Her Dark Curiosity (The Madman's Daughter 2)

I stuck to the well-traveled, gaslit thoroughfares. That path wasn’t the fastest route to Highbury, but I didn’t dare take the shortcuts through the alleyways. Men lurked there, men so much larger than a slip of a girl.

I turned north on Chancery Lane, which was busy at all hours with people loitering between pubs, and I hugged my coat tighter, keeping my eyes low and my fur-lined hood pulled high. Even so, I still got plenty of stares. Not many well-dressed young ladies went out alone after dark.

In such chaos, London felt much like Father’s island. The beasts that lurked here just had less fur and walked more upright. The towering buildings seemed taller each day, as though they’d taken root in the oil and muck beneath the street’s surface. The noise and the smoke and the thousand different smells felt suffocating. Too closely packed. Ragged little children reached out like thorny vines. It felt as if eyes were always watching, and they were—from upstairs windows, from dark alleys, from beneath the low brims of wool caps hiding all manner of dark thoughts.

As soon as I could, I escaped the crowd onto a street that took me to the north section of Highbury. From there it wasn’t too far to Dumbarton Street, where the lanes were wide and paved with granite blocks, swept clean of all the refuse found in the lesser neighborhoods. The houses grew from stately to palatial as my boots echoed on the sidewalk. Twelve-foot-high Christmas trees studded with tiny candles shone behind tall windows, and heavy fir garlands framed every doorway.

I paused to lift the latch of the low iron gate surrounding the last house on the corner. The townhouse was three stories of limestone facade with a sloping mansard roof that gave it a stately air, as though it had quietly withstood regime changes and plague outbreaks without blinking an eye. It was on the quiet end of Dumbarton, not the grandest house by far, despite the fact that its owner was one of London’s wealthiest academics. I dusted off my coat and ran my fingers through my hair before ringing the doorbell.

The door was opened by an old man dressed in a three-piece black suit who might be stern looking if not for the deep wrinkles around the corners of his eyes, which betrayed his inclination to smile in a charmingly crooked way—a habit he gave into now.

“Juliet,” he said, “I was starting to worry. How was your visit with Lucy?”

I smiled, the only way I knew to hide my guilt, and pulled off my gloves. “You know Lucy, she could chatter away for hours. Sorry I’m a bit late.” I kissed his cheek as if that would make up for the lie, and he kindly helped me out of my coat.

“Welcome home, my dear,” he said.

TWO

PROFESSOR VON STEIN HAD been a former colleague of my father’s—and the man who turned him in to the police ten years ago for crimes of ethical transgression. The professor’s betrayal of their friendship might have bothered me when I was younger and still had respect for my father, but now I thought he’d done the world—and me—a favor. I owed him even more because, for the last six months, he had been my legal guardian.

When I’d left Father’s island, I’d followed Montgomery’s instructions to find a Polynesian shipping lane and after nearly three scorched weeks in the dinghy, was picked up by traders bound for Cape Town. From there, the expensive trinkets Montgomery had packed bought me passage to Dakar, and on to Lisbon. I’d gotten sick on the last leg of the voyage, and by the time I reached London was little more than a skeleton, raving about monsters and madmen. I must have said my friend Lucy’s name, because one of the nurses had summoned her, and she’d taken care of me. My good fortune, however, ended there. One of the doctors was an old acquaintance from King’s College by the name of Hastings. A year ago he’d tried to have his way with me and I’d slit his wrist. As soon as he learned I’d returned, he’d had me thrown in jail, which was where Professor von Stein had found me.

Lucy Radcliffe told me your circumstances, he had said. Is it true what you did to this doctor?

He needn’t have asked. The scar at the base of Dr. Hasting’s wrist matched my old mortar scraper exactly.

I’m afraid so, I’d said, but I had no choice. I’d do it again.

The professor had studied me closely with the observant eyes of a scientist, and then demanded I be released into his custody and the charges dropped. Hastings didn’t dare argue against someone so highly respected. The next day, I went from a dirty prison cell to a lady’s bedroom with silk sheets and a roaring fire.

Why are you doing this? I had asked him.

Because I failed to stop your father until it was too late, he’d replied. It isn’t too late for you, Miss Moreau, not yet.

Now, sitting at the formal dining table with a forest of polished silver candlesticks between us, I secretly kicked off my slippers and curled my toes in the thick Oriental rug, glad to put that old life behind me.

“An invitation arrived today,” the professor said from his place opposite me. The hint of an accent betrayed that he’d grown up in Scotland, though his family’s Germanic ancestry was evident in his fair hair and deep-set eyes. A fire crackled in the hearth behind him, not quite warm enough to chase the cold that snuck through the cracks in the dining room windows.

I shivered in my dinner dress. Months of proper food had helped me put on a little more weight, and now my corset dug painfully into my ribs. To make matters worse, my woolen underskirts itched like the devil. I’d never understand why the rich insisted on being so damned uncomfortable all the time.

“It’s for a holiday masquerade at the Radcliffes’,” he continued, removing a pair of thin wire-rimmed spectacles from his pocket, along with the invitation. “It’s set for two weeks from today. Mr. Radcliffe included a personal note saying how much Lucy would like you there.”

“I find that rather ironic,” I said, buttering my roll with the hint of a smile, “since last year the man would have thrown me into the streets if I’d dared set foot in his house. He’s changed his tune now that I’m under your roof. I think it’s you he’s trying to win over, Professor.”

The professor chuckled. Like me, he was a person of simple tastes. He wanted only a comfortable home with a warm fire waiting for him on a winter night, a cook who could prepare a decent coq au vin, and a library full of words he could surround himself with in his old age. I was quite certain the last thing he wanted was a seventeen-year-old girl who slunk around and jumped at shadows, but he never once showed me anything but kindness.