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“Juliet. I’m just finishing up with Moira. She and Hensley got into a tiff. Come in.”
A tiff?
I stepped inside, closing the door behind me. Moira sat on the operating table with her back to me, hands folded neatly in her lap. My eyes immediately went to the bare skin of her hands, her ears, her bare feet, deeply curious to know what body part Hensley had damaged. A broken finger? A bruised throat? As I came around the table, Moira turned her head to look at me, and I stifled a gasp.
Her right eye, usually a deep green, was gone now. Only a gaping hole looked back at me.
“Boo,” she said, lurching toward me.
I jumped back with a shriek, and her face broke into a grin.
“My God,” I breathed. “Are you all right?”
She shrugged, unconcerned, though her fingers were clenched tightly. “Will be soon enough,” she explained. “I was fighting to get Hensley in bed. He lashed out. I stumbled back and hit my face on the edge of the bed.”
Elizabeth gave me a knowing look. “Before you say anything, I already know that he’s getting more unpredictable. I’m going to speak to Carlyle about fashioning a room with bars in the cellar, something like what you did to cage the Beast. Perhaps after all this wedding madness is over, you and Montgomery can help him draw up the plans.” In her right hand, Elizabeth held a round object in a sterile cloth. It was Moira’s other eye, repaired now. I watched in fascination as Elizabeth reattached the ocular vein and gently pressed the eye back into its socket.
Moira pressed her hand against her eye, waited a few breaths, and then opened it. Dark green, a perfect match. She blinked a few times and smiled at me. The deformed face from before was once more a pretty, freckle-faced girl.
She climbed off the table.
“Thank you, Mistress.”
Elizabeth scribbled a few notations about the procedure in her medical journal, nodding. “You’re quite welcome. Don’t worry; it won’t happen again. I’ll look after him myself from now on and ask McKenna to give you a different task. Just remember to take it easy until the sedation wears off. Don’t want you putting your eye out again because you aren’t walking straight.”
Moira scampered down the tower steps. Elizabeth took a cloth and started cleaning her tools. Her shoulders were tense, no doubt with worry over Hensley’s worsening condition. I recognized the clamp she held as the same one she’d chosen on the day the Beast had attacked. Now all those instruments were back on the wall, everything tidied, as though nothing at all had changed. And yet Edward’s body was in the cellar, cold and preserved, along with all the others. I shivered.
She followed my line of sight. “A scalpel is still missing,” she observed. “One of the little girls must have gotten careless. We should keep an eye out for it.” She finished cleaning the room, wiping down the operating table, disposing of Moira’s damaged eye in the same airtight glass container that held Hensley’s dead rats. An image flashed in my head of the foxes swallowing the eye whole.
She removed her apron and smoothed her dress. “I’m glad you’re getting married sooner. All the festivities will be a pleasant distraction for Hensley, until we can get that cell in the basement built.”
I fiddled with the ring on my finger, and she noticed.
“Are you nervous?” When I didn’t answer, she added, “It’s natural to feel anxious before one’s wedding. I attended your parents’ wedding, you know. I haven’t thought about that day in years.” She leaned back on the counter. “Your mother was nervous. She was almost as young as you are now, and I thought her foolish for tying herself to a man so young, even a man as intriguing as your father. He was quite the catch back then. Handsome, clever, wealthy. And your mother was the most beautiful girl of the season.” Elizabeth sighed. “She was so caught up in his charm that she hadn’t taken the time to get to know him. It’s different with you and Montgomery. I can tell it’s a deeper love.”
I swallowed and looked down at my clasped hands. Did I truly know Montgomery?
Elizabeth sensed the sudden change in my mood and rested a hand on my forehead. “You aren’t feeling ill, are you? Don’t tell me you’ve started wearing one of those dreadful corsets again.”
“It isn’t that.” Did I dare tell Elizabeth that there were secrets between Montgomery and me? About the mysterious letter he’d burned? About how I’d reanimated a rat and told him nothing?
“I’m worried about Radcliffe,” I said, though that wasn’t entirely the truth. “I fear he’ll have a surprise up his sleeve, something we haven’t thought of. It bothers me that we haven’t heard from Jack Serra since you sent him to London. It’s been over a week.” I took a deep breath, toying with a scalpel on the wall. “Perhaps we’re foolish to hold a wedding during such a time.”
She came around the table. “We would only hear from Jack this soon if it was bad news. I assure you, there’s no way Radcliffe can trace this place to us. No one in London knows this manor is in my family. Besides, even if he did discover your whereabouts, this place is a fortress. The original structure was attacked by Vikings in the thirteenth century, and again by marauders in 1790, and revolutionaries in 1880. It’s never been breached.” She squeezed my arms. “Or is it something else you’re worried about, perhaps the wedding night?”
My cheeks burned crimson.
She gave her crooked smile. “I might not be married but I’m no saint when it comes to the bedroom. If you need any advice, I hope you’ll come to me.”
“I don’t,” I said quickly. “Need any advice, I mean. I’m more worried because it’s been months since life has been normal for any of us. I was starting to think I was cursed, and so was anyone I tied myself to. That this wedding will only end in tragedy.” I looked down again, feeling foolish to hear my own fears spoken aloud.
She patted my arm. “Oh, I doubt that. I haven’t told you about Victor Frankenstein’s wedding night, have I? It was here in this very house. He was to wed his cousin Elizabeth, my namesake, but it never happened. He had promised his creation he would create a female like him—a reanimated bride—but at the last moment changed his mind and destroyed the body. The creature was furious, so he took away Victor’s bride in return. He murdered her only moments before the wedding, here in this same room.”
