The Gray Chamber Page 10

  “My cousin? What are you on about?” She pressed her hand to her chest and spoke slowly so they would understand her. “I am Edyth Foster.”

  The matron stepped forward, narrowing her eyes. “This is your first and only warning. Do not interrupt me. You are to obey me and the rules, or you will be returned to solitary where you can spend your days staring at the wall, contemplating your choices. If you strike one of the nurses or one of your fellow inmates, you will be sent to the violent ward in the Lodge, which will not be pleasant. Repeat the offense of striking or continually speaking out of turn, and you will be recommended for undergoing a treatment. Obey and live in peace. Disobey and, well, we have ways of making you comply. Is that clear?”

  A dozen questions sprang to mind, but she was unsure of this woman, and remembering her conversation with Doctor Wentworth, she knew to be afraid. Her body ached for food, so Edyth swallowed her queries, eager to hopefully finish here so she could break her fast.

  “Good. Now, I have others to see to this morning. Nurse Madison, please continue.”

  The nurse clicked her tongue to Edyth as the matron stepped from the room. “You will soon find that if one inmate claims to be the queen of England, ten more will declare themselves an heiress.”

  “But you see, I actually am an heiress.” She seized the woman’s arm. “If you will only send a message to Raoul Banebridge of the Banebridge Fencing Club, he will reward you handsomely.”

  The nurse paused in her mocking, tilting her head. “He will reward me?”

  “Yes.” Her parched throat nearly cracked with hope, barely keeping herself from stepping forward. “Yes, if you tell Mr. Banebridge where I am, he will pay you.”

  Nurse Madison thrust the gown into Edyth’s arms. “I’ll be sure to do that, duchess.”

  Edyth’s spirit collapsed. “You aren’t going to send the message, are you?”

  The nurse gave a cackling laugh and slapped her thigh. “You think? This is too easy. Nurse Sweeney and I have a long memory and plenty of time to make your life a living hell after your little show of rebellion on the ferry, lovey. Now, get dressed before I strip you to your chemise myself.”

  Edyth’s skin burned at the open door and the nurse standing over her, eyeing her as she peeled off her soiled gown. Laying it atop her cot, she stroked the bodice, somehow sensing it would be the last she would see of something beautiful, soiled as it was. She loosed her corset and tossed it on top of the gown, drawing a full, ragged breath for the first time since before the ball. She tugged on the thin dress, the fabric scratching her skin, grimacing at the tight fit about the sleeves and waist. She looked down and found that the skirt didn’t even reach the top of her ankles. “Do you have anything a few inches longer? This dress appears to have been made for a girl, not a woman. You cannot expect me to wear something so immodest.”

  “Aw, does the poor duchess want something a little more to her liking?” Nurse Madison thrust her bottom lip out in a mock pout. “Well, you’ll lose whatever little padding you do possess soon enough.” She nodded pointedly to Edyth’s bodice. “No one here keeps much weight on them after a few weeks.”

  Ignoring her, Edyth wriggled a scarlet-clad foot. “Do you have any shoes for me? These were not made to last for more than one party.”

  The nurse sniffed. “Our shipment from the charity has been delayed until next week. You’ll have to make do with your royal shoes until then, but you’d better watch your back.” She motioned Edyth out of the cell before she could inquire why she needed to watch her back over a pair of dancing slippers. “Come on. Breakfast won’t be kept warm for anyone.”

  “But I need to dress my hair,” Edyth said before catching herself.

  “Your hair will be brushed after breakfast, my lady.” The nurse spat the title, her fingers clawing the air, motioning Edyth through the door. “Hurry it up. I have much to do this morning.”

  Moving down the hall, Edyth held her head high despite the grime covering her face, her broken nails, and hair all askew. She paused on the threshold of the dining hall that was a bit smaller than her elegant dining room at home and stared at the row upon row of crude, narrow wood tables and long benches, each setting boasting of two small bowls with a slice of bread tossed on the table beside them, but no flatware in sight.

