“I apologize for that, sir,” Montgomery said. “I proposed the moment I returned to London. I’m afraid in my haste Juliet’s opinion was the only one I could think of.”
“Is this why you’ve been so cagey and slipping away?” Elizabeth said suddenly, twisting her head at me so that she nearly spilled over the tea. Equal amounts admonishment and relief mixed in her voice. She had been so worried the night I’d climbed through the kitchen window. To know I was just meeting a secret fiancé must have come as a considerable relief.
“Yes,” I lied. Now would have been the time to give Montgomery an adoring look, or playfully apologize for worrying them, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Acting the part of Montgomery’s sweetheart now, when I’d only just seen him again and still had the feel of Edward on my skin, was a role I wasn’t ready to play.
It didn’t seem to matter. The others took my stiff reaction as nothing more than lingering tension from the masquerade, perhaps.
“And what are your intentions, Mr. James?” the professor asked.
“I have some medical skill. I’d like to apprentice myself to a doctor, perhaps in a rural village, and have Juliet join me there as my wife.”
I glanced at him, wondering if this was the truth, or just some story to appease the professor. He was normally so painfully easy to read, and yet none of his usual tells were showing, which left me feeling deeply curious and even a little suspicious. He’d broken my heart once; I wouldn’t give it so easily to him again.
He’s keeping secrets from you, Edward had said.
Montgomery glanced at me and smiled.
The cuckoo clock chimed that another hour had passed, and Elizabeth glanced at the professor’s drooping eyelids. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. James, but you understand our shock at this news. I think we’d all like more sleep, and tomorrow you can explain more.”
The professor roused himself. “Yes, and in the meantime, you and your companion—if he wakes from that chair—may sleep in the guest room on the third floor.”
His words had an obvious edge to them, as his pointed stare went between the two of us. Engaged we might be, but not married yet. There would be at least one floor separating us until that day.
We bid him and Elizabeth good night. She paused at my bedroom door, a candle in hand, as the others continued upstairs.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” she whispered.
“I wasn’t certain you would approve of his former position, nor his association with my father.”
“We were all associated with your father, Juliet. By that logic each of us is guilty.”
I looked at my hands and nodded.
“Do you love him?” she asked.
I felt that pressure to play the part again. And yet as I struggled to sort out my feelings and provide Elizabeth with a satisfactory answer, I found it wasn’t that easy.
“He’s a good man,” I said.
I left out the hundreds of reasons why love between Montgomery and me wasn’t simple. How he’d abandoned me, and had helped my father, and how I’d made love with another man. I could still feel the tangle of all those things choking me like summer vines.
She gave me a somewhat pitying smile. Elizabeth had never married, and I’d overheard her telling the professor that she though marriage was a trap meant to keep women in the bedroom and kitchen. If she pitied me that fate, she didn’t know me very well. I couldn’t be a sweet, obedient wife if I’d wanted to.
She left, and without her presence the room took on a cavernous, lonely feel. I changed out of the stiff silk ball gown with the mud on the hem into a shift. I closed my eyes and listened for the sounds of the house settling. Everything was silent save the wind pushing at the windows.
I pulled on my house slippers and padded silently to the door. Montgomery’s room was on the same floor as the professor’s, but the old man slept as though in death, and I’d learned how to be silent on the island.
I twisted the doorknob, ready to sneak out. To my surprise, Montgomery was already waiting on the other side. He’d beaten me to it.
His eyes met mine, and they were the deep blue of a flame.
“May I come in?” he asked.
MONTGOMERY ADDED ANOTHER PIECE of wood to the small fireplace in my bedroom. I watched him working, remembering how he’d laid my fires for me when I was a little girl. He’d been so quiet back then. He was still quiet, and yet impossible not to notice. It wasn’t just how he’d grown into a powerful young man, but also a certain stillness to the air around him, as though even the fire springing to life in his hands knew he could be trusted.
He brought the fire to a roar, spilling flickering light over the bedroom’s soft curtains and thick duvets bursting with goose-feather down. I wondered if I looked the same to him, against such an elegant backdrop, when he had fallen in love with me amid jungle vines and the crashing sea.
“It was a rash decision,” he said. “But it was the best I could think of in the moment. If I’d shown up at your door after midnight, with your dress torn and muddied, they’d have thought me a villain at worst. If they’d allowed me time to explain I’d rescued you from the masquerade and escorted you home, I’d be a polite stranger, and they’d have thanked me profusely and dismissed me. Telling them we were engaged gives us the ability to be alone, to travel together, to explain why we sometimes sneak off just the two of us.”
“I understand. It only came as a considerable shock. I haven’t seen you in months. For all I knew you were dead. And I’ve already lied enough to the professor, when he’s done nothing but show me kindness.”
He tucked back a loose strand of blond hair. “Is it that far from the truth?” he asked quietly.
I let the roaring fire fill the silence. On the island, I’d never wanted to be apart from him. But now there was a rift between us wide as the ocean I’d passed through, alone and wounded. He’d shown up at the masquerade amid the swirling masks and looked at me as if nothing had changed.
But everything had changed.
I’d shared a bed with Edward the night before. I’d made love to a murderer, while I’d blindly thought I was safe in his company. I’d been worse than a fool.
“Why didn’t you come for me sooner?” My whispered words blended with the crackling of the fire.
He settled on the bed next to me, amid the silk sheets and sea of pillows that were a million miles away from the sparse simplicity of the island where we’d fallen in love. Then he took my small hand in his much bigger one, and ever so slowly brought it to his lips.