A Cold Legacy (The Madman's Daughter 3)

But I was wrong.

I closed my eyes, collapsing against the skeleton of a tree. I stared at my hands in the moonlight, flexing them, feeling as if I didn’t recognize the lines of my own palm. There was no fate there. No fortune. All Jack Serra had read was the desperation in my own face.

The tree’s bark scraped against my back, but I felt nothing. Memories of my mother looked different now: she had always clutched a Bible, so I’d assumed she was pious. Now that I thought back, was she a good person? All those times she came back from church sweaty and flushed, I’d assumed she’d been praying fervently, but it seemed so evident now she’d been with a lover instead. Or those days she was gone knitting socks for the inmates at Bryson Prison. I had never seen her knit at home, not even once. Did she even know how to knit?

Had every memory I had of her been a lie?

I sank into the mud, hugging my knees in tight. I wished I could disappear into the tree, into the soil, into the dark night, until there was nothing of me left. The bog had tried to swallow me once. Maybe I’d made a mistake in not letting it.

A branch snapped and my head jerked up, breath frozen. In my desolation I hadn’t thought about the foxes out here on the moors, winter-starved and used to the taste of human flesh from Elizabeth’s thrown-out experimentations. Now that the rains were gone, they’d be coming out of hiding, just like Radcliffe.

He might be in Quick even now, stopped only by a flooded road, hunting us like some famished animal. The household of Ballentyne was resting all its hopes on me.

The branch snapped again, and I bristled. I reached for a fallen limb, tearing off one branch to form a sharp end. Fear clawed at the soft parts of my throat as movement caught my eye in the darkness, and I clutched the branch harder.

Out of the gloom the creature came at me on fast little legs, and I let myself relax. Those short legs and black snout didn’t belong to a fox.

“Sharkey,” I said, as my little dog ran up to me. I pulled him close, burying my nose in his fur, breathing in that earthy smell I so loved. More footsteps came and another figure loomed in the darkness, this one much too large for a fox, even too large for a man.

“Balthazar, what are you doing out here?” I asked as he entered the clearing and Sharkey ran over to nuzzle his leg.

“Looking for you, Miss. Montgomery said you’d run away. Everyone’s out searching for you.”

He stopped a few feet away, tapped the ground with a foot until he’d found a dry patch, and sat cross-legged across from me. In the darkness he was little more than a voice and a smell of tweed and wet dog, though I knew that with his sight, he could see me perfectly.

I wiped the wet from my eyes. “I can’t go back there. I don’t belong there.”

“You’re mistress of Ballentyne.”

I barked a cruel laugh. “Elizabeth and the professor only made me their heir because they thought I was my father’s daughter. It turns out they were as wrong as I was.” I pulled my knees closer. “Did you know?”

“That the doctor wasn’t your father? Yes, Miss. I knew from the beginning. You didn’t smell like him.”

Father’s smell came back to me, formaldehyde and apricot preserves, but I knew Balthazar spoke of a deeper smell. The scent of family. Henri Moreau must have instructed Balthazar never to tell me the truth, taking advantage of his unwavering obedience just as I had.

“I’m not a Moreau,” I said, testing out the words. “I’m a . . . Chastain, I suppose,” I said, thinking of my mother’s maiden name. “Or rather a James, since I married Montgomery.”

So many names, and none of them felt right. They didn’t have the right number of syllables or the right feel in my mouth. None of them were Moreau.

“It’s useless.” My voice broke. “I was so certain I knew who I was and who I was supposed to be. I’m not certain of anything now.”

My running nose was the only sound in the night, save distant moisture dripping from branches and the wind in the moors. Balthazar’s joints creaked as he shifted.

“You’re Juliet,” he said simply.

I looked up at him helplessly. “I don’t know who that is.”

“Then you’ll find out.”

I found myself staring at the dark space where his voice came from. One thing I’d learned about Balthazar was that even though he was created by my father, he wasn’t bound by him. He’d gone from idolizing the man as a god to forming his own thoughts and beliefs and identity. How had a creature made of bits of a dog and a bear already learned so much more about life than I had?

Tears started coming harder. Big, thick ones. Balthazar shuffled closer and wrapped an arm around me, patting me gently. Sharkey nuzzled his snout against my arm. Sitting in the dark forest, I still felt lost, but now there was a light to move slowly toward.

As I squinted, I realized the light wasn’t just in my head. It moved through the trees, far off, but silently. My body went rigid as I turned to Balthazar.

“Someone’s coming,” I whispered.

I pictured Elizabeth’s ghost walking through these bogs, just as she had when I’d nearly drowned with that sheep. How I wish she were here now to guide me, as she had then.

Sharkey barked as the light grew closer. I made out Montgomery’s guilt-ridden face reflected in the light as he followed the sound of our voices to the clearing. He stopped at the edge.

“Juliet, thank God. I’m sorry.”

I wiped the last of the moisture from my eyes. Sharkey nudged himself closer, and I scratched his head hard as he liked, hoping it would calm me, too.

“You should have told me the truth,” I said quietly. I stood, holding Sharkey tightly in my arms. “I’m not that same little girl you used to shelter from the bad things in the world, Montgomery. I’m grown, and I might make mistakes, but I’m capable of taking care of myself—and Ballentyne.” I took a deep breath full of the highland mist and looked in the direction of the lights of the house, hoping that was true.

“We’ll figure something out,” Montgomery said. “Radcliffe won’t take Ballentyne.”

I squinted toward the house, feeling the cold mist spread over me, listening to the sound of the dripping bogs. “I might have an idea how,” I said hesitantly, letting the idea grow, and reached down to cup a handful of water from the closest puddle. “It has to do with Jack Serra flooding the moors.”

Montgomery tensed. “You mean to drown Radcliffe and his men?”