Luck Be a Lady (24 page)

*    *   *

Catherine snorted as she glanced down the page. “ ‘Straw colored'? Why not call it hay colored? Indeed, why not praise the chest's alfalfa-like sheen?”

Silence from the group ranged before her. Catherine sighed. The sun had been pouring through the office windows when she had arrived to review the catalog for O'Shea's treasures. But the scarlet light of sunset now spilled through the long window that overlooked the street, and her copywriters—two of them so young as to barely sport whiskers—slumped in a variety of glum postures behind their desks, their pens abandoned, their ink-stained hands tucked sheepishly into their pockets.

“Gentlemen,” she said more gently as she laid the draft onto a nearby desk. “I don't require poetry. But if
you
were looking to acquire a chest of drawers, would these descriptions light a fire in your pockets? There is no need to abuse your thesauruses. ‘Golden' and ‘amber'
will serve nicely, even if they appear twice on the same page.”

A rustle of movement: the men's shoulders abruptly straightened; chins lifted and spines stiffened. For a moment, Catherine fancied that she had inspired them. Then the sound of a cleared throat drew her attention toward the door.

The redheaded hostess—Miss Ames—blushed prettily at finding herself the center of so much masculine attention. “Miss Everleigh,” she said in a soft, apologetic voice. “Your brother requires a word with you.”

Catherine took a careful breath. O'Shea had intended to interrupt the board meeting this afternoon. No doubt Peter had come straight from Berkeley House—fuming, she hoped, over the results. But he might as easily have come to gloat.

“Very well,” she said, and reached for her wrap. “Gentlemen, I will return tomorrow. I hope to see all
agricultural
similes stripped from this text.”

She stepped out into the hallway, but Miss Ames stopped her from walking onward.

“You should know,” the hostess said tentatively, before trailing off, her color deepening.

Nobody blushed as violently as a redhead. But Catherine had never seen Miss Ames lose her composure quite so vividly. She frowned. “What is it? Go on.”

Miss Ames ducked her head. “Miss, I know you don't appreciate us to speculate on what doesn't concern us. But . . .” She looked up, hooking a curl away from her elfin face. “Lilah, she asked me to watch after you while she was gone—”

“Did she?” Catherine's first instinct was to bridle. Before her promotion to assistant, Lilah had worked as a
hostess—a position that had left Catherine very skeptical, at first, of her capacity to make herself useful in any meaningful regard.

But Lilah had proved her wholly wrong. Mindful suddenly of the prejudice that had blinded her for so long, Catherine softened her tone.

“Speak frankly, Miss Ames. What troubles you?”

“Your brother isn't waiting in his office alone,” Miss Ames said in a low, rapid voice. “And the two men with him—they don't look like clients to me.”

Catherine studied her for a moment. Among the hostesses, Lavender Ames stood out for her elegant composure. Granted, she took every opportunity to accept money from advertisers; her face was plastered across any number of cheap advertisements for soap and whatnot. But in her demeanor with the clients, she displayed a tasteful reserve that quite contrasted with the other girls' silly flirtations and chatter. Catherine suspected she came from a different sort of background than the other girls; that her position here represented a fall, rather than a rise. Moreover, she was sharp, often making savvy suggestions about where a collector's interests might be steered—and whether or not a client's claims about provenance might be trusted.

“Miss Ames,” she said, “tell me plainly. What is your concern?”

“It . . . perhaps I should accompany you into the office, miss.”

Alarm goaded Catherine to a quick calculation. She walked to the broad window and glanced out at the street.

Several coaches loitered on the curb. One stood out: unmarked, peculiarly boxy. Windowless.

“That's the one they came in,” Miss Ames said, touching her finger to the glass to indicate the windowless vehicle.

Catherine took a deep breath. This panic was baseless, of course. But Miss Ames had never carried such concerns to her before. She frowned down at the coach. There were three exits from this building. It grated unbearably to slip away like a thief from her own building on some half-formulated suspicion, but perhaps . . .

Miss Ames caught her arm, gripping very tightly. “Don't turn around,” she whispered. “But they've just come into the hall. They're walking toward us.”

Catherine laid her hand over the woman's. “Listen,” she said very quietly. “If something seems odd to you—send word to Mr. O'Shea at the House of Diamonds in Whitechapel.”

