Like he was reliving the same memory, Will said to Victor in a whisper, “You’re a doctor, correct? There’s something wrong with my . . . It’s private.” He put his napkin back across his lap.
“Jelly installed that for you, so you’d best ask her what she did.” Victor lolled back in his chair, cackling. “We are scientists, not doctors. I must say, I’m glad you’re here. It’s nice to have a new person to chat to. I’m glad you’re not screaming through the forest.”
Will laughed, too. “Angelika made a strong argument against it. I’ve got nothing. Not even my memory. I’m afraid I will need to rely on your generosity until I have my strength enough to leave.”
“Leave?” Angelika was brought back to the table by this. “Where are you going?”
“To find my old life,” Will replied. “When I see where I’m from, my memories will come back.”
Angelika was aghast. “I forbid it. Here, try some ham.”
Will recoiled at the slice of meat she forked onto his plate. “I cannot stomach it.”
“Only yesterday he was like meat,” Victor reminded his sister. “And it is his decision to make if he wants to leave us. Let’s try to find some clues about you. You speak like you are educated. Here, what do you make of this?” He rummaged in his clothing and then proffered a discolored and well-folded piece of parchment.
Will narrowed his eyes at it, then looked up. “You carry your last will and testament in your breast pocket?”
Victor snatched the page back. “Grand, you can read.”
“Perhaps I should have done the same,” Will said, looking at his hardly touched breakfast.
Victor replied, “You had not a pocket upon your person. So, we have deduced you may be a gentleman indeed. But finding you at a public morgue for commonfolk leaves a question mark.”
“I did not think you would be so interested in your past. Perhaps you could instead think of what the future might offer you?” Angelika looked around the dining room, seeing things through Will’s fresh gaze.
They sat underneath a sixteen-candle French chandelier, with fine glittering ropes of beads that might break under the weight of a dragonfly. When hosting guests, Angelika’s father, Alphonse, would often gesture upward and retell the delivery-day story. Eight people had walked thirty miles from the port of Bournemouth, carrying the chandelier’s crystals in baskets. They were too fragile to withstand the rattle of a carriage or cart. Angelika opened her mouth, ready to share this anecdote, and then closed it again, remembering Will’s concern over Mary carrying the heavy pails of bathwater.
She hardly knew him at all, but she thought Will probably would not like that story.
The dining room walls were stacked to the ceiling with frowning ancestral portraits. One painting of a great-great-uncle, nicknamed “Poor Plague Peter,” stood ajar on a hinge from the wall. Behind it there was an open safe box, glinting with gold in the morning sunlight, and it had not escaped Will’s notice. For a split second, Angelika felt fear.
Was he being truthful about his memory, and who he was?
There were another twelve hidden vaults throughout the house, from the basement cellar to the uppermost chimney on the roof, and now a stranger sat at their table. Hidden treasure, towers of treasure, dusty and forgotten treasure—enough for a hundred extravagant lifetimes at least—were all brought here by persons unknown, to be collected under the one black slate roof.
It was a fine upgrade from the morgue. Wasn’t it, indeed. A swindler could be sitting here right now, with her mother’s napkin on his lap. When she made eye contact with Will again, she saw no guile, no concealment, and she forced herself to let go of her gold-clutching terror. All she could do was hope, and trust.
Angelika put on a smile. “Could you start to make a list of things you would like me to purchase for your wardrobe?”
Will ignored that and replied to Victor’s remark. “Maybe we could go back to the morgue. They must have a record of me. I could be home before nightfall.”
“It is more likely that if you do have a family, they do not know where you are,” Victor said carefully. “Or they had no option but to leave you, rather than bury you at the church. Come now, my good chap. Is this so bad?” He gestured to the table, and then the room around them, and finally, at his sister.
“I am grateful.” Will’s gaze lingered on Angelika’s lips. “There is nothing bad at all.”
Angelika saw his hesitation. “How do you think your family will react when you appear like an apparition on their doorstep? You’re sewn together. They will not understand.”
“I’ll make them understand,” Will said, taking a sip of tea and wincing, a hand on his stomach. “I’m sorry, but in the interests of science, I’ll advise I am about to destroy a chamber pot. I’m afraid of what will happen just now.”
“Mary will be ever so pleased,” Victor said, after roaring with laughter. “Off you go. We will help you find your old life,” he added with more seriousness when Will stood.
Will bowed politely. “I will do my best not to inconvenience you.”
Victor wasn’t done. He held a finger aloft.
“We are an unconventional household, but I must be old-fashioned about something. If you deflower my sister with that unpredictable knob, I’m afraid you will be stuck with her for good. I will insist on it, brother-in-law.”
“There’s not a chance of that,” Will said, and left the room.
The look of sympathy on Victor’s face was unbearable. “Don’t say anything,” Angelika said quietly.
Victor disobeyed. “I always thought that I would recognize your future husband when I met him. I walked in just now and saw you two sitting together at breakfast and thought: Yes. That’s him. A patient, sensible constant, to counter your headstrong extravagance. Will is absolutely perfect for you.”
Angelika’s stomach flipped happily at the surety in her brother’s voice. “I did make sure of it. And I knew it, too, the moment he sat up.”
Victor was regretful. “But I’m afraid he will never know that he’s your match. Give up on this particular dream, my dear sister.”
“I don’t want to.”
“If you take that path,” Victor warned, nodding at the hallway, “you will find only heartbreak. He is going home to his family. But you will always have me, and Lizzie, and you will be Aunt Jelly to our children. We will all live happily here, together, forever.”
“But there’s no room for me in this house,” Angelika said, echoing Will’s earlier assertion. “Where am I to fit into this life, once the children begin arriving?”
“I’ll clear out a few inventions” was all Victor said in reply. “Now, let us return to the laboratory. We must write a full account of what happened last night.”
“Please bathe yourself first, you smelly boy.” Angelika drank from Will’s teacup. Did this count as a first kiss? “And there is a question I must ask of you. You used some of Will’s original body. Did you take the ring off his left hand?”
Victor looked at her in surprise. “I couldn’t be bothered finding cutters. My creation is still wearing it. The engraving bears a clue, no doubt,” he breathed, looking at the hallway. “I should go and tell him—”
Angelika was grim. “Your loyalty is to me, brother. When we find that ring, I want you to give it to me. Promise me. He’s mine. I made him, and everything he has is also mine.”
“You are wrong, you brat,” Victor said in a warning tone. “He belongs to himself. Or to a pretty widow somewhere who is crying her eyes out. I do find this rather amusing. You have found the one man you cannot ask a hundred questions of.”
She put her face in her hands. “I cannot believe neither of us could be bothered to look properly at his ring. I think we are a pair of fools.”
“This is the sort of thing a man would be very angry to find out about.”
“I’ll deal with that if it ever happens. There is no point in raising his hopes. For all we know, your naked creation is shot dead by now, lying on a slab again.”
“I should ask my colleagues to keep an eye on the county morgues,” Victor replied, grabbing another apple from the silver bowl on the table. “You’re a genius, Jelly.”
Chapter Five
Mary, where are my nightgowns?” Angelika asked the old woman on the upstairs landing. She held up a fistful of slippery silk. “These aren’t what I wear.”
Mary performed a slow, blinking grimace. “Mightn’t hurt to try.”
“Are you trying to wink at me?”
“For a week you’ve passed him on the way to bed, flannel nightgown buttoned up to your ears.” Mary boomed it so loudly the entire house could hear. “These were your mother’s negligees. I brought them up from the basement, to see if they’ll move things along. I’ll have you married yet,” she said like a threat.