The Gray Chamber

by Grace Hitchcock

  Bane was at her elbow at once. “Edyth? What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  Ignoring him, her brows drew together as she lifted her two-edged blade to the ready with one hand and with the other gripped her voluminous skirts behind her, showing a fair amount of petticoat and her ankles in the process.

  Jasper’s attention shifted to the still, crowded room around them, and he gave what sounded like a forced chuckle. “You didn’t think I’d really fight you, especially not without a foil and mask or your plastron or gauntlet, did you?”

  “I don’t need them,” she replied, her sharp blade slicing the air inches from his chest. “But you might. I suggest you put up your blade. En garde.”

  “I said I wouldn’t—”

  “Allez!” She lunged at him, and Jasper instinctively brought the blade up to block her, their steel crashing against one another.

  “Don’t be a fool. You will draw blood if you are not careful,” he growled.

  “That’s the point.” With a twist, she drove her blade down against his and, with a whipping motion, disarmed him. He lifted his hands in surrender, and despite her hunger for retribution, Edyth relented. She lowered her blade and stepped away from him. The thundering applause woke her from the haze of her temper. Oh Lord, please let me not have ruined everything for Bane. Stupid, stupid temper.

  She drew in a deep breath and slowly turned and found that the women didn’t appear horrified as she thought they would be; rather they seemed … impressed with her victory? The women crowded around, praising her that a lady could stand up for herself, even in a ball gown, and best a gentleman. And judging from the look on Bane’s face, he was as shocked as she over the reaction.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. My husband always makes mention of a lady at the club who bests the men.” Mrs. Marshall fanned her beaming face. “It was thrilling. Positively thrilling. I only wish I could have taken lessons as a girl. I always had a fascination for the sport.”

  “Mr. Banebridge is a wonderful instructor. I owe my skill with a blade to him.” Edyth thought of the hours he had spent perfecting her use of the sword even though, as a female fencer, she had little hope of competing and bringing further glory to the club. Bane had given her as much attention as his best male student, Marvin Slater. She sent Bane a smile before adding, “If you are interested, you should consider joining his fencing class. And, if you are too shy to begin class in the main hall, Mr. Banebridge now offers private lessons in a smaller women’s fencing area. A ‘steel’ of a deal, if you will.” She laughed at her own joke along with the ladies, who tittered behind their silk fans. She looked over her shoulder at Bane, hoping she did not ruin his party, but from the grin on his face, she knew it was a resounding success. Perhaps dressing the part of a socialite had its advantages after all.

  Bane waved Mr. Slater onto the piste, giving his own demonstration and earning more praise at his execution.

  She felt a tug on her wrist, turning her, and scowled at the sight of Jasper. “Why haven’t you departed yet? This is a party for respectable patrons.”

  “I wanted to warn you before I did.”

  She bristled at his threat and crossed her arms. “I already bested you, so I have proven I can take care of myself. Whatever you have to say—”

  He grunted. “Blast you, woman. Your arrogance will be the end of you. Just listen to me for one second, will you, and let me leave.”

  She fought the urge to wave Bane over, not liking Jasper’s tone. “Go on.”

  “The doctors weren’t there for your aunt.”

  “Excuse me?” She had told no one about the lunatic asylum doctors at her house. How could he know about them?

  “My father is one of the doctors from Blackwell’s Island, and as you know, I am your uncle’s lawyer. From what I have gathered from your aunt’s legal requests of late, they were there to evaluate you.”

  She let out a little laugh. “You are the mad one if you think I would take your word and believe such an outlandish idea. Cease being such a poor loser and leave.”

  Jasper stepped back, his nostrils flaring. “Don’t say I didn’t try. Enjoy the island.”

  She rolled her eyes as he stormed away, and returned her attention to Bane’s exposition.

  At the end of the night, she still felt rather overheated from the excitement, so she waved away the carriage in favor of walking home in the crisp evening air with Bane at her side. She chatted away, almost afraid of what he would say. Edyth knew it was only a matter of time before he addressed the duel. She felt like a young, mischievous girl again, awaiting her father’s stern lecture. At her street corner, he grasped her hand and pulled her toward him.

