The Reinvented Miss Bluebeard

by Minda Webber

  The Reinvented Miss Bluebeard

  Minda Webber

  When your father is not only an infamous pirate but the husband of six vanished wives, respectability’s hard to come by. That’s why Eve invented herself a husband. How else was a nineteenth-century gal to follow her dreams and become one of those newfangled psychiatrists? Certainly she will never run The Towers, London’s preeminent asylum for potty paranormals. But now, wackier than the werewolves and loonier than the leprechaun she’s treating, something new takes shape—and he has the name of her never-before-seen husband and the body to drive a girl absolutely batty…

  Minda Webber

  The Reinvented Miss Bluebeard

  Dedication

  I want to thank my fans, Kathe Robin and the Romantic Times BOOKreviews for their acknowledgment of a fledgling author. It can be a scary thing to be published for the first time. I was fortunate and found not only acceptance, but also encouragement and support. Thank you.

  Acknowledgments

  I wish to thank Paul, Crystal and Carlos for doing a bit of research for me; Holly league for being the first fan that I didn't know personally; Marilyn Webber for reading the manuscript; my editor, Chris, for not wringing my neck on my typos, and for his always great advice; my 2006 night class for coming to my Bustin' signing and making me laugh; Scott for his belief in me, Alien and a spaghetti dinner; Phil for his belief in me and the corn in his ear; and for one of the best written, best acted and funny sitcoms of all times—Fawlty Towers—which has given me years of laughter with jack-in-the-box rats and kippers in bed.

  Author's Note

  No pirates were plundered during the writing of this book. No native soil from vampires' coffins was thrown out with the wash. No Frankenstein monsters were chased around insane asylums with burning torches, and no rosebushes were exposed to any indignities. However, creative license was taken once again on historical dates and accuracy.

  Chapter One

  It Started with Eve in the Madhouse

  The trouble with being a Bluebeard was that everyone associated the name with plundering pirates, peg-legged men, and plank-walking prisoners. They were a salty crew, what with their arghs and shouts of "Give me your jewels." Their family crest was a skull and crossbones, and no one with any sense wanted to cross paths with them. Eve Bluebeard Griffin had more reason than most to avoid the whole thieving lot, for she was the daughter of Captain Edward Bluebeard, notorious scourge of the seven seas.

  "Why must he come here tomorrow, of all days?" she asked herself, her fingers playing with the brief missive written by her father. "Doesn't he have anything better to do? Important things, like forcing his motley crew to swab the deck, or following a treasure map or two?" She squinted, trying to decipher his chicken scratch:

  Back in port. Prepare to defend yourself for your mutinous actions—or rather, lack of actions. Love, the Captain.

  "Doesn't he have any treasure chests to pack? Ocean voyages to take?" Only the silence of her spacious study replied to her distress.

  Frowning in frustration, she stared out a large beveled window in the far west wall. Curtains of rich fabric were tied back from the long windows placed between massive oak bookshelves. Most of those shelves were filled with stately bound volumes, books of every kind and size, many with gold-leafed pages that concerned diseases of the mind or supernatural abnormalities. Adorning other nearby shelves were ornaments from the Far East and delicate porcelain figurines from Germany. On the north wall, two more large windows looked into the room. Opened midway, they admitted the sweet breezes and golden sunlight of a day in early fall, the light casting patterns on the hardwood floor.

  Through the open casement, the scent of rose petals perfumed the air. Since Eve usually saw patients in this room, the walls were painted a pale green and trimmed in various shades of amber—to calm overset sensibilities and fragile nerves. This was a room that commonly left Eve with a feeling of restfulness, but today her serenity was lost as she envisioned the arrival of her father for their biannual talk. In reality, the "conversations" were one-sided, and filled with a litany of the Captain's complaints. Verily, he would swagger into the room and begin issuing commands as if he were still on deck. Cursing up a blue streak, he would expect Eve to blindly obey, as all good daughters did in 1830 London.

