by Julia Bennet
Perhaps Bell had it wrong. As he’d said, he didn’t speak for Sterling; he must have misunderstood the old doctor’s meaning.
“Does Dr. Sterling examine his patients’ mode of living?” Will asked. “Does he talk to them about their lives?”
Bell confirmed his worst fears. “Talk to a lunatic? As far as old Sterling is concerned, one might as well talk to a dog or a cat. If he’s really letting you in on the case, tread carefully. I doubt it would take a great deal for him to snatch her back again. Like I said, he’s possessive when it comes to Miss Grey.”
But why? Her case file looked interesting despite the dense lists of symptoms, but not enough to justify the behavior Bell described. Was it to do with her mysterious parentage?
“Who is Miss Grey’s father?” Will asked.
“No one knows for sure except Dr. Sterling.”
“But there must be rumors.”
“A rich industrialist? A Lord? A Duke? The Prince of Wales? There are dozens of rumors but no way to tell which, if any, is true.”
All right. Perhaps Sterling held some old-fashioned beliefs, but his dedication to his patients seemed genuine. His connections—he and Lord Shaftesbury, the head of the Lunacy Commission, were old cronies—could still prove extremely useful, even if getting him to use them for reform might not be easy.
So much depended on how Will handled Miss Grey’s case. Clearly, she was important to Sterling.
“I’m beginning to wonder what I’ve got myself into.”
Bell sighed and shook his head. “A bedlam, old chap.”
Chapter Four
No matter the light in which one saw him, Dr. Carter wasn’t a handsome man. As he sat opposite her at the old desk in his tomb of an office, Helen had ample opportunity to study him.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Miss Grey. I won’t be a moment,” he’d said when she’d come in. So polite. Softly spoken, too, for a man who wouldn’t look out of place hauling cargo at the docks. Not that she’d ever seen real dockworkers—only photographs in books. In lieu of real male company, she had to make do with mentally undressing pictures of stevedores and factory workers.
With lines of concentration above his nose and at the corners of his mouth, he looked a hard man. How old was he? He might be anything between thirty-five and forty-five. Such broad shoulders. Such big hands. A laborer’s hands, too ungainly for the delicate fountain pen he held. If he touched her, would she feel calluses? The thought caused a little shiver.
No, Dr. Carter wasn’t a handsome man. What’s more, he lacked a certain elegance. But elegance wasn’t a necessary attribute for what she had in mind. How would he look without all those clothes to disguise him? Would he still play the gentleman as his big body pinned hers to the bed?
He glanced up and caught her looking. Perhaps something of her thoughts showed on her face because his eyes widened.
Unlike her, he hadn’t spent his formative years in the free and easy theatre. Mama had meant Helen to follow her onto the stage, and chastity hadn’t been part of the training. If one desires a man who desires one in return, where’s the harm? Mama had reasoned.
Helen had tried to explain this logic to Dr. Sterling back in her first year at Blackwell. She still remembered his look of disgust, and afterward Fletch had washed Helen’s mouth out with carbolic soap. Your mother was a whore, she’d snarled. Yet, Mama had always been faithful to her protectors. Loyalty is more important than selfish pleasure, she used to say.
Dr. Carter shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Out of his depth, poor man.
“Where’s your hell beast?” she asked.
“My—” He broke off, confusion giving way to understanding. “You mean Hector. In the stables. Dr. Sterling isn’t fond of dogs.”
Her feelings toward the animal warmed slightly. Petty of her perhaps, but true.
Dr. Carter opened a drawer and took out a clean sheet of paper.
“How long have you had him?” she asked when he began to write.
“I think perhaps it’s time to talk about what’s troubling you,” he said, his pen scratching across the paper. “What drove you out into the snow yesterday?”
Ah, they’d reached the poking and prodding stage of their relationship. She preferred to hold the poker in these exchanges.
“A very dull subject,” she said.
He smiled, his mouth quirking up at one corner. “Humor me.”
