Page 41 of An Unwilling Earl
He paused. “I do, too.”
She shook her head, hoping to rid it of those thoughts, but of course they didn’t go away. They were stuck with her, thoughts of bodies without heads. Heads with unseeing eyes, staring at nothing, morphing into the bodies of broken women. Women who had suffered terribly in their last moments on Earth.
He looked at her uneaten food. “This wasn’t appropriate dinner conversation. We can talk about something else.”
“I was the one who brought it up. I…I just can’t get it out of my head.”
“Charlotte, there is no need to worry. You’re not of the class of women that this monster is going after.”
“Monster?”
“Who else could do this other than a monster?”
She thought of her cousin, Edmund. “A disturbed person. Someone with problems of his own.”
He seemed to consider that for a long moment. “What makes you say that?”
She shrugged. “It seems that only someone disturbed could do something this horrific.”
“Or a monster.”
“Monsters walk among us all the time, but they don’t all kill.”
He tilted his head. “That’s a very interesting concept.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered at the people you pass on the street? What kind of people they are? Deep down inside, who are they?”
“I like to think there is good in everyone.”
“But for there to be good, there has to be bad.”
“Not necessarily.”
“You are saying there are people who are completely good with no bad in them at all?”
“That seems a bit too simplistic.”
“My point exactly.”
He put his napkin down and seemed to seriously consider her words. “You are saying there are monsters in all of us?”
“I think there is the possibility of monsters in all of us. I think most of us can fight it, tamp it down, ignore it.”
“And others are too weak to do so?”
“Maybe. Or maybe they embrace it.”
“That’s frightening,” he said.
“People are complex beings. That’s what sets us apart from the animal kingdom.”
“And yet the person who is killing these women is not so different from said animals.”
“Precisely.”
…
Jacob stood outside the palatial white-marbled estate and realized he was making the biggest mistake of his life. And yet he was committed to doing it.
