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“I am sorry for that, too.” I lifted my fingers to my lips to find my easy smile had abandoned me. “You cannot do it again.”
His face was a portrait of disappointment. “Will you answer something for me? Truthfully?”
I nodded. But I knew I would not, regardless of what the question was. The truth was not a luxury I could indulge in.
“Are you happy here?”
Henry’s simple question landed like blows on my shoulders, and I flinched away from it as I would have from my old caretaker’s fists. “Why would you ask me that?”
“Sometimes the things you say sound more like the lines I write than like what you are actually feeling.”
“What if I am not happy?” I whispered, smiling, though it was a physical pain to do so. “What would you do? What would anyone do? This is my home, Henry. The only one I have. Without the Frankensteins I have nothing. Do you understand?”
“Yes, of course I—”
I lifted a hand to cut him off. He could not understand. If he could, he would never have asked me such a stupid question. “But I am happy. What would I choose but this life? You are such a strange boy. We are together nearly every day! You know I am happy here. And you are happy here, too, or else you would stop coming.”
He nodded, worry clouding the open expanse of his face. I could not bear to look at it, so I drew him close in a hug. “I am happier when you are here,” I said. “Never leave us. Promise.”
“I promise.”
With his promise—because Henry was as truthful as I was not—I took him to the boats and waved him cheerfully away. I would have to be more careful with my two boys, with the balance there. I did not want to think what would happen if I lost Victor’s love. Losing Henry’s would simply hurt.
But I had had enough of hurting for an entire lifetime. I resolved to keep Henry near me always. I would use both of them as my protection.
Henry had asked if I was happy.
I was safe, and that was better than happy.
* * *
—
“So, what is your relation to our Victor?” Mary asked Justine. I chafed at her use of the possessive.
Justine startled, drawn out of the silence into which she had retreated. I walked as close to her as I could, but I still felt a distance between us I would need to work to heal.
She smiled reflexively. “I am employed by the Frankensteins. I started just before Victor left, so I do not know him well. But I take care of his brothers. Ernest, the elder, is eleven. He is such a good boy! So clever, and though he could do without a governess now, he still minds me. He is thinking of entering the military. It makes me scared just thinking of it, but he will be a fine and steadfast soldier someday. William, the baby, is such a dear! He has dimples sweeter than candy, and the softest curls. I worry about how he is sleeping without me. I sing him to sleep every night.”
“William is hardly a baby,” I said. “He is nearly five. You spoil him.”
“It is not possible to spoil a child so wonderful!” Justine gave me the harshest look her gentle countenance was capable of. “And you will appreciate my generosity of love when you have your own babies for me to be nursemaid and governess to.”
Her declaration startled me so much I laughed out loud, a welcome relief to the pressure that was beginning to build unbearably inside my chest. “If I ever have babies, you will already be a mother, and we will raise them as beloved cousins.”
Justine made a funny noise in the back of her throat. I thought, with a pang of guilt, about Henry’s absence and what that might mean for Justine’s private hopes. I had been selfish. I would make it up to her. I linked my arm through hers and drew her closer. “Justine is the best governess in the entire world, and the young Frankenstein boys worship her. The nicest thing I ever did for them was find her.”
Justine blushed, ducking her head. “It is I who have benefited most.”
“Nonsense. Any life is instantly improved by the addition of you.”
Mary laughed. “I concur! You have already rescued me from a dusty, lonely afternoon. And brought me to such an excitingly aromatic destination…”
She pointed to a cluster of brick buildings skulking along the riverbanks. We could already smell them as we turned off the bridge, the scents exacerbated by the moisture. There was a tannery somewhere in the distance, shit and piss competing to be the most overwhelming assault to the senses. We hurried along the row. The tannery stench faded but was replaced by the sharp metallic reek of old blood. Perhaps a butchery.
“All the things a city needs to survive but would rather not look at—or smell,” Mary said, stepping gingerly around a mysteriously discolored puddle. Outside one of the buildings on the corner were a couple of viciously hungry-looking men. Between them stood a middle-aged woman wearing a suggestively low-cut blouse. She was less alluring than depressing, but the purpose of the establishment was immediately clear.
“Why would Victor live out here?” asked Justine, sounding afraid as she drew closer to my side. In spite of the dreadful circumstance, relief buoyed me. We would be fine. Justine had probably already forgiven me.