It was the strange half smile that did her in; it made her want to like him, and liking someone usually led to a desire to please.
“I…” She’d seen the open gunroom door and the coat hanging there unattended. What more was there to say? “Why do you want to know about that?”
“I can’t help you until I understand more about you.”
He said that as if it were the most natural, the most obvious thing in the world. They all did, these doctors. Then they wielded what they’d learned like a weapon. Familiar resentment filled her belly.
Good. Use that to hold him off.
“Dr. Carter,” she said coldly, “you and I will get along much better if you stop offering to help. I have more than enough medical assistance already.”
“All right,” he said, very much to her surprise. “I’ll stop offering, but I’d still like you to tell me what was going through your mind when you removed your coat.”
“You said—”
“I know what I said,” he snapped, and then less brusquely, “Is that why you did it?”
A dozen responses occurred to her at once.
Instinct told her to blame him. At the very least, such an answer might distract him from his questions. Yet something stopped her. Though his face remained impassive, though his voice stayed even, she somehow gained the sense that he felt honestly troubled. The thought that his words might have prompted her behavior disturbed him. Why that should stop her, she couldn’t begin to say.
“It gets harder and harder to slip away.” She spoke to herself more than to him.
If it hadn’t snowed so heavily, they’d never have left her on her own like that. In the moment when he’d held his hand out to her, she’d known that if she let him lead her back to Blackwell, she’d never have another opportunity to escape.
On the day she’d arrived here—a month or so after her mother’s death—she’d naively believed that once she convinced the doctors of her sanity, they’d release her. Slowly she’d realized it didn’t matter what she did or said. Anything—a gloomy mood, an injudicious word, a moment of temper—could be misconstrued. If she snapped at the nurse who pulled her hair, she was “enraged, given to childish tantrums.” If she cried because her menses were due, she’d “given way to melancholia.” If Dr. Sterling caught her smiling at one of the male orderlies, she’d “engaged in lewd conduct.”
After ten years’ intense scrutiny placed on her every word and action, she was weary, on the verge of despair. What she’d done out there in the snow when she’d removed her coat… In the end it all came down to one thing:
“There are times when giving up feels like fighting,” she said. For a single weak moment, she’d welcomed death as the ultimate act of defiance. Rather than spend another moment as a prisoner, she’d attempted the only escape left open to her.
…
There are times when giving up feels like fighting.
The words rang in his ears as he looked down at Dr. Sterling’s notes. Patient is to be kept under constant observation. Patient is confined to the house for the foreseeable future. Sterling’s orders were clear. Disobeying them would immediately set Will at odds with the one man he needed to impress. He knew what he was supposed to do, but it was the opposite of what his instincts told him. He simply didn’t believe keeping her deprived of fresh air and exercise would benefit her.
Why are you here, Carter? Is it for the good of your patient or your own advancement?
There was only one right answer. Always, always the good of the patient came first. He needed this positio
n, and yes, Sterling might be angry if Will deviated from his instructions, but Miss Grey’s recovery must be his immediate aim. Sterling’s respect would follow.
“Miss Grey,” he said, “would you like to come out to the grounds for a walk with me?”
She didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she glanced away, at one of the narrow windows. Still and straight, she held her head high. Waves of energy rolled from her, or so he fancied. All the emotions she kept locked up tight, roiling and boiling within her.
“Miss Grey?”
“Yes, I would,” she said at last.
Spoken like a queen.
“Do you have a coat?”
“Yes, but…” Her expression shuttered. “They keep it somewhere. I don’t know where. And shoes. I don’t have any shoes.”
Perhaps he ought to dismiss her and arrange the walk for another day, but her disappointment seemed so controlled, so tightly leashed. The way she’d accepted the proposal in the first place…as if she suspected some cruelty hidden behind the offer, as though he might raise her hopes only to enjoy dashing them.
“I’ll find you something,” he said. “Wait here.”
