“I’m glad, miss. This is a very good thing.”
“I have another favor to ask of you. It’s tradition for the bride’s father to give her away.” I swallowed the rush of emotion in my throat. “I’d like you to do the honors.”
His brown eyes went wide. He shuffled a bit, rubbing the back of his neck. “Me, miss?”
“My father’s gone and I’ve no family, so I’d like a good friend to give me away.”
His face broke in a wide grin. He pulled me into another hug that felt warm against the cold. I wrapped my arms around him. I held goodness in my hands, his thick muscles beneath my fingers, his shaggy-dog smell beneath my face. Not everything created in a laboratory had to be an abomination.
Sometimes, it could be a friend.
I lost track of how much time I stayed with Balthazar in the barn, helping him clean, thinking about the wedding, while Sharkey slept on the wooden steps to the loft. It was a peaceful time—until I saw Balthazar’s back go ramrod straight. A low growl came from his throat.
I turned to find Hensley standing perfectly still in the entryway, alone, petting his white rat.
Alarm shot through me. Where was Elizabeth? Where were the girls who were supposed to be watching him? He stared at us blankly with that eerie white eye. I was about to reach for the knife in my boot when Lily rushed up behind him.
“There you are!” She tried to sound playful, but there was fear in her voice. “Remember, Hensley, you aren’t to run off by yourself anymore. You frightened Moira—”
“Moira told me I must take a nap. I didn’t want to.”
“Yes, but you forget how strong you are. You accidentally hurt her.”
He shrugged. “Mother will fix her. Mother can fix anything.”
I met Lily’s eyes over his head and read fear there.
“Balthazar, perhaps you can help Lily take Hensley back to the manor?” I asked. “I’ll check on Moira. Is she all right?”
“I think so, miss,” Lily said. “The mistress is with her now in the tower.”
I spared no time hurrying back to the manor and up the spiral steps.
“Elizabeth?” I knocked at the door to her laboratory. Low voices came from inside, then the sound of footsteps. The heavy wooden door cracked open. Elizabeth’s face relaxed when she saw it was me.
“Juliet. I’m just finishing up with Moira. She and Hensley got into a tiff. Come in.”
A tiff?
I stepped inside, closing the door behind me. Moira sat on the operating table with her back to me, hands folded neatly in her lap. My eyes immediately went to the bare skin of her hands, her ears, her bare feet, deeply curious to know what body part Hensley had damaged. A broken finger? A bruised throat? As I came around the table, Moira turned her head to look at me, and I stifled a gasp.
Her right eye, usually a deep green, was gone now. Only a gaping hole looked back at me.
“Boo,” she said, lurching toward me.
I jumped back with a shriek, and her face broke into a grin.
“My God,” I breathed. “Are you all right?”
She shrugged, unconcerned, though her fingers were clenched tightly. “Will be soon enough,” she explained. “Elizabeth gave me medicine for the pain. I was fighting to get Hensley in bed. He lashed out. I stumbled back and hit my face on the edge of the bed.”
Elizabeth gave me a knowing look. “Before you say anything, I already know that he’s getting more unpredictable. I’m going to speak to Carlyle about fashioning a room with bars in the cellar, something like what you did to cage the Beast. Perhaps after all this wedding madness is over, you and Montgomery can help him draw up the plans.” In her right hand, Elizabeth held a round object in a sterile cloth. It was one of the cadaver eyes. I watched in fascination as Elizabeth reattached the ocular vein and gently pressed the eye into the socket.
Moira pressed her hand against her eye, waited a few breaths, and then opened it. Dark green, a nearly perfect match. She blinked a few times and smiled at me. The deformed face from before was once more that of a pretty, freckle-faced girl.
She climbed off the table.
“Thank you, mistress.”
Elizabeth scribbled a few notations about the procedure in her medical journal, nodding. “You’re quite welcome. Don’t worry; it won’t happen again. I’ll look after him myself from now on and ask McKenna to give you a different task. Just remember to take it easy until the sedation wears off. Don’t want you putting your eye out again because you aren’t walking straight.”