Chapter 59
Chapter
My head ached from crying. The sky was gray. Dark. A storm was rolling in. I could taste it in the air off the sea.
I stopped outside my house.
Henry Stanton was standing on my doorstep.
“Hello, Mary.”
“I assumed you’d vanished forever.” I folded my arms. I hated him. I loved him. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to throttle him. Damn, damned, damnable Henry Stanton. “Did us all a favor, I thought.”
Ajax fluttered down to land on my shoulder. I glared at Henry defiantly.
“You kept him,” he said, and I knew he was trying to hide a smile.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said flatly. “This is a puffin.”
“Of course.” The wind caught his coat, and it swirled around his legs.
“Why are you here?” I glared. “Oh, wait. It doesn’t matter what you say, I know now that everything you say is a lie. All that talk about truth-telling, while you manipulated me. Used me. Planned it for fifteen years, isn’t that right?” I snorted.
“I’m not here to seek your forgiveness, Mary,” he said. “You’re right. I lied, and I used you. I know I don’t deserve that absolution after the things I’ve done. But I’m here because I—well, I found these when I searched Edgar’s house.”
He reached into the satchel and pulled out a stack of letters, bound in blue ribbon.
I took them, despite myself. My fingers trembled, running over faded handwriting. Mine. Henry’s.
“The letters,” I breathed.
“I always wondered why you stopped writing,” he said. “I sent you so many. I begged you to answer. I didn’t even care if you wanted to break our engagement, I wrote; I only wanted to know that you were well. And yet. Nothing. Eventually, I had to accept that you’d changed your mind.”
“Edgar,” I whispered. I pulled the bundle of letters to my chest unconsciously. “But why?”
Henry’s gray eyes flashed fury. “I suspect he considered you a distraction. From our work together.”
He had written. Henry had written. All those years, I thought he’d abandoned me, and he thought the same. My torn heart mended, just a little.
I didn’t know if I should forgive him. He’d lied so many times. Lied, and lied, and lied.
But he had written.
“This doesn’t change anything,” I said abruptly. “You can’t come inside.”
“Of course. One other thing, and I’ll be on my way.” He pulled a large lacquered box from his satchel. Nestled in purple velvet was a pterodactyl skull. Fangs jutted out of both the top and bottom of the beak, the longest of which was the size of my smallest finger.
“Charles Lyell had this sent to you at Palmanaeus House,” Henry exclaimed. “Lyell couldn’t convince the collector, a Bavarian geomagician, to sell the original specimen, but he agreed to have a cast made to compare with Ajax.”
I practically quivered with excitement as Henry handed me the box. The skull was of similar size to Ajax’s, but the fangs were significantly longer, and the way they interlocked reminded me of a bear trap. I couldn’t wait to measure the eye sockets. They looked larger than Ajax’s, too.
“Well.” Henry dipped his head. “That was all I wanted—”
“You can come back tomorrow,” I blurted out, clutching the box to my chest. “If you’d like. Though you’re still on stoop privileges.”
Henry’s grin was like the sun. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Later, I sat down at my desk and inked my quill to start the letter I’d been putting off.
Dear Mrs. Davies, Mrs. Mantell, and Mrs. Murchison,
You once asked if I would teach you. I declined, at the time, for reasons that would shame me now.
I am hoping you can forgive that offense and consider my proposal. Not that I teach you, but rather, that perhaps we might learn from one another.
In that spirit, I must humbly admit that Mrs. Davies’s theory about plesiosaur ambush hunting patterns may have some merit—
Ajax fluttered his wings and knocked over my pot of ink. I swore and chased him off, muttering under my breath as the ink spread quickly across my paper. I sighed. I would just have to start again.