The Daughter of Doctor Moreau(93)

“I am tired. We’ll rest together.”

“I don’t want you,” she whispered.

He laid her down and stretched out next to her. It was a parody of the night they’d spent together. They’d lain like that, slept until it was almost morning and he’d sneaked out of her room. But she’d loved him, then, and now she dreaded him. Now he caged her with his arms and forced her to look at him.

“You’ll want me again, one day.”

“I will not. You ruined it all. I’ll run away.”

“And leave your poor father behind? What about your friends? We are going to find them, you know.”

She hit his temple, where Montgomery had injured him, with the palm of her hand. He hissed in pain and squeezed her chin with one hand.

“Don’t disrespect me,” he said, his voice low. “I can make life difficult for you. Or it can be simple and good.”

When Carlota said nothing he simply repositioned her so that her back was to him. He wrapped an arm around her waist. It felt like a chain of iron holding her tight. “Don’t you want to go to Vista Hermosa with me?” he asked, whispering in her ear, iron turning to silk, and yet there remained that undertone of sweet savagery to his words. “Don’t you want to ride a calesa and wear emeralds and pearls around your neck? I told you, I fell in love with you the moment I saw you. I won’t let you go. I won’t hurt you.”

He was running a hand through her hair, and she heard him breathing in slowly. After a while, she thought he’d fallen asleep, the whole of the day hitting him hard. But his grip didn’t slacken on her. He clutched her tight, like a greedy child that holds on to a favorite toy.

She supposed that’s what she was to him: merely a doll to be carried around. Life with him would be, as he said, simple and good as long as she agreed with everything he said. And then, if she didn’t, his fingers would dig too tightly into her skin, his words would scrape low and dangerous against her ear.

She had the furious desire to pull his fingers into her mouth and bite them off. Her skin was like a burning coal.

A loud scream made both of them jump up.

“What was that?” she asked.

Eduardo pushed himself out of the bed and rushed to the door, pausing to snatch his revolver up. He fetched the key.

“Wait,” she said, running behind him, but before she could reach him he was closing the door behind him and locking it from the outside. She slammed her palms against it.





Chapter 30


    Montgomery


By the time they reached Yaxaktun and tied their horse to the trees by the Moorish arches, night had fallen and the house was a collage of shadows. He stared at the stout front door. He had no experience with picking locks, and the portón would not yield to brute force. Montgomery was still considering their quandary when he realized Lupe had tied her rifle to her back with her rebozo and had begun to scale the doors of the house.

He watched in awe as she moved as quick as a lizard, her nails digging into the wood, and disappeared over the door. Two minutes later she was opening the portón to let him in.

“I didn’t realize you could do that,” he said.

“It’s not hard,” she replied with a shrug.

Montgomery walked at the ready with his rifle. The light from the doctor’s room spilled dimly into the courtyard. The rest of the house was dark. He had counted the number of men who had stayed behind with Isidro. There were four of them in addition to Eduardo’s cousin. Hernando and Eduardo Lizalde had not been among the fallen, so he had to assume they might have returned to Yaxaktun. That meant there were at least seven men inside the house.

The windows at Yaxaktun had decorative iron grilles, and the auxiliary patio doors tended to be of the same sturdy black wood as the one used at the front of the hacienda, but Moreau’s room and the sitting room had French doors with glass, so he moved toward the sitting room and smashed one of the panes with the butt of his rifle, then reached in through the broken window and flung the door open.

There were many rooms in the house, and he couldn’t be sure where the men or Carlota would be holing up. If they had half a brain they would be at the ready, weapons within easy reach.

“You see if she’s in her bedroom and I’ll check on the doctor. I’ll grab him and haul him out,” Montgomery told Lupe in a whisper. “We’ll meet you by the horses. Be careful, rifle against the shoulder, as I told you. Otherwise it’ll kick.”

“It’s just pulling a trigger,” Lupe whispered back, scuttling quickly away.

Montgomery headed down the hallway leading to the doctor’s room with steady steps. When he reached the door he held his breath for a moment and stepped in quickly. Moreau lay on the bed, and next to him there was a man in a chair.

The man turned toward Montgomery and immediately clasped his pistol. Montgomery shot first, killing the man where he sat. Then he turned to Moreau, who was sitting up, hands trembling and staring at him with wide eyes. Montgomery looked around the room, but Carlota was nowhere to be found.

“Where is she?”

The doctor swallowed, reaching for his night table. “I don’t know, they— Laughton! Behind you!”

He heard the French doors swing open, and before he could react there came a bang and he felt the pain of a bullet hitting his arm. He turned around, threw himself to the ground, onto his stomach. A shadow drifted by the window.