“You are going about it all wrong. You need to draw him to you. I feel his presence,” she said, and they looked across to the site of her accident. “He’s here, close by. Same with Mary. We just have to find what they need most, and bring them home.”
Despite saying this, she still found herself hesitating to reveal her nightly meal deliveries into the forest. Just once, she’d like to show Victor that she could solve a situation alone. Besides, her brother would just barge in, ruining the delicate trust she was attempting to build.
“I believe he may try to kill me,” Victor said suddenly. “And I would not blame him.”
“When you find him, you will put this right. Are you going out again?”
“Nightfall seems to be when the villagers glimpse him. I will take Lizzie up to the house, set her down with some dinner, and ride out.” He smiled at his sister wryly. “Be glad you coaxed Will inside on that dark, rainy night with the mere promise of a bath.”
“You asked me if I can make my choice, being uncertain of his . . . reproductive viability. That will be my price to pay for my part in this if he asks me to marry him.” She hesitated on this next thing. “He said something about his health. He believes he has a limited life force. I don’t know what that means, but I don’t think it’s just his fatherhood prospects that plague his mind. It’s something more serious. His hands, Vic, unless I massage them several times a day, they curl and turn cold. I worry about the future.”
Victor answered with halting care, “I am not at liberty to discuss him.”
“I know. I’m just telling you I’m worried. Are you ever afraid that they cannot survive the things we have done to them in the name of science, and love?”
“I am sick over it. That’s why I need to bring mine home.” Victor’s expression was stark. “I’m worried also about something different.”
“What?”
He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I do not know how to be a father. It’s not in any of the literature.”
“Maintain your faith in natural science. Human beings have been fathers for countless generations. And I have seen how you have searched for your lost man. He has awakened a protective instinct in you, I think.”
“That is true,” Victor replied, cheered up. “Speaking of instincts, I never told you about what happened when Will found you flat on your back in the forest.”
“He told me that he turned a bit uncivilized that day.”
“When he saw you in danger, he stepped out of his present form and became something I have never seen before. His true feelings. I saw a man violently in love.”
Angelika’s heart flipped, then sank. “But he cannot easily show me this side of himself. If he knows one emotion, it is guilt, and I don’t know why.” She had a sudden intrusive memory: dark stone, an ivy-covered building, a white porcelain cross. “What about our chapel on the hill? Get married there.”
Victor was surprised by her change of topic. “I think it is where Belladonna births her piglets.” He leaned further out the window to point halfway up the hill. “It would be a total ruin.”
“But Will could help us repair it, and you could be married at home. You’ve seen how nice his cottage is now after a bit of hard work.” Angelika was determined to make her brother happy. “I will go and assess it. If we can make it something lovely, and pay someone to be as unobtrusively religious as possible, would that be a good option?”
“It would be nice to do something so difficult at home. Thank you,” Victor said, and when they stood up, he opened his arms. That blue-moon hug was being offered, and it was wonderful. He smelled like apple and arsenic.
Above her head, he said, “Do take a glass beaker with you. You never know what you may get if you let him adjust to the idea.”
It was this thought that stuck with Angelika as she walked toward the wisps of smoke from Will’s cottage. Sometimes, a person just needed a little time. When she saw the big man in the forest watching her, she waved to him and kept on walking.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Will answered the knock at his door, he found Angelika holding up the specimen beaker. His expression slackened with dismay. Before he could say a word, she took some flowers from behind her back, and turned it into a vase. After blowing out a long exhalation, he said, “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry he even asked you.” She dithered awkwardly. Was he still unhappy with her, after their altercation in the driveway?