The Final Descent (The Monstrumologist #4)(3)

“Not any longer.” He smiled wanly. “But I was a poet once, as you may recall. Do you know the difference between science and art, Will?”

“I am not as experienced as you in either,” I responded. “But my sense is you cannot reduce love to a biological necessity. It cheapens the one and demeans the other.”

“Love, did you say?” He seemed astonished.

“I am speaking in the abstract. I do not love Lilly Bates.”

“Well, it would be rather extraordinary if you did.”

Turning, turning, under the glittering chandeliers. He isn’t a bad dancer, her partner. He does not watch his own feet; his eyes are upon her upturned face; and her face follows the turn of her bare shoulders as he spins her lightly over the floor.

Dear Will, I pray this finds you well.

“Why?” I asked the monstrumologist. “And what business is it of yours?”

With dark eyes glittering: “As long as you are in my care, it is entirely my business. You must trust me in this. There is no light at the end of that particular tunnel, Will Henry.”

I stared back at him for a long moment, and then snorted, and the edge of the glass was cold against my bottom lip. “You would be the first to tell me not to take lessons from failure.”

He stiffened and replied, “I did not fail in love. Love failed in me.”

What nonsense! I thought. Typical Warthropian gibberish posing as profundity. There were times when smashing my fist into his face was a temptation nearly impossible to resist. I set down my glass and straightened my cravat and ran my palm over my splendidly gelled hair, while across the room one who danced far better than I spun her across the floor: black jacket, purple dress. Loud music poorly played, the coerced laughter from boring men, and white linen stained with the drippings of slaughtered beasts.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I am not going anywhere,” I answered, and launched myself into the breach, getting knocked about like a bit of flotsam in the churning tide, then tapping him on his broad shoulder, and across the hall Warthrop checked his watch again. Her partner turned about, and his thin lips drew back from his crooked yellow teeth.

“Next song, chum,” he said in a slickly refined English accent. Lilly said nothing, but her startling blue eyes danced more merrily than she.

Dearest Will, Please forgive me for not writing more often.

“You’ve hogged her enough, I think,” I said. Then a direct appeal to her: “Hello, Lilly. Spare a single dance for an old friend?”

“Don’t you see she’d rather with someone who actually can? Why don’t you crack open another oyster and leave the dancing to real gentlemen?”

“Quite so.” I smiled. And then I smashed my right forearm into his Adam’s apple. He dropped straight down, clutching his throat. I finished the job with a quick downward jab to his temple. Hit a man hard enough in that spot and you can kill him. He crumpled into a ball at my feet. He might have been dead; I did not know or care. I seized Lilly’s wrist as all around us the fists began to fly.

“This way!” I whispered in her ear. I shoved through the throng, dragging her behind me, toward the buffet tables, where I spied a red-faced Warthrop stamping his foot in frustration. It was not quite a quarter past ten. He had lost again. A chair sailed across the room; a man bellowed, “Dear God, I think you’ve broken it!” over the din; and the music broke apart into a confusion of discordant shrieks, like a vase shattering; and then we were out the side door into the narrow alley, where a trash fire burned in a barrel: gold light, black smoke, and the smell of lavender as she struck me across the cheek.

“Idiot.”

“I am your deliverer,” I corrected her, trying out my most rakish grin.

“From what?”

“Mediocrity.”

“Samuel happens to be a very good dancer.”

“Samuel? Even his name is banal.”

“Not like the extraordinarily exotic William.”

Her cheeks were flushed, her breath high in her chest. She tried to push past me; I didn’t let her.

“Where are you going?” I asked. “It’s positively reckless going back in there. If you’re not struck by a serving platter, the police will be here soon to clear the place out. You don’t want to be arrested, do you? Let’s go for a drive.”

I wrapped my fingers around her elbow; she pulled away easily. My mistake: I should have used my right hand.

“Why did you hit him?” she demanded.

“I was defending your honor.”

“Whose honor?”

“All right, my honor, but he really should have yielded. It’s bad form.”

In spite of herself she laughed, and the sound was like coins tossed upon a silver tray, and that at least had not changed.

I was urging her toward the mouth of the alley. The cobblestones were slick from an early afternoon rain, and the night had turned cold. Her arms were bare, so I shrugged out of my jacket and dropped it over her shoulders.

“First you’re a brute; then you’re a gentleman,” she said.

“I am the evolution of man in microcosm.”

I hailed a cab, gave the driver the address, and slid into the seat beside her. The black jacket went well with her purple gown, I thought. Her face flickered in and out of shadow as we rattled past the streetlamps.