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“The bookseller’s niece. She had a receipt from her uncle at the bookshop.”
“Oh. Carlos.” Victor tilted his head, a memory I was not privy to passing like a cloud over his face. “I wonder if that is how Henry did it, too. Clever of you. I would imagine he f
ound some simpler route. He arrived at my door all smiles and energy. I was relieved to see him. I needed a break from the intensity of my studies. But I quickly discovered he was much altered from when I left him. Prone to long silences, and distracted. After a week I could bear it no longer and demanded that he tell me what the problem was. He confessed he had come here to ask for my blessing in pursuing a betrothal. With you.”
“With me?” I frowned in feigned surprise. “But why would he ask that? I had always planned on him and Justine marrying. I had set my heart on it.”
“Henry set his heart much higher. You can doubtless imagine my response.” His eyes burned into mine. I could see his anger at just the memory of it. I could, in fact, imagine his response.
I took his hand in mine, lowering my eyes shyly. “Actually, Victor…I cannot imagine your response. It has been almost two years. Eighteen months without a letter. I feared—I feared perhaps by leaving me you realized I had no place in your life anymore. And we have never discussed our future. Not in any plain terms. I do not wish to engage you where you wish to be free, but my heart is as it ever was—”
“Elizabeth,” he said, his tone firm and chiding. He lifted my chin and fixed my eyes with his. “You are mine. You have been since the first day we met. You will be mine forever. My absence should not have caused you to doubt the firmness and steadfastness of my attachment to you. It will never fade.”
I nodded, this time the tears in my eyes bearing liquid truth as relief washed over me. I was still safe, then. I would have a place at Victor’s side, no matter his father’s wishes. No matter how much of a waste of resources I was.
He dropped his fingers from my chin, rubbed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was neither kind nor gentle with Henry. His application for possession of you rewrote our entire history together, and I can no longer view any of his actions as friendship. They are revealed instead to be a long and subtle campaign against me.” He paused. “When he asked, I demanded to know whether you reciprocated his feelings. If you had, I would have set my own feelings aside, of course.” The twitch of his jaw told me he was lying, but I appreciated his efforts. “He told me you two had not spoken of it.”
That, at least, Henry had gotten right. If he had told Victor the truth, this conversation would feel quite different. The last letter I had received from Henry was the only proof of my involvement. I would burn it when I got back to Geneva.
“I asked him to swear he would never try to capture your heart. He said he could make no such promises, as your heart was your own to give where you would and he would not reject it were it ever to be offered. I knew that our friendship was truly dead. I told him as much, and demanded he leave my presence and never darken my doorway with his traitorous lies again. He said he was going to study in England to clear his mind of both of us. And that is the last I have seen or heard from him.”
“I am so sorry. I knew he had traveled on to England, but had I known what he came here for—” Had I known, I would not have done anything different. Not now that I had Victor back. Henry was a friend and comfort of my youth. But I would have been deeply unhappy trying to convince him I was happy. He saw too much. It would have been a constant burden, being married to him.
Victor shifted, and I adjusted the pillow for him. He closed his eyes again, the skin around them tight. “It is not your fault, of course. Men will ever strive for that which is out of reach. For that which is higher than themselves. For that which is divine.”
I laughed, resting my head on his chest. “I have missed you so.”
Victor unpinned my hat, letting my hair fall free, the way he preferred it. “And I have been lost without you. Tell me, how have you managed?”
“Poorly. I would have lost my mind without Justine. She has been a great comfort to me in your absence. She helped mend the wound of missing you, in some measure. I am so glad we brought her to the house.”
“Hmm.” He toyed with a strand of my hair. “I never guessed she would be a good companion for you. She always seemed simple to me.”
“You never could see her worth.”
“And yet you did, immediately. You do not take to many people like that.”
“Justine is special. Just as I told you.” I breathed deeply, closing my eyes. “And you let me save her, just as you saved me.”
* * *
—
Justine, newly rescued from her mother, had been secreted away to my room. I instructed her to wait until I was ready. On the boat ride back from town, I had realized the flaw in my plan to save her.
The children already had a governess.
In my panic and agitation, I had sought only to take Justine away. I had not quite sorted through what I was taking her to. And I did not have the authority in the Frankenstein house to declare a change of employees. I did not have any authority there at all.
But I was never letting Justine go back to her mother’s house. I would simply have to make sure that a vacancy arose…immediately.
And for that, I needed a coconspirator.
“Victor?” I said, sliding onto the bed next to him and brushing his dark hair from his forehead. It was cool, his color healthy. His fever had finally lifted while I was away. He blinked his eyes open, and I was relieved to see that they were clear and focused. Sometimes during his fevers, he would be seized by fits during which he knew neither me nor his family. He would ramble about things that made no sense, as though he were living an entirely different life.
“Elizabeth.” He pushed himself up to sitting, then stretched, peering through the dim curtained room to look at the clock against the wall. “How long has it been?”
“A few days. I am so glad you are well.”
