Her Dark Curiosity by Megan Shepherd

bloody headlines in the newspaper. I rolled his sleeve back down gently. “One more thing. Promise me you won’t see Lucy again. You’re putting her in danger by being around her.”
    He nodded. “I’ll send her a note.”
    I felt the weight of the unfinished conversation, and finally asked, “What happened to Montgomery?”
    There was the pain again, sharp and quick, in my side, as though when Montgomery had shoved the dinghy away with his boot, he’d kicked in my heart instead. I recapped the syringe, biting the inside of my cheek.
    Edward didn’t respond right away, and my mind filled with answers he wasn’t saying. Perhaps he’d killed Montgomery, or one of the beast-men had. Or Montgomery was still there, on the island, content never to see me again.
    “He’s alive,” Edward said, but I could tell he was holding something back. “He hunted me for weeks on the island. I left him notes, trying to get him to give me a chance to explain. . . . I thought maybe he could help me with the cure. But he was only interested in hunting me down, and I knew sooner or later he’d have his chance, and he wouldn’t win. The Beast is too strong. So I left, to come here and find a cure before I killed him.”
    I toyed with one of the silver forks in the pile of stolen silverware, watching the glints from the lantern. He stepped closer, dropping his voice. “Forget him, Juliet. He abandoned you. He was keeping secrets from you.”
    I glanced up from the fork. “Secrets?”
    “That he was helping your father, that he’d made some of the creatures himself, and worst of all . . .” He stopped and looked away.
    “What secret?” I asked. When he didn’t answer, I let the fork clatter to the floor and grabbed his suit lapel a little roughly. “What other secret was Montgomery keeping from me, Edward?”
    “It doesn’t matter. You loved him, and he left you. I’d never do that to you. I’d sooner cut off my own hand than do anything to cause you pain.” My fingers were still coiled in the stiff fabric of his lapel, and he whispered, “If you’d only give me a chance . . .”
    But I stepped back toward the cabinet, away from his promises and his offers. My breath was coming fast. The world was an upside-down place when Montgomery James was keeping secrets from me and Edward Prince telling me the truth.
    But Edward was right—Montgomery had lied to me. He had left me.
    I grabbed my coat before he could say another word, and said, “The professor will have half the city out looking for me. It’s so late . . . I must get back. I’ll leave Sharkey here with you; the drugs will put you to sleep in a few minutes, so lock the door behind me. If you aren’t too groggy tomorrow, go through Father’s journal—maybe you can make sense of it. I’ll come back tomorrow night with fresh supplies.” I squeezed the doorknob, afraid to let go. Terrified to leave him, terrified that I still might read of fresh murders tomorrow in the newspaper. Sedatives might not be enough. Chains might not be enough. I had seen what the Beast could do. I’d have to make something even stronger to contain him until we could find the cure.
    As I slid into my coat, my eyes darted around the room. Edward, so handsome as he checked his pocket watch, stood amid the twisted rosebushes, with Sharkey curled on the hearth and a warm fire churning away. Almost a sweet scene, if it wasn’t so terrible. I threw on my coat and shut the door, heart pounding.
    I leaned my head back against the worn wood of the stairwell, eyes closed, uncertain if I was making the biggest mistake of my life by helping a murderer, or if I had found the one person in the world who understood me.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
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TWELVE
    W HEN I’ D LEFT THE house that morning, the professor had been so distracted by that Isambard Lessing’s visit that he hadn’t asked