My eyes went wide. “How awful!”
She gave me a crooked smile. “Indeed. Whatever happens on Friday, it can’t be as bad as that, can it?”
“I suppose not.” I toyed with my engagement ring, still uneasy.
“Blast,” she said, “I’ve gone and been too morbid again. I forget not everyone has spent their lives with the ghosts of my ancestors. Don’t worry, my dear. Radcliffe can’t reach the house. I’ll get Hensley under control. No one’s going to be murdered on your wedding night.” She handed me the jar of dead rats and Moira’s unblinking eye. “Now be a dear, and throw these out for the foxes before dinner.”
TWENTY-FOUR
IT WAS MESSY WORK, disposing of dead animals and leftover body parts. I followed the path behind the manor as it meandered among the sulfurous bogs. Night was falling, and my stomach grumbled with hunger despite the morbid contents of the glass jar.
A flash of orange-red darted between two bushes. I stopped. A fox’s keen black eyes watched me through the branches. Deciding I was far enough away from the house, I emptied the jar’s contents on the ground, then stepped back to watch the foxes make dinner out of Moira’s eye. Something crunched under my boot and I looked down to find a bone, long ago picked clean. It was part of a human hand. The wrist bone had been cut unevenly, as though someone had almost changed their mind halfway through the job.
Was it the bleached bones of Valentina’s hands that she had cut off herself? She had wanted ownership of this manor so desperately that she’d crippled herself for a chance at ingratiating herself to Elizabeth. And I had sauntered in and been named heir without even wanting it. Was it right that I got everything so easily while Valentina met such a terrible end?
I looked at my own hands, thinking of my mother. If she were here, she would tell me that this was a sign. I shouldn’t just accept being the heir to Ballentyne lightly—I should embrace it and work as hard as Valentina would have, educating the girls and making improvements to the house.
I turned back to the building looming in the twilight. On the second floor, lights were just coming on as the servants prepared dinner.
Anyone would want to oversee such a place, and yet I felt only hollowness in my chest. I wished Jack Serra were back, with his cryptic predictions.
Was running Ballentyne truly my fate?
A fox howled behind me, reminding me that I was alone and that night was falling. I wrapped my sweater tight and jogged back to the manor just in time to change clothes and get ready for dinner with the staff. On Sundays Elizabeth forwent tradition to let the servant girls dine with us at the grand table. I loved having them there. They drilled me with questions about the wedding, what type of flowers I liked and what my dress looked like and if they could try it on when it arrived and pretend they were to be brides as well.
Lucy’s seat, however, remained empty.
Halfway through dinner, I leaned toward Montgomery. “Do you know where she is?”
“Balthazar said she wasn’t feeling well and skipped dinner.”
After the meal, I wrapped some cold chicken in a napkin to take to her room, but when I opened the door, no one was there.
A strange feeling trickled down my back. Lucy had been acting odd since Edward’s death, first slaughtering the Beast with that wild look in her eye, and then appearing dry-eyed at his funeral and throwing herself so fully into work. Thinking back on it, it didn’t make sense. Lucy hated work. And she wasn’t the type to fall so deeply in love as she had with Edward, only to watch dry-eyed at his funeral.
Maybe my worries were more than just suspicions.
I hurried down the hall, peeking in keyholes, not finding her anywhere. I went to Elizabeth’s laboratory, but it was locked and I knew Lucy didn’t have a key. I scoured the observatory and the winter garden, and finally went down to the cellar.
I found her there. She was leaning over Edward’s body, head bent in prayer. My heart faltered for a moment. This must be where she was disappearing to when she’d been claiming to work or that she was ill. She came here to mourn in private, so she could appear strong in public. My heart ached; I’d do anything to take away her pain.
“Lucy,” I whispered.
She jerked upright, breathing hard in the cold air. “Juliet! Are you trying to make me die from shock?”
I took another step closer. A book was open on the floor. I had assumed it was a prayer book, but on closer inspection I saw anatomical drawings. She scrambled to shut the book and picked up various instruments, including the missing scalpel from Elizabeth’s laboratory.
“Lucy, what are you doing?” My voice was harder now.
Her face went white. She tried to block Edward’s body from my view, and alarm bells went off in my head. I pushed past her and stopped short.
It wasn’t Edward.
It was the body of one of the vagrants, a boy about Edward’s height and age. The shroud had been drawn back to reveal his bare chest, which was marked in dotted lines following the anatomy book. A line of cut flesh ran down his center. There was little blood—the body was too frozen. The cut line was unsteady and imprecise, made with hands that had never done such work before and were hesitant to try.
I lost the feeling in my fingertips. “Lucy, what have you done?”
She jumped up and pressed her hand over my mouth as though she feared I might scream. “Shh, Juliet,” she whispered, face even whiter. “I was just . . . I thought I might try . . .”
She was normally so good at lying. I’d seen her lie effortlessly to suitors and to her own parents. But now she stared at me, blood drained from her cheeks, without a single explanation as to why she was cutting open a stranger’s body with a stolen scalpel.
“Blast,” she cursed, dropping her hand. “Don’t tell anyone. Not Montgomery. Certainly not Elizabeth.”
I looked around at the other bodies, noticed some of the other sheets disturbed, a few drops of congealed blood on the floor. This clearly wasn’t the first time she’d come down here with the scalpel and an anatomy book. And there was only one reason why she’d do something so gruesome: she was trying to teach herself basic surgery by practicing on the vagrants’ bodies. All in an effort to bring Edward back.
“Lucy, you can’t mutilate strangers, even if they’re dead!” I hissed, low and frantic. “Have you gone mad?”
“It’s the only way!” she pleaded. “You refused to help me, and Elizabeth has that oath of hers, and I know Montgomery wouldn’t do it. I don’t understand how you all can just let Edward’s body rest down here, knowing there’s a cure. He’s dead now—there are no more hurdles. No questions of morality. We could bring him back, Juliet.”