Her Dark Curiosity

When I’d been a girl of seven and he a boy of nine, he’d once accompanied us to our relatives’ country estate. One morning after Mother and Father had gotten in a terrible row, I’d found a small bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace on my dresser. I’d never had the courage to ask Montgomery if he’d left them. When Mother found the flowers, she tossed them out the window.

Weeds, she had said.

Years later, he’d given me flowers on the island, when we were no longer children and he’d outgrown his shyness. He’d won my affection, but his betrayal had left my heart dashed against the rocks, broken and bleeding.

‘He loves me, he loves me not,’ I whispered. ‘He’ll forget me, he’ll forget me not. He’ll find me, he’ll find me not …’

I sighed, letting the sounds of my whispers float up to the rose-colored wallpaper. I rolled over, burying my face in my pillow.

You must stop with such childish games, I told myself, as the place beneath my left rib began to ache.

The next morning the professor took me to the weekly flower show at the Royal Botanical Gardens, held in the palatial glass-and-steel greenhouse known as the Palm House, where I found myself surrounded by ranunculus and orchids and spiderlike lilies, and where the only things more ostentatious than the flowers were the dozens of fine ladies sweating in their winter coats. A year ago I’d never thought I would find myself wearing elegant clothes once more, amid ladies whose perfume rivaled the flowers, who tittered about my past behind my back but wouldn’t dare say anything to my face.

It was shocking how much one’s fate could twist in a single year.

The professor, who I was quite certain wished to be anywhere but in a sweaty greenhouse surrounded by ladies, wandered off to inspect the mechanical system that opened the upper windows, leaving me alone to the sly looks and catty whispers of the other ladies.

… used to work as a maid …

… father dead, you know, mother turned to pleasing men for money …

… pretty enough, but something off about her …

Through a forest of towering lilies, a woman in the next aisle caught my eye. For a moment she looked like my mother, though Mother’s hair had been darker, and she’d been thinner in the face. It was more the way this woman hung on the arm of a much older white-haired man, dressed finely with a silver-handled cane. The woman wore no wedding ring – so the man was her lover, not her husband.

The couple paused, and the woman stopped to admire the lilies. I was about to leave when I overheard her say, ‘Buy me one, won’t you, Sir Danvers?’

Sir Danvers. I gave him another look, discreetly, studying the expensive cane, the bones of his face. Yes, it was he. Sir Danvers Carew, Member of Parliament, a popular lord and landowner – and one of the men who used to keep my mother as his mistress. He’d seemed kind, like his reputation, until he turned to drink. He had once knocked Mother around the living room, then struck my leg with that same cane when I’d tried to stop him. I hadn’t thought of him in years, and yet now my shin ached with phantom pain from that day.

I turned away sharply, though there was no danger of him recognizing me. Back then I’d been the skinny child of a mistress he hadn’t kept but a few weeks, and now I was one of the elegant young ladies come to admire hothouse flowers in winter.

‘May I show you these lilies, miss?’ a vendor across the aisle said. I turned my head, still a bit dazed by the memories. ‘They’re a new hybrid I developed myself,’ she continued. ‘I cross-pollinated them with Bourgogne lilies from France.’

Eager to be away from Sir Danvers, I pretended to admire the flowers. The blooms were beautiful, but the hybridization had made the stems too thick. They would have done better crossed with Camden lilies to keep the stems strong but delicate. I didn’t dare start talking aloud about splicing and hybridization, though – I’d have sounded too much like Father.

I swallowed. ‘They’re beautiful.’

‘There you are!’ called a voice at my side. Lucy came tripping along the steam grates in a tight green velvet suit, fanning her face. ‘I’ve been up and down every hall looking for you. Oh, this blasted heat.’ With her free hand she dabbed a handkerchief at the sweat on her forehead. Beneath our feet, the boilers churned out another blast of steam that rose as in a Turkish bath. I inhaled deeply, letting it seep into my pores. I felt healthier here, in the tropical warmth, where the symptoms of my illness never seemed quite as bad.

Lucy glanced rather disdainfully at a bucket of mangled daisies with broken stems. ‘Good lord. It looks as though someone pruned those flowers with a butter knife.’

‘It isn’t about the sharpness of the blade,’ I said. ‘It’s about the hand that holds it.’

‘Well, if you ask me, that hand isn’t anything special either. Must we come here every week? What do I care for flowers, unless a young man is giving them to me?’

I smiled. ‘Which dashing young man would that be? You seem to have quite a few these days.’