  “That was rather daring of you, Miss Foster.”

  She pressed her palms to her stomach and groaned, truly remorseful for almost destroying the perfect evening. “I am so sorry. One day I shall conquer my temper. I really have been working on it, but Jasper was so vile. I’ve never been able to back away from a fight, I’m afraid … as you very well know. ’Tis my greatest flaw.”

  “True, but if you hadn’t challenged him, I would have. However”—he grinned—“it turned out splendidly. Four wives signed up for classes and promised to spread the word amongst their circles and bring their daughters. Thanks to you, I will have almost a dozen new female students, and I can hire another instructor with the income they will bring.”

  “Bane, that’s wonderful!” Edyth threw her arms around his neck before realizing how completely inappropriate her action was. She pushed her hands against his solid chest, but his hands found her waist and held her to him.

  “You are wonderful.” He leaned his forehead down to touch hers, closing his eyes as he drew in a deep breath that stole her own.

  “What does this mean for us? Our seeing one another?” she whispered.

  His brilliant jade eyes met hers. “We’ve been seeing each other for years, Edyth.”

  “Yes, but you’ve only been noticing me for a few days. Doesn’t it seem rather odd to be holding me so close?”

  He stroked a finger under her chin, lifting her face. “I should have been holding you long ago, but I was too distracted by the business.”

  “And my outlandish clothes,” she added, hoping to break the tension but at the same time wishing to hold on to this moment forever.

  “I see you now, but Edyth, it is not your clothes that I like.” He smiled at her. “Don’t get me wrong, you are stunning in them, but I think your gowns caught my attention long enough to wake me to the fact that you are more than a friend, and if some man tried to take my dearest friend away from me—” His voice deepened to a growl.

  “What man would try to take me away from a fencing master?” Dare she reach out and tuck that loose strand of golden hair behind his ear? Her fingers twitched, but she held herself back.

  He kneaded a thumb over her palm again and again. “Would you think it strange if I didn’t want a long courtship? That is, if you’ll allow me to call?”

  “Do you think I’d let you hold me so if I’d say no to your calling?” she whispered over the pounding in her ears.

  He grinned. “Then, Miss Foster, as long as you know my hopes are for a spring wedding, we shall have our first official outing tomorrow.”

  “Bane!” She giggled as he pulled her up into his arms and twirled her around on the sidewalk, catching smiles from passersby.

  Slowly lowering her to the earth, Bane gripped her hand in his and pressed a firm kiss on the back of it, leaving her a bit dazed.

  “Are you certain?”

  “I don’t see why we need to wait when we’ve known each other so long and so well. I will ask you when you least expect it, so be looking over your shoulder. I’ll be coming to sweep you off your feet.”

  “You will?” Had Bane really just professed his intent? She rested her gaze on his lips, aching for him to tell her that he loved her and then kiss her senseless.

  At
the passing of a carriage that stopped at her door, she reluctantly drew back and saw the pair of doctors that had been there before pounding on the door. “Bane, I think those are the men from Blackwell’s Island.”

  “What?” He blinked, clearly not having seen the carriage.

  “Never mind. I better go inside,” she said, squeezing his hands.

  He pulled her back toward him. “Not without this,” he whispered, lowering his head and pressing a tender kiss to her lips for a breath then two before pulling away, but her hands caught the back of his neck, silently asking him for another and he obliged, leaving her breathless as she blinked against the stars in her eyes.

  Chapter Six

  The world doesn’t understand me and I don’t understand the world, that’s why I’ve withdrawn from it.

  ~ Paul Cézanne

  Edyth closed the front door behind her, leaning her head back and sighing. She lifted her gloved fingers to her lips, feeling the pressure of his mouth yet. She inhaled the scent of leather from his fencing attire on her sleeve from their embrace. She gave a little spin and pulled off her gloves one finger at a time. Bane cares for me. She could hardly believe it. She had dreamed of this moment for so long, she could hardly believe it was finally happening. Raoul Banebridge was intending on courting her.