  The patients were already crowding into their seats, a few speaking inanely while rocking back and forth. A woman seated on the far end was fixated on pulling out each eyelash, but from the looks of it, the poor dear didn’t have any left to pluck. Her companion continuously rubbed her face with the back of her wrists and hands, her mouth agape and her focus fixed on the ceiling. Edyth looked up and saw naught but a metal pipe.

  The nurse pushed her inside, causing her to trip over her feet. The other patients turned as one, their long hair hanging in wild tangles, staring at her as if she were an exhibit, many pointing to her shoes with a look of interest that alarmed her. Edyth regarded the room and paused at the sight of a petite young woman with pretty brown hair and striking, wide staring eyes who was keeping a vacant seat between her and a waifish girl. Judging from the petite woman’s cleanliness and the rosy hue in her cheeks, Edyth thought she must be a new arrival to the asylum. Insane or not, this girl would be her best chance of finding out what was going on outside the island. Maybe she read the papers before she was taken … maybe an American heiress was mentioned leaving the city for parts unknown.

  It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for the society column to comment on her. After her disastrous debut season, she had decided to step out of the light of the papers by swearing off attending further parties put on by society matrons, but being one of the wealthiest women in the States, she was still followed by the press. And she was fairly certain her little bout with Jasper Wentworth had made quite the stir among the ladies in attendance at the fencing club’s celebration, a few of which were part of the coveted Four Hundred set, a title she had spurned after her humiliation at the hands of Miss Finley and her mother. For once in her life, she hoped the papers had been following her again and at least noted her abrupt absence. But is two days of not stepping outside enough to garner their interest? She grunted, for once annoyed at her tendency to stay holed up painting for days on end. I doubt even the servants are aware of what happened … Uncle probably lied to them as well and paid Katie a ridiculous sum to keep silent.

  Edyth slipped into the available seat and peered into the bowls to find one contained tea and the other some sludge that appeared to be oatmeal. She looked about to see where she might find utensils, but as everyone around her was using their fingers, she sucked in her breath and dipped her fingers into the stone-cold concoction. The slimy oats slid from her grasp and returned to the bowl with a plop. Mm, delicious.

  Her stomach protested, but since she hadn’t eaten since the party, she drew in a deep breath and scooped up the fare with her middle three fingers and shoved the oats into her mouth, fairly gagging from the lack of flavor and the texture. She lifted her bowl of tea to wash it down. While it was weak and bore little flavor, at least it was warm and helped abate the taste and wet her parched throat. The liquid stung at the back of her throat and she took a second draft, the tense, inflamed muscles of her throat relaxing a tad. Her body awakened with the food, and she reached for her bread, the blackened crusts proving to be more like a biscotti in consistency but not nearly as enticing, with its hardened dough in the middle that rendered that portion inedible. She bit down on a corner of the bread, wincing as it scratched her gums. She held a finger to her top gum and moaned.

  “You have to dip it into your tea,” came a birdlike voice beside her.

  “Oh?”

  The girl nodded, rested a Bible on the table, and opened it to a passage. “You best eat, or you’ll get sick. But if you don’t want it …” Her words and stare lingered on Edyth’s portion.

  Edyth took one soaked bite and nearly tossed the contents of her stomach. Shuddering, she slid the bread to the
girl and watched it vanish in four tea-soaked bites.

  “Thank you, Miss—?”

  “Please call me Edyth.” Any formality under the circumstances seemed preposterous. “They let you read here?”

  She dipped her head and smiled. “Poppy Reed. It is a pleasure to meet you. And no. It’s against the rules, but they let me because of my parents.”

  So, parentage can protect you here after all. Good. Maybe she could find a way out of here. “Tell me, Poppy, why are you here?” You seem as sane as I.

  The girl looked up at her and blinked her long brown lashes. “People say I’m addled.”

  “Are you?” She rubbed her thumb into her palm against the hunger pains. Bracing herself, she dipped her fingers into the mush and shoved another bite into her mouth, managing to swallow even as her stomach turned against the vile fare.

  Poppy shrugged, wrapping both hands around her bowl of tea. “The doctors say I am, so who am I to argue?”

