“We will find a gift for Victor,” I said, just like the last time we had gone alone. What gift could remind Victor to set a damned pen to a damned piece of paper and write me a damned letter?
Justine stayed behind with William, who demanded a game of hide-and-seek. Justine was always happy to do whatever he wished. We were silent across the lake. Henry manned the boat himself, since the servant who used to do it had been dismissed after Madame Frankenstein’s death. In all our years as friends, we had been so rarely alone that even being together in a boat on the open lake felt surprisingly intimate.
I kept my eyes on the water, a delicate parasol protecting my face. Though it never got unbearably hot this close to the mountains, the sun could redden any complexion within a few minutes.
Henry did not mind. He tipped his head up, closing his eyes against the brightness as he pulled us across the lake with measured, confident strokes.
“You should marry me,” he said, his voice as light and breezy as the afternoon.
The rippling brilliance of the sun reflecting off our wake dazzled my eyes, nearly blinding me. Had it affected my ears, as well? “What?”
“I said, you should marry me.”
I laughed. He did not. He fixed his piercing blue gaze on me and gave me his purest, most sincere smile. I knew he had meant it.
And I was livid.
How could someone so effortlessly happy ever understand me? Would I have to pretend to be a new Elizabeth to keep him happy as a wife in some imaginary future? What Elizabeth would I be at his side? I had worked so hard to be Victor’s Elizabeth, and I had failed.
The parasol felt heavy in my hands, my shoulders drawn downward with sudden exhaustion. I suspected I was more myself with Victor than I could be with Henry, though who I truly was remained a mystery even to me.
“Henry. I am only sixteen. I am not marrying anyone yet.”
“But not never.” He raised his eyebrows hopefully.
I could feel a blush that was not entirely deliberate. I ducked my head, smiling. And letting him see a glimpse of the smile. “No, I did not say never.”
“That is good enough for now.” Henry docked the boat, an extra spring in his step as he disembarked. “Tell me about where you came from before you joined the Frankensteins,” he said as we took a leisurely stroll through the clean and well-kept streets of Geneva.
My annoyance flared back up. What would I have to tell him, to keep him loving me? I had only wanted his friendship, the relief from managing Victor all on my own. Would I now have to figure out how to be his friend and be what he wanted in a spouse? I did not want to marry Henry. It would be cruel of me; I would be miserable forever, knowing he deserved better love than I could offer.
But…I did not want to be without options. Victor had abandoned me. And the risk of becoming useless to Judge Frankenstein loomed ever larger as a threat. I sighed. I did not think Henry would mind if I was not actually of noble birth, but I knew he loved the romance of the story. “Imagine the shore of a lake. The water crystal clear. The bottom perfectly visible. But as soon as you reach in, or stomp through, the sediment is churned up, the water muddied, all the treasures inside the once-placid water hidden from view. Perhaps something could be found by digging, but why bother, when everything is fine as it is? That is all you need to know of my origins.”
He reached for my arm, stopping me. Then he turned me so we were facing each other. “I am sorry,” he said. “For all you have been through. I cannot imagine.”
I laughed prettily, rising on my toes to kiss his cheek. It was the fastest way to end the conversation, as his cheeks burst into shades of pink and his ability to speak left him for several minutes.
After that, I made certain to fill our time with idle chatter, drawing him out about his idea for a new play. Though he had outgrown asking us to act them out, he still wrote them. He wrote poetry, too, and yearned to study more languages. He had so little time for it now, though, working with his father.
“I have heard that Arabic has the most beautiful poetry known to man,” he said as we browsed a haberdashery. He idly stroked the ribbons streaming from a lady’s hat. This was the one topic that could make him sad. Though my situation was obviously worse, Henry was also a prisoner to other people’s expectations. His life had been mapped out for him from the day he was born: he would follow his father into business, expanding their family holdings.
I hated to see him sad. It felt like a too-tight collar, tugging at me. If I could fix Victor’s rages, I could fix Henry’s sadness.
And maybe I could fix my own situation, as well. “Henry. You must go to study with Victor.”
“I could never. My father sees no purpose in it.”
I pulled a hat off a shelf. It was stiff and well made, but the material covering it was velvety soft to the touch. I placed it on his head, stepping back to admire it. “You look like a poet.” I smiled. He reached up and tentatively stroked the hat. I forged ahead, with my quickly hardening idea. “You will convince your father that the Eastern languages are useful. Think of how much is left unbought, unsold, because we cannot adequately communicate with the merchants there! Why, a man with the connections of your father and the skills to speak clearly with the merchants of Arabia and China could build an empire!”
