Chapter 9
Crawshanks House, Whitechapel.
Ilie awake, exhausted to my bones but unable to rest.
Other than the slow, monotonous tick tick of the carriage clock on the mantel, it’s deathly quiet. The household have long since sought their beds, even the servants.
Tucked up warm in my comfortable bed, with its heavy eiderdown and goose feather pillows, it should have been so easy for me to slip down into slumber. The fire is banked low but still warms the room, the heat kept in by the thick rugs and heavy drapes.
After many long years at Crowscroft, I can no longer sleep without the ghoulish cacophony of pain-filled screams and hopeless cries echoing along dark, draughty corridors.
Here in my childhood home, I should feel safe.
The threat of my father no longer signifies.
He’s long gone—burning in hell, I hope, along with my weak mother.
My brother and sister are the only ones who’ve ever truly loved me, the only ones who’ve seen me for what I truly am.
I should feel safe. But I don’t.
Every tiny, unfamiliar noise makes me start, and the constant dread churning in my fragile body makes my stomach hurt and my chest ache.
Cornelius and Constance may think they’ve won, that it’s over because I’m home, but they don’t know Dr Whyte the way I do.
If they think an official document signed by the Queen herself will stop him from reclaiming his favourite plaything, they are mistaken.
After all, Dr Whyte is a favourite of Her Majesty, awarded several times for his service to medicine and the sciences.
Service. I scoff.
Crowscroft was nothing more than a place to indulge his deepest perversions and his delight in inflicting pain.
He was a master of manipulation. I hold no illusions that he won’t secure a new order of incarceration.
It would not take much effort on his part.
He need only show them what I did to his face to convince them I am dangerous.
It’s been three days since I’ve been home. I’m running out of time.
Constance has mothered me insufferably, although I know it comes from a place of love.
She’s insisted that I remain abed, practically spoon-fed broth like an invalid.
Admittedly, my ill health does not speak to the contrary.
My body is frail and broken, constantly wracked with shivers.
During the first two days, I slipped in and out of consciousness, sweating and shaking as my body began to purge the drugs Whyte had ordered be administered to me daily while I was held.
This is the first time my mind has been clear in years, and the first thing I’ve felt is…
Fear.
Fear that they’re coming back for me, fear that this time there is not a higher authority in the land that will stop Whyte or his underlings. Short of magic, there will be nothing Cornelius or Constance can do to save me.
How does it feel, Cordelia? How does it feel to be powerless?
Shutting my eyes against the memory of his voice whispering in my ear, his hot, sour breath on my skin, I swallow hard and my lips tighten, stinging when the sore, dry skin cracks at the movement.
No.
I am done with powerful men trying to ruin me. I am never going to be powerless again.
Gritting my teeth, I push the heavy sheets and quilt from my body.
I sit up with difficulty, and it’s an effort to slide my legs from the bed.
A pair of house slippers are placed close, and I slip my feet into them.
It feels like it takes forever to haul my exhausted body from my warm bed, pull on my dressing gown, and cross the room to the door.
Reaching out with trembling hands, I grasp the door handle, which turns and opens with a wet, oiled click. I’d almost expected it to be locked, and once again, I’m forced to remind myself I’m not a prisoner here. Even if it means I’m still not truly free.
I look out into the quiet corridor. No guards, and why would there be?
I can’t seem to get my mind to realise this is not Crowscroft.
The floor is carpeted with a new runner, the walls adorned in elegant silk wallpaper decorated with tiny flowers and birds.
Mounted on the walls at intervals and flooding the narrow corridor with soft light are a modern wonder—gas lighting. Much has changed since I was last here.
It seems times have been kinder to my brother and sister now that my father is no longer here to gamble away the household income. I wonder how much more of the house has changed, but now is not the time for idle wandering in the dead of night. I have not yet regained my strength.
I pick up the candle holder from where it sits upon the dresser by the door. Although I don’t need a candle for the moment, I know it will be dark where I’m going, and my magic is not yet strong enough to light my way.
