A Cold Legacy (18 page)

“E
DWARD
!” L
UCY RUSHED TOWARD
his side, but I dug my fingers into her arm to hold her back.

“Wait.” I pressed the pistol into Lucy's hands. “Keep this aimed on him until I tell you it's safe.”

Edward blinked again, moaning, his eyes glassy and unfocused. I took a cautious step closer, and then another, as a bolt of lightning lit the night sky outside.

“Edward?” I reached out trembling fingers to touch him. “Can you hear me?”

He mumbled a few incoherent words and shut his eyes. I let my fingers slide over his forehead. Cold, but alive. Blood pulsed beneath the sheen of sweat on his skin. I was at a loss for words. We had done it. Defeated death.

“I should check his heartbeat and breathing,” I said, still dazed. “Make sure everything is working.”

I went through the motions I knew by heart, monitoring his pulse, taking his temperature, utterly amazed to see his body working. I pressed the silver end of the stethoscope
against his pale skin and listened to his beating heart. What a difference a single day could make. Yesterday Edward was a cold body in the cellar, and now I was feeling his breath against my cheek.

Had I changed as well, in a single day?

“His pulse is a little slow, but still in the range of normal circulatory function.”

“But is he
himself
?” Lucy asked, clutching the pistol.

I lifted his eyelids one at a time. Even when the Beast had taken on a more human body, his eyes had still glowed a golden yellow. As I peered into Edward's glassy eyes, they were an earthy brown the color of peat. Relief overcame me like a warm bath. He mumbled a few incoherent words and I caught a sniff of his breath: unwashed teeth and day-old bread. Unpleasant, but very human.

A relieved laugh slipped from my lips. “It's him.”

Lucy let the pistol tumble from her hand and threw her arms around him, sobbing, petting his hair, speaking as incoherently as he was. I watched the reunion with a mixture of awe and gratitude. Why had I ever doubted this was the right thing to do? Edward was one of us, and he'd sacrificed himself for us, and now we'd repaid that favor. At long last I had made up for Father's cruelty in making him.

It occurred to me that now I could always keep the ones I loved safe. No matter what happened, accident or illness or violence, death wasn't the end anymore. I could bring Lucy back, or Elizabeth, or Balthazar, if anything happened to them. Tomorrow I would marry Montgomery, and we truly could have a lifetime together—many lifetimes—safe from
the fears that one of us might die young.

Lightning crashed outside. The electricity flickered and dimmed, then abruptly cut off. Lucy gasped in the sudden dark.

“The candle—I left one on the cabinet,” she said.

I lit it quickly, letting the light spill out over the wires and switches rigged into the walls of the laboratory. “This is where Elizabeth controls all the electrical systems,” I said. “She'll be here soon to repair it. We need to clear out quickly before she comes.”

“I don't think he can walk yet,” Lucy said.

I bit my lip. I'd poured all my energy into reaching this point; I hadn't actually thought past it to what we'd do with him afterward.

“Help me with the manacles.” By the light of the single candle, Lucy and I unfastened the shackles and dressed him quickly. His unfocused eyes moved back and forth in their sockets; his forehead was damp and feverish. While Lucy did up the buttons on his shirt, I cleaned the laboratory of signs of our presence as best I could, swept up the blood-soaked sawdust and tossed it out the window along with the poor vagrant's empty skull, and wiped down the knives and instruments.

I opened the door. Balthazar stood on the other side in his blue-striped pajamas. When he gazed beyond me at Edward moaning on the table, he whimpered.

“My friend,” I said, “I need your help once more to carry Edward downstairs. But I won't command you to do it this time. I was wrong to before. This time I'm asking, as a favor to me. You can say no.”

He rocked back and forth in indecision, until Edward moaned again. “I shall, miss, but only because Master Edward needs me.” He paused, kneading his fingers together. “Though if I'm free to say no, am I also free to make a request?”

“Of course.”

“Tell Montgomery about this. Or allow me to tell him. It isn't right, keeping it from him.”

Edward moaned again, and Lucy gave me a look that said we dared not wait much longer.

“I will,” I blurted out to Balthazar, a little desperately. “I promise. Only give Edward some time to heal. I'll tell Montgomery after the wedding. Is that good enough?”

He nodded. “Yes, miss.” He lumbered into the room and picked up Edward with gentle care.

“Take him to my bedroom,” I said in a rush. “There's a dressing screen with a chaise longue. We'll keep him there until he's fully conscious, then move him somewhere more permanent until we can figure out how to tell everyone about him.”

Lucy and I followed Balthazar down the winding staircase and through the halls as he carried Edward. For once, I was thankful for the poor electricity that let us sneak through the halls under cover of darkness. At last we made it to my room.

