The Reinvented Miss Bluebeard (London Paranormal 03) (3 page)

Frederick contemplated Dr. Eve's words. He desperately wanted to believe her, but life had taught him differently about being different. He was slow to words, slow to anger, and too large. Yet some part of him felt jubilant at this advice from such a wise, pretty woman. Smiling shyly at her, he couldn't keep from wondering about her absentee husband. Why would the man prefer to work with the insane in the Carpathian Mountains when he could be working with lunatics right here? There were certainly enough loons in London without treating foreign madmen. Maybe Dr. Adam Griffin was a bit of a slow-top himself. His logic was certainly faulty in leaving his wife alone. Frederick knew that if he had a wife like Dr. Eve, he'd never leave home without her.

"I don't know. 'Different' is good in birds, jackets, and ladies' gowns, but not people," he said.

"Rubbish! If everyone were the same, what a dull world we would live in. There would be no great discoveries, no stirring music or moving art…"

"But it's so hard at times, Dr. Eve. People always stare. It's not easy being green. I know you're trying to help me get a new lease on life, to help me feel like a new man… well, men. But I just feel… worn out."

"Rome wasn't built in a day," she stated firmly, hiding her sympathy for the big man. Pity would only undermine her work.

"What's Rome got to do with me? I've never been there."

She grinned. "Rome wasn't built in a day, oak trees don't grow overnight, and confidence isn't something we put on like a hat. You say you feel as if people are always staring at you—"

Frederick interrupted. "They are."

"Perhaps. But Frederick, embrace it when people stare. Give them that crooked grin, or dance a little jig like that time you danced at the Ritz. You are Frederick Frankenstein, beloved adopted son of the Frankensteins and cousin to Clare. Your brother-in-law is one of the highest-ranking werewolves in the world, while your aunt Mary is wed to a duke. Your connections are excellent. And inside, you are a kind, gentle man with lovely gray eyes who loves music and sees the good in people even when they aren't at their best. You are special, and you should always remember that."

Frederick blushed and stammered, "Th-thank you, Dr. Eve. It's just that sometimes I want what everyone else has. I want to wa-walk into a ball and have the ladies sigh at me, to want to dance with me. I want to dance with them like a swan, without stepping on their feet."

His words were opening doors in Eve's mind. Frederick was upset about something that had happened this week, most likely at a ball. Again she wrote on her notepad with her quilled pen.

Patient much less animated today than he was last week, and definitely feeling melancholy.

"Speaking of balls, have you been to any this past week?" she asked.

Nodding slowly, his big head bobbing, Frederick explained in a voice filled with regret, "I went to the Graus' ball."

"And?" Open-ended questions were important in a session. They made a patient expound about events or people which sometimes were what had made the patient feel depressed in the first, second, and third place.

"Uh, well, I guess I was introduced to a Miss Beal."

The way Frederick said the name alerted Eve immediately: a
female
was involved in Frederick's latest case of nerves and melancholy. "Did you find her… pretty?"

Frederick blushed and ducked his head. "She has puppy-dog eyes, and you know how I like puppies. Her hair is black, with a small white streak, and it's quite tall."

"She's tall?"

"No, her hair. And it's kind of fuzzy, like a lamb's. I like lambs too. And she has a funny smile."

It appeared that Frederick had a slight infatuation with this Miss Beal. Eve hoped the young lady would return his interest. Aside from all the medical strides of the new decade, it was a fundamental truth that a good woman could do great things for a man's confidence.

"Funny, how?" she asked as she wrote:

Tends to put foot in mouth with pretty females
—
quite a problem, given the size of Frederick's foot
.

"A gap between her teeth. I like it. At first her smile made me feel happy inside," Frederick admitted. "But right after that, it made me feel all odd."

"Can you describe that feeling?" Eve asked, making more notes.

"It became hard to breathe, and I saw little dots in front of my vision—like before, when those townspeople in Germany chased me with those torches."

"I see," Eve said, keeping her voice gentle, though her thoughts were anything but. Poor Frederick and his night terrors. He had feelings of fear no self-respecting monster wanted. After all, monsters were supposed to instill night terrors, not be subject to them. Eve wanted to find those nasty villagers and give them a piece of her mind.