  Although it was quite true that she was a daughter, and good, Eve had never done terribly well at blindly obeying. To say her fractious father had been disappointed when she failed to take up the gauntlet and sail the seven seas with him, causing mayhem and madness, was an understatement. But Eve had wanted a different kind of life, one that would enable her to be captain of her own dinghy, so to speak. Yes, being very much her father's daughter and thus stubborn to a fault, she would accept nothing else but a life free of robbing and looting, a life where people respected not only her, but also her chosen profession.

  Even as a small child, Eve had wanted to make a worthy contribution to the world and not just steal worldly goods from unsuspecting travelers on the high seas—or on the low seas, for that matter. Any liquid-located larceny was bad. Several years ago, fortune had smiled upon her in a less than ideal way: Her great-great-uncle, a vampire, had participated in a duel with a young upstart warlock. Needless to say, he had bitten the dust both figuratively and literally. Though he had won the duel, he had sadly miscalculated the sunrise and gone from being one of the great undead to just plain dead. Still, her inheritance had allowed Eve to abandon her father's ship and chart her own course, reinventing herself by remodeling her uncle's old manor on the outskirts of London as an asylum for the supernaturally insane.

  Although mostly mortal and not of a supernatural bent, Eve Bluebeard did have a skeleton or two in the old family wardrobe. There was a werewolf or three, and warlocks, though only one vampire now that her great-great-uncle was dead. This rich, diverse ancestry had given Eve a compassion for the supernatural, and also marginal inclusion into the otherworldly world.

  Her father, literally an old sea dog, had inherited a few shapeshifter traits, though he was not yet nor would he ever be a full-blooded werewolf. Captain Bluebeard couldn't change shape under the full moon—or any moon—but he did have a terrible growl, a worse bite than bark, acute hearing, and could sniff out a ship in the dead of night. He also aged somewhat slower than humans. Eve had a few werewolf attributes herself, but interspecies marriages to mortals had diluted the Bluebeard blood severely. By the time the shape-shifter genes reached Eve, she was left with merely an acute sense of smell and rather warm blood, often going without a cape until winter's first snowfall.

  It had been Eve's paternal grandmother who had passed on the genes. Grandmother Ruby had been a full-blooded werewolf, and had raised Eve after Eve's mother died when she was a girl. Eve had loved Ruby dearly, even though as the years passed the woman had gone beyond eccentricity into sheer lunacy. Werewolves, as Eve learned early in life, could shift shapes only when the moon was full, and in fact they had to change form then. But after the full moon came and went, Eve's dear daft grandmother would howl and wander the house in search of her full-length fur wrap that she always seemed to "lose" for twenty-some days every month.

  It was from tending to her grandmother in the old woman's final years that Eve had recognized what she wanted to do with her life, which had nothing whatsoever to do with pirates or plunder. Instead, she yearned to help others who were struck with mental instability—especially those who were stark, howling mad. Thus, after her grandmother's death, Eve had dedicated her life to the cause. Helping the supernaturally insane, she hoped to become a "psychiatrist"—a new scientific term for those who studied illnesses of the mind.

  In the past, t
his new field of psychiatry would have been considered witchcraft, and practitioners would have been burned at the stake. But as time marched forward, so did acceptance. It was the modern world now, and medical science was finally venturing out of the closet. The medical community had discovered that the mind could be diseased like other parts of the body, and with this groundbreaking revelation it had become the general consensus among men of intellect that the insane could be helped to live more normal lives.

  Eve had learned that different methods were used by different doctors—like placing hotheads in icy cold baths, or dressing the depressed in straitjackets with silver linings. Fortunately, the days of putting a bowl with a cracked egg underneath a bedlamite's bed to draw out evil spirits had faded into the past. The more modern asylums no longer even threw their mad in pits or left them unprotected from the elements. It broke Eve's tender heart to know that those who most needed kindness had in the past been literally left out in the cold.