“Thank you,” I whispered to Balthazar.

He paused before leaving. “Just remember your promise. It isn't good to keep secrets, miss.”

When he was gone, Lucy helped me lay Edward down
in the chaise longue behind the screen. He reached a hand up, combing it through his sweaty hair, his eyes still glassy.

“Juliet?” he mumbled.

I knelt at his side, wiping the sweat from his too-cold skin. “Yes, it's me. You've undergone an extensive medical procedure and you're recovering.”

“I died,” he said. “I think . . . I died.”

I glanced at Lucy. I hadn't thought through how to explain to him what we had done.

A knock came at the adjoining door, soft at first, and Lucy and I both froze.

“Juliet?” It was Montgomery. “Are you awake? I thought I heard you walking around.”

Eyes wide in terror, I thrust the cloth into Lucy's hand and signaled for her to keep Edward quiet. I hurried to the adjoining door, trying to think straight.

“Montgomery?” I said through the door.

“I can't sleep. Stay with me tonight—I want to wake up with you on our wedding day.”

My wedding. Tomorrow. I looked back at the dressing screen, where I could barely make out Lucy and Edward. I'd tell Montgomery about Edward eventually, as I'd promised, once he regained his strength and things had settled down. It would be a shock, but Montgomery would understand in time. He'd even be delighted to have Edward back—surely.

But I didn't dare tell him tonight.

“I think . . . that's bad luck, isn't it?” I said. “To see the bride on her wedding day.”

“It isn't yet midnight,” his voice came. “There's no rule about not seeing the bride the day before.” His voice was so light and playful, in stark contrast to the procedure we had just wrought in Elizabeth's laboratory.

I glanced back at the dressing screen, where Lucy was dabbing at Edward's forehead as he tried to sit up.

“One kiss,” I said, and twisted the key in the lock, swinging open the door and stepping into his room quickly. If he sensed how nervous I was, he must have attributed it to wedding jitters.

He stepped close, sliding a hand behind my back. “One kiss,” he murmured, “For tonight, that is. Tomorrow, after the wedding . . .”

He nearly growled as he pressed his lips to mine. I could feel his heart pounding beneath his thin shirt, and it made my own flare to life. Tomorrow I'd marry the boy I'd known forever. Edward wouldn't be able to attend the wedding, but it would be enough to know he was alive, returned to us, completely healed.

Montgomery pulled back, one corner of his mouth hitched in a grin. He looked so very young then, and more handsome than I'd ever seen him. “Your hands are shaking.”

“I'm . . . just nervous about tomorrow. That I'll trip walking up the aisle.”

“If you do, I'll be there to help you up.”

He kissed me again, more passionately this time, his hands drifting farther down my dress to settle on my hips. The clock on his mantel struck midnight, and I managed to pull myself away. I gave him a smile that I hoped appeared coy.

“
Now
it's bad luck,” I said, and returned to my room. I twisted the key in the lock and leaned my head against the door.

Lucy was watching me, dabbing at Edward's brow. I took a deep breath and released it slowly.

“We have to get him out of here,” I said. “We must find a secret place for him to stay tomorrow, and for a few days after while he heals. We could put him in Valentina's room. No one's been in there since she died.”

Edward moaned again, his body jerky as though he was still getting used to it. He kept rubbing the bandages on the back of his head where I'd replaced his posterior lobe.

“Do we dare leave him alone during the ceremony?” Lucy asked.

I sighed. “Let's get him to Valentina's room first, and then we'll figure it out.”

We struggled to help him stand. He seemed to have regained some strength, but his steps were unnatural and robotic.

I took a deep breath. I only needed to keep him secret until after the wedding. I wasn't going to suffer the same curse as Victor Frankenstein—there wouldn't be any tragedies on my wedding day, not after Montgomery and I had suffered so much already, only to find a safe haven here.

From today forward
, I told myself,
things are going to start going right for all of us
.

I
SLEPT LITTLE THAT
night. Lucy and I had spent hours with Edward in Valentina's room, monitoring his breathing and pulse, trying to communicate with him, though his eyes and hands moved strangely, as though there was some disconnect between them and his brain. He fell asleep at last, and in his sleep looked so startlingly human—so perfect—that it stole my breath. Lucy pushed back the curtains as the first tinges of dawn appeared on the horizon.

“Go to bed, Juliet,” she said. “I'll stay with Edward. You should get a few hours of sleep. You'll need it. It's your wedding day.”

It felt unreal. I left her with the silver pistol, only as a precaution. Edward had been jerky and confused since reanimation, but not violent. Now, as I gazed at Edward sleeping quietly in Valentina's bed, I couldn't believe the Beast had ever even existed.

