She understood, in one glance, Miss Ames’s concern. The men wore sober gray suits of identical cuts and fabric. They had bowler hats tucked beneath their arms.
They came to a stop. The stairwell, and her path to the exits, lay beyond them.
“Catherine,” her brother called. “There you are. Come, speak with me a moment. I have a most interesting proposition for you.”
Catherine squared her shoulders and walked forward. “I am busy,” she said, acutely aware of Miss Ames behind her, stepping into the office to remove herself from the men’s notice. “The catalog for the December auction—”
“It’s urgent,” Peter said. He came forward, smiling blandly, but the grip he took on her arm was firm enough to give her cause to pull away.
He did not let her. His grip tightened. “Come to my office,” he said. “We’ll walk together.”
She gave a sharp yank. “Let go of me.”
“It’s urgent,” he said mildly. “These gentlemen, you see—”
She did see. She saw the impersonal way they compassed Peter’s grip on her, and the lack of surprise, the absence of discomfort, which any client would surely evince, at the sight of the proprietors wrestling each other in the hall.
That was all she needed. She threw her weight into Peter, causing him to stumble and let go. She whirled for the copywriters’ office, desperate to reach the safety of onlookers—
And a new grip caught her, a brutal arm around her waist, while a hand shoved a rag against her nose, a sickly sweet odor invading her nostrils.
She choked in a breath, and the world began to soften at the edges, dimming . . .
Her last glimpse was the wide eyes of Lavender Ames as the girl peered out in horror at her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Her tongue felt like cotton. Parched. Swallowing hurt.
Dim sounds nattered at the edge of her awareness. She lay in darkness, spinning, odd visions flashing through her brain. The jolting noise of a carriage on unpaved road. Some liquid, sharp and noxious, forced down her throat, choking her.
Fear. Why had she been afraid? What had the dream concerned? She couldn’t recall.
Gradually, the murmuring sounds clarified into voices. That was her brother, speaking: “The delusions worsened recently. She accused me of trying to break into her bedroom. I say break, for she had three dead bolts installed, quite without my knowledge.”
“Paranoia,” a stranger said in concerned tones.
“I suppose so, yes. She claimed that I was conspiring with one of my business partners—I’m not sure what reason she invented for it. But she felt convinced that I would force her to marry him.”
It came to her that she should be alarmed. That this was no dream; that she was lying, trapped in her body, unable to open her eyes. Her limbs did not respond. She could feel them like dead weights, pinning her down.
“A common brand of fantasy,” said the other voice. “Particularly in unmarried women of an advanced age.”
“Perhaps. But it makes no sense. Were I such a villain, I would never wish her to marry! She has no rights over the company, you see, as long as she remains a spinster.”
“Delusions of this kind rarely make sense. Hysteria has its own logics, which we can only begin to glimpse.”
Memory sharpened, slicing cleanly out of the murk of her brain: Peter striding down the hall. Ruffians flanking him. A cloth at her face, some drug . . .
Her heart began to hammer. She managed to open her eyes a crack—was blinded by light before they fell shut again.
“I did not want to write to you,” Peter said quietly. “I thought I could manage her on my own. But then she fled the house. I’ve no idea where she’s living, now. She refuses to tell me. I’m concerned for her safety. She is a danger to herself.”
“Your concern does you justice, sir. Now, you mentioned in your letter that her health has been failing?”
“Yes, that was the most recent development. These fainting fits come on without warning. Why, she passed out in public, recently—at one of our auctions, no less. Quite a scene, as you can imagine.”
“I’m not surprised it should have happened in the workplace. The feminine temperament is not suited to such exertions.”
“So I told her. But it seemed a breaking point. She has gone beyond reason now. Imagine this: she has invented a husband for herself.”
“A husband? Not your business associate, I take it?”
She wrenched open her eyes. The ceiling above her was plastered smooth, painted a sunny yellow.
Oh, God. This was not Everleigh’s. This was not the house in Henton Court, either.
That carriage ride had been no dream. Where was she?