  Eve herself knew what it was to face bigotry and disdain. When she had entered the University of Vienna to study medicine, she had found herself in an elitist world where males ruled and most men believed females were vain and bird-witted. They believed women should stick to their own professions, stay courtesans, governesses, and wives. Every female was to be mistrusted and ridiculed. And while she'd grown tremendously during her years of medical school, both as a doctor and a person, it had still been devastatingly hard for Eve. Because she was female, the other interns ostracized and belittled her whenever possible. The abuse also came from many of Eve's professors, all of whom were supposed to be highly learned doctors. She had often mused, while she sat along the banks of the Rhine and memorized her lessons, that even getting in the door and taking your coat off in this profession was like fighting on the Barbary Coast.

  Yes, Eve had learned that, regrettably, in spite of mankind's new sympathy for the mentally ill, women were still held in subtle contempt. Females, most especially grand ladies, were thought to be creatures of excessive feeling and tender sensibilities—goofy gigglers, meaningless chatterers, and carriers of perfume-filled handkerchiefs drenched with tears. They were a delight to gaze upon and delightful for sport under the bedcovers, but never a man's boon companion or equal. And certainly none had the wit to become a doctor.

  No, a female would never be considered strong enough, wise enough, or emotionally stable enough to work at an insane asylum—most especially one filled with monsters. To most men's reasoning, a female psychiatrist in the paranormal field would be sheer folly and quite unsuccessful—would probably be eaten by one of her fiercer patients. But Eve vowed she would not only work at an asylum; she would run one.

  Despite harassment, belittling, and the tide of public opinion, Eve had studied hard and prevailed, refusing to buckle under the pressure. With her typical Bluebeard stubbornness, she had not only attended medical school, but had graduated at the top of her class—to the bewilderment of all the males concerned. She had returned to London victorious, with a degree in hand as well as a marriage contract, the latter being much to the surprise of her father. Proudly she was now Dr. Evelyn Griffin, respected psychiatrist for mad monsters.

  Eager to start her new life, she had hired staff and hung up her shingle at the Towers, her deceased uncle's now-renovated manor. The first year was difficult; however, the second year had been easier, and by the third season the Towers was becoming well-known in the supernatural community. Even more astounding was the knowledge that Dr. Eve Bluebeard Griffin was charting new territory, proposing that the insane could be cured by talking, in what she termed her "Verbal Intercourse" sessions.

  In these conversational sessions, Eve worked very hard at delving into the twisting and turning corridors of her patients' thoughts, trying to unravel the terrors and secrets of each one's subconscious mind. She probed festering memories and night terrors, which mortal and monster alike hid deep within. Whether it was a gargoyle, a leprechaun, or a vampire, their terrors were buried much deeper than six feet under. Eve was the person who lanced these boils, opening the graveyards of secret fear and exposing them to the naked light of day. Only then, she believed, could her patients begin to heal.

  Her task was monumental and extremely difficult, yet Eve thrived on the challenge. Every day and every night was a new adventure where she sailed into the uncharted seas of turbulent minds. And even with a lack of articulate and necessary detail from her patients, Eve held hope that time and determination would free them from their private demons.

  Turning her attention from the lush gardens outside her study, Eve began to tap her fingers upon the skull gracing her desk and glanced grimly down at her father's note with more than a little trepidation. With luck, the Captain wouldn't have been into his ninety-nine bottles of beer, which he liked to take down from the wall and pass around. Her wish was probably in vain, though, she realized wryly. He was a pirate captain; beer was like mother's milk to him. As was rum.

  Crumpling the note in her hand, she disposed of it in the brass rubbish holder beside her desk. "Tomorrow, of all days. How I wish for a stiff wind to Jamaica and my father sailing there."

