NIGHT HAD SETTLED WHEN Montgomery finally came to my room. The air hung with the promise of overdue rain. He’d spent all afternoon beyond the compound walls digging graves for the deceased. Shadows stretched over his face, handsome still after such grim work.
He stopped in the doorway. His blue eyes glowed in the soft light, lashing my heart like a string. But warning was written in them, too.
“Why am I here, Juliet?” he asked. We both knew there would be trouble if he was caught alone in my room, especially while Father was in a rage.
“Just come in for a moment,” I said. My nervous hands drifted to my dress’s tight bodice.
His lips were sunburned. He glanced around to make sure no one watched from the courtyard. But there were always eyes, somewhere.
He shook his head, reluctant to cross Father. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt, hard buttons and crisp linen, and pulled him gently inside. His eyes still held warning, but there was something else there now. Desire. Seeing it stilled the breath in my lungs. I closed the door behind him.
The oil lamp cast a warm glow over the whitewashed walls. In the semidarkness, his presence blazed even more.
“You’ve been digging graves,” I said.
A spot of sandy dirt clung to his right ear, missed in his bath. “Eight dead so far. That we know of.”
“Did Jaguar really kill them?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. A year ago I’d have said you were crazy. But things are different now.” He stepped closer. His hair was still damp from the bath. Lye soap mixed with the smell of coming rain. “Don’t worry. You’re safe here.”
He thought I wanted reassurance that whatever killed them wouldn’t kill me. But no one could make that promise. “That’s not why I asked you here. I need you to look at something.”
He brushed his hair behind one ear, just missing the patch of sand. An urge overcame me to wipe it off with my thumb. But my hand would have shaken, knowing what I was about to ask him to do. I tangled my hands in the folds of my skirt instead.
“What is it?” he asked.
I took his hand and led him into the corner where we couldn’t be seen from the window. His tired feet dragged, but his eyes were alert.
“I want to know why my medication is so similar to theirs.”
He let out a pent-up breath. “Is that what has you worried? I told you, it isn’t the same.”
“Close enough to make me need more proof.”
He touched my shoulder tenderly, like he’d done to Alice. “It’s impossible. You look too much like your mother to have been created in a laboratory.”
I tried to read the unspoken words in the lines of his face. His concern was deep and genuine and honest. He didn’t believe I was anything like the creatures. But he could be wrong.
“It’s more than that,” I said. “I feel odd sometimes. Like there’s something not entirely right about me, as if I’ve inherited some of Father’s madness. Only now I wonder if it’s something more. . . .”
His thumb rubbed small circles against my shoulder. “Everyone feels like that at some point or another. A little mad. Besides, your mother would know if you came from her own womb. She wouldn’t have lied to you about that.”
Thunder rumbled outside. The sky was on the verge of spilling open. I twisted a lock of hair, unused to having it long and loose. His fingers tightened, pulling me almost imperceptibly closer. He was right about Mother. She may have believed in denial, but her strict morals wouldn’t have let her lie outright.
“And you’re forgetting,” Montgomery continued. “That was sixteen years ago. He’s only recently been able to make anything close to the human form. And you’ve seen them. They look abnormal.” His eyes glowed. “You look . . . perfect.”
I tried hard not to confuse the reason we were alone in my bedroom. “But there are anomalies,” I said. My hands drifted to the row of buttons at the back of my dress that hid the puckered scar. “Like Jaguar. You said Father did something to his brain that he hasn’t been able to replicate. Couldn’t the same thing have happened to me? A fluke?”
Montgomery touched a calloused hand to my cheek. Outside, lightning cracked. The smell of coming rain swelled. “This is nonsense, Juliet. You’d at least have scars. But you’re beautiful.”
His thumb brushed my burning skin. The tops of my br**sts rose and fell quickly beneath the dress’s tight bodice.
“That’s just it.” I swallowed, trying to keep my reason. “I do have scars.”
The wind blew in the first drops of rain, and I pulled him deeper into the corner away from the window. “You know his work better than anyone,” I said, breathless. My fingers drifted to the fabric covering the base of my spine. “I have a scar on my back from surgery. He says I was born with a spinal deformity. I can’t help but think . . .”
He shook his head, almost laughing at my worry. “This is ridiculous.”
“Just look!” I said. Too loudly. We both glanced at the door. I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Please. Tell me if it looks like the procedure he uses on them.”
I started to untie the ribbons at the back of my skirt, but he grabbed my hand with an iron grip. “Don’t,” he said. “I shouldn’t even be here.”
“We aren’t in London anymore. Who’s going to gossip?” I hissed. “The birds?”
“If your father finds out—”
I shook off his hand and pulled the ribbon loose. I stepped out of my skirt and began unbuttoning my blouse. “I’ll only lower my chemise’s collar in the back.”