“Oh.” She felt oddly deflated. “Han I at leasht heep ha hulled ash a huvenih?”
“I have no idea what you’re saying. Wait another moment till I take out the thermometer.” He put his hand back on her forehead, and then, to her happy astonishment, his thumb stroked the hair at her brow. That, she thought, was not medically necessary. Which meant it was definitely a caress. An affectionate caress.
“That should do it.” He pulled out the thermometer and checked it. “Ninety-eight point four. Normal. No fever. Now, what were you asking me?” He held up a palm as if to hold off an attack. “If it pertains to nakedness or enjoyment, I refuse to respond.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Reply. I refuse to reply.”
“I said, ‘can I keep the bullet as a souvenir?’”
He looked a bit rueful as he said, “Afraid you’ll have to—it’s still in there. Removing it would just have torn up the muscle more.”
“Huh.” She caught the smell of medicinal alcohol as he disinfected the thermometer and put it away. “Why is it that in all the stories I’ve ever read the intrepid adventurer always has to dig out the bullet with nothing more than a pocketknife and a bottle of whiskey?”
“Are there tales of the Wild West? And do they also involve people yanking arrows out of their sides and then throwing them at the enemy?”
She grinned up at him. “You read penny dreadfuls too, huh?”
“You mean that tripe about Deadwood Dick and Calamity Jane?” He flashed her a quick grin then said with a straight face, “Absolutely not. Now, are you thirsty?” She nodded and he refilled her glass from a pitcher. She lifted her head to drink just as she’d done last time, but this time she seemed to have lost some hand-eye coordination and the glass tipped.
“Oh, darn it!” The entire front of her nightgown was clinging damply to her skin. She looked up to find Victor staring at her. “What?”
He made a funny sound in the back of his throat, a sort of choking laugh.
“What’s so funny?” She was smiling, ready to share in the joke, but then he wasn’t laughing anymore. She looked down at herself and saw the reason: the white linen had gone transparent.
“We need—” his voice thickened, and he had to clear his throat “—we need to change you into something dry.”
“All right.”
She expected him to turn his head, but instead, he put one hand on the tiny seed pearl buttons that that held the front of the nightgown together. Of course, she realized. There’s no way I can do this on my own, not with my wounded arm. He hesitated, glancing at her face, then began unbuttoning the gown with surprising dexterity, given the size of his fingers.
She didn’t try to stop him.
He peeled the nightgown back from her shoulders, carefully averting his gaze as he removed her left hand from the sleeve. She watched his face for any sign of a reaction as he maneuvered around her to work her injured shoulder free of the gown without jostling it. His eyes met hers, then, helplessly, as though against his will, his gaze dropped for an instant. “I... Sorry.” He turned his back to her. “I don’t know where Justine keeps another nightgown, so...” Of course, Lizzie thought, using her good hand to pull the blanket up so it covered her breasts. Justine was in the next room. The rhythmic, mechanical sound of the girl’s iron lung had become background noise, but now that she was paying attention she could hear it again, a constant reminder that they were not truly alone. No wonder he looked so uncomfortable.
Nice to think he might have kissed me, if we didn’t have company.
Except that Victor appeared to have changed his mind, because he was unbuttoning his black waistcoat, still keeping his back to her. Her mouth went dry as he threw the waistcoat over a chair and went to work on the buttons of his shirt.
“Victor?”
He peeled the white cotton shirt back, revealing the broad sweep of his shoulders. He must have decided that Justine’s presence wasn’t that much of a deterrent, after all. She would have to tell him that there was no way she could allow him to... He was pulling the shirttails out of the waist of his trousers now, and then he shucked the shirt entirely and she was looking at his naked back. She sucked in a breath, thinking of the charts she’d memorized showing the window formed just below the shoulder, where the trapezius, deltoid and latisimus dorsi muscles intersect. Funny, how none of the medical texts had described the beauty in the play of muscles beneath a man’s skin.
Victor ended the moment by reaching behind him without turning around. “Here.” His tone was curt, even annoyed. “Put this on.”
Not seduction, then. Torn between disappointment and relief, she took the shirt from his hand. Why did everyone make it sound as though young men were always looking to indulge their carnal appetites? As far as she could tell, she was the one with all the appetite. Looking down at the shirt, she realized she had to slip her arm out of the nightgown first. She angled her right elbow, then sucked in a sharp breath as a white hot pain lanced through her shoulder.
“You all right?” He was beside her in an instant, checking for bleeding. “Good, nothing’s opened up.”
She looked up at his bare chest, and her mouth fell open.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” For a brief moment his right hand came up, self-consciously covering the electrodes at his neck—she hadn’t noticed them until he tried to conceal them, too taken with his broad, muscular chest. The brass plate covering his left pectoral only drew attention to the perfection of his form. “You’ve seen me this way before, remember?”
Of course she remembered. But that might as well have been two different people, so much had changed between them since then. She hadn’t even noticed that he was handsome beneath his bruising, that first time. Now...she felt she wanted to just stare at him for hours, watching the way his passing moods registered on his features.
Right now, for example, he looked annoyed.
