Her Dark Curiosity

I turned the lock and pushed open the door. This place was more than a workshop; it was my retreat from fine china and straight-backed chairs and weak tasteless tea. I liked coming here alone, where I could hide from the world, tucked under the patchwork quilt. I had worried that by bringing Edward here, that precious balance would be upset. But as I watched him rubbing Sharkey’s head and leaning against the rough wood of the stairwell, he seemed to fit so naturally.

‘Come inside,’ I said softly. ‘No one knows about this place. You’ll be well hidden here.’

It took a lot for me to say that – to invite a murderer into my one private space. But in a twist of fate, watching him shift the dog from one arm to the other and brush back a loose strand of hair, I felt strangely safe with him.

Safe with a murderer. With Edward. Perhaps this was how madness started.

Sharkey jumped out of his arms and curled up by the bricks around the woodstove. Edward came in hesitantly, scratching the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable in a lady’s room. I lit the lamp and nodded toward the woodstove. ‘Will you light the fire? I’ll put the kettle on.’

He bent to swing open the iron grate and add wood to the stove. While his back was turned, I chewed on a fingernail and tried not to steal glances at his frame, so much stronger than I’d remembered. Having him here triggered so many memories. A sun-scarred castaway on the Curitiba’s deck, clutching a crumpled photograph. A boy holding me close in a cave behind a waterfall. The one person in addition to me who wasn’t afraid to stand up to my father, when even Montgomery wouldn’t.

My left rib started to ache at the painful memories. Montgomery had the strength of a horse, and yet he’d been powerless in front of my father. I remembered being a little girl and listening through the laboratory keyhole as Father taught Montgomery how the circulatory system worked. It had hurt then, too, that Father was closer to a servant boy than to his own daughter. Perhaps I shouldn’t have blamed Montgomery. He’d had no other family; his father was a Dutch sailor he’d never known, his mother died when he was barely five, no siblings, no other servants his age. Of course he’d fallen under the spell of Father’s charms; any child that lonely would crave a connection wherever he could get it.

And yet I offered him love, I thought blackly. I chose him, but he didn’t choose me.

Edward closed the grate and rubbed his hands together in front of the fire with a boyish grin. I didn’t even consider trying to smile back. My heart was too shaken.

‘Where did you get those clothes?’ I asked. ‘They aren’t cheap, and neither is that gold pocket watch.’

He came to the cabinet, where the lantern tossed pools of light over his face. ‘The Beast keeps a room at a brothel in Soho – I wake there sometimes. He steals clothes and things from the wealthy patrons, always finds men close to my size … very thoughtful of the Beast.’ The hints of a smile played on his mouth.

‘This isn’t a joking matter.’

He swallowed. ‘I’m sorry – I don’t mean to make light of it. I’ve been staying in the Beast’s room and selling the stolen goods. I know it’s hardly proper, but a brothel’s good cover – I don’t know where else to go. People tend to overlook the screaming when I transform …’

I shuddered at the thought. ‘You can’t go back there,’ I said. ‘Sooner or later one of the patrons will report the thefts, and if Scotland Yard comes to investigate and catches you, it’ll be all over the newspapers, and not long before Father’s mystery colleague gets his hands on you.’ I nodded toward the bed, looking away before my cheeks warmed. ‘You can stay here.’

He nodded, and silence fell around us. He took out his pocket watch, toying with it just to fill the quiet. He wandered to the worktable, where I’d left the laboratory equipment in perfect order, the boiler and beakers and glass vials arranged in descending order of height. It wasn’t a vial he reached for, though, but one of the grafted rosebushes. I’d bound a single white rose to a bush of red, and he touched it as gently as a caress.

‘You made these?’

I didn’t answer, afraid he’d point out how similar the grafting and splicing was to Father’s work, and how the placement of my laboratory equipment mirrored Father’s exactly.

‘Yes,’ I said at last.

‘They’re beautiful.’

A surge of pride swelled in my heart. The kettle started whistling, and I nearly tripped over the dog to fetch it, along with my single mug. I poured a cup and handed it to him, trying not to think about his compliment. ‘I’m not used to guests here. I’ve only the one cup.’