  “Good. You’re home. Come with me.” Her uncle’s booming voice startled her.

  She nearly dropped her gloves, her skin burning from being caught holding her sweet memories of Bane. His kisses had driven all thoughts of the two doctors out of her head. “Uncle, I saw the doctors return. Surely you aren’t committing Mrs. Foster tonight? Shouldn’t you at least wait until Lavinia returns from her trip? She would never forgive you if—”

  “What’s this I hear of your accosting Doctor Wentworth’s son?” Her uncle motioned to her from the doorway of the parlor, crossing his arms as he glared at her.

  Her stomach dropped. “Jasper Wentworth really is a doctor’s son? He’s not just a distant relative?” And how did Doctor Wentworth find out so soon? Did he go running to his father the moment he departed?

  “Isn’t that just what I said? It is most vexing having to repeat everything for you, Edyth. Listen so I do not have to say everything twice, won’t you?”

  She jerked back from his strident tone, a sliver of fear coiling around her heart.

  “What are you waiting for?” Uncle Boris motioned her inside the dark parlor where the doctors stood in front of the fire warming their hands.

  Where were the servants to light the gaslights? Not wanting to prove her uncle right that she would question everything that he asked of her, she brushed past him and took a seat in a gilded Queen Anne chair beside the fireplace, keeping her feet tucked primly under her dress. She sighed. All she wanted was her bed, a cup of chamomile tea, to relive her kiss with Bane, and to think on how her dreams were coming true. Instead, she addressed the doctors. “Good evening, sirs. I trust my maids have seen to offering you a hot beverage?” Why was her voice wavering so? Blast that Jasper for getting his lies into my head.

  All ignored her as her uncle removed a stack of papers from his coat.

  “So, I suppose you are wondering why the doctors are present,” he finally said.

  “If they are not here for Mrs. Foster, as you claimed earlier, then, yes.” Her gaze fell onto the papers, and she recognized them as the same ones he had been holding the other day. “But, uh, I must say that I strongly disagree with your decision to abandon your wife to the island.”

  He dropped the papers without ceremony on the side table with a thud and tapped the top sheet. “I recently uncovered a clause in the family will.”

  Edyth sat up straight. “A clause? What do you mean?” Would she be free from her uncle and his bitterness and his new wife’s anger sooner than four months? Or was it … the other thing that Jasper had insisted was true?

  Uncle Boris adjusted his monocle, the black string dangling past his fleshy jowls, and turned the pages, pausing at a ribbon marker. He lifted the page, his focus on her. “From what I understand, if you die unmarried and childless, or are declared mad and committed to an asylum, the fortune reverts to me and my heir.”

  “Why on earth would my father insert such a clause?” She snorted. Ludicrous.

  He shrugged. Something glinted in his eyes, and it wasn’t the monocle catching in the firelight. “I’m certain he had his reasons.”

  She tilted her head. She was her father’s only heir. “Well, I am not fatally ill, and even though I am not married now, it doesn’t mean that I won’t marry later and have a child. I am young still, Uncle.” The news of Bane’s almost proposal crept to the tip of her tongue, but she wanted to keep that to herself for a little longer.

  He slowly set aside the papers. “A fact which only leaves me with the second option.” He crossed his arms and stared at her, as if waiting for her to understand what he was insinuating.

  He can’t mean— She rose from her chair, limbs quaking. “The doctors … they aren’t here for Mrs. Foster, are they? You are trying to have me”—she fairly spat the last word—“committed?”

  “We have been studying you, and our findings are quite disturbing.” A nasally voice came from the shorter of the doctors.

  She crossed her arms to keep her trembling from being visible. “Please elaborate, Doctor Wentworth.”