In the end, Bell provided a coat, several sizes too large, but Miss Grey wouldn’t mind that. Shoes proved more of a problem until she proposed he ask one of the kitchen maids, a girl named Annie. She made the suggestion so casually that Will suspected this wasn’t the first time she’d borrowed illicit footwear from the same source.
Once they were both wrapped up against the cold, they ventured out. A dull, overcast sky glowered down on them, but since Will didn’t intend to leave the grounds, the threat of rain wouldn’t deter him. Miss Grey led the way across the snowy lawn while he trudged after her, curious to see where she’d take them. As far away from the house as possible, he suspected. And she didn’t disappoint, making a beeline for the main gate.
When they reached it, she stopped and stared, her rapid breaths misting the air. “And that’s as far as we go. I hate this gate.”
A heavy chain held the thing closed. On the far side stood the gatehouse, the small dwelling where the gatekeeper lived with his wife.
“You seem to think of Blackwell as your prison. This is a place of healing.”
Miss Grey laughed outright, a bitter scoffing. “You’re a fool if you think so.”
“If you let Dr. Sterling do his work, if you let me…” He’d been about to say if you let me help you. “If you let me do mine, you might be surprised at how much you improve. You’re how old? No more than thirty—”
“I’m twenty-six!”
Excellent work. Now he’d offended her. He was hopeless at estimating people’s ages. Why hadn’t he memorized those damned notes?
“Anyway, you’re laboring under a misapprehension,” she told him. “It doesn’t matter what I do or don’t do. I’m never getting out of here. He’ll never let me out.”
“Who won’t? If you mean Dr. Sterling, of course he will if your treatment succeeds.”
Her lips pressed together in a mutinous line. “You know nothing, Dr. Carter.”
This wasn’t getting them anywhere. He’d gone into this half-cocked, armed with only a vague sense that she distrusted doctors. Perhaps he ought to think of this first discussion more as an exploration of the problem. Afterward he would know better how to go on.
“Perhaps we should return to the—” A thought stopped him in his tracks. “How did you get out yesterday?”
“Excuse me?”
“The gate is kept locked. The gatehouse is occupied. How did you slip out?”
She pursed her lips. “There are ways and means.”
“Before, when you said you hate this gate, I’d assumed—” He’d assumed she hated it because it kept her in.
“Yes, you did,” she said. “If there’s one thing you’d better learn, and learn quickly, it’s that assumptions are dangerous things.”
For a lunatic, she talked an awful lot of sense. Not all of his past patients had been erratic. Only those whose behavior appeared entirely without logic earned the doom-laden title “mad,” but Miss Grey talked as much sense as anyone else here so far, including the doctors—if he ignored that episode out in the woods.
No, he didn’t believe she was mad, but that didn’t mean she didn’t need medical care. Again, he looked at the gate. “If you disregarded its function, why on earth would you hate it?”
“Well, look at it,” she said, exasperated.
He did. “It’s…ostentatious.”
Actually, to just above his head, it looked ordinary—big, with tall bars made of wrought iron—but above, the bars twisted and curved, forming foliage and curlicues. From the foliage, delicate iron birds leapt, as if caught in the act of taking wing. They looked exultant, happy.
“But to you, they seem caught,” he murmured. “Birds that will never fly.”
“Yes,” she said, no longer looking at him. “Yes, I suppose that’s one way to express it.”
When her mouth wasn’t thinned with displeasure or twisted with scorn, she had surprisingly full lips. Physiognomists set great store by the facial features, believing you could tell a good person from a bad or a strong from a weak. Will didn’t subscribe to their theories, but Miss Grey had an interesting face now that he’d leisure to study it.
That stubborn chin had a dimple in its center. Her wide-set brown eyes had heavy lids, which, as he’d realized to his discomfort when he’d caught her staring at him earlier, gave her a sultry appearance at times. But more often than not, she held her head up and looked down the length of her nose, eyes flashing. When that happened, she was formidable.
