Lizzie winced. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘How do you want me to respond, Father?’ He told me he wanted me to reassure him that there was nothing unnatural about me.” Victor’s jaw clenched.
“Did you tell him the truth?”
Victor shook his head. “He didn’t want the truth. At one point, I asked him what he wanted to do about the body interred in the family tomb under my name. He said he didn’t care to discuss the matter. His precise words were, ‘Why must you insist on dwelling on this unpleasantness?’”
“That’s so...” Lizzie trailed off, shaking her head. “So there’s still some stranger buried there?”
“Well, ‘buried’ isn’t quite the right word, as it’s a big marble mausoleum, but yes, I suppose so.” Victor paused, then added, “Although I suspect that it might not be a stranger at all.”
Lizzie frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Victor touched his left arm, as though he felt a sudden ache there. “I haven’t run into any Bio-Mechanicals that feel...familiar. Connected.”
“Oh.” It had never occurred to her to wonder before, but of course—something must have happened to the rest of Jack.
He looked away. “In a way, it’s sort of fitting that his remains are there. I don’t hear him so much now, not as a separate voice, anyway. Either he’s fading away, or...perhaps he’s just become a part of me.”
Lizzie had no idea what to say to that. Perhaps it should have unsettled her, the thought that the two had become one, but instead she was happy to think that Jack might not have just vanished from existence. Should she say that out loud, or would that make Victor think she preferred Jack?
“On a lighter note,” he said, turning back to face her, “I think Will’s getting used to having a brother again.”
“I’m so glad. I thought about you a lot, you know.”
“I thought about you, too.”
“Really? Then why didn’t you write me?” After Ingold had burned down, when most of the other students had returned home to their families, Lizzie and Sabina, the Jamaican girl, had gone to stay with Aggie in her mother’s cottage. “I kept waiting for a letter.”
“I know. I thought—maybe it was better to give you a chance to think things over. And then you wrote me, and I figured you had your chance. And here we are.”
She cupped his jaw in her hand. “Is that your attempt at making it up to me? Woefully inadequate. You owe me letters. Long, heartfelt letters. With feelings in them.”
He pressed a kiss to her palm. “You’ll get them. But you might want to stop looking at me like that.”
“And why is that?”
He squeezed his hands where they held her waist. “Because the bridge is opening, and if you don’t look over there, you’re going to miss the whole thing.”
As she watched, the lower portion of Tower Bridge began to lift in the middle, creating an arch for the large steamship to pass through. It really was a marvel of engineering, and she wondered if, on one of their days off, they might be able to see how the mechanism worked.
When she turned around, she was surprised to see that Victor had been watching her, not the bridge. His expression remained pensive as he helped her back down on her feet again, and she wondered what had caused the shift in his mood. Perhaps he was thinking about his parents again. She tugged at his white cravat. “So, Mr. Frankenstein. Prepared to become a student again?”
“I hope so. I still need to pinch myself from time to time to believe that I have my old life back.”
“Not quite your old life,” she said, indicating the approaching city.
“True. It’s going to be a lot noisier and smoggier, for one thing. A bit rougher.”
“I can’t imagine anything rougher than the past five months.”
Victor smiled down at her, touching the streak of white at her temple. “You have a souvenir.”
She adjusted the brim of her hat, tugging it down. “Don’t remind me. Maybe I’ll dye it.”
“Don’t you dare. It’s very distinguished.”
“Don’t you mean old?”
“I meant to say it’s very handsome. And yes, St. Roch’s can hardly be worse than what we’ve already gone through. But the truth is, I don’t really care where we are, as long as we’ll both be studying together. And—” he hesitated, taking a deep breath “—if you’ll have me, Elizabeth, I’d like us to be partners in more than medicine.” Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out a small jeweler’s box.
She stared up at him, caught completely off guard. “What?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his face falling as he took her silence for hesitation. “I just realized—I wasn’t thinking—it’s just a promise ring, you understand. But if that seems too much of a commitment, given what I am... I will always require a supply of ichor on hand to survive, and there are other considerations...”
She stopped his words by standing on tiptoes and pressing a kiss to his mouth. “There,” she said. “I don’t give a fig for what you are. And now you’re thoroughly compromised, so you’d better go ahead and promise me.” She held out her left hand, and he placed a tiny emerald ring on her index finger.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man with pince-nez and a goatee reading a newspaper with the headline: Queen Victoria Refuses to Meet Kaiser Wilhelm. Tensions were rising between the two countries, but that was a problem for another day. For now, she and Will and Aggie and Byram were all going to be together again, studying in London. As soon as they were properly set up, Justine was going to get a chance at a new Bio-Mechanical body. It might seem wrong, given the terrible things that had happened a short time ago, but she was almost absurdly happy.
Tucking her hand into the crook of Victor’s arm, Lizzie turned to watch a seagull as it banked and turned. A gust of wind threatened to blow her hat off, and for a moment, she felt as if she were the one flying, the whole bustling city of trolleys and horse-drawn carriages spread out beneath her. From a bird’s-eye view, the Sea Swallow must seem like a toy boat in a pond, and the new clock tower at Westminster Palace no more than a child’s sand castle. As they grew closer, the city would grow large and real and complicated, but for now, with the grace of a little distance, London felt like a marvelous playground, the reward for all the trouble they’d endured.
Resting her head against Victor’s broad shoulder, she watched as the gull raced them to shore.
* * * * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book had a very long gestation, so there are many people who have helped and advised me along the way. My thanks to:
My editor, Michael Strother, for enthusiasm, faith and excellent questions. And to my other editor, Lauren Smulski, for taking me on and helping make the book better.
My agent, Jennifer Laughran, for dry humor, warm praise and patience.
My colleague, Shelly Bond, who was there at the book’s very beginning, for encouraging me to make the book more political.
Brilliant artists Al Davison and Alain Mauricet, for reading early drafts and sketching the characters.
Ruthie Knox, Mary Ann Rivers, Darrah Cloud, Rachel Pollack, Liz Edelstein and Carol Goodman, for sage feedback along the way.
George Hanna and Bryan Lucier of the Steamship Historical Society of America, for arcane research assistance.
Laura Silverstein, for listening to me kvetch and moan until I had an epiphany, and then listening to me kvetch and moan all over again.
Mark Stapylton, for endless hot dinners, daft Britishisms, and the mistaken belief that everyone learned to write with a fountain pen.
Ziva Kwitney, for countless emotional and literary tune-ups.
And a special debt of gratitude to Elinor, my favorite mad scientist, for the macabre delight of watching London Hospital with me (Casualty 1906, 1907 and 1909 in the UK).
ISBN-13: 9781488030468
Cadaver & Queen
Copyright © 2018 by Alisa Kwitney
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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