Her Dark Curiosity (15 page)

“I mean . . .”

I started to clarify that I only meant he shouldn’t die for Father’s sins. Not that I wanted him to live because I cared for him, because I felt a strange sort of kinship to this boy torn apart by my father, just like me, just trying to find a place in the world between the dark shadows and the too-bright sunlight.

“I mean . . .” I started again, but my words faded. With the smell of roses around us, and his strong hands around my own, I wasn’t sure what I meant. My life with the professor was so fortunate, so fragile, and half of it was a lie. I could only be that proper young lady during the day. But at night . . .

I let my fingertips trail over the folds and valleys of his shirt, coming away with another man’s blood.

“In a way, I envy your other half,” I whispered. “At least he’s free to do what he wants.”

Edward watched me staring at my fingertips. “No, he isn’t. He’s as much a prisoner as I am, beholden to his own sick desires. The sooner he’s gone from me, the better. I want to be just a man, that’s all, who isn’t marked with bruises, who can walk the streets without worry that he’ll kill someone.” He swallowed, as his hands again closed over mine. “Who can love you as you deserve to be loved.”

My breath stilled. He’d made no secret of his feelings for me. Even on the island, behind the waterfall, he’d intimated that he’d loved me. I’d never given him any indication—not in words, at least—that I returned those feelings. Still, I couldn’t deny that someplace deep, my thoughts had often wandered to him. Even in death, Edward Prince had been a difficult young man to forget about.

“Edward, don’t talk like that,” I whispered.

But he touched my cheek gently, turning my face back around to look at him. The blood on his shirt mingled with the smell of roses, making me dizzy in a way that had nothing to do with my illness. He was so close that his warm breath dusted my cold neck. It stirred something inside me, as though the animal within now sensed another creature like itself and was waking.

“I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” he whispered. “I told you I came back to London to find Moreau’s colleague so I could cure myself, but that’s not the only reason. Nor is it the only reason I befriended Lucy. I had to see you again. I had to hear news of you, even if only bits of gossip from your best friend. I tried to stay away from you—to keep you safe from the Beast—but I couldn’t bear it. All I thought about was you.” He leaned his forehead against my own, and this close to the window his breath fogged in the space between us, but I didn’t feel cold.

“I came back to London for you, Juliet,” he whispered.

Words I’d once wished to hear while staring at my bedroom ceiling, whispering
he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not
into the silent air, but from someone else. In the small space of my workshop, tucked away amid the roses, it didn’t seem to matter as much who said them, as long as they were said. Edward loved me. Edward had risked everything to come here, to be with me. Life in London had always been lacking some critical piece, like a piano missing a single key. And here was Edward, who knew my secrets and didn’t judge me for them, desperate to fill that void in my life.

And I was desperate for him, too.

I tilted my head to look up at him, and our eyes met as my fingers coiled in his bloodstained clothing. I wasn’t certain who moved first, after that. We were already so close, his arms already around me. Not a far change to press our lips together, to slide my hands around his neck and tangle them in his dark hair. He responded instantly, breath ragged as he kissed me.

Heart pounding, I slipped my fingers between the buttons of his shirt to pull away the bloody reminder, but he held my hand. “Slowly, Juliet. I’ve wanted this a long time. We don’t have to rush.”

He kissed me again, achingly slow. But his breath was as ragged as mine, and his loneliness and desperation as deep as mine, and it wasn’t hard to make him forget about childish desires like chaste little kisses. Once I whispered his name and pressed my body flush with his, he was broken.

We found our way to the wooden bed beside the woodstove, where warm flames splashed on both our faces. Our limbs tangled together, our lips found each other feverishly. The smell of blood was choking my lungs, and I helped Edward out of the stained clothes and threw them on the floor, and then my own, never wanting to think of the blood on them again. My bare skin slipped against his under the patchwork quilt, and without the barrier of my corset and skirts and chemise I felt a million miles away from London and all the propriety the city required, and I gave myself to Edward.

