“I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” he whispered. “I told you I came back to London to find Moreau’s colleague so I could cure myself, but that’s not the only reason. Nor is it the only reason I befriended Lucy. I had to see you again. I had to hear news of you, even if only bits of gossip from your best friend. I tried to stay away from you—to keep you safe from the Beast—but I couldn’t bear it. All I thought about was you.” He leaned his forehead against my own, and this close to the window his breath fogged in the space between us, but I didn’t feel cold.
“I came back to London for you, Juliet,” he whispered.
Words I’d once wished to hear while staring at my bedroom ceiling, whispering he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not into the silent air, but from someone else. In the small space of my workshop, tucked away amid the roses, it didn’t seem to matter as much who said them, as long as they were said. Edward loved me. Edward had risked everything to come here, to be with me. Life in London had always been lacking some critical piece, like a piano missing a single key. And here was Edward, who knew my secrets and didn’t judge me for them, desperate to fill that void in my life.
And I was desperate for him, too.
I tilted my head to look up at him, and our eyes met as my fingers coiled in his bloodstained clothing. I wasn’t certain who moved first, after that. We were already so close, his arms already around me. Not a far change to press our lips together, to slide my hands around his neck and tangle them in his dark hair. He responded instantly, breath ragged as he kissed me.
Heart pounding, I slipped my fingers between the buttons of his shirt to pull away the bloody reminder, but he held my hand. “Slowly, Juliet. I’ve wanted this a long time. We don’t have to rush.”
He kissed me again, achingly slow. But his breath was as ragged as mine, and his loneliness and desperation as deep as mine, and it wasn’t hard to make him forget about childish desires like chaste little kisses. Once I whispered his name and pressed my body flush with his, he was broken.
We found our way to the wooden bed beside the woodstove, where warm flames splashed on both our faces. Our limbs tangled together, our lips found each other feverishly. The smell of blood was choking my lungs, and I helped Edward out of the stained clothes and threw them on the floor, and then my own, never wanting to think of the blood on them again. My bare skin slipped against his under the patchwork quilt, and without the barrier of my corset and skirts and chemise I felt a million miles away from London and all the propriety the city required, and I gave myself to Edward.
We fell asleep like that, tangled together, lips bruised, the worn old quilt thrown around my waist. I dreamed of a sea of blood, and Edward in a bobbing dinghy, and an island made of bones.
SIXTEEN
WHEN I WOKE, I was alone in the workshop’s single bed. Edward was gone, though Sharkey was curled in a tight ball atop the quilt, stirring when I did, and blinking contentedly a few times.
I sat up, breathing hard, trying to sort through last night. What had been real, and what had been imaginary? The bedsheets were stained with blood from Edward’s victim, as was my dress crumpled on the floor. I’d have to burn it, just like the coat.
My knuckles twitched and I grasped my hand together as if it could hold off my illness, but the stiffness was already spreading to my arms. Soon all my joints would ache, and vertigo would set in. Already my head felt strangely light as I looked to the window. Traces of sunlight were coming through. Dawn. The professor would be up in another hour, and if I showed up drenched in blood with a wrinkled dress and bruised lips . . .
The doorknob twisted. For a brief instant a memory from last night flashed in my head, Edward standing in the open doorway dressed in his victim’s blood. It was Edward again this time, but he’d changed clothes and smoothed his hair back, and now held a cone of newsprint in one hand that smelled of roasted chestnuts.
“I heard the vendor outside this morning,” he said. “Dickens wrote about hot chestnuts so often that I’ve always wanted to try them. And I thought you might be hungry after . . .” He couldn’t hide his smile. “Well, you know.”
I stared at him as my mind still struggled to piece everything together. Edward and I had embraced last night with a desire I’d never known. But now, in the first rays of daylight, everything looked bleaker. I threw the covers back so hard that Sharkey yipped and jumped on the floor, and then I started stripping the bed of its sheets.
“I have to wash these,” I cried, then froze as the cold air bit my bare skin. Naked, not a stitch of clothing. I grabbed a sheet and pulled it around me as Edward set the chestnuts on the worktable and hurried over to stop my frantic movements.
“Juliet, wait. Calm down. What’s the matter?”
“The matter?” I asked, wrapping the sheet tighter around me. “The matter? Edward, there’s blood everywhere!”
“I’ll handle it,” he said. “Come here, to the fire. Sit down.” He pulled me over to the chair by the woodstove and guided me into it. He took my hands in his, which were now washed clean of the evidence from last night.
Of the murder he committed.
I started to breathe faster. What was I doing, protecting him? I didn’t even know who he had killed last night, and neither did he. He rubbed my shoulder, then touched my hair, trying to soothe me. “Shh, calm down. What we did last night was only improper if you think it is. I’ll make it right. I’ve read about how these things happen. I need only find a minister, and we’ll pay a fee for a license, and then once we’re wed—”