That, at least, Henry had gotten right. If he had told Victor the truth, this conversation would feel quite different. The last letter I had received from Henry was the only proof of my involvement. I would burn it when I got back to Geneva.
“I asked him to swear he would never try to capture your heart. He said he could make no such promises, as your heart was your own to give where you would and he would not reject it were it ever to be offered. I knew that our friendship was truly dead. I told him as much, and demanded he leave my presence and never darken my doorway with his traitorous lies again. He said he was going to study in England to clear his mind of both of us. And that is the last I have seen or heard from him.”
“I am so sorry. I knew he had traveled on to England, but had I known what he came here for—” Had I known, I would not have done anything different. Not now that I had Victor back. Henry was a friend and comfort of my youth. But I would have been deeply unhappy trying to convince him I was happy. He saw too much. It would have been a constant burden, being married to him.
Victor shifted, and I adjusted the pillow for him. He closed his eyes again, the skin around them tight. “It is not your fault, of course. Men will ever strive for that which is out of reach. For that which is higher than themselves. For that which is divine.”
I laughed, resting my head on his chest. “I have missed you so.”
Victor unpinned my hat, letting my hair fall free, the way he preferred it. “And I have been lost without you. Tell me, how have you managed?”
“Poorly. I would have lost my mind without Justine. She has been a great comfort to me in your absence. She helped mend the wound of missing you, in some measure. I am so glad we brought her to the house.”
“Hmm.” He toyed with a strand of my hair. “I never guessed she would be a good companion for you. She always seemed simple to me.”
“You never could see her worth.”
“And yet you did, immediately. You do not take to many people like that.”
“Justine is special. Just as I told you.” I breathed deeply, closing my eyes. “And you let me save her, just as you saved me.”
* * *
—
Justine, newly rescued from her mother, had been secreted away to my room. I instructed her to wait until I was ready. On the boat ride back from town, I had realized the flaw in my plan to save her.
The children already had a governess.
In my panic and agitation, I had sought only to take Justine away. I had not quite sorted through what I was taking her to. And I did not have the authority in the Frankenstein house to declare a change of employees. I did not have any authority there at all.
But I was never letting Justine go back to her mother’s house. I would simply have to make sure that a vacancy arose…immediately.
And for that, I needed a coconspirator.
“Victor?” I said, sliding onto the bed next to him and brushing his dark hair from his forehead. It was cool, his color healthy. His fever had finally lifted while I was away. He blinked his eyes open, and I was relieved to see that they were clear and focused. Sometimes during his fevers, he would be seized by fits during which he knew neither me nor his family. He would ramble about things that made no sense, as though he were living an entirely different life.
“Elizabeth.” He pushed himself up to sitting, then stretched, peering through the dim curtained room to look at the clock against the wall. “How long has it been?”
“A few days. I am so glad you are well.”
“What day is it? Did you miss me?” He asked as though searching for facts to fill in the blank spaces in his memory.
“Thursday, and yes, of course I did. I was in here most of the time.”
He nodded. Then he looked at me closer. “You need something.”
An unexpected prickling stung my eyes. As much as I thought my interior life was hidden from Victor, he saw me better than anyone. I leaned my head against his shoulder, hiding my face so it would not reveal anything I did not want it to.
“Do you remember where your family found me?”
He reached up and undid my hair where it was pinned beneath my hat. It tumbled down, and he played with the curls. “Of course I do.”
“But you never met the woman who took care of me at Lake Como.”
“No. Why? Do you miss her?”
“I hope she is dead. And I hope she suffered tremendously on her way out of this life.”
Victor let out a quiet, surprised laugh, lifting my chin so he could look into my eyes. “Then I hope so, too. Why do you bring this up?”
“You saved me. And now I want to save someone else.” I told him of Justine, the scene I had witnessed, my rash intervention. “So you see, I cannot let her go home. I want her to be here, with me.” I realized my mistake and hastily corrected it. “With us. For the boys.” I took his hands, holding them in my own. “I want to save her, just like you saved me.”
Victor shook his head, clearly not understanding. “But you are special.”
“I think she is special.”
Something shifted in his face, as though a curtain had been drawn closed behind his eyes, shutting him off from me. He leaned back. I pushed ahead desperately.
“She is not lowborn. Her family lives in town. She is educated and sweet—already better off than I ever was!”
“But your father was a noble.”
Years of suspicion crashed down around me, but I skirted what I feared was the truth of my heritage. “Perhaps. Or perhaps I was the daughter of a whore, and my caretaker lied.” I smiled to pass it off as jest but watched for Victor’s reaction.
Saying it aloud felt like setting down a burden so long carried the weight was forgotten until released. I took a deep breath, my lungs finally filling. My head was light with all the air.
Victor could not tell whether I was joking. “But you said the house we had at Lake Como seemed familiar,” he said.
