The Madman’s Daughter
Megan Shepherd
A dark, breathless, beautifully-written gothic thriller of murder, madness and a mysterious island…London, 1894. Juliet Moreau has built a life for herself—working as a maid, attending church on Sundays, and trying not to think about the scandal that ruined her life. After all, no one ever proved the rumours about her father’s gruesome experiments. But when she learns her father is alive and continuing his work on a remote tropical island, she is determined to find out if the accusations were true.Juliet is accompanied by the doctor’s handsome young assistant and an enigmatic castaway, who both attract Juliet for very different reasons. They travel to the island only to discover the depths of her father’s madness: he has created animals that have been vivisected to resemble, speak, and behave as humans. Worse, one of the creatures has turned violent and is killing the island’s inhabitants. Juliet knows she must end her father’s dangerous experiments and escape the island, even though her horror is mixed with her own scientific curiosity. As the island falls into chaos, she discovers the extent of her father’s genius—and madness—in her own blood.
MEGAN SHEPHERD
The Madman’s Daughter
Table of Contents
Title Page (#ucbaa2cd8-69d2-5033-b341-2f840f0c0de2)
Dedication (#ueecaa358-7d1c-59a4-a4e2-d9f48cf2c043)
Chapter One (#u9cd963c2-e815-589d-8a8f-c3b8db24625e)
Chapter Two (#ua0f328a2-15db-5514-8b24-1da525cf7bd1)
Chapter Three (#u0a8eb006-1923-56c1-b851-1ce83770bd9b)
Chapter Four (#u75135908-1e3b-5b30-9648-2b8bb2fdb210)
Chapter Five (#u57178384-ee49-586e-aa08-43d92899f109)
Chapter Six (#u5bca2424-8644-53ba-8f61-1b0c9c07b1c6)
Chapter Seven (#u5a7b8440-e448-596b-b312-40be159acad3)
Chapter Eight (#u9a61daf3-9de3-5bad-bcbb-73e063b40bcc)
Chapter Nine (#u3ff29cd8-0728-58f9-aa64-ca0b9ce94701)
Chapter Ten (#uab31b7a7-18cf-5ca2-8794-e4e942902f10)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
To Jesse – I love you, madly.
ONE (#ulink_b8a50d48-3c41-5a8b-9610-3e7cf5ba0c10)
The basement hallways in King’s College of Medical Research were dark, even in the daytime.
At night they were like a grave.
Rats crawled through corridors that dripped with cold perspiration. The chill in the sunken rooms kept the specimens from rotting and numbed my own flesh, too, through the worn layers of my dress. When I cleaned those rooms, late at night after the medical students had gone home to their warm beds, the sound of my hard-bristle brush echoed in the operating theater, down the twisting halls, into the storage spaces where they kept the things of nightmares. Other people’s nightmares, that is. Dead flesh and sharpened scalpels didn’t bother me. I was my father’s daughter, after all. My nightmares were made of darker things.
My brush paused against the mortar, frozen by a familiar sound from down the hall: the unwelcome tap-tap-tap of footsteps that meant Dr Hastings had stayed late. I scrubbed harder, furiously, but blood had a way of seeping into the tiles so not even hours of work could get them clean.
The footsteps came closer until they stopped right behind me.
‘How’s it coming, then, Juliet?’ His warm breath brushed the back of my neck.
Keep your eyes down, I told myself, scouring the bloodstained squares of mortar so hard that my own knuckles bled.
‘Well, Doctor.’ I kept it short, hoping he would leave, but he didn’t.
Overhead the electric bulbs snapped and clicked. I glanced at the silver tips of his shoes, so brightly polished that I could see the reflection of his balding scalp and milky eyes watching me. He wasn’t the only professor who worked late, or the only one whose gaze lingered too long on my bent-over backside. But the smell of lye and other chemicals on my clothes deterred the others. Dr Hastings seemed to relish it.
He slipped his pale fingers around my wrist. I dropped the brush in surprise. ‘Your knuckles are bleeding,’ he said, pulling me to my feet.
‘It’s the cold. It chaps my skin.’ I tried to tug my hand back, but he held firm. ‘It’s nothing.’
His eyes followed the sleeve of my muslin dress to the stained apron and frayed hem, a dress that not even my father’s poorest servants would have worn. But that was many years ago, when we lived in the big house on Belgrave Square, where my closet burst with furs and silks and soft lacy things I’d worn only once or twice, since Mother threw out the previous year’s fashions like bathwater.
That was before the scandal.
Now, men seldom looked at my clothes for long. When a girl fell from privilege, men were less interested in her ratty skirts than in what lay underneath, and Dr Hastings was no different. His eyes settled on my face. My friend Lucy told me I looked like the lead actress at the Brixton, a Frenchwoman with high cheekbones and skin pale as bone, even paler against the dark, straight hair she wore swept up in a Swiss-style chignon. I kept my own hair in a simple braid, though a few strands always managed to slip out. Dr Hastings reached up to tuck them behind my ear, his fingers rough as parchment against my temple. I cringed inside but fought to keep my face blank. Better to give no reaction so he wouldn’t be encouraged. But my shaking hands betrayed me.
Dr Hastings smiled thinly. The tip of his tongue snaked out from between his lips.
Suddenly the sound of groaning hinges made him startle. My heart pounded wildly at this chance to slip away. Mrs Bell, the lead maid, stuck her gray head through the cracked door. Her mouth curved in its perpetual frown as her beady eyes darted between the professor and me. I’d never been so glad to see her wrinkled face.
‘Juliet, out with you,’ she barked. ‘Mary’s gone and broken a lamp, and we need another set of hands.’
I stepped away from Dr Hastings, relief rolling off me like a cold sweat. My eyes met Mrs Bell’s briefly as I slipped into the hall. I knew that look. She couldn’t watch out for me all the time.
One day, she might not be there to intercede.
The moment I was free of those dark hallways, I dashed into the street toward Covent Garden as the moon hovered low over London’s skyline. The harsh wind bit at my calves through worn wool stockings as I waited for a carriage to pass. Across the street a figure stood in the lee of the big wooden bandstand’s staircase.
‘You awful creature,’ Lucy said, slipping out of the shadows. She hugged the collar of her fur coat around her long neck. Her cheeks and nose were red beneath a light sheen of French powder. ‘I’ve been waiting an hour.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I leaned in and pressed my cheek to hers. Her parents would be horrified to know she had snuck out to meet me. They had encouraged our friendship when Father was London’s most famous surgeon, but were quick to forbid her to see me after his banishment.
Luckily for me, Lucy loved to disobey.
‘They’ve had me working late all week opening up some old rooms,’ I said. ‘I’ll be cleaning cobwebs out of my hair for days.’
She pretended to pluck something distasteful from my hair and grimaced. We both laughed. ‘Honestly, I don’t know how you can stand that work, with the rats and beetles and, my God, whatever else lurks down there.’ Her blue eyes gleamed mischievously. ‘Anyway, come on. The boys are waiting.’ She snatched my hand, and we hurried across the courtyard to a redbrick building with a stone staircase. Lucy banged the horse-head knocker twice.
The door swung open, and a young man with thick chestnut hair and a fine suit appeared. He had Lucy’s same fair skin and wide-set eyes, so this must be the cousin she’d told me about. I timidly evaluated his tall forehead, the helix of his ears that projected only a hair too far from the skull. Good-looking, I concluded. He studied me wordlessly in return, in my third-hand coat, with worn elbows and frayed satin trim, that must have looked so out of place next to Lucy’s finely tailored one. But to his credit, his grin didn’t falter for a moment. She must have warned him she was bringing a street urchin and not to say anything rude.
‘Let us in, Adam,’ Lucy said, pushing past him. ‘My toes are freezing to the street.’
I slipped in behind her. Shrugging off her coat, she said, ‘Adam, this is the friend I’ve told you about. Not a penny to her name, can’t cook, but God, just look at her.’
My face went red, and I shot Lucy a withering look, but Adam only smiled. ‘Lucy’s nothing if not blunt,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m used to it. I’ve heard far worse come out of her mouth. And she’s right, at least about the last part.’
I jerked my head toward him, expecting a leer. But he was being sincere, which only left me feeling more at a loss for words.
‘Where are they?’ Lucy asked, ignoring us. A bawdy roar spilled from a back room, and Lucy grinned and headed toward the sound. I expected Adam to follow her. But his gaze found me instead. He smiled again.
Startled, I paused a second too long. This was new. No vulgar winks, no glances at my chest. I was supposed to say something pleasant. But instead I drew a breath in, like a secret I had to keep close. I knew how to handle cruelty, not kindness.
‘May I take your coat?’ he asked. I realized I had my arms wrapped tightly around my chest, though it was pleasantly warm inside the house.
I forced my arms apart and slid the coat off. ‘Thank you.’ My voice was barely audible.
We followed Lucy down the hall to a sitting room where a group of lanky medical students reclined on leather sofas, sipping glasses of honey-colored liquid. Winter examinations had just ended, and they were clearly deep into their celebration. This was the kind of thing Lucy adored – breaking up a boys’ club, drinking gin and playing cards and reveling in their shocked faces. She got away with it under the pretense of visiting her cousin, though this was a far step from the elderly aunt’s parlor where Lucy was supposed to be meeting him.
Adam stepped forward to join the crowd, laughing at something someone said. I tried to feel at ease in the unfamiliar crowd, too aware of my shabby dress and chapped hands. Smile, Mother would have whispered. You belonged among these people, once. But first I needed to gauge how drunk they were, the lay of the room, who was most likely not to laugh at my poor clothes. Analyzing, always analyzing – I couldn’t feel safe until I knew every aspect of what I was facing.
Mother had been so confident around other people, always able to talk about the church sermon that morning, about the rising price of coffee. But I’d taken after my father when it came to social situations. Awkward. Shy. More apt to study the crowd like some social experiment than to join in.
Lucy had tucked herself on the sofa between a blond-haired boy and one with a face as red as an apple. A half-empty rum bottle dangled from her graceful fingers. When she saw me hanging back in the doorway, she stood and sauntered over.
‘The sooner you find a husband,’ she growled playfully, ‘the sooner you can stop scrubbing floors. So pick one of them and say something charming.’
I swallowed. My eyes drifted to Adam. ‘Lucy, men like these don’t marry girls like me.’
‘You haven’t the faintest idea what men want. They don’t want some snobbish porridge-faced brat plucking at needlepoint all day.’
‘Yes, but I’m a maid.’
‘A temporary situation.’ She waved it away, as if my last few years of backbreaking work were nothing more than a lark. She jabbed me in the side. ‘You come from money. From class. So show a little.’
She held the bottle out to me. I wanted to tell her that sipping rum straight from a bottle wasn’t exactly showing class, but I’d only earn myself another jab.
I glanced at Adam. I’d never been good at guessing people’s feelings. I had to study their reactions instead. And in this situation, it didn’t take much to conclude I wasn’t what these men wanted, despite Lucy’s insistence.
But maybe I could pretend to be. Hesitantly, I took a sip.
The blond boy tugged Lucy to the sofa next to him. ‘You must help us end a debate, Miss Radcliffe. Cecil says the human body contains 210 bones, and I say 211.’
Lucy batted her pretty lashes. ‘Well, I’m sure I don’t know.’
I sighed and leaned into the doorframe.
The boy took her chin in his hand. ‘If you’ll be so good as to hold still, I’ll count, and we can find our answer.’ He touched a finger to her skull. ‘One.’ I rolled my eyes as the boy dropped his finger lower, to her shoulder bones. ‘Two. And three.’ His finger ran slowly, seductively, along her clavicle. ‘Four.’ Then his finger traced even lower, to the thin skin covering her breastbone. ‘Five,’ he said, so drawn out that I could smell the rum on his breath.
I cleared my throat. The other boys watched, riveted, as the boy’s finger drifted lower and lower over Lucy’s neckline. Why not just skip the pretense and grab her breast? Lucy was no better, giggling like she was enjoying it. Exasperated, I slapped his pasty hand off her chest.
The whole room went still.
‘Wait your turn, darling,’ the boy said, and they all laughed. He turned back to Lucy, holding up that ridiculous finger.
‘206,’ I said.
This got their attention. Lucy took the bottle from my hand and fell back against the leather sofa with an exasperated sigh.
‘I beg your pardon?’ the boy said.
‘206,’ I repeated, feeling my cheeks warm. ‘There are 206 bones in the body. I would think, as a medical student, you would know that.’
Lucy’s head shook at my hopelessness, but her lips cracked in a smile regardless. The blond boy’s mouth went slack.
I continued before he could think. ‘If you doubt me, tell me how many bones are in the human hand.’ The boys took no offense at my remark. On the contrary, they seemed all the more drawn to me for it. Maybe I was the kind of girl they wanted, after all.
Lucy’s only acknowledgment was an approving tip of the rum bottle in my direction.
‘I’ll take that wager,’ Adam interrupted, leveling his handsome green eyes at me.
Lucy jumped up and wrapped her arm around my shoulders. ‘Oh, good! And what’s the wager, then? I’ll not have Juliet risk her reputation for less than a kiss.’
I immediately turned red, but Adam only grinned. ‘My prize, if I am right, shall be a kiss. And if I am wrong—’
‘If you are wrong’ – I interjected, feeling reckless; I grabbed the rum from Lucy and tipped the bottle back, letting the liquid warmth chase away my insecurity – ‘you must call on me wearing a lady’s bonnet.’
He walked around the sofa and took the bottle. The confidence in his step told me he didn’t intend to lose. He set the bottle on the side table and skimmed his forefinger tantalizingly along the delicate bones in the back of my hand. I parted my lips, curling my toes to keep from jerking my hand away. This wasn’t Dr Hastings, I told myself. Adam was hardly shoving his hand down my neckline. It was just an innocent touch.
‘Twenty-four,’ he said.
I felt a triumphant swell. ‘Wrong. Twenty-seven.’ Lucy gave my leg a pinch and I remembered to smile. This was supposed to be flirtatious. Fun.
Adam’s eyes danced devilishly. ‘And how would a girl know such things?’
I straightened. ‘Whether I’m right or wrong has nothing to do with gender.’ I paused. ‘Also, I’m right.’
Adam smirked. ‘Girls don’t study science.’
My confidence faltered. I knew how many bones there were in the human hand because I was my father’s daughter. When I was a child, Father would give physiology lessons to our servant boy, Montgomery, to spite those who claimed the lower classes were incapable of learning. He considered women naturally deficient, however, so I would hide in the laboratory closet during lessons, and Montgomery would slip me books to study. But I could hardly tell these young men that. Every medical student knew the name Moreau. They would remember the scandal.
