This Monstrous Thing(39)
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“And did you tell him about your almost-husband?” She looked away, which was answer enough. My hands curled into fists. “God.”
“I only told him last week, because he saw Percy and me at the market. Please don’t be angry with him, I asked him not to say anything to you.”
“I am angry with him,” I replied. “And I’m angry with you. You told me you were traveling with friends. What the hell have you been doing hanging around with two boys all summer when you’ve got an intended? God’s wounds, Mary, why did you lie to me?”
“Because I didn’t think you’d want to be around me anymore once you knew,” she cried. “Everyone back home was so cruel about us traveling together without being married. I hoped things would be better here, but it’s even worse. Percy and his friends have a reputation for being sordid, so everyone seems to think that’s permission for them to make our lives their conversation. The papers run vulgar stories about us every week. People steal our underthings off our washing lines. Tourists rent telescopes so they can stare into our bedroom windows from across the shore, did you know that?”
“Stop it,” I said. “Just stop, that doesn’t matter. That doesn’t explain why you lied to me.”
“Then how’s this: when I met you, you didn’t have a clue who they were, or who I was, and I saw a chance to be free of that and I took it.”
The moon had risen in earnest now, and in its light, I could see her clearly across the beach from me: arms crossed, chin raised, Mistress Mary, quite contrary, daring me to blame her for what she’d done. “Mary, I have told you everything about me. Things I’ve never told anyone before. Secrets that could get me killed. So why couldn’t you tell me that you were engaged?”
We stared hard at each other for a long moment, and I silently willed her to say something that would take us back to just before I kissed her, some reason to go back to trusting her without question and adoring her just as blindly. But when she finally spoke, all she said was, “I’m sorry.”
I snatched up my boots without putting them on and stalked off, sand caving under my feet. I wanted to say something more, wanted to think of something mean to throw back in her face. Oliver would have had something to say. He always did. But all I could do was walk away, trailing broken pieces behind me.
The flat was dark when I got home. I stumbled through the kitchen and pushed back the quilt strung up to divide our corner from the rest of the room. Oliver was lying on his pallet, sucking on his unlit pipe while he read by the light of a candle stub. He looked up when my shadow fell across him. “Where’ve you been?”
“Out,” I replied, already stripping off my clothes.
“You’re all wet.”
“No shit.” I flung myself down on my pallet so that my face was away from him. I was too hot for blankets and too exhausted to change.
From behind me, Oliver asked, “What’s wrong?”
I thought about confronting him. About rolling over and letting him have all my anger, because how could he act like Ingolstadt didn’t matter, how could he say Geisler’s work was wicked, how could he not tell me that Mary was married?
But instead I packed it up tight and deep inside me and said, “Nothing.”
“Are you angry at me?”
“No. I’m tired.”
There was a pause; then he said, “All right,” and a moment later the candle went out.
And that was the last real conversation we ever had.
By nightfall, the storm had settled into a whisper. Snowflakes wafted across the yard and a faint sliver of moon peered out from between the feathery clouds. Over supper, Geisler announced we’d be leaving the next morning.
I should have been ecstatic, with the promise of the return to Geneva to fetch Oliver, track down my parents, and end the nightmare of the last two years, but it felt as though a splinter had lodged inside me, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was doing something wrong. I kept thinking about the list I’d found in Geisler’s office, and the other pieces of this strange puzzle that I just couldn’t quite make fit together in my head.
Geisler disappeared after supper, muttering something about orders to be filled, and Clémence went with him. This left me alone with that nagging, deep and persistent like an itch in my lungs. I tried to press on with Frankenstein, but I kept losing the thought at the end of every line, and found myself reading paragraphs over and over without getting anything from them. I finally gave up and turned in early, but I lay in bed for hours, not even dozing, staring at the window with my eyes wide open.
The moon was high when I decided if I couldn’t sleep, I was going to work on something. I needed clockwork, and I needed it badly enough that I was willing to risk both Geisler and the automatons to go back to the workshop and finish reassembling the clocks I had torn apart.
I dressed in the dark, not bothering with a waistcoat and instead throwing on my coat over my shirt and braces. I remembered the empty fireplace in the workshop last time I had visited, and stuck a matchbox in my pocket for good measure. I’d have candles, if nothing else.
I padded softly through the house, peering around every corner like a burglar to make certain the automatons weren’t about. The keys to the workshop were hanging beside the back door, and I eased them off the hook with my breath held, hoping they wouldn’t rattle. The keys didn’t betray me, but the kitchen door did—it creaked when I opened it. I stood still for a moment, certain I heard ticking machinery coming my way from the hall, then dashed out into the night. The snow between the house and the workshop was well trodden enough that my footprints would go unnoticed.