Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
A Way Through
She held out a letter, her hand unsteady, her face bloodless.
I read it once, quickly, then again, slower—as though a second pass might rearrange the words into something less damning. It did not. "He means to commit her to the asylum."
Lark only nodded. She was holding herself upright by will alone, and the will was failing her by degrees.
Her cousin was faring little better. I turned to her butler, who had followed me into the morning room. "Bring tea. And something stronger—whiskey, brandy, whatever's nearest. Something to eat as well."
Relief crossed his face—the relief of a man handed a task he could perform instead of standing helpless in the wreckage. "At once, my lord."
I turned to Lark’s cousin who seemed ready to collapse.
“Mrs. Selwyn, please sit down. You've both had a shock.
" And then I crossed to Lark and took her hands in mine.
They were like ice, the fingers stiff. "Here.
" I stripped off my coat and settled it about her shoulders, then folded her hands between my own and chafed them, coaxing the warmth back.
She let me, without a word. That told me how far she had gone.
“He left you a letter. You weren't home when he came?”
"No. I—we—" she gestured toward her cousin "—we'd gone to Kent. To Elmwood House."
She had not waited, then. Not for my return from Edinburgh, nor for the report from my solicitors. She'd had a reason; Lark did nothing without one. "Why?"
"While you were away, Anne sent word that Edgar had set the thing in motion. The committal. He was only waiting for a convenient moment." Her breath caught. "And God help me, I handed him one by going to Kent.” Something broke behind her eyes. "I should have waited for you."
My heart bled for her. “He would have taken her regardless, Lark." At least I could offer her that small comfort.
Bexley returned with the tea, the spirit, and a plate of sandwiches. I poured for both women and added a measure of whiskey to each cup. By the time they had drunk and eaten a little, some color had crept back into Lark’s face.
"Thank you," Lark said, sounding steadier after the food and drink.
Mrs. Selwyn, however, had not regained her equilibrium as she remained quite pale. In the next instant, she set down her cup with shaking hands. "If you don't mind, Lark, I'll go up. It's been a long day."
"No—of course." Lark rose and embraced her. "Go and rest. Thank you for coming with me to Kent."
"Lord Everthorne." Mrs. Selwyn paused at the door. "I'll leave her in your capable hands."
I came to my feet and bowed. “Do not fret yourself, Mrs. Selwyn. I’ll take good care of her."
Once her cousin had left, I turned to Lark. “Tell me about Elmwood House.” It would give her mind something to hold that was not her sister.
She told it plainly. The high wall. The clergyman Grimshaw, who met them on the steps all kindness and lavender water. The cold physician, Strode, who asked more questions than she liked.
Then the rest: bright sitting rooms, a chapel, a walled garden.
Everything arranged to persuade. Everything respectable.
Very nearly convincing—right up to the moment they were leaving, when a window was forced open above the forecourt, and a woman appeared at the bars, clawing at the iron, screaming for help.
“That is the worst of it, Thorne." Her cup had gone still in her hands. "Grimshaw stood there and called the poor creature deranged. He said she always insisted she was sane. That she was wrongly imprisoned. That someone must come for her, and that this was the nature of the disorder."
She turned the cup in her hands but did not drink.
"Don't you see what it means? Every sane thing she did would be turned and used to prove her mad.
Her reason. Her desperation. There is no argument she can make that they have not already prepared to dismiss.
" Her gaze met mine. "And they will do precisely the same to Linnet. How are we to manage that?"
“We don't fight them on their ground. We don't try to prove Linnet sane. We prove the place corrupt." I let that settle. "The report from my solicitors reached me the day I left for Edinburgh."
Her face blazed with emotion. “And you said nothing to me?”
"There was no time. I had a train to catch, and I'd not put a thing like that in a letter. I meant to lay it before you the moment I returned."
Her shoulders eased. “So what did your solicitors have to say?”
"It confirms everything you've just described. And a good deal worse." I set my cup aside. "The arrangement has run more than fifteen years. Women go in. Almost none come out. They are not meant to."
She said nothing, waiting.
"And yet every form is observed, every certificate in order. Carmody, the solicitor, sees to that. Annual reports filed. Fees collected at admission and again each year, without fail." I held her gaze. "Grimshaw. Strode. Carmody. Three respectable men grown rich on the trade."
"So that is all it is?” Her voice flattened with contempt. "Money."
"At bottom, yes. But here is the thing of it—no one has ever challenged them. Not once in fifteen years has a single committal been questioned."
"Because the family who paid to lock the woman away is hardly going to petition for her release."
"Just so." I held her gaze. "But Linnet is not like the others.
Edgar may have the law on his side to commit her.
What he does not reckon on is that a committal can be contested.
And that is precisely what we shall do." She needed reassuring.
So, I set my hands on her shoulders. "We will get her back, Lark. "
"How?"
"To begin with, we stop panicking."
She shrugged off my hands. "I am not panicking, Thorne.” The look she leveled at me could have stripped varnish from a door.
Good. Her fighting spirit was coming back. "If you say so."
"I do. And even if I were, I should have every right to panic.”
"You would, I agree.” Unfortunately, I could not quite keep my mouth from twitching.
