Before I could answer, Lucy struck up a tune on the fiddle and the servants cheered. The little girls wrapped their arms around themselves for warmth, and Elizabeth herded everyone toward the glass-enclosed winter garden, where McKenna was waiting to serve cake. The coming darkness brought with it a chilling breeze, but I didn’t care. Today only one thing mattered.
“I love you,” I whispered to Montgomery.
He grinned, but a tug on my dress caught my attention, and I looked down to find Hensley in a tidy little suit with a rat perched on his shoulder, that one milky white eye seemingly staring into nothing. A coldness crept up my bare arms at the memory of him holding the Beast’s heart in his bloodred hands, staring at me the same way.
“What is it, Hensley?” I asked as calmly as I could, though my heartbeat sped. Montgomery was gone from my side; two of the little girls had pulled him into a dance.
“You’re keeping a man secret in the attic,” he said, and blinked solemnly.
THIRTY-ONE
MY HEAD WHIRLED AROUND to Montgomery, making sure he was out of earshot. I looked for Lucy but she was gone, probably to check on Edward’s recovery.
“I’ve been watching through the walls,” Hensley added. “He’s the same man who was scaring everyone before. You brought him back to life. You weren’t supposed to do that.”
My heart pounded harder. He couldn’t tell Montgomery about Edward, not today. I couldn’t shatter this one day of happiness with such shocking news.
“Come with me.” I led him away from the group and knelt down, hoping that if anyone caught sight of us, they would think it merely a sweet scene of the bride playing with a child on her wedding day.
“I know it looks like the same scary man, but it isn’t,” I said in a rush. “The man in the attic is good. He’s a dear friend, and he’s recovering from having been very ill. For now, let’s keep it a secret, what do you say? Like a game between the two of us.”
I could feel panic creeping further into my skin. Hensley was unpredictable and dangerous. There was no telling what he might do or say.
“Mother says we can’t ever bring them back. Bad things will happen.” He spun his head in Elizabeth’s direction. He had a cold look in his eye. “I should tell her what you’ve done.”
He started toward her, and I pounced on him. “No! No, listen to me, nothing bad will happen. The ones brought back from death aren’t anything to worry about. You’re fine, aren’t you? You only meant to kill that Beast because he was harming us, right?”
I knew that wasn’t true, but I hoped it might sway him.
He seemed to be wavering but then started for Elizabeth again. I grabbed his little wrist. “Wait,” I said, a little desperately. “I’ll tell you a secret, but you have to promise not to tell your mother. I can prove that the man in the attic isn’t a threat. I did the same procedure on your rat here, and it’s perfectly normal, isn’t it?”
He frowned, head twisting toward the rat on his shoulder. “My pet?”
I swallowed, speaking in a rush. “You’re quite strong for a little boy, and sometimes you crush them without knowing it. Your mother throws them out and replaces them, but this one I brought back to life. And he’s good, isn’t he? He’s a sweet little pet. Aren’t you glad he’s back? For me, it’s the same with Edward. Everyone will be glad he’s back, in time.”
Hensley’s jaw tightened. I had never been able to read the expression on his face. Even when he had killed the Beast with his own hands, he had barely flinched. His hand slowly reached up to clutch the rat. God, how I wished I could read what that little boy was thinking.
“There is more than one rat?” Hensley asked slowly.
“Yes. It’s true. Now you have a secret and so do I. If you keep mine about the man hiding in the attic, just for a few more days, I’ll read you all the stories you want.” I swallowed, worried. “Do you agree?”
He didn’t answer. He stared at me blankly and then stomped off toward the house. I uneasily watched him go. At least Lucy was watching out for Edward—Hensley surely wouldn’t do anything drastic like try to pull his heart out again. I’d read him a story later, and with luck he’d forget all about it.
Montgomery grabbed my hand, pulling me from my thoughts, and led me into a spin with the other dancers. I leaned in to him, breathing in his smell, memorizing it, trying not to worry about Hensley. Just one day of happiness, that’s all I wanted.
