Twelve
“EDWARD!” I STUMBLED FORWARD, but it was too late. I collapsed, wincing as my knees slammed into the hard dock. My fingers curled around the warped boards as I watched him sputter to the surface.
“Take my hand!” I reached as far as I dared, but the distance was too great. Edward slapped at the water uselessly, trying to pull himself up through the unsolid waves. He opened his mouth to shout, but I never heard what he said. He slipped under the surface.
My fingernails dug half-moon trenches into the rotten wood. The dark shape that was Edward hovered just under the glassy surface, like an apparition. I kept thinking I had seen it wrong. It had been an accident. And yet I’d seen Father push him.
I dug my palms against the dock and stumbled to my feet. Father calmly adjusted the rumpled cuffs of his shirt. “Have you lost your mind?” I shouted. “He’s not well. He’ll drown!”
Edward surfaced again, sputtering as he breached the water, only to sink again. Father watched as patiently as if he were waiting for a frog to die in a chloroform-filled jar. A wave of anger rolled up my throat.
Beside him, Montgomery’s face was slack and uncertain.
“You can swim,” I said to him. A desperate request, and he looked at me with hesitation. I understood then. He didn’t want to cross Father, not even to save Edward. Here, he wasn’t the strong, capable man I’d seen on the ship. He was just a boy.
“Please, Montgomery,” I said. He swallowed hard and lurched toward the water. But Father swung the parasol in a swift, graceful arc that blocked his path.
Montgomery’s boots skidded on the dock, as if the parasol had been a six-foot iron fence and not just a few bits of wood and lace. His eyes met mine. Everything felt wrong, so wrong. He should have been apprenticing himself to some craftsman back in England, meeting girls after church. Instead he was a slave to some madman’s whims.
With a growl, I lunged at the parasol and wrestled the flimsy thing from my father’s hand. To my surprise, he surrendered it easily with an amused chuckle that made me shiver. I knelt at the edge of the dock and held it out to Edward. His fingers grazed at the handle, but he was too far away. The last thing I saw before he slipped under was the gold glint of his eyes, fixated on Father.
“To hell with it,” Montgomery muttered. He dived into the water.
For a painfully long moment I was alone with my father. The late-afternoon sun crept over the dock, casting long shadows. I was afraid to look behind me. I’d come so far, only to find that the rumors must be true—only a monster would patiently watch a man drown. What happened to the father I remembered, the father who sneaked me chocolates when Mother wasn’t looking, whose warm tweed coats blanketed me when I fell asleep on the sofa? Were those memories nothing more than fantasies?
I realized I had no idea who the man in the white linen suit was. Fear slipped out of me in little gasps, the only sound except the slap of the waves against the piles. Farther down the dock, the hulking islanders loaded cargo into a horse-drawn wagon. They might as well have been in a different world, though they were only paces from us.
Montgomery surfaced at last with his arm circling Edward’s waist, shattering the awful spell. I threw aside the broken parasol and reached out to help him as he paddled to the dock.
“Hold on to him while I climb up,” Montgomery said. I clutched Edward around the shoulders while Montgomery pulled himself up; then he dragged Edward out of the water and onto the dock. I leaned over Edward, touching him cautiously, afraid the episode would bring back terrible memories of his shipwreck.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
He leaned to the side and coughed, and then his hand found mine. He squeezed the life out of it. “Juliet . . . you looked even more beautiful when I thought I was dying.”
I stared at his hand holding mine, not sure how to answer. Thank you?
Father offered no assistance. “You should have let him drown,” he observed.
Montgomery only tore at the laces of his dripping boots, trying to get the heavy things off. His knuckles were white. He’d been raised to never question one’s master—but I hadn’t.
I snatched the broken parasol and thrust it at Father’s own chest, not hard enough to push him, just hard enough to show my anger. “How could you?” I cried. An amused look played on his face.
I raised the parasol to jab him again, but he grabbed it and wrenched it from my hands. “Calm down,” he said. The smile was gone, along with his patience.
I heard a watery choking behind me. Edward leaned over the dock, coughing out more seawater. Father grabbed my chin and turned my eyes to meet his. “He doesn’t belong here, Juliet. He isn’t one of us.”
I jerked out of his grasp. “Then maybe I don’t belong here either!”
My chest rose and fell quickly with troubled breath. I ached to rip off the corset. The starched lace collar of the white dress scratched at my neck, and I cursed myself for being such a fool that I ever wanted to impress a man I barely knew, father or not.
The sound of wood striking wood made us all turn. A sailor was back in the launch with more trunks. The second launch followed with the caged panther, which hissed and let out a high-pitched, eerie growl.
Father picked up the parasol. He opened it, observed the shredded and soiled white lace, and then folded it back carefully. The three hulking islanders approached in their odd, lumbering gait and secured the launches. Their startlingly fair eyes threw nervous glances at my father, their master. I could barely stand to look at them. Balthasar’s deformities were unfortunate, but these brutes were the things of nightmares.