“It will be a difficult conversation. That is what happens when you toss apple cores to a piglet, over and over. I imagine she is an unfortunate princess.”
Will laughed. “Cursed forever and wanting true love’s kiss.” He looked toward Victor’s bedroom. “Perhaps we should let her try.”
Angelika was so glad he was a man who could play. “Exactly. She does have an intelligent stare, so we err on the side of caution, and she will never make the dinner table.”
“Prudent.”
“Make sure you close every door properly. She will come up the stairs.” Angelika looked at the portrait of her mother. “Mama, perhaps I should vacate to Larkspur and leave this madness behind?”
“Where is Larkspur?” Instead of finding this strange, Will faced the portrait and bowed to it with elegance. “Madam, an honor to meet you.”
“Caroline Frankenstein, this is Will. At least, he’s Will until further notice. Larkspur Lodge is our lake house and has been closed up for many years. That house will be Victor’s wedding present to Lizzie one day, just as Papa gifted it to Mama. Apparently that is now a family tradition. But it has only a caretaker and will be in a dreadful state.”
He was eager. “That is something I could do for you both. I could go there and clear the cobwebs out of Larkspur.”
“You were supposed to clear the cobwebs out of somewhere else, but we’ve seen how that worked out,” Victor bellowed as he ascended the stairs.
Will laughed. Angelika growled.
“Speaking of cobwebs, look at the state of this place,” Victor continued as he collected a spider off the stair rail. “My sister is talking of Larkspur, is she? I don’t know why you adore it, Jelly. It has no laboratory. It’s a dull life there, just lake swims and roses. And so many spiders,” he added to his new friend, letting it walk across the backs of his fingers. “I shudder to think what state it will be in when I take Lizzie there for our honeymoon.”
Angelika hated the distasteful curl to his lip. “Every good memory I have is of that place. Larkspur is heaven.”
“We don’t believe in heaven,” Victor reminded his sister on a yawn. “I’m going to bed. I was only hours behind a sighting of a huge person who had been stealing from a field. Out the window you shall go, my good fellow,” he said to the spider as he carried it off. “Good night. Remember, Will. If you bed her, she’s yours for good.”
He kicked his bedroom door closed behind him.
“I would be glad to never hear another door slam ever again.” Angelika scowled, glad to hide her embarrassment.
Will was also annoyed with Victor. “You can believe in heaven if you wish to. He cannot police your beliefs.”
“He doesn’t.” (He did. Often.)
“He thinks religion is thought control, but he does the same to you. You never argue back. You simply nod. And though I hardly know you at all, I know that this really does not suit you.”
Angelika rode out a wave of defensiveness, biting her tongue until it hurt. Then she thought that Will had a point. “Sometimes I don’t know who I am. Without Vic . . .”
Will gave his assessment. “Your true intellectual capabilities, directed solely to your own interests, would be a far more fulfilling use of your talent and creativity. What is your ambition, beyond spending money and pursuing the goal of being adored?”
She had no answer. It had always been Angelika and Victor, together all the time. He experimented, she assisted.
“Perhaps we are not so different,” Will observed. “Please, allow me to go to Larkspur, to clear my head.”
She made a huff to change the subject. “Every time you laugh at one of his awful jokes, I dislike you. The remark about cobwebs,” she reminded him in a withering tone.
Will tried. He truly did.
But the memory was too much; his eyes crinkled, his shoulders shook, and he broke. Angelika screeched in fury.
“I apologize,” Will spluttered, regaining momentary control, but he did not sound sorry. His gaze landed upon a feather duster that Mary had misplaced on the hallway credenza, and he laughed until he cried.
Cobwebs in her personal anatomy. It was the kind of joke the village folk would roar with mirth over in the tavern, exactly like this. She stormed down the hallway. To hell with it. Angelika was going to put on a negligee, do her hair, paint her lips, and loll around in bed reading a saucy book. She’d knock her own cobwebs out. She’d indulge in a late-night bath filled with expensive French oil. Mary would have a conniption, but until Lizzie showed up, Angelika was still mistress of this house.