Closing my bedroom door behind me, I make my way down the corridor and then the stairs.
My slippered feet make no sound upon the plush rugs as I move along.
Even though I walk with purpose, my eyes continue to note changes.
Gone are the hideous portraits and oils of hunting scenes my father bought from auction.
Not that I care, but I sense my sister’s hand with the change in decoration.
We’d left India with little more than a few steamer trunks of clothes and what remained of our family fortune after my father’s disgrace and expulsion from his post as governor.
We were never going to be welcomed into the upper echelons of society, no matter the pedigree of my father’s name.
Word travelled fast, and if news of my father’s scandalous behaviour was not enough, our Whitechapel address would have been.
It didn’t matter how big the property was or whether he filled it with antiques and portraits of ancestors that didn’t belong to us. He would never have been able to fabricate an acceptable provenance for our bloodline. We had been laughingstocks, he just refused to see it.
As for myself, I couldn’t care less what a whole bunch of upper-class whores and bastards thought.
I never forgave my father for taking me away from the one place I’d ever known or loved.
Being only a child, I’d cried for nearly the entire first week of the voyage from Calcutta until Father, having had enough of my tears, took his belt to me.
Seething with the indignity of losing his post and social status, he directed his fury towards me every night of that excruciating voyage.
Even now, years later, I can’t bear to think of the things he did to me.
By the time we arrived in London at the East India Docks, I’d learned my lesson and would never again show weakness.
Pushing the painful memories from my mind and tucking them away with a thousand others I’ve never wanted, I concentrate on trying to stay upright as I descend another staircase to the ground floor.
I’d spent a good deal of time at Crowscroft either bound to my bed or chained to the wall in a straitjacket.
Now, the muscles of my legs were weak and withered from being underused.
Only sheer willpower keeps me moving, albeit slowly.
I creep across the ground floor, pausing when I come upon a familiar room.
My spine stiffens and sweat breaks out across my brow at the sight of the golden light spilling from a cracked-open door.
Voices carry through the opening, speaking in tones too low for me to understand the words.
But I know this room; it was one I feared throughout my childhood and even more so when I became a woman.
My father’s study.
He is dead, I remind myself. Cornelius has sworn. He sat there and watched him die. But as I near the room, the voices become clearer, and despite the hammering of my heart and the clamminess of my palms, I have to know. I have to know it isn’t him.
I creep forward, pausing at the crack in the door and peering through.
The room looks almost the same and yet not.
It had been a cold, hard room, which had filled me with fear, and had often been shrouded in darkness and shadow, its only light source the small guttering candle on my father’s desk.
Now it is bathed in a warm, glowing light, no doubt a combination of the cheerfully flickering fireplace and the wall-mounted gas lamps.
From this angle, I can see my brother lounging in a high-backed leather chair by the fireplace, his thick, wild curls rioting, as if he’s run his hands through his hair repeatedly in agitation.
But I know from experience that his hair has always been a chaotic mess, even as a child.
His gaze is turbulent as he stares into the dancing flames, a brandy balloon resting carelessly in one hand. He’s dressed only in his trousers and shirtsleeves, collar unbuttoned and sleeves rolled up.
“Brooding is not going to help, love,” a distinctly male voice says, and I watch as the red-haired man from the other night appears, just as casually attired as Cornelius.
I cast my mind back to the night I was brought to the house. He’d been here then as well. What was his name? Ichabod, I’m sure that’s it. But just who is this man?
He circles around Cornelius’ chair, running his hands through my brother’s unruly hair, a move that is slow and speaks of intimacy. I watch, curious, as he lifts the glass from Cornelius’ hand and takes a sip of its contents before setting it on the mantel above the fire.
“You must know by now that brooding is my inherent nature.” Cornelius sighs and looks up at his companion.
Ichabod places his hands down on the arms of the chair either side of my brother and lowers his face, his mouth hovering above Cornelius’ lips.
“Maybe you need a distraction from your thoughts.”
“Perhaps I do,” Cornelius mutters, his eyes darkening as he reaches up and grips that shock of red hair.