"I felt like I was going to fall apart, like my stitches weren't holding," Frederick went on. "It was terrible. I was so upset, I just left without a word to anyone. Now Miss Beal must think I have monstrous manners."

"Perhaps you could send her some flowers, and a note of apology saying you'd forgotten some previous engagement," Eve advised.

"I would hate to tell her a lie," Frederick argued.

"Then you could tell her the truth—that you found her smile so engaging you didn't know what to say, so you left."

"Maybe so, Dr. Eve… but then, if she showed the note to her friends, they might laugh at me."

Since Eve didn't know Miss Beal or what the girl would do, she suggested, "Perhaps your cousin Clare might know of Miss Beal's character."

Frederick brightened. He said, "I will write and ask."

"How is she doing in her confinement?" Eve had met Baroness Huntsley at a ball five months past, and though the woman appeared as eccentric as all Frankensteins, Eve had found her to be a delightful lady with an inquiring mind. She and her husband,
the
Werewolf of London, were expecting their first child in less than a month.

"I saw her two weeks ago, and she was happy as a clam and fat as a pig. Of course, I didn't tell her that part about being fat as a pig."

"Very wise, Frederick. No lady likes to hear she has gotten plump."

Frederick shook his big, slightly dented head. "Oh, no. Clair doesn't care about her weight. Neither does her husband, Ian. Clair just doesn't like people to mention the word 'pigs' around her, what with that unfortunate incident and all."

Eve tapped her fingers on the skull on her desk. Ah, yes, she vaguely remembered some gossip about a misadventure with pigs, ghosts, and a cemetery when she'd first come to town.

"I'm glad to hear your cousin's confinement is going well. Now, about those feelings you experienced at the Grau ball. After you left, did you breathe into a paper bag, as I suggested?"

"Actually it was a horse's oat bag," Frederick admitted.

"Improvisation is good," Eve replied. "Now, did it help with your breathing?"

"Uh-huh."

"Good, good," Eve praised. "Did you count to one hundred and clear your mind of everything but the rolling ocean waves, as I suggested?"

"Yes. But I added fish. Goldfish."

"You were hungry?" Eve asked. Every patient had foibles, and Eve had learned of this patient's culinary fondness by coming into her office one day to find all her goldfish missing from the large glass dome aquarium she'd kept by the balcony doors. That day the fish tank was empty, and Frederick was wearing a stricken look on his homely face. "Well, a sign of hunger is always good, I say, after an attack of night terrors."

Frederick nodded, and Eve glanced at the grandfather clock against the wall. Withdrawing a folder from her desk, she slid out a piece of paper smeared with black ink stains.

"It's time for our other therapy," she said. Inkblot therapy was a brand-new concept encouraging the patient to come forth and give responses to various ink stains on parchment paper. These stains sometimes provided a key to the unconscious. The technique was necessary due to the subconscious mind often being hidden and slippery.

Pointing at the parchment she asked, "What does this picture remind you of?"

Frederick studied the ink spot with intense concentration. Finally he replied, "An electrical storm."

Eve rather thought it resembled the bow of a ship. She held up the next picture. "And this one?"

Again, Frederick concentrated. "I think it's either a gravestone, or maybe my friend Herr Munster's foot."

Since she had never seen Herr Munster's foot, she couldn't disagree, although she thought the dark stain rather resembled a pirate map. "And this one?" she asked, showing one that obviously resembled coins and jewels in her father's favorite sea chest.

"Faces. Lots of cruel faces, staring at me."

His answer was just about what Eve had suspected, and she noted her thoughts on her pad.

Patient's fear of crowds is still prominent in his subconscious mind. Not surprising
,
when he has been chased half the length of Germany by a vicious, bigoted mob brandishing torches and weapons
.

Yes, her work was still cut out for her. She would have to determine a way to help Frederick through his fears of being hunted and big crowds. Perhaps her assistant Pavlov's behavior patterning might provide a method. She would ask the man when he returned from France.

The grandfather clock chimed loudly beside her desk, and Eve stood, her hand outstretched. "Our time is up for today, Frederick. I want you to continue to do the exercises I gave you whenever you feel one of your nighttime terrors coming on. I also want you to practice looking into the mirror every day and repeating, 'I am a jolly good fellow' at least twenty times." She escorted Frederick to the door. "I will see you the same time next Monday. Take care, Frederick, and tell your father, Dr. Frankenstein, hello for me."

