After a violent shudder, Victor continued his noble speech. “I seek to understand what Will’s chances are of fatherhood. Whilst I do not flatter myself as the perfect specimen, I’m the only baseline I have easy access to. This new microscope is marvelous.”
“This is what he meant about your unendurable requests,” Angelika said slowly as the full scale of the experiment dawned on her. “You asked him for a sample, so you could compare.”
“I did, and he reacted like I had offered to tug it out of him myself.” Victor hunted through the mess on the bench and proffered a glass beaker. “Sterilize this, then see how you do. Make sure you bring it to me at once. Doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the night.”
“He said no.” She crossed her arms and refused to take it. “So I will not even ask.”
Victor insisted, “It’s the only way we can know. Our other comparison subject is my friend out in the forest, but that would be a challenge I’d rather not attempt. Unless you’re up for securing a third suitor.”
The grin on his handsome face was infuriating, but it also put a happy bubble in her stomach. This felt so much like old times, bar a snoring Lizzie behind them.
“I think we’ve done enough to him.”
Victor looked through the eyepiece at his sample again. “I’m thinking about bringing a dead ram back to life as a possible alternative.” His brow creased as he thought about it. “The things we do for science, eh?”
“Just leave it. This is one thing we can leave up to—” She mindlessly almost said God, but quickly finished with: “The mysteries of nature.”
“And can you make Will your final choice, without knowing?” Victor leaned an elbow on the bench and they both watched Lizzie sleep. “She’s with child, thanks to my spectacular efforts.”
Angelika knew this was inevitable, but still felt stunned. “Are you sure she is?” A flash of envious, guilty, scrambling desperation coursed through her. The race to lie on a picnic blanket with their babies had now officially begun. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“She’s tired, and is very picky about her food, and hates bad smells. Her courses were due two weeks ago. Check the slide again if you doubt me.” He gestured to the microscope. “I am a very productive person. I should be the one asleep.”
“Your greatest experiment begins. How wonderful.” Angelika saw his smile did not quite reach his eyes. “Are you not happy?”
“I’m very happy, but it is creating friction between us. According to her, we have to be married as soon as possible.”
Even in her sleep, Lizzie was pinching her engagement ring. “She would marry you today. Yesterday, in fact. I do not see the problem.” She tactfully did not glance at the printed anti-marriage treatise tacked to the wall, riddled with knives and darts. She didn’t have to.
“I am famous for my stance on it.” It was amazing how Victor could still wince. “It won’t die. It’s multiplied and spread, like a germ. Every time I walk into a room, I hear titters.”
“You’re being very brave, facing your fear of worldwide ridicule.”
“I’m not brave. She will only marry me in a church, to please her parents.”
“Ah.”
“I did not think it through completely, when I gave her the diamond ring. And now she is bitterly disappointed that I am being so difficult. Every time she looks at me, it’s frustration and sadness and . . . doubt. We Frankensteins are risky propositions.”
He moved away to the open window, leaning his elbows on the sill.
Angelika joined him, and copied his pose. “Can you not just endure it?”
“I cannot, Jelly. I cannot go and stand before the old man who told Papa to simply wish for Mama’s health to return.”
“Pray,” Angelika corrected with equal bitterness. “He told our father to pray.”
“Wish, pray, think very hard—it is all the same. Praying cannot cure scarlet fever.” His fingers flexed on the sill. “My child will have no grandmama or grandpapa. You will be married and gone by then.”
“Maybe not. The one I love looks at me with doubt and sadness, too.”
Victor had an idea. “I need you to ask Mary if she would come back to help us when the baby arrives.”
“I never told her to leave.”
“Tell me exactly what you said to her.” He listened as Angelika recounted the exchange. “She believes you dismissed her that day, Jelly. You did not say to her that she was to remain here for the rest of her days?”
Angelika audited the memory again. “I thought it was so obvious. You need to understand, she was horrid to me.” She told him about the strange decorations, the dolls, and the terrible underwear.
“She felt awkward having you in her personal space. Then you told her that Sarah would be the new head of housekeeping. She packed her bags and is gone forever, unless we get her back.”
His tone was kinder than she’d expected. Was this Will’s calming influence on Victor?
Quietly, she said, “She has hated me, from the moment I was born.”
“Nonsense. She’d cut out her heart if you needed a new one. She was hurt and upset, but she’ll forgive us. It’s also my fault. I did not make circumstances clear to her.” He was quiet for a while. “I should like her to be there when I am wed; she’s all the family we have left. But Mary will also insist on a church wedding.”
“Could we travel to another parish? Somewhere that doesn’t know us? You could just pretend, and say the church words, and later on make your own private vows to Lizzie.”
“I don’t think she would feel well enough to be jiggled about in a carriage. I thought about asking Chris to use the chapel at the academy, but even if that’s an option, I might open my mouth and no words will come out. I feel a rising sense of panic whenever I picture it.”
Angelika so rarely saw him vulnerable. “You just need some time to adjust to the idea. You’re Victor Frankenstein, and I am always at your side to assist you in inventing a solution. Thank you for not shouting at me, for mucking things up with Mary.”
“I don’t want to wake Lizzie,” Victor replied, but he was smiling. “I know you do your best. I’m sorry I made you run out of here the other day. I forgot that I’m your best friend. I still am, you know. You scared me. If anything happened to you . . .”
He left the words unsaid, but she knew what he meant. They bumped their shoulders together.
The sun hung above the hill, preparing itself to slip behind, and when it did, the entire property would be plunged into an icy blue. It was a melancholy time. Angelika leaned further out of the window and asked impulsively, “Do you ever think about the terrible things we have done, and regret them?”
“Well, when you put it like that,” Victor drawled, but then saw she was not joking. “We saved Will. He was dead. Now he’s having a nice cup of tea and a biscuit.”
“Please. We did not do it to be altruistic. You showed up that Schneider nemesis of yours”—here Victor grinned widely—“and I picked Will’s individual parts like a vapid heiress, hoping he would fall in love with me over time. And even if he is having tea and a biscuit, he lives in the worst kind of mental torment and physical pain that he keeps hidden. We are terrible people.”
“Yes, we are. But I’ve been observing you since that night we saw Will sleepwalking in the study. I know you’ve been tutoring Sarah, and helping Clara with food, and doing things for her baby. You’re changing. It’s like witnessing a moment in an experiment, when the most unexpected reaction takes place. All it took was the addition of Will.” Victor mimed using a chemical dropper. “When I think of my creation, lost out there, and how I cannot find him—” Victor’s voice broke a little, and he put his face in his hands. “Yes. I am a terrible person.”
“What more can you do to find him?”
Victor hesitated. “I would need more people to help me. Searching on my own is not working. But a well-paid group of men could easily turn into a mob, and a violent end is the last thing I want for him.”
“You are going about it all wrong. You need to draw him to you. I feel his presence,” she said, and they looked across to the site of her accident. “He’s here, close by. Same with Mary. We just have to find what they need most, and bring them home.”
Despite saying this, she still found herself hesitating to reveal her nightly meal deliveries into the forest. Just once, she’d like to show Victor that she could solve a situation alone. Besides, her brother would just barge in, ruining the delicate trust she was attempting to build.
“I believe he may try to kill me,” Victor said suddenly. “And I would not blame him.”
“When you find him, you will put this right. Are you going out again?”