“Familiar like a dream, not like a memory. Of course I would have dreamed of light and comfort and happiness in the midst of a life in hell.”
Victor’s silence was interminable. Finally, he nodded. “It does not matter. I do not care who your parents were. I never did. Perhaps it matters to my parents, but they are stupid. I did not know or care where you came from that day in the garden when you became mine. And I do not care now.” He leaned closer, focused on my face, all worry gone from his own. “You began existing the day we met. You are my Elizabeth, and that is all that matters.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine. It was the first time we had kissed.
His lips were soft and dry. If Justine’s lips had felt like a butterfly on my cheek—a moment of surprising grace—Victor’s were like a contract between us. A promise that I was his, and he would keep me safe.
I kissed him back, throwing my arms around his neck and pulling him closer to sign my own name to the contract between us. When he released me he sighed, his brows drawing down again.
“Very well. We will save this Justine. Though how giving her the care of Ernest and William is a kindness, I do not know.”
I laughed, burrowing into him with my head against his chest and holding him as tightly as I could.
But it was one thing to have a partner, another to have a plan. Victor excused himself to get something to eat. I paced in his room, trying to figure out how to make the Frankensteins dismiss their governess, Gerta, without convincing them she had done something worthy of prosecution or imprisonment. I bore no ill will toward her. She was simply in my way.
I settled on forging a letter from her family—who lived several days away—that her uncle was sick and needed her to return home immediately. Like mine, her parents were dead. I did not know how close she was with her relatives, but I hoped it was close enough that she would be enticed to leave. The mome
nt she left, I would put forward Justine as her temporary replacement, and then send a letter to Gerta that she was no longer required. A forged letter from Gerta would be sent to the Frankensteins, telling them that she had found new employment and would not be returning.
The plan could fall apart at any stage, but I was confident it was the least damaging option. I would also include in Gerta’s dismissal letter a glowing recommendation to help her find employment with another family.
I had just sat down at Victor’s desk with a quill and a pot of ink when he returned. “I did it,” he said.
“What?”
“Gerta is gone. My mother will be desperate for a new governess.”
I stood, shocked. When he had left the room, I thought he was going to eat. He had been gone only an hour. What could he possibly have done in an hour to get rid of Gerta so easily?
“Where did she go?”
“Home,” he said simply.
“She would not just leave. How did you manage it?”
He paused, holding up one of my long curls, still loose from when he had unpinned them. “Sublime,” he murmured, twisting my hair to catch the light streaming in from the window. “Why is it, I wonder, that I can find beauty in this? What is it about your hair—a natural phenomenon, one that holds no inherent value or purpose—that triggers happiness in me?”
“You are so strange.” I took his hand and turned it to kiss his palm. “Now. Tell me. How did you get rid of Gerta?”
He shrugged, his eyes fixing on some point above my head. I noticed that his shirt and vest were slightly rumpled and askew. It was not like him to be anything other than immaculate when he was well. A remnant of the fever must be lingering. “I asked her to leave. She did. Tomorrow will be a good time to suggest to my mother that you know a suitable replacement.”
He took my place at his desk, pulled out one of his books, and resumed the studies that had been paused by his illness.
Whatever Victor had done had worked. We never heard from—or spoke of—Gerta again. The next morning, I told a harried and upset Madame Frankenstein that I knew a perfect replacement governess. Justine was produced and immediately hired, and had only me to thank for her new life.
It was a struggle initially, finding a balance. I had to be careful not to make Victor jealous of my affection for Justine. Having so few people he loved in his own life, Victor was not inclined to share me. But when he was at school, I was free to spend time with her.
I would often join her in the nursery as she instructed Ernest while playing with and cooing over William. I interacted with the boys as required and pretended to be delighted with them, but Justine’s adoration of them was sincere. When she praised Ernest’s progress, she meant it. When she laughed and clapped at William’s newest trick, her eyes shone with pride.
I had meant to do Justine a favor—and thus myself—but I could see that she was what I should have been to this family: an angel.
She was an angel to me, as well. She was the one person in the house who did not, to some extent, hold my fate hostage. Because she was an employee and I was a ward, she could do nothing to threaten me. But because I was not a Frankenstein, she was free to treat me as a dear friend and not an employer.
Perhaps I stared at her with as much joy and adulation as the young Frankensteins did.
I loved Justine.
Just as I loved Henry.
But I loved no one as I loved Victor, because I owed it all to him.
* * *
—
When the afternoon light grew warm and long, the doctor shooed me out.
“Inform your landlady you will be leaving in the morning,” Victor said as I pinned my hat back in place. I still needed another pin to replace the one I had left in the charnel house man’s wrist.
“Where will we stay? Do you have a recommendation?”
“You must return home.”
