Her Dark Curiosity (29 page)

I opened the door from the inside to allow them entrance. “She isn’t home. She must have gone out.”

“Fortunate for us,” Montgomery said. They carried Edward into the foyer, then through the dining room, still set with silver finery, and into the kitchen. The basement doorway was low, the stairs narrow, and Balthazar had to step carefully not to miss a stair. At the bottom I twisted open the rusted cellar door. Balthazar carried Edward inside and I followed him, fumbling to unlock the chains.

“Are you mad?” Montgomery said. “Leave him chained.”

“The chains will serve us better wrapped around that door,” I said. “The only thing the professor ever imprisoned in here was vegetables, and they hardly required a lock.” I handed the heavy chains back to Montgomery.

Edward’s sleep was troubled. His head tilted to the side, as his eyes fluttered behind his lids. A dried patch of blood clung to his temple from where I’d hit him. I brushed it off with the pad of my thumb. His skin burned with a deep fever.

“Juliet?” Montgomery asked.

I blinked and pulled my hand back. Montgomery helped me out and locked the root cellar behind me, testing the lock. I tossed one final glance through the barred window at Edward’s bruised body, and something hitched in my chest.

Maybe I was fascinated by Father’s research. Maybe I did think some of it brilliant. But the Beast was wrong when he said I didn’t want to be cured, and I didn’t want Edward cured. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than for the both of us to be free of Father’s curse.

Father had won in life; he wouldn’t win in death.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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THIRTY-TWO

W
E CLIMBED THE STAIRS
to the kitchen just as the cuckoo clock chimed midnight. I looked around the quiet house, shivering at how empty it felt.

“We should try to find Elizabeth,” I said. “She might have gone looking for me.”

“It’s a big city,” Montgomery answered. “We’d have no hope of finding her. Best to stay here and wait for her to return.” He stumbled slightly and my eyes went to the glass still embedded in his skin, the web of cuts across his arms.

“First things first,” I said. “You need sutures before you pass out on the floor. Come with me.” I led him up the stairs to the professor’s study and turned on the lamp. For a moment I expected to see the professor’s body there, the blood dripping onto the floor below, but it was empty now, save the cat. With my knee I gently nudged the cat out of the chair so Montgomery could sit. I sat on the edge of the desk, examining his wounds. As I’d suspected, a few shards remained buried in his flesh.

I found the professor’s medical bag in the dusty old cabinet, stacked atop the ancient journals and boxes, and placed it on the desk. With the soft lamplight and the cat winding between my feet, I felt safe for once—if only for a little while.

“You’ll have to unbutton your shirt,” I said softly.

He started at the cuffs, taking care with a glass shard embedded in the fabric, and then undid the buttons down the front of his chest. Wincing, he let me help him peel it away from his blood-soaked skin.

My breath caught at the sight of his chest—bloody, slashed, bruised. Not so very unlike Edward’s bruises, in fact. I touched his shoulder softly, studying the cuts with a surgeon’s eye, then grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the bookshelves. “You might want a swig of this before I start.”

He took it gratefully as I arranged the handful of medical supplies I’d dug out of the professor’s bag. Forceps. Sterile needle and thread. Tin pan.

As I picked up the forceps, I couldn’t resist studying the pattern of his cuts. Wounds had always fascinated me. These were so smooth, perfectly sliced. A shame, really—straight cuts like these never healed as well as jagged ones.

He flinched as I touched the cold forceps to his forearm.

“Sorry,” I said.

He brushed back a strand of blond hair. “It’s fine. I just wish you’d let me clean that cut on your face first.”

I touched my cheek, surprised to come away with my own blood on my fingertips. I’d felt so numb that I could hardly feel the scratch the Beast’s claw had made.

“I didn’t crash through a glass wall. My cheek can survive a few hours without soap and water.” I examined the glass in his forearm, and then carefully extracted it with the forceps.

Tactile work like this gave me pleasure. I could get lost in the routine and give my head a rest. I worked in silence, filling the tin tray, and then once I was certain all the glass was removed, mopped the blood from his skin before coming back with thread to stitch the worst wounds.

