“I should have been there sooner. You took care of the Beast on your own. You’re stronger than you realize.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer such tender words that made knots of my veins, so I punctured his skin with the needle. He didn’t flinch. I made the stitch quickly, then another, then another. I blinked furiously with my head ducked, but a tear still found its way onto his skin.
Montgomery tilted my chin up gently, forehead creased in concern. “Why are you crying?”
I turned away, running the back of my hand over my wet cheeks. His chair creaked as he leaned closer, but I shrugged away from him and paced in the small space between the desk and the bookshelves, my emotions pulling me in too many directions.
“Tonight, before you came,” I started, “I had the Beast chained against a tree. We spoke. The things he said about my father, and who I was . . . A part of me thinks he was right. There is something unnatural about me. I can feel it, deep inside. I don’t care for the things other girls do. I’m curious about things I shouldn’t be. I’m so fascinated by Father’s research that I can hardly stop thinking about it. I feel like a monster for thinking that.”
I squeezed my lips together as if that would help me hold in tears.
“It’s your illness,” Montgomery said after a pause. “It’s getting worse, and your mind doesn’t know how to handle it. It’s causing these unnatural urges. Once you’re cured, there’ll be nothing abnormal about you.”
I thought of the spasms, the dizzy spells, the hallucinations of beasts crawling through tall jungle grass. “Do you think so?”
“Of course I do. Do you truly believe I could love a monster?”
A sob caught in my throat. “That’s just it. There are things you don’t know about that last night on the island. Terrible things I’ve done.”
“Shh,” he said, running a hand through my hair. “The island is long behind us. I’ve made my peace with it, and so should you.”
“You don’t understand. That night, while you were packing the wagon, I lied to you. I said I was going back for my treatment, but I went to the laboratory instead. Father had locked himself inside. Jaguar was there—”
“Juliet,” his soft voice came. “Let go of these nightmares.”
I shook my head, as memories came back faster of blood-red paint bubbling under a burning door, Jaguar’s tail flicking in the darkness.
“I killed him,” I choked, turning toward the windows. “I opened the door for Jaguar. He might have been the one to do it, but I was just as responsible.”
I faced Montgomery and the terrible penance I was due. He’d paid for his sins by staying behind for the beast-men he’d helped create. This was my due—admitting my guilt, telling him everything and resigning myself to whatever fate he decided.
“Well?” I asked. “Do you still think me not a monster?”
He tucked a loose strand of my hair back tenderly. When I dared to look into his eyes, I was surprised to find them absent of any judgment. “I already knew, Juliet.”
I swallowed. “What?”
“I saw what you did that night. It took me a long time to understand how you could do such a thing, and it frightened me, too, for a while. But I know you. I love you. You did it for the greater good. You see a chance for redemption in even the darkest beast.” He tilted my chin up. “You’re brilliant like your father, but you’ve none of his cruelty. I thought I might have lost you tonight, and I discovered there’s nothing in the world that frightens me more. I want to always be with you.”
He touched his lips to mine. “Marry me,” he whispered.
My heart stopped. The world stopped.
I hadn’t words. My thoughts seemed to diffuse through the room like the lamp’s soft light.
Marry me.
I sank onto the windowsill before I fell. I’d been half in love with Montgomery ever since I was a little girl and used to daydream about our quiet servant. But so much had changed. There’d been Edward, and Father, and an ocean between us.
At my stunned silence, he cleared his throat in a rare moment of shyness. “I had hoped to find some mistletoe, wait until Christmas, do this properly. . . .” He swallowed hard, fumbling in his pocket until his hand came out with a silver ring. “I know I said I wanted everything resolved about Edward, but it can’t wait. My entire life I’ve wanted a family. My father’s the only relation who might still be alive, and I’ll never find him; I know that. But I can have this. You and me, our own family.” His blue eyes, soft as the early-morning sky, found me. “I want to marry you.”
My heart wrenched. Who was the man I loved, exactly: The childhood servant? The brilliant surgeon? The single-minded hunter? He was still so young, still unsure of his path in this world, just as I was.