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A Cold Legacy
Megan Shepherd
With inspiration from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, this breathless conclusion to the Madman's Daughter trilogy explores the things we'll sacrifice to save those we love . . . even our own humanity.Juliet has killed the men who tried to steal her father's research and escaped to a remote estate on the Scottish moors. Owned by the enigmatic Elizabeth von Stein, the mansion is full of unexplained oddities: dead bodies in the basement, secret passages, and fortune-tellers who seem to know Juliet's secrets. This is not the safe haven Juliet was searching for.As she uncovers the truth about the manor's long history of scientific experimentation – and her own intended role in it – Juliet is forced to determine where the line falls between right and wrong, life and death, magic and science. She must decide if she'll follow her father's dark footsteps or her mother's tragic ones – or make her own.
Copyright (#u3df57947-bc12-598b-8a89-5a4b36b7e6bf)
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk (http://www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015
Copyright © Megan Shepherd 2015
Cover Layout Design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover design by designbynoodle.com (http://designbynoodle.com)
Cover photographs © Lee Avison / Trevillion Images
Megan Shepherd asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007500246
Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780007500253
Version: 2014-12-17
Dedication (#u3df57947-bc12-598b-8a89-5a4b36b7e6bf)
For Lena,and our Scottish Highlands adventures
Contents
Cover (#uda51b25e-75b9-53af-b28a-82d4a4ba15a7)
Title Page (#ub96616ac-ca3c-512b-b4b4-410d7b5b5bfd)
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Megan Shepherd
About the Publisher
1 (#u3df57947-bc12-598b-8a89-5a4b36b7e6bf)
The last travelers’ inn on the road from Inverness was no place to die.
Freezing rain lashed the windowpanes as I huddled over a warm bowl of soup in a corner of the inn’s ground-floor tavern. Across the table, Montgomery rubbed a scar on his arm and stared out the window, scanning the muddy road for signs that we were being pursued. In the upstairs room just over our heads, locked away from the other patrons, Edward lay dying.
I rested my hands on Montgomery’s anxious ones. “We’re safe here. No one would come after us this far north.”
Beneath the worn canvas shirt and the pistol strapped to his side was the young man I’d agreed to marry. His silver ring circled my finger, scuffed and dented after our escape from London. For the past three days, Lucy, Edward, and I had huddled in the back of the carriage while Montgomery and Balthazar had driven us through snow and rain without complaint, north to Elizabeth von Stein’s estate, Ballentyne Manor, where we hoped to hide.
I threaded my fingers through Montgomery’s. My hands were cold, as always. His were warm and solid. They belonged to a surgeon, not a servant, but I suppose it didn’t matter anymore. Now, like me, he was simply a fugitive.
He turned back to the window. “I keep thinking the police will find us.”
“We didn’t leave any evidence for them to trace. Besides, Elizabeth stayed behind to make certain they don’t suspect us. They’ve no reason to tie us to the … the deaths.”
Deaths. Murders is what I should have said. Just days ago, in the King’s College’s basement laboratories, we had brought to life five of Father’s water-tank creatures that had then slaughtered the most dangerous members of the King’s Club. I could still picture the blood seeping from a gash on Dr. Hastings’s neck.
Montgomery and I hadn’t yet spoken of what had happened at King’s College, though I knew the violence of it bothered him deeply. It had been terrible, but necessary—a fact we didn’t quite seem to agree on.
“We were very thorough,” I added in a dry voice.
A dark look crossed his face. He started to answer, but the sound of laughter drowned out his voice.
Annoyed, I turned to the inn’s fireplace, where a dozen red-faced men and women in gaudy satin clothes swapped stories and pints of beer. They were part of a traveling carnival troupe following the winter fair circuit, and were the only patrons sharing the inn with us. A scraggly-haired woman finished telling a ghost story with a loud belch, and the others roared with laughter.
I didn’t realize how tensely I was holding my muscles until Montgomery leaned in. “Ignore them,” he said.
“It’s nonsense,” I muttered. “Telling ghost stories. There’s enough in this world that’s frightening. Only the ignorant would scare themselves on purpose.”
Overhead, a floorboard creaked and I sat straighter, watching the ceiling, wondering how Edward was doing. Days had passed, and yet I hadn’t come to terms with the fact that he’d poisoned himself. He had tried to end his life before—misguided attempts to kill the monster inside him—but the Beast had always been too strong. It hadn’t been until the very end, when Edward and the Beast had nearly melded into one, that he’d been able to force arsenic down his own throat. He’d have been dead in hours if Montgomery hadn’t stolen drugs from a chemist’s shop outside of Liverpool to counterbalance the worst of the poison’s effects. It wasn’t a cure, but it was a chance.
Now, overcome by delirium and fever, he was caught somewhere between life and death, between being Edward and being the Beast. Lucy was up there now, tending to him at his bedside, while Balthazar stood guard outside the door.
The floorboards stopped shifting, and I relaxed. I leaned forward, letting my hair screen my face, and toyed with the ring on my finger.
“Ignorant, are we, lass?”
I tossed back my hair to see the speaker—a thin man with a potbelly gut that stretched his cheap green satin tunic. The leader of the troupe, I assumed. The room had gone silent, save the sounds of the fire popping and the barmaid cleaning glasses. None of his troupe was laughing now.
“It was a private conversation,” I explained. “You shouldn’t have listened in if you didn’t want to hear what we had to say.”
The thin man’s eyebrows shot up in surprise that a young woman would speak to him so boldly. He dragged his wooden stool next to mine, leaning in so close that I could smell the sour beer on his breath. “You’ve a fine accent. City folk, are you? If you’re smart, you’ll turn back.” He dropped his voice to a theatrical hush. “Strange things happen this far north. Flashes of colored light. Pools of black water. They say half the women smell of witchcraft.”
He was trying to frighten me, and it wasn’t working. “It’s probably the smell of soap,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’d recognize that particular odor.”
The barmaid snickered.
Montgomery’s hand tightened over mine. “The last thing we need is to draw attention to ourselves,” he whispered in my ear.
He was right. I started to turn away, but the thin man grabbed my stool with surprising strength and dragged me over until my face was only inches from his. “If you’ve a better ghost story, then by all means, lass, tell us.”
Montgomery let out a sigh.
