Her Dark Curiosity by Megan Shepherd Page A

when I’d be home. By now he must be worried sick, and I imagined every light would be blazing, a search party gathered on the front steps.
    But as I approached the brownstone on Dumbarton Street, not a single light shone in the windows. The professor’s routine was predictable to a fault; brandy after dinner and a book until nine, then at the chime of the cuckoo clock, he retired to his bedroom on the third floor. But even as a man of habit, would he have dismissed Mary for the day and gone to bed without me home? Could he have been so distracted over his argument with Isambard Lessing that he’d forgotten to look in my room?
    My mind turned back to that historian, and with a sharp stab I remembered that the professor had introduced Lessing as a King’s Man. Could the professor have never left the King’s Club at all? Could Edward have possibly been right, that he was the secret colleague?
    Fears stirring, I slunk past the iron gate and tiptoed through the snow to climb the garden trellis. When I reached my bedroom window, shivering in the cold, I discovered that the window wouldn’t move. I shoved my weight against it, but it held fast. I squinted through the glass. The padlock had been substituted with a fresh one.
    Blast. This didn’t bode well.
    I climbed back down and jumped into the garden, hesitant to knock on the door and wake the professor if it could at all be avoided. Fortunately, as I skirted the house, I found that Mary had left the kitchen window open a crack, and I silently thanked her forgetfulness. I gracelessly hoisted myself onto the window ledge and slid my stiff fingers into the crack, opening it as silently as I could.
    The kitchen was dark, the icebox and basin hulking shadows. I eased my head and shoulders in, kicking my feet to try to slide in further.
    I had almost made it when two hands grabbed me under the arms and hauled me roughly the rest of the way.
    I would have screamed if I’d found a voice. As it was I fought and clawed, but the figure dropped me unceremoniously on the kitchen floor, where my knees banged on the hard stones and made stars flash in my eyes as I winced in pain. I reached for my knife, but my coat and skirts tangled around me as my hair spilled loose. I was able to push my hair back just in time to see a dark figure moving toward the kitchen table and striking a match.
    The match flared to life, showing the face of a woman. My hand paused above my boot, more in surprise than anything. A stranger, I thought at first, but no, that wasn’t right—I recognized something in her long, loose blond hair, the fine set of her features only starting to show the first signs of wrinkles around her deep-set eyes, her Germanic ancestry evident in her face, just like the professor’s.
    “Elizabeth,” I said in a stunned whisper.
    She lit the hurricane lantern calmly, as though it didn’t trouble her in the least that I was collapsed in a bruised pile on the kitchen floor. She took a seat at the table and motioned to the opposite seat.
    “Miss Moreau, a surprise to be meeting again like this. Though I imagine you won’t mind if I call you Juliet, seeing as formality flew out the window when you crawled through it.”
    I scrambled into the seat, rubbing my elbow from where I’d banged it. Ten years had passed since I’d last seen her, and yet little wear showed on her features. Her hair was just as beautiful as ever as it tumbled to her waist in soft waves that glowed in the lantern light. She was still dressed despite the late hour, in a pale red dress that was quite simple, though even a rag would look elegant on her. She gave me a smile that was slightly off balance, the only quirk in an otherwise perfectly proportioned face, and it looked so much like the professor’s that I started.
    “When did you arrive?” I stuttered.
    “Shortly before lunch. The professor had fallen asleep in the library, and asked me to check on you in your bedroom and say hello. Imagine my