“Inconvenient! Miss Speedwell, I protest. Eliza had become afiend. I tell you, I did not know her. In the thrall of this demented scheme, she was nothing like the sister I had known. All gentleness, all sober dignitywere lost to her. She no longer conducted herself with anything like decorum. She ordered us about as if we were her henchmen!”
I saw then that Eliza’s crime had been as much stepping out of her place as endeavouring to reanimate a corpse. I could well imagine this quiet, watchful girl, liberated by her own audaciousness to attempt what these two men could never even dream of. It would have been a heady time for her as she threw off the confines of the role into which society had forced her. How long had she bided her time, waiting to burst free like some poisonous flower, no longer in bud but fully and violently in bloom?
“So you had no choice but to hold her back,” Stoker surmised.
“Exactly so,” Elyot agreed, clearly relieved that someone in the room seemed to understand his motivations. But Stoker flicked me a glance of pure understanding, and I knew he intuited my thoughts.
Before Elyot could absolve himself further, I took up the thread of the narrative once more. “The marquess counselled removing her from the premises and when you told Eliza, she became violent,” I suggested.
“Yes. She struck me, and before I could rouse myself to restrain her, she bolted,” he said. “But not before vowing vengeance. Even now, what she said haunts me. I will remember her words, her cruel and venomous words, until my dying breath. She promised to exact her revenge upon me, and I believed her. She outlined the tortures she intended to inflict in horrifying detail, such violence and horror as only a demon in Hell could conjure.” He paused, paling a little as he went on. “There were incidents when she was a child, things I had forced myself to forget. A neighbour’s cat that had killed her pet canary, later a puppy that had chewed her favourite slippers. She did... unspeakable things. But I made excuses for her, always. It was not until she threatened me that I knew real fear. Her words struck me to my marrow, and I knew I should never be free of her.”
“Was it Lord Ambrose’s idea or yours to burn down the laboratory?” Stoker asked.
“Mine,” he said. “I rued the necessity of it—so much knowledge lost! But I knew the only way to escape Eliza’s wrath was if she believed me to be dead. And I suppose I thought if the notes and equipment were destroyed, she could never replicate the work. She had not paid close attention to Ambrose’s formulae, you see. Without his preservation chemicals in precise and exacting applications, no specimen could withstand her efforts. I suppose it was an insurance policy of sorts that whatever dark path she was bent upon, she could no longer tread it.” He paused, sighing. “I acted in haste, panic even. But Ambrose and I believed it to be the only possible course.”
“Why preserve the Beauty if you meant to thwart Eliza’s work?” I inquired.
His brows rose. “The Beauty? Oh, I see. That is what you have called her. Yes, she was enchanting, was she not? After all we had done, we could not bring ourselves to destroy her. It seemed a blasphemous thing, which I know you will laugh at, but there it is. She was so perfect, the apotheosis of our work. I could not bear to let her burn.”
“She was also a human being,” Stoker reminded him.
Chastened, Elyot bowed his head. “Of course. It was her humanity which ultimately made it impossible to destroy her in the end.”
“Yet you did not give her a proper burial,” Stoker pressed.
“How could we!” Elyot threw up his hands. “We were desperate, acting in furious haste. It seemed a miracle we managed even to secure a place for her in some grimy warehouse. I always expected we would retrieve her at some point, when it was safe for me to return.”
“Yet you never did, until now,” I remarked.
“Because I was a coward. You may hold as many mirrors up to my soul as you please, Miss Speedwell, and I will not flinch from the reflection there. I have been unmanly in my weakness, and yet insufferable inmy arrogance. I have married the worst of conceivable flaws, and I have trailed destruction in my wake. I can only hope now to remedy my actions in a way that causes the least possible harm.”
He fell silent then, and after a long moment, Stoker rose, plucking the teacup from Elyot’s fingers.
“Time for something stronger, I think.”
CHAPTER
25
Stoker poured a stout measure of whisky for each of us. His hospitality was finely calibrated to his respect for the person he served. Lady Wellie was always accorded the finest Scottish single malt of great maturity, whilst I had upon one memorable occasion seen him palm an importunate caller with an indifferent port thick with sediment and smelling faintly of old goat. Julius Elyot, I noted, warranted no better than a limp Irish blend. It mightn’t have had the robust peatiness of its Scottish cousin, but at least it offered the virtue of beingbracing. Elyot looked as though he could do with some propping up, and after a few sips and a vigorous coughing spell—the libation could not be called smooth by even the most charitable imbiber—a slightly healthier colour rose in his cheeks.
“Thank you,” he gasped.
“Mr. Elyot, would I be correct in supposing this is not the first occasion upon which you have trespassed at Bishop’s Folly?”
My tone was pleasant, but there was an unmistakable note of accusation. He flinched a little.
“My apologies, Miss Speedwell. It was badly done, but I was desperate. Your call upon Ambrose persuaded us both that you must havesome knowledge of the whereabouts of the specimen.” I did not care for his clinical way of referring to the Beauty, and from the immediate scowl that settled upon Stoker’s features, I knew he shared my distaste. To us she was far more than a scientific project, but I said nothing and Elyot carried on, insensible to our feelings. “We were desperate to recover her.”
“Why?” Stoker’s inquiry was brusque.
Elyot thought a moment, sucking his teeth as he pondered. “She was our greatest achievement, even without Eliza’s mad intentions. She was utterly and perfectly preserved. Ambrose and I believed it might someday be possible to present our work to the scientific community.”
“To what purpose?” Stoker pressed. “Simply to say you could?”
“Perhaps,” Elyot admitted with a smile. “But there are commercial applications as well.”
“Commercial!” I did not bother to conceal my repulsion.