  The door to her study suddenly burst open, crashing against the solid oak wall. Right behind the banging door stood her butler, Teeter. His countenance stiff, he maintained his usual starched dignity. Teeter was the epitome of an English butler, with one exception. To Eve's dismay, Teeter never failed to enter or exit a room without a great deal of slamming doors—a common complaint against ogres or those with ogre blood. Since the butler's grandfather was an ogre, Eve took Teeter's entrances and exits in stride. She was nothing if not flexible, having learned to be so at an early age aboard the Jolly Roger, her father's ship.

  When she had first inherited the butler along with her estate, she had begged, pleaded with, and threatened him. But all her efforts to reform Teeter had been to no avail. He had resisted all her efforts.

  "Your next patient—one Mr. Frankenstein—is here to see you, Doctor," Teeter said.

  Eve sighed as her butler banged his way back outside her study. Good help was impossible to find these days.

  Chapter Two

  Diary of a Mad Monster

  Eve watched her patient enter the room to engage in their Verbal Intercourse session, called fondly by her patients "fireside chats." The nickname was due to the fact that her study held a massive green-marbled fireplace that dominated the east wall and pleasantly warmed the spacious chamber.

  Her oversize patient moved to seat himself on an over-large chair—a chair that had been constructed especially for his large frame when he'd first become Eve's patient seven months ago—and smiled shyly at her. Although he wasn't a resident of the asylum, the patient came once a week to meet with Eve, an arrangement made by his adopted father, Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein had heard of Eve's kindness in treating monsters with quirks, and since most monsters frankly had more serious quirks than he, the Frankenstein monster had been easy to add to her patient list.

  Monstrous or not, her patient, this Frederick Frankenstein, was a gentle giant who loved helping blind men cross crowded London streets and listening to violin music. Eve felt that Frederick was a sterling example of "Never judge a pirate by his ship, a madman by his conversation, or a monster by his face." Despite the unevenness of his features and the scars crisscrossing his visage, he was a compassionate soul. To less informed or bigoted people, Frederick at first glance would appear an ugly man, but inside he was pure gold. Well, not actually gold, she corrected herself. Dr. Victor Frankenstein had been quite explicit in the materials that went into the creation. Still, Frederick did have a heart as big as his almost-seven-foot self; he liked everybody, and was always willing to lend a helping hand—or rather, a dead earl's helping hands.

  Smiling cheerfully at Frederick, Eve checked her notes.

  Frederick Frankenstein is not wild and crazy, stir-crazy, non compos mentis, or even slightly dicked in the head. No, Frederick is m
erely unhinged; perhaps he has a screw or two loose. He has a peculiar habit of eating goldfish. During sessions he's revealed acute feelings of inferiority that are complex in themselves. He often feels as if he isn't as electrifying as anyone else, which, after hearing of his creation, I find to be wrong in many aspects.

  Some members of the ton thought Frederick to be a half-wit, because of his often slow speech, but Eve knew better. His wit had come from Lord Delbrook, and it was very whole indeed. Frederick's feet and legs had once been attached to a very large duke, Hans Holbrecht. His hands were those of an earl, and his aristocratic nose came from a German prince with the family name of Blucher. Unfortunately, the rest of Frederick was composed of criminals and the lower classes. But then, as Eve had learned in her cadaver class, the corpses of good men were hard to find.

  The chair groaned as Frederick shifted his massive frame. He smiled apologetically, his lopsided expression stretching the tiny scars across his lower jaw.

  "Dr. Eve, it's nice seeing you again," he managed to say, blushing a little.

  His blush was nothing new to Eve, since she often had that effect on men, or saw them stuttering in her presence. Many women would have become vain about their beauty, but Eve was not most women. Very infrequently did she think about her appearance, and when she did, she often shrugged it off and went about her business.

  Men were not so cavalier about it, however, for Eve was a lovely woman. She had thick wavy hair, of dark reddish gold, which she wore in a Psyche knot. Her eyes were the color of the rain-tossed seas of the tropics. Her face was heart-shaped, with prominent cheekbones, and she had a lush pink mouth with Cupid's-bow lips.