“No, no,” Peter was saying. “Far wilder than that. Some common criminal, whose name she glimpsed once in a newspaper, no doubt. Some East End thug. She swears she is married to him. Can you credit it?”
The other man chuckled. “Very inventive.”
“Of course, if I thought marriage would cure her, I would gladly try to arrange a suitable match, but in her current state . . .”
“Oh no, Mr. Everleigh. From everything you’ve told me, she has gone well beyond such simple cures. For that matter, I doubt any magistrate would recognize the legality of such a union. A woman must be of sound mind, you know, to properly consent to wed.”
Horror burned away the vestigial paralysis of the drug. She managed to bend her fingers. To turn her head.
She lay on a cot in a small, bare-walled room. A single stool. A sturdy writing desk. A window that showed a darkening sky, stars already emerging.
Those stars shone too clearly to overlook the bright city of London.
She tried to push to her feet. Fell back heavily, with a gasp she swallowed lest the men overhear. They must be standing just outside the door, which was ajar. “I had wondered as much,” Peter was saying. “So—if she were to be married, the union would not stand? Due to her . . . mental instability?”
Everything became clear to her in one single, ice-cold moment. He had brought her to an asylum. He had found a way, after all, to overturn her marriage.
“In her current state, certainly not.” That man must be a doctor. “Based on what you’ve told me, I can’t imagine any officer of the court would judge her compos mentis. Any marriage contracted in such a state is deemed invalid, and rightly so.” He chuckled again. “Even an imaginary species of it.”
“Well, thank God for that,” Peter said with a great warmth that triggered a flood of hatred through her, hatred so black that it gave her the strength, at last, to push to her feet.
She lurched toward the door, catching her balance on the doorjamb. “He’s lying,” she said hoarsely. The two men turned toward her, Peter with his hands hooked casually in his pockets, his smile sharpening as he caught sight of her. But it was the other man to whom she spoke, placing faith in his professional, kindly face, with its well-groomed mustache and wire-rimmed spectacles. “Don’t believe him,” she said. “He has every cause to wish to invalidate my marriage. He is manipulating you. I am perfectly”—she paused for breath, clutched the doorframe against a wave of dizziness—“perfectly sane, and he—”
Tsking, Peter stepped forward to brace her by the waist. “Again with that nonsense?” he said gently. She jerked her face away as he stroked her hair behind her ear; the violent movement unbalanced her, caused her stomach to lurch with nausea, and she sagged into Peter’s arms.
“You see,” she heard him say over her head, “she is quite invested in this story.”
“I do see.” The doctor gazed at her sympathetically. “Would you like another rest, Miss Everleigh? A sound night of sleep, before your treatment begins tomorrow?”
She swallowed bile, clawing at Peter’s loathsome grip. “He is lying to you! I don’t require treatment! Send to my husband—he’ll bring the register book to prove it! By law, my brother has no right—”
“Yes,” Peter cut in, his grip tightening
around her rib cage, causing her to wheeze. “By all means, Mr. Denbury, send to the gambling palace where she imagines her husband to live.”
“A gambling palace!” Mr. Denbury stared at her now as though she had sprouted another head.
In that moment, she realized that nothing she said would persuade him. He did not see her as a reasoning person. He saw her as a woman—a feebleminded, wayward girl in the grip of feminine madness. Whatever she said now, it would only fortify that opinion.
Nevertheless, she had to try. “Please,” she gasped, “at least make sure of the facts! Sir, I beg you, as a man of science—”
Peter hauled her back inside the room. She shoved him away—but not hard enough to account for how he stumbled backward and crashed into the desk.
“She’ll grow violent now,” he said urgently, edging away from her toward the door.
She lunged—too late. The door slammed and bolted. “Peter!” She would not beg. But her voice did break as she said, “For our father’s sake, please—”
“Let us move away,” Peter said loudly. “It pains me to hear her in this sad state.”
“I’ll see to it that she is calmed,” came Mr. Denbury’s reply. “In the meantime, take heart: we’ve had excellent results with electrotherapy. Why, by this time next month, she might seem like a new woman to you.”