Henry took the hat, turning it in his hands. “I have never thought of it that way. I could learn the languages because I love them—”
“And the poetry!” I added.
He beamed. “And the poetry!”
“To better understand their cultures and relate to them…” I smiled slyly. “It would be important and would aid you in gaining foreigners’ trust.”
He laughed. “You know, Elizabeth, I think you could convince Winter to leave early and give all his territory to Spring if only you could talk to him.”
“That might be too big a task for even me. But we will convince your father yet of the practical uses of Arabic poetry. Then you will join Victor at university. And you will write me how he is. I worry about him.” I paused. Henry offered two new futures. Good, sweet, dear Henry. “And if you meant it, about marrying me, you will need to talk to Victor. I know his mother always treasured the thought of Victor and me marrying, but he and I have never spoken of it. I do not know how he feels on the subject, and I could never enter into a betrothal without his blessing. We cannot hurt him.”
“I would sooner die than hurt him!” Henry said. But his face was alight with earnest excitement. “I think your idea will work, Elizabeth. I will go to university. And then…then we will both have a future to think about.” He smiled bashfully.
“Yes. A future.” I smiled, feigning demureness. My mind whirled as I bought him the hat with the meager pocket money I had managed to save. Victor would return, afraid of losing me, or give Henry his blessing. Either way, I would be saved from the constant threat of destitution.
I hoped, for Henry’s sake, that Victor would return. I suspected marrying me would be the great tragedy of Henry’s life. He deserved someone who could accept a proposal with a joyful heart, not a calculating and conniving mind.
Besides, I already knew how to be Victor’s. I did not want to learn how to be anyone else’s.
* * *
—
Justine was waiting outside for Mary and me when we arrived. How long she had been on the walk in front of the boardinghouse she did not say, though I suspected it was from the moment Frau Gottschalk unlocked the door.
The doctor would allow only one of us in to see Victor, so Mary took Justine to the bookshop while I sat at Victor’s side. He was already much improved, the color in his cheeks less alarming and his body able to sweat once again. The nurse showed me how to painstakingly get liquid into his mouth—enough that he would be hydrated, but not so much that he would choke in his insensible state.
After a c
ouple of hours, I thought he was waking. He began muttering, his eyebrows drawing together in that expression that was as familiar to me as my own face.
“Too big,” he muttered. “Too big. Too willful. I made thee out of clay.”
I bathed his forehead and used this opportunity to get some water down his throat. He coughed, sputtering.
“No! Eve from a rib. The rib is smaller.”
I stroked his cheek and his hand shot up and wrapped around my wrist. His eyes opened, red and furious. He pulled me close, his urgency palpable. “Eve,” he said. “The rib.”
“I understand,” I murmured. “That is an excellent point.”
Letting out a relieved sigh, he relaxed back into slumber. I realized the nurse had entered the room, and was grateful that Victor had not said anything suspicious.
“Good boy. Knows his Bible.”
“Yes.” I stood, straightening my skirts. In fact, that was one of the few books Victor had never found any use for.
* * *
—
With the doctor confident that Victor would be lucid within a day and that there was no danger of him worsening in the meantime, I spent the night in the boardinghouse with Justine. I had no secret errands to run, and I did not want any time alone with Mary, lest she think of more questions I would not answer.
Frau Gottschalk was predictably unpleasant. My dreams were worse. I once again awoke in the middle of the night, breathless with the feeling that I had been in the middle of a bleak conversation, pleading for my life. I went to the window with hopes I could work it open for a stirring of fresh air. The loose slat was easily removed, but I could not get through to the glass behind it. I pressed my face to it and looked longingly at the night.
And discovered the night was looking back.
On the street immediately beneath me, wrapped in the black shadows, a figure stood staring up at me.
No, not at me. No one could have known I was behind these shutters.
But the figure did not move. I watched, terrified that moving would reveal my presence. I had been able to put the chute and whatever or whoever splashed from it out of my mind, but now it rose like a specter. What if someone had been at Victor’s laboratory? What if I had nearly killed someone, and the person had followed me here to exact revenge?
But I had not come back here after the fire. I had gone to Mary’s house. So who would have known I was staying here?