“Well, we don’t have time for maidenly modesty. I have to help you change into this.”
“All right.” Her heart was beating so quickly she couldn’t find the breath to explain that she wasn’t feeling modest at all.
“I’m not angry. Don’t move your arm, I’m going to bunch this up and lift it over your elbow.” He lifted her good left arm out of the covers first, then pulled her arm through the shirtsleeve. His bare chest was right in front of her face, masculine nipple on one side, brass metal implant on the other. She could smell him, a pleasantly musky, masculine scent. “Now, let me see...” Suddenly, his eyes met hers again, and she saw that what she had taken for an impassive doctor face was really something else entirely. Everything in her body tightened.
“Victor.”
“No. Do not say my name like that. Elizabeth...”
She put her good hand on the warm skin of his chest, right over the hard swell of his pectoral, and then he was kissing her, just like before but better, because this time her bare skin was pressed up against the naked warmth of his chest.
He made an anguished sound, and this time it was the hand gauntleted in metal that pulled his right hand away. His chest was rising and falling in great heaves, as if he’d just finished a race. Or a fight.
“Victor? Are you all right?”
“No, lass,” he said with a rueful grin. “I’m not.”
“Jack?” She searched his face for clues. “Say something, so I know who you are.” Through the floating ease of the morphine, she thought about the fact that they were both naked from the waist up, a sleeping chaperone just one room away.
“Can’t you tell?” His mouth was so close to hers, all she needed to do was reach up to close the distance.
“Kiss me again.” She could tell them apart by their kisses. She lifted her chin, and he cupped her jaw in his hand.
“If I kiss you again, I’m afraid I won’t stop.”
br /> “So don’t stop.”
He gave a ragged laugh. “If only you knew what you’re asking.”
“I do know. I’m a medical student, Jack.”
He dragged in a deep breath. “No. Sorry. Not Jack.”
She twined her fingers through his hair, which was so much silkier than her own. “Why are you sorry you’re not Jack?” She leaned in to whisper in his ear. “You’re the one I like best.”
“You do?”
She nodded, leaning back. “I also like Jack, though. I think if you were a little more Jack, you’d kiss me again.”
Even in the dark, she could see his eyes change. “If I were a little more Jack, I’d do more than kiss you. And you’re innocent, and you’re injured, and you’re talking under the influence of the poppy.”
She examined that for a loophole, no easy task when her mind kept skipping over the planes and ridges of his remarkable chest. “Can I just smell you?”
“What?” He pulled back, clearly appalled. “Dear Lord, I hope not.”
“No, no, I want to smell you. I want to put my nose right there...” She pointed to the depression between his pectoral muscles and then winced as the movement pulled at her arm.
“Easy there.” He was all Victor again as he checked her shoulder and then swiftly buttoned his shirt up to her throat before tucking the blankets even more firmly around her breasts. “I can’t make you a respectable offer of marriage, Elizabeth, and so this can go no further. But if I could...and if you weren’t under the influence of an opiate...I would kiss you from the top of your head to the soles of your feet.”
Startled by his casual mention of marriage, it took her a moment to work her way through the end of his sentence. “Oh,” she said. Suddenly she felt very sleepy. She was trying to think of what to say next and drifting away when she felt the brush of lips against her forehead.
35
A small bell chimed just above Victor’s head, startling him. It was the sort of bell that was used to summon a servant back at home; he supposed he was the servant here.
Checking to make sure that Elizabeth was still asleep, he retrieved his waistcoat from the chair and his jacket from the coatrack. He was still buttoning the waistcoat as he opened the connecting door to Justine’s room. The girl looked even frailer than he recalled, with only her blond head visible at the front of the enormous metal machine that did the work of her atrophied lungs. “Are you all right? Do you need anything?”
“Just someone to talk to. Sorry to trouble you, but I lie here all day...sometimes I can’t sleep.”
“No trouble at all, if you can forgive the appalling state of me? I just donated my shirt to Miss Lavenza.”
Justine dimpled. “I think we can move past the usual formalities. After all, I’m an invalid and you’re nearly a doctor.”
He pulled up a chair and sat down beside her. “But you’re not in any discomfort?”
“Oh, no, not me. Is Miss Lavenza all right? I thought I heard her cry out at one point.”
“Yes, well, she’s asleep now.” There was a plate with some slightly browned slices of apple and some cheddar on a side table. He wondered if it might be rude to ask if he might eat a slice.
Justine nodded at the plate, though Victor hadn’t said a word. “Help yourself, if you like. I’m afraid I never eat very much, so it will all go to waste otherwise.”
“Thanks.”
He was just biting into the apple when she said, “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”
He choked a little, then managed to swallow the bit of apple and sputter out, “I beg your pardon?” How much had she heard?
“I’m so sorry! I know I should have let you know I was awake.” Her voice sounded thoughtful. “It’s just that nothing interesting ever happens in my life.” She met his eyes. “Are you very upset with me?”
Yes. “Of course not.” He took a bite of cheese, more for distraction than from appetite. Good Lord, he’d come within a hairsbreadth of ravishing a wounded, drugged girl while another invalid listened in. Wish I could blame this one on Jack.