We fell asleep like that, tangled together, lips bruised, the worn old quilt thrown around my waist. I dreamed of a sea of blood, and Edward in a bobbing dinghy, and an island made of bones.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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SIXTEEN

W
HEN
I
WOKE,
I was alone in the workshop’s single bed. Edward was gone, though Sharkey was curled in a tight ball atop the quilt, stirring when I did, and blinking contentedly a few times.

I sat up, breathing hard, trying to sort through last night. What had been real, and what had been imaginary? The bedsheets were stained with blood from Edward’s victim, as was my dress crumpled on the floor. I’d have to burn it, just like the coat.

My knuckles twitched and I grasped my hand together as if it could hold off my illness, but the stiffness was already spreading to my arms. Soon all my joints would ache, and vertigo would set in. Already my head felt strangely light as I looked to the window. Traces of sunlight were coming through. Dawn. The professor would be up in another hour, and if I showed up drenched in blood with a wrinkled dress and bruised lips . . .

The doorknob twisted. For a brief instant a memory from last night flashed in my head, Edward standing in the open doorway dressed in his victim’s blood. It was Edward again this time, but he’d changed clothes and smoothed his hair back, and now held a cone of newsprint in one hand that smelled of roasted chestnuts.

“I heard the vendor outside this morning,” he said. “Dickens wrote about hot chestnuts so often that I’ve always wanted to try them. And I thought you might be hungry after . . .” He couldn’t hide his smile. “Well, you know.”

I stared at him as my mind still struggled to piece everything together. Edward and I had embraced last night with a desire I’d never known. But now, in the first rays of daylight, everything looked bleaker. I threw the covers back so hard that Sharkey yipped and jumped on the floor, and then I started stripping the bed of its sheets.

“I have to wash these,” I cried, then froze as the cold air bit my bare skin. Naked, not a stitch of clothing. I grabbed a sheet and pulled it around me as Edward set the chestnuts on the worktable and hurried over to stop my frantic movements.

“Juliet, wait. Calm down. What’s the matter?”

“The matter?” I asked, wrapping the sheet tighter around me. “The matter? Edward, there’s blood everywhere!”

“I’ll handle it,” he said. “Come here, to the fire. Sit down.” He pulled me over to the chair by the woodstove and guided me into it. He took my hands in his, which were now washed clean of the evidence from last night.

Of the murder he committed.

I started to breathe faster. What was I doing, protecting him? I didn’t even know who he had killed last night, and neither did he. He rubbed my shoulder, then touched my hair, trying to soothe me. “Shh, calm down. What we did last night was only improper if you think it is. I’ll make it right. I’ve read about how these things happen. I need only find a minister, and we’ll pay a fee for a license, and then once we’re wed—”

“Wed?” My fingers dug into the wooden arm railings.
“Wed
?”

“Well, yes. I assumed that’s what you would want. Isn’t that what men and women do, after what happened last night? You could get . . . with child.”

I pushed my way out of the chair, eyes wild, pacing a little in the strangling bedsheet. “No, I can’t. I haven’t had my cycles in months, not since Father’s serum stopped working. And you . . . you . . .” I wanted to remind him he wasn’t even human, he was a collection of animal parts made to speak and look and kiss like a boy. Oh god, what had we done?

I collapsed back into the chair, a hand over my mouth. I was hardly a prude when it came to such things. Half the girls who came to Lucy’s teas probably had indiscretions with men they weren’t engaged to, but this was different.

This was Edward. This was a
murderer.

“No,” I stuttered. “I don’t want to get married. We can’t.”

He swallowed, though his eyes still gleamed with hope. “All right, then. Yes, you’re right, we should wait until after we’ve cured ourselves. Then we’ll have a lifetime together.”

“No, Edward, you don’t understand.”

The light in his eyes flickered. “What do you mean?”

“It was a mistake,” I said, though my voice broke. “I care about you, but I was lonely. I needed someone . . .”

“Juliet, shh,” he started, shaking his head a little too quickly.

“ . . . but I’ve never stopped loving Montgomery. I thought you understood that.”

For a moment the entire room was still, no wind at the window, no cracking in the fire. Just me, and him, and Montgomery’s name between us.

“Montgomery?” he repeated, barely above a whisper.

