Beasts of london, p.13
Beasts of London, page 13
“Darling, I need that for my research,” Father murmured in a chiding, sing-song voice. He was smiled at her the way he always smiled at Mother, with complete adoration.
“What research?” Hazel danced out of his grasp with the book. “I thought your days of exploration were over. If you require information on Egyptian glyphs, I’d be happy to assist. Now, let’s see…” She produced the book from behind her back and raised an eyebrow. “What do you need a book on curses and binding magic for?”
“It’s for Cecil.”
“Really? What does he need it for, then?” Hazel laughed and backed away from him as he made a grab for the book. “Felix, I’m not one of your wild animals. You cannot hunt me into submission. I can be reasoned with. Now, if you tell me what you and he discussed this morning, I shall return your book to you.”
“My dear, we have been over this before,” Father groaned. “What Cecil and I discuss does not concern you. Now, hand over that book.”
With a sigh of defeat, she returned it. When he drew near, she placed her hands on his chest, brushing the fresh purple flower on his lapel, and looked into his eyes. “Felix, you will tell me what you discussed with Mr. Morris,” she said calmly.
Father clutched his head as if suddenly dizzied. “We discussed the murder of Lord Danvers.”
Murder? Lucy’s blood ran cold. It was an odd word choice to use for an animal attack.
“Nothing else?” Hazel pressed.
“That was all, my darling.” Father leaned toward her for a kiss, but she pulled away. He frowned. “I do not approve of your talk of Cecil lately. One might think you were interested in him beyond what is appropriate.”
Father had never been the type of man who became jealous for no reason. He had always been confident in himself and in his marriage. Lucy had never heard this bitter, acrid sting in his voice before. It made her shudder.
“Oh, darling, you do not need to worry about Cecil.” Hazel clucked her tongue and patted his cheek. “Now, give me a kiss like a good husband and forget all about it.”
Lucy knocked sharply on the half-open door to announce herself before striding inside. “Father,” she said tightly, “I need to speak with you on an important matter at once. Alone, please.”
“Now, Lucy, you know you can speak to both of us.” Hazel smoothed out her elegant emerald green day dress with her dainty hands. “Don’t you agree, Felix?”
Father nodded, though he looked as if he had hardly heard. He was not even looking at his daughter at all; he was smiling in a dreamy way at his new wife like he enjoyed being henpecked. “Whatever you say, darling.”
A scoff escaped Lucy’s lips before she could stifle it, but she began her rehearsed explanation in a voice stiff with force patience. “Since returning from Italy, I have grown quite bored and restless. I need something meaningful to do, and I believe that teaching will bring me much fulfillment.”
“Yes.” Father nodded absently. “Your mother always said that women needed as much enrichment as men, and I agree. You must keep your mind engaged.”
Lucy’s mouth twitched at into a faint, pained smile. “Yes, Father. That is why I’ve decided as of this afternoon to act as a temporary governess and art teacher to Mr. Morris’s ward at his museum.”
A look of befuddlement crossed Father’s features, and he shook his head as if shaking off a dream. “You’re leaving? When?”
“Mr. Morris wishes me to begin work this evening, and I have already packed my carpet bag.”
“But you’ve only just returned. This is very sudden, Lucy.”
“It’s only until a more suitable governess can be found. I shall visit as often as I can, and you visit the museum frequently already.”
“Well, I think it is a wonderful idea,” Hazel said, squeezing his arm. “From what I’ve seen of Lucy’s artwork, she should be sharing her passions with the world, not keeping them hidden in a sketchbook. You agree with me, don’t you, darling?”
Father’s brow furrowed. “May I have a few words with my daughter alone, darling?”
“Of course, my love.”
When his wife left the room, Father took his daughter’s hand gently. His thumb traced over the Egyptian ring on her finger; he had the twin of it on his own hand, and he never took it off. “Lucy, if the child proves too much for you to handle, it would not be a failure on your part.”