She trapped her sob with one hand, straining to hear Peter’s fading voice:
“No need to rush through the treatment,” he told Denbury. “Money is no object. For my sister, I am willing to take all the time in the world.”
* * *
“Can you hear me?”
Catherine stirred, hastily wiping tears from her face. That was not the coarse slur of the male nurse who had assaulted her earlier, but the lilting, well-modulated voice of a lady, speaking through the bolted door. “Yes. Heavens, yes.” She clambered to her feet, battling with rash desperation, and lost. “Oh, please—can you help me?”
“It depends.”
The breath exploded from her. “On what?”
“One moment.” Something scratched across the door. The knob rattled. It came to Catherine, as she waited, that she had no idea who stood on the other side. This was a madhouse, after all.
She took a step backward as the door swung open. Her visitor was a blond woman swathed in a white lace wrapper that made her appear ghostly. She had deep, large, shadowed eyes of indeterminate color. She hesitated in the doorway, looking Catherine over as though she felt doubtful, too. “You mustn’t try to get past me,” she said. “If I scream, they’ll be on you in a moment.”
Catherine slowly nodded.
“I heard you crying out before,” the woman said.
In the sane, civilized world, Catherine would have been mortified by this news. But tonight, she had been strapped to a bed and forced, by a giant brute with clumsy hands, to drink a poison that had paralyzed her body but not her brain.
She had feared she would suffocate. When she had finally regained the ability to twitch her fingers, it had not seemed so important to muffle her sobs.
The woman seemed to compass all of this in one sympathetic glance. “They gave you a treatment, did they?” When Catherine nodded, she sighed and stepped inside, softly shutting the door. “Ever since Denbury took over from Mr. Collins, he has grown more brutal than I would wish. He was a soldier, you know—not a medic. His notions of healing are . . . unpleasant.”
“Not for you, apparently.” For the woman carried with her the scents of orange water and roses, and an air, moreover, of perfect serenity. Her pale hair was neatly dressed, threaded through with white silk ribbons.
“He would never cross me,” the woman said. “He knows better.”
In the opening silence, Catherine weighed her strategies. Was this woman allowed to wander freely, or did she have a way with locks, as Lilah did? Moreover, did she know how to slip out of this place?
As though sensing these thoughts, the woman shifted squarely in front of the door. “All the main doors are locked,” she said, not unkindly. “And I do not have the keys to those.”
Catherine swallowed and opened her mouth—but did not trust her voice. After a moment, she put a hand over her eyes. Don’t cry again. It won’t help.
“My name is Stella,” the woman went on. “And yours is Catherine, I believe? I heard the nurses speaking of you, earlier. May I sit, Catherine?”
On a deep breath, Catherine lowered her hand and nodded toward the stool. The woman eased onto it with the grace of a dancer, perching there with an impeccably straight posture. “The key,” she told Catherine, “is to remain calm. Resistance is seen as proof of illness. If you don’t wish the treatment, you must give them no reason to use it.”
Easier said than done! “He intends to use an electroshock device on me,” Catherine burst out. “And I rather prefer my brain as it is!”
“Do you? How lovely for you.” The woman looked up at her. “Won’t you sit, too?”
That was the last thing she wished to do. When Denbury or his nurses came through that door again, she wished to be ready to meet them. The room offered no weapons—the stool and even the chamber pot were locked in place by bolts in the floor. But she had her nails. And her teeth.
Just like a proper madwoman, in fact.
“None of the men will come back tonight,” Stella said. “They like their sleep too much. A nurse might come, but she won’t abuse you. Simply drink the medicine, if she insists.”
That serene tone was beginning to grate on Catherine’s nerves. She grudgingly sat on her cot. “Do you know where we are?”
“The hospital is called Kenhurst.”
“Hospital!” Catherine felt her mouth twist. “Prison, you mean.”
Stella sighed. “Well, once it was a hospital. But I agree with you; it has changed since Mr. Collins left.”
