Her Dark Curiosity (The Madman's Daughter 2)

He jumped up, lips moving as he awkwardly searched for words. “So sorry, miss,” he said. “So sad, what happened.” He gestured to Sharkey and added, “I’ll put him out again, miss, if you like. Only he looked so cold outside those windows, I thought I’d just let him warm up a bit.”

“It’s fine.” I stepped into the kitchen, where the stone floor froze my stocking feet. I picked up Sharkey and held him in my lap. I scratched the scruff of his neck and stared into the dying kitchen fire.

“His name is Sharkey,” I said. It felt good to talk about anything other than the body upstairs. “He belongs to me, in a way. I never told the professor about him because I feared what he’d say. But now . . .” My voice trailed off. “Well, I can’t imagine Elizabeth would deny me a comfort after what’s happened, even if he does bring fleas into the house.”

Balthazar nodded his agreement. “That’s good, miss. No one should be alone. Not a girl. Not a dog, either.”

At last I set Sharkey down and went upstairs to my room, where I locked the door and climbed onto my silk bedcover, then opened my journal to the page with the pressed white flower. I picked it up by the stem, afraid to touch the delicate dried petals. Edward had warned me that his transformations were coming more frequently and unpredictably. I had been so arrogant to think I could cure him of an illness so insidious.

I replaced the flower and closed the journal angrily. If only I’d just told the professor everything, this might not have happened. He might not have been home alone, or opened the door for a stranger.

But it was too late.

I feared it was too late for Edward as well. Montgomery and I would find him. If we couldn’t strangle the Beast out of him, if there was no way to separate the two, then I’d kill him myself.

The only thing I was certain of was that the beast inside Edward Prince would not have another chance to kill anyone I loved.

I WAS USED TO long, sleepless nights, but that was one of the longest of my life. Inspector Newcastle finished and came to the kitchen to bid me farewell, startled by the sight of Balthazar and his strange deformities. The police removed the professor’s body, and Mary came to clean the bloodstains on the floor, crying soft tears into the parquet floor. It wasn’t until the cuckoo clock chimed midnight that the house was ours again. Elizabeth made us a pot of licorice tea and we retired to the library—none of us wanted to be anywhere near the study with the reminder of the professor’s unblinking eyes.

Elizabeth had changed into a simple white lace dress with a housecoat, elegant as always. The only clue to the night’s horror was her hair, which now hung limp down her back, instead of in its usual curls. I thought of her petting the wooden cuckoo bird, and my heart clenched all over again.

“Well, drink,” she said, as none of us took our cups. “The man loved a good licorice tea. You’re doing his memory a disservice by letting it go cold.”

Montgomery cleared his throat and took a cup with the awkward manners of a former servant who wasn’t used to being served himself. “Very grateful, madam.” He’d pulled his hair back and unbuttoned his shirt a few buttons, and he looked quite possibly like the most handsome man I’d ever seen.

“Now that the professor is gone, your guardianship falls to me, Juliet.” Elizabeth paused, as though there was something more she wished to say. But her eyes flashed to Balthazar in the corner, and she shook her head, changing her mind. “It’s been a long night. We should all get as much sleep as we can.”

She pressed her lips to my forehead and whispered a prayer I couldn’t make out.

As soon as she was gone, I slumped in the chair, exhausted. Montgomery asked Balthazar to take Sharkey into the kitchen for a cup of water, with a mind to spare his friend the conversation I knew we were fated to have.

The fire crackled, and the room smelled like licorice, and all I could picture was blood.

“It was the Beast,” I whispered.

Montgomery ran a hand over his face. “I know.”

“He killed the professor, Montgomery. He has to be stopped.”

“I’ve been scouring the city. He hasn’t left a single track.”

I swallowed. He hadn’t left a track because I’d told him his previous room at the brothel wasn’t safe and then warned him about Montgomery following him, and this is what my warning had gotten us—the professor, murdered.

“He was staying in a lodging house in Shoreditch, the attic room, for a time,” I said softly. “Though you’ll never find him there now; he wouldn’t dare return after this, nor to the room he kept before. But I know how we can find him. Wait here.” I ran upstairs and retrieved the pressed white flower from within my journal, then returned and set it on the tea table. “He leaves these at his crime scenes. They’re very rare; he must be getting them from somewhere.”

Montgomery took the flower from the table, and my stomach cringed to see such a delicate thing in his graceless hands, afraid he’d crush it. My anguished heart didn’t know what to make of all this. Edward had never betrayed me, and yet now I forsook him in cold blood. But what choice did we have?

When I opened my eyes, Montgomery’s blue eyes held a strange sort of look, almost as though I was a stranger to him. He had only looked at me that way once before, when I had frantically climbed into the wagon on the island as the compound had burned—only seconds after I had helped kill my father. To this day, I still didn’t know if he had seen how I’d helped Jaguar enter the laboratory.

That’s when I realized the look in his eye was fear. He was afraid of the things I was capable of. He was afraid of me. My heart surged again in worry, and I bit my lip nearly hard enough to taste blood. Did he know my greatest secret? Had he seen what I’d done that night on the island?

Would he still love me if he did?

“We’ll find out where the flower’s from,” he said carefully. “And then we’ll do what needs to be done.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

THE FLOWER SHOP WHERE I sold my grafted rosebushes was one of London’s finest, owned by a Middle Eastern couple who imported their flowers from countries I’d scarcely even heard of. As I made my way toward Narayan Flowers & Wholesalers, I clutched my satchel with the journal inside. It had taken some time to convince Montgomery that instead of coming with me, his time would be better spent eavesdropping on the King’s Club members.