When I didn’t answer, his hands curled on the wooden armchair rails so hard the wood splintered. I jumped at the reminder of how strong Edward could be, how quickly his moods could shift. He pushed himself up to pace before the fire. “Montgomery left you. He didn’t come back for you.
I
did.”

My heart started pounding. This was wrong—talking of Montgomery here, now.

“I must get home. It’s nearly morning. I’ll need to give myself an injection, and I haven’t any here.”

I crawled out of the chair and snatched my dress from the floor, shaking it out and struggling into fabric that was stiff with dried blood. I started to reach for my coat, but Edward grabbed my arm. “Wait.”

I didn’t dare look at him. “I’ll come back tonight and we’ll work on the serum.”

But his hand held me with an unnatural strength. Outside, the wind howled all the same warnings that my heart was whispering to me. My thoughts turned back to the broken chair rail and how easily that could be my bones splintered in two. I shivered, but not because of the cold.

Sharkey picked his head up and growled low in his throat.

“He’ll never understand what’s inside you,” Edward whispered. “He wants Moreau’s daughter, the girl he used to know, but that’s not who you are now. You’re no one’s daughter anymore. You can think for yourself, take care of yourself. You’re Juliet, and that’s enough, and Montgomery will never fully understand that.”

His other hand slid to touch the delicate skin above my rib cage but I twisted out of his grasp, not certain if I dared believe his words.

“The professor will worry,” I stuttered.

“I don’t care about the professor. I won’t let anything, or anyone, come between us.” He stepped close enough that I could feel his breath on my neck, warm and moist. I noted a different smell in the air—an animal smell. Not Sharkey’s light musty scent, but something heavier, more primal. I felt like here, in this moment, I was seeing that tenuous line between man and Beast I had been so curious about.

“I love you, Juliet.”

Sharkey stood up now, growling louder. I could tell by the deeper timber in Edward’s voice that the boy I knew was slipping. The Beast was used to getting his way, and I was refusing him what he wanted most—me. How far would he go to get what he wanted?

I had to be careful, now. Very careful.

“Edward, please . . .”

His fingers curled into mine nearly hard enough to bruise. When I met his gaze, my breath caught. His pupils were already starting to elongate. In moments the Beast would fully emerge. He leaned close enough that his lips grazed my earlobe. “I won’t let you go.”

Sharkey barked now, twice, very loud.

“I
must
get home,” I said, trying to keep my shaking voice under control. “If I don’t, the professor will send half the police after me, and they’d soon trace me here. We can’t let them find this place. Find
you
. I’ll come back tonight, and we’ll be together.”

I forced myself to look him in his animal eyes. I ignored how broad his shoulders were growing, how dark the hair on his arms was becoming. I pulled my lips in a smile that I prayed would convince him. His tight grip eased a small degree, and I cautiously slid from his grasp. I reached for one of my boots, though the moment I picked it up, the knife slid from its holster and clattered to the floor.

Blast.
I dove for it, but he was faster.

His hand clamped over my wrist. Sharkey exploded in barks that tore at my ears.

“Let me go!” I lunged for the knife again, but it only seemed to excite his predator instincts more. As he clutched my wrist, I could feel the bones in his hand shifting and popping as the transformation came faster.

A flurry of noise came charging across the room as Sharkey tore at Edward, barking and growling. Edward gave him a single kick that sent him cringing under the bed.

“Don’t you dare hurt him!” I cried, trying to pull him away from the dog. But my hands on his arm had the wrong effect, and he turned to me with a leer.

“Juliet,” he muttered, his eyes dilated and glowing. His voice was still Edward’s, and yet the edges of it were changing. The Beast was coming, fast. “How I missed you.” He leaned in close, his forehead against my temple, breathing in the smell of my hair and skin. His lips grazed my cheek and I shivered, painfully aware of the coldness of his flesh.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “I am what I am. An animal. Can you blame me for that?”

He nuzzled my cheek again, breath cold against my skin, as the last traces of Edward’s voice dissipated. That voice. That
humanity.
It was unnaturally deep in tone and yet spoken like a man, calculated, polite. The creature before me was larger, taller, stronger—the same body and yet such a different person. I couldn’t control the shivers of fear that ran along my spine, nor the goose bumps on my bare skin.