Chasing the Heiress (26 page)

After the initial beating, Charters had left him lying on the floor, his head and belly aching from where the old sailor Flute had struck and kicked him. When he'd heard the door unlock, he had feared that Charters would be the one to let him out, and he'd been pleased to see that the aging fop Georges had come to free him.

But then the fop had stepped aside to allow two large men to enter the room. The men had pulled him from the floor and seated him in a chair that the aging fop had pulled into the room behind them. Then, taking another chair and turning it round, the fop had seated himself, letting the silence draw out between them.

After a long silence, Marner had thought Georges was going to question him. But instead, he'd pulled that blasted piece of pumice from his pocket and begun to sharpen and smooth his nails. After the fourth nail, Georges spoke, never looking up from the pumice.

“My employer is nat pleased that you thought to injure your cousin while she was under his protection.”

“Protection?” Marner started to rise, but the two men pulled him back. “I hired you to find her. You had no right to keep her from me. You. Work. For. Me,” he spat. He was a lord. They wouldn't dare push him too far.

“Ah, but that is where you have it wrong.
We
work for those who pay us. Had you paid your bill, then chosen to slice her ladyship up, we would have provided you with a comfortable arena to do so. We might have even provided you with better tools. But you haven't. So until that time that your account is paid, we are our own agents, free to work as we please, for whom we please. At this moment, it pleases us to help you understand the limits of our relationship.” The fop nodded to Flute, and the pain had begun. Searing pain that had made him more than once lose consciousness.

Each time he'd awoken, they'd begun again.

By the end he would have answered any question, but they didn't ask any. Only made him hurt. Then made him hurt some more.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Lucy promised to meet me today at noon at the British Museum. But she wasn't there.” Colin felt frantic and was doing a terrible job of hiding it.

“From the first, she said she would leave when William was safe. He's safe. She's gone. Perhaps it's for the best.” Aidan spoke the words gently.

“I went to her boardinghouse to see if I could find her there. The landlady remembered me. Lucy's rent is paid through the end of the month, but she hasn't been to her rooms for several days. The landlady let me into her room, and everything was there. Her dresses, her valise, everything.” Colin paced to the other side of the room. “Something's wrong. I know it.”

“How do you know it? Has she not merely done what she said she would do?” Aidan insisted. “When I spoke with her at the inn, she suggested that she intended only to have an affair.”

“That was at the inn.” Colin remembered the unspoken promise in her eyes, the touch of her hand on his cheek. But she hadn't said anything. Aidan would say her gestures only signaled goodbye. He rubbed behind his ear, trying to come up with an argument Aidan would entertain. “The puppy. She might have decided she didn't want me, but she wouldn't abandon Boatswain.”

“Well, that's an unexpected argument.” Aidan shook his head in disbelief. “Are you certain?”

“I'm certain.”

“Colin, you are my brother.” Aidan placed his hand on Colin's shoulder. “I would move heaven and earth to find Lucy, if doing so would make you happy. But we have nowhere to start. Not even her real name. Do you know anything that would help us?”

Colin shook his head ruefully.

Fletcher coughed for attention. “If I may offer, Your Grace. We do know something.”

“What?” both brothers asked in unison.

“I've never known a woman who could shoot as she did,” the old sergeant said firmly.

“Yes, Aidan!” Colin grasped the detail like a drowning man would a piece of driftwood. “You were at Badajoz. Did you ever hear of an officer's daughter who served in the hospitals and was a sharpshooter? She would have been seventeen or eighteen.”

Aidan scratched his forehead. “The hospitals were at Llerena, about forty-five miles away, but there was constant movement between the two. She could well have been at Badajoz for some of the siege. But the Allies were twenty-seven thousand strong there. Was her father with the Ninety-fifth?”

“No, her fiancé was. Her father was in the light cavalry.” Colin rubbed the inside of one hand with his opposite thumb. “See, we aren't completely without information.”