“I am not giving up on this,” she said. “And if I can teach Agnes, I can teach any little girl.”
“She is not a normal girl. She’s half Fae and thus unpredictable.”
Lucy ignored the prickle of dread at the back of her neck, thinking about the boggart she had faced a few years prior. “Yes, of course.”
“Lucy, you haven’t been having those nightmares again, have you?” He scrutinized her, his grip on her hands tightening.
“N-no, Father.” She lowered her head, unable to meet his eyes. “I haven’t forgotten to take my sleeping draught every night as Dr. Heath ordered.”
“Good girl.” He patted her shoulder. “Now then, I doubt it would happen, but if Mr. Morris acts ungentlemanly toward you—”
“Father, he would not dare.” She gestured to the many trophies decorating the room. “He knows you’d mount his head on your office wall like a prized lion if he acted indecently.”
“Yes, indeed.”
Agnes was reading in her room when Lucy came to explain her departure. She sat in the alcove overlooking the back garden, completely absorbed in one of her literary magazines. This one was an old favorite: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe. When her sister entered, Agnes looked up.
“I came to talk with you, preferably without making a fool of myself this time.” Lucy sat down across from her, and the younger girl scooted to make room. “Are you still cross with me?”
Agnes shook her head, lowering her magazine. “I’ve been reading, and I realized you were right.”
Lucy tried to not appear too shocked. “Oh? What made you decide that?”
“Well, I always imagined that Mr. Morris was like a hero in my magazines. He would be hiding some dark history and secret horrors that torment him, and I would be the heroine who saved him with my unwavering virtues and my voluptuous lips…”
“Oh, Agnes, really!” Lucy snapped. “You’ve been reading too many of those dreadful novels. I ought to take them away from you!”
“But it was my novels that made me realize that what I want is simply not realistic.” She sighed, gazing out the dew-beaded window. “However, if I am to court any man, I’d wish him to be completely devoted to me, body and soul. If Mr. Morris won’t even devote himself to me long enough to hear me play piano, I don’t want to pursue him.”
Lucy blinked. “That is a mature conclusion to make, Agnes,” she conceded calmly. “I’m quite impressed with you.” Even if how she came to that conclusion was absurd and completely inappropriate.
“Why do you ask about Mr. Morris?” Agnes asked.
When Lucy broke the news to her sister that she was leaving temporarily, Agnes sat in stunned silence for a moment, seemingly torn between wanting to be outraged again and wanting to keep her newfound maturity. Before she could respond, Lucy explained, “I know your feelings for Mr. Morris are still tender, but I need you to know that I am not doing this for him. I’m doing this for Father.”
“For Father?”
“Agnes…” Lucy hesitated, still picturing her little sister as a child. Agnes sat up with the elegant posture and bearing of a young woman. She had been alone when Mother died, and she had mourned on her own. “Father may have been blackmailed by Lord Danvers, and Mr. Morris is involved somehow.”
“Have you spoken to Mr. Morris about it? He loves Father, and I’m sure if you asked him, he would be willing to help.”
Lucy was not sure she could trust Mr. Morris after he had taken Father’s bribe, and the thought of sharing her secret nightmares and artwork with him was mortifying. “There’s something else, Agnes. It’s about the Forgotten City…”
She scooted closer, her eyes lighting up. “That’s why you mentioned it to me this morning. Is this about what Madam Hazel saw in her reading last night?”
“I had a dream last night about the horned woman,” she admitted in a low, tremulous voice. “In my dream, I saw Lord Danvers die before it happened, or as it happened.”
“Perhaps you heard about it this morning somehow—”
“It happened in the middle of the night.” She folded her hands in her lap, twisting her fingers together. “I need to discover why I dreamed about Lord Danvers, and how Father is involved. Mr. Morris is investigating his death, and what he uncovers may give me answers.”
“So you’ll investigate too?” Agnes’s eyes shone bright, and she held up her magazine. “You’ll be like Detective Dupin. While you do that at the museum, I can be a detective here and keep an eye on Madam Hazel.”
