Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
The Asylum for Inconvenient Women
Anne came to me on the second morning after the salon, glowing with triumph. I knew before she spoke that she had done the thing she set out to do, something more worthwhile than simply being Edgar’s decorative wife.
"I saw Honoria’s sister," she announced the moment the door closed behind her.
"Mrs. Pelham. I told her I had been thinking of Honoria, that it had been too long, that family ought not to let family slip away so.
I was very affecting, Lark. I nearly believed myself.
" She pressed her gloved hands together.
"And she wept. She has not been allowed to see Honoria in two years.”
“On what grounds?"
"That visits overexcite her.” Anne said the word as though it had a taste. “That she is delicate and improving." Her chin came up. “Honoria rode to hounds, Lark. She once told a bishop to his face that he was a hypocrite. There has never been anything delicate about her in her life.”
I made Anne sit and tell me the rest.
The place was called Elmwood House, near Sevenoaks in Kent.
A private establishment for ladies whose nerves had supposedly failed them.
Families were permitted to tour it before committing a relation.
The proprietor encouraged it. He was proud of the place.
A clergyman managed the house, and a physician of great reputation attended during viewings to lend his authority to the proceedings.
At the edge of what she had been carrying, she faltered. "Lark. Edgar has already viewed it. He’s only waiting on a convenient day to proceed.”
And there it was—the floor below me opening exactly like I knew it would.
For a moment I heard only Thorne's voice. You are not to go down to that place alone. Wait for me. We go together. I had looked him in the eye and promised.
But Thorne was four hundred miles to the north, chasing a frightened man through Scotland, and would not return for two days at least. The doctor only traveled to Elmwood on certain days, and a viewing would be granted only when he was there.
I had no notion when the next such day would fall.
And Edgar was only waiting for a convenient day to commit Linnet.
I refused to sit in this house, pouring tea, while the trail went cold and my own sister's name moved closer to a ledger in Kent.
"You will say nothing to Edgar," I told Anne. "Nothing at all. You have done magnificently, and now you will go home and be exactly as decorative and idle as he believes you to be, and you will leave the rest to me."
Once she left, I wrote to Elmwood House under the name Mrs. Marsh, a widow seeking accommodation for an elderly aunt whose mind was beginning to wander.
The reply arrived the following morning.
Mrs. Marsh and her companion would be welcome to visit on Thursday. The physician would be in attendance.
Thursday was the next day.
Miriam read the letter and looked at me over her spectacles. “Everthorne asked you to wait."
"He did."
"And you intend to ignore him."
"I do."
She sighed.
"Then I am coming with you."
Early the following morning, we boarded the train at London Bridge for the two-hour journey. From there, we hired a carriage to our destination.
Elmwood House stood behind a wall higher than any honest wall had reason to be.
That was the first thing I marked, as the hired carriage carried us up between the trees—not the house, which was handsome enough, a square Georgian box of pale brick with white-framed windows, but the wall.
It ran the whole circuit of the grounds, old brick topped with newer brick.
The gate we had passed through stood eight feet high, all of iron.
A man had opened it and closed it behind us.
I heard the closing of it more clearly than I heard the birds.
A wall keeps the world out. It also keeps the house in.
The proprietor met us himself on the steps. He was not the gaoler I had imagined but a silver-haired clergyman with kindly eyes and a gentle voice. "Mrs. Marsh. Welcome to Elmwood House. I am Reverend Grimshaw."
I had a single bad moment—a lurch of pure animal fear—in which I was certain he must know me, that the next words out of his benevolent mouth would be, But surely you are Lord Westmere's sister.
He had dined with my brother. He had sat at a table and discussed my own sister's confinement over the wine.
But he had never met me. Edgar would no more have brought me to such a dinner than he would have brought Linnet.
To Grimshaw I was merely a widow in grey with money to spend.
He ushered us inside.
The hall smelled of lavender and beeswax. Everything was spotless. Everything was respectable. Grimshaw showed us bright sitting rooms, a dining room, a small chapel, and a walled garden where the patients took the air.
It was all very nearly persuasive. That, I realized, was the cleverness of the place. The more carefully a thing is arranged for visitors, the more one ought to ask what it is hiding.
So I began asking questions.
How were the ladies admitted? Families provided the necessary orders and certificates.
Who supplied the certificates? The attending physician.
Where were they kept? Safely lodged within the house.
I stored away every answer.
Then Grimshaw brightened. "You are fortunate, Mrs. Marsh. The doctor is here today."
A door opened farther down the corridor, and a man emerged. I knew his name before Grimshaw spoke it. "May I present Dr. Strode."
He was handsome in a cold, careful way. Immaculately dressed. Composed. Trusted. The sort of man who entered the best drawing rooms in England and was welcomed into all of them. "Mrs. Marsh."
His voice was pleasant. His eyes were not. He studied me as though taking measurements.
"You have an aunt, I understand." He asked several questions. More than I liked. More than I expected.
“I will have to examine her.”
“Yes, of course,” I said.
When it was finally over, I was relieved beyond measure. I had seen enough. I wanted only to leave.
Grimshaw accompanied us outside to where the carriage was waiting.
Without warning, a harsh screech cut across the forecourt.
I looked up.
A sash window had been forced open above us.
"Help. Help me. Please help."
A woman stood at a barred opening, her hands clawing at the iron. Her eyes fixed on mine. Not wild. Not empty.
Desperate. Intelligent. Rational.
She had seen a visitor and understood instantly what that meant. A chance. A witness.
"HELP!"
Movement stirred behind her. Hands seized her own hands and her shoulders and yanked her away.
The window slammed shut. The curtain fell.
She’d vanished.
The entire thing lasted only seconds.
I had already taken a step toward the house when Miriam's hand closed around my arm. Not now. Not here.
Grimshaw appeared beside us. "I do apologize," he said gently. "One of our more troubled ladies. Poor creature. She imagines the most fantastical things.”
“How very sad for her,” I managed to say even though I wanted to scream.
“They always insist they are sane, you understand. They claim they are imprisoned. Wronged. That someone must rescue them." The benevolent smile never left his face. "It is the nature of the disorder, you see.”
And suddenly I understood the perfection of the machine.
The woman at the window could speak nothing but truth, and it would still be used as evidence against her. The saner she sounded, the madder she would be judged. There was no argument she could make that the institution had not already prepared to dismiss.
I wanted to challenge him. To demand her name. To demand her release. But I had no authority. No proof. No protection. Only a false identity and the knowledge that someone inside those walls was begging for help.
So I did the hardest thing I have ever done. I thanked Reverend Grimshaw, climbed into the carriage, and left.
As we rolled down the drive, I glanced back. A figure stood by a ground-floor window. Tall. Perfectly still. Dr. Strode. He had witnessed the entire scene. And he was watching me leave.
Miriam and I did not speak until the gates were well behind us.
"That woman," I said.
"I know."
"She was no madder than you or I."
"I know." Miriam had gone pale. "I have spent my whole life being told what women are," she said quietly. "I know the sound of a sane woman."
I thought of Linnet. Of that barred window. Of Edgar waiting on a convenient day.
I had gone searching for evidence. Instead, I had found a person. A living woman trapped behind bars who had looked into my eyes and chosen me to carry word that she existed. I would carry it.
Whatever it cost.