Chapter 6
Sabine is speaking to a man whose voice I don’t recognize. Downstairs, I edge the door open with my foot and keep to the shadows.
“She just married yesterday, did she not?” asks the man.
Sabine laughs lightly. “Yes. Pity, that.”
Sabine never belonged in quiet, privileged Cheltenham’s old money families and their traditional ways never suited Sabine. She has the fire of a suffragette in her veins and the cunning of a card shark.
“That does complicate things legally,” the man’s voice is saying.
“He has vanished, and nothing has been signed. I hardly call that a complication.”
My hazy mind embraces the truth slowly. Ansel. AJ has vanished. I grab the back of a chair as my knees buckle. AJ…gone.
I see the rooftop in my mind. That delicious moment when AJ’s face appeared so close to mine, refusing to simply allow me to walk away. His gold-flecked eyes that snapped with humor. The lightness of my heart around him.
His achingly handsome face.
I smooth my hair back, rubbing my temples as the pressure increases and the memory of the seashore man surfaces. Perhaps this is the way it’s supposed to be, AJ disappearing.
I collapse into the chair as the room spins.
“Two doctors?” Sabine says, her voice rising again. “Is one of you not intelligent enough to see she’s—” Sabine’s gaze locks with mine through the cracked door.
I push open the door. “I’m what?”
Sabine’s glittering, up-slanted eyes don’t change. Her lips press together then bloom out. “Singular and interesting.” She smiles. “We were discussing your condition, Merryn. Your memory loss. And how it might inhibit your ability to manage—”
“My condition has no bearing on the will.” She’s having me declared mad. What else requires two physicians? The visitors—four police officers and one alienist with a clipboard—observe me. “I’m exactly as I was when Lady St. Laurent made me trustee.”
Sabine is very still. “She wished to see you cared for, of course,” she says, “and you will be. I’ll see to a small fund for—”
“And Cecil?” I keep my voice steady, direct.
She steps closer, placing gentle hands on my arms. “The boy will be cared for, and you, of course. Mama would want that. You were so dear to her.” A flicker of a smile and I see the truth.
She will have exactly what she wants. There’s no stopping Sabine St. Laurent. “I’ll see to your care personally.”
“You’ll nurse me yourself, will you? Bring my food, change my chamber pot?”
She stiffens at my vulgarity then pats my cheek as she whispers, “I will not cast my mother’s pearls before swine, you ungrateful lout.”
I fight for self-control. “They were her pearls, and she may cast them where she will.” I pat her cheek back, a bit harder.
Her hand snaps up and clamps on my wrist. “I have only begun to fight, Merryn Forsythe, and you don’t wish to see all the weapons in my arsenal.”
Those words click into place like the thunk of pins as a safe is unlocked. Sabine St. Laurent belongs to this money, much as it belongs to her, and she is a force. Her network of admirers is a wall I cannot penetrate.
I step back and collide with a small human. “Cecil.” I anchor him beside me. “I thought I told you—”
“I don’t listen well,” he whispers back. “Remember?”
My own words echo back at me. An odd mix of amusement and fear twists in me. I rise, hand to his back. “If you’ll excuse us—”
“He’s not going anywhere with you,” says Sabine, her voice low. Commanding.
Sabine gives a quick nod to the police officers and they surround Cecil, prying him away from me.
He doesn’t scream this time, but his tiny twig form goes rigid.
He clings to me with his eyes the way his arms did, and he waits for me to swoop in with some great rescue—the tumble and roll out of the path of this oncoming automobile.
Like a powerful undertow, that compulsion to lunge for him again sweeps over me.
I open my arms and they block me—three of them—as if they were prepared to restrain my hysteria.
The uniformed men form a wall between me and the boy who’s holding his bravery together by a thread.
But his right shoulder tics a bit, which means the tears will come soon.
Keep calm. No wild demands. And definitely no screaming of any kind. “I’d like to leave, please. You cannot stop this boy’s guardian from taking him.”
“I’m afraid you’re not his guardian anymore, Miss Forsythe.”
A cool panic washes over me. “Of course I am.”
Sabine’s smile is pitying. “I’ve put in for a temporary order to become, as next of kin, his guardian.”
“Have you?” I’m steady. Not trembling at all. “Will this order be granted?”
Her smile widens, and I realize it already has been.
“You cannot leave with him before the competency hearing, miss,” says one of the men.
“But who will—”
“I’ve enrolled him at Cheltenham Prep,” says Sabine. “He’ll be leaving for the Michaelmas term directly.”
“No!” Cecil shouts and crumples at the men’s feet.
I lunge for him, and hands immediately yank me back. A tall man blocks me from Cecil’s tiny, helpless body curled up on the rug. He scrambles to stand.
“Don’t make matters worse for yourself, Miss Forsythe,” says Sabine. She draws the boy back against her, wrapping her arms around his narrow shoulders. “Asylums for the criminally insane are far less pleasant than the one I’ve chosen for you. Don’t make me change my mind.”
I take two steps and level a gaze at her. “What great tragedy has broken you, Sabine St. Laurent, to make you do this to him?”
“Don’t patronize me,” she says on a breath, eyes snapping. “I’ll have little trouble proving you’re unfit to manage the estate. Or your life, for that matter. It’s difficult to put up any sort of fight from an asylum, believe me. Eric has tried.”
Cecil whimpers at the mention of his father. Sabine shoves him behind her again. She doesn’t even see the panic on his face—because she isn’t looking at him. She isn’t looking at anything but the person standing between her and the fortune she believes is her lifeblood.
