The Madman’s Daughter. Megan Shepherd
the muscle of my heart clenching with a longing to feel that bond with him again.
My throat felt tight, but I forced out words. ‘I found the diagram and recognized it. I thought, maybe, it meant Father was here. Alive.’ Spoken, it sounded even more foolish. I braced myself for his laughter.
But he didn’t laugh. He didn’t even flinch. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ he said softly. ‘It’s only Balthazar and myself.’
I took a sip of the tea, which had grown cold, but its sweetness replaced the chloroform’s lingering tang. I wondered what Montgomery thought of me, showing up here, looking for a dead man. Father’s death had never been confirmed – just assumed. I think the world wanted him dead, or simply forgotten.
But a girl couldn’t just forget her father.
‘Do you know what happened to him?’ I asked. I wanted to ask if Montgomery believed the rumors, but the words wouldn’t come. I was frightened of what his answer might be.
He looked toward the window, foot tapping a little too fast against the table leg. He shifted in his stiff clothes, as though his body wasn’t used to them. It struck me that a wealthy medical student wouldn’t pick so uncomfortably at his starched cuffs as Montgomery was doing. I wondered how recently he had acquired his fortune.
As if sensing my thoughts, he loosened his shirt’s collar. ‘The day he disappeared, I ran away too. I was afraid I might be accused as well, because I sometimes helped him in the laboratory. I’ve heard speculation … that he died.’
The teacup shook in my hand. I felt at the point of shattering with warring emotions. I wondered if that was what Father had felt like before he went mad – shattered. The teacup rattled more, and I set it next to the blood-spattered paper. ‘What do you even want with this?’ I nudged the dotted lines that formed a split-open rabbit. I knew it was abhorrent, but my gaze kept creeping back to the black lines, obsessively tracing the graceful arcs of the body.
‘I study medicine. I’m not a servant anymore.’ His words were pointed.
‘But this? Vivisection?’ It was hard to talk about these things with him. The corset I had worn under my Sunday dress suddenly felt too tight. I pressed my hands against my sides. I thought of that rabbit, its twitching paws, its screams. Not even science could justify what those boys had done. And I knew Montgomery, deep in my marrow. He wasn’t like them. He had a strong heart. He’d never do something he knew wasn’t right.
His foot tapped faster and his gaze drifted around the room until it settled on the parrot. His throat tightened. ‘It was among a collection of documents, that’s all.’
He’d always been a terrible liar. I studied him from the corner of my eye, wondering. His gaze darted again to the parrot on the dresser, and I stood up and started toward the cage, just wanting to look closer at its iridescent feathers as some sort of distraction from everything that was happening. Montgomery’s eyes were too real, too evocative, too familiar. I didn’t know what to do with myself around him.
But as soon as I reached for the cage, Montgomery shot up, knocking over the footstool, and beat me to the dresser. His hand closed over a small silver object next to the parrot’s cage. I blinked, uncertain, surprised by his actions.
‘What is that?’ I said quietly.
His fist clamped the object like a vise. His chest and arms were tensed. He’d always been strong. Now he was powerful.
Curiosity made me bolder. My fingers drifted away from the parrot’s cage and rested a breath above Montgomery’s closed fist. I wanted to touch his hand, feel the brush of his skin against mine, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
‘Montgomery, what is that in your hand?’
His face was broken with things unsaid. ‘Miss Moreau …’ The title sounded too formal on his lips. Juliet, I wanted him to call me.
My fingers trembled slightly. ‘Please. Tell me.’
Something changed in his face then. He seemed so grown up, but it was all an act. I knew because I’d played the same role for years. But being with him tore down that facade and left me stripped, vulnerable, just like the look on his face now.
‘Don’t be angry, Miss Moreau.’ His voice was little more than a whisper. He looked away, softly, and opened his fist. The object dropped into my palm.
A pocket watch. I turned it over in my hand. Silver, with a gouge in the glass face and an inscription on the back that had all but worn away. It didn’t matter. I knew the words by heart. Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. Unlike my mother, who’d maintained her devoutness even after becoming a mistress, Father had a scientist’s skeptical fascination with religion. The watch had been a gift to him from his father, a bishop of the Anglican Church. Father had little use for the Ten Commandments, but the inscription was one rule he believed in and expected me to uphold.
Father had carried this watch every single day. He’d never have left it behind. Which meant either Montgomery had stolen it, or …
Montgomery folded my hands over the watch, and his hands over mine.
‘I’m sorry. He made me swear never to tell you he was alive.’
The pocket watch, Montgomery explained, had broken. He’d been instructed to have it repaired by a clockmaker in the city and brought to my father along with the rest of the supplies.
But I didn’t care about his explanation.
‘You lied to me,’ I said.
He dipped his head, avoiding my gaze. ‘I said I’d heard speculation that he died. That’s true enough.’
‘He’s been alive this whole time and you’ve known it.’ I sank to the bed, closing my eyes. Seeing Father’s watch had brought that wall back up, reminding me that I wasn’t a child anymore. I couldn’t afford to let my guard down, not even with Montgomery.
He turned toward the window, twisting the watch chain. ‘He thought if the world assumed him dead, they’d leave him alone.’
Father was alive and had never tried to find me – the painful realization of that betrayal ripped open the last tender stitch in my heart. ‘But I’m his daughter.’
His only response was to pour me a glass of brandy and one for himself. He, as well, had returned to the act of playing adults. He sank into the desk chair. ‘I still work for him, but no longer as a servant. I’m his assistant now. He isn’t here, if you’re wondering. He refuses to come back to England. We live on a biological station, of sorts. An island.’ He swallowed the brandy and considered the empty glass. ‘It’s very far. He wanted a private place to continue his work undisturbed. I leave every eighteen months or so for supplies.’
I set my glass down, untouched. ‘And your associate? Are all his kind like him?’
‘The islanders.’ Montgomery hunched over his glass. His hair had come loose again, veiling his face. ‘They are, yes. You needn’t fear him. He’s harmless.’
As though he’d heard himself mentioned, Balthazar came in with a fresh pot of tea on a tray. He was a monster of a man, twice my size, with hands like bludgeons. He set the tray down and daintily removed the sugar bowl’s tiny lid. Montgomery thanked and dismissed him.
He prepared my tea again with my childhood sugar ritual. The steam from my cup rose like the words of an oracle, forming a haze between us. I took a sip, hoping the tea would soothe my nerves. I tried to remember him as a child. He’d been quiet, especially about what went on in the laboratory. But Mother had been, too, as had the other servants, and all of us. None of us wanted to talk about the puddles of blood on the operating-room floor or the animals that went in and never came out