Ever since Edward’s funeral my heart had felt as though it was missing a small piece, but for her sake I picked up the fork and tried the chocolate cake. To her credit, it was delicious. I took a bite of the other two as well. When I met Montgomery’s eyes over the cakes, I smiled for the first time in days.

  “Oh, this shall be such a happy day for the manor, after poor Mr. Prince’s death, and Valentina’s as well.” McKenna chattered on like a mother hen. “No one has been wed on the grounds since Elizabeth’s mother some forty years ago. I was just a girl, not much older than Moira is now. A duke from London came to give the bride away. He was a distant uncle. He brought with him the most beautiful horses any of us had ever seen.” She rambled to herself, thinking back on fonder days.

  An idea seized me as I thought about her words. “If you’ll excuse me, I have an errand to run.”

  Before they could answer, I grabbed another bite of cake and ate it while I ran outside and crossed the courtyard.

  “Balthazar?” I stuck my head in the barn. “Are you in here?”

  The sound of a mumbled song came from the tack room. “A Winter’s Tale,” my mother’s song. Balthazar came out with a curved shepherd’s staff, pausing his tune when he saw me, flushing with guilt.

  “Hello, miss. Pardon my singing—I know it’s a time of mourning, but the goats so like music.” He scratched behind a goat’s ear. “It’s good to see you out of the house in the fresh air. After the funeral I was afraid you and Miss Lucy would stay hidden away for days.”

  “I suppose life at the manor must continue, whether Edward is here or not.” I watched him scoop some feed for Carlyle’s donkey. “It’s good of you to help with the animals.”

  “I don’t mind. I like to stay busy. And the little girls don’t much like getting their hands dirty, except Moira. She likes the horses. Especially that big bay one.” To my surprise, he handed me a bundle of dried-out carrots. “You could help, miss. If life at the manor continues, that means you must as well.”

  We crossed into the barnyard, where a light rain settled into our clothes. Balthazar smelled musty, like Sharkey after he’d been tromping through the dew-heavy moors. It was a smell I’d come to love.

  “That’s actually why I’m here. About trying to move on after Edward. Can I ask you a favor, Balthazar?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “It’s Lucy. She puts on a brave face, but I know Edward’s death must be destroying her inside. She’s so fond of you that I wonder if you might keep an eye out for her. Try to get her outside to breathe some fresh air, maybe help you teach Sharkey some tricks.”

  He straightened at this, proud. “Of course, miss.” We reached the hutches, and I held the first one open as Balthazar set down one of the shriveled carrots, prodding it toward the nervous rabbit. “There now, little fellow. A special treat.”

  We moved to the next hutch and Balthazar used his same gentle manner. It occurred to me how different he was with animals than Hensley was. Hensley thought he cared for his pet rats, not realizing he was strangling them with his affection. Balthazar, however, knew exactly what great strength he had, and knew how to be gentle.

  We finished feeding the rabbits, and Balthazar tipped his hat and started back for the barn.

  “Wait, Balthazar! That isn’t the main reason I wanted to talk to you.” Rain came harder outside, and we took shelter in the barn’s eaves. I brushed the moisture from my face. “Montgomery and I have decided not to wait until the spring to marry. We’re going to marry next week. A small ceremony. Just the residents of the manor.”

  His eyes went wide. Before I could react, he pulled me into the warmth of his arms. His comforting musty smell let loose a flood of emotions, and I leaned into him, closing my eyes, wishing this moment could last.

  “I’m glad, miss. This is a very good thing.”

  “I have another favor to ask of you. It’s tradition for the bride’s father to give her away.” I swallowed the rush of emotion in my throat. “I’d like you to do the honors.”

  His brown eyes went wide. He shuffled a bit, rubbing the back of his neck. “Me, miss?”

  “My father’s gone and I’ve no family, so I’d like a good friend to give me away.”

  His face broke in a wide grin. He pulled me into another hug that felt warm against the cold. I wrapped my arms around him. I held goodness in my hands, his thick muscles beneath my fingers, his shaggy-dog smell beneath my face. Not everything created in a laboratory had to be an abomination.

  Sometimes,
it could be a friend.