“What about Madam Hazel?”
“Don’t you think there’s something odd going on with her? She appeared in Father’s life out of nowhere, and then he married her so suddenly. You weren’t here, so you don’t know what it was like.”
“No, I wasn’t here.” She glanced down at her hands.
“But, Lucy, if Father is in trouble,” she took her sister’s hand, “we shall figure it out together.”
Lucy’s fingers gripping her suitcase were sweating beneath her gloves as she approached the Morris Museum of Supernatural Curiosities. Her coach driver dropped off her art supplies and her trunk of clothes on the street outside. Strangling the handle of her case, she watched the driver leave and had to restrain herself from calling him back. She wondered if she had made a terrible mistake in coming here.
Before she could ponder it further, one of the massive oak double doors swung open. She expected to be greeted by a butler or a servant, yet there was no one standing there. It was as if the door had opened on its own or by some unseen hand. Chills erupted down her back, but she held her head high and stepped forward.
“Mr. Morris?” She peered inside. “It is Miss Lucy Todd—”
“Down here, miss.”
Lucy held back a scream as a squat, boney creature materialized in front of her. He reached just below her knee in height, and he wore a long green cap on his wrinkly white hair-tufted head. It looked similar to the boggart, except this faery was not bloodless in color and did not have sharp claws or wicked teeth.
“May Witherbones take your bags, miss?” The creature bowed so low that his cap dragged on the floor. “Your room is on the third floor.”
Lucy could only stare and make a choked sound. A moment later, Mr. Morris appeared from the right wing of the ground floor and greeted her with a slight bow of his head. “Miss Lucy, I hope the journey was pleasant. I am terribly sorry if Witherbones startled you.”
“Is he…?” She licked her dry lips, watching the creature. “Is he safe? Or is he like that horrible boggart that possessed our home?”
“He’s a house Brownie, and he will not harm you.”
The Brownie shuffled past them to fetch the bags from outside. Lucy thought there was no way he could lift them with his scrawny arms, but he did not need to. With a snap of his knobby fingers, the bags levitated and floated into the house.
She gaped and turned to Mr. Morris. “You have a strange definition of what is harmless, sir.”
As he led her further inside the museum for a tour, he clarified. “I never claimed he was harmless. I said that he would not harm you. Every faery has the potential to pose a threat, just the same as any human you encounter on the street has ample opportunity to pose a danger.”
“Then what is keeping the Brownie from being like that boggart?” She halted in her tracks a moment as she came face to face with a dragon’s skull. “Do such creatures have morals or a conscience?”
“Faeries can have an alignment, certainly. They are Seelie, Unseelie, or Neutral. Each of those alignments has the same power to harm a person, yet they have different worldviews that prevent or enable it.” He chuckled in amusement at her startled reaction and asked, “Miss Lucy, what do you think prevents a man from acting like that boggart and terrorizing people to get what he wants?”
“Because it is immoral.”
“What makes it so?”
“Why, the law makes it so.”
He nodded. “Exactly, and disobeying the law would lead to social ruin. So is it society that prevents man from committing evil acts?”
“Father says—”
“Your father shares his opinions quite often. I am asking to hear yours.”
Lucy tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear and thought it over as they walked. They toured the various wings of the museum, and she marveled at or recoiled from every creature she saw. There was a creature that scurried past them called a Phouka that changed shape from a raven to a yellow cat midair. There were insect-like faeries that took the shape of tufts of grass or flowers. There were will-o-the-wisps bobbing and floating and creating their own mist.
“I agree with Father that whether a man is good or evil depends on factors of upbringing, education, and religion. However, I feel he is far too charitable in some respects.”
“How so?”
“Because there are some men who, even when given every opportunity, will never choose goodness over evil. That means their wicked nature must play a part in their choices. They are simply born wicked and always shall be.”
