Mrs. Forbes merely snorted.
Hannah ignored her as she removed the blanket from my lap and helped me stand. My legs wobbled as the other women watched silently.
“Dinner in a half hour,” the nurse said to me. “Maggie is the chambermaid—though where she is at the moment, I couldn’t say. I will find her. She’s to help you dress, do your hair, and such. Which, if you’ll forgive me, miss, looks like a bird’s nest after the cat’s gotten to it.”
As I automatically lifted a hand to the back of my hair, a spike of fear jammed me between the ribs. Though I still wore the teal gown the seamstress had dressed me in only hours earlier, the neckline was loose. The tiny buttons on the back of the high collar gaped open.
When I patted the embroidered fabric over my chest, all I could feel was my heart hammering beneath.
My lodestone. Gone.
I wheeled on Hannah. The sudden movement, combined with the remnants of the drug, made me sway. I gritted my teeth, forcing my voice to sound calm and reasonable. “Nurse Hannah, where is my pendant?”
When she didn’t answer, I grabbed her. “The necklace I was wearing when I was brought in. Where is it?”
Hannah snatched her arm away. “You just calm yourself right down, Miss Randolph, or I will call the guard. Your necklace is safe. The doctor, he don’t let folks go to Ward B with nothing that can be used to harm others.”
“Harm . . .”
“She means,” Mrs. Forbes explained, “that it was removed, in case you become inclined to choke someone with the chain.”
As Hannah marched off, muttering under her breath about lazy maids, I tried to calm myself. This wasn’t like last time. Mac had two extra lodestones tucked away in his case. Still, the black opal pendant had been in the Carlyle family for generations, and I couldn’t help but feel even more violated.
“Don’t think to get the jewel back, either,” Mrs. Forbes murmured, sending a fish-eye glare after Hannah. “I think Carson sells them. I’ve been asking after my emerald hairpins for seven months now.”
As I stood beside the wheelchair, the other women—aside from Annabelle Allen—all stared at me. Even Bootsie seemed intrigued by my bedraggled hair and creased, rumpled gown.
After what felt like an eternity, Mrs. Forbes released a sigh that made her perfect posture slump. “You might as well come sit, child.” Taking my arm in her firm grip, she led me toward a divan upholstered in rich burgundy velvet. “That slattern Maggie isn’t worth two red cents. The nurse will probably find her taking a nap in one of our beds. Why,” Mrs. Forbes went on, “if the girl were in my employ, I’d—”
“But she isn’t in your employ, is she, Dorothy?” A curvaceous, striking woman in her thirties interrupted Mrs. Forbes.
With tawny skin and upswept hair the color of rose gold, the woman lounged against an arm of the opposing couch. “In fact, since your perfect son took over that moldy old mansion of yours, all the servants are his now, aren’t they?” She shook her head in mock sorrow. “I hear he and his cow of a wife are living it up, spending all your lovely money. While you rot here in the madhouse, just like the rest of us. You can pretend otherwise,” she added. “But you know it’s true.”
Dorothy Forbes’s upper lip quivered in outrage. “Don’t you dare speak of my son, Lila Jamesson. You know nothing. M-my Wilbur just wished me to recover my nerves, is all. Why, I can leave any time I want.” Dorothy was shaking, bits of spittle gathering in the corners of her mouth as she turned an alarming shade of fuchsia. “And as for you. We all know why you’re here.” She stomped off to plop down at the grand piano on the far side of the room. But not before we all heard the hissed word. “Unnatural.”
“Yes. Yes,” she called to the older woman. “We all know how little you approve of my tastes, Dorothy.” Green-gold eyes and lips that tilted up at the corners gave Lila Jamesson a feline appearance. With a boneless, slinky grace that matched her looks, Lila slid from the sofa’s arm and glided across the oriental carpet to settle herself at my side.
“Oh, I’ll admit, when my husband discovered—in a very compromising manner, I might add—that I enjoy the company of women, he was a bit . . . put out. Imprisoned me here so that the good doctor could rid me of my ‘aberrant inclination.’ But I won’t stay long. Not near as long as her, anyway.”
