by Mia Marlowe
Then, without warning, Meg shuddered. She gasped, dragging in a lungful of air, as her eyelids fluttered uncontrollably. Vesta hugged her tightly. Lady Easton was up at once, fetching a glass of sherry for the Finder from the liquor cabinet in the corner.
“Here you are, dear, safe and sound,” Lady Easton said as she pressed the glass of fortified wine into Meg’s hand.
“Where is—” Camden began.
“Not yet,” Vesta interrupted. “Give her a moment to collect herself.”
Meg continued to breathe heavily between sips of sherry. Her hands shook. “I don’t need a moment. I have nothing to report. I couldn’t Find him, and I thought I knew exactly where to look,” she said disbelievingly, “but I couldn’t Find him anywhere.”
…
Plink. Plink. Plink.
Pierce curled tighter into the fetal position and covered his ears with his palms.
He could still hear the incessant drips. They landed near, but not on him. He seemed to feel them in any case. It was as if the drops were boring into his forehead, wearing a hole in his skull. It wasn’t so daft a fancy. Water would eat away at even granite given enough time, and his head surely wasn’t as hard as that.
Water sloshed over his whole world. He was never dry. Either he was in the chair where the deluge rained down without mercy or in his dank cell in the basement of the hospital where moisture condensed on the ceiling and pattered to the stone floor with soul-deadening constancy. Then there was the watery soup that comprised his daily meals and the slop bucket in the corner that served as his latrine.
Water everywhere.
But none to bathe with and precious little to drink.
He tried to sleep as much as possible because keeping up his mental shield taxed his strength at every turn. In a moment of weakness, he lost the fight and the voices from nearby cells rushed into him.
Pick a posy, pick a pocket, pick a peck of pickled pumpernickel, peddler’s pockmarks, pimples and piss…
Wicked boy. Nasty boy. You’ll get yours. Then the voice turned sugary. Where’s that mother’s angel?
Did you see that knife? God, the blood, so much blood. The blade still drips with it.
He sat up and put all his effort into rebuilding his shield. The voices became muted, but he could still hear them, buzzing at the edge of his consciousness like a hornet’s nest. “As long as I can tell which thoughts are mine, I am not mad,” he muttered.
“Oh, I greatly fear you are not competent to make that assessment, Signor Mycroft,” came a voice from the slot in his door. He’d not realized he was being watched until he saw the pair of dark eyes that stared through the opening.
Dr. Falco.
“If you are thinking thoughts they are, of course, yours, capisci? Scusi, I mean, you understand?”
He understood. The Italian doctor expected him to agree. He expected him to admit that he couldn’t hear the thoughts of others. In fact, Falco was thinking it so loudly now, it drowned out the other voices and became the only one he could hear.
Pierce thought he could deceive his doctors easily enough. All he had to do was say what they wanted to hear.
How hard could it be?
Very hard, as it happened.
“The truth is all I have.” Westfall repeated the phrase under his breath like some yogi’s mantra. He could hear the thoughts of others. He couldn’t surrender his truth. If he denied this fact about himself, something inside him would break, and he didn’t think he’d ever be able to put it back together again.
“Ah! Veritas,” Falco said. “The search for that elusive quality, it is the search of the ages, no? But if it is the truth you seek, I have something that might help—a new treatment.”
Pierce couldn’t stifle his groan. Dear God, not a new one. The water chair was torture enough.
“Do not fear, my troubled friend. It is not so…strenuous as the water chair. It involves the simple ingestion of a mushroom.”
Pierce had heard of such things. Before his friend Stanstead had joined the Order of the M.U.S.E. he had regularly medicated himself with opiates to try to rid himself of the nightmares he dreamed that inevitably came true. Could a cure for him be as simple as taking some mind-altering substance?
“You think it will work?” he said, ashamed of the naked hope in his voice. If there was a chance to be normal, he’d jump at it.
“After the curative properties in the mushroom have worked its way into your system, your senses will be enhanced,” Dr. Falco said. “Patients report being able to smell colors and taste words.”
