The man winced and shifted, breaking the moment. He was busy getting his bearings, eyes wild and unfocused as he looked around the room and down at his own body. “Who are you? Where am I?”
“You died, but I brought you back. Well, my brother and I. I am your new . . .” She hesitated on the phrasing. Maker? Admirer? Friend? He was waiting for her explanation, so she went with: “. . . mistress, and my brother, Victor, is your master. You may live here with us now, as long as you like.”
“But where is here?” The man reached out for the edge of the chamber and froze at the sight of himself. “This isn’t me,” he said in a daze to his arm, and began to struggle, clumsy like Victor’s creation. “I’m all heavy and cold. It’s pain like I’ve never known, piercing right through me. And you won’t tell me where I am.”
“Blackthorne Manor. Well, the laboratory anyway, which used to be the barn.”
“That’s not as helpful as you seem to think,” he replied, and with a huge amount of placenta slopping over the edge, he hauled himself out of the chamber to stand beside Angelika, his muscles gleaming in the candlelight. She could not admire his body now. He shimmered with agony, and it made her sick to her stomach. She put a hand on his slimy elbow, but he shook it off irritably, looking instead to the window. He moved toward it with wincing, grunting determination, his ambulation stiff. Both of tonight’s creations seemed hell-bent on escaping.
“No, stay here, it’s raining,” Angelika shouted. She noted his exceptional backside in an abstract way as he leaned out the window. But he made no further move to climb out, and when she came closer, she saw he was observing Victor struggling on the lawn in the sheeting rain. Victor had managed to loop a rope around the huge man and was wrangling him as best he could with the loose end around a tree for leverage. In the shadows of the house, a lop-eared pig was observing the commotion.
“That’s my brother. Pardon me, Victor,” Angelika called from the window.
“I’m busy!”
“Mine worked, too.”
Victor’s head whipped around in shock. His creation took advantage of his broken attention, untangled himself, and fled, pursued by the pig.
Victor roared unintelligibly. He was soaked and exhausted, with one boot missing.
“He’s alive and talking.” She pointed at the man at her side. “Let yours go, you’ll never stop him. Come back inside.”
Victor couldn’t accept this. “He might hurt himself.” He took off running into the night.
The man looked down at Angelika. “What did you mean, yours worked, too?” He was shaking badly with cold, his skin still an unhealthy hue. “Am I like that giant . . . thing? What did you do to me?”
“He’s not a thing, he’s a guest, just like you. I told you what I did. I saved your life. Come away now.” This time when she took his elbow, he allowed her to lead him back into the relative warmth of the room. “I’ll ask our servant to light us a fire and heat some water.”
She pulled the lever marked MARY on the wall—another of Victor’s great inventions—but summoning her this late at night was dangerous. “Come up to the house with me. Here, let me find you something to wear,” she said, cursing her lack of organization. “Wrap this around yourself.”
She passed him a long muslin cloth, and together they knotted it at his hip.
“I’m not going anywhere until you explain everything.” His teeth were audibly chattering. “It’s all a dream, nothing more. I’ve gone mad, that’s what this is. I’m in Bedlam. I’m in hell.”
“Everything is fine. You are in England. Blackthorne Manor is two miles outside Salisbury. I’ll explain everything when you’re in a nice warm bath.”
A distant bang could be heard. A gunshot? Worse: Mary slamming a door.
“But I have no memories. Was it an accident?” He was looking again at his arms, thumbing a line of healing stitches. “Is this a sanitorium? I’ve been in a long sleep?” He began to beg. “Please, my name. Tell me my name.”
“I don’t know it.”
A shadow darkened the room. It was Mary in her soaked nightgown, a scowl on her weatherworn face. Both Angelika and the man took a step backward.
Angelika recovered first, and said in her best mistress-of-the-manor voice: “Mary, my guest has arrived at last.”
Mary had seen too many unusual things in this household to be shocked. “Fourth time’s the charm,” she said snidely. “When’s the wedding?”