He realized he was staring just as she glanced up and caught him.
“Dr. Carter?”
He’d never heard her speak so softly. Suddenly, she wasn’t a duchess or a queen. By softening her voice, she’d transformed herself into a damsel in need of rescue. His rescue. Oh, how grateful she’d be when he saved her.
Before his thoughts could take shape in ways unbecoming to a physician, he cleared his throat. “Let’s go back now, Miss Grey.” Before I have to start reciting my Hippocratic Oath again. “It’s almost dinner time.”
Like quicksilver, she changed again. Knowing and cynical, Miss Grey smiled without mirth. “Quite right, Dr. Carter. Let’s get inside before we both freeze.”
Turning, she strode back the way they’d come.
The summons came early the next morning.
Will was still in bed but on the verge of gathering enough resolve to attempt easing a foot out from under the coverlet—like dipping a toe into ice-cold water. In truth, he was barely awake, drifting in and out of that strange state between sleeping and waking. The sun was slow to rise in January. The dark outside made it hard to accept that morning had broken.
A knock came at the door. “Carter,” a voice said, half whisper, half shout. “Carter.”
“Come in, Bell,” he said at a normal volume. “Perhaps you could explain whether you meant to shout to make yourself heard or whisper so as not to disturb me,” he added when Bell entered, lamp in hand.
“Sorry. Wasn’t thinking. I was up early dealing with a patient when I bumped into Sterling. He wants to see you.”
“Now?” Judging by the light, it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet.
“He didn’t look happy.”
Will groaned, but he wasn’t truly surprised. He’d expected something like this, only he’d thought it could wait until after breakfast.
It didn’t take him long to wash and throw on some clothes once Bell had gone.
Sir Clifford’s old study was now Dr. Sterling’s office, and it made for a more formal meeting place than the library. Unlike the turret where Will and Bell worked, this part of the house was less exposed and, therefore, much warmer, though still far from cozy. The corridors and hallways lacked for light, which made them gloomy, but someone must come up to clean because Will couldn’t see any cobwebs.
Dr. Sterling
admitted him with his usual courtesy. “I apologize for calling you here so early,” he said, once they’d sat down on their respective sides of the polished desk.
Apart from the usual writing implements, the surface was clear, except for a sealed terrarium, its glass dome enclosing mossy soil and a single fern.
“I confess I was rather distressed by the report you submitted. After Helen’s recent episode, I thought it wise to confine her to the house—my notes made that perfectly clear—and yet you took her outside.”
Will had his answer ready. “I naturally assumed her confinement extended only to unsupervised walks. In your pamphlet, A Treatise on the Diseases of the Nervous System, you argue for the efficacy of fresh air and exercise in cases of neurasthenia, hysteria, et cetera. I didn’t think you’d wish to punish Miss Grey at the expense of her health. I do apologize if I overstepped my bounds.”
“Fresh air and exercise are important,” Sterling allowed, mollified by Will’s prompt admission of guilt. “But so is discipline. Helen’s will must be curbed until she gains the means to curb it herself.”
“Current thinking—”
“Young man,” Sterling said, pokering up just when he’d begun to show signs of relenting. “Current thinking doesn’t trump forty years of experience. I am sure you are a very good doctor, and in thirty years, you’ll be better still, but Helen is my patient and has been for many years. I know her. I know her very well. I hope you won’t make me sorry I entrusted her to your care.”
And that was another thing Will didn’t understand. Bell had called Sterling possessive when it came to Miss Grey, and yet he’d handed her notes to Will on his first day. “And Dr. Bell? Surely he can assist us?”
“I keep the pretty fellows like Bell as far away as possible. Her patron’s wish and…necessary.”
The words hit Will like a blow taken full in the face. Apparently, he hadn’t won Sterling’s trust through his reputation as a physician; that fact pricked his pride, but the implication—that his lack of physical beauty had been the deciding factor in his favor—actually hurt his feelings. How vain of him. How bloody ridiculous.