“Badajoz.” Aidan shook his head. “I still have nightmares about it sometimes. So many lives were lost, and then the Allied troops pillaged the city. For three days, it was a rout, shameful, inhumane. No one could control the men. A seventeen-year-old English girl at Badajoz. Her father must have been mad.”

“She dressed as a boy,” Colin added helpfully.

“So, we could be looking for a boy or a girl.” Aidan brushed his hair back in frustration. “Do you at least know where her father died?”

“Waterloo, as did her fiancée.”

“Over fifty thousand men were killed, wounded or lost in action at Waterloo.” Aidan walked to the window and looked into the garden, where Sophia and her children were playing croquet. “You do realize that none of this is terribly helpful.”

“I know. But she didn't leave me. I know it was her plan. I know it looks like she changed her mind, but I can't believe she left me, at least not of her own free will.” Colin threw himself into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

Seth and Aidan watched him silently, then, meeting each other's eyes, raised their hands in helplessness.

Seth said quietly, “When I was first trying to discover who our mystery nurse might be, I heard about a missing heiress in the next county over. She'd been missing for several weeks—from the description, it sounded like our scullery maid. Apparently the heiress was found wandering the countryside out of her wits. The family was reportedly grief-stricken and put her into an asylum, hoping she'd recover.”

“So it could be Lucy?” Colin raised his head from his hands.

“Probably not,” Seth replied.

“Why not?”

“Because Lucy was with you at Em's when I heard the reports that the heiress had been found,” Seth countered gently.

“But something about it felt right?” Aidan interpreted.

“Yes,” Seth pushed his thumbs into his waistband. “Your run-of-the-mill heiress wouldn't hide in the kitchen of an inn, but one who grew up in the camps wouldn't have been afraid of work or dishes.”

“And you can't shake the feeling that the heiress might have been Lucy.” Colin leaned forward, hopefully.

“I couldn't at the time—and I still can't.”

“Then perhaps you should investigate,” Aidan directed. “Ride back to the Newfords'. Find out who the heiress's family was. Then track down anything you can about their mad relative. And see if Nell will give you any more information now that Lucy has disappeared. As for me, I think I know whom I might ask about the sharpshooting.”

* * *

The banquet hall was full, a dinner for Prinny about to commence. Colin and Aidan found General Hampton in the corner regaling a group of MPs with stories of his latest fox hunt. The general had enjoyed his years since Waterloo, growing happy and fat.

“My boy, glad to see you!” He slapped Aidan's back firmly. “I haven't seen you since that night when . . .” His voice trailed off as he saw Lady Wilmot.

“My brother Colin Somerville; and my fiancée, Sophia, Lady Wilmot.”

“Welcome, welcome! I'm happy you could accept the invitation.”

“We have a question about one of the officers under your command, or who we believe might have been under your command.”

“Give me the name, and I'll tell you what I can. But I have only a few moments. I'm to offer some good words about Prinny once he arrives.”

“We haven't the name. That's the problem. We are looking for an officer who reared his daughter in the camps and taught her to shoot and fence. She was at Badajoz, and we believe her fiancé was in the Ninety-fifth.”

Hampton grew solemn, distant. “I'm afraid I can't help you after all, my boy.”

Colin pushed forward. “She disappeared last week, and we fear she might be in danger.”

“But you don't know her name.”

“I knew her as Lucy.”

Hampton picked up his pocket watch and checked the time. “I cannot help you. A girl who could shoot at Badajoz? That would have been dreadful for morale.”

Colin started to object, but Aidan held out his hand for him to be quiet.

“Are you saying that there was no girl, or that she would have been kept a secret? Even now, a secret?”

“If there had been such a girl, then Wellington would have wanted to make sure that no one knew.”

Chapter Thirty

She wasn't sure where she was. She couldn't open her eyes. She could move her fingers. She pressed the tip of her thumb to her forefinger and felt only numbness. Drugged. She fought to remember.

She groaned. A rough hand touched her face.

