“Hold the skin together.” I frowned in concentration, mirroring Victor’s standard expression. It was just sewing, after all, and I had done plenty of that at Madame Frankenstein’s side. Victor aided, watching closely. I sewed the wound shut as neatly as I could manage. My work was as good as any surgeon’s. I never had much artistic flair for needlework, but apparently I was good with skin.

Closed, the cut only seeped blood, making me hope that Ernest would suffer no long-term ill effects. I rushed back upstairs to the hall linen closet, ignoring Henry’s shouts, and pulled out a clean towel. I ripped it into strips—wishing I could use those stupid scissors—brought them downstairs, and bound Ernest’s arm tightly.

Then I curled up in the armchair with him snuggled into my lap.

Victor stood in the center of the room, watching us. “I should learn to sew,” he said. “When we get home, you can teach me.”

“Get Henry out of his room and tell him that Ernest got into the nursemaid’s sewing bag and cut himself. Tell him I was so busy helping that I forgot to let him out.”

“Why did you lock him in, in the first place?” Victor asked, puzzled.

“Because I did not know what was happening.” I gave him a look heavy with meaning. “And I needed to protect you.”

Victor looked impassively at the floor, where the blood was congealing around the scissors. “I can tell you what happened. I—”

“We know what happened. It was the nursemaid’s fault for leaving out her sewing supplies. She is stupid and lazy and still sleeping. She will be punished and relieved of her duties. Ernest will be fine.” I paused to be sure Victor understood that this was our story, no matter what. “And we are fortunate that she is stupid and lazy and convenient, and nothing like this will happen again. Will it?”

Victor looked more thoughtful than sheepish. He nodded curtly, then turned to go get Henry. By the time the Frankensteins and Henry’s parents returned, Ernest was sleeping warm and silent in my arms. Victor was reading the same volume that had obsessed him the entire trip, and Henry was fretting and pacing.

“Little Ernest got into the nursemaid’s sewing supplies and cut his arm horribly!” Henry was filled with melodrama as he threw himself at his mother for a comforting embrace. “Elizabeth and Victor stopped the bleeding by sewing his wound shut!”

Madame Frankenstein rushed into the room, ripping the boy from my arms and waking him. He immediately began crying and fussing again—she was always disturbing him like that, with no sense of how to handle him—and she called for the coachman to take them to a doctor.

Judge Frankenstein quietly surveyed the room: The blackened puddle of blood. The scissors so artfully placed. The nursemaid still absent. And Victor reading.