We're more alike than you want to admit
, he had once whispered.

I shivered with the memory.
Not anymore
, I told myself.

I collapsed on my bed, thoroughly exhausted by the procedure. My fingers ached in a delicious way, and I stretched and popped my knuckles as I'd seen farmers do after a hard day's work threshing. As I drifted off, I wondered if Father had fallen asleep at night this satisfied. I doubted he had. After all, he'd never accomplished his goal to create the perfect creature.

I
had.

In the morning, I woke to knocking. My first thoughts flew to Edward upstairs in the attic, and I scrambled out of bed and threw open the door, only to find a half dozen excited faces staring at me. Lily and Moira and the little girls crowded into my room, grinning from ear to ear.

“Today is your wedding!” they squealed, bustling into the room with combs and soaps and piles of ivory ribbon and lace. I watched them in a daze, a hand to my head, trying to calm my racing heart.

“How wonderful of you all to come help me,” I said, in an attempt to pass off my shock as jitters. “I just . . . need to check on something for a moment. I'll be right back.”

I gazed in the direction of the stairs leading to Valentina's room, but Moira clucked her tongue and shook her head. “Oh, no, no running off for you today. McKenna wants to hold the ceremony right at sunset, when the moors are at their prettiest, and you've slept so late we don't have much time to get you ready.” She looked over my bare feet and frowned. “First things first: a bath!”

I protested, desperate to slip upstairs for just a peek to make sure everything was all right with Edward, but they wouldn't hear of it. They dunked me in steaming water, scrubbed me with rose-scented soap, and slathered my hair with precious oils, only to dry me off and check my fingernails and do it all over again. By the time we finished in the bath, my skin was the consistency of a prune and my stomach was rumbling.

Back in my room, Lily threw open the curtains and started to air out the corset and underclothes I would wear beneath my wedding dress.

“Look at that sun,” she said, even though the sky was mottled with clouds. “I told you the storm would break, eh? But the vicar sent a note he can't make it. Had too much to drink last night, the rumor is.”

“McKenna's offered to take his place presiding over the ceremony,” Moira added while raking her fingernails through my hair. “She can forge the vicar's signature to all the official documents. It won't be the first time, and he won't mind.”

The girls spent the next hour toying with my curls and rubbing lotions into my hands and face, peppering me with compliments about what a beautiful bride I would be and speculating who would be next. Lily voted for Lucy, and Moira thought McKenna and Carlyle would discover they'd been passionately in love for years. When I suggested Elizabeth might marry, they only burst into laughter.

“Speaking of Lucy,” I said, managing to extricate
myself from their primping, “I haven't seen her yet today. I really should go find her.”

“She came down for breakfast,” Lily said. “Grabbed the entire basket of scones and ran back upstairs. Said she shouldn't be disturbed.”

It wasn't until McKenna called the younger girls down to help with the cooking that I was able to give Moira and Lily the slip and race up to the attic.

I knocked on Valentina's door. “Lucy,” I whispered. “It's me. How is he?”

She threw the door open and looked both ways to make sure I was alone, then pulled me into the room. Her entire face glowed as radiantly as mine, and she hadn't used a single salve. It was amazing how sheer joy could transform a person.

“Ask him yourself,” she said with a grin.

E
DWARD COULDN
'
T STOP STARING
at his hands.

Lucy had helped him move from the bed to a reclining chair by the windows, and he sat upright as casually as any gentleman, though his skin was still clammy, and his muscles trembled as he took a glass of water that Lucy offered him. He drank it greedily.

“I keep expecting the claws,” he said in a rusty voice, clearing his throat. He held out his hand, flexing his fingers. “Even when I was in control of my body, I could still feel them. Now they're just . . . gone.”

His brown eyes met mine. Not even a hint of gold in them.

“
He's
gone too,” he added. “The Beast. I could always feel him before. Now there's nothing.”

Lucy took the glass from him. He looked over with a smile and rested his hand over hers. “Lucy explained to me the basics of the procedure you performed, but I still have questions.”

“And I'll answer them all,” I said. “But you should rest first. You've been through so much.”

He flexed his hands again, marveling at them. “All I've wanted is to be a normal person with a normal life. I didn't know I just had to die first.”

I smiled. Even brought back from the dead, Edward had a sense of humor. Lucy grinned as well.

“As far as I'm concerned, you're quite normal now,” I said. “Your breathing is slower, as is the rate of your blinks, but it's nothing to be concerned about. Hensley's levels are slower, too.”

“Hensley?” Edward asked.

“Oh—I forgot. You never met him.” I tactfully avoided mentioning that Hensley was the one who had ripped out the Beast's heart. “Hensley is the professor's son. You'll meet him soon enough; he likes to crawl around in the walls and play with rats. He's like you—brought back.”

