The Mysterious Madam Morpho

Page 9

“I b-b-believe you are safe,” Vil said, and her companion answered, “Thank you, Vil.”
In the faint light of the doorway, their eyes met again.
“I believe you have some explaining to do, Mr. Gladstone,” she murmured.
“Call me Henry,” he said.
9
Getting down from their secret perch was nearly as difficult as getting up, possibly more so, thanks to the fact that Imogen was utterly discombobulated. No man had ever touched her face, much less looked at her with longing. Her assignations with Beauregard had been as swift and cold as shop transactions, and she had been neither warmed nor satisfied by his brief, harsh caresses.
The first time he had caught her and used her, she had found a quiet corner of the museum’s cellar vault and sobbed her heart out into a handkerchief. After that, she had steeled herself to be just as remote and aloof, to consider it a duty and the fine line between her and a life of begging on the streets, a fallen woman. She had never felt her professor’s hands without gloves, never known a moment of tenderness.
But now! That one ungloved hand on her face had seemed as intimate as a whisper in the night, and she was not yet ready to face him again by light of day.
The moment her boots hit the ground, she nearly collapsed. Mr. Murdoch . . . no. Henry. Whatever his name was, he landed beside her and put a hand on her arm to steady her. The connection was no less shocking than the last touch, and she hid her disquiet by pressing her eyes to the leather cups of the periscope goggles and gazing at the caravan outside. The hillside that had held the Coppers when last she looked was now empty.
“You’ll want to see the other side, I wager,” Henry murmured as he adjusted the dials and her view.
The scene was eerie. All of the carnivalleros sat on the roofs of their wagons, their eyes pinned to the one next door to Mr. Murdoch’s. That was the engine, and Criminy Stain stood outside it, facing the door, arms crossed and eyebrows drown down in carefully controlled anger.
“May I?”
She backed away and let Henry look, her eyes straying to his backside. Imogen had never seen a man without a tailcoat or a university gown and found herself transfixed by the neat cut of his pants over lean hips, just a triangle of his shirt flashing from under his vest.
“So the engine wagon should be their last stop, then,” he said. “That’s Vil’s, you know. He hasn’t anything painted on the side, as he’s neither an act nor a figure of mystery. Poor lad has to be satisfied enough to see his own name painted on my trailer.”
“And what of your name?”
“You already know more of me than is safe.”
He stepped away from the goggles, arms crossed and face stern and watchful. She began to wonder if he regretted their whispered conversation in the dark, secretive crawlspace, and she didn’t want to think too sharply about how much of her own soul she had bared. Glancing around the room for an occupation, she sought something, anything to keep him from looking at her like that and making her heart race. With a few quick steps, she began moving his books off her trunk, stacking them neatly on the floor. He should have offered to help, but he just watched her struggling under the weight of the great tomes as if it were rather amusing.
“Honestly, did you select only the most burdensome books to anchor my trunk?”
“My dear lady, you’re as jittery as a one-legged crow.”
She set down the encyclopedia with a slight puff of dust and drew herself up to her full height, giving him the look she had given any of the college fellows who deigned to ridicule her.
“My entire life is buried in this trunk and was very nearly discovered by those horrid hooligans,” she said. “Of course, I’m anxious about their safety.”
“Your butterflies are trapped in some fascinating state of suspended animation, Imogen, and, as such, require neither oxygen nor attention. You’re just feeling busy. It is a simple remainder from such a fright. But you needn’t worry. Your entire life is not, in fact, buried in that trunk.”
She took a shuddering breath. “What do you mean by that?”
He gave her such a slow, honey-sweet smile that she thought he might reach for her again, touch her face, or dust her lips with another kiss. Instead, he walked to the bookshelf and selected a book.
“Olivia Twist. Let me guess. One of your favorites?”
“That’s mine! You beastly, beastly man!” Then she realized that his entire bookshelf was covered in her books. She knew every single volume, considering that she had spent the last year of her life buying them one by one from used-book sellers and hollowing them out with a penknife.
“Rather elegant a solution, don’t you think? Hiding your darlings in plain sight?”
“What if they’d picked up a book? What if they’d opened it?”
He snorted. “Do you suppose Coppers are often bibliophiles? That men trained to hurt, to kill, to capture, and especially to hate anyone but their own species—do you think that they are learned men?”