It wasn’t until I was nearly finished and a web of black stitch marks crisscrossed his arms that his unsteady voice, threatening to shatter, broke our silence. “I feared he would kill you, Juliet. I saw him through the glass attacking you, and it was like he was ripping out my own heart.”

I shifted, needle and thread poised above the last cut. “I’m thankful you were there.”

“I should have been there sooner. You took care of the Beast on your own. You’re stronger than you realize.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer such tender words that made knots of my veins, so I punctured his skin with the needle. He didn’t flinch. I made the stitch quickly, then another, then another. I blinked furiously with my head ducked, but a tear still found its way onto his skin.

Montgomery tilted my chin up gently, forehead creased in concern. “Why are you crying?”

I turned away, running the back of my hand over my wet cheeks. His chair creaked as he leaned closer, but I shrugged away from him and paced in the small space between the desk and the bookshelves, my emotions pulling me in too many directions.

“Tonight, before you came,” I started, “I had the Beast chained against a tree. We spoke. The things he said about my father, and who I was . . . A part of me thinks he was right. There
is
something unnatural about me. I can feel it, deep inside. I don’t care for the things other girls do. I’m curious about things I shouldn’t be. I’m so fascinated by Father’s research that I can hardly stop thinking about it. I feel like a monster for thinking that.”

I squeezed my lips together as if that would help me hold in tears.

“It’s your illness,” Montgomery said after a pause. “It’s getting worse, and your mind doesn’t know how to handle it. It’s causing these unnatural urges. Once you’re cured, there’ll be nothing abnormal about you.”

I thought of the spasms, the dizzy spells, the hallucinations of beasts crawling through tall jungle grass. “Do you think so?”

“Of course I do. Do you truly believe I could love a monster?”

A sob caught in my throat. “That’s just it. There are things you don’t know about that last night on the island. Terrible things I’ve done.”

“Shh,” he said, running a hand through my hair. “The island is long behind us. I’ve made my peace with it, and so should you.”

“You don’t understand. That night, while you were packing the wagon, I lied to you. I said I was going back for my treatment, but I went to the laboratory instead. Father had locked himself inside. Jaguar was there—”

“Juliet,” his soft voice came. “Let go of these nightmares.”

I shook my head, as memories came back faster of blood-red paint bubbling under a burning door, Jaguar’s tail flicking in the darkness.

“I killed him,” I choked, turning toward the windows. “I opened the door for Jaguar. He might have been the one to do it, but I was just as responsible.”

I faced Montgomery and the terrible penance I was due. He’d paid for his sins by staying behind for the beast-men he’d helped create.
This
was my due—admitting my guilt, telling him everything and resigning myself to whatever fate he decided.

“Well?” I asked. “Do you still think me not a monster?”

He tucked a loose strand of my hair back tenderly. When I dared to look into his eyes, I was surprised to find them absent of any judgment. “I already knew, Juliet.”

I swallowed. “What?”

“I saw what you did that night. It took me a long time to understand how you could do such a thing, and it frightened me, too, for a while. But I know you. I
love
you. You did it for the greater good. You see a chance for redemption in even the darkest beast.” He tilted my chin up. “You’re brilliant like your father, but you’ve none of his cruelty. I thought I might have lost you tonight, and I discovered there’s nothing in the world that frightens me more. I want to always be with you.”

He touched his lips to mine. “Marry me,” he whispered.

My heart stopped. The world stopped.

I hadn’t words. My thoughts seemed to diffuse through the room like the lamp’s soft light.

Marry me.

I sank onto the windowsill before I fell. I’d been half in love with Montgomery ever since I was a little girl and used to daydream about our quiet servant. But so much had changed. There’d been Edward, and Father, and an ocean between us.

At my stunned silence, he cleared his throat in a rare moment of shyness. “I had hoped to find some mistletoe, wait until Christmas, do this properly. . . .” He swallowed hard, fumbling in his pocket until his hand came out with a silver ring. “I know I said I wanted everything resolved about Edward, but it can’t wait. My entire life I’ve wanted a family. My father’s the only relation who might still be alive, and I’ll never find him; I know that. But I can have this. You and me, our own family.” His blue eyes, soft as the early-morning sky, found me. “I want to marry you.”

