He lowered his book and raised an eyebrow.
“What’s that word that you use for when you have a corpse and you use lightning to stimulate its limbs and then the perfectly dead corpse that’s already decomposing moves its limbs, shakes its jaw, twitches its eyelids, and raises and clenches its fists as if it were alive?”
“Good Lord.”
“It’s nothing whatsoever to look so appalled about. It’s currently all the rage, really. In fact, there have been research papers published on the topic by Giovanni Aldini. He even had public demonstrations of it. I would love to see it myself one day. George said he’d take me to one when he returns. It’s in London, but I never get to go to London, you see. I can’t wait for George to take me. But I forget the name Aldini called this process.”
“George said he’d take you to London to see one of these horrific demonstrations?” His brother must have been more deranged than he’d feared.
“Naturally.” She twirled her pencil between her fingers.
He’d read about it. That Italian physics professor used the corpses of executed criminals for his experiments. It was a sensation, since he seemed to prove that with the use ofelectrical currents, one could bring the dead back to life. But of course, that was all tosh and nonsense.
She tossed her pencil aside and sighed. “But I see there is no use applying to you for help. What are you reading?” She tilted her head to read the title of his book. “Commentaries on the Laws of Englandby William Blackstone.” She pulled a face. “My, what utterly thrilling and charming fare.”
He snapped his book shut and rose. “It is indeed. Certainly, more useful than stories on how to revive corpses and other nonsense.”
“It isn’t nonsense!” she retorted hotly. “It’s science!”
“Balderdash.”
She jumped up and clenched her hands into fists. A rosy flush crept over her cheeks, and her eyes sparked with fury.
She looked dashed pretty when she was angry.
He blinked, for he hadn’t just thought that. No, he had not. It was utterly impossible.
And what was the milkmaid saying now? She was spewing forth an impassioned speech on the importance of imagination and creativity, besides abusing his character as he, clearly, with his priggish, humourless, frigid, arrogant nature, lacked either. When she drew a breath, he interrupted.
“Galvanised.”
She blinked. “What?”
“That was the word you were looking for.”
She spluttered and looked so adorably confused that he quirked one of his rare smiles. Those that he gave only to Nana and George.
Then he turned on his heel and fled.
He buriedhimself in the library for the rest of the afternoon, looking for a legal text, and found that confoundingly difficult.He’d discovered an ivory button on the carpet that must have come from her dress. How did she do that, that wherever she walked, she was shedding stockings, slippers, buttons, and what was this? He bent down to pick it up. A hairpin? He knew nothing of female accoutrements, but even he could see that was too thin to hold her thick, wavy hair.
Then her ever-present scarf, which she’d left draped over the armchair. He lifted the soft, flimsy material to his face. Lavender, of course. And something else, feminine, womanly. He dropped it. It fluttered to the carpet, where he stared at it as if it were a beast about to bite him. After a moment, he picked it up again, folded it neatly and placed it on the desk, and the hairpin on top. The button he twisted between his fingers before pocketing it absent-mindedly.
Now, he was standing on the ladder, holding a leather tome in his hands. He looked at it with irritation. Dom Augustin Calmet:Treatise on the Vampires of Hungary and Surrounding Regions (1751). Why the deuce did he pull this off the shelf? This was not the legal treatise he was looking for. He wondered whether she’d seen it since it had been placed on the very top shelf. She might not have. Judging from the disorder on the lower shelves, she’d merely rifled through the books there.
Wasn’t there more? If his memory of the Classics served correctly, Petronius’sSatyriconcontained a werewolf story. And Ovid’sMetamorphosiscontained Lycaon’s story as a shapeshifter.
He pulled out the books and stacked them tidily next to her scarf.
He stared at the pile.
Good Lord.
He was becoming as deranged as his brother.
Weeks passed,and summer turned into an unsteady autumn.
Nana’s condition appeared to have stabilised, though she was still bedridden. He visited his grandmother daily, and most of the time she was clear-headed, though it happened rather frequently that she confused him with George.