Edward's eyebrows raised. “There are more like me?”

“Only the two of you.”

His dark eyes shifted to mine. “Where's Montgomery? He helped with the procedure, I imagine. I should very much like to thank him.”

Lucy and I exchanged a look, and when I didn't answer
straightaway, he guessed the truth. “He doesn't know, does he? That's why you have me hidden away up here.”

I leaned forward to take his clammy hand in my own freshly washed one. “Lucy and I brought you back ourselves. We'll tell Montgomery soon, and he'll be delighted. Today, though . . .” I glanced at Lucy again. Right now, Montgomery would be dressing in his suit, perhaps sharing a drink with Balthazar to calm his nerves. “Let me worry about what Montgomery thinks. You worry about getting used to being alive again. Now, open your mouth. I want to run a few more tests.”

I prodded Edward with a metal tongue depressor, then checked inside his ears and nose, and jotted everything down in a notebook at my side. On something of a whim, I handed him the tongue depressor. “Take this. See if you can bend it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “It's made of steel.”

“Humor me.”

He took the metal depressor in both hands and gave it a slight jerk, no more effort than breaking a matchstick, but it bent like it was hinged in the middle. I stifled a gasp.

“Unnatural strength. I'm not surprised. All humans have powerful latent strength, but normal bodies are conditioned to respect limits so we don't harm ourselves. Because of your condition, you can't harm yourself, so your body doesn't register those usual warnings.”

“Can't harm myself?” he asked, confused. “I thought I was normal now.” His dark eyes found mine. From the day he'd washed up on the
Curitiba
, all Edward had ever wanted was a normal life.

“You're better than normal now,” Lucy said tactfully. “You can't die.”

This news made him stand up anxiously, but the effort was too much and he had to sit back down. “How do you know this?”

“Hensley is the same way,” I explained.

He rubbed a hand over his face. There was a heaviness to the lines around his eyes and mouth that hadn't always been there. I could imagine a small part of what he was going through—when I'd cured myself in London, the wracking pain in my joints was gone overnight. My hands—like Edward's now—were mercifully still. Cured. And yet the Beast had seen straight through my supposed cure.

“Lucy, could you give us a moment alone?”

She hesitated only a second. “Of course.” She left the room, closing the door behind her.

Maybe the serum cured your physical afflictions
, the Beast had said,
but it didn't cure the illness of your soul
.

“I can't imagine what you feel like,” I said softly. “But I hope you don't hate me for bringing you back.”

He looked up from his hands. “Hate? No, I could never hate you. I know my feelings for you were rash when we first met. I had only been alive a few months, and you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. It's taken some time to understand what loving a person truly means.” His head turned in the direction Lucy had gone. “Sometimes it must grow. And sometimes it's quieter, less expected, not like how they describe in books.”

He turned back to me, looking more serious. “I'm grateful you've given me a second chance, though I'll always be an experiment, won't I? An aberration. Something made in a laboratory.”

I knew what it meant to be an aberration, but I'd never longed for a normal life like Edward had. I'd dreamed of an exceptional life for as long as I could remember. Ambitious, just like Father.

“Can I ask you a question?” I drummed my fingers nervously against my knees. He nodded. “After the Beast took over your body, he told me that I should be wary of Montgomery. That he had burned some files and a letter that my father had written to me.” I swallowed. “Do you know what he meant?”

Edward rubbed his eyes. “I'm afraid I don't. When you cut the Beast out of my head, you cut out his memories, too. I might have known once, but not any longer.”

I let out a heavy breath. “I shouldn't have even asked.”

“Montgomery is a good man, Juliet.” I looked up in surprise, and the corner of Edward's mouth pulled back in a smile, though the movement seemed to pain him. “Even if he did try to kill me a time or two. I know he was only defending you. He and I have had our differences, but I can recognize a good heart when I see it, and if my blood had to come from anyone, I'm glad it was from him. If Montgomery is keeping secrets from you, it's for a good reason.”

I spun the ring on my finger slowly. “The reason I must keep you secret today—it's because Montgomery and I are getting married. After the ceremony, once things have
calmed down and we are certain you're well, I shall tell him everything.”

Edward nodded slowly at the mention of my wedding, unsurprised, and I wondered if Lucy had already told him or if he simply was too exhausted for strong reactions. He had loved me passionately once, but that time had slipped away sometime between his death and rebirth.

“I'm glad,” he said. “You deserve to be happy.”

I paused. “So do you.”

Lucy opened the door, peeking her head in and giving me a smile. “All the girls are downstairs looking for you, Juliet. It's time to put on your dress.”