I crossed my arms, obstinate. “Not without you.” Then I paused, repenting of my forcefulness. It was never the way to win Victor’s agreement. “Or will you stay on and continue your studies? I want to remain at least until you are fully well.”
“It would be a waste of your time. And no, I am not going to stay, either. My failure here was complete. I need a fresh start. I will return home as soon as I have settled a few personal business matters. You must go ahead of me so I remember the goodness I have awaiting my return. It will make my time here pass far more bearably. I will not be more than a month behind you.”
“A month!” I cried.
Victor laughed at my unhappiness. “What is a month to us, who have shared a lifetime? I am quite serious, though. Ingolstadt is no place for you.”
I sighed. I both agreed and disagreed. I had not had a particularly good time here—but there had been something invigorating about being on my own, chasing down my own future. Answering to no one. Still, I would do as Victor wished. I could go back knowing that he would follow, bringing my security with him. “Justine is quite unhappy here. She is desperate to be back home.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed with a twitch. “You mean back to work?”
I waved dismissively. “She does not consider it work. She adores William, and has been so good for Ernest.”
“And she has been your dearest companion.”
I looked toward the outer rooms, where Justine was waiting. She had been so good to accompany me. Without her, I never would have been able to make this trip. I had deceived her and pulled her away from the things she loved. As much as I wanted to remain and make certain Victor came back, I could not ask her to do the same. If Victor wanted me to go and Justine wanted to go, I could not justify staying. And I would have no one to help me do so. “If you think it best, I will return home for Justine’s comfort. But you must promise to write me at least once, and send word ahead when you are on your way.”
His eyes were heavy and dark with some meaning I found—to my great dismay—I could no longer read. It filled me with panic. What was he thinking? Was he upset? Was he just tired? Suddenly he was a language I did not know.
“I will most certainly send word ahead.” He smiled then, and some of the tightness in my chest released. “You will know when I am coming. I promise.”
“I will hold you to that.” I leaned over the bed to kiss his forehead. I was entirely unprepared when Victor tilted his head up and met my lips with his own. A charge passed between us, and I gasped, pulling away. It reminded me too much of the one I had received in his horrible laboratory.
Victor looked amused. “Why, Elizabeth. Have you forgotten how to kiss me?”
I lifted my chin in the air, looking down at him imperiously, but with a hint of a smile. “You had better hurry home so you can remind me.”
His laughter followed me out of the room, my steps lighter for it.
Justine stood, putting William’s mending in her bag. How she had managed to pack it, I did not know. “How is Victor?” she asked. Justine had not gone back to see him. I offered to let her, but she blushed at the mere thought of seeing her employer’s oldest son in a state of repose. What would she think if she knew how often I had shared his bed, however innocently!
“He is restored to himself. And he insists we go home immediately.”
Justine closed her eyes and bowed her head, smiling in silent prayer. “I am so glad.”
“That he is restored, or that we get to go home?”
“Both! And that we will have only one more night in that horrible boardinghouse.”
I pursed my lips thoughtfully. I had already bidden farewell to Victor. Everything was settled between us. He loved me. I had secured my prize and protected Victor’s reputation through a few careful acts of destruction. My future was once again free from the threat of poverty and destitution.
Judge Frankenstein could take himself straight t
o hell.
Smiling, I tucked Justine’s hand into the crook of my arm. “We should leave tonight. As soon as we have secured our things. I do not want to spend another moment in this town, either.”
Justine kissed my forehead, then pulled an extra pin from her hat and carefully pinned my hat more firmly in place. As we walked out the door, I glanced over my shoulder and thought I saw Victor passing back into his room. Had he come to say goodbye? Why had he not called out to us?
Perhaps he, too, was shy in front of Justine, wearing only sickbed clothes. He did not like talking to people in general, much less when he was ill. Or perhaps it had been the doctor, not Victor. It nagged at my mind as we hurried back to the boardinghouse. I would have been much more settled if he were returning with us.
But I had to trust that he would come home as he had said. Victor did not lie to me.
Back in our room at Frau Gottschalk’s, I closed our trunk with emphatic flair.
“Oh!” Justine exclaimed with dismay. “What about Mary? She was so good to us. It would be rude to leave without saying goodbye.”
I agreed. It would be rude. And also the most prudent thing to do, given what she knew of my activities while I was here. “Write to her and give her our regrets. Tell her I am grateful for everything. Particularly the cloak she lent me.” I ran my fingers along its edge, surprised to find I already missed Mary.
Justine, ever dutiful, sat down at the scratched and peeling desk and proceeded to write a letter more sincere and elegant than I could have managed. Under other circumstances, I might have been friends with Mary. Circumstances under which I could afford such indulgences as friends, that was. She had her uncle and her shop. She had no need of me. And I had no need of her sharp and perceptive eyes. Besides, I had Justine and Victor. I had lost Henry, but that only showed how one truly could have too many friends.