  The man with the spectacles and pointed beard stepped forward. She could now easily see how he was an older, stouter version of Jasper. “For one, your erratic behavior tonight. I have a firsthand account of the scene from one of the guests. Imagine a woman fencing my son in a duel of honor, intent on besting him.”

  The coward did go running to his daddy after all. “So, you admit it was a duel for honor, Doctor Wentworth? Did he happen to tell you that he accosted me most grievously? I would not stand by and allow that to happen to a friend, so why would I allow him to speak so to me? Your son acted in an ungentlemanly manner. And as for the duel, I bested him tonight as I do every week.” She tilted her chin up. “It was nothing unusual. If he did not wish to embarrass himself, he shouldn’t have goaded me.”

  “But it is a man’s place to defend your honor,” Doctor Wentworth replied with a dismissive wave. He looked to the other two men. “Based on tonight’s events and the information we have gathered in the past few days from our man, I recommend immediate placement of Miss Foster in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island.”

  Someone has been following me? She curled her lip at the sickening violation and turned to the short doctor. “Sir, you have to agree this is unfounded.” She returned her attention to her uncle. “And you. Why on earth would you wish to have me committed?”

  He nodded to the doctors. “Thank you for coming out tonight. I will send for you should I have need, but your reports are just the thing for us to bypass the usual admission trials and have her quietly committed to avoid scandal.”

  Edyth flinched at the words, and all sense of calm fled her. She clenched her fists at her sides. “Quietly committed?” she yelled. Ignoring the doctors’ abrupt departure, she skewered her uncle with her anger. “What have I ever done to you other than support you and your new family with my fortune? Have I been unkind to you, Mrs. Foster, or Lavinia? When Mrs. Foster wanted to redecorate her rooms, I agreed for you to allot her the funds needed, even though it was unnecessary considering you all are moving out come summer to your own place on Fifth Avenue that I will have furnished for you.”

  “And your kindness alone is the only reason I am offering you one chance to escape your fate. From what I’ve heard of the asylum on Blackwell’s Island, it is not going to be to your liking. So, risking the wrath of my new bride, I am giving you a choice. Either you sign your fortune over to me here and now and you shall be free to live your life on a small stipend, or …” He sat down in the armchair beside the small side table with the papers atop, “I will have you committed to Blackwell’s Island. The choice is yours.”
/>   She clenched her jaw. “You cannot be serious.”

  He extended a pen to her and tapped the papers with his finger in a steady rhythm. “You have sixty seconds.”

  “How dare you threaten me. No one will believe you!” she shouted as he kept up the incessant tapping. “Lavinia herself will testify on my behalf.”

  “Fifty seconds left. Are you certain you wish to spend them arguing?” He sent her a smile underlined with a hatred that alarmed her. “As you recall, I sent Lavinia to the Manhattan Beach Hotel this morning for a short stay. All of your other ostensible friends are from a fencing club.” He scoffed. “Which would not help your plea of sanity.”

  “My lawyer—”

  “No lawyer will be able to protect you against the word of the three doctors I have had studying you since Lavinia’s welcoming party. Granted, one of the doctors was distracted by Lavinia, but if he wishes to continue seeing my stepdaughter, he will keep quiet when he discovers you at the asylum and agree with the other two doctors who thought you quite eccentric. They have seen you riding your velocipede in your ridiculous costume for all the city to see, and they’ve heard from your own mouth of your fencing lessons. And, of course, your bout with Jasper tonight did nothing to aid your case.” He gave a chortle. “Imagine my delight when Doctor Wentworth informed me that you threatened and dueled his son in front of all at tonight’s party. It’s as if you wanted to help me commit you.”

  She lowered her voice and stepped toward her uncle. “I did not threaten him. I acted in defense of my honor, as you very well know.”

  “Which you should have left to a man, as Doctor Wentworth stated. In any event, the doctors have taken your eccentricities as signs of insanity, for what woman would ever want to cycle when she could ride in a fine carriage? What woman would want to fence when she could embroider or have tea parties or have whatever she wants because she is one of the wealthiest women in New York?”