I would have screamed if I’d found a voice. As it was I fought and clawed, but the figure dropped me unceremoniously on the kitchen floor, where my knees banged on the hard stones and made stars flash in my eyes as I winced in pain. I reached for my knife, but my coat and skirts tangled around me as my hair spilled loose. I was able to push my hair back just in time to see a dark figure moving toward the kitchen table and striking a match.
The match flared to life, showing the face of a woman. My hand paused above my boot, more in surprise than anything. A stranger, I thought at first, but no, that wasn’t right—I recognized something in her long, loose blond hair, the fine set of her features only starting to show the first signs of wrinkles around her deep-set eyes, her Germanic ancestry evident in her face, just like the professor’s.
“Elizabeth,” I said in a stunned whisper.
She lit the hurricane lantern calmly, as though it didn’t trouble her in the least that I was collapsed in a bruised pile on the kitchen floor. She took a seat at the table and motioned to the opposite seat.
“Miss Moreau, a surprise to be meeting again like this. Though I imagine you won’t mind if I call you Juliet, seeing as formality flew out the window when you crawled through it.”
I scrambled into the seat, rubbing my elbow from where I’d banged it. Ten years had passed since I’d last seen her, and yet little wear showed on her features. Her hair was just as beautiful as ever as it tumbled to her waist in soft waves that glowed in the lantern light. She was still dressed despite the late hour, in a pale red dress that was quite simple, though even a rag would look elegant on her. She gave me a smile that was slightly off balance, the only quirk in an otherwise perfectly proportioned face, and it looked so much like the professor’s that I started.
“When did you arrive?” I stuttered.
“Shortly before lunch. The professor had fallen asleep in the library, and asked me to check on you in your bedroom and say hello. Imagine my surprise when I found the room empty and the window lock broken.”
“I’m sorry about that.” I swallowed thickly. “And about sneaking back in through the kitchen window. I didn’t want to worry the professor.”
“I didn’t wish to worry him either, which is why I told him you weren’t feeling well and were not to be disturbed for the remainder of the day.”
“He doesn’t know that I wasn’t here?” I said, feeling a coil of hope.
“I kept your secret,” she said, flashing those shrewd blue eyes at me. “For the time being, at least.”
“Don’t tell him, please. I was only—”
She held her hand up, silencing me. “Whatever you’re going to tell me won’t be the truth, but we’re all entitled to our secrets. I remember what it meant to be a young woman in a city like this. In a life like this, where everyone is watching your every move. The professor told me you were clever, and that broken lock on your bedroom window seemed to support that theory, so I left the kitchen window cracked after he went to bed and hoped you had the good sense to climb in through it. It’s what I would have done.” She leaned forward. “You’d be wise to never sneak out of this house again, or else you had better get far craftier at it, because if I catch you another time I won’t hold my tongue.”
I nodded, unable to look her in the eye. Now I’d disappointed the professor’s niece, too, before I had barely met her. She stood and crossed to the still-open window, which let in slips of cold air that left me shivering, and slid it closed. When she took her seat at the table again, the sternness had eased from her face, and a deep concern knotted her brow in its place.
This is how a mother might look, I thought, and the idea filled me with a sense of loss and longing.
“Now that we’ve gotten that behind us, you aren’t in trouble, are you?” Her eyes had a way of reaching somewhere deep inside me, beyond my past and my indiscretions and focusing instead only on my well-being. Such care from a stranger made my chest tight with emotion I didn’t know how to process.
I shook my head quickly. “No trouble. It was only a silly lark, sneaking out to see a friend.”
She raised an eyebrow, uncertain whether to believe me, but then jerked her chin toward the top of the stairs, dismissing me. I gathered my skirt and hurried up, still shaken, and closed myself in my room.
I didn’t know what I had been expecting from Elizabeth’s arrival. Perhaps just one more person to lie to. I certainly hadn’t expected a woman who thought like I thought, who anticipated my every move.