Her Dark Curiosity. Megan Shepherd

Penderwick, solicitor for Queensbridge Bank.’

      The name sounded vaguely familiar. ‘Not a friend of yours, I hope.’

      The professor seemed absorbed by the article. ‘A friend? No, I’d hardly call him a friend. Only an acquaintance, and a black one at that, though I’d never wish anything so terrible upon the man as murder. He was the bank solicitor who took away your family’s fortune all those years ago. Made a career of that dismal work.’

      Uneasiness stirred at the mention of those darker times. ‘Have they caught his murderer?’

      ‘No. It says here they’ve no suspects at all. He was found dead from knife wounds in Whitechapel, and the only clue is a flower left behind.’ He gave me a concerned glance above his spectacles, then folded the paper and tossed it to the side table. ‘Murder is hardly proper dinner conversation. Forgive me for mentioning it.’

      I swallowed, still toying with the fork. The professor was always worried that whenever an unpleasant topic of conversation arose, I’d think of my father and be plagued by nightmares. He needn’t have worried. They plagued me regardless.

      After all, I had helped kill Father.

      When I looked up, the professor was studying me, the laugh lines around his eyes turned down for once. ‘If you ever need to discuss what happened while you were gone …’ He shifted, nearly as uncomfortable with such conversations as I. ‘I knew your father well. If you need to resolve your feelings for him …’ He sighed and rubbed his wrinkles.

      I wanted to tell him how much I appreciated his efforts, but that he would never understand what had happened to me. No one would. I remembered it as if it had happened only moments ago. Father’s laboratory burning, him locked inside, the blood-red paint bubbling on the tin door. I feared he would escape the laboratory, leave the island, and continue experimenting somewhere else. I’d had no choice but to open the door. A crack, that was all it had taken, to let Jaguar – one of my father’s creations – slip inside and slice him apart.

      I smiled at the professor. ‘I’m fine. Really.’

      ‘Elizabeth is better with this sort of thing. You’ll feel more comfortable with another woman in the house, someone to speak with freely. What would a wrinkled old man know about a girl’s feelings? You’re probably in love with some boy and wondering what earrings to wear to catch his eye.’

      He was only teasing now, and it made me laugh. ‘You know me better than that.’

      ‘Do I? Yes, I suppose so.’ He gave his off-balance smile.

      It wasn’t my way to be tender with people, but the professor was an old curmudgeon with a kind heart, and he’d done so much for me. Kept me from prison. Given me elegant clothes, kept me fed on French cuisine, and done his best to be the father figure I should have had.

      On impulse I went to his end of the table, where I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and kissed his balding head. He patted my arm a little awkwardly, not used to me showing such emotion.

      ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For all you’ve done for me.’

      He cleared his throat a little awkwardly. ‘It’s been my pleasure, my dear,’ he said.

      After dinner I climbed the stairs, jumping as the cuckoo clock sprang to life in the hallway. I considered ripping the loud-mouthed wooden bird out of its machinery, but the professor adored the old thing and patted the bird lovingly each night before bed. It was silly for him to be so sentimental over an old heirloom, but we all have our weaknesses.

      I went to my room, where I locked the door and took out the silver fork I’d stolen from the dinner table, pressing my finger against the sharp tines. The professor had set up accounts at the finer stores in town for me, but what I needed was cash – paper money for my secret attic’s rent, for the equipment and ingredients for my serums, and grafting roses only paid so much. I stared at the fork, regretting the need to steal from the man who’d given me a life again. But as I looked out the window at the dark sky and saw the snow falling in gentle flakes, flashing when hit by the lights of a passing carriage, I told myself I was desperate.

      And desperation could lead a person to things one might never do otherwise.

      3

      That night, like most nights, I lay in my sprawling bed, staring at the ceiling, and trying desperately not to think about Montgomery.

      It never worked.

      When I had moved into the professor’s home, he had wallpapered my bedroom ceiling in a dusky pale rose print. Now, my eyes found hidden shapes among the soft buds, remembering the boy who would never give me flowers again.

      ‘He loves me,’ I whispered to nothing and to no one, counting the petals. ‘He loves me not.’

      When I’d been a girl of seven and he a boy of nine, he’d once accompanied us to our relatives’ country estate. One morning after Mother and Father had gotten in a terrible row, I’d found a small bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace on my dresser. I’d never had the courage to ask Montgomery if he’d left them. When Mother found the flowers, she tossed them out the window.

      Weeds, she had said.

      Years later, he’d given me flowers on the island, when we were no longer children and he’d outgrown his shyness. He’d won my affection, but his betrayal had left my heart dashed against the rocks, broken and bleeding.

      ‘He loves me, he loves me not,’ I whispered. ‘He’ll forget me, he’ll forget me not. He’ll find me, he’ll find me not …’

      I sighed, letting the sounds of my whispers float up to the rose-colored wallpaper. I rolled over, burying my face in my pillow.

      You must stop with such childish games, I told myself, as the place beneath my left rib began to ache.

      The next morning the professor took me to the weekly flower show at the Royal Botanical Gardens, held in the palatial glass-and-steel greenhouse known as the Palm House, where I found myself surrounded by ranunculus and orchids and spiderlike lilies, and where the only things more ostentatious than the flowers were the dozens of fine ladies sweating in their winter coats. A year ago I’d never thought I would find myself wearing elegant clothes once more, amid ladies whose perfume rivaled the flowers, who tittered about my past behind my back but wouldn’t dare say anything to my face.

      It was shocking how much one’s fate could twist in a single year.

      The professor, who I was quite certain wished to be anywhere but in a sweaty greenhouse surrounded by ladies, wandered off to inspect the mechanical system that opened the upper windows, leaving me alone to the sly looks and catty whispers of the other ladies.

       … used to work as a maid …

       … father dead, you know, mother turned to pleasing men for money …

       … pretty enough, but something off about her …

      Through a forest of towering lilies, a woman in the next aisle caught my eye. For a moment she looked like my mother, though Mother’s hair had been darker, and she’d been thinner in the face. It was more the way this woman hung on the arm of a much older white-haired man, dressed finely with a silver-handled cane. The woman wore no wedding ring – so the man was her lover, not her husband.

      The couple paused, and the woman stopped to admire the lilies. I was about to leave when I overheard her say, ‘Buy me one, won’t you, Sir Danvers?’

      Sir Danvers. I gave him another look, discreetly, studying the expensive cane, the bones of his face. Yes, it was he. Sir Danvers Carew, Member of Parliament, a popular lord and landowner – and one of the men who used to keep my mother as his mistress. He’d seemed kind, like his reputation, until he turned to drink. He had once knocked Mother around the living room, then struck my leg with that same cane when I’d tried