‘Much obliged,’ he said, taking the tea, and only then acknowledged the medical equipment. ‘And all of this?’

‘I have to have it,’ I said quickly. ‘The serum I take is failing. Father designed it for me when I was a baby, and as I get older, it’s less effective. I’m trying to cure myself, just like you are.’ I let my hand fall over a crystal beaker. ‘That’s why I offered to help you.’

‘Have you had any success?’

‘Not yet,’ I said, though my voice caught as my eyes fell on the cupboard shelf. A book glowed there in the faint lantern light. It was one of many books I kept on anatomy, and botany, and philosophy, but this one was special. It stood out like a temptation, or maybe an accusation.

It was my father’s journal.

I’d found it the day after Montgomery set me adrift from the island. He must have stowed it in the dinghy along with the water and food and other supplies. For a while, I had resisted opening it. And yet once I discovered that Father’s serum was failing me, the temptation to look had been too strong. I had opened that leather cover and read his notes – some scrawled, most in his painstakingly precise handwriting. I’d flipped through the pages, desperate for some clues about how to cure myself. And yet the journal hadn’t proven anything, half of it little more than lines of nonsense words and numbers strung together.

I touched the journal delicately, but didn’t dare pull it out. ‘Father made most of his notations in here, before he transferred everything to the files he kept in his laboratory. There’s a formula for my serum, and the one he used on the islanders, and I’ve been trying to adapt it to my current situation.’ I let my hand fall away from the book. ‘No luck so far. Much of what he says in there is nonsense, anyway. He must have used a personal shorthand when he was writing in a hurry, and I haven’t been able to make sense of it.’

Edward’s eyes didn’t leave the journal. When he spoke, his voice held a quiet sort of hope. ‘Does it say anything about me? He used cellular traits from human blood to make me. I never found out whose blood it was.’

His fingers were still flipping the pocket watch over nervously, and I understood. To Edward it wasn’t just blood in a test tube. That human blood was his only tie to another person – to a family, in a sense.

I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t say. I’m sorry.’

He turned to the chemistry set, looking through my beakers and vials of supplies. Science, math, literature – these were the things Edward was comfortable with, things easily learned from a book. He made a good show at social interaction, using lines and scenes from obscure plays no one knew, but I didn’t think it ever came naturally to him.

‘We can figure it out together,’ I said softly. ‘We’ll cure both of us. It’ll just take time.’

‘Time is something I don’t have much of, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘The longer I’m with the Beast, the more alike we become. I can feel him bleeding into me, trying to take over. I can still delay the transformations, but I’m not sure for how much longer. He could only hold his form minutes at first, a half hour at most. Now he can hold it for two hours.’ His eyes met mine over the flickering burner flame, and again I thought about how much darker they looked. ‘In another month, maybe less, I’m afraid he’ll take over completely.’

My lips parted. This was why he seemed bigger to me, and darker, and stronger. The Beast was melding with him. ‘Edward …’

‘I can’t let it get to that, Juliet. He’ll terrorize everything. If he would let me take my own life, I would. I’ve tried a dozen times, but he prevents me.’ He paused. ‘Montgomery nearly killed me, once.’ He looked away from the flame. ‘You shouldn’t have stopped him.’

‘Don’t say that,’ I whispered.

His flickering eyes found mine. ‘You know it’s the only possible end for me. I was never meant to exist.’

‘But you do exist, Edward. We’ll find the missing ingredient, and we’ll get rid of the Beast.’ I realized how desperate my voice sounded. Desperate for him, or desperate for me, now that I had someone in my life who shared my secrets?

‘Juliet …,’ he muttered, and brushed the back of his hand against my cheek.

Warmth bloomed where he touched me. For an instant I leaned into it, as starved for human contact as he was, and wicked temptations whispered in my head before I could twist away in shock at my own response. I was lonely, that was all, especially for someone I could talk to freely.

He killed Alice, I reminded myself, thinking of my father’s sweet young maid. He could kill you, if you get too close.

‘How did you survive the fire?’ I asked, as though we could pretend that touch had never happened.