Miss Ames knew the name. She gave Catherine a slack-jawed, marveling look. But she nodded once, to show she understood.

Catherine wheeled. Her brother was indeed coming down the hall, flanked by two men of such burly proportions that they made Peter appear a child.

She understood, in one glance, Miss Ames's concern. The men wore sober gray suits of identical cuts and fabric. They had bowler hats tucked beneath their arms.

They came to a stop. The stairwell, and her path to the exits, lay beyond them.

“Catherine,” her brother called. “There you are. Come, speak with me a moment. I have a most interesting proposition for you.”

Catherine squared her shoulders and walked forward. “I am busy,” she said, acutely aware of Miss Ames behind her, stepping into the office to remove herself
from the men's notice. “The catalog for the December auction—”

“It's urgent,” Peter said. He came forward, smiling blandly, but the grip he took on her arm was firm enough to give her cause to pull away.

He did not let her. His grip tightened. “Come to my office,” he said. “We'll walk together.”

She gave a sharp yank. “Let go of me.”

“It's urgent,” he said mildly. “These gentlemen, you see—”

She did see. She saw the impersonal way they compassed Peter's grip on her, and the lack of surprise, the absence of discomfort, which any client would surely evince, at the sight of the proprietors wrestling each other in the hall.

That was all she needed. She threw her weight into Peter, causing him to stumble and let go. She whirled for the copywriters' office, desperate to reach the safety of onlookers—

And a new grip caught her, a brutal arm around her waist, while a hand shoved a rag against her nose, a sickly sweet odor invading her nostrils.

She choked in a breath, and the world began to soften at the edges, dimming . . .

Her last glimpse was the wide eyes of Lavender Ames as the girl peered out in horror at her.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

H
er tongue felt like cotton. Parched. Swallowing hurt.

Dim sounds nattered at the edge of her awareness. She lay in darkness, spinning, odd visions flashing through her brain. The jolting noise of a carriage on unpaved road. Some liquid, sharp and noxious, forced down her throat, choking her.

Fear. Why had she been afraid? What had the dream concerned? She couldn't recall.

Gradually, the murmuring sounds clarified into voices. That was her brother, speaking: “The delusions worsened recently. She accused me of trying to break into her bedroom. I say
break
,
for she had three dead bolts installed, quite without my knowledge.”

“Paranoia,” a stranger said in concerned tones.

“I suppose so, yes. She claimed that I was conspiring with one of my business partners—I'm not sure what reason she invented for it. But she felt convinced that I would force her to marry him.”

It came to her that she should be alarmed. That this
was no dream; that she was lying, trapped in her body, unable to open her eyes. Her limbs did not respond. She could feel them like dead weights, pinning her down.

“A common brand of fantasy,” said the other voice. “Particularly in unmarried women of an advanced age.”

“Perhaps. But it makes no sense. Were I such a villain, I would never wish her to marry! She has no rights over the company, you see, as long as she remains a spinster.”

“Delusions of this kind rarely make sense. Hysteria has its own logics, which we can only begin to glimpse.”

Memory sharpened, slicing cleanly out of the murk of her brain: Peter striding down the hall. Ruffians flanking him. A cloth at her face, some drug . . .

Her heart began to hammer. She managed to open her eyes a crack—was blinded by light before they fell shut again.

“I did not want to write to you,” Peter said quietly. “I thought I could manage her on my own. But then she fled the house. I've no idea where she's living, now. She refuses to tell me. I'm concerned for her safety. She is a danger to herself.”

“Your concern does you justice, sir. Now, you mentioned in your letter that her health has been failing?”

“Yes, that was the most recent development. These fainting fits come on without warning. Why, she passed out in public, recently—at one of our auctions, no less. Quite a scene, as you can imagine.”

“I'm not surprised it should have happened in the workplace. The feminine temperament is not suited to such exertions.”

“So I told her. But it seemed a breaking point. She has gone beyond reason now. Imagine this: she has ­invented a husband for herself.”

“A husband? Not your business associate, I take it?”

She wrenched open her eyes. The ceiling above her was plastered smooth, painted a sunny yellow.

Oh, God.
This was not Everleigh's. This was not the house in Henton Court, either.

That carriage ride had been no dream. Where was she?