I hugged Montgomery closer. We had a wedding party to celebrate, and then the wedding night.
THE STORM STRUCK AS night fell. Everyone crowded into the glass-enclosed winter garden to stay out of the rain, and in the jumble Montgomery and I were able to sneak away to be alone. Laughing, we climbed through the portrait in the library and followed the wall passages to the upstairs closet, where we spilled out in the empty hallway next to my bedroom door.
The laughter faded on my lips as other feelings grew: nervousness, excitement, apprehension. The only man I’d been with was Edward, and that night hadn’t been about love. It had been about loneliness and desperation and trying to pretend I wasn’t slipping, when I’d already slipped too far.
Montgomery pulled me close. He was my tether to the real world, not the other, darker one that had called to me so many times before. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about my unsettling meeting with Hensley.
“Juliet James,” he whispered against my cheek. “How do you feel, knowing you’ll never be a Moreau again?”
“I suppose I haven’t given it much thought.” A cold feeling ran up my spine like drips of ice water. No longer a Moreau? Was it really so simple as a name changed on paper, my father’s to my husband’s? Was Juliet James a different girl—a normal girl? I looked at my hands, scrubbed clean now, the gold ring glinting on my fourth finger. One nail was jagged.
“Come with me,” Montgomery whispered, leading me to the bedroom door. He wrapped me in his arms, and the kiss felt so natural and so right that I was hardly aware of who was shutting the door, who was dragging whom toward the bed. Cracks in the windows let in hints of cold winter wind. Montgomery reached for the row of buttons down the back of my dress.
“Wait,” I whispered, unable to shake the unsettled feeling. “There’s just one thing I must do first.”
He raised an eyebrow. “One moment, and not a second more.”
I pressed a kiss to his cheek, and then went to my own bedroom. I kicked my wedding shoes off and tiptoed to the doorway, then down the hall and up the stairs, fighting with my heavy dress, to the attic. No matter how I’d tried, I couldn’t forget Hensley’s words at the wedding. I wanted just to see Edward to make certain Hensley hadn’t done something rash. Night had fallen, and the windows were black beyond, showing me my reflection. With all the rouge and fancy hairdressings, I scarcely recognized myself.
There was a photograph taken once of my mother when I was a baby. She wasn’t much older than I was now. It seemed to be my mother looking back at me, and at first the sight was startling, but then I felt comforted. Montgomery had been right. She’d been with me all along, a quieter memory than that of my father, but still there. Only now was I starting to realize it.
I hurried the rest of the way down the hall and rapped on Valentina’s door. There was no answer, so I twisted the knob and peeked within.
A single candle flickered on the bedside table. Lucy and Edward lay on the bed, fast asleep with exhaustion. They were fully clothed, though her dress strap had fallen from her shoulder, and his shirt was unbuttoned at the top. She had an arm wrapped across his chest and he, in turn, had buried his face against her shoulder.
It was a sweet, simple scene. Edward sighed in his sleep and pulled her closer, just like any couple in any bed in the world.
I glanced at the fireplace that held the trapdoor to the passageways. Tomorrow I’d board it up with nails so Hensley couldn’t get inside—just in case. And besides, I’d tell Montgomery about Edward soon enough, and then we’d all tell Elizabet
h together. She wouldn’t be happy, but what choice did she have but to accept it? She had accepted Hensley. In time, she’d come to accept Edward.
Feeling deeply contented, I eased the door closed so as not to wake them. Was there anything in the world better than a husband waiting for me downstairs, and my two best friends healthy and falling in love upstairs?
I tiptoed back to my room and sprayed some perfume over my shoulders to justify my absence, and then knocked on Montgomery’s door.
When he opened it, he pulled me inside. “That was two moments. Are you trying to torture me?”
“Perhaps,” I whispered. “Now, kiss me.”
He was all too happy to oblige. His hands found the row of buttons down my back and he undid them gracelessly, anxious to feel my skin beneath. Once his fingers brushed the scar that ran the length of my back, I moved his hands away and slid the straps off my shoulders, shedding the lace and pearl buttons, stripping down to my undergarments with the ivory ribbons, a thin chemise and corset and petticoats that stretched to just below my knees.
