Something shifted in his face, as though a curtain had been drawn closed behind his eyes, shutting him off from me. He leaned back. I pushed ahead desperately.

“She is not lowborn. Her family lives in town. She is educated and sweet—already better off than I ever was!”

“But your father was a noble.”

Years of suspicion crashed down around me, but I skirted what I feared was the truth of my heritage. “Perhaps. Or perhaps I was the daughter of a whore, and my caretaker lied.” I smiled to pass it off as jest but watched for Victor’s reaction.

Saying it aloud felt like setting down a burden so long carried the weight was forgotten until released. I took a deep breath, my lungs finally filling. My head was light with all the air.

Victor could not tell whether I was joking. “But you said the house we had at Lake Como seemed familiar,” he said.

“Familiar like a dream, not like a memory. Of course I would have dreamed of light and comfort and happiness in the midst of a life in hell.”

Victor’s silence was interminable. Finally, he nodded. “It does not matter. I do not care who your parents were. I never did. Perhaps it matters to my parents, but they are stupid. I did not know or care where you came from that day in the garden when you became mine. And I do not care now.” He leaned closer, focused on my face, all worry gone from his own. “You began existing the day we met. You are my Elizabeth, and that is all that matters.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine. It was the first time we had kissed.

His lips were soft and dry. If Justine’s lips had felt like a butterfly on my cheek—a moment of surprising grace—Victor’s were like a contract between us. A promise that I was his, and he would keep me safe.

I kissed him back, throwing my arms around his neck and pulling him closer to sign my own name to the contract between us. When he released me he sighed, his brows drawing down again.

“Very well. We will save this Justine. Though how giving her the care of Ernest and William is a kindness, I do not know.”

I laughed, burrowing into him with my head against his chest and holding him as tightly as I could.

But it was one thing to have a partner, another to have a plan. Victor excused himself to get something to eat. I paced in his room, trying to figure out how to make the Frankensteins dismiss their governess, Gerta, without convincing them she had done something worthy of prosecution or imprisonment. I bore no ill will toward her. She was simply in my way.