“No, no,” Peter was saying. “Far wilder than that. Some common criminal, whose name she glimpsed once in a newspaper, no doubt. Some East End thug. She swears she is married to him. Can you credit it?”

The other man chuckled. “Very inventive.”

“Of course, if I thought marriage would cure her, I would gladly try to arrange a suitable match, but in her current state . . .”

“Oh no, Mr. Everleigh. From everything you've told me, she has gone well beyond such simple cures. For that matter, I doubt any magistrate would recognize the legality of such a union. A woman must be of sound mind, you know, to properly consent to wed.”

Horror burned away the vestigial paralysis of the drug. She managed to bend her fingers. To turn her head.

She lay on a cot in a small, bare-walled room. A single stool. A sturdy writing desk. A window that showed a darkening sky, stars already emerging.

Those stars shone too clearly to overlook the bright city of London.

She tried to push to her feet. Fell back heavily, with a gasp she swallowed lest the men overhear. They must be standing just outside the door, which was ajar. “I had wondered as much,” Peter was saying. “So—if she were to be married, the union would not stand? Due to her . . . mental instability?”

Everything became clear to her in one single, ice-cold moment. He had brought her to an asylum. He had found a way, after all, to overturn her marriage.

“In her current state, certainly not.” That man must be a doctor. “Based on what you've told me, I can't imagine any officer of the court would judge her compos mentis
.
Any marriage contracted in such a state is deemed invalid, and rightly so.” He chuckled again. “Even an imaginary species of it.”

“Well, thank God for that,” Peter said with a great warmth that triggered a flood of hatred through her, hatred so black that it gave her the strength, at last, to push to her feet.

She lurched toward the door, catching her balance on the doorjamb. “He's lying,” she said hoarsely. The two men turned toward her, Peter with his hands hooked casually in his pockets, his smile sharpening as he caught sight of her. But it was the other man to whom she spoke, placing faith in his professional, kindly face, with its well-groomed mustache and wire-rimmed spectacles. “Don't believe him,” she said. “He has every cause to wish to invalidate my marriage. He is manipulating you. I am perfectly”—she paused for breath, clutched the doorframe against a wave of dizziness—“perfectly sane, and he—”

Tsking,
Peter stepped forward to brace her by the waist. “Again with that nonsense?” he said gently. She jerked her face away as he stroked her hair behind her ear; the violent movement unbalanced her, caused her stomach to lurch with nausea, and she sagged into Peter's arms.

“You see,” she heard him say over her head, “she is quite invested in this story.”

“I do see.” The doctor gazed at her sympathetically. “Would you like another rest, Miss Everleigh? A sound night of sleep, before your treatment begins tomorrow?”

She swallowed bile, clawing at Peter's loathsome grip. “He is
lying
to you! I don't require treatment! Send to my husband—he'll bring the register book to prove it! By law, my brother has no right—”

“Yes,” Peter cut in, his grip tightening around her rib cage, causing her to wheeze. “By all means, Mr. Denbury, send to the gambling palace where she imagines her husband to live.”

“A gambling palace!” Mr. Denbury stared at her now as though she had sprouted another head.

In that moment, she realized that nothing she said would persuade him. He did not see her as a reasoning person. He saw her as a woman—a feebleminded, wayward girl in the grip of feminine madness. Whatever she said now, it would only fortify that opinion.

Nevertheless, she had to try. “Please,” she gasped, “at least make sure of the facts! Sir, I beg you, as a man of science—”

Peter hauled her back inside the room. She shoved him away—but not hard enough to account for how he stumbled backward and crashed into the desk.

“She'll grow violent now,” he said urgently, edging away from her toward the door.

She lunged—too late. The door slammed and bolted. “Peter!” She would not beg. But her voice did break as she said, “For our father's sake, please—”

“Let us move away,” Peter said loudly. “It pains me to hear her in this sad state.”

“I'll see to it that she is calmed,” came Mr. Denbury's reply. “In the meantime, take heart: we've had excel
lent results with electrotherapy. Why, by this time next month, she might seem like a new woman to you.”

She trapped her sob with one hand, straining to hear Peter's fading voice:

“No need to rush through the treatment,” he told Denbury. “Money is no object. For my sister, I am willing to take all the time in the world.”

*    *   *

“Can you hear me?”