“I’ve never seen anything more beautiful,” he said. I turned around so he could unhook the corset, which he let fall to the floor. He tugged loose the tie around his neck, threw it on the pile along with his black jacket, and dragged the shirt over his head.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” he asked.
I silenced him with a finger over his lips. “You’re the one who wanted to wait. Not me.”
With something like a growl, he wrapped an arm around my back, pulling me into a soft kiss, and then it wasn’t so soft anymore, and my thoughts were lost amid the sounds of wind pushing at the window. Making love wasn’t like it had been with Edward. That had been rushed, hungry. Being with Montgomery was nothing but love. Victor Frankenstein’s wedding night might have ended with tragedy, but history wasn’t always doomed to repeat itself. Sometimes, things could go right.
We fell asleep, arms intertwined, to the sounds of the windmill churning outside. Even in sleep, I didn’t want to let him go. I dreamed of us together in my house on Belgrave Square with children of our own and hallways that always smelled of fresh roses. I dreamed that one day, years from now, it would be safe for us to leave Ballentyne and we’d travel to Paris and New York and Rome.
As I fell deeper into sleep, a different scent reached my nose. Montgomery’s arm suddenly tightened around me, shaking me until I blinked fully awake.
“Do you smell smoke?” he asked, just as screams rang out from beyond the walls.
THIRTY-TWO
WE THREW ON CLOTHES and raced through the dark hallways toward the sound of the screaming. I nearly slipped on the stairs before Montgomery caught me with quick instincts. Smoke. Screams. It was still night out, but just barely. What had happened? Had lightning struck the house?
We reached the foyer and spun, trying to find the source of the screams. Footsteps came from the kitchen, where Lily appeared straining under a bucket of water, still dressed in her nightclothes, her eyes glassy with fear.
“It’s the south tower, miss!” she cried.
The laboratory. We raced up the stairs, but a door flung open, startling us. Moira stumbled out of Hensley’s bedroom with smoke billowing behind her. She leaned against the wall, coughing.
“What’s happened?” I said.
She let out a wail, and a terrible dread twisted inside me. Hensley’s bedroom. The secret room of rats that I’d told him about last night.
No, no, no . . .
“Is anyone hurt?” Montgomery asked, but I just squeezed my eyes closed. I’d have done anything not to face that room, afraid of what we’d find, and my own role in it.
Moira cried harder. “It’s the mistress,” she choked. “And Hensley too . . .”
I opened my eyes and took a shaky breath. We pushed into Hensley’s chambers, and I froze.
I had expected a raging fire. Charred furniture. Every scrap destroyed.
But everything was exactly as I’d last seen it, untouched by flame, save the smoke stains on the ceiling. They came from the secret room where Elizabeth kept Hensley’s rats. The door was cracked open.
“There.” My voice was faint, as I pointed toward the secret room. “In there.”
Montgomery threw open the door. His face went white. “My God.” He tried to block the sight from me. “It must have been an accident. I’m so sorry. Tonight, of all nights . . .”
My head started spinning. Everything felt surreal. “Let me through,” I said, though my own voice sounded distant. “I need to see.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said, but it was too late, as I pushed past him. My breath caught, as the lingering smell of smoke hung in the air. The fire had died out. The rats’ cage was completely burned—as were the two human bodies in the center of the room.
They were charred beyond recognition, and yet there was no mistaking them. A woman and a little boy. Elizabeth and Hensley.
Both dead.
My stomach clenched. I doubled over and emptied my stomach onto the floor, again and again. The smoke came from them. Loose rats crawled through their ash—their flesh and blood. I coughed and gagged, but couldn’t get the taste of smoke from my throat.
“Murdered,” Montgomery murmured, and then went rigid. “It must be Radcliffe. He must be here!” He ran to the door. “Moira, fetch Balthazar. Sound the alarm. Radcliffe has found us—”
“No.” I interrupted him. “No, it wasn’t Radcliffe.”
