Her Dark Curiosity - Megan Shepherd

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him. The letters aren’t signed; whoever his colleague was, Moreau wished to keep it secret. The correspondent called himself a King’s Man, nothing more. So I’ve been investigating all the members of the King’s Club, starting with those closest to your father, such as Radcliffe. He’s a hard man to get close to.’

      ‘The King’s Club is wrapped up in this?’ My mind ticked back to the grainy old photograph hanging in the hallways of King’s College. Father’s young face had seemed so hopeful then, brimming with ambition. I tried to remember the other faces. Hastings had been there, and Isambard Lessing … the rest of the names bled together in my head.

      ‘So you used Lucy. Never mind that you would only end up breaking her heart, assuming you didn’t first rip it out of her chest.’ I knew my words were laced with acid, but he didn’t flinch. ‘Did you at least discover anything about her father?’

      He shook his head. ‘Not yet. There are a dozen King’s Men who fit the profile.’ A shadow passed through the golden flecks in his eyes. ‘Including your guardian.’

      My hand fell away from my collar. The professor? Words raced up my throat, ready to deny it, but they never made it to my lips. Doubts started to pull them back down – the professor had been in the photograph, standing right next to my father, of all places – but I gritted my teeth and ignored my doubts. ‘The professor was the one who turned Father in. He’d never support his work.’

      But Edward didn’t answer, and my blood went cold. Only the day before yesterday the professor had told me about how he’d met Father in the King’s Club. He’d prodded me for information, asked me to talk about my time on the island. I thought he’d just been concerned …

      I shook my head fiercely. ‘No, I don’t believe it. It’s someone else. But it doesn’t matter – whoever Father’s secret colleague is, you can’t contact him. It’s too dangerous.’

      ‘I haven’t a choice. If he knows Moreau’s work, he might know how to cure me.’

      ‘He’ll use you! On the island Montgomery and I swore we wouldn’t let any of my father’s research leave, in case the wrong people were to get ahold of it. That’s the entire reason I destroyed his laboratory, the reason I wouldn’t let Balthazar come back with me … the reason I helped kill my own father!’

      My desperate words filled the artificial jungle around us, and I clenched my jaw as if I could take them back.

      ‘I’m flesh and blood, not a diagram in a laboratory notebook,’ Edward said. ‘How could they possibly use me?’

      ‘It wouldn’t be impossible for someone with the right training. I saw a hybridized Bourgogne lily the other day and knew exactly what stock it had come from. If I’d been able to dissect it and further examine its various parts, I’d be able to tell even more.’ My voice fell to a whisper. ‘They could do the same to you, Edward. Cut you open and see how Father made you, and then re-create it. Think of what that would mean. How many animals would die on their operating tables. Humans, too, probably. And in the end, an army of beast-men not contained on a single small island.’

      His hand touched the scar under his eye absently and then fell away. ‘What other choice do I have? As long as the Beast is a part of me, he’ll keep killing. That blood is on my hands too, Juliet. I’ve no one else to help me.’

      A thousand emotions warred in my chest. Some told me to run, some told me our goals were the same – finding a cure – and that we could help each other. Some told me to leave him to his fate. But it was my fate too, now. I’d had a hand in my own father’s murder to keep this from happening. And I wasn’t a fool. If Father’s colleague got his hands on Edward, it would only be a matter of time before he found out I, too, was one of Father’s experiments. If I wasn’t careful, it might be me strapped to an operating table one day.

      I cursed under my breath, wondering if I was making a huge mistake.

      ‘Then I’ll help you myself.’

      11

      Later that evening, Edward and I stood on the landing of my lodging house in Shoreditch while I fumbled with the key. Sharkey had been waiting outside the front door, half-hidden in the bushes, having escaped Joyce again and come here, where he knew I’d give him whatever meat scraps I had left over from my experiments. I’d introduced the dog to Edward and he’d carried Sharkey up the stairs in his arms. Seeing him act so gentle with the little mutt stirred something inside me.

      For months I’d thought Edward was dead, though that hadn’t kept my mind from straying back to him. Edward had been a friend, possibly even something more, before I’d learned the terrible truth about the monster inside him. I think I would have felt more outrage if he hadn’t died. But in death I had absolved him of his crimes, blaming my father instead for having created him, and I had absolved myself of blame, too, for not seeing through his lies earlier. But here he was, very much alive, responsible for a string of violent murders, and yet also very much just a boy learning what it meant to be human. Almost all he knew of the world he’d learned from books; the sights and smells of the city – even something as common as a street dog – must be a revelation to him.

      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.

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