But he was already gone.
THE BATHHOUSE WAS SIMPLE but pleasant. A large wooden tub held a steaming pool that gave off traces of some sweet herb I couldn’t identify. I peeled off the summer dress and eased into the bath. It was hot enough to turn my skin red. I scoured every inch of my body with a sea sponge and a bar of lavender soap that seemed out of place on an island full of men. The old me flaked off with bits of mud and sand. The steam eased those tight feelings I’d carried forever, shame and worry and uncertainty. I took a deep breath, shocked at how full my lungs could be without a corset’s restriction.
After the bath I put on a dressing gown and returned to my room. The clouds had parted, though the sun was all but gone. I lit the lanterns and slowly untangled my hair with a silver comb I’d found among Mother’s things. The bath had worked all the thought out of me. My mind was blank. It was a strange feeling.
I stretched out on the bed. Before I knew it, the lantern flickered, and I felt myself giving in to sleep.
I DREAMED OF MONTGOMERY’S rough hand on my cheek. His palm was warm, familiar, as it ran over my jawbone, over my shoulders, his thumbs brushing across my clavicles in an echo of the game the medical students played counting Lucy’s bones. The game didn’t seem nearly so silly now that it was Montgomery’s touch. But something changed in that witching hour between waking and sleep. My mind conjured a man’s body, with strong, alluring hands, but they were cold. It wasn’t Montgomery, but Edward. That safe, protected feeling I’d had with Montgomery was gone, replaced by a deep chill that sent shivers running down my limbs. In my dream the edges of Edward’s body slipped and slid like a ghost, only half bound to this world.
We were back in Father’s laboratory on Belgrave Square. There were the familiar rows of cabinets, the specimen jars, everything so meticulously laid out. I was flat on the operating table. Something held me down—not the usual canvas restraints used by doctors, but something heavy and metal, like chains.
Edward stood over me. He rolled his shirt cuffs slowly, first one, then the other, preparing for surgery. A reference book lay open on the table next to him. I tried to lift my head to see the diagram, but something held my head down, too. I tried to jerk free. His gold-flecked eyes slid to me.
“Don’t struggle,” he whispered. “It won’t do any good.”
He turned to the table, sorting through instruments that clanked with the familiar ring of steel. I should have been frightened. But, strangely, I felt only an abnormal calm and the suffocating weight of the chains.
“Remain still, Juliet,” he said.
The swinging kerosene lamp above the table lit up the tool in his hand. A dented old bone saw, rusted and flaking. A butcher’s tool, not a surgeon’s. I noted this calmly, wondering what a bone saw was doing in my father’s old laboratory.
Edward’s other hand flickered ghostly, fingers fading in and out, but when he brushed the hair off my face, he felt solid enough. He traced a hand down my cheeks, tilting my head, examining my face. I thought he might speak, but he didn’t. Instead he raised the saw.
I felt a jolt, somewhere near my feet where I couldn’t see. Then came the awful squeal of metal. He was sawing, I concluded. But a bone saw wouldn’t cut through chains. You’d need at least a crosscut-tooth hacksaw for that. It was most perplexing.
The squeal and groan of metal continued. I wanted to cover my ears, but my hands were immobile. Edward came back into view. The bone saw was gone. His hands were covered in blood. I frowned, trying to deduce its source. Had he cut me? I mentally inspected my feet, my legs, my chest, my arms. I didn’t feel pain. But I didn’t feel anything else, either, except the strangling chains.
His fingers wrapped around something next to my head. He pulled with straining forearms. Sweat poured off his forehead. The rim of something metal came into the edge of my sight. The sharp edge sliced into his fingers, breaking the skin. The blood on his hands was his own, I realized.
The more he peeled back the metal, the more I could move my head. At last I twisted so I could see. He’d cut off a metal bonnet with a copper flower and a ribbon of steel and then peeled it back with his bare hands.
Very peculiar.
Edward moved to my chest. Another squeal of metal. Straining muscles. Blood dripping onto the table. I could breathe at last. Air rushed into my body, waking my senses. I sat up, shaking off the cold detachment, breathing in lungful after lungful of air. I nearly cried when I saw what he’d freed me from. A metal corset, and below that a metal skirt, already peeled back. There’d never been any chains, I realized. What held me down was a metalwork dress. And Edward, with a butcher’s saw and bloody hands, had painstakingly undressed me.
Beneath the steel dress I was naked, and I covered myself with my hands, still trembling with the feeling of air and freedom and something else, earthy and corporeal. It was as if I’d woken from a harsh London night into an Italian painting, where the world was lush and warm and passionate.
I swung my legs off the table. Sweat and blood dripped off Edward’s brow. His hands were latticed with cuts. He didn’t look at my na**d body, but instead he inspected my face. He brushed my hair back, studying my features, his eyes dark and unreadable.
Without the restriction of the clothing, I was filled with a constellation of sensations. I was aware of the smell of cologne mixed with his blood, the rough feel of his trouser fabric grazing against my legs, his desire that seeped from the cuts in his hands, staining the floor.
He slid a hand behind my waist, his fingers like ice. My bare skin was flush against his bloodstained clothes. His hand brushed through my hair.