Anyone I left the cards with. I squinted, as though narrowing my eyes would increase their ability to pierce the darkness. But I could not make out any features. I could not tell whether it might be Professor Krempe. The figure seemed far too tall for it to be the charnel house man. But it could have been Judge Frankenstein himself and I would have been none the wiser.
There was some strange trick of the darkness, though, a shifting and magnifying of perspective or perception that made the figure loom larger than life. It looked…wrong. The torso too long, the legs bending at not quite the right place. A bulk of chest that spoke not of excess weight, but rather of unnatural power.
Justine stirred, cooing in her sleep. I glanced over to see if she had awakened. When I looked back, the figure was gone.
Its unnaturalness did not leave my mind. It settled over me like a spider’s web, invisible and impossible to brush off.
TO MY SURPRISE—AND VAIN dismay—when I walked into Victor’s convalescence room the next morning, he looked better than I did. Whatever damage my sleepless nights had done to my face, his time here had erased all traces of his feverish delirium.
He was propped up by a pillow and was surprised to see me when I walked in.
“Elizabeth! What are you doing here?”
I bit back my impulse to berate him, to inform him I was there to save his foolish life. Instead, I pressed my hands to my mouth and rushed to his side. “Oh, Victor! When I found you, you were in such a low state. I feared I was too late.”
His eyes twitched. “You were the one to find me? I do not remember anything of the last few days. Weeks, perhaps.” He rubbed his forehead, eyes searching the air in front of him for some hint of what he had missed. “Did you…What state were my rooms in?”
I smiled gently, taking his hand from his forehead and resting my cheek against his much cooler fingers. “You certainly could have used a maid. I did not have much time to look around. We rushed you right here. I am so sorry to report that the same night we found you, the stove caught fire and burned down the building. All your things were lost. And to think—if I had not found you, you would have been inside the inferno!” I let tears pool in my eyes.
He dropped his head back against the pillow, but I knew every expression of his face. He was the text I had devoted my life to studying. It was relief, not despair, that caused him to lose his strength.
“My time here has been for naught anyhow. I sought to puncture heaven and instead discovered hell.” He closed his eyes. His eyelids were nearly translucent, traced with tiny blue and purple veins. I was reminded of the time when he mapped my own veins with his fingers, plotting the course of my heart with meticulous study.
“Victor,” I said, needing to speak to him before he fell back into sleep. If he wanted to remain silent on what his mad studies had cost him, I was more than happy to let him keep those secrets. We would never talk of them again. I had erased the evidence from the world, and perhaps Victor’s fever had erased them from his mind, too. But there was one mystery I could not set fire to and turn my back on. “Why did you never write? I was so worried about you that I sent Henry here just to find you. And then he left, too.”
“Henry?” he echoed. But his eyelids twitched, tightening from their relaxed state.
“Surely you remember. He came six months ago. And he wrote that he had found you. But then I never heard from him—or you—again. That is why we came. I was so worried about you without anyone to look after you.”
“I was working every day for us. For you. I never wrote because I had nothing to report. Surely you did not doubt that what I was doing was important.”
I wanted to pinch him, to pull on his hair until he cried out in pain. I also wanted to press my mouth against his and devour him. Consume him. Instead, I smoothed his hair back from his forehead, playing with the silky curls. “I know. And I knew you would have been lost in your studies and forgotten how desperately I would want to hear from you. But Henry left you all alone. And that is not like him. Your condition when I arrived proved I was right to be worried. Henry should not have gone.”
Victor opened his eyes and studied me shrewdly. “We did not part on good terms. You know why.”
I feigned innocence. “I assure you, I do not.”
“Do you know why Henry came here?”
“To learn Eastern languages so he and his father could open up trade with merchants from the Far East. I thought it was an excellent idea. He was unhappy, working as his father did, and this allowed him the freedom to pursue something he loved while remaining loyal to his father.”
Victor’s dark lashes swooped low as he narrowed his eyes. “It turns out that loyalty is not something Henry values highly.”
“What do you mean?”
“Henry tracked me down when he arrived. I am not certain how he found me. Or how you did.” He paused, curious.
“Mary Delgado.”
“Who?” Victor’s genuine confusion was a balm to my competitive spirit. She might have remembered him, but he had no use for her. All my initial regard for her settled back into place now that I had nothing to fear from her as far as Victor’s affections.
“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.”