“That’s ridiculous.” And of no benefit whatsoever. Hearing thoughts was bad enough. He didn’t need to smell colors or taste words, too.
“Of course it is. Utterly ridiculous. And it is a good sign that you recognize it. Bene. This level of self-awareness makes you the perfect candidate for the treatment.”
“What if I refuse?”
“During the time you have bided here, have you successfully refused any other treatment? Ah, I thought not.” Falco cast him the thin-lipped smile of a cat before a mousehole. “Once you have had a few sessions with this miraculous substance, perhaps you will also see that it is equally ridiculous for you to believe you hear the thoughts of others. According to my colleagues in France, they are seeing great changes in their patients.”
Colleagues in France. The Fides Pulvis. For a few moments, the real reason he’d allowed himself to be taken into Bedlam again had flitted from his mind. He’d allowed himself to hope, however briefly, that there was a way for him to lay aside what the duke called his “gift.” Now his true purpose slammed back into him. He had to find those incriminating letters in Falco’s office and escape with them. Then he would trade them for Lord Albemarle’s Trust Powder, free Honora from her patently false relationship with the baron, and hire the Hobarths at his country estate so Honora could see her daughter anytime she wished.
Then, maybe, she would marry him.
And it wouldn’t matter if he heard other people’s thoughts or not, so long as he could hear hers every day.
“Dodsworth,” Dr. Falco said to the orderly who hung on his every word. “Prepare Mr. Mycroft for a dose of Myconia Fantasma.”
He might have a troubled brainpan, but he was not going to let this Italian quack take who he was from him. “I’m not Mycroft.”
“You will be,” Falco assured him. “After floating with the mushroom for a while, you will be anyone or anything I tell you to be.”
It is the perversity of human nature to want what we don’t have. Worse, we never seem to appreciate what we do have until it is taken from us.
~from the secret journal of Lady Nora Claremont
Chapter Twenty-One
Meg Anthony looked up from her book and blinked in surprise. “Lady Nora is here? To see me?”
“Yes, miss,” Mr. Bernard, the hard-working steward of Camden House, said. “I’ve directed the lady to the parlor. She awaits you there. I have also ordered tea. I hope that is in accordance with your wishes.”
“Oh yes, and quite the correct thing to do, I’m sure. I’ll come at once.” Meg rose from the overstuffed chair in His Grace’s library and replaced the simple hornbook on the shelf. Once Lady Easton had learned that Meg could neither read nor write, it had become yet another task for the Finder to accomplish in her quest to pass as a wellborn young lady. She worked at it every day, and while she could now decipher most words, she struggled with being able to read them quickly enough to make sense of entire sentences.
Meg climbed the grand staircase to the first floor parlor, her heart racing. She’d practiced taking tea with Lady Easton. This would be her first time with someone who didn’t know she would be more at home washing up the used cups in the scullery than pouring out the brew in a ritual of gentility in the duke’s fancy parlor.
She paused at the parlor doorway and found Lady Nora pacing before the heavily curtained windows like a caged lynx. Meg dropped a shallow curtsy. �
��Good afternoon, my lady.”
Lady Nora’s pacing stopped, and her gaze cut to Meg sharply. She returned Meg’s curtsy. “Thank you for receiving me, Miss Anthony. Many respectable women wouldn’t, you know.”
Meg’s mouth twitched. She was an accomplished pickpocket and drawlatch. Masquerading as a lady made her an utter fraud. It was amusing to be considered a respectable woman. But she couldn’t remain amused while her guest was in such obvious discomfort.
“Won’t you please be seated?”
“No, I shan’t be staying long,” Lady Nora said. She hadn’t removed her bonnet, the signal for an extended visit according to Lady Easton. “I realize how improper it is of me to intrude on you like this, but you were so helpful in finding that little girl at the fair. I feel as if I know you better than our short acquaintance warrants, and I had to speak to somebody.”
The courtesan’s ensemble was as elegant as ever. Her artfully made up face was beyond striking. But there was a glint of something Meg recognized as terror in her wide eyes.
“Please tell me you have heard from him,” Nora said.