Mr. Morris rubbed his chin, considering her. His posture and features were relaxed, yet there was a brightness to his unusual eyes that suggested he was actually interested in what she was saying. “That’s a conundrum. How can a man be culpable for his crimes if he was only following his nature?”
“I—” Lucy frowned. “I do not know.”
“You see, an Unseelie faery is born Unseelie. His nature and alignment order him to follow a certain set of rules which he cannot escape. One of those rules is that he must consume human flesh and blood to survive…”
Her breath caught. “Your point, Mr. Morris?”
“My point is that herein lies the problem with your theory. Societal pressure can only do so much to keep one in line.” He turned and picked up a loose petal that had fallen from a flower pot. The vines were carefully pruned, though they seemed to be stretching toward the sky for freedom. “You see, I believe that men are either Unseelie, Seelie, or Neutral. He follows society’s influence in order to remain unpunished, yet his nature is what truly drives him.
“To bring it back to our original topic, that is why Witherbones could harm you but will not. He may be unlikely to betray his oath because that would mean he receives no porridge from me and loses his home, but what truly keeps him in check is his Neutral nature. Harming you would not be his first instinct, and since he doesn’t need your blood…”
They reached a room dedicated to Unseelies, ugly, horrible, and twisted beings that made Lucy shiver. When she looked at one of his sketches (which she grudgingly noted was quite good for an amateur) of a humanoid faery with ram horns and sharp teeth, she jerked away, thinking of the horned woman.
“Why do you look away?” Mr. Morris asked gently. “You find them repelling, don’t you?”
“Because they are repellant.”
“I think they’re beautiful.”
She scoffed outright. She knew men like him—dandies who only appreciated the shallow aesthetics of a thing. “You cannot mean that earnestly, Mr. Morris. You claimed before that only beautiful art is worth anything. I would prefer that you did not tease me as though I was Agnes, for I do not find it amusing.”
When he looked at her, his serious features did not waver. “I meant what I said, Miss Lucy. Beauty exists for our pleasure, and it makes life worth living. I simply happen to find the most beauty in the unique, the strange, and the powerful.”
When he led Lucy to the room where she would be staying, which was across from the little girl’s room upstairs, the child was waiting in the hall. Clad in an oversized navy blue short dress with a crisp white apron, the girl had her hands clasped shyly in front of her and was staring at the floor.
“Miss Lucy, this is Vera.” Mr. Morris’s features softened when he addressed the girl. “Vera, greet Miss Lucy as we practiced.”
Vera gave a quick, clumsy curtsy and quickly looked away again.
Reminded of how shy her sister was as a child, Lucy’s heart unclenched. “I am pleased to meet you, Miss Vera.”
“Wonderful.” Mr. Morris clapped his hands together and said brightly, “Now that introductions have been made, I must see to an important matter in the city. Take care, ladies.”
Then he turned swiftly and made for the stairs. Both Lucy and Vera balked. The girl raced to the banister and watched him go, clinging to it as if she had been left alone with a dangerous animal. Lucy felt as though she had more reason to feel that way, and she followed him down the stairs.
“Mr. Morris, will you wait one moment?” Lucy asked, catching up to him. “You have given me no instruction on how to deal with the child. I know nothing of what kind of creature she is, or what to do with her.”
He halted, frowning. “What to do with her? You’re meant to teach her art.”
“Yes, but the boggart…” She lowered her voice, aware of the child’s eyes on her. “Sir, when the boggart attacked, you warded him away with iron. What am I to do if the child uses her powers? How do I stop her?”
“Miss Lucy, you cannot stop her nature any more than you can stop a thunderstorm. It is who she is, and she should not have to hide it. I assure you, she will not harm you intentionally.”
“Intentionally?” Lucy snapped.
“If she misbehaves, she’ll get no more boiled sweets. Besides, she has the gift of influencing and reading emotions.” Mr. Morris shot her a cool, knowing look over his shoulder that made her stiffen. His blue eyes were bright with teasing. “As I said, Miss Lucy, you have nothing to worry about on that front. Good day.”