She caught it, of course. "Stop smirking and explain yourself."
I surrendered the smirk. “Here’s the thing. We must be clever, and we must be loud.”
Her brow creased.
"Your brother wants this done quietly. A respectable arrangement, soberly conducted, attracting no notice whatever. So we deny him the pleasure, and we turn it against him."
A dangerous light came into her eyes as she caught my meaning. “We give it a voice. We make a very great deal of noise."
“Yes, but not yet.”
“Not yet? Why not?”
“If we make the noise too soon—before she is committed—we gain nothing but to warn him.
Westmere has every reason to move her somewhere we cannot follow, and every excuse to call you precisely what he would like to call you.
Hysterical. Unwell. Unfit to have charge of anyone, least of all yourself.
" I held her gaze. "Noise is a fine weapon, Lark.
But you fire it once, and you fire it when it cannot miss. " I learned that lesson in the Crimea.
"Then when?"
"When the thing is done. When Edgar has signed his order, when two doctors have signed their certificates, and Linnet has been received at Elmwood under the seal of the law."
The color drained from her face. "You are asking me to let him take her."
"I am asking you to let him reach for her. Not to leave her there." I softened my voice. "A thing that has not happened cannot be undone, Lark. But the moment he commits her, the order exists. The certificates exist. And we know whose names will be upon them before the ink is dry."
"How can you know that?"
"Because of my solicitors’ report, and what you yourself have learned.
Strode will sign as one of the examining physicians.
Carmody will have brokered the arrangement, as he brokered so many others.
And the whole of it runs through Grimshaw's very respectable house in Kent. We are not guessing at our enemies, Lark. At that point, we will have their names, their fees, their signatures on Linnet’s committal. ”
“But how will we fight this once it’s done?” she asked.
“They will claim the same they have of other women.
That she is hysterical. Of unsound mind.
Not mistress of her own senses." I held her gaze.
"And there sits the flaw at the center of the thing.
Linnet is deaf, but not one of those men signs.
So how does Strode examine a woman he cannot speak to and cannot understand?
How does he take down her answers when he has no means to put the questions?
He will write her silence into derangement and her hands into the ravings of a disordered mind, because he has no other way to read her.
He will call deafness madness, for it is the only verdict the room permits him. "
Understanding came into her face. "And the moment we say so—"
"—his certificate is worthless. It is proof he certified a woman he never once comprehended.
" I let that settle between us. “But we do not stop at tearing up his paper. We answer it. You will set before the commissioners a young woman whose conduct half of literary London has witnessed with its own eyes. Respectable men and women who have sat in your drawing room and watched Linnet hold the whole company without speaking a word. We will show them her drawings, her paintings.”
“Along with Lord Charles Merriton’s testimony,” Lark said.
The name meant nothing to me. Another poet, perhaps? “Who’s he?”
“A gentleman who belongs to a family no board in England would care to offend. He’s troubled himself to learn sign language and is, unless I am a great fool, halfway to losing his heart to Linnet.”
"He would make a fine witness, then. A man from a family that can't be ignored, vouching she's as sane as he is." I paused. "And that a gentleman thinks her worthy of being loved."
"Of course she is worthy of being loved." The words came out clipped. "You speak as though Linnet requires a gentleman's endorsement before society will acknowledge what she has always been."
I instantly became contrite. “That was not my intention. I apologize.”
She shook her head. "Now I'm the one apologizing. You're helping, and I snap at you for it.”
“No need to apologize, Lark.”
She breathed out a long sigh. “How long will this take?”
“Days at the very least.”
She sprang from her chair. “Linnet is to stay inside those walls. Behind barred windows. Have her suffer for days—”
"Lark."
"—and to trust a Lunacy Board and witnesses and the good opinion of Charles Merriton, while she sits in the dark not knowing whether anyone is coming for her at all and—"
"Lark. No panicking. Remember?”
It stopped her, as I had known it would. Her mouth closed. The look she turned on me this time held no fight in it, only fear, naked and terrible, and that was far harder to stand against than her temper had been.
"You ask too much of me," she said, very low, retaking her seat.
"I know it." I took her hands. They were once again cold. I turned one palm upward and brushed my thumb across it. Her eyes met mine briefly, but she did not pull away.
"Days," she said quietly.
"I would not ask it if there were another road. But there isn’t. Every other road ends with Linnet lost to you forever. This one ends with her home. I will not pretend the cost is small. But I will not lie to you about the prize either."
She drew a breath that shook on the way in.
"Your sister is not the woman at that window.
Linnet is not friendless, she is not forgotten, and she is a great deal stronger than her brother has ever troubled to notice.
She will know what has been done to her.
She will know, the whole of the time, that you are moving heaven and earth on her behalf—because she knows you, and she has never once had cause to doubt that you would come.
She will hold. She will walk out of that place on her own feet.
And whatever it costs her, she will not come out broken.
She will come out knowing precisely what she survived, and what she is made of.
" I pressed her hands. "That is not nothing to give a young woman, either. "
For a long moment she only looked at me. Then something in her shoulders gave way—not collapse but surrender of a different kind. The setting down of a weight she had been carrying alone.
"You are very certain of her," she said.
"I am certain of you both."