My heart wrenched. Who was the man I loved, exactly: The childhood servant? The brilliant surgeon? The single-minded hunter? He was still so young, still unsure of his path in this world, just as I was.

“Juliet?”

My stomach felt hollow. I loved Montgomery, but we had both changed since the island. He’d been forced to slaughter all the beasts he’d once called friends, which had hardened him. Would marriage bring a little of his softness back? And would I make a good wife? I hadn’t any domestic skills; I could barely sew a button. It was more than that, though. A wife had to surrender all her property and wages to her husband, had to seek his legal permission to sign a contract or in some cases, even to travel alone. I trusted Montgomery, but I’d been wrong about men before. . . .

“Juliet, did you hear me?” His voice was heavy with concern.

I gave a jerk of a nod. It was all I could manage.

“Is that a yes?” he asked, as his face broke into a smile.

My lips parted as I started to contradict him. I had nodded to mean I’d heard him, nothing more. The question of marriage was something I couldn’t answer so easily. Elizabeth had once told the professor marriage was a cage, and I wasn’t certain I entirely disagreed. . . .

I felt something cold on my finger and looked down to find him slipping the silver ring on my hand. My voice caught, still speechless, and he drew me into his arms and kissed my temple, my forehead, my cheek.

“I love you,” he breathed.

I stared at the ring. Good lord, how could I contradict him now? Did I even want to? Marriage was logical for us. I loved him. I wanted him. I thought of him constantly. So why did a part of me feel like I was a runaway train headed for broken tracks?

I pressed a hand to my corset, wishing I could ease it just an inch. Maybe my fear was only because this had come so suddenly; I’d never doubted my feelings about him before, except for when he’d left me in the dinghy, but we’d put that past us.

“I’m happy too,” I said. His question had caught me by surprise, but I could make it work. Just because my own parents had been failures in marriage didn’t mean I was doomed to repeat their mistakes. When I smiled, it was genuine. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

My voice only trembled slightly, and it was easy to pass off as girlish nerves.

His hand tentatively found mine, his thumb absently tracing circles around the silver ring.

“The easiest decision of my life,” I whispered.

Though was it
?

Montgomery’s fingers intertwined with mine, still flexing restlessly. Slowly I realized that the source of his agitation no longer had anything to do with Edward; his eyes were drifting over my neckline, gliding over my curves. I had the wild notion that he wanted his hands to be touching all the places his eyes were.

He leaned in to brush his lips across my cheekbone. My pulse sped at his touch, as my mind drifted to being married and everything it meant . . . especially the things that married couples did, alone, things that I’d done in a heady rush with Edward but that I’d take my time about with Montgomery.

My pulse fluttered, a bird without wings. Why was I suddenly so shy around him? It wasn’t as though we hadn’t kissed, hadn’t ever touched each other, and I was hardly innocent when it came to being with men. The house creaked and settled, reminding me that it was empty of servants and Elizabeth. Save Edward locked in the basement and Balthazar guarding him, it was just us.

I crossed to the door and shut it. Engaged to Montgomery James, with his heartbreaking blue eyes. . .

Montgomery pulled me to him and kissed me so hard the stitches reopened on his arms, and I had to set him down and stitch them up again, but he kept smiling and eventually I laughed too, despite my sins, despite his, despite knowing the King’s Club would be coming for us soon, and he kept kissing me, and time ebbed away before the work was done.

“My future wife,” he whispered against my cheek.

His smile only faded at the sound of footsteps on the stairs outside, followed by the sound of the study door thrown open. Elizabeth stood there, snow still caught in the web of her hair.

I gasped, wiping my face of his kisses.

“I was out looking for you,” she said as she took in the scene with a deeply wrinkled brow. “Now please tell me where you have been, and why Mr. James is covered in stitches, and most importantly, who the young man is locked in my cellar.”