‘The Beast is strong. He heals fast. I came to and was able to crawl out before the barn collapsed, and then I salvaged what I could from the house. The letters, for one.’

‘I want to see these letters.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll go back to the brothel and collect them. I must return anyway for the chains I use to bind myself and some changes of clothes.’

I chewed on a fingernail, pacing. ‘I want to help you, Edward, truly, but not if …’ I swallowed, thinking of those drained bodies. ‘Not if you keep killing people.’

‘I’ll fetch the chains in the morning. He’s weaker early in the day. If he has the choice, he prefers to emerge at nighttime.’

‘And tonight? Can you promise me no one else will die tonight?’

A flash of Annie Benton’s face, Sir Danvers Carew, the red-haired thief girl.

Edward went to my worktable and searched through the vials, coming back with a heavy dose of sedative. ‘Give me this, then,’ he said.

‘That much could kill you.’

‘You underestimate how strong I’ve gotten. It’s only for one night. Tomorrow I’ll have the chains.’ He held it out to me, and I took it hesitantly. I’d gotten it from a veterinarian who had told me it was used to sedate animals for transportation. If it would stop a lion, it would stop Edward.

‘Give me your arm,’ I said. ‘You’ll fall asleep in ten minutes, twenty at most.’ He held it out to me and I inserted the needle into a vein, telling myself there was no choice, that I was doing this so we wouldn’t wake up to any more bloody headlines in the newspaper. I rolled his sleeve back down gently. ‘One more thing. Promise me you won’t see Lucy again. You’re putting her in danger by being around her.’

He nodded a little hesitantly. ‘I’ll send her a note.’

I felt the weight of the unfinished conversation and finally asked the question that kept circling in my thoughts.

‘What happened to Montgomery?’

There was the pain again, sharp and quick, in my side, as though when Montgomery had shoved the dinghy away with his boot, he’d kicked my heart instead. I recapped the syringe, biting the inside of my cheek.

Edward didn’t respond right away, and my mind filled with answers he wasn’t saying. Perhaps he’d killed Montgomery, or one of the beast-men had. Or Montgomery was still there, on the island, content never to see me again.

‘He’s alive,’ Edward said at last, but I could tell he was holding something back. ‘He hunted me for weeks on the island. I left him notes, trying to get him to give me a chance to explain … I thought maybe he could help me find a cure. But he was only interested in hunting me down, and I knew sooner or later he’d have his chance, and he wouldn’t win. The Beast is too strong. So I left, to come here and find a cure before my other half killed him.’

I toyed with one of the silver forks in the pile of stolen silverware, watching the glints from the lantern. He stepped closer, dropping his voice. ‘Forget him, Juliet. He abandoned you. He was keeping secrets from you.’

I glanced up from the fork. ‘Secrets?’

‘That he was helping your father, that he’d made some of the creatures himself, and worst of all …’ He stopped and looked away.

‘What secret?’ I asked. When he didn’t answer, I let the fork clatter to the floor and grabbed his suit lapel a little roughly. ‘What other secret was Montgomery keeping from me, Edward?’

‘It doesn’t matter. You loved him, and he left you. I’d never do that to you. I’d sooner cut off my own hand than do anything to cause you pain.’ My fingers were still coiled in the stiff fabric of his lapel, and he whispered, ‘If you’d only give me a chance …’

But I stepped back toward the cabinet, away from his promises and his offers. My breath was coming fast. The world was an upside-down place when Montgomery James was keeping secrets from me and Edward Prince telling me the truth.

But Edward was right – Montgomery had lied to me. He had left me.

I grabbed my coat before he could say another word, and said, ‘The professor will have half the city out looking for me. It’s so late … I must get back. I’ll leave Sharkey here with you; the drugs will put you to sleep in a few minutes, so lock the door behind me. If you aren’t too groggy tomorrow, go through Father’s journal – maybe you can make sense of it. I’ll come back tomorrow night with fresh supplies.’ I squeezed the doorknob, afraid to let go. Terrified to leave him, terrified that I still might read of fresh murders tomorrow in the newspaper. Sedatives might not be enough. Chains might not be enough. I had seen what the Beast could do. I’d have to make something even stronger to contain him until we could find the cure.

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