  I lost track of how much time I stayed with Balthazar in the barn, helping him clean, thinking about the wedding, while Sharkey slept on the wooden steps to the loft. It was a peaceful time—until I saw Balthazar’s back go ramrod straight. A low growl came from his throat.

  I turned to find Hensley standing perfectly still in the entryway, alone, petting his white rat.

  Alarm shot through me. Where was Elizabeth? Where were the girls who were supposed to be watching him? He stared at us blankly with that eerie white eye. I was about to reach for the knife in my boot when Lily rushed up behind him.

  “There you are!” She tried to sound playful, but there was fear in her voice. “Remember, Hensley, you aren’t to run off by yourself anymore. You frightened Moira—”

  “Moira told me I must take a nap. I didn’t want to.”

  “Yes, but you forget how strong you are. You accidentally hurt her.”

  He shrugged. “Mother will fix her. Mother can fix anything.”

  I met Lily’s eyes over his head and read fear there.

  “Balthazar, perhaps you can help Lily take Hensley back to the manor?” I asked. “I’ll check on Moira. Is she all right?”

  “I think so, miss,” Lily said. “The mistress is with her now in the tower.”

  I spared no time hurrying back to the manor and up the spiral steps.

  “Elizabeth?” I knocked at the door to her laboratory. Low voices came from inside, then the sound of footsteps. The heavy wooden door cracked open. Elizabeth’s face relaxed when she saw it was me.

  “Juliet. I’m just finishing up with Moira. She and Hensley got into a tiff. Come in.”

  A tiff?

  I stepped inside, closing the door behind me. Moira sat on the operating table with her back to me, hands folded neatly in her lap. My eyes immediately went to the bare skin of her hands, her ears, her bare feet, deeply curious to know what body part Hensley had damaged. A broken finger? A bruised throat? As I came around the table, Moira turned her head to look at me, and I stifled a gasp.

  Her right eye, usually a deep green, was gone now. Only a gaping hole looked back at me.

  “Boo,” she said, lurching toward me.

  I jumped back with a shriek, and her face broke into a grin.

  “My God,” I breathed. “Are you all right?”

  She shrugged, unconcerned, though her fingers were clenched tightly. “Will be soon enough,” she explained. “Elizabeth gave me medicine for the pain. I was fighting to get Hensley in bed. He lashed out. I stumbled back and hit my face on the edge of the bed.”

  Elizabeth gave me a knowing look. “Before you say anything, I already know that he’s getting more unpredictable. I’m going to speak to Carlyle about fashioning a room with bars in the cellar, something like what you did to cage the Beast. Perhaps after all this wedding madness is over, you and Montgomery can help him draw up the plans.” In her right hand, Elizabeth held a round object in a sterile cloth. It was one of the cadaver eyes. I watched in fascination as Elizabeth reattached the ocular vein and gently pressed the eye into the socket.

  Moira pressed her hand against her eye, waited a few breaths, and then opened it. Dark green, a nearly perfect match. She blinked a few times and smiled at me. The deformed face from before was once more that of a pretty, freckle-faced girl.

  She climbed off the table.

  “Thank you, mistress.”

  Elizabeth scribbled a few notations about the procedure in her medical journal, nodding. “You’re quite welcome. Don’t worry; it won’t happen again. I’ll look after him myself from now on and ask McKenna to give you a different task. Just remember to take it easy until the sedation wears off. Don’t want you putting your eye out again because you aren’t walking straight.”

  Moira scampered down the tower steps. Elizabeth took a cloth and started cleaning her tools. Her shoulders were tense, no doubt with worry over Hensley’s worsening condition. I recognized the clamp she held as the same one she’d chosen on the day the Beast had attacked. Now all those instruments were back on the wall, everything tidied, as though nothing at all had changed. And yet Edward’s body was in the cellar, cold and preserved, along with all the others. I shivered.

  She followed my line of sight. “A scalpel is still missing,” she observed. “One of the little girls must have gotten careless. We should keep an eye out for it.” She finished cleaning the room, wiping down the operating table, disposing of Moira’s damaged eye in the same airtight glass container that held Hensley’s dead rats. An image flashed in my head of the foxes swallowing the eye whole.

  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 at such a young age, 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 hear from Jack this soon only 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 tenth century, and then 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. “Inde
ed. 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.”

  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 and brought with her in a basket? 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.