My eyes fell on another small body in the ashes, this one charred but not burned. One of the white rats. A terrible certainty grew as I knelt down and recognized the wounds on its side, made from the procedure to reanimate it.
This was the rat I’d brought back. I had only just told Hensley about it. I had thought the reanimated rat was harmless, and perhaps it was.
But Hensley wasn’t.
“Jack Serra would have alerted us if Radcliffe knew our location,” I whispered, eyes still squeezed tight. I forced myself to stand straight. “It wasn’t an accident, either. Hensley did it.” Moira let out a strangled gasp. “He killed her—look at the way her neck is broken. The same way he strangled the rats.” Guilt flooded me so hard I could barely stand. I’d been so desperate when I’d told Hensley the truth about the rats. I should have known better after he’d killed the Beast, and after those bruises on Elizabeth’s wrist. He must have flown into a rage and killed her, then killed himself when he realized what he’d done.
I sank to my knees, burying my face in my hands. Montgomery stared at the bodies with wide eyes, the idea horrifying. I sank against the wall as a harsh, mad laugh bubbled out of me. “History did repeat itself,” I coughed. “A cursed wedding night. Oh God, just like Victor Frankenstein’s.”
Montgomery’s brow wrinkled, but before I could explain, Lucy crashed through the doorway in her nightclothes, Balthazar right behind her.
“I smelled smoke . . . ,” she said, and then froze.
Balthazar took one look at the rats crawling around the charred bodies and wrapped her in his arms, squeezed her tight.
“Don’t let her see,” I said. “Take her away from here, Balthazar.”
Lucy sobbed as Balthazar carried her back toward the stairs. Lily came in with the bucket of water but let it fall when she saw the scene. Frigid water soaked into my slippers.
“Oh God,” she whispered, and sank onto Hensley’s bed.
I took a shaky step closer to the charred bodies, nothing more than ash and bone now. As I knelt, my skirt brushed Elizabeth’s leg, which fell away into black ash. I pulled my hand back, afraid of crumbling their charred bodies any more.
“She gave us everything,” I said.
“She did,” Montgomery agreed. “She gave you everything. Which means you’re the mistress of Ballentyne now.” He looked back at Hensley’s bedroom, where McKenna held two girls pressed into her skirt to spare them the awful sight. “They’ll be looking to you now for guidance.”
I looked at
him helplessly. “Me, guide them?” I dropped my voice to a hushed whisper. “I practically killed their mistress with my own hands, Montgomery. Last night I told Hensley about the rats. That’s what threw him into a rage.”
He hesitated for a moment, but then shook his head and smoothed down my hair to calm me. “He was unpredictable. He’d hurt her before. There’s no telling what might have set him off, today or a month from now. All that matters now is the room full of girls who need you.”
I looked back through the doorway. Moira let out another sob and McKenna pulled her close, rubbing her back. Over the girl’s shoulder, the old housekeeper’s wrinkled eyes met mine. Waiting for me. Waiting for my leadership.
I stood, fighting the urge to dust the black ash from my hands and my dress. Outside, dawn was breaking.
“Moira, Lily, take the little girls back to their bedrooms,” I said, barely recognizing the sound of my own voice.
“And the ashes, miss?” McKenna asked quietly.
I looked at the wet ash on my hands. I wouldn’t ask McKenna to clean up the ashes of her own beloved mistress. “Fetch me a pail,” I said. “I’ll handle it.”
McKenna raised an eyebrow but muttered something to one of the younger girls, who scampered off to fetch a pail. The rest of them, wiping their eyes, hurried away with fearful energy. After a few minutes, only Montgomery and I remained.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered. “Elizabeth was their leader. The staff obeyed her. She knew everything about this house and how to run it and keep it safe. I can’t do it on my own.”
“You’re not on your own,” he said.
I paced, feeling the warning swell of panic as the truth of this situation crashed down upon me. “They loved her. They would do anything for her. She gave them hands, Montgomery. Hands and feet and eyes and organs. What can I give them?”