Megan Shepherd - The Madman’s Daughter

He finished buttoning his shirt and slid the suspenders over his shoulders, throwing me hesitant glances as he tied his blond hair back. He wasn’t a thin, silent boy any longer. In six years he’d become a well-built young man with shoulders like a Clydesdale and hands that could swallow my own. Montgomery and I used to spend so much time together as children, though he was a servant and I the master’s daughter. I’d never been at a loss for words with him.

Until now.

‘I am sorry about the chloroform,’ he said at last.

I swallowed. ‘Odd way of greeting an old friend, don’t you think?’

He paused while buttoning his cuffs. ‘You were trying to break into our room. Balthazar behaves irrationally sometimes. But he meant you no harm.’

I pulled the pins out of my hair and raked my fingers through it, hoping for some semblance of sanity. ‘Balthazar? That beast has a name?’

‘He’s my associate. Don’t let his appearance frighten you.’

The word associate made me hesitate. Montgomery wasn’t even twenty yet, barely old enough to be anyone’s associate himself.

He sat on a footstool and rested his elbows on his knees, peering at me with that same seriousness he’d had as a boy. It struck me, with a rush of blood to my cheeks, that he had become extremely handsome. I looked away quickly, before he could see my thoughts reflected in my face.

‘I didn’t expect to find you here,’ I said.

Something like a smile played on the corner of his mouth. ‘It’s a coincidence that you were breaking into my room?’

‘No.’ My face burned. Words weren’t coming out right. My mind still couldn’t comprehend that he was actually sitting here, an arm’s length away, grown into a handsome young man. I wondered how I looked to him, and if I was much changed from the sullen little girl he used to push around the courtyard in our wheelbarrow in an effort to make her smile.

My bag rested on the dresser next to the parrot’s cage. I loosened the string and took out the folded diagram from between the Bible’s pages. I handed it to him, but he gave it only a glance, as if he didn’t even need to look at it.

‘You’ve seen that before,’ I concluded.

‘Yes.’ His features grew serious again. ‘It belongs to me. At least, it did. I acquired it from an old colleague of your father’s, but it was stolen two weeks ago with other documents. So you see why Balthazar reacted as he did. He thought you were a thief.’ He unfolded the paper and raised an eyebrow. ‘The blood spatters are new.’

My face turned red. How could I explain what had happened? I still felt the weight of the ax in my hand, remembered the frightened look on the boys’ faces. Like them, Montgomery would think I’d gone mad. He sat here in his well-tailored clothes, a servant at his call, crates of expensive items around him. The scandal obviously hadn’t brought his life crashing down. He’d changed from a servant to a gentleman, and I’d done exactly the opposite. I must look terribly pathetic to him. And the small scrap of pride I had wouldn’t let Montgomery think me lacking.

I stood. ‘I should go. This was a mistake.’

‘Wait, Juliet.’ Montgomery held my arm. For a second, his eyes flashed over my dress, my face. He swallowed. ‘Miss Moreau, I should say. I haven’t seen you in six years, and now I find you breaking into my room.’ A muscle clenched in his jaw. ‘You owe me an explanation.’

He’d been our servant, I told myself. I didn’t owe him anything. But that was a lie. Montgomery and I were bound together by our past. This was the boy who had secretly taught me biology because my father wouldn’t. Who’d told me fairy tales late at night to distract me from the screams coming from the laboratory.

I sank back down, not sure how to act around him. His blue eyes glowed in the hazy light from the window. He moved the tea tray to a side table and poured me a cup, adding two lumps of sugar, then breaking a third in half with a spoon, crushing it, and stirring it in slowly – the peculiar way I used to prepare my tea when I was a little girl. I was so oddly touched that he remembered that I didn’t tell him I’d given up sugar in my tea long ago. As I took the cup, his rough fingers grazed mine and I bit my lip. Just the brief touch sent the muscle of my heart clenching with a longing to feel that bond with him again.

My throat felt tight, but I forced out words. ‘I found the diagram and recognized it. I thought, maybe, it meant Father was here. Alive.’ Spoken, it sounded even more foolish. I braced myself for his laughter.

But he didn’t laugh. He didn’t even flinch. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ he said softly. ‘It’s only Balthazar and myself.’

I took a sip of the tea, which had grown cold, but its sweetness replaced the chloroform’s lingering tang. I wondered what Montgomery thought of me, showing up here, looking for a dead man. Father’s death had never been confirmed – just assumed. I think the world wanted him dead, or simply forgotten.

But a girl couldn’t just forget her father.

‘Do you know what happened to him?’ I asked. I wanted to ask if Montgomery believed the rumors, but the words wouldn’t come. I was frightened of what his answer might be.

He looked toward the window, foot tapping a little too fast against the table leg. He shifted in his stiff clothes, as though his body wasn’t used to them. It struck me that a wealthy medical student wouldn’t pick so uncomfortably at his starched cuffs as Montgomery was doing. I wondered how recently he had acquired his fortune.

As if sensing my thoughts, he loosened his shirt’s collar. ‘The day he disappeared, I ran away too. I was afraid I might be accused as well, because I sometimes helped him in the laboratory. I’ve heard speculation … that he died.’

The teacup shook in my hand. I felt at the point of shattering with warring emotions. I wondered if that was what Father had felt like before he went mad – shattered. The teacup rattled more, and I set it next to the blood-spattered paper. ‘What do you even want with this?’ I nudged the dotted lines that formed a split-open rabbit. I knew it was abhorrent, but my gaze kept creeping back to the black lines, obsessively tracing the graceful arcs of the body.

‘I study medicine. I’m not a servant anymore.’ His words were pointed.

‘But this ? Vivisection?’ It was hard to talk about these things with him. The corset I had worn under my Sunday dress suddenly felt too tight. I pressed my hands against my sides. I thought of that rabbit, its twitching paws, its screams. Not even science could justify what those boys had done. And I knew Montgomery, deep in my marrow. He wasn’t like them. He had a strong heart. He’d never do something he knew wasn’t right.

His foot tapped faster and his gaze drifted around the room until it settled on the parrot. His throat tightened. ‘It was among a collection of documents, that’s all.’

He’d always been a terrible liar. I studied him from the corner of my eye, wondering. His gaze darted again to the parrot on the dresser, and I stood up and started toward the cage, just wanting to look closer at its iridescent feathers as some sort of distraction from everything that was happening. Montgomery’s eyes were too real, too evocative, too familiar. I didn’t know what to do with myself around him.

But as soon as I reached for the cage, Montgomery shot up, knocking over the footstool, and beat me to the dresser. His hand closed over a small silver object next to the parrot’s cage. I blinked, uncertain, surprised by his actions.

‘What is that?’ I said quietly.

His fist clamped the object like a vise. His chest and arms were tensed. He’d always been strong. Now he was powerful.