Hannah strode back into the room, followed by a maid and a young girl in a pearlescent evening gown. “Miss Rittenhouse,” she said, “this here’s Miss Randolph. Let’s make her welcome.” The nurse tilted her head toward the girl. “Miss Rittenhouse is eighteen, close to your own age, miss. I imagine you two will become fast friends, ain’t that right, Miss Rittenhouse?”
The girl didn’t answer. Only stared down at the carpet with her arms crossed, hands covering the exposed skin between her long white gloves and capped sleeves.
“Our Priscilla’s quite the sight, isn’t she?” Lila Jamesson leaned close, pressing a shoulder against mine as she whispered. “You know, I’ve often wondered why her mother bothers sending all those marvelous clothes, when they shall only become stained with blood.” Raising her voice, Lila called out, “Evening, Priscilla, lovely gown. New, is it?”
Priscilla didn’t speak and gave no indication that she’d heard Lila’s snide tone.
I felt my smile fading, but forced it back into place as the girl looked at me.
Priscilla Rittenhouse’s cheeks, forehead, even her exposed chest, were pitted with deep acne scars. One side of her mouth sneered up, tugged by a dreadful scar that zagged from her upper lip across her cheek and into her hairline. Another scar sliced down the opposite side from her temple to just below her cheekbone.
The girl’s hands dropped to her sides as she fidgeted with her gown, and I bit back a moan.
In the few inches of visible skin, dozens of sets of parallel scars ranged up both arms. I tried to count, but there were so many. Priscilla noticed my regard and her close-set eyes narrowed. Whipping about, she snatched a matching wrap from the maid’s arm and stomped past to the dining room.
“Did that to her face when she was fourteen.” Lila didn’t bother to whisper this time. “You see, her parents come from two of the great Philadelphia families. Her mother was—and still is, actually—a celebrated beauty who married the handsomest boy in Pennsylvania. Everyone claimed that any child they produced was bound to be the most beautiful creature imaginable.” Lila pivoted toward where Priscilla waited near the long dining table, picking at her arms. “You can imagine their disappointment.”
“I’m here, I’m here,” called a woman dressed in mossy green and dripping with diamonds as she rushed from the short hallway that led to the private bedrooms. I stood, but before I could blink, she was reaching for my hands, squeezing them between her own. “A new girl!” She smiled and nodded so effusively, a few strands of mousy hair escaped from the pearl-covered snood. “Oh, how marvelous! It is so wonderful to see a new face, and you have not even met them yet, have you? Oh, what jolly fun.”
Lila Jamesson groaned.
Releasing me from her clammy grip, the woman reached into a beaded handbag and brought out a photograph. She thrust the thick paper at me, leaving me no choice but to take it.
“Aren’t they beautiful? I simply cannot wait to finish up my holiday so that I may be with them again. I do hope they haven’t been troubling the new nanny.” She giggled, the sound manic and eerie. “Especially my Lionel. He is such a scamp.” Her fingernail tap, tap, tapped the photo in my hands. “Look. Look. Doesn’t he have his father’s eyes?”
I refocused on the sepia tones. Her children ranged from a boy of about ten to an infant in a frilly white gown, cradled in the seated father’s arms. It looked much like every other Victorian photo I’d seen. A girl in a huge hair bow and a toddler in short pants. Then I looked closer, and a chill star-ted creeping up my legs.
“Quite so, quite so,” the mother was saying. “Nan acts the little mother to the younger ones. And Billy . .
. well, he looks so much like my side of the family. The baby is teething, which can be such a trial, but . . .”
As she babbled on about how the new nanny had been a bit difficult, the back of my throat began to ache. I swallowed, forcing myself to take a closer look at the picture.
The woman’s face was slightly blurred. Only hers. The rest of her family—every last one of them—was absolutely, perfectly clear.
Victorian photographs took a long time. Each exposure was nearly a minute long. There was nearly always some blurring, caused by even the tiniest of movements. Children especially had a difficult time holding still. These children had not moved a muscle. They hadn’t moved, because they couldn’t. Every one in this photo, except for the woman standing before me now, was dead.
