‘Her stomach’s been awfully unsettled for a while now – poor Clara’s murder, and now this. Her hands have come out in hives and her mouth is too sore for her to eat properly.’
I thought of Aurora sitting for hours in her parlour reading, of how fragile she had felt as I embraced her. How gingerly she moved and how warm she was to the touch; the way she kept taking to her bed for days.
She was ill, of that I was sure. But it had nothing to do with arsenic poisoning.
Back in the empty lecture theatre, I told Elisabeth and Merchiston what I suspected.
‘Her hair is falling out, she’s barely eating and she’s feverish. Her maid says she has rashes on her hands – she thinks it’s because of the upheaval over the murders, but what if it’s something else?’
Merchiston raised his eyebrows.
I sighed. ‘I’m a fallen woman, Professor. I know the symptoms of syphilis when I see them.’
He choked.
‘My parents sent me away – for my health, they said. It was a hospital for girls from nice families who had transgressed in some way. Venereal disease wasn’t uncommon; we all learned the symptoms from the doctors.’ I had also learned that there were many ways a woman could transgress – so many that it was a wonder that the drawing rooms of Great Britain remained full of unblemished ladies.
Mrs Ashdown had been blemished in the most literal fashion. Her hands were pockmarked with coppery welts, her hair had fallen out so profusely that she was bald in patches. She had been wearing a wig before she came, until it had dislodged during a rubber of bridge and her deformity was revealed to her entire social circle. I was never sure if she was there because of the disease or because of her anger, at both her husband and the women she had called her friends until they had dropped her like a burning coal. But while her appearance was unsettling, her rages were terrifying. Her husband bore the brunt of it, in screaming harangues that lasted until the nurse could restrain her long enough to administer a sedative. She called him a whoremonger, a blackguard, a reprobate, ordered the porters to take him away, but he never once responded. From the moment she crossed the threshold until the moment I left, he never once visited her.
Aurora was distracted and irritable, but still composed – but what was she like behind closed doors?
‘I don’t suppose you kept the hair?’
I looked at him in disgust. ‘I’m not sure what you think of me, Professor, but I can assure you, I don’t leave clues or medical samples behind.’
He snorted as I passed him the clump of hair from my bag. ‘Miles Greene is a very lucky man.’
It didn’t sound as though he were joking.
‘That poor woman.’ Elisabeth’s eyes were wide. ‘To have one’s husband betray you and then ruin your health – it’s more than I could bear.’
‘Even if her condition has progressed, it’s unlikely that she has been infected for more than ten, maybe fifteen years. If it were longer, she wouldn’t be in control of her faculties. Whilst syphilis can harm an unborn child, even infect it, she would have contracted it long after . . .’
‘Long after Miles was conceived.’ So my husband-to-be didn’t have a virus lurking in his body, ready to pass on to his unsuspecting bride on our wedding night. That was something in his favour at least.
‘Did Colonel Greene show any symptoms? Any lesions, particularly around the . . .’ I trailed off, not sure if I was sparing Elisabeth’s blushes or my own.
‘None. Whoever infected Aurora, it wasn’t her husband.’
I had visited the Greenes expecting to find another potential murder victim. Instead, I had found material for blackmail that could ruin Aurora’s life.
Chapter 17
I was braiding my hair before bed, thinking about the handfuls of Aurora’s hair I had seen and what they meant, when the door creaked open and I felt rather than saw my mother’s presence. I paused, tensing out of habit. This had always been her favourite time to chastise me as a child, sitting on my bed and tugging a brush through my hair as she recited a litany of the ways I had disappointed her.
Talking back to my governess – never mind that I was right and she couldn’t conjugate Latin verbs if her life depended on it – hiding novels in my bible during church, being caught on the stairs listening in on the grown-ups’ conversations during dinner before I was permitted to join them, and slipping out to eavesdrop on the men after I was. There had been no end to the ways I had plagued her, and for a while her visits had been as much a staple of my night-time routine as my prayers, a complaint for every one of the hundred strokes of the brush.
