daughter? Mother died and I heard nothing. He left no money. I’m one step away from the streets.’ The words poured out before I could stop them. They’d been buried such a long time.
‘I’m sorry.’ His throat constricted. ‘I wish the last few years had been easier for you. If I’d been here, maybe …’
Maybe Mother wouldn’t have died? Maybe I wouldn’t be living in poverty? Maybe … what? His eyes dropped to the pit of my elbow, hidden by my sleeve. I pressed my fingers against the sensitive place, protectively.
He nodded toward it, his voice lower. ‘You still give yourself the injections?’
I drew back, clutching my arm as though the skin had been stripped back leaving the veins exposed and vulnerable. Montgomery knew things about me even Lucy didn’t know. Like my illness. I rubbed my inner elbow, thinking of the glass vials in the back of my closet at the lodging house. The ones in the embossed wooden box Annie kept asking me about. They held a treatment – a pancreatic extract – I injected into my arm once a day. If I kept to a rigid schedule, I rarely showed symptoms. The few times I’d missed a dose, I’d gotten feverish and weak. My eyes would play tricks on me, hallucinate things that weren’t there. Sometimes, in the evenings, the weakness would come anyway. Just thinking about it now made a cold sweat break out across my forehead.
Father had diagnosed the condition when I was a baby. A glycogen deficiency so rare it didn’t have a name. I would have died if he hadn’t discovered the cure. Now, I’d slip into a coma if I ever missed more than a few weeks’ treatment.
I hesitated. Speaking of my illness made me feel exposed. It was just one more thing linking me to my mad father. But this – this was new. Montgomery already knew everything about my illness. It was an unfamiliar and comforting thought to know I didn’t have to hide from him.
I nodded slightly.
He leaned forward with concern. ‘And you haven’t had any symptoms?’ He reached out to take my wrist, but I jerked away. There was a limit to how much I’d share, even with Montgomery. ‘I study medicine,’ he said. ‘Please. Let me see.’
I thought of the game those medical students had made up as an excuse to touch every bone in Lucy’s body. Montgomery had given me anatomy lessons, but not like that. He would have been as uncomfortable with that lurid game as I’d been. Cautiously, I laid my white palm in the cradle of his tanned hand. He rolled up my sleeve, then brushed a finger against the sensitive skin of my inner elbow. My breath caught. I was alone in a young man’s room, letting him touch me in places he shouldn’t even see. But he wasn’t just any young man – he was Montgomery. His touch sent my mind whirling. My body was already leaning forward, drawn toward his presence uncontrollably, before my thoughts could catch up.
‘Good,’ he muttered, and I came back to the present, blushing wildly. His finger still rested against my arm, rubbing absently, burning a hole in my skin. ‘Have you had trouble getting enough of the treatment?’
I took a deep breath. ‘No. Any chemist will make it if I give them the instructions and the raw supplies. Though they look at me oddly enough.’
He nodded. ‘I’m glad. I’ve worried.’ Slowly he released my arm. I rolled the sleeve back down quickly, smoothing the cuff over my wrist.
The silence was heavy.
‘When do you depart?’ I asked quickly.
‘Soon,’ he said just as quickly, as though it couldn’t be soon enough. He sat back in his chair. ‘Day after tomorrow, maybe.’
I swallowed, trying to hide my disappointment. ‘Back to the island?’
‘Yes. Balthazar has been working to arrange our return voyage. Not many ships want to take our cargo.’
‘Cargo? The trunks and things?’
‘That’s only part of it. The rest is … well, the doctor’s supplies.’
My curiosity was piqued. Surgical tools? Specimens? But I shook the questions out of my head. I wanted my father’s truth, not his science.
‘Does he ever speak of me?’ I asked in a rush. I had to ask before he sailed away, forever.
Montgomery grinned, one second too late. ‘Yes. Of course.’
I didn’t smile back. I knew that grin, one side pulled back just slightly, jaw set harder than it should have been. Montgomery had given me that grin before, when our house cat had run away. He promised me all cats knew their way out of the city to the farms where mice grew fat as pigeons. But the cat hadn’t made it out of the city. Later I found out Father had drowned it for bringing fleas into the house.
That grin meant Montgomery was lying.
I stood so fast the teapot rattled. I pushed my chair back, looking for my bag. I realized I wasn’t ready to learn the truth. And Montgomery … I hadn’t felt such intense and confusing emotions in so many years that I didn’t know what to do but run.
‘I need to go. I was supposed to work tonight.’
He stood, surprised. ‘Stay. It’s been so long—’
‘It was good to see you,’ I said, stumbling toward the door. I’d forgotten the time. Mrs Bell had asked me to help clean the operating theater before a lecture Monday morning. She’d be furious I wasn’t there.
Balthazar poked his head out from the other room, giving me a quizzical look. The parrot pecked against the bars of its cage. ‘I’m sorry about trying to break in,’ I said.
‘Miss Moreau, please! Wait.’
I was out of the room before Montgomery could finish. I hurried down the stairs, into the dining hall, where the proprietress was mopping the floors. She looked up, but I didn’t stop until I was outside.
The streets were empty. St Paul’s church bells tolled as I made my way along Cannon Street. My head was as foggy as the night. Eight, nine, ten tolls. Ten o’clock. Blast. Mrs Bell would skin me alive. I picked up my skirts – my Sunday best, which would take too long to change out of – and ran through the back alleys to my boardinghouse. Annie gave me a quizzical look as I threw open the door and grabbed my basket of cleaning supplies, but I couldn’t waste time on an explanation.
I ran back out into the night, down the Strand toward King’s College. Mrs Bell and Mary would probably still be there, seething that I was late. I tried to ignore the other thoughts clouding my mind: My father was alive but hadn’t contacted me. Montgomery was back, and yet he’d soon return to my father, as though our roles as servant and child were reversed.
At last I made it to the entrance of the medical building and dashed up the granite steps, tugging on the front door. Locked. I set down my basket and gathered a few bits of broken stone from the street and tossed them at the high first-floor windows, praying Mary would hear me. Mrs Bell would give me an earful for being late, but it was better than not showing at all. My aim wasn’t good, especially since my bare hands were cold and trembling, but a light went on in one of the windows.
‘Thank God,’ I said, cupping my freezing nose. I picked up my basket of cleaning supplies. I’d help them finish and then scramble home to my warm bed, where I could bury my thoughts in a downy quilt. I’d find a way to get a message to Lucy about my