Lucy jumped to my defense. ‘Juliet knows more than the lot of you. She works in the medical building. She’s probably spent more time around cadavers than you lily spirits.’
I gritted my teeth, wishing she hadn’t told them. It was one thing to be a maid, another to clean the laboratory after their botched surgeries. But Adam arched an eyebrow, interested.
‘Is that so? Well then, I have a different wager for you, miss.’ His eyes danced with something more dangerous than a kiss. ‘I have a key to the college, and you must know your way around. Let’s find one of your skeletons and count for ourselves.’
Glances darted among the other boys like sparks in a fire. They prodded one another, goading each other on in anticipation of the idea of a clandestine trip into the bowels of the medical building.
Lucy gave me an impish shrug. ‘Why not?’
I hesitated. I’d spent enough time in those dank halls. There was a darkness there that had worked its way into the hollow spaces between my bones. A darkness that clung to the hallways like my father’s shadow, smelling of formaldehyde and his favorite apricot preserves. Tonight was supposed to be about escaping the darkness – if not in the arms of a future husband, at least in a few lighthearted moments.
I shook my head.
But the boys had made up their minds, and there was no convincing them otherwise. ‘Are you trying to get out of a kiss?’ Adam teased.
I didn’t respond. My desire for flirtation had evaporated at the mention of the university basements. But if Lucy didn’t balk at the idea of seeing a skeleton, surely I shouldn’t. I cleaned the cobwebs from their creaky bones every night. So what was holding me back?
Lucy leaned in and whispered in my ear. ‘Adam wants to impress you with how brave he is, you idiot. Swoon when you see the skeleton and fall into his arms. Men love that sort of thing.’
My stomach tightened. God, was this what normal girls did? Feign weakness? I could never imagine Mother, with all her strict morals, doing something so scandalous as slipping into forbidden hallways on a dare. But Father – he wouldn’t have hesitated. He would have been the one egging them on.
Dash it. I snatched the rum and poured the last few swallows down my throat. The boys cheered. I ignored the queasy feeling in my stomach – not from the rum, but from the thought of those dark hallways we were soon to enter.
TWO (#ulink_9ae4a230-e042-5ec9-9f7b-a6cc510d19a5)
We bundled into our coats and slipped into the cold night, crossing the Strand toward the university’s brick archway. This late only a few lanterns shone in the upper windows. The boys passed a bottle around with hushed laughter at being on school grounds after hours. I wrapped my arm around Lucy’s and tried to join the mirth, but the warmth didn’t spread below my smile. For the boys, this taste of mild scandal was titillating. They’d never known real scandal or how it could tear a person apart.
Adam led us to the side of the building, through a row of hedges to a small black door I’d used only once or twice. He unlocked it and held it open. Hesitation rooted my feet to the ground, but a gentle tug from Lucy led me inside. The door closed, plunging us into darkness broken only by the moonlight from one high window.
The hallway filled with the eerie silence of unused rooms. My hands itched for a rag and brush as a legitimate reason to be here. Coming on a lark to settle a silly wager, risking my job – it didn’t feel right.
Lucy squinted into the darkness, but I kept my eyes on the tile floor. I already knew what lay at the end of the hall.
‘Well?’ Adam asked. ‘Which way to the skeletons, Mademoiselle Guillotine?’
I started to head for the small door to the storage chambers, but a light at the opposite end of the corridor caught my eye. The operating theater. Odd; no one should have been there this late. Something about that light chilled my blood – it could only mean trouble.
‘We’re not alone,’ I said, nodding toward the door. The boys followed my gaze and grew quiet. Lucy slid off her glove and found my hand in the dark.
Adam started toward the operating theater, but I grabbed the fabric of his cuff to hold him back. The hallways were filled with the normal smells – chemicals and rotten things. Usually it didn’t bother me, but tonight it felt so overpower-ing that my head started to spin. A wave of weakness hit me and I grabbed his wrist harder.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
I waited a few seconds for the spell to pass. These spells were not uncommon, coming upon me suddenly, usually in the late evening, though I wasn’t about to explain their source to him. ‘The skeletons are the other way,’ I said.
‘Someone’s in the theater after hours. Whatever they’re doing, it has to be good. The skeletons can wait.’ His voice was charged. This was a game to them, I realized. If they got caught, the dean might give them a stern talking-to. I would lose my livelihood.
He cocked his head. ‘You aren’t scared, are you?’
I scowled and let go of his cuff. Of course I wasn’t scared. We made our way silently down the hall. As we approached the closed door, a sound began to gnaw at my ears. It took me back to my childhood, when I would hide outside the door to Father’s laboratory, listening, trying to imagine what was happening within before the servants chased me off.
The sound grew louder, a scrape-tap, scrape-tap. Unaccustomed to being in a laboratory, Lucy threw me a puzzled look. But I knew that sound. The scrape of scalpel on stone. A gesture surgeons made to clean the flesh from the blade between cuts.
Adam threw open the door. A half-dozen students huddled around a table in the center of the room, over which a single lamp formed an island of light. They looked up when we entered, and then after a few seconds their faces relaxed with recognition.
‘Adam, you cad, get in and close the door,’ said one of the students. He threw Lucy and me an annoyed look. ‘What are they doing here?’
‘They’ll be no trouble. Right, ladies?’ Adam raised his eyebrow, but I didn’t answer. A good part of me contemplated bolting out the door and leaving them to their sick lark. Yet I didn’t. As we drifted closer with hesitant steps, I could feel the stiffness in my bones easing, as though releasing some pent-up, slippery curiosity from between my joints.
Why were they in the operating theater after dark?
Adam peered over the surgeon’s shoulder. Their bodies blocked the table, but the metallic smell of fresh blood reached me, making my head spin. Lucy pressed a handkerchief to her mouth. Memories of my father flooded me. As a surgeon, blood had been his medium like ink to a writer. Our fortune had been built on blood, the acrid odor infused into the very bricks of our house, the clothes that we wore.
To me, blood smelled like home.
I shook away the feeling. Father left us, I reminded myself. Betrayed us. But I still couldn’t help missing him.
‘They shouldn’t be here,’ I murmured. ‘This building’s closed to students at night.’
But before Lucy could answer, the scrape of the scalpel sounded again, drawing my gaze irresistibly to the table. We stepped forward. The boys paid us little attention, except Adam, who moved aside to make room. My breath caught. On the table lay a dead rabbit, its fur white as snow and spotted with blood. Its belly had been sliced open, and several organs lay on the table. Lucy gasped and covered her eyes.
My eyes were wide. I felt vaguely sorry for the dead rabbit, but it was a far-off sort of thought, something Mother might have felt. I wasn’t naive. Dissection was a necessary part of science. It was how doctors were able to develop medicine and how surgeons saved lives. I’d only ever glimpsed dissections a handful of times – peeking through the keyhole of Father’s laboratory or cleaning up after medical students. After work, in my small room at the lodging house, I’d studied the diagrams in my father’s old copy of Longman’s Anatomical Reference, but black-and-white illustrations were a poor substitute for the real thing.
Now my eyes devoured the rabbit’s body, trying to match the fleshy bits of organ and bone to the ink diagrams I knew by heart. An urge raced through my veins to touch the striated muscle of the heart, feel the smooth length of intestine.
Lucy clutched her stomach, looking pale. I watched her curiously. I didn’t feel the need to turn away like normal ladies should. Mother had drilled into me the standards of proper young ladies, but my impulses didn’t always obey. So I had learned to hide them instead.
I looked back at the rabbit. Creeping vines of worry wound around my ankles and up my legs.
‘Something’s wrong.’
The student performing the surgery glanced up, irritated, before selecting another scalpel and returning to work.
‘Sh,’ Adam breathed in my ear. My chest tightened as my eyes darted over the rabbit. There. The rabbit’s rear foot jerked. And there. Its chest rose and fell in a quick breath. I clasped Lucy’s hand, feeling the blood rushing to the base of my skull.
My brain processed the movements disjointedly, with an odd feeling like I had seen all this before. I gasped. ‘It’s alive.’
The rabbit’s glassy eye blinked. My heart faltered. I turned to Adam, bewildered, and then back to the table, where the boys continued to operate. They ignored me, as they ignored the rabbit’s movements. Something white and hot filled my head and I gripped the edge of the table, jolting it. ‘It’s not dead!’
The surgeon turned to Adam in annoyance. ‘You’d better keep them quiet.’
‘It isn’t supposed to be alive,’ Lucy stammered, her face pale. The handkerchief slipped from her hand, falling to the floor slowly, dreamlike. ‘Why is it alive?’
‘Vivisection.’ The word came out of me like a vile thing trying to escape. ‘Dissection of living creatures.’ I took a step back, wanting nothing to do with it. Dissection was one thing. What they were doing on that table was only cruel.
‘It’s just a rabbit,’ Adam hissed. Lucy began to sway. I couldn’t tear my eyes off the operation. Had they even bothered to anesthetize it?
‘It’s against the law,’ I muttered. My pulse matched the thumps of the frightened rabbit’s still-beating heart. I looked at the placement of the organs on the table. At the equipment carefully laid out. It was all familiar to me.
Too familiar.
‘Vivisection is prohibited by the university,’ I said, louder.
‘So is having women in the operating theater,’ the surgeon said, meeting my eyes. ‘But you’re here, aren’t you?’
‘Bunch of Judys,’ a dark-haired boy said with a sneer. The others laughed, and he set down a curled paper covered with diagrams. I caught sight of the rough ink outline of a rabbit, splayed apart, incision cuts marked with dotted lines. This, too, was familiar. I snatched the paper. The boy protested but I turned my back on him. My ears roared with a warm crackling. The whole room suddenly felt distant, as though I was watching myself react. I knew this diagram. The tight handwriting. The black, dotted incision lines. From somewhere deep within, I recognized it.
Behind me, the surgeon remarked to another boy in a whisper, ‘Intestines of a flesh-toned color. Pulsing slightly, likely from an unfinished digestion. Yes – there, I see the contents moving.’
With shaking fingers I unfolded the paper’s dog-eared right corner. Initials were scrawled on the diagram: H.M. Blood rushed in my ears, drowning out the sound of the boys and the rabbit and the clicking electric light. H.M. – Henri Moreau.
My father.
Through his old diagram, these boys had resurrected my father’s ghost in the very theater where he used to teach. I was flooded with a shivering uneasiness. As a child I’d worshipped my father, and now I hated him for abandoning us. Mother had fervently denied the rumors were true, but I wondered if she just couldn’t bear to have married a monster.
Suddenly the rabbit jolted and let out a scream so unnatural that I instinctively made the sign of the cross.
‘Good lord,’ Adam said, watching with wide eyes. ‘Jones, you cad, it’s waking up!’
Jones rushed to the table, which was lined with steel blades and needles the length of my forearm. ‘I gave it the proper dose,’ he stuttered, searching through the glass vials.
The rabbit’s screams pierced my skull. I slammed my hands against the table, the paper falling to the side. ‘End this,’ I cried. ‘It’s in pain!’
Lucy sobbed. The surgeon didn’t move. Frustrated, I grabbed him by the sleeve. ‘Do something! Put it out of its misery.’
Still, none of the boys moved. As medical students, they should have been trained for any situation. But they were frozen. So I acted instead.
On the table beside me was the set of operating instruments. I wrapped my hand around the handle of the ax, normally used for separating the sternum of cadavers. I took a deep breath, focusing on the rabbit’s neck. In a movement I knew had to be fast and hard, I brought down the ax.
The rabbit’s screaming stopped.
The awful tension in my chest dripped out onto the wet floor. I stared at the ax, distantly, my brain not yet connecting it with the blood on my hands. The ax fell from my grasp, crashing to the floor. Everyone flinched.
Everyone but me.
Lucy grabbed my shoulder. ‘We’re leaving,’ she said, her voice strained. I swallowed. The diagram lay on the table, a cold reminder of my father’s hand in all this. I snatched it and whirled on the dark-haired boy.
‘Where did you get this?’ I demanded.
He only gaped.
I shook him, but the surgeon interrupted. ‘Billingsgate. The Blue Boar Inn.’ His eyes flashed to the ax on the floor. ‘There’s a doctor there.’
Lucy’s hand tightened in mine. I stared at the ax. Someone bent down to pick it up, hesitantly. Adam. Our eyes met and I saw his horror at what I’d done, and more – disgust. Lucy was wrong. He wouldn’t want to marry me. I was cold, strange, and monstrous to those boys, just like my father. No one could love a monster.
‘Come on.’ She tugged me through the hallways to the street outside. It was cold, but my numb skin barely felt it. A few people passed us, bundled up, too concerned about the weather to notice the blood on our clothes. Lucy leaned against a brick wall and pressed a hand over her chest. ‘My God, you cut its head off!’
Blood was on my hands, on the tattered lace of my sleeves, even dotting the diamond ring my mother had left me. I stared at the paper in my fist. The Blue Boar Inn. The Blue Boar Inn. I couldn’t let myself forget that name.
Lucy braced her hands on my shoulders, shaking me. ‘Juliet, say something!’
‘They shouldn’t have done that,’ I said, feeling feverish in the cold night air. The paper was damp from my sweating palms. ‘I had … I had to stop it.’
I felt her hand squeeze my shoulder tighter. ‘Of course you did. Our cook kills a brace of hares for dinner all the time. That’s all you did – killed a rabbit that was already going to die.’ But her voice was shaking. What I had done was unnatural, and we both knew it.
A cold breeze blew off the Thames, carrying the pungent smell of sweat and Lucy’s perfume. I drew a shallow breath. The rumors of so long ago crept through the streets, coming back to life. All I had were slips of memories of my father: the feel of his tweed jacket, the smell of tobacco in his hair when he kissed me good night. I couldn’t bring myself to believe my father was the madman they said he was. But I’d been so young when it happened, just ten years old. As I matured, more memories surfaced. Deeper ones, of a cold, sterile room and sounds in the night – recollections that never entirely disappeared, no matter how far I pushed them into the recesses of my mind.
I didn’t tell Lucy about the diagram with his initials in the corner. I didn’t tell her that he used to keep it neatly in a book in his laboratory, a place I glimpsed only when the servants were cleaning. I didn’t tell her that, after all these years trying to accept that he must be dead, a part of me suspected otherwise.
That maybe my father was alive.
THREE (#ulink_63ea9280-8838-55c7-abe6-0115cbfa82be)
London society was not kind to the daughter of a madman. To the orphan of a madman, even less. My father had been the most celebrated physiologist in England, a fact Mother was quick to mention to anyone who’d listen. My parents used to host elegant parties for his fellow professors. Long after bedtime I would creep downstairs in my nightdress and peek through the drawing room keyhole to take in the sound of their laughter and the smell of rich tobacco. How ironic that those same men were the first to brand him a monster.