I straighten slowly, a phoenix rising from the ash. “Do not mistake my quiet for weakness, Sabine.” I’ve not even begun to fight.
A pert smile. “Really? With your disappearing husband, and—”
“HERE!” AJ waves from the top of the stairs, grinning like a fool. Then that jovial acrobat takes to the railing, sliding down with a whoop, then springs up and offers a mock bow. “Present and accounted for, one husband.”
The heat climbing my neck could light a hundred candles, but he is here. AJ is still here.
Sabine is stunned. Silenced. And for the moment…bested. Whatever happens in the long war, I have won this moment.
One of the men steps forward. “I’m sorry, sir, but we’ll need to question your wife—”
“Has anyone seen my hat?” AJ pokes about the hall.
“I’m sorry, Doctor. This isn’t a good time.” I slip around him. “They say I cannot handle my inheritance,” I tell AJ, who pauses his hat search. I’m trying not to shake. “They wish to lock me away.”
“She wouldn’t have any idea what to do with such a sum.” Sabine spreads her elegant hands out, palms up.
“I imagine she can scare up a few ideas,” AJ says. “Starting with a wedding trip. Come along, wife.” His grin is enormous. He snatches the doctor’s hat from a nearby table, popping it on his head. “Ah, here. This one will do.”
One of the men steps forward. “This is a serious situation, and I’m afraid we must handle it. Now. If you’d only step into the study, we’ll speak with you both.”
But AJ is tugging me toward the door.
“I’ll come for you, Cec,” I say as I pass him. I cannot see his face. “I vow it.”
“Tea is in order, is it not? Step into the study and we’ll just—” Then AJ is shoving me toward the kitchen through the servant’s hall…and directly out the service entrance.
“Here we are now, out to the car.” AJ closes the door behind us.
“But AJ, stop! Cecil and…and my luggage. I haven’t—”
“Will this do?” He swings my carpet bag off the steps and shoves me with fingertips against my back toward the drive…and the barred asylum cart. The bag strikes my shins as I hurry along, rather dumbfounded by the events. I look at AJ’s familiar face and realize he knows more than he let on.
There’s yelling inside, and a door bangs. They’ve seen us, and they’re coming. “AJ! How shall we—”
With a boom and a rattle, the Packard is huffing toward us. He grabs my hand, pulling me toward it. “I’ve no fortune to my name, but I can plan a hasty exit.”
The men from the asylum come rushing down the drive. “See here! This is a serious matter, and she’s a threat to—”
He shoves me into the car, tossing my bag into my lap and throwing himself on top of me. “Drive, James. Drive!”
But it is Lady St. Laurent’s solicitor Henry Gould behind the wheel, his silver hair slicked back.
AJ grins. “Ah, it’s you, is it, old chap?”
I shove him off me. “AJ, we cannot leave Cecil. He needs me, and I’m his legal guard—”
“You can’t guard anyone from an asylum. First things first, my lady. We must abscond with you. Now, let’s pick it up, Henry.”
“Ordering me about, are you?” demands Gould. He’s a bit gruff, but fatherly—his bark is worse than his bite. “Ready, Miss Forsythe? Ah!” he says with a grim smile. “Mrs. Winthrop, that is. My apologies, madam. Ready for a handy escape?”
“More than ready.” I cling to my bag, and to AJ’s coat as he scrambles over me to the next seat, and the car lurches forward, propelling us away from Lady St. Laurent’s fine home. Away from Sabine.
Away from Cecil. But not forever.
“Take my card, my dear,” says Mr. Gould, passing it over the leather seat.
“It’s a calling card with my exchange written on it.
I’ve placed some money on the card so you can call from anywhere with a public telephone.
Meanwhile, I don’t want to see your face about until probate is all settled and done. ”
“And we’ll win, won’t we?”
He sighs and turns the large steering wheel, hand over hand. “It depends on how well you keep hidden. Judges are not in the habit of awarding large fortunes to those in county asylums, no matter what the will states.”
I swallow. “Of course.” He’s scribbled something on the back of the calling card—Take care and keep safe. Contact me if anyone hurts you. I’ll always believe you.
I glance at his stern face in the mirror, but Mr. Gould keeps his gaze ahead. It darts my way for half a breath, then back to the road. We’re safe now, though, aren’t we? “How long will probate take?”
“As long as I can possibly make it.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If it wraps up this moment,” says AJ, “they’ll likely find you incompetent. Her guardianship will become permanent.”
“But Lady St. Laurent chose me as guardian.”
Mr. Gould sighs. “Her daughter doesn’t fight fairly.”
“We’ll fight this, Mr. Gould.” AJ is tense. I’ve never seen him this way before. “We cannot let her win.”
Warmth curls inside at his protective reaction, then it swirls into dread. I am leading AJ into a mess. He will find himself tied to a woman with no past at best, and an institutionalized madwoman at worst.
“I cannot stop them from institutionalizing you for a condition you most certainly do have, so I’ll need you to recover your memory. As much as you possibly can.”
I breathe, closing my eyes. The pressure of a barely dammed past pushes against my skull. “I wouldn’t count on it returning.” Mostly because I don’t want it to.
“Is there nothing you recall?”
I close my eyes and knead my temples, unwilling to brave the sharp edges of the unknown. I huddle in this roaring car, clinging to my carpetbag and cursing my past, wishing I could lay hold of it, diffuse its hold over me and live fully in the present.
Memories are dangerous.