A house Will itched to leave.
“He needs to clear his head?” she muttered to herself as she pawed around in the slippery nightwear that now took up hardly a quarter of her entire drawer. She then pulled black silk down over her head. “He’s got a beautiful bedroom and a beautiful new wardrobe of the finest clothes I could find. He can go back to the morgue and really get his head cleared, right off his shoulders by a student of medicine.”
“Angelika, I can hear you fuming,” Will said through the door. “I shouldn’t have laughed at Victor’s joke.” He had a smile in his tone.
“Go away.” There was even a small pair of slippers with rabbit’s tail fluff on the toes. “I’m having a pampering evening alone. Go chat through my brother’s door.”
Will said, “I forget that I’m a guest and not just a rude brother.”
“That’s exactly who you remind me of when you make those little jibes. You’re spending too much time with Victor.”
The mirror confirmed it: this lace negligee was scandalous, cut low front and back and reaching barely halfway down her thighs. It was so old and fragile, it would hardly withstand a nap.
Will confided, “I like your brother awfully. It’s why I should go to the lake house, to get some perspective. To remind myself I am not going to be a part of this family.”
“You don’t seem to remotely resent Victor for his part in your resurrection. He was there, you know. He taught me what to do. And yet, you share lunch together and go for walks. But me, you cannot seem to get past my role.”
Victor was her best friend, and he preferred another now. She called out for them to wait, but they were too busy talking and laughing to hear her. Will was right. Loneliness was a pain all of its own.
Will said, “If you had left me to nature, I would not be dealing with all of this . . . frustration.”
She’d inconvenienced him by saving his life, whereas Victor was blameless? “You’d rather be dead than faced with the prospect of me?” On that stormy night, Victor’s creation had screamed at the mere sight of her. Apparently, Will was only a tad more genteel.
Angelika wrenched open her bedroom door. “You wish to be an apple in the orchard, left to rot?”
Will looked down at her body, and his eyes almost fell out of his head.
Chapter Six
She pointed a finger into his chest.
“My crime, in addition to body-snatching, is that I’m lonely. I’m aging by the day. Twenty-four, never kissed, never touched. I cannot travel without my brother, and unless the destination has a fully stocked laboratory, he is not interested. I have money I can’t seem to spend because I am marooned on a hillside. I am a woman.” She raised her voice. “And a woman needs certain things, even if society tells her she should not.”
“I . . .” was all Will could reply to her negligee.
“Do you know what men call me in the tavern? My nickname that not even Victor knows?” Angelika paused and wondered if he might use it against her.
“You can confess it to me,” Will said. “I will keep your secret safe.”
“The barren-ness. A play on baroness. Because I am wealthy and barren, I suppose? But how could anyone know that? For all we know, I am infinitely fertile, given the proper treatment.”
Will was having a personal malfunction. “I . . .”
“Apart from that night we slept together, I have never lain with a man. Now if you’ll pardon me, sir, I’m going to lie on my bed and sulk. Unless you’d care to join me. My final offer to you, before I shrivel up and die from embarrassment.”
His entire body shivered. He took a step toward her. The pink of his tongue was obscene, licking at the corner of his mouth.
Now he was blinking, realizing, and lanced through the heel by reality. “I will be forced to belong to you. My pride will not allow me to be kept like a stray dog. Or worse, a mutt, but treated as a pedigree poodle. I am a man, and I am someone. I just have to find out who that is.”
Angelika thought that whoever he was, he had remarkable principles.
“You could be Will Frankenstein, richer than your wildest dreams. More exhausted from the previous night than you ever thought possible.”
“But I am not a Frankenstein. You can’t just open your home to a stranger and offer him everything like this. What if I am a bad person? A dangerous one?”