“Then don’t look so grim! I assure you this evening has been the most diverting one in recent memory.” Her voice, with its odd, breathless cadence, was so at odds with her words that it took Victor a moment to comprehend her meaning.
A suspicion formed.
“Since we are suspending propriety...just how old are you, Miss Makepiece?”
“Justine, please.” There was a hint of mirth in her voice. “And I am seventeen.”
So she was the same age as Will and Elizabeth and the other first years. No wonder she was so restless that she would eavesdrop on strangers. “The fact that you are not in actuality a child does not excuse my behavior.”
“No, but the fact that you love her does.” Her huge pale eyes never left his face.
He debated how honest to be with a young woman so sheltered from life that she probably thought love was something out of the Arthurian tales. “I am very fond of Miss Lavenza,” he allowed.
“That would explain the impulse to kiss her from head to toe, I suppose.”
“Miss Makepiece...”
“I’m an invalid, not an imbecile. I know all about the difference between lust and love—at least, everything one can learn from Shakespeare. Unexpurgated Shakespeare.”
He had to laugh at that. “That is, as I recall, a good deal.”
She gave a gasping laugh, and then they were both silent for a moment. There was a crackle from the fireplace, and then Justine said, very softly, “Tell me, what is it like?”
“What’s what like?” He pulled the chair closer. A thought occurred, and he hoped she wasn’t asking him about what he had said to Elizabeth.
“Being a Bio-Mechanical, of course. Do you still feel like you? Most of the time, I mean, when you are you and not the other one.”
That wasn’t the question he had been bracing for, and it took him a moment to come up with an answer. “I don’t really remember what I’m supposed to feel like. I have memories from before, but I’m not entirely sure they feel like my memories.”
“Do they feel like something you read in a book? That’s what my old memories feel like. Actually, the memories I have of books feel more real than my memories of walking around like a normal person.” Her gaze turned inward for a moment, and then she added, “It was so long ago, I can’t really recall what legs ought to feel like.”
“There are worse fates,” he said, his voice grim.
“You mean becoming like you? That doesn’t seem so terrible. I’ve been trapped in that iron lung most of my life, so I don’t really have very many memories worth keeping.”
Victor couldn’t quite conceal his reaction. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Don’t I?” She was amused, as if he were the naive one.
“No,” he said simply, “you don’t. You may not be able to walk, but at least you know who you are. Your mind is free, if not your body. My mind is like an occupied city. What I think, what I feel... I can’t trust myself.”
“Would you trade places with me, then? Spend your life sealed up in here?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say yes, he would, but then he thought of how powerless she was to even breathe on her own, and he hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“Liar.” She said it without rancor. “You do know. So you are not the man you were. The men you were,” she corrected herself. “Yet you are not dead. You have but suffered a sea change.”
Into something rich and strange, he thought, the Shakespeare quote floating into his mind from one of his lives. “You think it would be that easy to accept that kind of change? You lack a body. I lack a soul.”
She rolled her eyes. “Forgive me, but aren’t you supposed to be a scientist? What is a soul, in any case? If it’s some so
rt of essential spark of the divine, then I know plenty of people who seem to lack it.”
At that moment, Victor’s stomach gave a very audible grumble. “I beg your pardon.”
Justine laughed almost soundlessly. “Nonsense, that’s the perfect response to my nattering on about souls. Are you still hungry?”
“I suppose I am. Or else just exhausted.” He tried to remember the last time he had eaten something besides the two bites of cheddar and apple. It had been a long and difficult night, and he was suddenly so tired that all he could think of was how he might acquire a rasher of ham and a pint of something foamy before collapsing.
“I seem to have worn you out—and myself, as well.” Her tone was light, but she had gone even paler than usual, he realized.
“Should I try to find your father?”
She closed her eyes. Suddenly, she looked less like a child than she did an old woman, pared down to sharp bones and sharper insights. Just when he was about to go looking for Makepiece, she began talking as if nothing had happened. “I’m more interested in history than science, myself. Scientists tend to be so blinkered in their vision.”
“That seems a bit harsh.”
“Is it? You spend all your time working on one piece of the puzzle, while historians take a look at the whole mosaic. Take this school, for example. All this effort to produce a disposable soldier for the empire. Did you ever ask yourself why there was such an urgent need?”
He paused, one hand on the cool metal of her prison. “To save the lives of young men, I suppose. Isn’t that urgent enough?”
She shook her head, the only part of her body she could move. “Yet new and improved weapons never really save lives, do they, Mr. Frankenstein? From the longbow to the revolver, each technological improvement makes the weapon deadlier.”
He was so weary, he was only half paying attention to her words. “I suppose you’re right.”
“So why make England’s armies deadlier? What reason could there possibly be?”
“War,” he said, the realization coming to him in a cold rush that chased away fatigue and hunger both. “They’re preparing for war.” This time, when he met her eyes, he stopped seeing a lonely blond waif desperate for company. Instead, he saw the sharp intelligence of a prisoner who set her mind to roam widely in all the places her body could not follow.