Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match(2)

His smile turned evil. “Quiet, Jelly, or I’ll send you to an orphan house.”

“I’m twenty-four. They’ll never take me.” What would their parents have thought of these late-night activities?

Helsaw provided the siblings with a lantern each and heaved a sigh. “Bickering already. It’s a long wait tonight, lads,” he told the growing queue of medical students. They muttered and lit their pipes.

Inside, Angelika addressed her brother again. “I am only doing this to put my name in medical history, alongside yours.”

“You are so terribly noble,” Victor scoffed, picking up a corpse’s arm to bend and straighten it. “You help me because you’re bored out of your wits.”

“You can’t do this without me, and you know it.” She waited for his nod. “I wish we were traveling again.”

Victor gave her a narrowed glance. “Give up. I hate living out of luggage, with no laboratory. When Lizzie arrives, I’m home forever.”

“Forever?” Angelika picked up a dead man’s cold hand, and interlaced her fingers with his. Then, she rotated the wrist joint. She might be living without love, forever? She’d be a white-haired old lady, still living as her brother’s ward? “If you had done your duty as older brother and guardian, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

Victor replied, “I’ve introduced you to every unmarried man I’ve ever met. I’ve struck up conversations in theaters with men you thought were your destiny. I’ve sat through fortune-teller visits. I’ve delivered anonymous love notes and objected at a wedding. I once helped you perform a spell under the full moon. It was absolutely unscientific, but I did it.”

He did sound very close to tearing his hair out.

Angelika forged on. “My point is, you haven’t helped me for a long while. The moment you saw Lizzie, you forgot about my goals. I think you forgot how to spell your own name.”

“This, from a girl whose name is spelled with a k instead of a c. Here’s a little suggestion for you,” Victor said as he pressed around on a man’s rib cage. “Men do not like being asked questions from a preprepared list. My friend from school, Joseph, said meeting you was like being interviewed for the position of junior footman.”

“You praise my organization in the laboratory.” Oh, dear. Victor had a point. Somewhere around the questions about favorite color and happiest childhood memory, men abruptly spoke of the late hour and the long road home. “Sometimes, I had the length of a cup of tea to make my choice. I need to know everything about a man, as quickly as possible.”

Bending a corpse’s knee up toward the ceiling, Victor replied, “For matters of the heart, you must go by feeling and instinct. Lizzie taught me that.”

He had the smug glow of new love, and it sparked Angelika’s temper.

“I would take this advice if I had anyone left to meet. I once had so many suitors, they were in a queue like that.” Angelika nodded toward the doorway, where the medical students stood smoking. “I thought I had forever to find true love, the kind Mama and Papa had.”

“You do have forever. There’s no rush.”

“Spoken as a man. I want to travel. I want my own house. Especially as you are soon to be married, and you’ll both want Blackthorne Manor all to yourselves. I’m quite sure I would be a bother.”

“You would. I am hereby reinvested in your marriage project.” Victor looked around the dark room. “Well? Does anybody here wish to belong to a selfish young lady who will keep you as a handsome pet and will refuse to compromise on anything? Make yourself known if you are indeed that fool.”

There was a long, dead silence.

Angelika glared at him. “Is that how you would have introduced me at the military academy ball?”

“Are you still angry about that? It was weeks ago.”

“Yes, I am angry that my brother refused to take me somewhere to dance with soldiers and to meet the new commander.” She put her hand on her hip. “It’s my fault I’m considered odd, and superior, and a bit witchy. It’s my fault I’m unmarried. But it’s your fault, too.”

Victor ran a hand through his famous honey-red hair; the same color as hers. “I accept that I could do more,” he conceded. “But I draw the line at country dances.”

“Lizzie will want to go to them.” Her brother’s betrothed was currently packing her belongings, in preparation for becoming Mrs. Frankenstein as soon as possible.

Victor smiled at the mention of Lizzie’s name. “Only she could drag me to one. Be proactive. Pick a chap here tonight, and if he survives, you can bring him tea trays in bed, wearing your prettiest gowns.”

“Oh, certainly, much less effort than attending a dance.” She held it in as long as she could, but then cackled at the absurdity. “All right, husband, please volunteer. I promise you do not have to tell me a single thing about yourself.”

Victor was laughing, too, and gagging, in the unventilated back corner of the room. “Other women order lace and hat trimmings. My dear sister is tailoring a suitor, right down to his cock.”

“I hate you, Victor. So very much.”

Sincerely, he replied, “I love you, too.”

Angelika found a corpse she had not checked. Her pulse throbbed in her throat, and Victor’s teasing faded into the background.