After the scandal broke and Father disappeared, Mother and I were shunned by the company we once called friends. Even the church closed its doors to us. We were forced to sell our home and possessions to pay for his debts. We were left penniless for months, relying only on Mother’s prayers and a string of grumbling relatives’ sense of duty. I was young at the time, so I didn’t understand when suddenly we had an apartment again, a small but richly appointed second-story flat near Charing Cross. Mother would take me to piano lessons and have me fitted for gowns and buy herself expensive rouge and satin undergarments. An older gentleman came by, once a week like clockwork, and Mother would send me out for chocolate biscuits in the café downstairs. He wore strong cologne that masked a pungent, stale smell, but Mother never said anything about it. That’s how I knew he must be rich – no one ever says the rich stink.
When consumption took my mother, the old gentleman hardly wanted to keep the dead mistress’s bony daughter around. He paid for Mother’s funeral – though he didn’t attend – and let me stay in the apartment for a week. Then he sent over a brusque maid who boxed up and sold Mother’s things and handed me a banknote for their value. No doubt he considered himself generous. I was fourteen at the time, and totally on my own.
Fortunately, a former colleague of my father’s named Professor von Stein heard of Mother’s death and inquired at King’s College for suitable employment for a young woman of distinguished background. Once they found out who my father was, though, the best offer I got was to be a part of Mrs Bell’s cleaning crew. It paid just enough for a room at a lodging house with twenty other girls my age. Some were orphaned, some had come to the city to support younger brothers and sisters, some just showed up for a week and vanished. We came from different backgrounds. But all of us were alone.
I shared a room with Annie, a fifteen-year-old shopgirl from Dublin who had a habit of going through my belongings whether I was there or not. She once came across the embossed, locked wooden box I kept at the back of our closet shelf. I never told her what was inside, no matter how much she begged.
The night I killed the rabbit, I kept the blood-spattered diagram under my pillow. At work the next day I tucked it into my clothing, like a talisman. It infused my every waking thought with memories of my father. Every remembrance, every gesture, every kind word from him had been eclipsed by the terrible rumors I’d heard in the years since.
I slipped away from my mop to find Mrs Bell scrubbing towels in the laundry room. Her light eyes, narrowed as if she knew I was up to no good, found mine through the billows of steam.
I picked up a bar of soap and chipped at it with my fingernail. What did I expect to find at the inn, anyway? My father, raised from the dead, smoking a cigar in his tweed jacket and waiting to tell me a bedtime story?
‘Mrs Bell,’ I asked, setting down the mutilated bar of soap. ‘Do you know where the Blue Boar Inn is?’
I had to wait until Sunday after church before I could follow Mrs Bell’s directions south of Cable Street, avoiding the swill thrown out from lodging houses. As I paused at the corner to find the right street, I became aware of someone watching me. It was a girl around my age, though her face was caked with powder and rouge that made her look older. A striped satin dress limply hung on her thin frame. She stared at me with hollow eyes. I looked away sharply. If it hadn’t been for my employment at King’s College, that might have been me on the corner, waiting for my next gentleman. I leaned against a brick wall, queasy. Lucy had told me what happened at brothels. That had been my mother’s desperate solution, at the expense of the virtues she held so dear. I might not have as many virtues to lose, but I was determined that wouldn’t be my future.
The prostitute ambled down the street, coming toward me leisurely, and I hurried in the other direction, until I suddenly came upon a faded blue sign swinging above a thick door, painted with a tusked beast I assumed was once meant to be a boar.
The inn was a wooden three-story building, keeling slightly toward its neighbor. I tugged on the heavy iron latch and entered. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. Little sunlight passed through windows coated with smoky residue. I found myself in a dining hall, among sullen patrons murmuring in low voices over their midday meal. The furniture was worn but made of heavy oak that had recently been polished. None of the patrons looked up except a thin man twice my age, face marred with pox scars, who stared at my Sunday dress and the Bible I clutched in my arms. It seemed the Blue Boar did not see many young ladies.
A portly woman came out from the kitchen and raised her eyebrows. She wiped her hands on her apron and looked me over: my face that hinted of aristocracy and clothes that spoke of poverty. ‘Come for a room?’
‘No … I haven’t,’ I stammered. ‘I’m looking for a man. A doctor.’ My heart pounded, warning me not to get my hopes up. ‘His name is Henri Moreau.’
She peered at me queerly. I must have been the color of ripe tomatoes. ‘We aren’t in the habit of giving out our patrons’ information. You understand.’ It was a command, not a question. Was he there, I wondered, in the same building, maybe right above our heads?
‘I mean no trouble. I only need to speak with him.’
Her face didn’t budge. ‘No one by that name here.’
The ground fell out from beneath me. She was mistaken. She had to be. Or else I’d been a fool, thinking some old paper meant my father was here, in London, the city from which he’d been banished.
The set of her mouth softened. She took my elbow and pulled me away from the diners to a staircase that led into the shadows of the upper floors. ‘We’ve no one by that precise name, but there is a doctor.’
My heart leapt. ‘Where is he? What does he look like?’
‘Calm down, now. You say you don’t want trouble, and nor do I.’ Her gaze slid to the dining hall, nervously. ‘But if it’s the doctor you’re after, you should know Dr James has been nothing but trouble since he arrived.’
Dr James. Not Dr Moreau. A pseudonym, perhaps? My mind was grasping, trying to form the parts of the equation into a reasonable solution, but there was only one logical conclusion: Dr James was someone else entirely, one of a hundred visiting doctors in London. And yet my curiosity wouldn’t be satisfied without proof.
‘I’m sorry to hear it. Perhaps if I may speak to him …’
‘Mind you, the young gentleman is gracious enough. It’s that companion of his. Makes the other guests nervous, you understand.’
‘Certainly.’ I nodded, breathless. No one would describe Father as young. So could the odd companion she spoke of be my father, then?
She turned her attention to my dress, narrowing her eyes, and spoke in a low voice. ‘I won’t question what a pretty young lady wants with that pair, but I doubt you’re a relation. This is a reputable establishment. I don’t want no trouble, you hear?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ A nervous bloom spread across my cheeks at the realization of what she was implying about a young woman alone with two strange men.
Her chin jerked toward the stairs. ‘Second floor. Room on the left.’
I dashed to the second-floor landing, gripping the railing to steady myself. To my left was only one door, tucked into an alcove. A tarnished mirror next to the door reflected my face, wide-eyed and flushed. I looked like a madwoman. I paused. What was I doing chasing a whim? I should have been with the other girls from the lodging house, gossiping about the handsomest boys in church this morning.
But here I was. I slid my Bible into my bag and knocked cautiously.
There was no answer. Should I wait? I rapped again, harder. Behind me, low voices and the sounds of clinking glasses floated up from the dining hall.
A wild idea struck me. I tried the knob – locked, of course. It wasn’t a sophisticated lock, though, so any skeleton key might do. I rifled through my bag for the key to my wooden box at the lodging house. At last I found the small bronze key and compared it to the door’s lock. Too small. I knelt, peering into the keyhole. Inside was a small room with an unmade bed and stacks of steamer trunks. I tried the key again, willing it to reach the tumbler, and I almost had it before it slipped out of my hands.
‘Blast,’ I muttered, bending to retrieve it. As I stood back up, I brushed the hair out of my eyes, the movement reflected in the mirror. I looked again at my face, studying the hollows under my cheekbones, the shadow around my eyes, wondering if Father would even recognize me now. Suddenly, a second face appeared behind my own – a dark face covered in a thick beard that obscured a man’s heavy features. His forehead slanted with an odd deformity, leading to a brow that thrust forward, hooding his eyes. I gasped and tried to turn, but his beastly hands dug into my shoulders. The key fell as he forced a cloth over my mouth. The last things I saw before passing out were his yellow-green eyes glowing in the mirror.
FOUR (#ulink_7fb3532e-7119-5cfe-ae6e-8df6b788204c)
I awoke, head throbbing, the taste of chloroform in my throat. I was on the same wooden-framed bed I’d seen through the keyhole. I bolted upright. Scanned the room for my attacker, for a weapon, for an explanation as to why I was there.
I remembered in flashes. The face in the mirror. The cloth against my mouth.
Drugged.
A rush of panic sent my vision blurring and my ears roaring as I ransacked my clothes, relieved to find no signs I’d been harmed. Regardless, I needed something to use as a weapon – a fire poker or a letter opener. But a wave of nausea knocked me back to the pillows. I squeezed my eyes shut until my foggy head began to clear.
I was alone at least. In someone’s room – the deformed man’s, most likely. From the angle of sunlight pouring into the room, I must have been out for hours. A sick taste rose in my throat as I recalled the feel of his hairy hand against my mouth. My breath came fast, faster, until I thought I might black out. I gritted my teeth, holding in the urge to scream. Panic would get me nowhere.
I opened my eyes, slowly. Testing the door wasn’t an option until my head cleared enough for me to stand. But the room was full of clues about my abductor. Crates and trunks were stacked by the door three deep, surrounded by packages wrapped in brown paper. He was traveling, then, and somewhere far away, judging by the cargo. A caged parrot on the dresser eyed me warily while picking at the bars with its beak. I stared at it.
My abductor traveled with a parrot?
A second door, which I assumed led to an adjoining room, was shut. Beside the bed was an open trunk, which I managed to lean toward without too much nausea. It contained rows of glass bottles, partially obscured by packing straw. I brushed the straw aside and took out a bottle: Elk Hill brandy. My father’s favorite.
Before I could piece together what it meant, the door to the adjoining room swung open, revealing the beastly face from the mirror.
‘You!’ I cried. I coiled my fist around the bottle neck, ready to swing. I tried to stand but my feet wouldn’t obey, and I grappled for the bedpost for support.
His was not the face of a monster, as I’d first imagined, but it was disfigured nonetheless. A wild black beard covered a protruding jaw below a snub nose and deep-set eyes. He moved with an odd lurch, as though he was unused to his own legs. Despite his disfigurement, he didn’t seem so threatening now, partly due to the tray of tea and biscuits he was holding.
Still, my body tensed. He stepped forward with a shuffle, just far enough to set the tray on the foot of the bed. He scurried back and twisted his mouth into what might have been a smile.
The strange act of kindness only made me more uneasy. ‘Get away!’ I cried. I hurled the bottle at him, but my vision was distorted from the drugs, and it fell uselessly past his shoulder into a crate of clothes. I climbed over the bed, stumbling with vertigo, grabbing at his wrinkled linen shirt and hammering him with my fists. ‘Someone, help!’
The man did not speak. He merely cringed and let me pummel him. But the side door jerked open again with a squeal of hinges and another man rushed in, a young man with shirt half-buttoned and suspenders at his sides. He threw his arms around mine to keep me from tearing the beastly man apart.
‘Let me go!’ I cried. But he was powerfully built, and it didn’t take him long to pin my wrists in the shackles of his hands.
‘Juliet! Stop this!’ he said.
I froze at the gruff sound of my name. The young man let me go and I whirled on him. His face was deeply tanned, odd during the London winter. Loose blond hair fell to his broad shoulders. My lungs seized up.
I knew him. I’d have known him anywhere, despite the years.
‘Montgomery,’ I gasped. But what was he doing here, with my abductor? I’d expected to find my father, if anyone at all. The last person I’d expected to find was my family’s former servant.
My knees buckled from shock, but he grabbed my elbows, holding me up. I had thought I was alone in the world. But here he was, the one person who knew me, the only one left who shared my dark secrets. Just seeing him started to untangle the swollen tightness in my chest.
I pulled away from him, not ready for the fragile, preserved knot of my heart to unravel so quickly.
‘It’s safe. You’re not in danger.’ He held out a hand as though he was calming a wild horse, his handsome features set with seriousness and concern. The recognition in that expression nearly unbalanced the cadence of my heart. He was two years older than me, the son of our scullery maid. After his mother died when he was very young, my parents kept him on to help with the horses and Father’s research. I’d had one of those hopeless crushes on him girls get before they even know what love is, but he had disappeared six years ago, the same time as my father. Wanting nothing more to do with our terrible family secrets, I’d assumed.
Now here he was, flesh and blood and blue eyes and a total mystery.
Montgomery glanced at the hairy-faced man, who shuffled nervously. ‘Leave us,’ he said, and the man obeyed. A part of me relaxed to see his deformed shape disappear into the other room. But then I realized I was alone with Montgomery, totally unprepared. My hand shot to my coiled braid, which had fallen loose and wild in the commotion. Blast. I must have looked like an idiot.
He finished buttoning his shirt and slid the suspenders over his shoulders, throwing me hesitant glances as he tied his blond hair back. He wasn’t a thin, silent boy any longer. In six years he’d become a well-built young man with shoulders like a Clydesdale and hands that could swallow my own. Montgomery and I used to spend so much time together as children, though he was a servant and I the master’s daughter. I’d never been at a loss for words with him.
Until now.
‘I am sorry about the chloroform,’ he said at last.
I swallowed. ‘Odd way of greeting an old friend, don’t you think?’
He paused while buttoning his cuffs. ‘You were trying to break into our room. Balthazar behaves irrationally sometimes. But he meant you no harm.’
I pulled the pins out of my hair and raked my fingers through it, hoping for some semblance of sanity. ‘Balthazar? That beast has a name?’
‘He’s my associate. Don’t let his appearance frighten you.’
The word associate made me hesitate. Montgomery wasn’t even twenty yet, barely old enough to be anyone’s associate himself.
He sat on a footstool and rested his elbows on his knees, peering at me with that same seriousness he’d had as a boy. It struck me, with a rush of blood to my cheeks, that he had become extremely handsome. I looked away quickly, before he could see my thoughts reflected in my face.
‘I didn’t expect to find you here,’ I said.
Something like a smile played on the corner of his mouth. ‘It’s a coincidence that you were breaking into my room?’
‘No.’ My face burned. Words weren’t coming out right. My mind still couldn’t comprehend that he was actually sitting here, an arm’s length away, grown into a handsome young man. I wondered how I looked to him, and if I was much changed from the sullen little girl he used to push around the courtyard in our wheelbarrow in an effort to make her smile.
My bag rested on the dresser next to the parrot’s cage. I loosened the string and took out the folded diagram from between the Bible’s pages. I handed it to him, but he gave it only a glance, as if he didn’t even need to look at it.
‘You’ve seen that before,’ I concluded.
‘Yes.’ His features grew serious again. ‘It belongs to me. At least, it did. I acquired it from an old colleague of your father’s, but it was stolen two weeks ago with other documents. So you see why Balthazar reacted as he did. He thought you were a thief.’ He unfolded the paper and raised an eyebrow. ‘The blood spatters are new.’