“She's waking up.”

She heard indistinct voices. A calloused hand forced open her mouth. Bitter liquid dripped on her tongue. She knew the taste. More laudanum. She tried to spit it out, but the hand shut her mouth and held it closed.

Her limbs began to float, as the darkness enveloped her.

* * *

She was cold. The wall against her back was uneven stone, dank with mold. She'd been set in a corner, her neck crooked painfully against the side wall.

Her arms felt heavy; they hung at her sides, hands against her thighs. Under her fingers, she felt a coarse woven fabric. She moved her fingers, feeling for the edges. A thin pallet.

She tried to turn her head to the room, but bile rose in her throat. Nausea. Too much laudanum.

Slowly. She could turn her head if she moved it slowly.

The room was dark, but the air smelled of unwashed bodies. She could make out the sounds of two, or more, people sleeping. She held her own breath and tried to count the noises made by the other sleepers. At least two.

With effort, she could move her left hand. Beside the pallet was a thin folded blanket. She had enough strength in her hand to pull it into her lap, then with concentration, she lifted her right hand to help her left hand stretch it across her lap. Exhausted, she let her hand fall back to her side.

Her fingers felt the floor. Wood, old and much marred. Her fingers could trace its deep groves. Her left hand found a lidded chamber pot to her right. With the laudanum she had been given, she had little need of it.

One of the sleepers grunted and rolled over in the dark. Were they also captives or her captors?

She waited, listening.

She slept again.

She awoke sometime later. The transit of the moon now offered a weak half-light. The sleepers still slept. How much could she move without waking them?

She tried to move her legs. One of her legs was tied. She leaned forward and felt a shackle on her ankle. The thick fetters were bolted to the wall inches below her feet. The chain measured no more than three spans of her hand. Enough to stand and no more. No hope of escape.

Colin. She thought of the last time she'd seen him. She'd touched his face and looked into his eyes. He'd clasped her hand in his, kissed the inside of her palm. She'd intended the moment to signal her commitment to him. But, with her gone, he would think she had meant goodbye. He wouldn't look for her.

She was alone. She would have cried, but she couldn't.

She hunched down onto the floor, facing the wall. She pulled the blanket up from her lap over her shoulder. She curled her knees into her belly as protection, against her invisible foes. She struggled against sleep, but it came against her will.

* * *

She woke again. It was morning, but what morning she did not know. Her right forearm throbbed with pain. It was bandaged. She didn't remember hurting herself. She was afraid to take off the bandage. That was at least clean, and she didn't wish to see what they might replace it with.

She pushed herself partway up and examined her cell. A long, thin room in the upper level of the building. Tree limbs moved with the breeze outside the window.

The window had no glass, just an opening to the outdoors. The cold would be unbearable in another week or two when fall finally set in. The fireplace looked long unused, no cinders or ashes on the stone hearth. The other occupants were gone. Three other pallets stuffed with straw lay on the floor, each one near a shackle bolted to the wall near the floor. Dirty linens and blankets were piled high in the corner to her right. A prison or an asylum. She blinked away tears.

Footsteps, heavy, approached her cell. A key scraped in the lock. She lay down as quickly as she could. She forced her eyes closed, wanting to watch, to see who her captors were.

Footsteps approached and stopped near her. She made her breath shallow and even. A thin hand grasped her shoulder and shook.

“Wake up. Time to eat.”

She pretended to be just awakening, her movements slow and languid. It was easy to do. There was still so much drug in her body.

“Open yer eyes.”

She complied but kept them deliberately unfocused.

“Ah, too drugged still. Lucky they didn't kill yer with it. But yer's safe now. As long as ye abide by the rules, yer'll be treated fairly. They says yer a wild one. Need to keep ye close so ye don't harm yerself agin. Do as I says, and yer'll do fine. We keep an orderly house here. Understand?”

Lucy nodded. A linen-covered tray sat on the floor behind the woman. She leaned down and helped Lucy sit up.

