Her Dark Curiosity (The Madman’s Daughter #2)(40)
Author: Megan Shepherd

His voice held steady, but the way he ran an anxious hand through his loose blond hair betrayed him. He had loved the creatures, even helped give life to many of them. When I’d first arrived on the island, the beast-men had been civilized creatures, living in villages and eating only vegetables, even praying in a church of their own making. Yet once Father had taken away their treatments, they quickly regressed into the animals they were, and in the end all Montgomery’s scientific genius and high morals were reduced to nothing more than kill or be killed.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

He looked away, into the hedges. “You were right when you said they should never have been created. It was mad of him to do it, and folly for me to help him. Killing them mercifully was my penance.” His voice dropped as he glanced at the balcony again and stepped closer. “But one escaped, Juliet. I went back to bury the bodies of those who died in the compound fire, and Edward wasn’t there.”

His words were low and thick with warning. Meant to shock me, and yet how could I be shocked when just the night before I’d been in that very man’s arms? The scratches on my shoulder burned beneath the piece of red silk so hot that I was certain Montgomery would feel them.

“He survived the fire,” Montgomery continued, mistaking my silence for distress. “For weeks I hunted him. He left me notes, begging for a chance to cure himself, wanting me to help him. But I didn’t—I couldn’t. Because that monster inside him left me letters, too. They came from a Mr. Hide, addressed to a Mr. Seek. The quarry writing to his hunter.”

The blood drained from my face. “The Beast can write?” It made me uncomfortable to speak of the Beast like this, as a thinking creature. I preferred to picture him as a mindless animal, but I knew that wasn’t true. He was sentient. He was clever.

“The handwriting was the same—written by the same hand, I mean, though with more of a slant—yet it was the ramblings of a demon. He said he was going to leave the island and come to London. That he deserved to know all the pleasure and pains in life, and he would do whatever he must to experience them.”

“You’ve been following him ever since?” I whispered into the night.

“Yes. He stowed away on the Curitiba when that damn Captain Claggan returned. He’s left me notes across half the world, tucked in the pockets of his victims as though this is only a game to him.” He rubbed some warmth into his face, or maybe he was trying to brush aside the memories. “He’s in London now. I arrived last week and have been searching for signs of him. I came to the party thinking with so many of your father’s colleagues gathered in one place, he might try to seek some sort of retribution. When I saw you here—”

“How did you recognize me?”

“I made some inquiries when I first arrived and discovered you were living with Professor von Stein and his niece.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “And I’d know you anywhere, mask be damned.”

His hand grazed mine. I allowed myself this brush of contact. I hadn’t forgiven him—it wouldn’t be that easy. And yet as we stood with the snow soaking into our shoes, in this city where we’d grown up together, it was impossible to pretend I felt nothing.

“I already know about Edward,” I whispered.

His hand fell away as a look of astonishment crossed his face. “You know? Have you seen him? Has he tried to contact you?” He grabbed my arm rough enough to shake me. In the blink of an eye the honest, hardworking boy I knew had been replaced by this single-minded hunter.

He has secrets, Edward had warned me. Secrets you still don’t know.

My lips were trembling. I wasn’t ready to have this conversation, inevitable as it was. Edward and I were connected in a deep way—a primal way—that Montgomery would never understand. It was the human in us fighting against the animal inside. It bound us, intertwining our fates, our desires.

“The murders,” I stuttered. “I heard about the Wolf of Whitechapel’s murders, and knew it must be Edward, back from the dead.” I was about to tell him the rest, how I investigated the bodies and found Edward at Lucy’s. And yet something held my voice. The look in Montgomery’s eyes was one of pure determination.

He would kill Edward. Or Edward would kill him. Either way, one of them would die, unless I prevented it.

My hand drifted to the scratches hidden beneath my silk dress. Amid my unquiet thoughts, something else Montgomery had said came back to me. He’d had been in London for a week already. He hadn’t come to see me. If not for our accidental encounter tonight, would he have come for me at all?

I didn’t get a chance to ask. The porch door opened above our heads, and footsteps came out onto the balcony. The fibers of my stomach shrunk at the thought that it could be the Beast. Montgomery pressed a finger to his lips to tell me to remain silent and pulled me into the shadows beneath the balcony where we couldn’t be seen. I nodded, holding my breath, dreading the telltale clicks of claws upon stone that meant the Beast had found us.

But I heard only the hiss of a match springing to life, and then smelled tobacco on the breeze. There were footsteps of a few other men, three or four in all. A man’s voice spoke, and relief rushed out of me.

“Did you see where she went?” the man said. His voice was the deep baritone of a lifelong smoker, and I recognized it as Lucy’s father, Mr. Radcliffe, and the vision of that brain came slamming back into me. Perhaps my relief had come too soon.

“So many damn masks in there, it’s hard to keep straight,” another man said.

“The masquerade is necessary for our purposes,” Radcliffe answered. “Moreau’s creation wouldn’t have come unless he could disguise himself. You’re certain no men tried to talk to her? I’d stake my life they’ve been in contact. That fool who brought Moreau’s last letter—Captain Claggan, isn’t it?—said the boy was quite taken with her.”

My breath halted as I realized the girl they spoke of was me.

TWENTY-TWO

I JERKED MY HEAD toward Montgomery. Worse, they also spoke of “Moreau’s creation,” which meant they knew about Edward, too. Montgomery kept a finger to his lips and silently reached for a revolver holstered at his side.

“She got lost in the crowd,” another man answered.

“Well, find her,” Radcliffe said. “She’s the best chance we have of hunting him down. If only Claggan could have given us a better description before he drank himself to death. Dark hair, not yet twenty—that could describe half the young men in there.”