Bride of a Distant Isle (32 page)

“May I come in?” He stood at the door once I'd opened it.

“Of course,” I said, glad that I had taken time to dress properly. Maud had not tended to my needs for some days.

“I believe you saw our guest leave,” he began. He did not sit down, as I did, as Clementine had. Instead, he paced like one of the lions at London's zoological park, which I had visited with the Rogers school. He rubbed his temple over and over.

“Lady Somerford,” I began smoothly. “I wondered at her visit.”

“She came to call upon Clementine, as lady of the house.” Edward's voice was snide. “To deliver a letter from Lady Leahy. They've become friends.”

I looked sharply at Clementine. “I had no idea.” Perhaps this was why my painting had not been given to Elizabeth. To sever my ties with her and replace them with ties to Clementine.

Clementine shrugged. Her face was drawn, and she looked as though she'd had little more sleep than I had.

“I meant Captain Dell'Acqua. His visit was, I'm certain, related to the unfortunate and compromising situation my wife found you in last evening. I told him to leave, to sail away, and never to return. He seems to have agreed.”

“Your investments together . . .”

“He's terminated those arrangements, Annabel. Decided to do it late last night, apparently, as I had not had definite word before then. Due, in all likelihood, to the manner in which you conducted yourself with him. I asked you to do
one thing
, Annabel, to help the family, which was to smooth the path with the Maltese. You could not do that.”

“Family? You are not family to me, Edward, not in the ways that count, no matter how long I'd wished that otherwise. It is certainly not my fault that your dealings went wrong. Marco told me . . .”

Clementine inhaled. “Marco?”

Edward looked self-satisfied, catlike contentment spreading across his face. “How intimate! What did Marco tell you?”

“He'd already decided to terminate the agreement before yesterday.”

Edward seemed startled, but not shaken. “No doubt he had a sword up his sleeve the entire time, the foreigner. Once he found he couldn't have his way with you . . . thanks to Clementine's intervention . . . he'd concluded all he came for. Too late, I might add, for me to pursue other interests who were in attendance at the Great Exhibition. I shall, I promise, find better, more satisfactory arrangements.”

“It wasn't like that.” I stood up. “He . . . he asked me to marry him.”

“He
asked you to marry him
? Unbelievable.”

“He said . . .” My spirit fell. In actuality, he had not asked me to marry him. He'd asked me to come away with him.

“He said?” Clementine prompted.

“It was a private conversation.”

“Like the other ones inside your head,” Edward threw at me. Then he indicated that Clementine should stand up and motioned for her to join him by the door.

I closed my eyes. There was nothing I could say that would change his mind. He was angry and I was lost.

“When will Mr. Morgan return?” I asked, my voice heavy with shades of gray.

Edward nearly pushed Clementine through the door and then looked back to me. “Given the circumstances, Morgan will not be returning. Instead, I've sent a note to the doctor, asking him to send a nurse to help care for women in your . . . circumstances. She'll arrive this afternoon.”

Of course. There may not have been proof—yet—of my legitimacy, but the proof was steadily stacking up. Edward could not allow me to be thought of as sane, nor to marry. When my legitimacy was proved, I, and my child, would take all.

He pulled the door shut, and I sank into my bed.

He'd like me to believe that the circumstance he referred to meant my mental well-being. But I knew what circumstance truly concerned him: my legitimacy and his likely loss of legacy.

Two hours later, the nurse arrived.

C
lementine brought her to my door. I let them into my rooms, and we three sat in the small sitting area.

She looked to be about thirty years old; I had been expecting someone much older. Her face was unlined, and her hair was pulled back rather severely in a nurse's cap. She had a medical bag with her. I wondered what kinds of instruments and elixirs were hidden within; horror stories I'd read and heard about pressed into my mind, and I grew cold at the core.

“My name is Mrs. Strange.” She leaned toward me. I almost laughed out loud at her name; did it not strike any of them as ironic? If Clementine were to laugh, it would be taken as poor manners, but for me to laugh aloud would be to call my sanity further into question. Once people are predisposed to believe something about you, proof offered or not, it was difficult to dissuade them from that position. In their minds, every action, word, or insight only added weight to their already foregone conclusion.

I was well accustomed to deflecting unspoken accusations. I would handle this one well.

“And I am Miss Annabel Ashcroft,” I said. “How do you do? Thank you for journeying out here from . . .”

“Other parts,” she said, offering nothing, which won a nod of approval from Clementine.

“I am certain I do not need your administrations,” I said.

“But Mr. Everedge is certain you do,” Clementine pressed softly.

“I'm here to help,” Mrs. Strange said, her voice soothing.

“Edward wrote to the doctor, the doctor wrote to a specialist, and he sent Mrs. Strange,” Clementine said. “I am certain you'll be well cared for upstairs.”

“Upstairs?” I stood up and looked for a way to the door; I'd bolt outside and run toward Pennington if need be, though I did not know if anyone was still in residence there.

Clementine stood also, then blocked my way and closed the door.

“I am not going upstairs!” I shouted toward her, toward the door. I repeated it, shouting ever more loudly. “There is no reason to quarantine me, as you well know!”

Perhaps someone in the hallway would hear me. Clementine understood my intentions.

“It's not likely any will hear you,” she said. “And if they do, your ravings will only confirm what most of us, staff included, have come to believe. You've inherited your mother's . . . condition. It's well known to be passed in families. It comes upon people at similar ages. You're very close in age, aren't you, to when your mother was locked away?”

