Читать книгу The Madman’s Daughter - Megan Shepherd, Megan Shepherd - Страница 8

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.’