Meg didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. “We have received no word of Lord Westfall.”
“What about his family? Might he have gone home?”
Meg shook her head. After her efforts to locate Westfall had failed, the duke’s party had returned to London, and His Grace had turned to mundane methods of finding the missing lord. He had employed half a dozen Bow Street runners to chase down clues. At first, the viscount’s countryseat had looked promising, but Westfall’s aunt and uncle swore their nephew was not there. In fact, Horace Langdon was incensed that the duke had lost track of Lord Westfall after faithfully promising to be responsible for his well-being since he’d been released from Bedlam to Camden’s care. Over a week had passed, and they were no closer to finding Westfall than they had been on the day he’d gone missing without a trace.
Lady Nora began to pace again.
This was no way to conduct a proper visit. Meg had to get a handle on the situation. “Please, won’t you be seated?”
“I can’t. Every time I sit, my knee begins to bounce so, and I can’t keep it still. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I shall go completely dotty if I don’t hear from the man soon.”
A hostess’s first task is to make her guests feel comfortable. Lady Easton had drummed that cardinal rule of etiquette into Meg’s head. How could she set Lady Nora at ease? If Lady Easton came in and discovered Meg couldn’t preside over her first official call, she’d be so disappointed. Meg was determined not to let that happen.
“Lord Westfall wouldn’t want you to take on so, my lady. He—” She stopped herself when one of the footmen entered the room. Lady Easton had also drummed it into her head that conversation was not to be continued in the presence of servants, especially when the conversation was as fraught with emotion as this one. The footman bore a tray of finger sandwiches and petit fours along with the tea service, which he placed on the low table before the settee. When he retired, Meg went on. “Allow me to offer you refreshment. You’ll feel ever so much better after a nice hot cup.”
Lady Nora met her gaze squarely and sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry for being so difficult. I can’t seem to think straight these days.”
“That’s understandable. You are fond of his lordship. We all are.”
“Fond,” Lady Nora repeated as she sank into one of the Sheridan chairs. “Such a bland word, fond. As if the man were an éclair I couldn’t resist. Fond is woefully inadequate, I fear.”
Oh, dear. Meg had insulted her by using the wrong word. She’d never get the hang of this being-a-lady business. “I beg pardon. I didn’t mean to—”
“No, I’m the one who should apologize.” Nora waved away Meg’s attempt to smooth things over with her lace-gloved hand. “It’s terribly gauche of me to offer confidences where none have been encouraged.”
“I’m all for encouraging confidence, my lady.”
Lady Nora’s lips tightened in a suppressed smile, and Meg suspected her words had come out wrong somehow. Then the lady leaned toward her.
“The truth is, I love Lord Westfall. Most desperately. I know I shouldn’t. He deserves the love of a fine lady. Someone worthy of the name. But I can’t seem to help myself.” Her lovely face crumpled, and tears trembled on her long lashes. How could Lady Nora be so distraught and so attractive at the same time? Meg wasn’t a pretty crier. Her nose turned red and her eyes became puffy instead of glistening and interesting. “If he cannot be found, I don’t know what I shall do.”
Meg laced Lady Nora’s cup with milk and two sugars without asking how she preferred it. Someone suffering that badly from a fit of the blue devils deserved milk and sugar, whether she wanted it or not.
“His Grace is searching for his lordship,” she assured the courtesan as she handed her guest a full cup and saucer without sloshing a bit. “Trust to that.”
“But I can’t sit by and do nothing.” Lady Nora raised the cup to her lips and went through the motions of sipping. Meg doubted she tasted more than a drop. “Do you think it possible that Westfall’s family had him committed again without His Grace’s knowledge?”
“No, I’m certain he’s not in Bedlam.” That was the one thing Meg was sure of. She’d looked high and low and no one called Pierce Langdon was trapped behind those barred gates.
Meg was beyond surprised not to have Found him, because he’d told her his intention to go there. She feared he’d met with foul play somewhere between Albion Abbey and the hospital for the insane. For a few months, her Uncle Rowney and Cousin Oswald had hired out as part of a press gang to waylay solitary travelers. After a solid clout to the head, the unfortunate victim was deposited on a departing ship and forced to work as part of the crew. If that’s what had happened to Westfall, he might be halfway to the Horn of Africa by now.