Frederick nodded, his big head ducking under the door frame as he slowly began his lumbering march to the front hall.

Tapping her fingers upon her chin, Eve watched him lurch away, his massive shoulders hunched, his oddly shaped head bobbing up and down, and his tremendously big feet slapping loudly on the marble hallway.

There went a good soul, a kind monster, and a complex man of many parts. Too bad most of those parts were mismatched, the cynical side of her thought; people could be so cruel to those who were different. But the more romantic side of Eve caused a faint smile to crease her lips. Perhaps Miss Beal might be persuaded to be Frankenstein's bride.

"What a strapping young man!" her housekeeper, Mrs. Fawlty, said in a voice loud enough for Eve to hear in the study.

Eve followed the voice. As she rounded the corner into the large entranceway, she saw the woman—a tall, middle-aged matron with modishly curled gray hair—scurrying toward her. Mrs. Fawlty's heavily painted face wore an aggrieved expression upon its continuously pinched features. The housekeeper was a woman of excessive nerves, insatiable desires, and uncertain temperament, and she was always in a snit about something.

"It's a shame that husband of yours is in that godforsaken country of Trainstationia, working on those railroads all the livelong days. Who knows what foreign disease he might be catching, and who knows what foreign ladies he might be tupping? They might be giving him an evil eye or something even worse, what with their tawdry Trainstationia ways. You just can't trust them foreign women. No, sirree, I tell you, you sure can't. They'll try to steal him away from you, they will."

Eve repressed a smile. Let them try. Her husband was, after all, the quintessential invisible man, resistant to all lures of the flesh. "It's Transylvania, and my husband is doctoring a mad vampire. Remember, I've told you this before." At least a thousand times in the past two years, Eve thought wryly. But Mrs. Fawlty heard what she heard, and if it wasn't to her liking then it doubtless never reached her brain.

"Well, he doesn't need to be in some far-off land to work his inventions."

Eve did smile then. "It's true, my husband
is
a man of invention," she said slyly. "And his work is very important to him." Yes, Adam Griffin was a creation to rival one of Dr. Victor Frankenstein's. He was almost perfect. No fantasy could be better. "But I trust him. He's a good husband, a good doctor, and a good man. I am blessed and proud to be his wife, especially since he gives me the freedom to go about as I please and do the work I love."

"Hmph. Too much freedom, if ye ask me," Mrs. Fawlty said. "A wife needs her husband around to give her a shoulder to cry on and a good tussling in bed." She grinned, showing her buckteeth, meddling ways, and carnal nature. "Nothing like a good tupping first thing in the morning after your cup o' tea. And ye know how men are. They got their needs, they do. If ye're not there, then somebody else will supply the body. And you're nobody till a body loves you." Eve smiled again. She trusted Adam implicitly.

The next afternoon found Eve tapping her fingers nervously against the skull on her desk, wondering why it always wore such a sly grin. The skull of the notorious Henry Morgan had been a gift from her father when she was fourteen. If only she felt like smiling similarly. Unfortunately, there was no merriment to be had with the Captain's inopportune visit.

"Why must he come today?" she asked again, this time of the quixotic skull. "Today of
all
days." In less than five hours Eve would be hosting a dinner party of select patronage, guests who were some of the top-ranking doctors of the mind. These guests also happened to be the board of trustees for the Supernatural Science Foundation, which provided funding to certain paranormal medical institutes. In short, tonight she would be hosting a gathering of giants.

Giants. These men controlled the purse strings to all sorts of much-needed coin, and Eve hoped to impress them. She desperately needed the funding for her asylum.

Her inheritance was long gone, and many of her patients couldn't afford to pay much at all. The roof was leaking in the west wing, the wallpaper in many of the patients' rooms really could use refurbishing, and food to feed a variety of the mad was maddeningly expensive—which wasn't that surprising since she was treating everything from gargoyles to werewolves. But if funding didn't come in soon, she would be forced to turn away any other supernatural creatures who were seeking treatment. What would become of them if she couldn't provide a safe haven?