A Cold Legacy (The Madman's Daughter 3)

Just like mine.

“I’m not mad,” she continued. “I’ve no desire to play God. The secrets I’ve sworn to keep have the power to save the world. There couldn’t be any reason more noble.”

I closed my eyes. Noble? Could my attraction to these darker sides of science actually have some noble ramifications? My heart thumped harder than it ever had. By my side, Montgomery took a step closer.

Elizabeth grabbed the book off her desk and handed it to me. “Take this. It’s the biography of Lord Ballentyne, who built this place. Before you make a decision, read this so you at least know what you would be walking away from.” She gave me a hard look. “Read it tonight.”

I took it from her, a bit shaken. Montgomery and I returned to our adjoining rooms, where I told him I needed a few hours alone to think. As soon as I closed the door to my bedroom, I opened the book. A piece of paper with Elizabeth’s hurried writing on it fluttered to the ground. She must have scrawled it while Montgomery and I had been distracted by Lucy eavesdropping.

Montgomery is a good man, but he’ll never understand why women like us do what we must do, her message said. If you want to know the real truth, I will teach you everything.

A shiver ran through me. I balled the paper and tossed it into the fire so no one would ever find it. I glanced at the door to Montgomery’s room, hating to keep secrets from him, but knowing that as important as promises were, sometimes my curiosity was just too strong.

ELEVEN

A FEW MINUTES LATER, as Elizabeth’s note burned to ash, pounding sounded at my door. When I twisted the knob and peeked out, Lucy burst through the doorway.

“Can you believe it?” Her cheeks burned with excitement. “Reanimation, Juliet. It’s incredible!”

I sank onto the bed, wishing for just a few moments alone with my thoughts.

“I know,” I whispered.

“For a hundred years they’ve had this power and only used it once, on a silly little boy. Think of all the people they could have brought back: Beethoven, Darwin, Charles Dickens—”

“It’s a dangerous science,” I cut in, my voice harsher than it should be. “The von Steins are right to keep it secret.”

The excitement fell from her face, just for a second, and then flared to life again. “But don’t you see what this means? It solves the paradoxical situation that Elizabeth was telling us about, that in order to cure Edward we would first have to kill him.” A madness shone in her eyes as her voice dropped. “It’s possible now. Death doesn’t have to be the end anymore.”

I stepped back. “What exactly are you suggesting?”

She came close enough that I could smell feverish sweat on her. “You know what I’m suggesting, Juliet. We make certain Edward dies, then perform the operation to cut out the diseased part of his brain, and bring him back to life. He’ll be entirely cured.”

I took another step away from her until the cold glass of my bedroom window bit at my back, and I could go no further. I pressed a hand to my spinning head. Lucy usually talked about lace patterns and French powder, not experimentation on the dead. This wild-eyed girl in my room felt like a stranger.

I took a deep breath. “It’s impossible.”

“Is it?” she hissed. “Elizabeth has her oath, but we could find a way to convince her to help. We’d just have to drain the diseased portion of Edward’s brain of the infection, cutting it out if we have to, making sure the Beast is gone for good, and then bring Edward back to life. We’ve given him a chance to fight it on his own and he’s losing. He needs our help.”

“We would have to kill him, Lucy,” I hissed back. “Are you prepared to do that?”

Her cheeks burned, but her eyes were even more aflame. She grabbed my arm hard enough that her fingernails dug into my skin.

“Not me,” she said. “You’d do it.”

I ripped my arm away from her, breathing heavily, and paced in front of the window. “I’m not going to kill Edward! Murder isn’t some lark. It isn’t a decision made lightly.”

Her eyes burned feverishly bright. “You killed Inspector Newcastle lightly enough. You killed your father easily enough.”

I gasped at her accusation. This wasn’t a stranger. It was Lucy, my best friend, who had a good heart but wasn’t seeing reason right now.

“Go to bed,” I said. “In the morning you’ll see how insane this plan is of yours, and you’ll thank me for putting an end to it right here.”

I opened the door, but she didn’t make a move toward it. The light in her eyes burned colder now.

“I never thought I’d see the day when Juliet Moreau was too weak-willed to do whatever it took to save a friend’s life,” she hissed. “Even if it meant ending it first.”

She slammed the door behind her.

I forced myself not to go after her. It was better this way. She was mad with grief and didn’t realize how insane it sounded to kill Edward so that we could cure him and bring him back.

Could we even do it? Could I?

I CRAWLED INTO BED, exhausted. It was dark outside, those witching hours between midnight and dawn when anything seemed possible, and the idea of bringing a dead friend back to life was no more strange than rigging a remote manor with electric lights. If one was possible, why not the other?

Montgomery would tell me that I should stay far away from anything resembling Father’s dark science. He would remind me that I had another path open for me: my mother’s.

I closed my eyes, trying hard to picture her face, and a memory came from when I was seven years old and my parents took me to a carnival at Vauxhall Gardens. There were performing horses. Chinese jugglers. Ventriloquists. Mother had fanned herself with playbills and teased Father that he was going to run away with the bearded lady. Father swore that he’d never love a woman with more facial hair than himself, and she had laughed.

“Come with me to the music hall, Juliet,” Mother had said. “They’re playing Vivaldi on dueling pianos.”

Father scoffed. “Vivaldi, that repetitive hack? I’m off to see the monstrosities, myself. The Dog-faced Boy. Hairy Mary from Borneo.” He paused, as if for the first time noticing how I hung on his every word. “Would you like to come?”

My heart had soared. It was the first time he’d invited me to do something, just him and me.

But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember which one I had chosen: my mother and her piano music, or my father and his freakish science. In my head there was only a blank. Why couldn’t I recall?