“Even if His Grace made inquiries, which I’m assuming he has, the keepers at Bedlam could be convinced to lie,” Lady Nora said as she drummed her fingers on her knee. “Cross someone’s palm with enough money and you can generally get them to agree to most anything.”
Is that why she became a courtesan? For the money? Or was it the fine clothes and the jewels winking at her throat?
Nora rose and began pacing again. “I should go and see for myself.”
“You? Go to Bedlam?”
“Yes, of course.”
“How?”
“With the right size ‘donation,’ anyone can enter the hospital and view the unhappy souls held there. Some claim altruistic motives, Societies for the Improvement-of-Whatever-They-Can-Think-to-Criticize-This-Week sorts. I’m sure you recognize the type. Others treat it like visiting a freak show.” Lady Nora lifted a hand toward her. “I can see I’ve shocked you. Since you’ve been gently reared, Miss Anthony, I’m sure you’ve never heard such a repugnant notion.”
All Meg heard was that Lady Nora thought she’d been gently reared. Uncle Rowney would have a laugh over that, but Lady Easton would be so proud.
“Of course, I’ve never done it, but I’ve listened to stories from those who have.” Nora’s voice sank to a whisper. “Pitiable. Horrendous. I almost hope I don’t find him.”
“If you’re determined to go, I’ll go with you,” Meg offered. She’d seen Bedlam while in spirit form and found it disturbing enough. It made her flesh crawl to think about walking those filthy halls in person. But Lady Nora would need her support when she didn’t discover Lord Westfall in that hellacious place.
“No, I don’t think that would be wise.” She sat again and returned her cup and saucer to the tray. She’d hardly touched the tea. “Since His Grace has already inquired about Lord Westfall, and you’re known to be part of the duke’s household, if Pierce is there, they’d make sure we didn’t see him.”
She uses his Christian name. Dear me. This is serious!
“But you dare not go alone, surely,” Meg said. She’d taken off by herself when she
ran away from Uncle Rowney and had to disappear into London. Not being gently reared, she figured she could hold her own in the chanciest of neighborhoods. But even Meg would hesitate to enter Bedlam without someone at her side.
“I can’t take Mr. Whittles,” Lady Nora said.
“Who is that?”
“He’s my butler and, while he’s handy with a chafing dish, he’d be of no use whatsoever in a tight spot. Besides, he’d feel the need to tell Lord Albemarle about this little expedition, and that would never do.”
“No, I suppose not.” How did Lady Nora manage to juggle a patron and a lover at the same time? She obviously knew how to handle men. But even a clever woman like Lady Nora might need a man’s protection in a place like Bedlam. “Oh! What about Mr. LeGrand?”
“Who is he?”
“Westfall’s valet, but he hasn’t been with him long enough for anyone to put the two of them together. I’d feel ever so much better about this if you’d take him with you.”
Nora cocked her head to one side, considering. “That might answer, but I should still have a female companion as well, I suppose. Benedick would want me to if this little excursion comes to his attention. I wonder if Miss LaMotte would—”
“I’m sure she will,” Meg cut in and then clapped her hand over her mouth because she’d made the mistake of interrupting her guest. How did the Quality ever manage to get anything accomplished when there were so many rules to be mindful of? “Of course, she and the duke are known to be friends, but Miss LaMotte has lots of friends.”
“Lots of friends,” Nora repeated. “You dear girl, what a sweet way you have of putting things.”
The words sounded like a compliment on their face, but something about the way Nora said them suggested that Meg was a bit feebleminded. That was rot. Meg knew perfectly well what Vesta did for a living and, while she couldn’t imagine the confidence it took for a woman to become a top tier “bird-of-paradise,” she wouldn’t fault Vesta for her choices. Just as Vesta hadn’t ostracized her when she learned that Meg was a master of the cutpurse’s art. Meg straightened her spine.