At the sanatorium, some of the women had had their hair cut short or shaved. I never knew if it was part of their treatment or a punishment, but I had lived in fear of the same happening to me. That would, I think, have been the final straw, the one incontrovertible sign that my family had given up on me. Instead, I had emerged much as I went in – my hair thinner and brittle, but still there. Still long and golden like a fairy-tale princess, even if the resemblance stopped there.
She moved my hands and replaced them with her own, undoing my work and pulling the hair so tight it made my eyes water.
‘Such a pretty girl,’ she said softly. ‘I hate to think of you wearing spectacles or getting frown lines from poring over those books. And those chemicals they make you work with can’t possibly be good for your skin. You’ll waste what’s left of your youth in that ghastly building, and then where will you be?’
It wasn’t a question that required an answer, and I didn’t have one that would please her. I doubted my future patients would mind if I wore eyeglasses or had lines on my brow. But my husband would, and I knew that was what she really meant.
‘We need to take you to the dressmaker,’ she continued. ‘Emily has you in such drab colours! I swear my sister would have you looking like a plain spinster if she could, rather than a woman in the first flush of young love. Mint green, perhaps, or a soft peach. Something light and spring-like.’
I wondered if dressing as an infatuated future bride would make me feel more like one. I doubted it, although the prospect of a wardrobe not chosen on the basis of what colours best hid formaldehyde stains did appeal. And once upon a time I had worn those colours. I had scandalised gruff old gentlemen and prim ladies with my talk of education, of never marrying, of finding a profession – but I had done it dressed in the height of fashion, still young enough and untouched enough for it to be little more than a charming oddity, my independence an endearing quirk that wouldn’t last the trip down the church aisle. All the delicate pastel shades in the world couldn’t bring that innocence back, and my mother’s attempts just felt like papering over the cracks, her fuss and frippery designed to disguise who I was underneath like a society matron dressing like a debutante.
‘Aurora clearly sees you as a good choice,’ she said, and I felt a sharp stab of pleasure at her approval. ‘I think she likes that you’re more serious-minded. Some empty-headed young chit wouldn’t do for Miles at all – he’s the kind of man who needs someone to run his life for him and make sure he doesn’t spend all his money on parties. But you can afford to be a little more effervescent, my dear.’
‘They’re in mourning, Mother.’ I winced as she yanked on the braid a little too hard. ‘I think I can be excused some solemnity.’
‘And the last thing we need is for some gay young thing to catch his eye before they’re out of mourning and you can marry. Your behaviour until then will be paramount.’
That was the only upside to this whole ghastly scenario – Aurora would not appear in society for at least a year now, meaning that any matrimonial plans were firmly on hold.
She sighed. ‘Long engagements make me nervous. Your father and I had eight months, which was more than adequate for my liking.’
‘Did you love Father before you married him?’ I asked. I had never really considered my parents’ marriage before – in my mind they were a fixed constant of the universe.
‘One of us had to make a suitable match,’ she replied waspishly.
‘Uncle Hugh is Scottish, not illegitimate,’ I pointed out. ‘He has a perfectly good family name and Aunt Emily is well respected in society.’ How Mother had manoeuvred me into defending Uncle Hugh I didn’t know, and I found myself scowling.
She shook her head. ‘Your aunt was always the giddy one,’ she said. I couldn’t imagine an adjective further from Aunt Emily in all her staid propriety. ‘She believed in marrying for love. It was fortunate for her that your uncle has the right connections and family, or she would have faced a stark choice – unhappiness or penury. Out of the two, the former is more easily cured. Sarah, when it comes to your marriage, my sister and I differ in one respect and one respect alone. She believes you can grow to love Miles.’
‘And you don’t?’
‘I believe your feelings towards him are irrelevant. Acceptance, obedience and propriety are all I require from you – and believe me, my girl, it is a requirement. You are a disgraced bluestocking lacking in virginity as well as most of the social graces, and almost entirely devoid of any common sense. I’d have half a mind to disown you completely and let you take your chances on the streets if I thought you’d survive the week.’