I looked around the room for any way out. Mrs. Strange stood, too. Would the two of them physically restrain me if need be?

“I. Am. Not. Mad,” I said. “There is no reason to confine me.”

A memory slammed into my consciousness.

“Judith! Judith, you cannot separate me from Annabel. There is no reason for this, as you well know.”

I cowered behind my mother whilst servants packed her things in this very room. A woman, in the corner of the room, looked like, looked like . . . I could not see her clearly.

“Annabel?” Clementine's voice snapped me back to the present. “I've just said that Mrs. Strange will pack your things and deliver them upstairs for you.”

“I can pack my own things, thank you very much.” I did not want Mrs. Strange or anyone else touching my belongings. “Several of my things have gone missing and I'd like to see to what remains myself.”

Clementine sighed, and Mrs. Strange looked, patiently, at the floor. “You've said that a cap has gone missing, a cap no one else has seen. You've said you had a proposal from a man, but cannot remember the words. What else is missing?” Disbelief colored her voice. “More wild accusations are not going to help you. Next thing you'll be accusing us of poisoning your food.”

“That, in particular, is a common concern many of the . . . that many of those who are mentally unstable voice.” Mrs. Strange, unhelpfully, added her experience to Clementine's allegation. “Poisoning, that is.”

I could not speak of the missing hair clips and add to her litany of doubt. So I said nothing. Had they, somehow, poisoned my food? Perhaps my convalescent trays? It would have to have been done without Chef's knowledge. Added afterward.

Or perhaps this, too, was the fevered imagination of a person under exceptional nervous tension.

Someone had heard me shout. Suddenly, I heard footsteps; Clementine opened the door, and two footmen and a stable boy stood there. Each averted his eyes.

“Come along.” Clementine took my arm. “Quietly and on your own is better, but I can have assistance if need be.”

I was very glad, then, that the hallway had been cleared of those I knew and loved so they would not witness my shame.

Realizing, now, there was no way out, I walked of my own accord, scrimping together whatever dignity remained. She brought me to the quarantine room and locked it from the outside. I hadn't even known it could be locked. Had a lock been newly added?

The cot was now made up, and I sat upon it. Then I lay down. I noticed, for the first time, that the paint was peeling from the plastered ceiling, where it blistered and boiled like burnt flesh; black mold bled out from within the gaps between paint and wall. For the first time, I noticed that the room smelt both damp and stale, like a drained pond.

I closed my eyes and thought about my mother and how distraught she must have been when separated from me. When I'd been old enough to enquire, I'd simply been told that she'd died, away, of a broken heart. Later, Edward told me the truth. I could remember no more of that time; perhaps that was a blessing. Had she known she would never leave this room except to be taken to the asylum?

I sat upright in a cold sweat. Was that what Edward intended for me?

Shortly, there was a knock on the door. Mrs. Strange appeared, Oliver behind her, carrying my trunk. He, too, would not meet my gaze, and his eyes looked as though he may have been crying.

“Thank you, Oliver.” I hoped to reassure him with a quiet voice, but he only nodded.

“I've packed all your belongings,” Mrs. Strange said, her voice almost hypnotizing. I supposed that was helpful in her profession. “Your room will now be packed and cleaned. The house is to be sold within the month or so.”

“I . . . I had no idea,” I said. That soon. She stood nearby while I looked through my trunks.

The sketchbook was not in there. But if I did not say something to her now I might never get it back. With the exception of the necklace tucked underneath my dress, it was the only thing of my parents left to me. I had to speak up.

“I know this might seem odd,” I began, realizing, perhaps for the first time, how peculiar it would look to others. “But I hid my sketchbook, something very dear to me, under the box that held the chamber pot, underneath my bed. Could you fetch it?”

Mrs. Strange smiled, well, strangely, before answering. “I'm very used to thoroughly looking in every nook and cranny for my patients,” she said. “I did find it. But I decided you would be better off without it.”

“What?” I nearly shouted. She remained calm in the face of my angry vent. “Why would you decide that? You've no right.”

“It's my sacred duty to do what is best for you,” she answered serenely, and at that moment an intense burst of lava-like hatred coursed through me: toward this nurse, toward Edward, toward Clementine and my father, and even toward Marco, who had abandoned me. “Will that be all?”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I could not even bring it up with Clementine—she'd believe it to be another imagined misdoing. Mrs. Strange pulled the door closed behind her.

I, Annabel Ashton, was the last evidence of my mother and father's love, their marriage, and the legacy that rightly belonged to my mother, and, therefore, to me! I had the forbidding feeling that I would soon, like the other evidence, be destroyed as well.

I ate little that night, not trusting the food, but was ill rewarded for my temperance anyway with a mild hallucination: my head pounded and I heard bits and pieces of conversations between teachers I'd once known, urging me to act, though they could not possibly know of my present situation. A dog again, in my mind's eye; I'd never owned a dog. I pushed the thought away. Perhaps it was true; I was insane. Thoughts of China still troubled my mind now and again. I'd told no one.

There would be no reason for them to continue to poison my food anymore, if there ever had been. I drank more tea; it did not matter now, for I could use the chamber pot as I needed to and Mrs. Strange would empty it. As the sun set, my life was darkened by hopelessness.

Before I went to bed, I looked out of the window. I did my level best not to notice the stained glass; I did not care to see the angels tending the Lord in His time of need when He had left me utterly alone in mine. Through the spyglass I observed Marco's ship still in the harbor.

Perhaps there was a chance. I humbled myself, knelt by my bed, and asked God to send Marco to save me.