Catherine stirred, hastily wiping tears from her face. That was not the coarse slur of the male nurse who had assaulted her earlier, but the lilting, well-modulated voice of a lady, speaking through the bolted door. “Yes. Heavens, yes.” She clambered to her feet, battling with rash desperation, and lost. “Oh, please—can you help me?”

“It depends.”

The breath exploded from her. “On
what
?”

“One moment.” Something scratched across the door. The knob rattled. It came to Catherine, as she waited, that she had no idea who stood on the other side. This was a madhouse, after all.

She took a step backward as the door swung open. Her visitor was a blond woman swathed in a white lace wrapper that made her appear ghostly. She had deep, large, shadowed eyes of indeterminate color. She hesitated in the doorway, looking Catherine over as though she felt doubtful, too. “You mustn't try to get past me,” she said. “If I scream, they'll be on you in a moment.”

Catherine slowly nodded.

“I heard you crying out before,” the woman said.

In the sane, civilized world, Catherine would have
been mortified by this news. But tonight, she had been strapped to a bed and forced, by a giant brute with clumsy hands, to drink a poison that had paralyzed her body but not her brain.

She had feared she would suffocate. When she had finally regained the ability to twitch her fingers, it had not seemed so important to muffle her sobs.

The woman seemed to compass all of this in one sympathetic glance. “They gave you a treatment, did they?” When Catherine nodded, she sighed and stepped inside, softly shutting the door. “Ever since Denbury took over from Mr. Collins, he has grown more brutal than I would wish. He was a soldier, you know—not a medic. His notions of healing are . . . ­unpleasant.”

“Not for you, apparently.” For the woman carried with her the scents of orange water and roses, and an air, moreover, of perfect serenity. Her pale hair was neatly dressed, threaded through with white silk ribbons.

“He would never cross
me
,”
the woman said. “He knows better.”

In the opening silence, Catherine weighed her strategies. Was this woman allowed to wander freely, or did she have a way with locks, as Lilah did? Moreover, did she know how to slip out of this place?

As though sensing these thoughts, the woman shifted squarely in front of the door. “All the main doors are locked,” she said, not unkindly. “And I do not have the keys to those.”

Catherine swallowed and opened her mouth—but did not trust her voice. After a moment, she put a hand over her eyes.
Don't cry again. It won't help.

“My name is Stella,” the woman went on. “And yours
is Catherine, I believe? I heard the nurses speaking of you, earlier. May I sit, Catherine?”

On a deep breath, Catherine lowered her hand and nodded toward the stool. The woman eased onto it with the grace of a dancer, perching there with an impeccably straight posture. “The key,” she told Catherine, “is to remain calm. Resistance is seen as proof of illness. If you don't wish the treatment, you must give them no reason to use it.”

Easier said than done! “He intends to use an electroshock device on me,” Catherine burst out. “And I rather prefer my brain as it is!”

“Do you? How lovely for you.” The woman looked up at her. “Won't you sit, too?”

That was the last thing she wished to do. When Denbury or his nurses came through that door again, she wished to be ready to meet them. The room offered no weapons—the stool and even the chamber pot were locked in place by bolts in the floor. But she had her nails. And her teeth.

Just like a proper madwoman, in fact.

“None of the men will come back tonight,” Stella said. “They like their sleep too much. A nurse might come, but she won't abuse you. Simply drink the medicine, if she insists.”

That serene tone was beginning to grate on Catherine's nerves. She grudgingly sat on her cot. “Do you know where we are?”

“The hospital is called Kenhurst.”

“Hospital!” Catherine felt her mouth twist. “Prison, you mean.”

Stella sighed. “Well, once it was a hospital. But I agree with you; it has changed since Mr. Collins left.”

Catherine had no interest in the golden days of yore. “Where are we?” From the great silence outside, and the crystalline clarity of the stars, Catherine judged them to be in the countryside.

“Five miles from the railway station at Kedston.”

Five miles. She could get there by foot.

“Even if you made it into the entry hall, you would go no farther,” Stella said gently.

How resigned she seemed to the situation! “What brought
you
here? Let me guess: some man took a disliking to you, too?”

The woman smiled slightly. “Rather, I took a disliking to him. The courts sent me here for killing him.”

Horror snapped through Catherine's chest. A strong wind rattled the windows, and she found herself grabbing for the rough bedspread, drawing it over her lap as though it might serve as armor to protect her from a murderess.