The Daughter of Doctor Moreau(55)
A few glasses later, the night shrouded his room. He lit a candle and turned Isidro’s letter between his hands, examining the envelope. It would take a small movement of his hand to burn it and toss the ashes out the window.
Instead, he stuffed the letter in his pocket and stumbled out of his room. The house was quiet and he moved like a somnambulist, before stopping in front of Carlota’s door. He ran a hand through his hair and tried to straighten himself up. His clothes were rumpled, and he knew he reeked of aguardiente. Again.
He raised a hand to knock. He wanted to show her Isidro’s letter and to explain what the man had said. But as he rested a palm against the door he realized he couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t believe him, and even if she did, he was afraid he’d babble inanities.
He was drunk and stupid and if she opened the door he’d take her face between his hands and kiss her. First on the mouth, then on that long neck that was laid tantalizingly bare when her hair was plaited. He’d beg her not to marry that boy, beg her and be lost.
And she’d say no, he was sure of it.
She’d say no, slam the door on his face, and everything would be ruined. Moreau would rid himself of Montgomery, and Carlota would be disgusted.
Moreau had said not to trouble his daughter.
He wouldn’t.
Montgomery turned around and stumbled back to his room instead.
Chapter 17
Carlota
The morning after her episode in the library, Carlota went to the laboratory.
Her father had been correct. She was fine. Her illness had been brief and lifted with the dawn. Nevertheless, she felt strange. That jagged, broken edge she feared grew under her flesh remained. She did not know what it meant, this baffling sensation that something was amiss, something was different, but she did not like it.
After a quick cup of coffee, she’d washed her face, changed into a blue tea gown, and left her room. Carlota looked around the antechamber, flipping through the many books and journals stacked on the shelves. Her father’s sketches of wild animals were plentiful. There was a drawing showing the head of a dead rabbit from above. The skull had been removed and the position of the nerves neatly indicated. A drawing of a dog revealed its spinal cord.
Jaguars appeared in her father’s sketches often. Sometimes they did not seem like scientific studies, but more artistic pursuits. She admired the animal’s fangs and remembered that a jaguar had almost torn Montgomery’s arm to shreds, leaving behind a net of rugged scars.
But her father’s papers did not have any information on his medical formulas, despite all the drawings.
Carlota went from the antechamber into the lab space and eyed one cabinet that her father kept locked. Behind the glass doors she spied more leather-bound journals. She wondered if that was where he kept his notes on chemical matters. She didn’t have a key to it, though.
She had spent the whole of the morning in the laboratory and uncovered nothing useful. However, there was much to go through. Her cursory explorations were clearly insufficient, and she was now afraid that, even if she should find the notes she needed, she’d be unable to interpret the information. Yes, she understood certain basics of her father’s laboratory, she knew to distill sulfuric acid and alcohol to create ether, could name the bones in the human body and could insert a hypodermic needle with remarkable ease, but all this, she realized, amounted to little.
When she left the laboratory Carlota was crestfallen, though she had a thought that perhaps Montgomery could tell her if the notes she wanted were indeed in that glass cabinet or whether she should focus on a different section of the laboratory. Montgomery, however, was not in his room.
She searched for him throughout the rest of the house. As she ventured into the sitting room she spotted Eduardo, who was idly turning the pages of a book. When he saw her, he immediately stood up and smiled at Carlota.
“Miss Moreau. It’s such a pleasure to see you up and about. Are you feeling better?” he asked and pressed a kiss upon her hand. “Your father said you were taken ill.”
“I’m well. It was nothing. How are you?”
“A tad restless, to be honest with you,” he said. “Look, I’ve found your old friend: Sir Walter Scott.”
“You’re reading Ivanhoe! But I believed you didn’t like it?”
“?‘I will tear this folly from my heart, though every fibre bleed as I rend it away!’?” he declaimed, which pleased her. Montgomery and her father thought little of her adventure novels, and she took Eduardo’s knowledge of the book to be a good omen. If he should enjoy the same literature she relished, she thought it must be indicative of a kindred spirit, perhaps of a good match. “I’ve read him, yes. It’s not bad, but the day is hot. It makes it hard to turn the pages when you’re sweating,” he concluded, tossing the book on the chair he’d been occupying. “I was thinking of going back to that cenote you showed us. Do you want to come with me?”
“Mr. Laughton is not around to accompany us.”
“I’d rather not have him with us. If I can be perfectly honest, he makes a horrid chaperone.”
The clock ticked upon the mantelpiece. A dozen ticks and a dozen beats of her heart.
“I suppose I could walk with you part of the way,” she offered. She didn’t really want Montgomery with them, and God knew where he was hiding. She feared he’d cause another scene. Montgomery and Eduardo didn’t mix well.