The Madman’s Daughter (20 page)

As I followed the stream deeper into the island, I heard the sound of falling water. A clearing opened ahead. Moonlight reflected on a waterfall tumbling into a deep pool. After I’d spent so long in the dark tunnel of the trees,
the moonlight shone with a silver tint that made everything dreamlike. There was something odd about the waterfall, something extra luminous, as though it glowed from within. A rocky bank hugged the falls, and I carefully climbed it, feet slipping on the slick rocks. The roar of the water was deafening. I made it to an outcropping, balancing unsteadily on the pitched rock.

There was a gap behind the falls, just wide enough for a person to slip through. I peered inside. The red glow of flames met me.

“Is that fire?” I muttered. But two hands thrust from behind the waterfall, grabbed my shoulders, and pulled me through the screen of water.

S
PUTTERING
, I
FOUGHT MY
attacker, but the rush of water blinded me. Then the water was gone, and I was in a shallow cave lit by a small fire.

“Edward!” I said. A gash ran up the side of his shirt and blood stained the knees of his trousers, but, even weary and spent, I threw my arms around him, not thinking, just needing to feel that he was real.

“I was afraid it had gotten you,” I said.

“I’m faster than that.”

My fingers curled around his dirty shirt, pulling at the fabric. I wished I could express how relieved I was to feel his arms around me.

His fingers found my waist, inching me closer, and for a moment I didn’t think about impropriety. The rules of society couldn’t reach us here beyond the falls. I pulled back to ask if he was all right, but the breathless desire written on his face stole my words. Before I could put together a coherent thought, he kissed me.

His lips were cold like in my dream. I was stunned, barely able to think as his hands pulled tighter on my waist. And then as quick as he’d kissed me, I pushed away and stumbled to the other side of the cave.

I’d felt a shiver from the touch of his lips that I hadn’t expected. A surprisingly welcome one.

“Juliet—” he said, half filled with apology, half with lingering desire. “I’m sorry. I thought—”

“Don’t say anything else,” I said. The rushing water was deafening. “Just forget it happened.”

He paced, somewhat frantically, as though he wanted to come closer but knew he shouldn’t. “I don’t want to forget.”

“Edward, please …” I slumped against the cold stone, eyes closed. Water had seeped into the inner layers of my clothes, giving me a rash of gooseflesh.

He stopped pacing. “It’s Montgomery, isn’t it? You like him.” The fire sent sparks dancing in his gold-flecked eyes as he waited for me to deny it, but I didn’t. I didn’t know how I felt about any of this. I needed time to think, to analyze.…

“You said he used to be your servant,” Edward interrupted my thoughts. “That there was nothing between you.”

“There isn’t. Not yet. God, I don’t know.”

Edward raised his voice above the roaring water. “He was in the laboratory, wasn’t he? Helping create those aberrations. He’s as bad as your father, Juliet! How can you love him?”

“I never said I loved him!”

My pulse quickened with all the boiling arguments
forming in my head, but then I paused. Something Edward had said didn’t sit right. “How do you know what they were doing in the laboratory? You said you didn’t see.”

A wave of guilt washed over his face and I knew, in that look, he’d been lying. Embers from the fire littered the ground, disturbed by my struggling. He knelt to rebuild it, avoiding my gaze.

I watched him sweep the embers together, jerking his hands back to keep from being burned. “How long have you known?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.

He stood slowly, brushing his hands against his trousers. Firelight danced in his eyes. For a moment, we just looked at each other. He was gauging my reaction. Trying to decide how much to tell me.

“Since the
Curitiba
,” he said. “Since the first time Montgomery said the name Moreau.” He flexed his scarred knuckles nervously, starting to pace again. “My uncle was acquainted with one of the detectives at Scotland Yard who worked on that case. The King’s College Butchery, they called it. They kept it quiet, but they suspected your father was trying to stitch together animals to create something human—more or less. It used to give me nightmares as a boy. And when I saw Balthazar and the other islanders, I knew.” His eyes flashed. He was not just the naive young man everyone had first taken him for—but I’d known there was more to him. “Scotland Yard’s theory was right.”

“Balthazar’s my friend,” I shot. “He’s no creation of surgery.”