“Oh, Mary, what a joke,” Angelika replied, blanching under the man’s narrowing eyes. “We need hot water. Enough to fill two baths, at least.”
“Do you know how old I am?” Mary began, before remembering she was a servant. She left the room, shrieking an obscenity when she thought she was out of earshot.
“I’m worried about Victor,” Angelika said when the man would only stare at her. She went back to the window. “If you promise to stay in the bath, I might go out to help him.”
The man joined her and looked at the lawn where the violent scene had taken place. He then assessed the stormy sky, and his wet hand slid around her waist and tightened. To Angelika, it felt like a husbandly, possessive touch, telling her to stay inside and out of danger.
Just as the pleasure of the moment rang through her body, he seemed to notice what he had done, and reacted in surprise. He pushed her away hard enough that she bounced off the window frame, her cheek smarting from the impact.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted, his eyes darting. “I’m not this strong. My body isn’t my own.” To add to his humiliation, under the muslin cloth, his penis was growing erect. He looked at Angelika’s waist, her thighs in trousers, and the situation became more prominent. “I didn’t mean to push you. What is happening?”
The hotness in her cheekbone was a reminder of reality. This was nothing like her girlish daydreams, and she refused to lasso her creation as her brother did.
“It’s up to you if you come with me now, but life will be hard for you with no clothes or money or shelter. If the villagers see you like this, they’ll assume you’ve escaped an asylum and will beat you to death. If you come willingly, I will give you warmth, a bed, food, and answers.”
Silently she left the room, and he followed her.
As she crossed the lawn that separated the barn from the manor house, he was still behind her, limping and biting back groans. She felt his attention on the rear of her body acutely. Apart from the involuntary circulatory response from his new penis, there was no indication that he found her even remotely appealing.
Only she felt a connection, and it was a familiar situation.
If Angelika saw a man more than twice, and could somewhat guesstimate where and when she might see him again, she fell into rapturous infatuation. The baker’s pockmarked delivery boy had no idea that he starred in Miss Frankenstein’s most romantic fantasies; ditto the neighbor’s footman, the goatherd who used their back laneway, and, for a shameful time, Victor’s elderly bookbinder.
Angelika had a passionate heart, but as she walked through the dark foyer of the manor and up the left-hand curved staircase, it finally struck her how unromantic this was. Instead of being patient and letting fate decide, in typical Frankenstein fashion, she had been too proactive.
“You’ve become rather quiet,” the man behind her said. She turned on the staircase and saw he was only on the second stair, struggling to raise each leg.
“It’s difficult?” She went to his side and put his arm around her shoulder. “I’ll help you. Lean on me.”
“I think I’m dying.” He was matter-of-fact about it. “I’m turning blue.” He resisted her help for as long as he could, but then grew heavier against her, until the remaining stairs seemed to Angelika to stretch upward like a mountain summit. Not once did he complain, and she was in awe of his sheer strength of will.
Now that they were pressed together, she could hear a wheeze in his lungs. I did this to him, she told herself in a daze. I have put him through this terrible agony, and for what? To have a handsome man around the house to have afternoon tea with? What was I playing at?
“I’m so sorry about this. My brother is a bad influence on me.”
Up and up they toiled, until they halted, puffing with exertion, on the landing, beneath the portrait of Angelika’s mother. The expression of the painting changed, depending on the angle and circumstance.
Right now, Caroline Frankenstein was deeply unimpressed.
“I’m clearly doing my best, Mama,” Angelika said up at the frame. “Come now.” She steered the man left. “My bedchamber is at the end; we just need to make it that far.”
“Your brother might not approve.”
“A man in my bathtub will not be the strangest thing happening today.”
His body leaned into hers, like it wanted her feel and scent. Against her hip, his member retained its rigidity. “Why does my body keep doing this?” He pulled back with distaste in his features and pushed at himself with his palm. “I want you to know, from the neck down, this is not me.”