Chapter 22 — return to Geneva, the wedding

Victor and Alphonse return to Geneva. Elizabeth meets them. She has been writing to Victor through the long imprisonment and recovery and is gentler with him than he can bear. Privately, before the wedding, she tells him that if he is in love with someone else, or has any other reason to break the engagement, she will release him. He must not marry her out of duty. He swears, more honestly than he has been able to about anything for years, that he loves only her and has no other promise. They marry quietly at the family chapel.

The wedding party retires to a small inn at Evian, on the lake. Victor spends the day in a state of growing dread. He has been convinced for weeks that the Creature will come for him that night. He has armed himself with pistols. He has rehearsed his death. He insists that Elizabeth retire to her bedroom alone while he walks the corridors of the inn, on watch. He does not, even now, tell her what he is watching for; he does not warn her. The misreading is total. He still believes the threat is to him.

He patrols the inn. He hears nothing. The minutes pass. Then, from the bedroom upstairs, a single scream. He runs up. He bursts in. Elizabeth is on the bed, strangled, the marks at her throat the same as the marks at William's, the same as the marks at Henry's. The Creature is standing at the open window, smiling. He points at the body and slips out into the dark. Victor fires a pistol; the shot misses. He collapses on the bed beside Elizabeth. The Creature has, exactly as promised, been with him on his wedding-night. The threat had never been against him. It had been against the only person he had stood any chance of saving by being honest.