Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match(19)
Angelika wrenched open her bedroom door. “You wish to be an apple in the orchard, left to rot?”
Will looked down at her body, and his eyes almost fell out of his head.
Chapter Six
She pointed a finger into his chest.
“My crime, in addition to body-snatching, is that I’m lonely. I’m aging by the day. Twenty-four, never kissed, never touched. I cannot travel without my brother, and unless the destination has a fully stocked laboratory, he is not interested. I have money I can’t seem to spend because I am marooned on a hillside. I am a woman.” She raised her voice. “And a woman needs certain things, even if society tells her she should not.”
“I . . .” was all Will could reply to her negligee.
“Do you know what men call me in the tavern? My nickname that not even Victor knows?” Angelika paused and wondered if he might use it against her.
“You can confess it to me,” Will said. “I will keep your secret safe.”
“The barren-ness. A play on baroness. Because I am wealthy and barren, I suppose? But how could anyone know that? For all we know, I am infinitely fertile, given the proper treatment.”
Will was having a personal malfunction. “I . . .”
“Apart from that night we slept together, I have never lain with a man. Now if you’ll pardon me, sir, I’m going to lie on my bed and sulk. Unless you’d care to join me. My final offer to you, before I shrivel up and die from embarrassment.”
His entire body shivered. He took a step toward her. The pink of his tongue was obscene, licking at the corner of his mouth.
Now he was blinking, realizing, and lanced through the heel by reality. “I will be forced to belong to you. My pride will not allow me to be kept like a stray dog. Or worse, a mutt, but treated as a pedigree poodle. I am a man, and I am someone. I just have to find out who that is.”
Angelika thought that whoever he was, he had remarkable principles.
“You could be Will Frankenstein, richer than your wildest dreams. More exhausted from the previous night than you ever thought possible.”
“But I am not a Frankenstein. You can’t just open your home to a stranger and offer him everything like this. What if I am a bad person? A dangerous one?”
“You are not.”
“We don’t know when my true nature will reveal itself. I must find the life I left behind. Until I know who I really am, I can make no choices for my future. You will not distract me with your beauty, or how silk lays on your body.” He closed his eyes and swallowed. He appeared tormented. “You will not distract me with your perfume in every room of the house, or how you bounce up and down stairs.”
“It does sound like I am rather distracting.”
He saw her smile and turned dour. “I am quite resolved.” He turned on his heel, walked across the hall, and shut his door, audibly locking it. Was he anticipating she might slink in, during the night, as Mary had directed?
Her cheeks burned. “You didn’t need to lock it!”
A door opened, but not the one in front of her.
“You two, shut up,” Victor barked from his end of the hall. “Either bed each other or do not speak. Will, we are going to the morgue tomorrow night to sort this mess out, and maybe I will have some peace.”
“And maybe I’ll collect myself a new husband while I’m there,” Angelika snapped back. Neither man replied. Louder she hollered, “Mary, fetch hot water. I am having a long, distracting, and very naked bath, with my door unlocked.”
“Ugh.” Victor recoiled in horror and slammed his door harder than he ever had before.
*
“You both will have to go to the morgue without me tonight,” Victor said as he fastened his cloak with one hand, the other hand gripping the reins under the chin of his evil gray mare. “I’m sorry, but this sighting is too promising. Athena, stop prancing. Give me a leg up, Will.”
Word had come via messenger that a seven-foot man with a waxy pallor was spotted several parishes west, stealing cabbages.
“I will be two days, possibly three,” Victor said on a grunt as Will legged him up onto the horse. “Take care of my sister. The morgue is dangerous, but it’s not the dead ones you’ll have to worry about.”
“He can go alone,” Angelika said spitefully. “He has declared he has no need of me.”
“You must go, too, Jelly,” Victor said, circling his mount around them. “He has no proof of identity until I find my lost achievement. If Will gets into trouble, only you with your honorable Frankenstein name can keep him safe. There’s been news of thieves and highwaymen. Every stranger will be under scrutiny by the night watch.”
“Fine, I will accompany him,” Angelika said. “Even though he wishes to be a stranger.”
“So, in summary, I wish for you to look after each other,” Victor advised them both, but his eyes were on Will. “You are in charge of protecting the house in my absence.” Athena spun in rearing pirouettes, skittering gravel on their shoes.
Will was uncomfortable. “How could you let me have that role?” He looked back at the house, perhaps noticing its faded grandeur for the first time.
“Because my sister trusts you.” And with that, Victor allowed some rein and galloped down the wide carriageway, arched over by yew trees. He called back, “My sister created you, and that counts for something, brother.”