“It’s you they’ve come for, miss.”
More footsteps came from below, inside the house now, amid the sounds of arguments. My heartbeat sped. Five men at least, and then came a crash, and lighter footsteps on the stairs as Elizabeth must have rushed down to investigate.
I fumbled with the window, but this wasn’t my bedroom with the broken lock. This one held fast. “I need your help, Balthazar!” I cried. He picked up the lock in his meaty hand, examined it, then fumbled through the dusty collection of toys until he found a stick horse, which he rammed against the lock until it broke. I pushed open the window as bitter-cold snow stung my face.
“Go downstairs,” I urged him. “Help Montgomery and Elizabeth. I’ll hide somewhere outside and come back when it’s safe.”
“Please take care, miss,” he said, and pointed to my feet. “You haven’t any shoes.”
“I’ll manage.” I climbed out of the attic window, stomach shrinking at the four-story fall to the garden. A copper drain spout, ancient and corroded, clung to the exterior wall. I made my way down it carefully, freezing in only my nightdress. I slipped near the end and tumbled to the garden, landing in a pile of snow that broke my fall but left me with a terrible scrape on my shin. When I looked up, the lights were on in my bedroom. If I’d spent the night there instead of the nursery, they would have already caught me.
Cold bit at my bare limbs. Pain would come soon, and then terrible numbness.
I scrambled to my feet. I would freeze in minutes without coat or boots, not enough time to race across town to my attic in Shoreditch. Perhaps not even time to make it to Lucy’s in Cavendish Square, but I had no choice. I stamped through the snow toward the garden gate, eyes blinded by flurries.
Someone was waiting for me.
I felt his hands on me before I saw his face. The shock of it made me scramble and claw, but he had another man with him wearing leather driving gloves, and the two of them together were too strong. It wasn’t until the lights from the house shone on his white hair that I recognized his terrible visage.
“You won’t get away from me this time,” Dr. Hastings said.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
THIRTY-SIX
ANGER SEETHED IN ME. I had overpowered him once, and I could have done it again if not for the driver holding me. He had twelve inches on me, and I had no knife, no mortar scraper, nothing to give me an advantage.
“Put her in the carriage,” Hastings said with no little relish. “And notify Newcastle that I’ve got her.”
The driver shoved me in, despite how I scratched at his face and kicked at the soft parts of his body. I winced, shivering in nothing more than my nightdress, as I landed in the carriage. It rocked as Dr. Hastings climbed in after me and locked the door.
I scrambled to the opposite door—locked as well. Trapped. I pressed my back into the furthest corner, eyes wide. Dr. Hastings clutched a pistol.
“You know, I always detested von Stein, thinking himself so much smarter than the rest of us,” he said. “Pity he isn’t here to protect you anymore.”
“Were you the one who killed him?” I seethed.
“That honor wasn’t mine, but no matter. Seeing you locked away for the rest of your life will please me well enough.” He held the pistol unsteadily in his left hand, the one I had maimed. I couldn’t see the scars in the dark carriage, but I knew they were there.
“Newcastle promised me a chance to dole out my own punishment. The courts can be so lenient sometimes. I’m a biblical man myself. An eye for an eye, isn’t that how the expression goes?”
Anger seeped up my spine, vertebra by vertebra. I’d be damned before Dr. Hastings laid a hand on me again. I wished the Beast had clawed his heart out when he’d had the chance. Some people didn’t deserve to live, and if that made me a monster, so be it.
He smiled in that thin-lipped way that showed the tip of his tongue.
“Now, now, Miss Moreau. I’ve the blade this time.” He flicked open a knife, sliding closer until I could smell his spoiled-milk stench. The pistol’s cold metal barrel pressed against the gooseflesh of my arm.
“Hold out that wrist of yours like a good girl. It’s either a slice through the tendons of your hand, just as you did to me, or a bullet in the head. Your choice.”
Fury screamed inside me. I could kick him, throw myself at him, yet he held the two weapons. As he reached the knife toward my wrist, there came the sound of a key turning hastily in the lock.
The carriage door swung open, and my hopes surged until I recognized the familiar outline of Inspector Newcastle, his copper breastplate glinting in the moonlight.