My face turned red. How could I explain what had happened? I still felt the weight of the ax in my hand, remembered the frightened look on the boys’ faces. Like them, Montgomery would think I’d gone mad. He sat here in his well-tailored clothes, a servant at his call, crates of expensive items around him. The scandal obviously hadn’t brought his life crashing down. He’d changed from a servant to a gentleman, and I’d done exactly the opposite. I must look terribly pathetic to him. And the small scrap of pride I had wouldn’t let Montgomery think me lacking.
I stood. ‘I should go. This was a mistake.’
‘Wait, Juliet.’ Montgomery held my arm. For a second, his eyes flashed over my dress, my face. He swallowed. ‘Miss Moreau, I should say. I haven’t seen you in six years, and now I find you breaking into my room.’ A muscle clenched in his jaw. ‘You owe me an explanation.’
He’d been our servant, I told myself. I didn’t owe him anything. But that was a lie. Montgomery and I were bound together by our past. This was the boy who had secretly taught me biology because my father wouldn’t. Who’d told me fairy tales late at night to distract me from the screams coming from the laboratory.
I sank back down, not sure how to act around him. His blue eyes glowed in the hazy light from the window. He moved the tea tray to a side table and poured me a cup, adding two lumps of sugar, then breaking a third in half with a spoon, crushing it, and stirring it in slowly – the peculiar way I used to prepare my tea when I was a little girl. I was so oddly touched that he remembered that I didn’t tell him I’d given up sugar in my tea long ago. As I took the cup, his rough fingers grazed mine and I bit my lip. Just the brief touch sent the muscle of my heart clenching with a longing to feel that bond with him again.
My throat felt tight, but I forced out words. ‘I found the diagram and recognized it. I thought, maybe, it meant Father was here. Alive.’ Spoken, it sounded even more foolish. I braced myself for his laughter.
But he didn’t laugh. He didn’t even flinch. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ he said softly. ‘It’s only Balthazar and myself.’
I took a sip of the tea, which had grown cold, but its sweetness replaced the chloroform’s lingering tang. I wondered what Montgomery thought of me, showing up here, looking for a dead man. Father’s death had never been confirmed – just assumed. I think the world wanted him dead, or simply forgotten.
But a girl couldn’t just forget her father.
‘Do you know what happened to him?’ I asked. I wanted to ask if Montgomery believed the rumors, but the words wouldn’t come. I was frightened of what his answer might be.
He looked toward the window, foot tapping a little too fast against the table leg. He shifted in his stiff clothes, as though his body wasn’t used to them. It struck me that a wealthy medical student wouldn’t pick so uncomfortably at his starched cuffs as Montgomery was doing. I wondered how recently he had acquired his fortune.
As if sensing my thoughts, he loosened his shirt’s collar. ‘The day he disappeared, I ran away too. I was afraid I might be accused as well, because I sometimes helped him in the laboratory. I’ve heard speculation … that he died.’
The teacup shook in my hand. I felt at the point of shattering with warring emotions. I wondered if that was what Father had felt like before he went mad – shattered. The teacup rattled more, and I set it next to the blood-spattered paper. ‘What do you even want with this?’ I nudged the dotted lines that formed a split-open rabbit. I knew it was abhorrent, but my gaze kept creeping back to the black lines, obsessively tracing the graceful arcs of the body.
‘I study medicine. I’m not a servant anymore.’ His words were pointed.
‘But this? Vivisection?’ It was hard to talk about these things with him. The corset I had worn under my Sunday dress suddenly felt too tight. I pressed my hands against my sides. I thought of that rabbit, its twitching paws, its screams. Not even science could justify what those boys had done. And I knew Montgomery, deep in my marrow. He wasn’t like them. He had a strong heart. He’d never do something he knew wasn’t right.
His foot tapped faster and his gaze drifted around the room until it settled on the parrot. His throat tightened. ‘It was among a collection of documents, that’s all.’
He’d always been a terrible liar. I studied him from the corner of my eye, wondering. His gaze darted again to the parrot on the dresser, and I stood up and started toward the cage, just wanting to look closer at its iridescent feathers as some sort of distraction from everything that was happening. Montgomery’s eyes were too real, too evocative, too familiar. I didn’t know what to do with myself around him.
But as soon as I reached for the cage, Montgomery shot up, knocking over the footstool, and beat me to the dresser. His hand closed over a small silver object next to the parrot’s cage. I blinked, uncertain, surprised by his actions.
‘What is that?’ I said quietly.
His fist clamped the object like a vise. His chest and arms were tensed. He’d always been strong. Now he was powerful.
Curiosity made me bolder. My fingers drifted away from the parrot’s cage and rested a breath above Montgomery’s closed fist. I wanted to touch his hand, feel the brush of his skin against mine, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
‘Montgomery, what is that in your hand?’
His face was broken with things unsaid. ‘Miss Moreau …’ The title sounded too formal on his lips. Juliet, I wanted him to call me.
My fingers trembled slightly. ‘Please. Tell me.’
Something changed in his face then. He seemed so grown up, but it was all an act. I knew because I’d played the same role for years. But being with him tore down that facade and left me stripped, vulnerable, just like the look on his face now.
‘Don’t be angry, Miss Moreau.’ His voice was little more than a whisper. He looked away, softly, and opened his fist. The object dropped into my palm.
A pocket watch. I turned it over in my hand. Silver, with a gouge in the glass face and an inscription on the back that had all but worn away. It didn’t matter. I knew the words by heart. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. Unlike my mother, who’d maintained her devoutness even after becoming a mistress, Father had a scientist’s skeptical fascination with religion. The watch had been a gift to him from his father, a bishop of the Anglican Church. Father had little use for the Ten Commandments, but the inscription was one rule he believed in and expected me to uphold.
Father had carried this watch every single day. He’d never have left it behind. Which meant either Montgomery had stolen it, or …
Montgomery folded my hands over the watch, and his hands over mine.
‘I’m sorry. He made me swear never to tell you he was alive.’
FIVE (#ulink_20a9b3ed-cc07-503e-bda1-1c8420f02aec)
The pocket watch, Montgomery explained, had broken. He’d been instructed to have it repaired by a clockmaker in the city and brought to my father along with the rest of the supplies.
But I didn’t care about his explanation.
‘You lied to me,’ I said.
He dipped his head, avoiding my gaze. ‘I said I’d heard speculation that he died. That’s true enough.’
‘He’s been alive this whole time and you’ve known it.’ I sank to the bed, closing my eyes. Seeing Father’s watch had brought that wall back up, reminding me that I wasn’t a child anymore. I couldn’t afford to let my guard down, not even with Montgomery.
He turned toward the window, twisting the watch chain. ‘He thought if the world assumed him dead, they’d leave him alone.’
Father was alive and had never tried to find me – the painful realization of that betrayal ripped open the last tender stitch in my heart. ‘But I’m his daughter.’
His only response was to pour me a glass of brandy and one for himself. He, as well, had returned to the act of playing adults. He sank into the desk chair. ‘I still work for him, but no longer as a servant. I’m his assistant now. He isn’t here, if you’re wondering. He refuses to come back to England. We live on a biological station, of sorts. An island.’ He swallowed the brandy and considered the empty glass. ‘It’s very far. He wanted a private place to continue his work undisturbed. I leave every eighteen months or so for supplies.’
I set my glass down, untouched. ‘And your associate? Are all his kind like him?’
‘The islanders.’ Montgomery hunched over his glass. His hair had come loose again, veiling his face. ‘They are, yes. You needn’t fear him. He’s harmless.’
As though he’d heard himself mentioned, Balthazar came in with a fresh pot of tea on a tray. He was a monster of a man, twice my size, with hands like bludgeons. He set the tray down and daintily removed the sugar bowl’s tiny lid. Montgomery thanked and dismissed him.
He prepared my tea again with my childhood sugar ritual. The steam from my cup rose like the words of an oracle, forming a haze between us. I took a sip, hoping the tea would soothe my nerves. I tried to remember him as a child. He’d been quiet, especially about what went on in the laboratory. But Mother had been, too, as had the other servants, and all of us. None of us wanted to talk about the puddles of blood on the operating-room floor or the animals that went in and never came out or the noises that woke us in the night. Father said those were the ways of science and I shouldn’t question them. Montgomery, at least, had taken good care of the animals before they went in.
I took another sip of tea. ‘How did you find my father after so many years?’
‘Find him? I never left him. The story about running away … it wasn’t exactly like that.’ He brushed the loose strands of hair behind his ear. ‘After his colleagues made their accusations, your father knew he had to flee. He thought Australia might look upon his work more favorably. He took me with him. We found an island off the coast that suited his needs. I didn’t want to leave you and your mother, but I hadn’t a choice. I was twelve years old.’
‘And you’ve been there this whole time?’ The teacup trembled in my palm.
‘There is much you don’t know,’ he said. ‘I was just a boy.’
‘Well, you aren’t a boy anymore,’ I snapped, even though I knew that wasn’t entirely true. He dressed like a man, but he was too stiff in his clothes, too uncomfortable. He was only pretending to be a gentleman, and making a fairly poor show of it. ‘You don’t have to keep working for him. You can come back to London – he can’t return or they’ll arrest him.’
Montgomery bristled, as though the idea of returning to London was like agreeing to be locked in a cage. He didn’t want to return, I realized. The city, with all its mechanization and soot and rigid society laws, had lost its hold on him.
But he said nothing. He only jerked his chin at the pocket watch and then at last said, ‘It’s not that simple. He’s been like a father to me.’
‘He’s no father!’ I curled my fingers into the armrests, suddenly angry that my father had left me behind and raised a servant boy instead. ‘Haven’t you heard? He’s a madman.’
His face tightened. ‘He’s your father, too, Miss Moreau.’
‘Would a father abandon his wife and daughter? Mother died and I heard nothing. He left no money. I’m one step away from the streets.’ The words poured out before I could stop them. They’d been buried such a long time.
‘I’m sorry.’ His throat constricted. ‘I wish the last few years had been easier for you. If I’d been here, maybe …’
Maybe Mother wouldn’t have died? Maybe I wouldn’t be living in poverty? Maybe … what? His eyes dropped to the pit of my elbow, hidden by my sleeve. I pressed my fingers against the sensitive place, protectively.
He nodded toward it, his voice lower. ‘You still give yourself the injections?’
I drew back, clutching my arm as though the skin had been stripped back leaving the veins exposed and vulnerable. Montgomery knew things about me even Lucy didn’t know. Like my illness. I rubbed my inner elbow, thinking of the glass vials in the back of my closet at the lodging house. The ones in the embossed wooden box Annie kept asking me about. They held a treatment – a pancreatic extract – I injected into my arm once a day. If I kept to a rigid schedule, I rarely showed symptoms. The few times I’d missed a dose, I’d gotten feverish and weak. My eyes would play tricks on me, hallucinate things that weren’t there. Sometimes, in the evenings, the weakness would come anyway. Just thinking about it now made a cold sweat break out across my forehead.
Father had diagnosed the condition when I was a baby. A glycogen deficiency so rare it didn’t have a name. I would have died if he hadn’t discovered the cure. Now, I’d slip into a coma if I ever missed more than a few weeks’ treatment.
I hesitated. Speaking of my illness made me feel exposed. It was just one more thing linking me to my mad father. But this – this was new. Montgomery already knew everything about my illness. It was an unfamiliar and comforting thought to know I didn’t have to hide from him.
I nodded slightly.
He leaned forward with concern. ‘And you haven’t had any symptoms?’ He reached out to take my wrist, but I jerked away. There was a limit to how much I’d share, even with Montgomery. ‘I study medicine,’ he said. ‘Please. Let me see.’
I thought of the game those medical students had made up as an excuse to touch every bone in Lucy’s body. Montgomery had given me anatomy lessons, but not like that. He would have been as uncomfortable with that lurid game as I’d been. Cautiously, I laid my white palm in the cradle of his tanned hand. He rolled up my sleeve, then brushed a finger against the sensitive skin of my inner elbow. My breath caught. I was alone in a young man’s room, letting him touch me in places he shouldn’t even see. But he wasn’t just any young man – he was Montgomery. His touch sent my mind whirling. My body was already leaning forward, drawn toward his presence uncontrollably, before my thoughts could catch up.
‘Good,’ he muttered, and I came back to the present, blushing wildly. His finger still rested against my arm, rubbing absently, burning a hole in my skin. ‘Have you had trouble getting enough of the treatment?’
I took a deep breath. ‘No. Any chemist will make it if I give them the instructions and the raw supplies. Though they look at me oddly enough.’
He nodded. ‘I’m glad. I’ve worried.’ Slowly he released my arm. I rolled the sleeve back down quickly, smoothing the cuff over my wrist.
The silence was heavy.
‘When do you depart?’ I asked quickly.
‘Soon,’ he said just as quickly, as though it couldn’t be soon enough. He sat back in his chair. ‘Day after tomorrow, maybe.’
I swallowed, trying to hide my disappointment. ‘Back to the island?’
‘Yes. Balthazar has been working to arrange our return voyage. Not many ships want to take our cargo.’
‘Cargo? The trunks and things?’
‘That’s only part of it. The rest is … well, the doctor’s supplies.’
My curiosity was piqued. Surgical tools? Specimens? But I shook the questions out of my head. I wanted my father’s truth, not his science.
‘Does he ever speak of me?’ I asked in a rush. I had to ask before he sailed away, forever.
Montgomery grinned, one second too late. ‘Yes. Of course.’
I didn’t smile back. I knew that grin, one side pulled back just slightly, jaw set harder than it should have been. Montgomery had given me that grin before, when our house cat had run away. He promised me all cats knew their way out of the city to the farms where mice grew fat as pigeons. But the cat hadn’t made it out of the city. Later I found out Father had drowned it for bringing fleas into the house.
That grin meant Montgomery was lying.
I stood so fast the teapot rattled. I pushed my chair back, looking for my bag. I realized I wasn’t ready to learn the truth. And Montgomery … I hadn’t felt such intense and confusing emotions in so many years that I didn’t know what to do but run.
‘I need to go. I was supposed to work tonight.’
He stood, surprised. ‘Stay. It’s been so long—’
‘It was good to see you,’ I said, stumbling toward the door. I’d forgotten the time. Mrs Bell had asked me to help clean the operating theater before a lecture Monday morning. She’d be furious I wasn’t there.
Balthazar poked his head out from the other room, giving me a quizzical look. The parrot pecked against the bars of its cage. ‘I’m sorry about trying to break in,’ I said.
‘Miss Moreau, please! Wait.’
I was out of the room before Montgomery could finish. I hurried down the stairs, into the dining hall, where the proprietress was mopping the floors. She looked up, but I didn’t stop until I was outside.
