A house Will itched to leave.
“He needs to clear his head?” she muttered to herself as she pawed around in the slippery nightwear that now took up hardly a quarter of her entire drawer. She then pulled black silk down over her head. “He’s got a beautiful bedroom and a beautiful new wardrobe of the finest clothes I could find. He can go back to the morgue and really get his head cleared, right off his shoulders by a student of medicine.”
“Angelika, I can hear you fuming,” Will said through the door. “I shouldn’t have laughed at Victor’s joke.” He had a smile in his tone.
“Go away.” There was even a small pair of slippers with rabbit’s tail fluff on the toes. “I’m having a pampering evening alone. Go chat through my brother’s door.”
Will said, “I forget that I’m a guest and not just a rude brother.”
“That’s exactly who you remind me of when you make those little jibes. You’re spending too much time with Victor.”
The mirror confirmed it: this lace negligee was scandalous, cut low front and back and reaching barely halfway down her thighs. It was so old and fragile, it would hardly withstand a nap.
Will confided, “I like your brother awfully. It’s why I should go to the lake house, to get some perspective. To remind myself I am not going to be a part of this family.”
“You don’t seem to remotely resent Victor for his part in your resurrection. He was there, you know. He taught me what to do. And yet, you share lunch together and go for walks. But me, you cannot seem to get past my role.”
Victor was her best friend, and he preferred another now. She called out for them to wait, but they were too busy talking and laughing to hear her. Will was right. Loneliness was a pain all of its own.
Will said, “If you had left me to nature, I would not be dealing with all of this . . . frustration.”
She’d inconvenienced him by saving his life, whereas Victor was blameless? “You’d rather be dead than faced with the prospect of me?” On that stormy night, Victor’s creation had screamed at the mere sight of her. Apparently, Will was only a tad more genteel.
Angelika wrenched open her bedroom door. “You wish to be an apple in the orchard, left to rot?”
Will looked down at her body, and his eyes almost fell out of his head.
Chapter Six
She pointed a finger into his chest.
“My crime, in addition to body-snatching, is that I’m lonely. I’m aging by the day. Twenty-four, never kissed, never touched. I cannot travel without my brother, and unless the destination has a fully stocked laboratory, he is not interested. I have money I can’t seem to spend because I am marooned on a hillside. I am a woman.” She raised her voice. “And a woman needs certain things, even if society tells her she should not.”
“I . . .” was all Will could reply to her negligee.
“Do you know what men call me in the tavern? My nickname that not even Victor knows?” Angelika paused and wondered if he might use it against her.
“You can confess it to me,” Will said. “I will keep your secret safe.”
“The barren-ness. A play on baroness. Because I am wealthy and barren, I suppose? But how could anyone know that? For all we know, I am infinitely fertile, given the proper treatment.”
Will was having a personal malfunction. “I . . .”
“Apart from that night we slept together, I have never lain with a man. Now if you’ll pardon me, sir, I’m going to lie on my bed and sulk. Unless you’d care to join me. My final offer to you, before I shrivel up and die from embarrassment.”
His entire body shivered. He took a step toward her. The pink of his tongue was obscene, licking at the corner of his mouth.
Now he was blinking, realizing, and lanced through the heel by reality. “I will be forced to belong to you. My pride will not allow me to be kept like a stray dog. Or worse, a mutt, but treated as a pedigree poodle. I am a man, and I am someone. I just have to find out who that is.”
Angelika thought that whoever he was, he had remarkable principles.
“You could be Will Frankenstein, richer than your wildest dreams. More exhausted from the previous night than you ever thought possible.”
“But I am not a Frankenstein. You can’t just open your home to a stranger and offer him everything like this. What if I am a bad person? A dangerous one?”
“You are not.”
“We don’t know when my true nature will reveal itself. I must find the life I left behind. Until I know who I really am, I can make no choices for my future. You will not distract me with your beauty, or how silk lays on your body.” He closed his eyes and swallowed. He appeared tormented. “You will not distract me with your perfume in every room of the house, or how you bounce up and down stairs.”