“It was the new nanny.” Lila’s whisper brushed across the back of my neck, making me shiver. “Amelia’s husband got the girl in trouble. A fairly common occurrence, of course, and generally handled with a letter of reference and a tidy sum. But the girl got angry. When Mortimer Langdon refused to acknowledge the child, the girl took a jar of arsenic and poisoned the lot of them. Even the servants. She then stabbed herself in the stomach and bled out right there at the dinner table, seated in Amelia’s place and wearing one of her gowns. When poor Amelia came home the next morning from visiting her sister, she found them there.”
I nodded, but it was all I could do to keep from curling up in a tight ball right then and there. I wanted to lie down and cry myself to sleep.
“Immediately after the photographer left,” said Lila—and I heard actual emotion in her husky voice—“Amelia locked up the house. She refused to let anyone inside. She stayed there for days, with her family rotting around her, until her sister had the authorities break in. When they found her, she . . .” Lila’s breath hitched. “She was trying to nurse the baby. By the time her sister had her brought here, her mind had snapped.”
Amelia Langdon hugged the photo to her chest, eyes closed as she whispered, “I must remember to buy Lionel a new pair of shoes. He grows out of them so quickly.”
She wandered off, muttering to herself, and I turned to Lila. “I—I don’t even . . .”
“Yes,” she said, all flippancy gone from her voice. “I know.”
The nurse clapped her hands, startling me. “Maggie, you slattern. Take Miss Randolph to her room at once, and help her dress. We don’t want to delay dinner, now do we ladies?”
Over at the mirror, Priscilla was mumbling to herself. “Ugly, ugly, ugly.”
“Oh Lord.” Lila rolled her eyes. “She’s doing it again, Nurse.”
The nurse shot Lila a look and led Pricilla away from the looking glass.
“She’ll be next to go under the knife. Unless . . .” Lila peered deep into my eyes, her gaze keen as she asked, “What did you do?”
Chapter 27
AFTER THE MAID STRIPPED AND STUFFED ME, unceremoniously, into an ocher gown that smelled of its former owner’s rose perfume, I sat to a formal dinner with the rest of my little group.
Seven courses, served on bone-thin china by two uniformed footmen, as if we were visiting some great estate. Consommé, followed by cold lobster salad with bitter greens. A roasted game bird called a plover. Roast beef in mushroom sauce. Potatoes and carrots and buttered peas. Two kinds of pillowy rolls. All of it interspersed with tart sherbet served in tiny frosted bowls.
This, I thought, staring down at the bowl of glistening, honey-glazed fruit that had just been set before me, this is insanity. How can they just sit here, eating like kings, pretending they’re out at some fancy dinner party?
Throughout the meal, Amelia Langdon chattered incessantly about which dishes were her kids’ favorites and who among her “darlings” couldn’t tolerate fish or refused to eat carrots. Toward the end of the meal, she tugged on the sleeve of one of the servers and quietly asked him to have a box of the diminutive iced cakes delivered to her “silly brood.”
“And be sure to sign the card ‘From your loving Mummy,’” she called as he walked away. Spearing a slice of pear, she smiled over at me. “I’m sure my babes miss me terribly. Such a long holiday this is. I should think of heading home soon.” She chuckled. “Until I can make arrangements, the cakes shall be a sweet reminder that their mummy thinks of them always and—”
Annabelle Allen’s little-girl voice cut in. “Begging your pardon, dear Mrs. Langdon.” The girl’s head turned in odd, bird-like increments toward the older woman. She smiled sweetly, patting Mrs. Langdon’s arm. “Perhaps I am mistaken,” she said. “But I thought your children were all dead. Yes, yes. I’m quite certain I remember hearing that. All of them. Dead. I believe it was Bootsie who said as much?” She looked down at the kitten in her lap. “Didn’t you, Bootsie? Dreary, dreary. Dead. Dead. Dead.”
Mrs. Forbes gasped as Annabelle Allen began rocking her kitten, crooning to it in a high, childish soprano: “Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. And down will come ba—”
“Stop!” Lila Jamesson shot to her feet, lips peeled in fury. “Stop this instant, you stupid girl. Can’t you see what you’re doing to Amelia?”
Annabelle only looked puzzled, as if someone had just asked her to solve a complex math equation.