The streets were empty. St Paul’s church bells tolled as I made my way along Cannon Street. My head was as foggy as the night. Eight, nine, ten tolls. Ten o’clock. Blast. Mrs Bell would skin me alive. I picked up my skirts – my Sunday best, which would take too long to change out of – and ran through the back alleys to my boardinghouse. Annie gave me a quizzical look as I threw open the door and grabbed my basket of cleaning supplies, but I couldn’t waste time on an explanation.
I ran back out into the night, down the Strand toward King’s College. Mrs Bell and Mary would probably still be there, seething that I was late. I tried to ignore the other thoughts clouding my mind: My father was alive but hadn’t contacted me. Montgomery was back, and yet he’d soon return to my father, as though our roles as servant and child were reversed.
At last I made it to the entrance of the medical building and dashed up the granite steps, tugging on the front door. Locked. I set down my basket and gathered a few bits of broken stone from the street and tossed them at the high first-floor windows, praying Mary would hear me. Mrs Bell would give me an earful for being late, but it was better than not showing at all. My aim wasn’t good, especially since my bare hands were cold and trembling, but a light went on in one of the windows.
‘Thank God,’ I said, cupping my freezing nose. I picked up my basket of cleaning supplies. I’d help them finish and then scramble home to my warm bed, where I could bury my thoughts in a downy quilt. I’d find a way to get a message to Lucy about my father being alive. She’d know what to do.
The door jerked open. I hurried inside but stopped when I saw the face lit by candlelight.
‘Dr Hastings—’ I said. He closed the door, plunging us into darkness lit only by the glowing flame. When he slammed the door behind me, the sound echoed through the empty hallway.
‘Juliet. It’s quite late.’
‘I’m to help Mrs Bell,’ I stuttered, holding up my basket. His eyes were on my Sunday dress. No coat, no gloves. I must have looked suspiciously out of place on a cold night. I swallowed. ‘I’ll just go find them—’
I started down the hall, but he laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘They’ve already left. They finished not ten minutes ago.’ His fingers tightened. ‘It’s only me in the building tonight.’
My stomach clenched. ‘Then I suppose I’m not needed. I’m sorry for disturbing you.’ I twisted toward the doorway, but he blocked it.
‘You’re freezing,’ he said, clutching my bare hands. ‘What a silly girl, without a coat on a night like this. Come to my office. I have a fire going.’
‘Thank you. But I should get home.’
His parchmentlike skin grazed my palm, so unlike the strong feel of Montgomery’s touch. I tried to slip my hand away, but he didn’t let go. I jerked my arm, but his grip only tightened. He smiled. Anger and fear spread throughout my body like an infection.
‘Now, now,’ he said, with a sickening smirk. ‘What sort of mischief have you been up to, out alone late at night in your finest dress?’ He licked his lips, his eyes glowing in the candlelight. ‘You’ve been with a man, haven’t you? I can smell his cologne. It would be a shame for Mrs Bell to find out. She’d have to dismiss you, of course. King’s College has a reputation to uphold.’
The threat raised the hair on my arms. My body started to tremble with a feverish anger that seeped from my bones, tangling in my veins, urging me to lash out at him. My hand tightened on the basket handle as I fought to stay calm. ‘It’s no business of yours who I’ve been with. If it was a man, you can be sure he wasn’t a balding, dried-out old git.’
He smirked. ‘A dried-out old git, am I? You’re a pretty one, but you’ll have to cool that temper if you want to keep your job. Now come to my office and do as you’re told, and there’ll be a sixpence in it for you as well.’
A bilious mix of fear and disgust rose in my throat, but my lips felt sewn together. I had to get out of there, quickly. He was twice my weight. If I tried to run, he’d be on me in an instant.
His spindly fingers pried the basket from my hand and set it on the entry table. My thoughts beat in time with my frantic pulse, trying to devise a solution. He reached for my waist, but I stepped backward.
The thin line of his mouth tightened. ‘I’m losing patience with these games of yours. I’m going to have you tonight, and you might as well be a good girl and you’ll get something out of it.’ Wax dripped from the half-forgotten candle in his hand onto the floor. I’d have to clean that hardening wax before this night was out. My fear started to harden, too. My eyes caught the blade of the mortar scraper in the basket, and all sorts of ideas came to mind of what I’d like to do with that sharp point. I might be cleaning up splashes of his blood, too, unless he left me alone.
‘You’re a lucky girl, Juliet, that I still take an interest in you even after your father’s transgressions. Not every man would show such kindness.’
Kindness. A bitter laugh sounded in my head. The last thing Dr Hastings showed was kindness. If he only knew about Montgomery, the man he’d just accused me of having been with. Montgomery would have slammed his fist into Dr Hastings’s lump of a nose. My eyes drifted back to the basket. The mortar scraper was within reach. The palm of my hand was hungry to hold its worn handle. To do something … I might regret.
Dr Hastings took my silence as consent. He snaked a hand up my arm, his fingers squeezing my flesh like ripe fruit. Run, I told myself. But what about the next time? He’d retaliate. He’d come at me harder.
There couldn’t be a next time.
‘It’s a good thing your father’s dead,’ he said, his fingers curling around my shoulder, suggestively rubbing the place where my worn lace collar met bare skin. ‘He wouldn’t want to know all the vulgar things I’m going to do to you.’
I started to twist away, but he pushed me against the entryway table. My hip connected with the sharp corner as a bolt of pain shot through me. I winced, and he took the opportunity to pin me against the table with the weight of his own body. His fingers found my throat greedily and ripped the collar of my dress. Buttons rained to the floor.
My cleaning basket was just behind me. His thin lips breathed a disgusting moan against my collarbone. Although he had me trapped, my right hand was free. A tiny voice warned me I’d regret what I was about to do, but my head echoed with a roar. My fingers had already closed over the mortar scraper. A sort of madness took me over, pushing away the fear and terror. Before Dr Hastings realized what was happening, I had the sharp edge of the mortar scraper pressed against the fleshy triangle in the base of his palm where all the flexor tendons met.
His face twisted with anger, but I pushed the blade harder, almost breaking the skin. I didn’t want to enjoy this. But I did, so much that my hands shook with the silent promise of the blade in my hand. ‘Don’t move, or I’ll sever every tendon in your hand,’ I hissed. ‘My father was a surgeon. I know how important motor function is to you, Doctor. I can end your career in about half a centimeter of flesh.’
‘I told you I was tired of these games,’ he growled. ‘Now put the knife down and finish taking off your dress.’
‘It isn’t a knife. It’s a cleaning tool, but I wouldn’t expect you to know the difference.’ I pressed harder, barely able to restrain myself. ‘And I’ll use it unless you swear to never touch me again.’ I let the blade dip into his skin, just enough to draw a dark line of blood.
‘You’re as mad as your father!’ he cried. He spit a thin stream of saliva that landed on my cheek. ‘I’ll see you run out of town just like him.’
My hand tightened around the mortar scraper. Anger snapped in my nerves, shooting electric rage though the synapses.
To hell with it.
I thrust the blade into his pale skin until I felt the edge of the flexor tendon attached to his right index finger. A flick of my wrist was all it took – no more pressure than cleaning blood from the mortar. And my God, as wicked and wrong as it was, I enjoyed it.
He howled and crumpled to the floor, clutching his hand. I dropped the mortar scraper, realizing what I had done with a growing horror. I wouldn’t need the scraper anymore. My employment was over.
I found the doorknob behind me, turned it, and ran into the cold November night.
SIX (#ulink_65b9d1e1-f34e-5497-9a0c-3308eb279823)
The next morning I sat in Victoria Gardens with a tattered carpetbag and seven shillings, my entire savings. The carpetbag, a parting gift from Mrs Bell at my dismissal, was probably worth more than the contents – a few threadbare dresses, Father’s Longman’s Anatomical Reference, my Bible, and the embossed wooden box containing the syringe and a small supply of medication. Only the diamond ring Mother had left me was valuable. I took off my glove to watch it sparkle. I’d have to sell it. Even that would give me lodgings for only a few weeks. And staying in London was no longer an option.
‘Oh, Juliet, I’m so sorry.’ Lucy jogged across the lawn and collapsed on the bench, throwing her arms around me. She pulled back and touched a gloved hand to my face. ‘Is it true, what they’re saying?’
I nodded.
She shook her head. ‘I’m sure he deserved even worse,’ she said, her voice brimming with anger. ‘He’s lucky you didn’t sever his other appendage.’
I gave a weak smile. But not even Lucy’s friendship could get me out of this mess, and we both knew it. Dr Hastings had gone straight to the police, wanting to have me arrested. Mrs Bell had shown up at my lodging house an hour before dawn, banging on the door so hard that even Annie woke. She thrust the carpetbag into my hand along with the week’s wages and told me to leave town before the police came inquiring.
A man reeking of whiskey passed by our bench, and I hugged the carpetbag closer. My chest felt hollow. How would I even leave? I hadn’t money for a train, and surely my reputation would follow me. I’d never find employment as a maid again.
‘What will you do?’ Lucy asked.
I fiddled with the carpetbag’s leather handle. ‘It’s either the workhouse, or …’ I didn’t need to finish. My mind drifted to the girl outside the Blue Boar Inn, with the hollow eyes and stained silk dress.
Lucy pushed a few coins into my hand. ‘I took these from my father’s desk. It’ll get you as far as Bedford. There must be something you can do. A shopgirl, maybe.’
I counted the coins. Enough for the train, but not room or board. I’d have to spend the night in the station, and from there it was a short – and usually forced – leap to the gutter. Had my mother faced a similar dilemma? She’d done what she did out of desperation, and at least it kept us clothed and fed. My father had left with no note, no parting words, nothing. Was he really the kind of man to simply walk away from his family? Was he really the monster they said he was?
The truth was, I knew next to nothing about him. He was little more than a hazy memory and a slew of scandalous rumors. But he was alive. Out there, across oceans. Living. Breathing. For the first time in my life, I could simply ask him if the rumors I’d heard about him were true.
Lucy glanced across the park. Her mother had caught sight of us and was striding straight through the grass. My stomach tightened. If Mrs Radcliffe didn’t approve of me before, she must positively detest me now.
Lucy jumped up, her face suddenly white. She pressed her cheek against mine, hard. ‘Write to me, won’t you?’ She was breathless. ‘Let me know where you’ve gone? I’ll try to send money. I’ll try to visit, wherever you are.’
Mrs Radcliffe was so close I could see the clench of her jaw, and I pushed Lucy away. ‘Go. Now. I’ll write. I promise.’
Lucy dashed across the lawn to stop her mother. I grabbed the carpetbag and hurried the other way, dragging its weight along the length of the Thames. Lucy’s mother said something biting, but I swallowed hard and didn’t look back.
I kept walking, past the bridge and Temple Bar, where the archway used to stand. I crossed Cable Street to the main thoroughfare, to an inn with a swinging sign above the door. I pushed my way in, past the crowded dining room, and climbed to the second floor. I knocked. Then I pounded. The mirror beside the door reflected my wild desperation.
I should have told Lucy she couldn’t visit. Where I was going, she couldn’t come. It was a bit farther than Bedford.
Montgomery opened the door, clearly surprised. ‘Miss Moreau. What are you doing here?’
The carpetbag fell at his feet. My heart was racing.
‘I’m coming with you,’ I said.
Early the next day, our carriage rumbled south of town to the Isle of Dogs. I pushed aside the gauzy curtain. Outside, the massive hull of a cargo steamer rose toward the sky, dwarfing the fleet of barges that clustered around the dock. Everywhere men swarmed like insects, hawking services or bearing trunks twice their size.
Beside me, Montgomery compared a handful of banknotes against a small ledger, erasing and redoing sums with a frown. I wondered if he thought me a burden.
He looked up, as if sensing my question. The carriage lurched, and the ledger slid from his lap. We both reached for it, our hands grazing. I pulled back.
‘It’s not too late to change your mind,’ he said.
I shook my head and concentrated on the ships outside. I’d made my decision. We had argued all day and night since I had shown up at his door. He’d flatly refused at first. He said the voyage was long, with a rough crew, and the island was no place for a lady. I told him I certainly wasn’t a lady, thanks to my father’s abandonment, and it was either the island or the streets. Or worse, prison. I didn’t tell Montgomery my other motive, the one deep within my rib cage that beat in time with my heart: The world knew my father as a villain. I knew him as a thin man in a tweed suit who carried me on his shoulders during the Royal Guard’s parades. I needed to know which man my father was – the monster, or the misunderstood genius.
In the end, Montgomery conceded only when I dragged him to the window and pointed out the prostitute my age. He said nothing of how Father would receive me on the island, and I didn’t press.
‘Is our ship like any of those?’ I nodded toward the magnificent four-masted cruisers lined up in port.
Montgomery barely glanced at them before giving a hint of a smile. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘It’s an older ship?’
‘Most likely. The reputable ships turn us away. They don’t like Balthazar’s appearance. Nor our destination.’
Outside, the relative order of Union Docks gave way to a more run-down part of the wharf. I covered my nose against the smell of rotting fish. Here, the docks were crammed with rusted parts and torn netting. There were no women – even the prostitutes stuck to the better end of the quay.
As we came around the bend, Montgomery pointed to a hulking two-masted brigantine docked alone at the Isle of Dogs. ‘There,’ he said. ‘The Curitiba.’ I frowned. It looked far too old and neglected to sail more than halfway across the Pacific. A windy storm might blow holes straight through it.
The driver stopped the carriage and we paid him a few coins. He seemed glad to leave us.
‘There’s Balthazar,’ I said, shading my eyes. He sat by the gangway on a steamer trunk that looked more like a child’s toy chest next to his size. A rabble of dirty sailors threw him uncertain glances as they dawdled around the rest of the cargo; rough as they looked, even they gave Balthazar a wide berth. A skeletal older man with a grizzly beard stumbled down the gangway in a mildewing black jacket that looked robbed from the dead. He stopped in his tracks at the sight of Balthazar and went the other way.
‘Is that our crew?’ I asked Montgomery hesitantly.
‘Afraid so.’
‘They look a shady bunch. Good thing Balthazar could knock them flat if they tried anything.’ I watched as Balthazar hoisted the trunk and carried it onto the ship.
‘He’s not a fighter. But luckily for us, they don’t know that.’ From the rigid outline of the muscles beneath his shirt, I realized Montgomery probably could have knocked them all flat, too. He was no longer the gentle-natured little boy who caught kitchen mice and placed them outside to save them from the cat’s sharp teeth.
He took my carpetbag. ‘Come on. Lady or not, I’m going to lock you in your cabin. I don’t trust this lot.’