She knew nothing about what I had survived. Not Paul, and not what came after him. She thought common sense meant marrying my attacker, not publicly accusing him. She had no idea of the world I had stumbled into, first with that horrible encounter and then when I moved to Edinburgh. The scales had fallen from my eyes, but she was still blinded by them. For all her condescension and advice, her view of the world was far more rose-tinted than mine ever would be again.
She tied the ribbon at the end of my plait and scooped up some night cream from the pot on my dressing table. It was cold to the touch and she massaged it firmly into my face, pulling at my skin.
‘Your father was everything I wanted in a husband,’ she said with a smile. ‘Our families were friends, he was young and handsome and rich. I knew he could offer me the life I wanted – and he has.’
‘But did you love him?’ I repeated. ‘Did he make you blush whenever he smiled at you; did you want to be in whatever room he was in? Did your heart beat faster when you imagined him kissing you?’
My mother’s face grew stony. ‘The only time I imagined him kissing me was on my wedding day,’ she said coldly. ‘Prior to that, he didn’t do more than take my arm as he accompanied me in to dinner. Your father is a gentleman. Had he attempted to do more, I would not have married him – and had I wanted him to, I would have been no fit bride for him.’
It was a grim view of romance. I wondered how much she really meant it, and how long it had taken to instil in her until she stopped questioning it.
‘There are other duties a wife has to perform,’ she conceded. ‘I don’t need to tell you what those are – nor,’ she said with a warning glare in her eyes, ‘do I need to remind you that they are only to take place after the wedding night. The Greenes are aware of your past history, and Emily has done an admirable job of convincing them that you are reformed. Do not make her efforts go to waste. Whatever Paul Beresford had you convinced of, such activities are for procreation and are entirely at the husband’s discretion. Once you have heirs, your job will be done, your efforts will no longer be needed and it will gradually cease.’
‘You must be disappointed then,’ I said tersely. ‘Your efforts would seem to have been rather wasted where producing me was concerned.’
She bit her lip, and I wondered if she regretted inflicting an unnecessary operation on her elder child or depriving herself of grandchildren and the status that came with them.
‘It seemed kinder at the time. If we had had any idea that your . . . rehabilitation in society was going to go so well, of course we would never have taken such drastic measures. But the doctors said that your hysteria would be ameliorated, that your behaviour would calm down and we’d have no more of this nonsense about Paul Beresford or medicine . . .’
‘My ambitions aren’t a symptom you can cure, Mother! And it would seem that his course of treatment was ineffective.’
She wrinkled her nose as though presented with a bad smell. ‘Don’t talk like that, Sarah. It isn’t ladylike. I just don’t understand you! Gertie is a perfectly sweet thing – tractable, excited about taking her place in the world. But you were never content. You were such a fractious child,’ she said softly. ‘Always crying, always hungry – we got through two wet nurses in the first four months alone. But you were a beautiful baby. And all that lovely golden hair, even when you were born. Everyone said it would darken as you got older, that your eyes wouldn’t stay that pretty sky blue. But look at you – you’ve grown into everything I had ever hoped you would be.’
My throat tightened and I swallowed thickly. She sighed.
‘On the outside, at least. You could have made such a good marriage, Sarah! Beresford would have had you if you hadn’t made such a spectacle of yourself. Yes, he was a cad, but he would have grown out of it. There were half a dozen men vying for your attention, but all you cared about was your ridiculous fixation on becoming a doctor. We should have forced your hand sooner, married you off before you grew too wilful, but your father was convinced it was just a fad. All you silly girls were talking about education and emancipation, and not one of them actually went through with it aside from you. And now you have a second chance! Don’t squander it, Sarah, for mark my words, there won’t be a third.’
There was a threat in her words that went beyond my diminishing marriageability.
