Her Dark Curiosity. Megan Shepherd

      8

      As soon as I left King’s College, I rounded the edge of the building and slumped against the rough brick wall, fighting to calm my erratic heartbeat. The day was clear but bitingly cold. My coat hung open, my hands bare, yet I didn’t reach for my gloves nor do up my buttons. I couldn’t. All I could manage was to slide down the brick wall to the frozen grass and let the cold seep up from the ground into me.

      Edward was back from the dead.

      If he truly was alive, if he had done this, then he must have been following me for some time. My mind searched through the past few weeks and months, trying to remember if I’d felt like I was being followed. But that was just it – one always felt followed in this city. Always felt eyes, always heard footsteps.

      A flock of ravens alighted in the central courtyard, and my head whirled around. Was he following me even now? So many places to hide: behind those skeletal trees, on the rooftop of a nearby building …

      I hugged my knees tight, not daring to close my eyes. If he knew about Annie stealing my mother’s ring, what else did he know? Did he know about my secret workshop and my growing illness? Did he know how I was stealing from the professor? Did he know that back on the island I’d opened the laboratory door so Jaguar could kill my father?

      It terrified me that Edward might know all my secrets. If he chose to, he could expose me. Hurt me for how I’d hurt him when I’d rejected his affections. People loved a good gruesome rumor. If he revealed that the vilified Dr Moreau’s daughter had murdered her own father, this city’s gossip mills would devour me alive.

      I ran numb fingers over my face, thinking. Edward was tied up in all those secrets too. Exposing my secrets would also expose his own – his unnatural origin and his inclination to kill. No, the more I thought about it, the more I was certain it wasn’t my secrets he was after.

      Maybe it was my life.

      A tingling started deep in my spine. For all I knew, I could be Edward’s next target. He could merely be toying with me, killing those who had wronged me to create a false sense of safety before he struck. After all, I’d rejected his love and then left him for dead. I could hardly expect him to do anything logically. How much control did Edward really have over himself? Where was the line between Beast and man?

      Yet if Edward had wanted to kill me, there were far more effective ways. I’d given him a thousand opportunities to strike as I slunk along Shoreditch at night on my way to my secret workshop. And I might have left him for dead, but I’d prevented Montgomery from slitting his throat. I had given him a chance.

      So what were these bodies supposed to tell me? If he meant me no harm, why hide behind such macabre gestures of affection?

      It’s different with you, Juliet, Edward had said. We belong together.

      He’d been wounded before he’d been able to explain what he meant by that plea for help. As I leaned against the brick wall, body ravaged by too many emotions, I wondered if Edward Prince had come back to London with that in mind. Not to destroy my life with rumors, not to claw out my heart, but to confess his love once more.

      A hundred uncertainties twisted at my heart. The question was, Who else had to die first? Who else had wronged me? I could give him a list, I thought blackly, starting with Dr Hastings. But I immediately regretted such thoughts. Edward was the murderer, not me. The truth was, he had to be learning about all these people from somewhere. No one knew about Annie stealing that ring except for Lucy. Perhaps she told someone; perhaps Lucy wrote it in a journal that he’d found.

      Could he be following Lucy, too?

      Before I knew it, my feet were racing along the streets toward Lucy’s neighborhood, throwing glances over my shoulder. I didn’t dare involve her in any of this, and yet I needed to make sure she was safe. Edward could be anywhere. I made my way toward her house in the finest part of town, where the muddy snow had been cleared from the streets. Every manor was stately here, even finer than in the professor’s neighborhood, and each home was decorated for the holidays with mistletoe over the entryway.

      Lucy’s family’s mansion was impossible to miss, a four-story red-brick palace on the most prominent corner, by far the grandest house in Belgravia. A wall of perfectly trimmed hedges designed to keep the riffraff out circled the rounded brick turrets. An iron gate opened onto the front walk to the imposing entryway topped with a holiday garland that smelled of pine.

      I paused by the gate, casting another cautious glance over my shoulder. The smell took me back to my childhood, when I used to come here for parties. We’d had the most beautiful carriage then. I remembered soft lace curtains and peach upholstery. Montgomery would sit up front with the driver, learning his duties as groomsman, while Mother and Father and I rode in silence in the back until we pulled up at this very gate. Montgomery would take my hand – never meeting my eyes, as a proper young groomsman – and help me down from the carriage. The place beneath my left rib throbbed again at the memory.

      A door slammed and a maid appeared in an upstairs window with a rug and duster. I started to pull my hood over my hair and duck away, but I reminded myself that I was once again welcome in this house. The Radcliffes had forbidden Lucy to see me after Father’s scandal, but now that I was ward of the illustrious Professor von Stein, they had no problem smiling at me like nothing had happened. I approached the front door and knocked.

      Clara, the maid, answered the door while wiping her hands on a rag. Her face lit up when she saw me. ‘Miss Juliet! What a treat – we haven’t seen you around here much.’ She paused. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost, miss. Are you ill?’

      I shook my head, though she was closer to the truth than she could imagine. ‘Is Lucy home?’

      ‘She’s in the salon with her aunt. Shall I tell her you’re here?’

      I hesitated. My heart thumped with the need to make certain Lucy was safe. But with her aunt in the room, I wouldn’t be able to speak openly. ‘I didn’t realize she had company. I’d really wanted to speak with her alone. If you’ll just pass along the message that I came, and have her come visit as soon as she can …’

      ‘Juliet!’ Lucy’s face appeared behind Clara, and she jerked the door open wider. Her frown accused me just as much as the finger pointing at my chest. ‘You’re not leaving without saying hello, are you?’

      Her face was so warm and full of life, after those in the basement. ‘If you’ve already got company—’

      ‘Henry’s here for tea and Aunt Edith is chaperoning. And I’m in desperate need of you, you horrid friend. After you left me alone with John, I practically had to fend him off with an umbrella to keep him from kissing me.’

      ‘I’ll come back tomorrow. We’ll chat then.’

      Lucy folded her arms across her chest. ‘I’ve told Henry so much about you that he must believe you’re an imaginary friend I invented out of boredom. The least you could do is have a cup of tea with the poor man.’