I followed closely. My head spun as we crossed the gangway to the deck. A short walk, but a scary one. The ship’s odd swaying made my legs quake. There were a handful of men on deck, though I hesitated to call them sailors. Pirates might have been more accurate. Montgomery pulled me out of the way of two men loading a trunk.
‘You’ll get used to the rocking in a few days,’ he said, leading me toward the quarterdeck. My mind whirled at his easy confidence. He carried himself almost as surely as the sailors, though he was far younger than most.
A monstrous barking tore through the air, and I nearly leapt into his arms. A pair of cages stood on the deck, containing three snarling bloodhounds and one matted sheepdog who barely lifted its head, a web of drool dangling from its jowls.
‘Quiet,’ Montgomery called to the dogs, and then turned to me. ‘Stay here. I’ll find the captain.’ He wove around the cargo toward the rear of the ship.
The dogs had stopped barking at his order. I was surprised to find more cages beyond them. A panther, black fur matted with filth, flattened its ears and hissed from between the bars. And beside it was a small sloth that opened one sleepy eye and shut it again. And others. A monkey. Rabbits. A capybara – an enormous rodent I’d only read about.
I stepped closer, brushing my fingers against the monkey’s cage, both incredulous and uneasy at the same time. A movement caught my eye as Balthazar poked his head up from the hold. He hurried toward me.
‘Stay away from the cages, miss,’ he said in his coarse English. ‘It isn’t safe.’ A tarpaulin had slid off the sloth’s cage, and Balthazar replaced it with great care. ‘It doesn’t like the sun,’ he explained, patting the cage gently.
‘These are for my father, aren’t they?’ I asked. My uneasiness grew. ‘For his research.’
Balthazar scratched his ear. Folded his mouth tight. Didn’t answer.
I told myself there were plenty of legitimate reasons a scientist might want live specimens. It didn’t mean, necessarily, that the animals were intended for vivisection. I caught sight of Montgomery coming back toward me, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask him. I wasn’t sure I was ready to learn what types of boundaries my father might have crossed out there in the dark, silent sea.
‘Come meet the captain,’ Montgomery called, waving me aft, where the grizzly-bearded man waited for us at the hold. The man swayed slightly. The cloying stench of alcohol hovered around him like yellow London fog.
I climbed around the cages and cargo, my steps uneasy on the swaying deck.
Montgomery took my hand to help me over a coil of line. ‘Miss Moreau, this is Captain Claggan. He’ll show us to our quarters.’
The captain eyed me closely, either shortsighted or sizing me up. ‘Damn wild animals,’ the captain muttered. ‘Damn lass. Ain’t good luck, I say. If you hadn’t paid up front …’ He spit to the side and led us down a steep ladder into a low hallway darker than a coffin. ‘Crew’s quarters at the rear. My cabin’s up top, below the quarterdeck. The hold’s below.’ He tapped his foot on a trapdoor.
He stopped at a closed door and jiggled the latch, then threw his shoulder against it with a curse. The door swung open into a tiny room with a small bed and desk, so cramped I could feel the heat from Montgomery’s body.
‘You’re all staying in here together, eh?’ The captain leered. Blood rose to my cheeks.
‘My man and I will sleep above deck, if the weather holds,’ Montgomery answered, a hint of red at his cheeks, too. An unwed young man and woman sharing a room together only meant one thing to the sailors.
The captain smirked and left.
Montgomery set the bags on the bed. ‘We should have free run of the ship, except the crew quarters and the boatswain’s hold. Just the same, I’d rather you stay here. It’s safer. Passengers have been rumored to disappear under Captain Claggan’s watch.’ He hesitated, and I wondered if he might try to talk me out of coming one last time. It was so strange to see him like this, almost grown, capable beyond his years. He couldn’t have had much of a childhood. So much strength had to hide some sort of vulnerability. But then he brushed past me to the door before I could finish my thought. ‘I’ll be back once we’ve left port.’
I closed the door behind him. My stomach was rolling. I let myself fall onto the bed. By the time I awoke, we were already at sea.
SEVEN (#ulink_ce57f777-3731-5170-bfe2-09ae4b6f9052)
Montgomery was right – it took time to grow accustomed to the ship’s movement. For the first few days I could barely sit up in bed. Montgomery lashed a lantern to the desk and left a bucket by the bed, though he quickly learned to lash that down, too. Balthazar brought me food from the galley, but I couldn’t stomach the rock-hard dried meat and slimy canned vegetables. At last Montgomery brought up a tin of Worthington’s biscuits from Father’s cargo. It was the only thing besides water I could keep down, and the water turned rancid after two weeks. From then on, it was bitter beer.
After over a month in the dark, cramped cabin, I started going above deck once a day for fresh air and sunlight, but the smell of turpentine and piss usually drove me back even before the sailors started leering. Montgomery came down sometimes, but the ship was shorthanded and the captain kept him and Balthazar busy above deck, never mind that they were paying passengers. Montgomery did the work without complaint. The dogs barked incessantly. I thought I’d gotten used to the ship’s rocking, and even believed we’d make it to the island with no incidents – until the storm hit.
That night the waves sent the ship tossing and made sleep impossible. Every lurch had me clutching the sides of the bed to keep from falling, and my stomach felt flipped upside down. I couldn’t imagine what was happening above deck. The animals must be going wild, or else terrified and huddled in the corners of their cages. Not so different from how I felt.
Someone pounded at the door. I stumbled across the dark room to let in Montgomery and Balthazar, who were drenched to the core. I lit a match for the lantern, but the ship lurched and the flame wavered and sputtered before catching. Montgomery bolted the door against water creeping in. He pulled off his shirt, cursing and shivering.
As the weeks passed, I’d spent more time above deck, and it wasn’t uncommon for the sailors to go shirtless. But this wasn’t some stranger. This was Montgomery. It was hard to keep my eyes from trailing back to steal glances at his bare chest.
He wrung out his shirt and hung it over the back of the wooden chair to dry. ‘It’s a squall,’ he said. ‘Captain’s ordered all but a handful below. Damn drunkard. We lost a trunk over the side before he thought to batten everything down.’
I sank onto the bed and pulled a blanket around my chemise. It didn’t cover my ankles, which I tucked underneath me. Montgomery might be accustomed to showing his bare skin, but I wasn’t.
Balthazar sank to the floor and rested his head against the wall. He didn’t seem to care that he was drenched. His trousers and white shirt were now just one dull shade of dirty gray.
Montgomery pulled out the desk chair. His skin glowed in the lantern light. The first time I’d seen him in London, I’d noticed how tanned his skin was for a gentleman in winter. He looked considerably less like a gentleman now. Sunburned shoulders. Salt ringing the hem of his trousers. Hair tangled and loose, and an edge in his handsome blue eyes. No wonder he bristled at the idea of staying in London – he was as wild as the caged animals.
We sat in silence, listening to the storm rage. I recalled an old song Lucy used to sing about a fisherman lost in a squall who returned to his beloved as a ghost. I didn’t realize I was humming the tune until Montgomery leaned back and closed his eyes.
‘That’s nice,’ he said.
‘It’s just an old song.’
‘Well, don’t stop. Please.’
But I was too embarrassed to continue. Montgomery toyed with the lantern’s latch, raising the flame to a blaze and then back to a whisper of light. When we were children, I could tell what he was thinking even without words. Now his thoughts were a puzzle to me.
‘Do you still play piano?’ he asked at last.
It took me by surprise. ‘It’s been a few years.’
‘We have one on the island. It’s probably out of tune. I never had an ear for music like you.’
My cheeks warmed at the thought of him remembering that I played. ‘How did you manage to bring a piano to an island?’
‘It wasn’t easy. I hadn’t a clue what I was doing, but I wasn’t going to tell the merchants that. I’d chipped three keys and broken a leg by the time we reached the island.’ He paused, and I blushed as I realized he was staring at my bare ankles, which had drifted free of the blanket. I tucked them under me.
‘The piano’s limb, I should say,’ he said curtly, clearing his throat. ‘I’m sorry. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the presence of a lady.’
I smiled. There was a time when the word leg wasn’t mentioned in polite company, even when referring to inanimate objects. My mother had tried to train Montgomery in etiquette. Apparently a few things had stuck.
‘You’ve been gone from London too long,’ I said. ‘No one gets upset over mention of a leg these days.’ My neck felt increasingly warm. ‘Besides, you forget that I’m not a lady anymore.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Jul— Miss Moreau.’
‘If you haven’t noticed, Mr James, I’m alone in my nightdress with two men, after being thrown out into the streets.’ I lightly ran my fingertips over my dry lips. My nails had grown so jagged and unkempt that Lucy would have called them claws.
‘What else does Father have you bring?’ I asked.
He laughed, almost a bark. ‘Four cases of butterscotches. The full collection of Shakespeare, the same edition as from his library on Belgrave Square; you remember the ones? I had a devil of a time tracking those down. And once he asked for a copper bathing tub. It fell from the crate and sank while we were loading it.’
‘What peculiar things.’
‘Yes, well, he can be very peculiar.’ His jaw clenched. ‘I’m sure you recall.’
I drew the blanket tighter around my shoulders. A peculiar disposition didn’t make a madman.
Not that alone.
‘Montgomery, what do you …’ I paused. The words were an experiment, and they came out stilted and half formed. ‘About the accusations …’ My throat closed up. I felt his intense gaze but couldn’t bring myself to ask. If I’d still been ten years old, I wouldn’t have hesitated. But there were years between us now.
‘Is it only you and him on the island?’ I asked quickly, instead.
‘And the islanders,’ he said. Balthazar shifted in the corner. I had almost forgotten he was there. He had a way of settling into the shadows.
‘Don’t you get lonely?’
‘The doctor, he doesn’t mind. Sometimes I think even I’m too much company for him. And he certainly can’t abide their presence.’ He glanced at Balthazar, making me wonder who exactly ‘they’ were. ‘It will be different with you there. At times he can get so distracted that he forgets years are passing.’ He lowered the light to the barest hint of a flame. ‘We’re getting close. Another week or two.’
I hesitated. ‘Do you think he’ll be pleased I’ve come?’
Montgomery brushed back his hair. ‘Of course he will be.’ A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, the smile I remembered as meaning he was lying. I pulled the blanket tighter against the sting.
The heel of Montgomery’s boot tapped nervously against the floor, as if he knew he was a bad liar. ‘I can’t say how he’ll take the news at first. He can be unpredictable, but in the end he’ll be glad you came.’ He leaned forward, his blue eyes simmering. His boot tapped faster. ‘I’m glad you came.’
His words set every inch of my skin sizzling, and I nearly dropped the blanket in surprise. I’d always idolized him, but I’d been a little girl. The crush I’d had on him then seemed silly now that I knew how the world worked. Servant boys didn’t grow up and marry their masters’ daughters. Instead, women fell from privilege and sold themselves on the streets. Men could be cruel, men like Dr Hastings. As much as I believed in Montgomery, the fairy tale was gone.
I sneaked a glance at him. Wondered what his life must have been like, alone on a remote island with only my father and the natives for company. Perhaps he was as hungry as I was to feel that connection we once shared, to get back a little of that fairy tale. I felt myself drifting closer to him as the blanket slipped from my fingers.
The ship jerked suddenly, and I flew backward. My head struck the wall. Montgomery tumbled out of his chair and would have fallen on top of me if he hadn’t braced himself against the wall with quick instincts. I clung to his arms as if I were falling, but we weren’t going anywhere. My fingers tightened. He was a finger’s distance from me. Closer. Close enough to feel the brush of his loose hair on my face, to feel the heat from his sunburned skin. If it hadn’t been for the thin fabric of my chemise, we’d have been skin against skin, his hard muscles against my soft limbs. My jagged fingernails curled into the bare skin of his biceps. His lips parted. He drew in a sharp breath. Being so close to a half-naked man – to Montgomery – made me breathless.
He winced. I was hurting him, I realized.
I let go. Blood and reason flooded back to my head. I hadn’t meant to grab him. Instinct had made me do it. And now he would think … what would he think?
The ship righted, and Montgomery sat up, his lips still parted. A line of red half-circles marked his arms from my fingernails. His eyes were wide.
‘Blasted storm,’ he said, a little gruffly. He was breathing as heavily as I was. ‘How’s your head?’
I touched the back of my skull absently, still dazed from being so close to him. ‘Just a bang.’
He pulled his damp shirt back on, hiding my nail marks. A bloom of pink spread over his neck. ‘I should probably check on the animals.’ He seemed suddenly unable to look me in the eyes. ‘Try to sleep if you can.’
He disappeared into the forecastle hatch, leaving me alone with Balthazar. The big man stared into space, then gave a shudder that sent seawater spraying, like a dog. He smelled of wet tweed and turpentine. I doubted I smelled much better.
I realized I knew almost nothing about this man who hung at Montgomery’s heels like a shadow. It was impossible not to be intimidated by his size and looks, despite how gentle he was with the animals.
‘You’re a native of the island, aren’t you?’ I asked. He seemed surprised that I addressed him and remained mute through the next lurch of the ship.
‘Aye, miss,’ he grunted at last.
‘So you know my father, the doctor? Henri Moreau?’
Balthazar pulled his legs in to his chest. His eyes darted nervously. ‘Thou shalt obey the Creator,’ he said.
‘Creator? God, you mean?’
‘Thou shalt not crawl in the dirt. Thou shalt not roam at night.’ He rocked slightly.
I peered at him uneasily. His words had the ring of commandments, but none I’d ever heard. ‘What are you talking about, Balthazar?’
‘Thou shalt not kill other men,’ he said, rocking harder. The ship dipped suddenly and I grabbed the wall for support. Balthazar no longer seemed aware of the storm. He rocked faster, eyes glassy.
‘Who told you all this?’ I asked. ‘My father?’ His recitation had the feel of Father’s commanding influence all over it.
‘Stop saying these things,’ I said. ‘Please. Calm down.’ My thoughts raced. Did the natives see my father as some sort of supreme ruler? Father had scorned religion, so I couldn’t imagine he would permit such ridiculous chanting. I wanted to ask Balthazar more, but he leapt to his feet and hurried from the room without another word.
The storm lasted through the night and into the morning. When the Curitiba returned to its normal rocking, I stumbled above deck to gasp fresh air and feel warm sunlight. The foremast boom had buckled under the weight of the canvas sail, which now cracked and whipped in the heavy breeze. The dogs sprawled in their cages, quiet for once, under a waterlogged canvas tarpaulin. They didn’t lift their heads as I passed. Only their eyes followed me.
Montgomery and Balthazar stood on the quarterdeck, peering into the rigging.
‘Is the ship still seaworthy?’ I asked.