Catherine had no interest in the golden days of yore. “Where are we?” From the great silence outside, and the crystalline clarity of the stars, Catherine judged them to be in the countryside.
“Five miles from the railway station at Kedston.”
Five miles. She could get there by foot.
“Even if you made it into the entry hall, you would go no farther,” Stella said gently.
How resigned she seemed to the situation! “What brought you here? Let me guess: some man took a disliking to you, too?”
The woman smiled slightly. “Rather, I took a disliking to him. The courts sent me here for killing him.”
Horror snapped through Catherine’s chest. A strong wind rattled the windows, and she found herself grabbing for the rough bedspread, drawing it over her lap as though it might serve as armor to protect her from a murderess.
“I hate to see you afraid.” Stella sounded ruefully amused. “There’s no cause for it—not with me, at least. My husband, you see, liked to use his fists on me. And so one day when he lifted his hand, I pushed him down the stairs.” She leaned forward, bringing her face into the wash of moonlight. “The result was not by my design.”
She was younger than Catherine had first realized—thirty at the most. Her eyes were a bright, vibrant blue, her heavy lids lending them a sensual look, quite at odds with the delicate cupid’s-bow of her mouth. Here was a face that would cause men to stare. She was not pretty, precisely, but she was certainly striking.
She also looked familiar, somehow. “Who are you?” Catherine whispered.
The woman frowned. “Never mind that. You don’t want to be here, do you? That troubles me.”
“Who would want to be here?”
“Most of the residents. But as I’ve said, times have changed. You’re not the first woman brought in recently to be mistreated.”
“I’m sane,” Catherine said fiercely. “And Denbury means to torture me. To shock me, in the morning.”
Stella studied her. “I gather it was not a magistrate who dispatched you here.”
“It was my brother. He wants to steal my company.”
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“Oh dear.” The woman pressed her palms together at her lips. “One expects it from a husband—but a brother? How terribly distressing.”
This conversation was beginning to feel ludicrous. To sit commiserating politely about who had landed them in the madhouse! “Listen,” Catherine said through her teeth. “You seem to have full liberties here.” If only she had asked Lilah to teach her how to pick locks! Instead, she would make do with secondhand hopes. “Can you post a letter for me? I must let someone know what my brother has done.”
Stella shook her head. “I could have done it, before. But I fear Denbury is reading my letters now before he posts them.”
Catherine swallowed hard. “Then I am doomed.”
Stella seemed to sense her fight against tears. She came off her stool and settled beside Catherine in a fragrant floral cloud. Catherine breathed deeply of the civilized scent as Stella closed one soft hand over hers. “Take heart,” Stella said. “I have a brother, too—a far kinder one that yours. I’ll write to him, ask him to come visit. Denbury shan’t oppose that. James will be here within hours of receiving my letter. And once he’s here, I’ll tell him to carry a message for you. Whom would you like him to contact?”
Catherine opened her mouth—then hesitated as the pieces clicked together. Stella and James. James, Viscount Sanburne. Stella, Lady Boland. This was the notorious murderess, daughter of the Earl of Moreland, whose trial had been in all the newspapers years ago.
Catherine stared at her, unable to square it. Lady Boland hardly struck her as a vicious madwoman.
“You must tell me now,” said Stella with a soft squeeze. “I have seen what electrotherapy can do. It’s possible you won’t remember the name or address afterward.”
Fear passed like an icy draft through her bones. She had never known such terror. God above, who would she be without her mind? Without her learning, her knowledge?
“Nicholas,” she said as her tears spilled over. The very feel of his name seared her; she had never gotten a chance to speak it aloud to him. And she might never do so now. Heavens, how had she taken his attentions for granted? And how had she imagined that his touch was his greatest allure? He listened to her; he respected her opinions; he consulted with her as an equal. He would never look askance on her for working; never imagine that labor might imbalance her mind. He was . . . a miracle, and she had squandered him. “Nicholas O’Shea,” she managed. “Write to him at the House of Diamonds, Whitechapel, London.”
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