“I'm Smith. I watch the lodgers. Yer name is Sally. Doesn't matter what yer name was afore. It's Sally now. Matron likes her lodgers all meek and easy. She won't ken well to arguing about why yer here. Your relatives pay her well to keep ya, and she won't like to find yer isn't crazy. Best be a bit melancholy and grateful.”

Lucy nodded again.

Suddenly, from her right, the pile of blankets moved, and thin arms grabbed at the tray. Lucy recoiled instinctively.

“No, Moll. That's Sally's.” Smith pushed the tray toward Lucy. Then she took a piece of dried bread from her apron pocket. “Here's a treat.”

The pile transformed to an emaciated woman with large eyes and a dirty face. So tiny one could think her a child except for her hair, almost completely grey, and the lines on her face. Smith tossed the bread, and Moll with surprising speed, caught it, and retreated to her corner. Her back to the walls, she squatted, gnawing the bread with suspicious eyes.

Lucy looked at her with dread. Was this what she was to become? Old, mad, and alone?

“Ah, don't fear her, luv. Just keep yer distance,” Smith said plainly. “Moll's long past human. Acts like one of those African monkeys in the Royal Menagerie. If we let her into the garden, she climbs whatever is nearby. Last time, she took to the matron's rose trellis. Thorns in her hands and feet, and never noticed. Cold don't faze her. She breaks the window fast as we replace it.”

Smith uncovered the tray, revealing a bowl of oats and some cheese. “Yer family is paying dear for yer meals. Few gets this much.”

She needed to learn the rules of the place, to appear compliant. It was her only hope of escape. If she tried to escape and failed, there would be no second chance.

“This is yer room. You share it with Moll, Dinah, and sometimes with Rebecca when she's offended the matron. Dinah works in the yard, Rebecca in the kitchen. Moll, well, she keeps here most days.”

The nurse held out a spoonful of oats. The smell reminded her of mornings in the camp, the sunlight on the walls of Lisbon. James and her father welcoming her to the fire, smiling. She drifted.

“No, gel. You must eat. It'll help with whatever they gave you.”

She opened her mouth, and Smith fed her like an infant.

She slept again.

* * *

She woke in the night. Moll stood in front of the window, swaying. The moon was almost full. Moll held one arm outstretched through the window, reaching for something. She moaned and hummed. The tune hung at the edges of Lucy's memory.

She slept. Moll's moans became the moans of the wounded. Blood and fire powder. Limbs without bodies. The noise of the cannon. Her own cries rang in her ears.

“Wake up. Wake up, gel. Yer dreamin. Wake up.”

Smith shook her awake, then bathed her face with cold water. “There, there. Just a dream. Nothing to be a-feared of. Smith is here.” Her tones were even and soothing, like the voice of a mother with a frightened child.

* * *

Sometime later, she awoke to screaming—this time not her own. The woman called Rebecca was struggling against two large men who dragged her into the room from the hall.

“You should know better than to offend the matron.”

The woman was wailing, weeping, screaming, fighting them with all her might.

The men who smelled of the stables threw Rebecca to the floor, pressing her face into the pallet, one man's knee in her back. “She'll need air soon. But at least she's quiet now.” The second man laughed as he locked the shackles on her legs; then they dragged her to her feet and shackled her arms high above her head. The man cursed as she bit his arm, and he slapped her hard, then crushed her face into the corner.

The first man groped her breasts from behind. “Want a little of this?” he proposed and lifted Rebecca's skirts, revealing bare legs. He kicked her feet farther apart, and Rebecca struggled against the shackles to close her legs. “Or do you prefer taking your pleasure in the basement?”

“That one has family.” The second man walked to the still open door. “And they all end up in the basement eventually, and by the third night, they welcome a bit of company.”

“Looks like you have only me for comfort, lass.”

Lucy closed her eyes, not wanting to see what would happen next. But Rebecca, rallying, screamed for Smith. And Smith—miraculously—came.