“Your
friend
? He’s a monster!”

I brushed the spray and tears and sweat off my face. Edward didn’t know Balthazar like I did. Balthazar might be malformed, but he wasn’t a monster.

“He’s not,” I said. “Cymbeline—he’s just a little boy. That scaly man …”

“Puck,” Edward said.

“Puck.” I kicked at a glowing coal. Like the name of the sprite in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. A fitting name, since his existence was as unbelievable as any fairy tale. “They’re not all monsters.”

“You’re making excuses for your father,” Edward said, his voice rising. We were shouting, but no longer because of the waterfall. “Trying to justify his work.”

“You knew the truth and didn’t tell me!” I hugged my arms around my chest, turning toward the falls, letting the rush of water drown my thoughts. Edward was wrong—I wasn’t defending my father. I was defending the part of me that knew what my father did was evil but was terribly proud that he’d accomplished it. My father’s blood flowed in my veins, too. Didn’t he understand that?

It stung. A stranger knew the truth I’d searched for my whole life. “You should have told me.”

“Why do you think I came here?” he yelled. “I could have stayed on the
Curitiba
. Did you think I was so afraid of that idiot captain? I came because you didn’t know what you were getting into! You were walking into a danger with your eyes closed, not wanting to see the evidence so clearly in front of you.”

I paced, hugging my arms tighter. He’d been right, I
realized. I had known all along, in those deep recesses of my brain. It had been my heart—my weak, human heart—that had betrayed me, not my head.

Edward hadn’t lied to me. I’d lied to myself.

I ran a shaky hand over my face, feeling like the world had flipped upside down. “You should have stayed on the
Curitiba
, then. There’s nothing for you here.”

“I came here for you, Juliet!” He was so close to the falls that water danced on his shoulders like fine rain. He wiped the spray from his eyes. “I came because I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I still can’t.”

For a moment, the water roared around us. He’d come here, knowing my father was a madman, for
me
. My heart thumped so loudly, I thought the whole jungle must hear it. I touched my lips, wet from the waterfall’s spray, still cold from his kiss. Still
wanting
. But this was wrong. My heart belonged to Montgomery, not Edward. But Montgomery had been helping my father do his terrible work. So much had happened that I was unable to decipher my own feelings.

I sat down at the edge of the cave, closing my eyes, sealing out the rush of emotion.

Edward paced a bit more and then sighed. He eased himself down beside me, wincing.

“You’re hurt,” I said at last. Hoping to change the subject.

“I tripped after we got separated. I might have cracked a rib.”

I picked up a thin twig from the cave floor, twirling it in my fingers. Trying not to think about how Montgomery
was helping my father while Edward, who’d come to protect me, had just kissed me.

After a minute Edward pulled a steak knife out of his pocket.

“Where did you get that knife?” I asked.

“While you were chatting over dinner, I was stealing the silverware.” He started to whittle at the pointed end of a stick. Trying to make a spear. God, were we that desperate? His grip was too tight. He didn’t know what he was doing any more than I did. He’d probably only read about spears in
Robinson Crusoe
.

The twig stopped in my fingers. “How did you know you’d need one?”

“Your father tried to kill me five minutes after I arrived. That was a pretty good indication.”

I rolled the twig between my fingers, scraping the thin bark with my thumbnail. At last I threw the stick into the fire.

“I came across two of the islanders in the jungle,” I said. “They weren’t like Balthazar or those big ones on the dock. They were wild. They killed one of the rabbits—ripped it in half. I don’t know what they’d have done if they’d known I was there.” I shivered at the memory of the spotted one’s piercing eyes. He’d looked directly into the bamboo grove. Had he really not seen me?

The knife paused in Edward’s hand. “That’s strange. Montgomery said no one eats meat on the island.”

I’d had the same thought. I studied Edward, impressed that he wasn’t scared out of his wits. Firelight danced across
his strong features. His face belonged half cast in shadows, with warm light on the planes of his nose and forehead. He would have looked out of place in the bare electric lights that were becoming so popular in England. I wondered if we would ever again see London. In the small world of the cave behind the waterfall, it felt like we were the last two people on earth.