Montgomery jerked his chin toward the sailors, who fought to tame the sail under the captain’s slurred curses. ‘We won’t sink, but we won’t go far if they don’t fix the sail. Anyway, we have our own problems.’ He looked back into the rigging. On the top spar, a dozen yards above us, was the monkey. ‘His cage shattered in the storm.’
‘Can’t one of the crew climb up to fetch him?’
Montgomery glanced at the foresail. ‘They won’t bother themselves for an animal.’
I studied the complicated puzzle of rigging, spars, and sails, looking for a solution. But wherever a man might cut off the monkey’s passage horizontally, it could always move vertically.
‘You’ll have to wait for him to come down,’ I concluded.
‘Not possible. Captain’s given me no choice.’ His face went serious and he made a gesture to Balthazar, who shuffled to a stack of crates and came back with a rifle. He handed it to Montgomery.
The blood drained from my face. ‘Don’t you dare shoot it!’ I said.
He shook his head a little too forcefully. ‘Captain says the monkey’s added weight can affect the sails.’
‘That’s not true. It’s basic physics. You know that, Montgomery.’
‘Very scientific of you, but it won’t make a difference to the captain.’ He split the barrel and checked inside. ‘Balthazar, go belowdecks for a few minutes.’ Balthazar nodded, grinning naively, and shuffled off to the forecastle hatch. Montgomery clicked the barrel back into place. ‘You should go as well, Miss Moreau.’
‘I shan’t. I’ll talk some sense into the captain.’ I pointed at the rifle. ‘And don’t even think about using that.’
‘Miss Moreau, wait.’ His voice begged. ‘Juliet!’
I ignored him and crossed the deck. While trying to tame the loose sail, the men had torn a gash down its center, and the captain cursed something furious.
‘Captain Claggan, a word, please.’
He whirled on me with bloodshot eyes and breath like a tannery. His nose and cheeks were splotched with broken blood vessels that made him look like the devil himself. ‘What do you want?’ he bellowed.
I took a step back. The deckhands glanced my way, their faces hardened. I’d find no support there.
‘I asked you what the devil you want!’
‘The monkey,’ I said, getting irritated. ‘It weighs too little to do any damage. The laws of physics—’
‘Physics! Devil take you, lass! I’ll shoot the wretch down myself. And you, too, if you don’t mind your own business!’
I wasn’t used to being threatened by a bony drunkard, and it didn’t sit well with me. Anger stirred deep in my bones. At just sixteen, I had already had a lifetime’s experience with men like him. The last one ended up without use of his hand. The river of anger flowed from my capillaries into veins and straight to my heart, lodging there like a hardened bit of glass. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d brought my palm across his face.
The crew went silent. The captain touched his cheek, blinked twice, then stumbled toward me with black rage. Suddenly Montgomery was beside me. He snatched my hand and tucked the rifle under his arm.
‘Is there a problem, Captain?’ he growled. In an instant Montgomery had turned into a hulking animal, powerful and dangerous.
The captain’s bloodshot eyes steadied on the rifle. Montgomery casually adjusted it so it pointed at his gut. The captain hesitated, then spit a thin mess of tobacco a few inches from Montgomery’s feet. ‘Keep your little bobtail below where she belongs.’
I gasped at the insult, but Montgomery squeezed my hand so hard I couldn’t think of anything else. ‘Our apologies for the disruption,’ he said, his blue eyes cold. ‘It won’t happen again.’ He pulled me to the side, where I leaned against the rail, shaking with anger.
‘Did you hear what he called me?’ I said, face burning.
‘He’s a liar and a drunk, so what he says is of no consequence to us.’ His hand tightened over mine. ‘I’m less concerned with your reputation than your safety. Men like him are dangerous. He may be checked by Balthazar’s size and by my rifle, but he could do anything to us out here, Juliet, and no one would know.’
His large fingers swallowed my own. He could have let go, for we were quite safe now.
But he did not.
I cleared my throat. His presence had a way of making my anger dissipate, but in return it set loose a swell of other feelings. ‘I should thank you, then.’ I didn’t know exactly what to do with myself. What to say.
He still didn’t let go of my hand. He took a step closer, interlacing his fingers in my own. I swallowed the nervous jitters rising in my throat.
‘I suppose I’ve made this voyage very difficult for you,’ I said. My voice shook, but the thought of silence was more frightening.
‘As I said, I’m glad you came.’ His eyes held mine, leaving little doubt as to his meaning. Montgomery wasn’t one for games.
My corset felt even more constricting than usual. I wanted to rip the stays apart and fill my burning lungs with air. His touch was thrilling. His whispered words, I’m glad you came, turned my insides molten. Emotions were a puzzle, something to be studied and fitted together carefully. But the edges of this puzzle didn’t fit within the lines I knew. I focused on the loose white thread on his cuff rather than on our intertwined hands.
‘I’ve thought of you over the years, Juliet,’ he said, his voice low as he brushed a blowing strand of hair out of my face. ‘More than I should.’
Juliet, he’d called me. He’d dropped the pretense of using my surname. I studied the waves beyond our hands, trying to work out the equation of my emotions. Since I’d seen him again, in that room at the Blue Boar Inn, there’d been a tightness inside my chest whenever he was around, like string lashed around my heart. I felt it tug at his little gestures that brought me back to our childhood. I felt it at his kindness to Balthazar. At the way circumstances had forced him to grow up too quickly. At the way he made me feel safe, for the first time in years, and yet passionately alive. It was something I could never have felt with Adam or any of those silly boys.
The waves’ caps blurred into a dizzying blue mass. I felt myself swaying and gripped the rail. My corset was bound too tightly. Blood wasn’t flowing to my brain. I didn’t know how to process these feelings. Safety. Warmth. Affection – God, I wasn’t a little girl anymore – maybe it was more than just affection.
I pressed my fingers against my eyes and looked back at the waves. A strange sight: a dark mass against the sea. I blinked to clear my head.
A hundred feet away from us a battered dinghy bobbed, half sunk. I squeezed my eyes shut.
‘Juliet, are you all right? Did you hear what I said?’
But when I opened my eyes again, I saw that the dinghy was real.
So was the hunched body inside.
EIGHT (#ulink_2dbf9f33-d335-52b5-939a-d52fcf7284c7)
‘Captain! There’s a man adrift,’ Montgomery yelled. I dug my fingers into the chipped rail. The dinghy was quickly taking on water, sinking lower and lower.
‘Could he be alive?’ I gasped.
‘Doubtful. Must have been drifting for days. We’ve been at sea nine weeks and haven’t seen another ship.’
The captain shuffled over, cursing loudly, and shoved me aside as he peered over the rail. ‘Bloody devil,’ he muttered, and signaled to the first mate. ‘Turn us alongside her!’
A red-nosed young deckhand helped Montgomery lower some line, hand over hand, so fast that watching made me dizzy. As the ship swung to aft, the sinking dinghy drew closer until it knocked against the hull. The waterlogged body lay curled in the bottom, a hideous display. The tatters of a coat, bleached and salt stained, covered his upper half. Torn trousers ended midcalf over bare feet that were scarcely more than bones. What would we find under the clothes? A bloated corpse? Bleached bones scoured clean by salt and sand? I found myself leaning dangerously far over the rail.
‘Larsen, you’re lightest,’ Montgomery said. The deckhand swung a leg over the side and disappeared. I waited tensely with the group of sailors. Even the monkey watched from high in the rigging. A cloud passed overhead, stealing our sunlight. A few fat raindrops fell on my face.
Suddenly, a rough hand took my wrist and pulled me away. Balthazar. He led me to the sheepdog’s cage, where we could watch from a distance, sheltering us from the coming rain with a canvas cloth.
‘Thank you,’ I muttered, hugging my arms, though I still wanted to be watching from up close.
‘Montgomery says a lady must be protected.’
I looked at him askance. If Montgomery and Balthazar thought I’d never seen a gruesome image before, they were mistaken. I wasn’t that kind of lady. I started to say as much, but Balthazar seemed proud, as if he was protecting a proper young woman, so I kept my mouth shut.
A murmur spread through the men like spring rain, and I strained to hear. I caught only one word, but it was enough.
Alive.
I itched to move closer, but knew I should stay with Balthazar. Another sailor climbed over the side. The line jerked wildly, held fast by the second mate and his watch crew. At Montgomery’s signal, they pulled. Several feet of line came up. The sailors hoisted up Larsen along with the castaway. The unconscious body fell upon the deck, dripping with seawater. The crew swarmed closer.
Unable to resist, I tore away from Balthazar. He called after me not to look, but I felt compelled to, dragged forward by an invisible hand. I slipped quietly among the sailors, catching glimpses between their swarthy frames.
Montgomery rolled the body carefully to its back. It was a young man, a little older than me, unconscious and so battered and beaten by the sea that I couldn’t believe he had survived. His hand clutched a tattered photograph as though, in his last hours of consciousness, the image was all he’d had left to cling to.
I blinked, paralyzed by the image of that bruised hand holding a photograph. A coldness stole my breath. I had been drawn by morbid curiosity like a vulture to carnage. But this wasn’t some lifeless corpse – it was a person, with a heart and a hope. Alive.
I drifted along the outskirts, keeping my distance, almost afraid that if I stepped closer, my curiosity would once again take control of my limbs. I glimpsed a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his leg. I imagined him alone and desperate in the dinghy, tending to his wound and wondering if he was going to die out there.
Montgomery’s lips silently counted the young man’s pulse. ‘Fetch some water!’ he called.
A sailor shifted, giving me a clear look at the castaway’s face. I’d never been one to turn away from blood, but my heart twisted at the sight. A crusted and seeping gash ran down one side of his face, just below his eye. Sun blisters covered his cheeks and forehead. His salt-stained dark hair tangled like the seaweed that washed up at low tide in Brighton. His eyes were closed.
It struck me he was almost a ghost, straddling the fine line between the living and the dead. I wanted him to live, to see again whatever was so important in that photograph, as if it would make up for my morbid fascination.
The rain came harder now. A sailor pushed past me with a flask. Montgomery held it to the castaway’s lips, but he didn’t wake, so Montgomery poured the water over his face instead. A slight moan. A cough. And then the castaway jerked awake, blinking, rain streaking down his face. His wild eyes darted back and forth.
‘We found you at sea,’ Montgomery said. ‘Can you speak? What’s your name?’
But the castaway shook his head, muttering something I couldn’t make out, clutching the photograph so hard it crumpled. He grew more agitated with each breath, kicking and tearing at some invisible demon. The gash on his face reopened, and a line of dark blood rolled down his neck.
‘Calm yourself!’ Montgomery threw his weight on him. The castaway was no match for his size, but delirium made him fierce, and Montgomery had to struggle to hold him down.
‘Sea madness,’ Montgomery said. ‘Balthazar, get the chloroform.’
The castaway clawed at the deck, nearly grabbing my foot. Montgomery jerked his chin at me. ‘Get back, Juliet!’ he yelled.
But all I could do was shuffle back a few inches, wondering what was happening in the young man’s mind. He seemed to think he was in some other place. But then his eyes found mine and he stopped struggling, like the mad fog had lifted. Like he remembered something – no, recognized something. An odd sensation tickled the back of my neck. Did he recognize me? I’d never seen him before in my life. His desperation was familiar – I had only to look in a mirror to recognize that – but he was still a stranger. His lips formed a few voiceless words that drew me closer, fascinated, wanting to hear, wanting to know who he was.
‘Juliet, I said stay back! He might be dangerous.’
Montgomery’s voice broke the spell and I tore my eyes away. All the sailors were staring at me. I shrugged hesitantly, as curious as they were.
Balthazar stumbled up beside me, clutching a glass bottle and cloth soaked with chloroform. The castaway took one look at Balthazar’s hulking form and started straining again. He twisted out of Montgomery’s grip and slammed a fist so hard against the deck that the weathered boards splintered. My lips fell open. That sort of strength came only with powerful delusions. He didn’t know what was happening, I realized. A part of him had slipped away out there in the open sea. He let out one hoarse yell before Montgomery thrust the cloth over his mouth and nose and he slumped to the deck.
The captain sank to a knee to rifle through the castaway’s pockets. Montgomery frowned as he handed the cloth back to Balthazar and glanced at me, a question in his eyes: What was it about me that had made the castaway go silent?
But I was as much at a loss.
‘Might as well pitch him back overboard,’ the captain said, turning out only empty pockets. ‘You saw him. Mad. Can’t have a madman hanging about.’
‘If you throw him overboard, that’s murder,’ Montgomery said tensely. ‘And I doubt you’d be saying that if you’d found money in his pockets.’
‘Ain’t murder if he can’t pay.’
‘You’re not throwing him overboard.’ Montgomery’s voice was hard.
The captain sat up, eyeing him with something like a challenge. ‘You going to take him with you, then, boy?’
Montgomery hesitated, giving Balthazar an uneasy glance before turning back to the captain. ‘Look at his buttons – silver. He comes from wealth. Give him a few days to regain consciousness, and I’m sure he’ll offer to repay you generously.’
Balthazar wrapped an arm around my shoulders and started to lead me away. My feet went with him as if of their own accord, but I couldn’t tear my gaze from the castaway. The gash across his face, the bruises on his bare arms from being tossed about at sea. He seemed so eager to cling to a slip of life. He was a survivor, like me.
NINE (#ulink_f1e3cdf4-ee40-5e15-a8c9-e78928795ce3)
Montgomery attended to the castaway day and night. A rumor circulated that the young man didn’t remember his own name, or how he’d been shipwrecked, or if he was the only survivor. The captain lost patience and threatened to throw him overboard again, but Montgomery slipped the captain the last of our coins in exchange for setting up a cot for him in the galley. It was one of several places on the ship I wasn’t allowed, but after a few days without seeing Montgomery or hearing more than snatches of gossip about the castaway, I couldn’t stay away.
The galley was as dark and damp as the inside of a rotting cellar. The only light came from the cooking fire and a few lit candles. The sailors had laid the young man next to the chimney, where the bricks would keep him warm, but in sleep he looked as cold as death.
Montgomery glanced up when I entered. We both knew I wasn’t supposed to be there. Rather than scold me, he handed me a dirty cloth and nodded toward a copper pot on the hearth. ‘Boil this. Add a few drops of chlorine to the water. The vial’s next to the fire.’
Our hands grazed as I took the cloth. My skin still tingled with the memory of our fingers intertwined.
‘I hear you’re quite the doctor,’ I said, adding a few drops of chlorine to the pot. Steam billowed in the dank space around me.
Montgomery carefully peeled back a bandage on the young man’s leg, airing the wound. It oozed with angry white pus. ‘Hardly. Your father says I’m useless.’ He reached for a bottle of Elk Hill brandy and splashed some onto the scraped flesh. The castaway moaned but didn’t wake.