I felt like someone was pinching my heart between giant fingers as Mrs. Langdon slowly got to her feet. The photograph still clenched in one hand, she began to back away. “I—I believe I shall lie down for a spell. The, um.” She licked her lips. “The children. They . . . They need their mummy well rested.”
Mrs. Forbes pushed her plate of half-eaten food away, and buried her face in her hands. Lila Jamesson stormed off without another word. A terrible sadness washed over me as I realized that fancy food or no, the women were all prisoners trapped inside a pretty box.
Coffee was served in the sitting room. I downed it, thinking it might help stave off the exhaustion.
“What happened to her? To Annabelle, I mean?”
Suspicion narrowed Lila’s gaze as it sharpened on me. “How could you not know? It was in all the papers. Everyone knows about Annabelle Allen.”
“I—”
“Then again, your accent reveals your Southern origins, yes?” At my hurried agreement, she sneered. “Your ignorance, then, is not at all surprising. In fact, I would wager very little of importance makes it through that region’s filters of bigotry and narrow-minded provincialism.”
I opened my mouth in defense, then let it close.
“One night, seven years ago,” Lila said, “when Annabelle was but thirteen, she went down to the kitchen. Took a butcher’s knife from the rack. Crept into her father’s bedroom. And with the help of two young serving girls, stabbed him to death in his own bed.”
My hand flew to my mouth. Like icy pebbles of sleet, horror pinged me in a thousand places. “Why?” I croaked, unable to reconcile the odd, child-like young woman with her cat and her blank eyes with cold-blooded patricide.
“Why do you think?” Lila spat. “Why else would a thirteen-year-old girl murder her own father? He’d been ‘bothering’ her since she was a child. The serving girls too. Annabelle has a younger sister, only seven at the time. When that degenerate began turning his eye on the sister, Annabelle had finally had enough.”
“What about her mother?”
“The mother,” Lila scoffed. “She knew. She must have known. I believe it was her own guilt that caused her to hire the best lawyers. They fought to have Annabelle committed, rather than sent to prison for life. The woman did that much, at least, before disowning Annabelle and fleeing the continent with the other daughter.”
“She was different before.” Lila and I both jumped when Mrs. Forbes spoke from just behind us. “I was here. I knew her prior to the doctor’s . . .” She waved a hand. “Intervention. The girl was kind to me. Troubled, yes, but smart as a whip. Most of the time, she was fine. But on occasion, she would sudde
nly blurt out the most awful things.” Chin quivering, Mrs. Forbes whispered, “Lewd, intimate things. Or she would remove her clothing and go running around in the altogether. Then one day, a guard got familiar with one of the younger girls. Annabelle drove a hat pin through his eye. They removed her to Ward C and two months later, she was returned to us with parts of her hair shaven away and horrific scars on each temple. From that day until this, she has been as you see. An imbecilic shell.”
Psychosurgery? But . . . But that can’t be right? Surgical intervention for psychiatric purposes didn’t begin until sometime in the 1930s. It makes no sense.
Sick, furious, and utterly confused, I followed Mrs. Forbes’s gaze. Annabelle Allen noticed us watching and gave a brilliant smile that set my teeth on edge.
Chapter 28
WHILE EVERYONE BUT ANNABELLE CHATTERED OVER needlepoint and mending, I roamed the area, searching for any possible escape route.
There were only two doors. One to a short hallway that housed our six bedrooms and single lavatory. The other to the main hall outside. That one was firmly locked. And—I deduced from the male voices and occasional phlegmy cough—constantly guarded.
The window was out, too. No bars, but with Ward B’s third-floor location that didn’t much matter. With no handy trellis or opportune rain gutter, shimmying down the redbrick wall was not an option.
Heartsore and exhausted, I rested my forehead against the thick, cold glass. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Lightning flashed behind an ominous roiling cloud bank. Heavy raindrops smacked against the panes.
As the storm raged toward us, the muffled booms intensified, turning to cracks that beat at my eardrums like a battery of gunfire. The scent of ozone suffused the air as bolt after sizzling bolt slammed to earth. Then came a lengthy flash that momentarily destroyed night’s concealing shadow, and I jerked suddenly upright, certain I was seeing things.
I mashed my nose against the glass as if I could push right through it and into the rain-soaked darkness.
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