Page 29 of Her Creation

It was impossible to know what to say. She never knew how to let them know she wanted—needed—some sort of friendship, and if there were a way, Victoria did not know of it. The entire workings of a human heart she knew, but not how to use it to stop feeling so lonely.

Victoria, on the rare occasion she found someone she wanted to know better, instead worried too severely about offending the prospective friend and then would remain too quiet, too stiff, too…something. She wasn’t sure what the last ingredient was, only that she did not know the correct measure of it, instead being too much or too little of whatever was needed. Even had she been able to explain away the Wilhelm situation, Helena was far too worldly and social to have held any interest in a genuine friendship with Victoria. She didn’t particularly care for the entire group of friends, though Johanna, Ida, and Rosemary had been surprisingly nice to her, but Helena had seemed different. Relatable in her interests and creativity, reasonably intelligent in her conversation.

Victoria hadn’t realized quite how much she’d actually wanted a friend that wasn’t dead until now, when it was being taken away from her, and as she sat drained and hollow from the forced composure of the evening, she ran through everything she had done and said, searching and analyzing how she could adjust and do differently if ever she were given another chance.

“Leopold is my brother.”

Victoria roused at the sudden statement. “I’m—I beg your pardon?”

Helena’s voice grew louder, more impatient, as if saying it again were a torture. “Leopold is my brother. He is a master tailor in Paris; that’s how Sophia knows him.” The words fell from her curled lip with disgust.

Victoria vaguely remembered Sophia mentioning the name but couldn’t remember why they had been speaking about Helena’s brother. “That sounds very nice. Does he make you—or Sophia—a lot of pieces?” She trod carefully, grateful for a line of communication finally.

“She’s such a witch sometimes, though I daresay, with the way Wilhelm behaves, how could she not be?”

The soft clink of the metal on the horses’ tack lingered in the air, a fragile sound suspended in the hollow stillness between them.

“My husband and Leopold are in love,” Helena stated.

“Your brother?” Victoria’s breath stilled. “Helena…” She trailed off, unsure of what to say.

“Yes. They live in France together, in our home.” Even in the dark, Victoria could see the woman’s pointed chin lift slightly.

“I—I’m so sorry,” Victoria muttered with wide eyes. “How awful. What can I do to help you?”

Helena let out an inaudible sigh. “Don’t be sorry. They have been in love longer than I have been around. We have a sort of…arrangement. Karl was required to marry in order to receive a rather substantial inheritance. The two are both like my big brothers. When they came to me and asked me to marry Karl, I agreed. Now the two of them can live a somewhat normal life together, and I reap the enormous financial benefits. Every few months I return so that we may be seen doting on one another in public. Leopold fashions me a new wardrobe, and then I travel somewhere else. Many speculate, but few know the truth of our relationship.”

“And Sophia is one,” Victoria added softly.

“Yes, though she generally holds the threat of losing new dresses in higher regard and silences her tongue. You understandably got under her skin.”

Silence pressed into the space once more.

Helena’s voice softened. “I’ve shared my secret; now it’s your turn. Are you having an affair with Wilhelm?”

Victoria could lie. All Helena had seen was him grip her thigh.

The problem with loneliness was that while the solitude and isolation that came with grief could bring temporary comfort, in its truest form, it was a dismal emptiness that craved relief.

“Yes, but only because he forces it and I fear I have no other choice,” Victoria admitted. Her eyelids pressed closed so tightly that white stars speckled her vision while she waited for what Helena would say next.

“I see.” Her words were not harsh or judgmental.

Victoria let out a slow breath. Perhaps their friendship wasn’t over before it had really begun; maybe there was still hope.

“Then he has something on you? He’s holding something over you?” Energy surged through Helena’s words with a defensive bite.

“Yes.” Victoria nodded. She wanted to lie down in front of the carriage and let the horses pulling it trample her. What would she say when Helena asked more questions that Victoria could not answer?

“That snake. And all while dragging poor Sophia through it as well, and he isn’t even hiding it!”

Suddenly, Helena was on the seat next to Victoria, her shoulder pressing against Victoria’s as the padding of the seat dipped. “I can help. Is it money? I’ve just told you, I have a near endless supply, and my cats hardly—no, it’s not money.”

Victoria shook her head, words failing at the surprising generosity of her new friend.

“Then he knows something.” Helena leaned back to get a better look at Victoria.

Victoria pressed and pulled at her fingernails. Helena was going to ask what it was, what secret Victoria kept that was so damning that she would go to such measures to keep it hidden. She’d already told Helena about Wilhelm. Would she spill all her secrets? Tell her about the lessons and the experiments, and how she was dissecting jarred hearts and brains hoping to resurrect her mother? Where would she stop?