Her Dark Curiosity (The Madman’s Daughter #2)(26)
Author: Megan Shepherd

On the following pages Edward and I had scrawled our own notations: alterations to the dosage and ingredients, failed results, amended amounts.

The lantern flickered as a spool of air slipped in from the window cracks. I worked quickly, readying the extract, and finished the serum by distilling it over the burner flame and then transferring it into a glass vessel. Each minute that passed while I waited for it to cool was excruciating.

Five second passed, and still it held. My breath hitched with hope.

Ten seconds.

I took a thermometer, waiting at the edge of patience for the reading.

It reached 38° C, and still it held.

Still.

Then it split apart like oil in water.

“No!” I grabbed the vial full of separated liquid, shaking it, willing it to stay mixed. But it had failed, as all of them had. In a fit I threw the serum against the wall, where it shattered to the floor, making Sharkey jump up and bark in alarm. I doubled over in the chair and leaned my head on the table, barely holding myself together.

Failed again.

I rocked back and forth, listening to the wind push at the window, Sharkey’s uneasy pacing on the floor before he curled up again on the hearth. Had Father had these same challenges? Everything had seemed so easy for him. I couldn’t ever picture Father failing at anything.

Your father is still with you, a voice whispered in the back of my head.

I tilted my head so one eye was free, and my gaze fell on Father’s journal flickering in the lantern light. It wasn’t exactly true that Father said nothing about serums. On one page near the back, I had found a detailed procedure he’d done on a cat.

Glycogen deposits are most potent when they are freshly collected, the entry said, And in many cases, this means the difference between a serum’s success and failure.

“Freshly collected”—he meant from vivisecting a live animal.

I glanced toward the door to make sure Edward was long gone, and let my fingers creep toward the crooked shelf like a spider. The lantern cast a ghostly shadow as they moved closer and closer to the journal, until I could graze it with my index finger. The leather cover was soft, well worn, well loved.

The difference between success and failure.

I ran my finger along the top of the journal, testing its weight, how much pressure it would take to pull it from the shelf. I did so, just an inch, and then paused.

How desperate was I to cure myself? To cure Edward? Desperate enough for that?

I glanced at Sharkey, curled on the rug by the woodstove. His paws twitched as he dreamed he was chasing rabbits. I traced my eyes along his scrawny rib cage, where the bones stuck out like a map of his body. I’d seen enough of Father’s diagrams to know where to cut to extract the pancreas. First I’d have to splay the stifles and make an incision from abdomen to sartorius, looking for the pink line of the diaphragm. The pancreas would be located between that thick wall of muscle and the spleen. It would take no more than four incisions to free it. A simple procedure, really.

A log cracked in the fire, and the dog twitched awake. I jerked out of my thoughts and slammed the journal back against the shelf as if it was on fire. My head filled with the memory of watching Father at work in his laboratory, his poor victim twitching, screaming, dripping blood onto the floor. I stumbled to my feet, knocking the chair back, whole body shaking. Sharkey leaped up, worried for me, and scrambled to my side.

I looked down at his wet nose, his tiny claws. No, I couldn’t. I would never. God help me, I’d stop Edward some other way before that.

I pulled Sharkey into my arms.

“I won’t do it,” I whispered to him. “I couldn’t.”

But I could, that was the thing. If I wanted to, I could

do it.

I didn’t seem to feel any warmth from the fire anymore. All I felt was the sour taste of that journal’s promise of a cure, but at a terrible price.

I couldn’t get out of the workshop fast enough, though I knew Edward would be puzzled when he returned and I wasn’t there. As I escaped back into the cold winter night, the moon was the only witness to that terrible flicker of temptation I’d managed to resist.

I should burn the journal, as the rest of Father’s work had burned.

I pulled my coat tighter as I descended the lodging house’s front steps. It was a quiet night, save the wind that ruffled the strands of hair that had come loose from my braid. I could hardly focus on anything but the failed serum and Father’s journal as I made my way back to Dumbarton Street, feeling na**d without my corset, and exposed for all the world to see.

I knew, though I’d be damned for it, that I would never destroy that journal.

FOURTEEN

THE NEXT FEW DAYS were a precarious balance of secrets and truths, darkness and light. I snuck off to my attic chamber to work on the serums with Edward at night, and during the day attempted to maintain a respectable life with the professor and Elizabeth as they hosted teas and took me ice-skating on the pond in Wiltshire and teased me about every young man who glanced my way.

The newspapers were blessedly silent. The Wolf of Whitechapel hadn’t struck again, credited to Inspector Newcastle’s prowess. Of course I knew it was my efforts that had kept Edward restrained, but I could hardly tell that to the London Times.

On a sunny morning the professor, Elizabeth, and I walked together in Covent Garden market, looking for Christmas presents for Mary and the other servants. By and large, Elizabeth was a fiercely private person, used to the solitude and quiet of the Scottish moors, and even days after her arrival I still had little indication as to the type of person she was. She stayed up late most nights, dressed in a housecoat in the library until all hours, wearing reading glasses not unlike the professor’s wire spectacles, drinking licorice tea laced with gin—she didn’t know that I knew—and staring out the window at the city lights.

“Have you heard of a man called John Newcastle?” I asked the professor as we passed a stall of silver dishware. “He’s an inspector with Scotland Yard. I met him last week.”

“Newcastle? Yes, a crackerjack, they’re calling him. Trying to make a name for himself rather quickly. He puts on a show that he’s from a good family, but his father owned a handful of shoe shops, nothing more. You haven’t got your eye on him, have you? And here I thought you hated police officers.” He gave his off-balance smile.

I laughed. “No, nothing like that. He’s courting Lucy.”

“Ah. Well, he’s got ambition, and that would certainly appeal to her father.” The professor patted my hand as we followed Elizabeth to the flower market for mistletoe. “He wouldn’t be good enough for you, anyway, my dear. You deserve at least an earl. Perhaps even a duke.”