* * *

Smith came to rouse her. “Time to see the doctor and meet the matron.”

Lucy needed to know what line Rebecca had crossed that had led to her being chained against the wall for two days. When they had finally released her arms, Rebecca had crumpled to the floor, and they had left her, curled up there, still shackled at her feet and smelling of her own urine.

Smith had told her to be meek.

The matron was a well-dressed woman, with a cross at her neck and a Bible in her hands. A member of one of the reforming societies. Lucy's heart sank.

An older man, hunched and wizened, removed the bandage from her arm. He pressed on the wound to see if it would weep. “Ah, nicely mending. No weeping of the wound. You are lucky, girl. A wound like this could putrefy easily.” He watched her eyes for a reaction, and Lucy was careful not to give one. Shaking his head slowly, he latched his medical bag, then spoke to the matron. “If the weather suits, she may walk in the garden three times a day.”

“No, she is able in body, if not in mind. She will walk in the garden only if she has completed her chores.”

The doctor picked up his bag and left, leaving Lucy standing quietly.

“Your family tells me that you suffer from fits of melancholy and in one of those fits you harmed yourself.” The matron's voice was hard and stern.

Lucy kept her gaze at a spot on the floor six inches before her toes.

“While you have been healing, you have been allowed to remain in your room, but now you will go about with the other patients. If you comport yourself well and do your work cheerfully, you may remain with the others. If you do not, you will be confined in your room until your demeanor improves. If your manner is not improved by that correction, then you will be moved to the cellar, where the dark can calm your nerves and promote useful reflection. Do you understand me, Sally?”

Lucy nodded her head, keeping the movement slow and her eyes fixed on the rather elegant carpet.

“If you work cheerfully and well, you will find that we do everything to make our guests comfortable. You will be allowed to wash your face and hands three mornings a week and bathe every two weeks in the warm months, every month in the cold. We will give you flannel to wrap your feet when the days grow colder, and we will change your straw whenever it is wet or dirty. Until we can be sure you will do yourself no more harm, you will be confined to a strait waistcoat after you complete your work. Do you understand me?

Lucy nodded.

“Then you may go. Smith, escort Sally to the kitchen, where she may begin her chores.”

* * *

She no longer knew what day it was. She had begun to make scratches in the floor next to her pallet to keep track of time, but she hadn't begun her calendar immediately. And any time the matron entertained the local magistrate or her friends, the patients were given laudanum to make them appear placid and content. She never knew how many days she lost. But her scratches numbered twenty-one.

Her routine was unvarying.

She would awaken in the morning. Three times a week, Smith would bring a bowl to her room and let her wash her face and hands. Then Smith would unlock the chain that connected to the metal ring bolted on her ankle. She would go down the stairs with the other women, sit in rows at the tables, and eat a bowl of porridge. Most days, she and the other women were served from a common bowl, but on other days her porridge came to the table already in a bowl. On those days, she ate as little as possible. Sometimes she had to avoid eating on regular days, so that they would not figure out that she knew the pattern. She grew thin.

After breakfast, whether she ate the porridge or not, she would work first in the kitchen, once more a scullery maid. If she were too good at washing, she would never be allowed to do anything else, so she had to work to splash the water on the floor or to bang the pots together loudly enough that the Cook cursed at her clumsiness. Tea was always safe because she ate it in the kitchen, but it was rarely more than a biscuit and cup of tea.

Every other afternoon, she would scrub the floors alone, working her way through the whole house once a week. On the other afternoons she would work in the kitchen garden. Though the days were growing cold, there were late plants to harvest and beds to prepare for spring.

Each day before it grew dark, she would walk in the garden with the other patients, making slow circles around its edges under the watchful gaze of Smith or one of the other nurses. She knew each crack in the garden wall, each place where she might find a handhold. She had looked out each window in the house as she mopped the floors, trying to learn the lay of the land beyond the asylum, trying to find a way out. She hadn't been able yet to find one.