She ran a hand along the mismatched spines of her precious books. Even though she had known, upon buying them, that they would be destroyed for the most gallant of causes, she had still taken pains to buy the books she loved. It was as if by cutting out their hearts, she was still able to give them souls. Her butterflies.
Quickly, cleverly, she sought out the first book. He had arranged them in alphabetical order, the tidy creature, and she found it easily enough. Fantastic Conjectures. One of her favorites. She plucked it from its place on the shelf and opened it, careful to keep the spine facing him. With one look inside, her eyes rolled heavenward in silent thanks. Her beloved Blue Morpho was in perfect form despite time and travel and his possibly careless handling.
But no. Imogen was starting to see that nothing he did was careless.
“But what if they had opened one?” she asked again.
His face went dark, his eyes darting to the corner, where a large lump sat, covered in a canvas tarp.
“I had a plan for that, too,” he said.
“What is that, under the tarp?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I am a scientific woman, Mr. Gladstone. The most curious of creatures.”
“Curiosity killed the cat. That’s what they say, is it not?”
“Where I came from, it was mostly bludrats or my father with a grain sack and a visit to the Thames.”
His eyes softened, and he held out a hand to her. “I think the world has been unnecessarily cruel to you,” he said softly.
She stared at his hand a moment before taking it, unsure of what he wanted. Would he pull her close for another kiss, perhaps hold her as if she were a frightened child?
Instead, he tugged her over to the worktable, saying only, “Work will soothe us both, I think.”
The plans had been covered by a few casually strewn newspapers. He stacked them neatly to the side as she ran a finger over the cunning designs, each carefully labeled and drawn as if one could see straight through the objects in question. The musical instruments were wonders of clockwork, the machines for feats of strength as magical and seemingly fragile as the butterflies themselves. These plans weren’t simply a man’s response to his employer’s request. They were a gift of rare beauty and imagination.
Holding up an ink-smeared handbill showing a drab and featureless woman with a very high price on her head, he said, “Vil was right. This isn’t you. It could be anyone. And it doesn’t nearly do justice to your beauty.”
She looked up at him, a smile trembling on her lips, one hand on his drawings.
“These plans are a credit to yours,” she said.
10
After an afternoon spent discussing butterfly species and colors while he cut and filed bits of metal, Imogen realized it was long past time to go. How odd, that one could spend the day in a room full of ticking clocks and still utterly lose track of time. When she opened the wagon door, it was dark outside, and the caravan was in full swing, a riot of noise and light.
Henry stood a little away, as if he didn’t want to be seen by anyone who might be lurking beyond his door.
“So I’ll see you tomorrow after breakfast?” he said, and she nodded and said, “Of course.”
But she paused, one hand on the door, uncertain. The sound of a calliope danced on the brisk air, interlaced with laughter and bells and the merry burble of voices. She could smell candy floss and smoked meat and popcorn, overlaid with the metal tang of the train and, nearer, of Henry. The moon was a bare sliver, high in the sky, outshone by the lanterns strung around the perimeter of the caravan. A sharp line of light divided the warm atmosphere of the show from the dark emptiness of the surrounding moors. They’d been so busy that they had missed the dinner bell, and for whatever reason, Vil had not brought a tray, which Henry had said was his usual manner of meals. Her stomach clenched in hunger, or so she told herself.
“Do I just . . . go out?” she asked. “Is it safe?”
Henry laughed and took a step closer to the door. And to her. “You’re a carnivallero now, dear lady. Have you never been?”
“Never.”
The longing was clear in her voice, and he took a deep breath and stared out the door as if a firing squad waited on the other side, crossbows poised.
“I can’t . . . I haven’t . . . It’s just been a very long time since I went out among people,” he said.
Her fingers drummed on the door in time with the calliope’s glad pipes. “You do not seem like a coward to me.”
“Nor you to me, and yet here you stand, on this side of the door.”
“Perhaps it is not fear of the carnival that keeps me here. Perhaps I remain for selfish reasons. Enjoying someone’s company is not an exhibition of cowardice,” she said, chin high.
“What a strange, plain-speaking creature you are.” His eyes seemed to seek something in the carnival’s glow behind her. “But I find that I share your curiosity. It does sound very exciting out there, doesn’t it? I so rarely open my door when the show is on. Bide a moment, and we’ll see what I can do.”