  Her nerves bristled. How many poor girls have they falsely imprisoned? At the stirring of a nurse doing an inspection as she walked down each long table, Edyth leaned back and watched as the woman jerked an old, battered comb through an elderly inmate’s matted white locks, pulling out a chunk of hair and setting the woman to whimpering at what would have made Edyth use a few choice words she had picked up from her years at the fencing club.

  She shivered and asked, “Do they do this every morning?”

  “They comb our hair the morning after bath night,” Poppy replied, and stared at Edyth’s oatmeal.

  Bath night. She swallowed, thankful that she had at least been spared that humiliation last night. But she couldn’t avoid it forever. Edyth forced herself to take one more bite before sliding the oatmeal over to Poppy as well.

  The girl finished the contents of the bowl, returned it to Edyth, and looked over her shoulder. “What’s that, Papa? Oh yes, I agree.”

  The hair at the nape of her neck rose. Edyth looked sideways at Poppy and asked slowly, “You see your father?”

  “Don’t you?” Her eyes grew wide. “He is wearing his best suit today and is looking ever so dapper for Grandmother’s birthday. I wanted to go shopping for her gift, but the nurses wouldn’t allow me to speak with the matron to even ask for permission.”

  “Uh …” She searched for anything to say that would not vex the girl, but as Poppy became distracted in an animated conversation with her father, Edyth mercifully returned to finishing her weak tea, gathering her courage to speak with the new inmate on the other side of her. Part of her feared that if she found the new girl to be mad as well, she would begin to question the validity of her own claim to sanity.

  “She had a fever and lost her parents to it. You best say you see them, else she will grow hysterical.” The whisper came from the petite woman at Edyth’s other side. “That’s what I heard from the lady beside me.”

  “Y–yes, hello to you, Mr. Reed.” She nodded to the air behind Poppy, who went back to munching on her crusts left over from her own bread while the nurse finished another poor soul’s combing.

  Edyth waited for the nurse to grow distracted with another patient’s hair before whispering, “So, why did they send you here? Have you been here long?”

  The woman turned her wide eyes to Edyth and answered, “They think I’m mad. But no one will believe me that I just can’t remember where I am from. My name is Nellie. Nellie Brown,” she said with a faint accent that Edyth could not place. “I only arrived last night.”

  “Nice to meet you, Nellie.” She cracked a smile, finally realizing how many times the inmates must proclaim themselves sane. But Edyth decided to give Nellie the benefit of the doubt nonetheless. After all, wasn’t that what she longed for herself?

  “Are you mad, Miss …?” Nellie asked.

  “My apologies. I’m Edyth Foster.” Edyth finished off her now cold tea to keep from bursting into tears at the question. A day and a night alone in the freezing cell had pushed her to the brink of hysterics. She could not afford to give in to her tears here where the staff would respond with anything but kindness. She shook her head. “No. I am not mad. My uncle wanted my fortune and this is the only way he could get it … by locking me away from my future.” And along with it, any love I could have with Bane. “Perhaps you’ve read something about my being committed in the papers?” She knew it was foolhardy to think that the papers would have printed any news of her absence so soon, but she was desperate to latch on to any bit of hope that perhaps someone had spotted her being taken or that Bane had alerted the newspapers. Once again, she could kick herself for being such a recluse from parties in recent years. No one would miss her, except Bane.

  Nellie’s eyes widened even more. “Papers? No, I’m sorry I haven’t. Why?”

  Edyth dropped her gaze to her lap and drew in a breath, steadying herself. “I used to be someone of standing.” Used to be.

  “But didn’t you see any doctors? Didn’t you tell them what was happening? No one on the different stops here believed that you were being falsely committed?”

  Edyth rubbed a finger over a stain on her skirt left from the previous owner. She wondered where the girl was now, but she stopped herself from finishing that thought as the logical answer would not be the desired one. “The only doctors I saw were the biased ones who came to my house, whom I’m certain were paid generously by my uncle, using my own funds, for their diagnosis of insanity.”

  Nellie twisted her hands on her lap. “I saw many doctors and made many stops along the way here. But all said I was mad as the hatter from that Carroll novel.”

