A Cold Legacy (The Madman's Daughter 3)

“I never wanted to tell you this, Juliet. I’ve tried so hard to protect you from the truth.”

I forgot about Radcliffe, and the servants, and my plans to reanimate an army of dead, as a thousand little claws of fear dug into me. It felt just like that terrible day on the island when I had opened Father’s files and found my own name written there, among his other creations all named after Shakespearean characters: Balthazar, Ajax, Cymbeline, Juliet.

Ask him about your father’s laboratory files on the island, the Beast had said. About the ones you didn’t see.

I shook my head a little too hard. “If you’re trying to say I’m one of Father’s creations, I don’t believe it. He gave me a few organs from a deer, that’s all. I’m human.”

Montgomery’s face softened. “I know that.” His voice was so gentle that I knew that whatever he would say next was going to break my heart. “You’re right—you aren’t one of his creations. You were born to your mother, just as he said. The only difference is . . .” He swallowed, slow and reluctantly. “He isn’t your father.”

The flames in the fireplace stopped. The drafts ruffling the tapestries froze. The entire world ceased in its orbit for the space of just a few words.

“What did you say?” I whispered.

THIRTY-FIVE

“HENRI MOREAU ISN’T YOUR father,” Montgomery said, more emphatically. “I’ve known it since we were little. He kept the paper records locked away, even on the island. He told me himself once, after you’d tried to sneak into his laboratory on Belgrave Square. That’s why he never wanted to teach you his research, Juliet—not because you were female, but because you weren’t his.”

I pressed a hand to my head. “That’s impossible.”

“He raised you as his own. He could have left you and your mother, but he didn’t.”

I leaned against the wall with the feeling that my blood was moving in fits and starts through my veins. Moreau blood. It had always been his blood in my veins, guiding me, leading me. Hadn’t it?

“I don’t understand,” I stammered.

“Your mother had an affair.” His words came like a crash of thunder. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but your mother wasn’t the pious woman you thought she was. She had affairs since long before you were born, many with the same men she later went on to be a mistress to—”

“No!” I slapped my hands over my ears. It was difficult enough to process that my father wasn’t really my father, but that my mother wasn’t the pious woman I remembered? “That’s not true. You’re the one who keeps reminding me what a good woman she was!”

His open hands pleaded with me. “Your father didn’t want you to know the truth. He was afraid you’d turn out like her, so he lied about the type of woman she was, and I did the same, but he changed his mind after you’d arrived on the island. He thought you were old enough to know the truth, so he wrote you a letter I was to give you on the return voyage back to London. He kept the letter in a file in a locked section of his laboratory along with other records that proved your mother’s transgressions.”

The burned letter.

“The Beast saw you,” I said. “He told me you set fire to a letter meant for me, along with secret files you were trying to keep hidden. I didn’t know if I could believe him or not, but he wasn’t lying, was he?”

Montgomery looked very pale. “No. He wasn’t lying.”

“But why would you burn them?” Anger started to flood my veins. “That’s the truth—my truth! You had no right!”

“I didn’t want you to know,” he said. “I thought if you believed your mother was good, then you might want to be like her and less like your father. All this obsession over being like him, inheriting his madness . . . I wanted you to think there was another option. Even if that other option was a lie.” He clenched his jaw. “I grew up without a father. It’s terrible not knowing a thing about who you come from. I didn’t want you to suffer the same way.”

“It’s worse to believe the wrong man is one’s father!”

He looked down at his hands. “Is it? I don’t know anymore. Now I see I shouldn’t have lied to you, but it frightened me when you kept insisting you had no choice but to be like Henri Moreau, when you weren’t even his child.”

I stared at him. Upstairs the staff was waiting for us, Edward was reacquainting himself with life, and I couldn’t bear to think about anything other than my parents.

“Then who is my father?” I asked.

Montgomery blinked, like the question had never occurred to him. I continued, “You said there were files on my mother’s transgressions. You must have read them. It must have said who my true father is, before you burned it all.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t read the files. There was talk once about a French diplomat who died years ago. Whoever he was, it doesn’t matter. No one of consequence.”

I stared at him, feeling like a glass left too long on a burner, heating and glowing and so very, very close to the point of shattering.

He had destroyed any chance I had of knowing my true parentage.

I went to the front door, throwing it open so I could gulp fresh air and let the dark night shroud me. The blood in my veins belonged to a stranger I’d never met. The wedding ring on my finger tied me to a liar.

I had been so afraid of revealing my secrets to him; perhaps I should have feared more what he was hiding from me.

I closed my eyes, feeling my whole body shake. Montgomery called my name but I tore outside, down the front step into the night, through the mud and the darkness away from Montgomery, away from the truth, away from the fact that he had lied to me.

I wasn’t Henri Moreau’s daughter. I wasn’t a Moreau at all.

And if I wasn’t that, what was I?

WITH A MOONLESS SKY, the entire world looked black. I crashed through the soggy muck away from the road and the manor and the servants depending on me. I didn’t want to be found, not now. How could I be found, when my soul was this lost?

My thoughts moved faster than my steps, and I barely paid attention to where I was going. For my entire life, society had defined me by my father—and so had I. I’d blamed all my faults on him: my unnatural curiosity and my inclination toward experimentation and even how easily I was able to kill. I’d also thought of him as my source of strength. All those desperate nights I’d comforted myself with my father’s brilliance and determination. I’d structured my entire world around a man who was both a madman and a genius because I thought his spirit lived in my blood.