“So what do we do?” I asked. “We can’t stay out here forever. It’ll be a year before another ship comes.”

“Other ships must pass nearby on the way to Australia or Fiji. Montgomery said there’s a Polynesian shipping lane not far off the coast.”

“So we take our chances with a raft and hope a ship finds us?” I pulled my arms in tight, shivering. “We’ll drift off course. Or go down in a storm. Or die of thirst. You should know better than anyone.”

He sat back, staring into the fire. The tic in his jaw pulsed, just once. He’d spoken so little of what happened when the
Viola
sank. He didn’t have to. It was written in the sun blisters that still marred his face. “What choice do we have? Your father’s gone mad out here. What’s to say he won’t find a use for us after all? Strapped to his operating table, perhaps.”

“He wouldn’t do that. He’s my
father
.” I didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to speculate how far Father had gone over that line.

Edward placed a finger on my cheek to turn my face back toward him. “You know how I feel about you. You don’t have to say anything in return—it doesn’t matter. I came here to protect you and that’s what I intend to do. Tomorrow we’ll
find our way back to the compound. We’ll act like everything is fine—we just got lost in the jungle while exploring. And then we’ll find a way to get off this island.” He brushed my hair behind one ear. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”

I studied the tender new scar that ran just below his eye. His bruises had faded, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still there, under his skin, beaten into his bones.

“What was the photograph?” I asked before I could stop myself.

Surprise registered on his face for a second. And then the fold between his eyes deepened. “What photograph?”

“You had a photograph. It was too water damaged to make out. I haven’t seen it since the ship.”

He gave a slight shrug, brow furrowed, as though thinking back to the time in the dinghy unsettled him. “I don’t remember any photograph.”

We stayed like that for some time, listening to the water in our own private world behind the falls. I didn’t believe for a minute he’d forgotten the photograph, but the secret was his own, and so were his reasons for lying. The night got cooler, and my soaking dress made my skin turn white. I self-consciously stripped to my chemise to let the dress dry next to the fire. I was too aware of my bare ankles, my bare arms. Edward’s eyes shone bright in the dying firelight, not like a gentleman anymore. But he didn’t try to kiss me again.

The closeness of the cave pressed in, as hard as the memory of his kiss. I knew Edward wouldn’t hurt me. And yet I didn’t exactly feel at ease with him.

I lay down next to the fire, aware of every stone and crack
in the ground. Edward lay down behind me, a respectful two feet away, but close enough that I could feel the heat from his body. I fell asleep to the sound of the roaring water and a thousand questions tumbling in my head.

I
AWOKE HALFWAY THROUGH
the night to find the embers barely smoldering. Edward and I had found our way together in our sleep, my head against his chest, his hands wrapped fiercely around my waist, our legs scandalously intertwined. It wasn’t safety I felt with him, no, more like a deep connection I didn’t even understand. I had a vague memory, more like a dream, of him wrapping his arms around me, breathing in the scent of my hair, muttering against my cheek. I could have stopped him. But I kept my eyes closed instead, and held him closer.

I
N THE MORNING
E
DWARD
was gone. The coals were cold in the light filtering through the screen of water. The cave looked different in daytime, without shadows clinging to the dark corners. It was only a damp outcropping, bare except for clumping moss near the puddles and more spiders than I cared to notice.

The knife, which Edward had left by the fire while we slept, was gone too.

I peered through the gap in the falls. A young man’s naked form bathed in the shallows of the pool. I jerked back with a gasp, embarrassed to see Edward undressed. I’d never seen a man naked before. The memory of his body against mine all night and the brief, unreturned kiss made me feel suddenly very warm.

I splashed water on my face from a puddle. Went to check on my dress. Washed the cuts on my arms. No matter how I tried to busy myself, I couldn’t stop throwing glances at the waterfall.

“Oh, dash it.” I tiptoed back to the gap. My heart thumped in my ears.

He had his back to me. He waded up to his chest and ducked underwater, whooping as he came up, holding his hurt rib lightly. I’d never seen him so carefree. And I’d certainly never seen him so … exposed. He didn’t have Montgomery’s impressive physique, but there was something undeniably strong in his wiry arms. Arms that had held me last night.