Her powdered cheeks grew pinker as she brushed by a display of orchids, absently knocking their petals to the floor. ‘Papa prefers John Newcastle, of course, and I know he’s handsome and a self-made man and all that, but he’s so boring. And then there’s Henry, and my goodness, I simply can’t abide him. He’s from Finland, you know, which might as well be the end of the earth. He hadn’t even seen an automobile until one practically ran him over in Wickham Park.’

As I watched her carelessly knock over an entire plant, I said, ‘For a boy you keep claiming to dislike, you certainly seem to dwell on him.’

She gasped with indignation and rattled on more about her other suitors, but I only half listened. I’d heard all this before, time and time again, different young men depending on the week. I nodded absently while I stooped to clean up the flowers she’d knocked over.

‘Really, Juliet,’ Lucy said in exasperation. ‘You must remember you’re not a maid anymore.’

I paused. She was right. I lived with a wealthy guardian now and was back in good social standing. Seeing Sir Danvers and remembering my mother’s fall from grace had made me relive my former shame all over again. At the far end of the aisle, Sir Danvers and his mistress admired some orchids. He tapped the cane on the steel grates at his feet, sending vibrations all the way to where we stood. I had the sudden urge to stride over, snatch the cane from his hand, and slam the silver tip into his shin, as he had once done to mine. For a man his age, it wouldn’t take much force to shatter the bone.

My hands itched for that cane. More tittering laughter came from behind me, cruel and high-pitched, and I imagined the flower show ladies whispering among themselves.

… violent tendencies …

… well, with a father like hers …

Itch, itch, itch. But I forced myself to turn away. The professor wanted to prove I could be a respectable young lady despite who my father had been. The only problem was, being respectable wasn’t nearly as second nature as I had thought it would be.

I turned my back on them, facing the frost-covered wall of the greenhouse, beyond which I could make out the shadowy shapes of falling snow. As I watched, a black police carriage pulled up outside. My breath froze. Ever since Scotland Yard officers had arrested me in response to Dr Hastings’s accusations, I’d been jumpy around policemen.

All that is behind you, I reassured myself.

But the carriage stopped, and a handsome officer perhaps ten years my senior climbed out, and through the glass panes dripping with condensation, he looked directly at me.

I turned toward the sprays of ferns, Sir Danvers forgotten, thoughts racing. If this had been Father’s island, I could have disappeared into those vines with silent steps I’d learned from his beast-men. But large as the greenhouse was, the police would find me in minutes.

Lucy gave me a strange look, dabbing at her brow. ‘Whatever’s the matter with you?’

‘The police are here,’ I whispered. I jerked my chin toward the door at the far end of the palm court, where the groan of the heavy iron door sounded. I should get away from Lucy. It would only humiliate her to have her friend arrested so publicly.

I started for the door to intercept him, but Lucy grabbed my arm. ‘The police? Oh, don’t tell me you’re still afraid of the police. That was ages ago, and everything was sorted out. And look at you; you’d look like royalty if you’d just stop slouching so much. Only criminals slouch.’

My heart pounded harder as the officer appeared through the vines that draped from the catwalk above. He was a tall man with a sweep of chestnut hair that matched Lucy’s, and he walked with the confidence of the upper classes. Not a beat patrol officer, then. They’d sent someone important for me – how thoughtful. He was dressed in a fine dark suit with an old-fashioned copper bulletproof breastplate beneath his cravat, and a pistol at his hip.

My muscles twitched, urging me to flee, but Lucy’s arm still held me.

‘Oh, him?’ She sighed. ‘You’ve nothing to worry about. He’s not here for you. Papa must have sent him to collect me.’

I looked between the officer and Lucy, still not understanding. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That’s John Newcastle, the suitor Papa’s so fond of,’ she said. ‘I was just telling you about him. Weren’t you listening? Really, Juliet.’

I stared at her. ‘You didn’t say he was a police officer!’

‘He isn’t a police officer,’ she said, fluffing her hair where the humidity had made it go flat. ‘He’s an inspector. Scotland Yard’s top inspector.’ Her voice dropped to a mutter. ‘He’s rather fond of telling me how important he is, not to mention handsome. He’d marry himself, I do believe, if he could.’

‘Lucy—’ I started, but Inspector Newcastle reached us then and gave us a dashing smile, his eyes only darting to me in a perfunctory manner before settling on Lucy.

‘Lucy, darling.’ He bent forward to kiss her cheek, which left a glistening mark that she dabbed at with the handkerchief.

‘Papa sent you, I presume?’