The boiling water tumbled over itself in great bubbles, and I submerged the soiled cloth in the pot with a wooden spoon. ‘My father used to call everyone useless, from the scullery maid to the Dean of King’s College. You’re far from useless.’ I stirred the pot slowly, throwing glances at the castaway’s face in the candlelight. ‘How is he?’
‘He’ll live.’ Montgomery picked up a needle and a length of black thread. ‘If we’d found him a day later, maybe hours, he might not have been so lucky. I’d hoped this would have healed, but it got infected. Not a damn clean thing around here.’ He pinched the skin around the scrape and punctured it with the needle.
I memorized his gestures as he stitched the wound closed. His movements were like a long-acquired habit, something he did so often, his hands could practically think on their own. When he was younger, he used to build fires in my room’s small fireplace with the same certainty of action. For Montgomery, work came as naturally as an afterthought – it was keeping up his strong front that required concentration.
‘Has he been awake?’ I asked.
‘Off and on.’
‘Did he tell you what happened to him?’
Montgomery started on the next stitch, tugging the skin tight. He paused to toss me the old bandage, which I added to the pot. The billowing water turned a murky shade of brown. ‘He remembers a little more each day. Yesterday he told me he was a passenger on the Viola, bound for Australia, but it took on water from a cracked hull some twenty days ago.’
‘Twenty days! Was he the only survivor?’
‘He gets confused when I ask questions. But in his sleep, he says as much.’ His eyes flashed. ‘He’s asked about you.’
I nearly knocked over the boiling pot. ‘Me? What did he ask?’
‘Who you were. Where you were going. What a pretty girl was doing on this kind of ship. It seems you made quite an impression.’ There was a flicker of jealousy in Montgomery’s voice that made me focus on the pot, studying the rising steam.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘The truth,’ he said. ‘You’ve come to find your estranged father.’
‘So you don’t think he’s dangerous?’
Montgomery tied off the last stitch and bit through the thread. ‘No, he isn’t dangerous.’ He stood, wiping his hands on a rag, and came to the hearth. Steam made sweat bead on his forehead. I was suddenly aware of the intense heat in the small galley, and that we were, with the exception of the sleeping castaway, alone. ‘He’s the gentleman type. You saw the silver buttons. Probably never had a true day of hard work in his whole life.’
‘Still, he survived a shipwreck.’
Montgomery brushed his hair back, studying me with those deep blue eyes. ‘What has you so interested in him?’
The tone in Montgomery’s voice made me stir the water faster, aware of the red creeping up my neck. Lucy would have said something coy. She believed the way to keep a man interested was to make him jealous, but Montgomery wasn’t mine to begin with, and he had no good reason to be jealous of a half-dead castaway, silver buttons or not.
‘He had a photograph,’ I said into the pot. ‘Did you find it?’
Montgomery reached to the shelf behind me, between the larder and block of salt. A trace smell of spiced brandy clung to his hands. He pulled down a scrap of crumpled paper and handed it to me. The photograph, waterlogged and torn beyond recognition.
I could only make out an overcast brown sky, the vague shape of people. I glanced at the castaway. What had it meant to him?
‘The helmsman spotted debris in the water this morning,’ Montgomery said. ‘We’re getting close to the island. It’s just a matter of days now.’ His voice held the relief of reaching home after a long voyage. But there was an undercurrent of worry. ‘I don’t like the thought of leaving him here, especially without a doctor aboard. That wound will get re-infected without treatment. And if he can’t convince the captain he can pay, once we leave there’s no telling what will happen. They don’t owe him anything.’
The castaway muttered something in his sleep and tossed around in the cot. I brushed my hair back, stealing a glance at the black stitches in his leg. ‘You want to take him with us,’ I said, reading Montgomery’s thoughts.
His jaw tensed indecisively, but he shook his head. ‘It crossed my mind, but no. Your father doesn’t allow strangers on the island. There’s nothing to be done for him.’
‘He’s been in a shipwreck. Father will take pity on him.’
Montgomery shook his head harder. ‘It was a foolish idea. Forget I said anything.’ He took the pot off the grate and set it on the cook’s table. ‘Watch him for a moment, if you would. I have to check on the animals.’
‘What if he wakes?’
A corner of his mouth turned up. ‘Say hello.’
And he left me with the castaway, the wooden spoon, and my thoughts drifting in and out of the swirling steam.
A few days later I stood on the sun-bleached deck, squinting into the rigging, chewing on a fingernail. I was studying the monkey. It studied me back. Bribing the captain to spare the monkey’s life had been easy – apparently he valued a few bottles of Father’s brandy over being right. But getting the creature down was now my problem. And with our arrival imminent, I was running low on time.
‘Monkey, look!’ I held up my father’s silver pocket watch. One of the crew had told me monkeys liked reflective objects, but I dangled the watch for the better part of an hour with no results.
Balthazar and Montgomery chuckled behind me.
‘Be quiet!’ I chided. ‘You frighten it, Balthazar. And you too, Montgomery. It remembers you wanted to shoot it.’
‘Have you tried a banana?’ Montgomery offered.
I scowled. ‘I haven’t got a banana. And unless you do, clear out!’
Laughing, he went back to tending the caged animals. I folded my arms, puzzled and frustrated. I’d been methodical in my attempts to get the monkey down. First I tried setting a trap, then luring it into a cage with food, and then climbing into the rigging until the boatswain and the whole first watch tried to look up my skirt. Nothing had worked.
I slid the watch into my pocket and watched the monkey swing effortlessly from bowsprit to boom, graceful as a bird. Its skill was astounding. It never missed, never hesitated, never doubted. I was overcome with an urge to try myself, though I knew it was impossible. I’d learned enough from Montgomery’s lessons and Father’s books to know we weren’t built for climbing and swinging, though humans and monkeys had the same basic limb structure. The only major differences were the double-curved spine on a human and the flexible ligaments in a primate’s feet. Both easily alterable through surgery. My mind wandered, curious whether science would ever find a way to make us as graceful as animals.
‘Don’t you wish you could do that?’ I called to Montgomery over my shoulder. ‘It’s like it’s flying.’
There was no answer. I turned, but Montgomery had gone below. In his place was the castaway; awake, upright, watching me from across the deck. Surprise drenched me like a splash of cold water.
The sun blisters on his face had faded, though the gash on the side of his face was a constant reminder of the shipwreck. He’d cut the tangles out of his dark hair, and it now fell just below his chin, unfashionable but at least clean. Only a whisper remained of that haunting apparition, and now he was merely flesh and blood and bone and bruises. He looked naturally lean, so his gauntness was even more pronounced, yet there was something undeniably strong about him.
He waved.
I hesitated, and waved back.
TEN (#ulink_bda926d0-9309-5300-8436-6a7edaaf8061)
The next afternoon I found a lidded bowl full of live worms and roaches outside my door with a note written in a gentleman’s handwriting. It wasn’t in Montgomery’s hand, and none of the sailors could write, so it took little reasoning to determine who it was from.
Monkeys adore insects, it said.
I went above deck, set the teeming bowl under the rigging, and removed the lid. One roach saw its chance to escape and crawled up the side, but I flicked it back in. I hid behind some crates, settling in to wait, but heard the sound of the ceramic bowl moving within only a minute. The monkey was so engrossed in the bowl that he didn’t even notice when I sneaked up behind him and slipped a collar around his neck. I let him finish eating before putting him in his new cage.
Monkey secured, I found the castaway sitting in the corner of the forecastle deck outside the boatswain’s hold, his back to me, leaning over an old backgammon board balanced on top of a barrel. He was studying the game’s red and black tokens by the fading sunlight. They were set all wrong. He didn’t seem aware of the sailors throwing him angry glances for taking up space on the deck.
I studied him as carefully as he studied the game. Despite the gash along his face, there was something undeniably attractive about him. Not handsome in a classic way like Montgomery, but more subtle, deeper, as if his true handsomeness lay in the story behind those bruises and that crumpled photograph. Something to be discovered, slowly, if one was clever enough to decipher it.
‘They say you’re mad,’ I said.
His arm jerked as he turned toward my voice. The backgammon game spilled to the floor, red and black tokens rolling across the deck. I fell to my knees to collect them, and he bent to help. He seemed reluctant to meet my eyes. Reserved. His fingers absently drifted to the gash under his eye. A muscle twitched in the side of his jaw. He was scarred from the shipwreck, of course, but there was something in his guarded movements that spoke of more, as though the scars might continue deep below the surface.
‘I couldn’t remember much at first,’ he said, daring a glance at me. This close, I saw that his brown eyes had flecks of gold that caught the fading sun. ‘But it’s coming back to me.’ His hand dropped away from his face. A sailor passed, kicking one of the tokens down the deck and grumbling curses about cadging stowaways.
The castaway added, ‘I’m not mad.’ For a moment his eyes shifted oddly to the left, as though half his mind was still trapped in that dinghy or had sunk with the ship. He had suffered so greatly, and the sailors seemed keen to make him suffer more.
‘Mad enough to come above deck and get in the sailors’ way. You aren’t making yourself popular with them,’ I said, and then lower, ‘You should be careful.’ I handed him the tokens I’d collected and nodded at the board. ‘Would you like to play a round?’
The corner of his mouth twitched again, this time in a half smile. He straightened the backgammon board and stacked the tokens one by one.
I folded my legs and sat across from him. I tried not to stare at the bruises on his arms and face. His knuckles were scraped raw nearly to the bone, and I remembered that hand clutching the photograph, clutching to life. Hard to believe this was the same person.
‘Do you remember what happened?’ I asked. ‘The shipwreck?’
His eyes slid to me, only a flash, judging whether or not to trust me. He picked up the dice. ‘Yes.’
‘And your name?’ I asked.
‘Edward Prince.’ He said it slowly, as though he had little information about himself to share and had to ration it carefully.
‘I’m Juliet Moreau.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I know.’ And I remembered he’d asked Montgomery about me.
It was my turn to stare, wondering what he’d thought of me that first day, when he’d been lost in a whirlpool of delusion. He’d said something that none of us had heard. Now he stared at the tokens, just slices from an old mop or broom handle, with the dice waiting in his hand. The tokens were still set wrong, and I instinctively reached out to re–arrange them before starting our game. It felt good to put something in order.
‘How did you survive?’ I asked.
My question caught him off guard, and his hand curled around the dice. He gave a cautious shrug. ‘The grace of God, I suppose.’
I watched his broken fist working the dice, the twitch of his bruised jaw, the strength in his wiry shoulders. His words came too easily. He’d said what he thought I wanted to hear, not what he was truly thinking.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said. He tilted his head, surprised. ‘Twenty days at sea. No food. No water. No shade. The sole survivor of dozens of passengers. God didn’t save you. You saved yourself. I’d like to know how.’
He studied my placement of the tokens on the board, memorizing it, learning everything over again from scratch. ‘Montgomery’s first question was about the family I must have lost,’ he said. ‘The grief.’ He rolled the dice, a little too hard. His reaction told me I should have had more sympathy, like Montgomery.
I blinked, unsure of myself. I hadn’t meant to be cold. ‘I’m sorry. Your family … were they with you on the Viola?’
‘No,’ he said, surprisingly flat. ‘I was traveling alone. My father’s a general on tour abroad now. The rest of my family is at Chesney Wold – our estate. Probably entertaining dull relatives and glad to be rid of me.’
His tone was so cavalier as he scratched his scar with a jagged nail and studied the board. Something felt a little too forced. There was almost a harsh, layered tone that spoke of pain and anger and made me suspect he wasn’t being entirely honest. ‘But you said—’
He shrugged. ‘I thought it strange you were more interested in the details of my survival than the dozens who died on that ship.’ He started to move his tokens, and I should have thought about how heartless I must have seemed, but instead all I could focus on was how badly he was playing backgammon.
He slid a token slowly around the points. ‘Montgomery told me you’re to be reunited with your father. A doctor of some sort,’ he said.
‘That’s right.’
He picked up the token, running his finger over the rough-hewn wood. ‘It’s odd, don’t you think, for a wealthy doctor to want to live in such a remote place? It makes one wonder.’
I caught the undercurrent in his voice, and it intrigued me. Whatever he was insinuating wasn’t good, and it was awfully bold to speak it aloud. Maybe there was more to him than a sea-mad castaway who’d never worked a day in his life.
I picked up the dice. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What would make a man give everything up to come out here?’
I shook the dice and spilled them out across the deck. ‘I could ask you the same thing, Mr Prince. What made you leave England if all your family is there?’
His jaw twitched again. ‘You’ve come to find your father. I’ve come to get away from mine.’ Once more, that subtle layer of anger laced his voice.
‘Why? What did he do?’ I moved my tokens like an afterthought.
He paused. ‘He didn’t do anything. I did.’ And then he shook the dice and threw them, abruptly, as if he’d said too much. A three and a six. He started moving the token in the wrong direction.
‘Captain Claggan isn’t exactly pleased I’m here,’ he added, and the change in subject caught me by surprise. ‘Did you know he came with that first mate of his, last night after Montgomery was asleep, and dragged me to the rail? He was going to throw me over until I told him I had relatives in Australia who would pay dearly for my safe return.’
My hand was frozen in midair. The game suddenly didn’t seem to matter anymore. ‘Did you tell Montgomery? He won’t let the captain get away with that.’ I shifted on the rough floorboards. ‘Just the same, it’s lucky about your relatives.’
He gave me a guarded look, though something like amusement peeked through. ‘I don’t know anyone in Australia. I just made that up. I sought passage on the first ship I could from London, regardless of its destination. The Viola just happened to be it.’
‘So what happens when you get to Australia and he finds out there are no wealthy relatives?’ Once we were gone, without Balthazar and bribery and guns, Edward Prince would be on his own.
His fingers drummed on the wooden board. The last ray of sun slipped below the horizon, casting half of his bruised face in shadows. ‘I don’t know.’
A cry from the crow’s nest made me drop the token in my hand. The castaway and I exchanged a breathless glance.
‘Land ho!’ the watchman called.
Night fell quickly that day, obscuring the land the scout had spotted. The sailors sent Edward back to the galley and me to my quarters and told us to stay there. But obedience wasn’t one of my virtues. I found Montgomery on the quarterdeck speaking in hushed voices with Balthazar below the glowing mast light. The captain and first mate stood by the gunwale with a lantern held above the sea charts.
I leaned over the rail and studied the black horizon. Moonlight reflected on the waves like scales of some dark dragon. I couldn’t tell where the night ended and the sea began. Between them, somewhere, was my father.
Montgomery caught sight of me and rushed over, a spark of energy to his movements. I’d forgotten that this place was his home. He pointed to the horizon. ‘It’s volcanic. Do you see the plume?’
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