Chapter 30
Chapter
Thirty
The Empty House
By the time our train reached London, dusk had begun to gather beyond the carriage windows, smearing the rooftops to soft grey shapes and turning the gas lamps to pale, uncertain stars.
I wanted nothing more than a pot of tea, my quiet room, and several uninterrupted hours to think things through properly until the pieces settled into a shape I could act upon.
We hailed a hansom at London Bridge station. Half an hour later, it rolled to a stop before Everly House.
I stepped down onto the pavement, my limbs aching with the weariness of too many hours spent sitting upright. Miriam followed, gathering her skirts, muttering something uncharitable about the railways under her breath.
The front door opened before we reached it. That was rather unusual. Doors at Everly House were opened only when one knocked, and not before.
More unusual still was the expression on Bexley's face. Our butler was not a man given to displays of emotion. I could count on one hand the number of times I had seen him unsettled. He looked positively grim.
A knot formed in my stomach as I stepped into the house. “Bexley?”
“Lady Larkspur.”
“What is it?”
His gaze flickered briefly toward Miriam. Then back to me. “Lord Westmere called this morning.”
Every muscle in my body tightened. The hall, the long-case clock, the looking-glass above the side table—all of it seemed to recede, until there was only Bexley standing before me and whatever he had not yet said.
“When?”
“Shortly after ten o'clock.”
A sick feeling spread through me. “What did he want?”
Bexley hesitated. The pause lasted only a second. It was enough.
"Where's Linnet?"
"His lordship took her, my lady.”
For a moment, I simply stared at him. The words made perfect sense, and that was the horror of them.
There was no misunderstanding to take refuge in, no second meaning, no hope that the day's exhaustion had muddled plain English into something worse than it was.
Edgar had done the thing he promised he would do.
My grip tightened on Miriam's arm until I felt the bone beneath her sleeve. She did not pull away. She did not say a word. She only moved closer, the way she had moved closer beside the iron gate in Kent, as though her nearness might keep the floor from opening beneath me.
"No."
“I'm afraid so, my lady.”
“No. It can't be.” The words came out sharper this time, edged with something I did not recognize in my own voice. “He cannot.”
Bexley said nothing. Because we both knew that he could.
That was the cruelty of it. Not a single act of villainy that might be undone, but the whole weight of the world arranged behind him.
The law cared nothing for what a woman wanted, or feared, or knew to be true.
A brother might do as he pleased with an unmarried sister, and the more respectable his manner of doing it, the less anyone would ask.
"Did he say where he was taking her?"
"He said nothing to me, my lady." Something worked briefly in Bexley’s face, which he swiftly mastered. "We were not permitted to interfere. I am more sorry than I can say." He drew a breath. "He left a letter for you. It's on the table in the morning room."
I was already moving. Past Bexley, past the hall, my bonnet still tied beneath my chin. Miriam followed close behind.
The letter lay exactly where Bexley had said. One sheet of folded paper. My name written across the front in Edgar's hand—that small, upright, merciless hand that had never in its life formed a tender word.
I broke the seal and read.
Lark,
Your continued refusal to acknowledge the realities of our sister's condition has left me with little choice but to intervene.
Linnet has today been placed under my supervision.
Arrangements have been made for her to be examined by a physician of suitable standing. Upon receipt of the necessary certifications, provisions for her future care will proceed accordingly.
You may rest assured that her welfare is being attended to.
E.
That was all. No direction. No name of a house. No opportunity for reply. Just certainty.
Cold.
Absolute.
Final.
My hands began to shake. The words on the page swam and blurred, then sharpened again, each one worse than the last.
“Lark.”
I barely heard Miriam as I sank down onto the nearest chair.
A physician.
Certifications.
Future care.
I knew precisely what those words meant.
Only hours earlier I had stood inside Elmwood House.
I had walked its corridors with my heart in my throat.
I had heard the answers given by a smiling clergyman.
I had heard the screams that no amount of polished oak and fresh paint could muffle.
I had watched a woman claw at iron bars and beg strangers for help while the proprietor spoke gently of nerves, and delicacy, and the great kindness of removing such unfortunates from the world's notice.
Now physicians would examine Linnet. Certify her in need of care. And lock her away the rest of her natural life. She was barely eighteen.
The room tilted. I pressed my palm flat against the cold tabletop until it steadied.
“Did anyone accompany him?” I asked, without looking up.
"A gentleman I did not recognize, my lady. Possibly a solicitor." Bexley had followed us into the room and stood now just inside the door, his hands folded before him with the stiffness of a man holding himself together by discipline alone. "He carried a leather case and said very little."
My stomach dropped further. Of course Edgar would bring a solicitor. He would have come in good order, with a man of business at his elbow to note the date and the hour, so that whatever he did this morning would wear, ever after, the appearance of duty soberly performed.
"Did Linnet go willingly?"
The butler hesitated. "No, my lady. His lordship was forced to carry her into the carriage."
My eyes closed. And though it grieved me, I was glad. I was glad she had fought.
She had been frightened. She had been distressed, and most surely terrified—because Linnet would have understood.
She missed nothing. She read faces the way I read print, and she would have read Edgar's, and the stranger's, and Bexley's helpless one, and known in an instant exactly what was happening to her.
And I had not been here.
I had been in Kent. Miles away, congratulating myself on my cleverness, walking the corridors of one such house to gather what I might use against him—while the door I had left unguarded swung open behind me.
“Did she leave a message?” My voice had gone very quiet. “Some word. Anything. She would have tried.”
Bexley looked regretful and older than I had ever seen him. “She was not allowed to, my lady.”
I had to know where he’d taken her. Think. Think. There had to be something. A name. An address. The physician's direction. A clue carelessly let slip. Edgar was thorough, but no man was perfect, and I had unraveled tighter knots than this.
But there was only the letter. One sheet of folded paper that told me everything of his intention and nothing of her whereabouts. He had given me certainty in place of facts, knowing certainty was the crueler gift.
A knock suddenly sounded on our front door. None of us moved. I could not have risen if the house were on fire.
When the knock sounded again, Bexley said, “I best attend to that, my lady.”
I scarcely noticed him leave. I sat frozen, with the letter still open in my lap, reading E. over and over, as if by staring at that single initial I might compel it to surrender more than it contained.
A voice sounded from the open sitting room door. Deep. Familiar. Threaded through with concern.
"Lark?"
I glanced up.
Thorne stood in the entrance, the lamplight catching the pale line of the scar along his jaw.
For one brief moment, relief hit me so hard it was almost painful—a clean, bright thing cutting through the dark. Then I remembered why I was sitting there, and the cold came back.
His expression changed in the space of a breath. He had taken one look at my face and read the whole of it. "What has happened?"
“Edgar has taken Linnet.”