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“Juliet. What’s wrong?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose as I sat on the edge of his bed. “Listening to Balthazar read at the funeral today got me thinking. Father could have saved Edward, I know it. I didn’t tell you this, but I had my fortune read by the fortune-teller, Jack Serra. He said I was destined to follow Father’s footsteps. I think . . . maybe he was right. If I had, I could have saved Edward, too.”
I turned, afraid my confession would only drive Montgomery further away. But instead he smoothed my hair back gently. “Just a fortune, that’s all. You know how those carnival types work. Say something vague and let you impose your own meaning on it.”
“Yes, I know, but that’s just it. Magic fortune or not, Father means something to me. I can’t deny it. It wasn’t until the end that he went mad. Before that he was rather brilliant.”
Montgomery’s strong hands tucked back a loose strand of my hair. “I remember. I loved him too, you know. But he was also a monster.”
“Do you think . . .” My voice caught. “Do you think I’m a monster, too?”
“Of course not,” he whispered. “I haven’t agreed with all your decisions, but I wouldn’t be engaged to you if I thought that.”
“Bringing the creatures to life, letting them slaughter those men . . .” My voice dropped even lower. “I enjoyed it, Montgomery. The justice of it. The power of it.”
His hands paused. Though my father had raised him to be his successor, Montgomery had managed to resist the temptation to follow in my father’s footsteps.
I hadn’t been that strong.
“I suspected you did,” he said quietly. “That’s what scared me most.” His hand absently rubbed against the scar on his fingertip. It was where my father had taken the blood to make Edward.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry for what I did at King’s College, and I’m sorry for what happened to Edward. I know you’re grieving, too. You and Edward never had a chance to be brothers.”
He looked at me in surprise. I’m not certain he had ever really let himself feel sorrow. When Alice died, he’d been furious. Now he was trying to take care of me, but I wasn’t the only one hurting.
He glanced down at his fingertip.
His hair looked nearly gold in the candlelight. I couldn’t help but touch it. What were a few secrets, when death was always just one step away?
“I love you,” I whispered. “I’m sorry for what I’ve done. I’m sorry for all the fighting and arguments.”
I touched Montgomery’s cheek, feeling the hard ridge of bone there. Hard to believe the boy I loved was, at the core of it, nothing more than skin and blood and a beating heart. The sounds of the house around us were as loud as my beating heart: rain on the windows, joints settling. His eyes sank closed. “I love you, too.”
I leaned in to kiss him. His hand, big and heavy, found the smooth silk shift around my waist. Each time we kissed felt different. New. We still had so much to learn about each other, for better or worse, and I wanted to spend a lifetime finding out.
“I was so afraid the Beast would kill you,” Montgomery whispered against my cheek. “I never should have let you out of my sight.”
My fingers smoothed over his bare chest. His tan had faded over the past weeks, but the story of the island was written in each scar and scratch on his skin. One day, after all this was over, the scars would be nothing but memories we could chose to forget.
He pulled my hair lose from its braid and ran his fingers through it.
“I can take care of myself,” I said. “I know how to use a knife and a pistol. You won’t lose me.”
He paused, meeting my eyes. “There is more than one way to lose you.”
Voices whispered to me of the King’s Club’s laboratory in London: how I’d brought the water-tank creatures back to life with a determination bordering on madness, and how I’d felt that same thrill in Elizabeth’s operating room with the reanimated rat. Had Montgomery known about the bond I’d felt with the Beast? Did he know that at the last moment I hadn’t been able to pull the trigger?
I tilted his chin up and kissed him again. Not slowly this time. His hand found the curve of my waist, bunching the fabric. His other hand pushed the hem up to graze my knee. Ripples of electricity ran through me. My mind turned to things I’d only dared dream about late at night.
“So much death,” he said. “All I could think about during the funeral was that any of us could be next.” He swallowed hard, and when he spoke next, his words were in a rush. “Let’s not wait until the spring, Juliet. I’ve wanted to marry you since I first saw you in London, standing in my room at the Blue Boar Inn, pummeling Balthazar with biscuits. Marry me sooner. Next week. It can be a small ceremony. Whatever you want.”
My hand went slack against his chest. “Next week?”
“With lives like ours, who knows what tomorrow will bring. We have to take happiness when we can.” He paused. “That is, unless you’ve changed your mind.”
My heart softened. “I haven’t.”
I looked down at the silver ring around my fourth finger. There was still so much Montgomery and I needed to work out before our relationship would be sound. The secrets that both of us kept, the madness that overtook me at the King’s Club massacre . . . and yet what was more important, our love for each other or our secrets?
I twisted the ring. “Next week, then.”
He kissed the ring on my finger. So like my mother’s hands, long and slender. A grin cracked his face. “Then in a few short days, you shall be Mrs. Juliet James.”
His eyes grazed over my body, lingering on my bare shoulder. Tomorrow we would announce the wedding and shed some happiness on the gloomy household. Beyond that the future was far too uncertain, but at least Montgomery and I would face it together.
TWENTY-THREE
OVER THE NEXT FEW days, Elizabeth’s attention was consumed with watching Hensley for signs that he was growing more violent. His body didn’t age, but it did deteriorate. Elizabeth admitted she had already replaced his failing liver twice, and his heart once. Now it was his brain that concerned us—the flesh might be breaking down and making him act irrationally. After the Beast, the last thing we needed was another madman.
The only piece of brightness in our lives was the impending wedding. No one was more excited than McKenna to hear of the change in date, and she flew into a flurry of preparations, telling the girls to search the moors for any pretty greenery, baking us sample cakes.
