Unease crept along Clara’s skin, raising gooseflesh. “What are you going on about?”
Mr. Forrester took possession of her gloved hands. “Please, marry me, Clara. Tonight. It will solve everything.”
Her tense shoulders sagged, laden with weariness. “My family’smoney, you mean. That will solve everything.”
“Yes, yes, Clara. Money is the only thing that solves problems, that brings security in this world. Why can’t you comprehend that simple fact?”
“Why can’t you stop being so underhanded? Why not just ask Papa for the money or get a loan—”
“Paying off one man with another man’s money still leaves you under a burden of debt. And I refuse to be indebted to anyone ever again. Marriage will make your fortune mine in the eyes of the law, and I’ll finally have the means to make myown way. Don’t you see? Once we’re engaged, the creditors will be appeased with assurance of payment, and I can be free of their blighted faces and fists. Free to learn to love you the way you love me. Free to be my old self again.” Pulling her close, Mr. Forrester kissed her hand with the awkwardness of a child who’d never been shown such affection. “Everything will be as it was before.”
A sigh bled from her lips. He was either completely delusional or the greatest actor to perform off a London stage. “You have conspired to wed me under false pretenses. You have slandered those I hold most dear. You’ve sent spies into our home—strangers who might’ve done us harm—all so you could steal the evidence of my family’s greatest heartache and use it to manipulate me for personal gain. Even now, you choose to deceive and make empty promises rather than tell me the truth of your circumstances. Things can never be as they were before.”
Prying her fingers from his desperate grasp, Clara restored a healthy distance between them. “Now, Mr. Forrester, I bid you farewell and good night.” She skirted around his stunned form and made for the ship.
“Drosselmeyer should’ve been more careful.” Mr. Forrester’s voice, a hollow, haunting specter, reached out through the gloom. “Taking flight midday when the docks were crowded with onlookers was a mistake he’s sure to regret.”
A quiver unsettled her lips, but Clara kept moving. She should’ve known reports of the owl’s departure would reach Mr. Forrester quickly. He had men working the docks from end to end.
“The moment Drosselmeyer sets foot on British soil, I’ll see him carted off to Bedlam.”
The threat’s icy hand yanked her worst fears to the surface, and she whirled, fists balled. “On what grounds, sir? Your bumbling spies have failed to find the letter.”
Mr. Forrester’s dark silhouette remained still and calm. Too calm. “Who needs a letter about the deranged son when the father is crazy enough to take to the sky in a machine of war?”
Her jaw slackened. “You’re mad.”
“No, my darling. Just desperate, thanks to you and my old man. Before the break of dawn, I can buy a dozen respectable witnesses who will testify your unhinged grandfather threatened to attack the Palace with his flying machine. Carry off the little queen and her brats like so many mice in its talons. Yes, those were his very words. With the rumors of Drosselmeyer’s lunacy and his son’s death in an asylum already swirling about London, who will doubt such testimony? Not a single soul who’s loyal to the Crown. Just think how easy it will be for the papers to play on the public’s fears, goading them into a hysterical mob. For the good of queen and country, the crazy pilot of the owl will have to be locked away in a government institution. Safe and sound.”
Mr. Forrester stalked toward her slowly. “Ah, but you and I know what those places are really like. How unsafe they are for the pitiful wretches who find themselves there. Lieutenant Harbinger’s letter about your poor uncle made that plain enough.”
Her blood ran cold. “Don’t—”
“Shackles hang from the ceiling to restrain the derangedpatients, all skin and bones.”
At that line, Granny had begun to weep. Clara retreated, without care to where the dock ended and the Thames began. “Stop.”
“Brutish guardsmaintain order with the crack of whips.”
At that line, Granny had collapsed, never to rise again.
“Enough!” Her back slammed against a stack of crates as tears pooled in her eyes. She looked about for help, but none was to be found. The solitude she’d once craved was now an enemy, and the quiet of night a menacing accomplice.
Moonlight cast Mr. Forrester’s looming shadow over her with the ominous effect of a hand to the throat. “Lest you think the lieutenant was exaggerating, let me assure you, dearest. There is no darker hell than a government institution. I’ve been inside the four walls of a debtor’s prison. Seen the dank stone cells, untouched by sunlight or fresh air. Heard the coughs of illness, felt the heat of fever left untreated.”
Seen? Heard?Clara gawked at him. “When did you have cause to visit a debtor’s prison?”
“Visit.” He spat the word like a bit of spoiled meat.
“What are you not telling me? Have you—”
“If that’s the sort of care the government gives to its poor, imagine what hospitality they show to their insane. Drosselmeyer won’t last a month in one of those places. Marry me, and you’ll save him from that fate. Marry me, and I’ll call off my spies, cease my search, and keep quiet about what I know of your uncle’s death and your grandfather’s machine.”
Clara shuddered, pressing against the immovable crates at her back. A wedding band would not protect her family from a man like this. A man callous enough to corner her alone . She needed to get on that ship. Now.
A splintering crash resounded behind Mr. Forrester. He startled and turned away from her in the direction of the noise, fists raised as though to fend off attackers.
Clara ran for the ship. Mr. Forrester called after her as unseen longshoremen cursed the loss of cargo, now shattered, but she didn’t look back—didn’t stop—until the steel door of the SSHeidibarred out the night.
