Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match(40)
Angelika thought with despair that Christopher was very, very, very handsome.
More than his outstanding personal presentation, he was fun, masculine, and had been warm to the barkeeper and kind to a beggar. He had an outdoorsy sun-kissed glow, nice teeth, and a smile that should make her pulse respond. He was technically ideal. Where had he been even a month ago? It suddenly felt absolutely imperative to guard and protect and fight for what she felt for Will, lest Christopher’s thighs weaken her resolve.
“May I ask a somewhat personal question?” Christopher carefully touched the back of her hand with his riding crop to get her attention. “Why did you cry when you held Clara’s baby?”
She asked his legs, “Did I?”
Gently: “You did.”
Angelika’s memory of the moment was being shocked that a baby could be so heavy. The child defied physics. He was like a wet sandbag on her forearm. Clara had shown her how to hold him, and as she and Christopher chatted by the fire—something about Clara’s cottage and how much time was left—Angelika absented herself to stare into the baby’s eyes for an age.
Life and possibility glowed in little Edwin. His skin was perfect and had a smell she liked. His sticky starfish hand pulled her hair. She found herself bobbing from one knee to the other, and when Clara proclaimed her a “natural,” it deeply flattered her, and embarrassed her speechless.
Her hollow insides ached.
It was that thing that Victor was always banging on about: natural science. A lever had been pulled. It was time. There was nothing connected to Will, or her hopes for a future with him, in this memory—it was just the feel of her heavy redheaded friend in her arms.
She needed to answer Christopher now. “I’d never held a baby before.” And she hadn’t wanted to hand him back. In fact, she had already planned in her mind the tartan cloak she would have made as a gift for him, of the softest lambs-wool. Perhaps a matching Scottish bonnet, topped with a pom-pom—wouldn’t that look sweet, set upon his head? Angelika thought about the endless outfits a baby would need for the ever-changing seasons, just extravagant spoiling, for years on end. The finest fabrics and the loveliest colors. Corduroy dungarees with a patch pocket on the chest, in russet tones for autumn—
Cutting into the daydream, Christopher asked, “Do you wish for your own child?”
Angelika contemplated kicking Percy into a gallop in lieu of a reply. But she found herself saying instead, “I think I’ve just realized that I should absolutely love one. But I’ve been a bit disorganized on that front,” she reminded him.
But he did not smile, and confided in return, “I have long given up on starting a family. I am rotated to a new post every two years to train recruits. It’s hard to find someone adventurous who would want to start over in a new town, possibly abroad, again and again. I’m told I am intimidatingly well-ironed, which people mistake for a lack of humor. Also, I am thirty-seven.” He admitted his age as though he were an elderly man.
“You don’t look too old to me.”
“Neither do you.”
They regarded each other with curiosity. Then Christopher’s eyebrow raised and they both howled with inexplicable drunk laughter, causing the horses to shy. When they finally arrived at the front stairs of Blackthorne Manor, the first thing Angelika noticed was that the house had had a haircut.
“Something’s been happening out here,” she said, squinting at the visible porch railings. There were leaves on the ground and some sacks filled with greenery. “I think someone’s been gardening.” She felt conscious of the old house’s appearance. “It was so grand, once upon a time. These days, it just looks miserable.”
Christopher was charitable. “It looks grand to me.”
“Not in daylight.” It was a black brick gothic mansion, three stories, plus basement and attic. It had arched windows, and the thick glass panes shone iridescent, like soap bubbles. Now that the choke hold of ivy and creeping roses had been loosened, the gargoyles might be visible again.
“Must be twenty-five rooms, at least,” Christopher said. He had been counting windows and doing his sums.
“And every one of them is stacked up to the ceiling in curios and inventions. Believe me when I say I barely have enough room to store a new hatbox. The barn to that side has been converted into Victor’s laboratory. Stables, orchard, and so on.” She waved in the direction of the dark. “The forest is the stuff of nightmares. Who has been working out here?” she asked herself again. “The ground is covered in petals.”
The next odd thing happened when a teenage lad appeared from the side of the house and grasped her reins as she dismounted. “I’m your new stablehand, Jacob. How do you do, Miss Frankenstein?” His voice was thin from nerves.
She shook his hand firmly. “Hello. Who hired you?” Angelika could not imagine Victor being bothered. He usually left the horses free to roam.
“Sir Black did. Is this Percy?” The lad produced a carrot from his pocket. He barely spared Angelika another glance.
She laughed at his eagerness to be acquainted with his charge. “Yes, this is Percy. He is purebred Arabian. He was brought here from Persia by ship as a colt.”
As she said it, she heard it: the casual brag, and the privilege she had. Poor Percy; how frightening the journey must have been. He had suffered in order to be a birthday gift for a spoiled girl? She was wicked. She ran a hand down the animal’s gleaming neck to say, I’m sorry, so sorry. “I have had him half my life, and he is precious to me. You must be kind to him. I’m sure you’ll do a fine job.”