  Edyth scrunched her mouth, trying to remember the name of the odd novel she had heard about in passing. “Alice in Wonderland?”

  “Yes, that’s the one. I fear that this is a rabbit hole we shall never escape from, don’t you?” Nellie glanced over her shoulder, the nurse’s approach eminent.

  This woman sounds no more mad than I am. Edyth pressed her palm to her stomach to halt the violent churning of the contents. “Do you have any ideas for attempting an escape? I was taken at night, so I was quite disoriented when I arrived at first light, and then I was taken straightaway to a cell by myself for a day and a night.”

  “I’m sorry to find you in the same predicament as so many others here. It is a hard thing to be sane in this pit that seems to be designed to make us mad.” Nellie nodded toward the young Poppy laughing at something the ghost of her father said to her, before giving Edyth a slow shake of her head, sorrow lining her features. “I have no such ideas … I have only been here a morning, yet I can already tell that Blackwell’s Island is like a human rat trap.”

  The nurses worked on the patient next to Nellie, ripping the comb through her tangles, exposing inflamed, angry scabs on her scalp, and finished her hair with a long braid down her back. To Edyth’s horror, they moved on to Nellie without sanitizing the brush. She shivered. She had never paid much attention to her hair, but she knew Bane found it lovely. But after a week of living in the asylum, she was certain she would be missing whole chunks of her black locks. Lord, be swift.

  Bane executed a perfect circular parry with a riposte, ending with the tip of his foil at Jasper Wentworth’s shoulder, which sent his student into another long monologue. It didn’t take any effort for Bane to ignore Jasper and his incessant boasting as they began the second bout.

  The Fosters’ doctor had indeed come to see Bane yesterday afternoon, and at first he was going to dismiss the doctor without seeing him, but thinking the man might inadvertently help him figure out where Edyth had disappeared to after her claimed illness, he took the appointment. And as he suspected, the doctor’s lack of information on the supposed illness confirmed his suspicions that Mr. Foster had sent his niece somewhere, paid the doctor for a false diagnosis, and was using it to his advantage. But why was still the festering question.

  He twisted his blade upward, disarming Jasper, who laughed and accepted his weapon as they readied themselves fo
r their third bout. He began to drown out Jasper again, but when the Foster name came up, Bane dropped the tip of his foil to the ground, nearly sacrificing his stance. He recovered at the last moment, blocking Jasper’s strike, and asked, “What about the Foster family?” He shuffled his feet and thrust his blade in such a way that Jasper could easily evade its touch.

  A gleam sparked in Jasper’s eyes as if he knew he held Bane’s interest at last. “I probably shouldn’t mention any more because of client confidentiality, but I suppose this once it wouldn’t hurt … if you understand that this is a gentlemen’s agreement to keep silent? I would not wish to jeopardize my position as the Foster lawyer.”

  “Certainly.” He paused in their duel and motioned Jasper over to the water stand and out of earshot from any of the other men practicing with Bertram.

  Jasper poured a glass from the pitcher of water, and taking his fill, he released a long exhale, trying Bane’s patience. But Bane held his emotions intact and waited for the man to finish off his second cup. He focused on the sounds of steel against steel, calming his nerves as it always did.

  “Well, not too long ago, the new Mrs. Foster demanded to see the Foster family will. Mr. Foster has never really bothered to see it, or ask about it, so I never looked into it. But, apparently, the missus is the daughter of a lawyer and wanted to look for something.” He chuckled. “I, of course, complied by giving her a copy, but I didn’t think a woman could be astute enough to sort through the details on her own. However, I underestimated this one. She discovered a very small clause in a very large will, that should Miss Edyth Foster perish without a husband and heir, or should she be declared mad, the fortune would revert back to Boris Foster and his heirs.”

  Bane’s stomach flipped at the odd stipulation. They wouldn’t harm her, would they? He thought of the stream of dead rose petals in her room, the overturned objects, the broken vase, and her rapier on the floor, and his heart stuttered. The signs all pointed to a struggle, and he could not think of another thing that would explain away such destruction in her room. She had been taken.