I squeezed him harder than I expected. With Balthazar life was simple. It didn’t matter that he was a monster and I a madman’s daughter. We were just two friends, long parted.
I let him go and stepped back. “It’s good to see you, Balthazar.”
“Yes, miss.” He shuffled his feet a little, grinning.
“All right, inside with you,” Montgomery said. “She’s unwell, Balthazar. Fetch my medical bag.”
I stepped cautiously inside, where it was even darker than the hallway, with only the light from a few candles burning. The room was small. A single filmy window looked out onto an alleyway. There was a fireplace, but the fire had gone out and cold air blew down. The bed was unmade. A trunk was open, not even fully unpacked after a week. Montgomery hadn’t been planning on staying long, I realized. Only long enough to hunt his quarry. If not for tonight, would he have come and gone without ever once seeing me?
I’d chosen him, after all. He hadn’t chosen me in return.
Balthazar hurried to dig through the trunks, while Montgomery led me to a wooden chair at a table covered with stacks of newspapers. Headlines about the Wolf of Whitechapel’s murders had been circled in dark red ink, with Montgomery’s notes littering the margins. I had to shove my hands beneath the table to hide how they popped and shifted unnaturally.
“I’m sorry for the state of this place,” Montgomery said, stacking the newspapers. “Without a woman’s touch . . . well, you know. I’ve been scouring the papers for information about the murders. It seems to be all anyone is talking about, which means speculation and false leads are rampant.”
Balthazar lumbered over with a black medical bag.
“Thank you, my friend,” Montgomery said. “Now if you’d be so good, take this coin downstairs to the innkeeper and tell her we mightn’t return for a few days.” He fished in his pocket until he found a coin and gave it to Balthazar, who shuffled out the door.
The door shut, sealing us in the small room alone.
My face flushed. I hadn’t been alone with Montgomery since the island. I still felt a flutter of nervousness around him, as I did when I was a little girl with a crush on him, the quiet servant boy who helped Father in his laboratory and would sneak me biology books in secret.
Only now everything was different. I was no longer the master’s daughter and he no longer a servant. Now I knew what it felt like to have his lips against mine. And now I was lying to him about having seen Edward. Having made love to Edward.
I looked away as if he could read my thoughts. The muscles in my arm started spasming and I rubbed them deeply, trying to work out the ever-present tension there. Montgomery walked to the hearth, where he knelt to rebuild the fire. I listened to the comforting sounds of wood being stacked, a match struck, a sizzle of flame.
Was I risking everything by keeping the truth from him? Wasn’t he keeping secrets from me, too?
“I’m surprised to see Balthazar,” I said slowly. “It’s good to see him, of course, but I thought we agreed, on the island . . .” I didn’t need to finish. He dusted the soot off his hands and came to sit across the table from me. The pained look on his face said enough.
“I know what we said,” he answered. “But he’s like family to me. It’s childish, I know, but I’ve no father, no mother, no one. When I was young, I used to watch the boys play in the street and wish I had a brother, too. I know what Balthazar is, but it doesn’t matter to me. He’s the closest thing to a brother I’ll ever have.”
An urge overcame me to take his hand, kiss each of his knuckles. I’d been such a lonely child too. Children who had no family were the ones who cherished the idea the most. “It’s just that you’ve come all this way to kill Edward, so that he won’t keep murdering, but also so that no one would be able to deconstruct Father’s work if they captured him. Balthazar was made with an older, cruder method, but if they caught him they could do the same.”
“I know,” he said, studying the lines of soot on his hands. “I know I shouldn’t have brought him, shouldn’t have even let him live. But I never claimed to be perfect. I have weaknesses. My affection for him.” He looked up. “And for you.”
The muscles twitched harder in my arms. I stood up, shaky and light-headed, and paced in part to ease the symptoms, in part to ease the pounding of my heart. All the while, Montgomery studied me with the keen eye of a surgeon.
“Tell me your symptoms,” he said. “And how they’ve gotten worse.”
As I explained the problem with the serum, he opened the medical bag, every bit the doctor. This was easier, more natural for the both of us, to talk of such tangible things as bones and flesh, instead of matters of the heart.
He removed a corked glass vial filled with a cloudy-colored liquid. I expected him to draw it into a syringe, but to my surprise he handed it to me and said, “Drink this.”
I took the small glass vial, but hesitated. “What is it?”
“A concoction I designed for Balthazar. It dulls the effects of his affliction between injections. It won’t cure you, but it’ll ease your symptoms long enough for us to get you to the professor’s, where I can treat you properly.”
“You’re coming to the professor’s too?”
“If you think I’m leaving you alone after what we heard tonight, you’re mad. The King’s Men run this city; if they’re targeting you, you need me. I knew the professor, and with luck he’ll recall me favorably as well. Now drink.”
I uncorked the liquid and sniffed it tentatively. Astringent, with a hint of sulfur. “Valerian,” I said, somewhat surprised. It was the same drug I’d given Edward to ease his affliction.
“That, and other ingredients,” Montgomery said.
I swallowed it down and very nearly gagged. The taste was even worse than the smell.
“I would have flavored it with peppermint,” he said. “But Balthazar never complains. Can you walk now without those tremors?”
He pulled the chair back for me as he used to when he was a servant, and I braced myself on the table and stood shakily. “I’ll manage.”
The door opened behind me, and I heard Balthazar’s distinctive shuffle. Montgomery patted him on the shoulder and said, “Balthazar here wouldn’t mind carrying you all the way to Highbury, but I doubt the professor would enjoy seeing his ward in a torn dress in the arms of a man like him.”