This Monstrous Thing(44)

“Yes.”

She smirked. “It’s his favorite line. He uses it at the start of every term. Dr. Geisler is . . .” She paused, fingers working at the frayed cuff of her sleeve. “Not a good man. I can’t imagine that after you showed him how to bring people back from the dead he’d have much more need for you. Or your brother, who, if reports are to be believed, isn’t very good either. Though I’m not sure about you yet.”

“What about me?”

“Are you good, or are you clever?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. I’d spent so long living with this monstrous thing I’d done that I didn’t feel either anymore. “Thank you,” I said instead of answering, “for telling me.”

“About my accident?”

“About Geisler. And yes, that too.”

She slid her hands into her sleeves and folded them across her stomach. “I don’t know much about you, but I know about the Shadow Boys, and I’m assuming you live in a way that makes secrets and lies as necessary as breathing. I think people need to be trusted every now and then with something sacred of someone else’s just to understand that not everyone will turn on you.”

I knew she had said it to be kind, but guilt wriggled inside me for not telling her the truth about Oliver. I stood up and offered her my hand, careful when I pulled her up not to strain her mechanical circuit. “We should go in. I think it’s nearly morning.”

She retrieved her shirt from the floor, then turned her back to me as she dropped her coat and pulled it on. “You go on. I sleep out here.”

“What? He’s got that whole big house and he doesn’t even give you somewhere to sleep?”

“He thinks it’s as much as I deserve.”

“It’s bleeding cold out here.”

She shrugged. “I’ve got a coat.”

“Come inside with me. You can sleep in my room, then sneak out in the morning before we go.”

“What a sound plan, Mr. Finch.”

“So let’s sleep in the sitting room then. I’ll stay with you. If Geisler finds us, say we were talking and fell asleep.”

“What about the automatons?”

“They don’t come in my room—more reason to stay up there. Come on, I’ll be thinking about you all night if you don’t.” She paired a cocked eyebrow with her usual smirk, and I felt myself go scarlet. “I’ll be worried,” I corrected. “Please. I’ll stay out here if you don’t come in.”

She stared at me for a moment, but I knew before she spoke what her answer would be.

“Fine,” she said, and pulled on her coat.

As we walked back to the house, I reached out and took her hand. Her fingers were cold and chapped—I knew mine were too—but the feeling of her skin warmed me. I hadn’t had anyone to hold on to in a long time, no one close enough to touch, and it felt better than I expected. I held on tight, and she held on right back.

Once inside, we made for the sitting room, but one of the automatons was standing in front of the fire and looked as though it had no intention of moving anytime soon. “Upstairs,” I mouthed at Clémence. She shook her head and gestured to go back the way we’d come, but I dragged her up after me into my bedroom and shut the door behind us.

The fire was dying, and it took another log and some coaxing from the poker until it consented to burn properly again. When I turned from the hearth, Clémence was standing by my bed, trailing her fingers along the covers.

She caught my eye and smiled sheepishly. “Is it shallow to say I miss living well?”

“I don’t think it’s shallow. I think it’s human.” I glanced around the room, which suddenly felt very small, with the two of us and that massive bed in between. “You can have the bed, if you like.”

“And what about you?”

“I can curl up at the end, I suppose.”

“Not a chance.” She pulled back the covers. “Come get in with me.”

My stomach gave an odd lurch. “I can’t do that.”

“We don’t have to do anything,” she said with a sly smile that made me blush to my bones. “We’re just keeping each other warm. Come on, this was your idea.”

And I couldn’t argue with that.

Neither of us had nightclothes, so we just took off our shoes and crawled under the covers. I tried to keep a chaste distance from Clémence, but she wiggled up next to me, her forehead buried in my neck, so close that I could feel her heartbeat like it was inside me, thumping in tandem with mine.

Lying there beside her, thawing from the cold with her body warm against mine, was somehow both the most gentlemanly and most ungentlemanly thing I had ever done. My father would have had a fit if he’d known. Mary Godwin, on the other hand, with all her modern sensibilities, would have applauded. She would have wanted to be that girl, I thought. The girl I slept beside but didn’t sleep with.

We talked for a while as the fire faded back into cinders. Clémence was delighted to learn that I had picked up my French in Paris, not, as she said, at some fancy Scottish boarding school. I told her that Scotland wasn’t really the land of posh boarding schools. She laughed, and, in spite of everything, I smiled.

“Are you coming to Geneva with us?” I asked her.