She stood to leave, and looked down at me for a long moment, her expression unreadable. ‘Get some sleep. I don’t want you looking tired in the morning.’ She extinguished the light and disappeared into the night.
When the door closed, I suddenly felt exhausted and collapsed limply back onto the bed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Somehow I managed to clamber into bed, pulling the sheets tightly around me. My room was warm and cosy, a dying fire in the grate and a hot brick wrapped in blankets at my feet, and yet I shook violently.
I had felt imprisoned in the sanatorium, but it was nothing to how I felt here in the bosom of my family with a gaoler I loved despite myself. Part of me – the dutiful daughter I had thought long since buried – wanted to trust her. To believe that I could be happy in the life she had planned out for me in such meticulous detail. But the woman I had become rebelled against it. I would not suffocate, walled up in a marriage of convenience arranged purely to keep the gossips at bay. I would earn my freedom and raze the whole edifice to the ground if I had to. Not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon.
I lay coiled like a snake biding its time. One day I would strike, I was sure of that, and when I did, there would be nothing left of the tattered ambitions my family had for me.
Chapter 18
When I arrived at Warrender Park Crescent, I was shown not into the parlour like any other guest, but into the library, where Gregory Merchiston stood, sleeves rolled up and his knuckles taped.
He looked away as I removed my jacket, leaving me clad in a starched ivory blouse and thick serge tweed skirt. I felt my mouth go dry and my heart thump beneath my ribcage, so loud I was sure he must be able to hear it.
The door closed, leaving us alone. Merchiston handed me a roll of bandages. I opened my mouth to remonstrate, but he shook his head firmly. I wrapped the gauze around my knuckles tightly, flexing my fingers to see how much movement it allowed me. Satisfied that I was prepared, I took my place standing across from him. Next to us, the fire crackled and popped, providing an excuse for the flush that stained my cheeks. Even the normally sallow professor looked positively rosy.
‘Hit me,’ he said softly.
I swung.
Before my fist could even connect with his face, he had my wrist captured and my arm bent behind my back. His grip was loose, but it took me by surprise.
I did the only thing I could
think of, and brought my knee sharply up right below his belt.
He doubled over, swearing profusely.
The housemaid pushed open the door. She looked at me nervously. ‘Should I call Mrs Chalmers?’
Grateful for her concern, I shook my head. ‘No need, Flora. Professor Merchiston was simply teaching me how to fight.’
She grinned. ‘I think you’ve got the hang of it, Miss Sarah.’
‘Painful as that was,’ Merchiston winced, ‘it was hardly the most effective stratagem.’
‘Then why are you crying?’ I asked, unable to keep the smirk from my voice.
‘I am not crying,’ he muttered. ‘My eyes are merely watering from the soot. Next time, kick your assailant sharply in the shins. It will make it harder to grab you and still produces the desired effect. Particularly if your opponent is a woman.’
We were silent then, remembering my struggle against Fiona Leadbetter, my friend and mentor who had found herself so worn down and desperate in her attempts to help women in trouble that she had turned to murder. She had lured me into her trap by charm, not force, and I doubted that all the boxing lessons in the world would have saved me had it not been for Merchiston’s timely entrance. As it was, he insisted that I learn the rudiments of fighting, whether I returned to the slums or not. Knowing that violence could occur as easily in a town house as a tenement, I had accepted his offer, and so we found ourselves sparring in the privacy of Randall and Elisabeth Chalmers’ library.
‘Your stance is all wrong,’ he grumbled. ‘This is a fight, not a tea party.’
He grabbed me by my upper arms and shoved me backwards. I found myself pressed against the bookshelves, and suddenly my breath was gone. My chest tightened, and although my fists were clenched so hard my knuckles hurt, I could no more lash out than I could fly.
Sensing my distress, Merchiston let go and took a few steps back. I crumpled to the floor, not in a faint – I remained stubbornly conscious – but simply because my legs couldn’t hold me up any longer.
The Unquiet Heart Page 13