Dr. Todson's Home for Incorrigible Women Read online

  “Maybe not,” Dr. Rand said. “But you can tell me how you’ve been feeling of late.”

  How she’d been feeling? Did people care about such things now?

  Sit down, Caroline.

  Wear this, Caroline.

  Be nice, Caroline.

  Don’t look so dour, Caroline .

  As far as she could tell, life was about one’s observable actions, not one’s feelings.

  Assailed, though, by the question, Caroline couldn’t help but formulate an answer. How did she feel? She felt like a ghost in her own life. Flitting through it. Observing. Having absolutely no impact at all. But that wasn’t just “of late.” She had almost always felt that way. “I feel fine.”

  “Ask her about the cleaning.” Evidently dissatisfied with the speed or tack of Dr. Rand’s questions, Thomas shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  “What about the cleaning?” Dr. Rand asked.

  “What about it?” Caroline said.

  “Mr. Ajax says you don’t allow the staff in your home to clean.”

  Oh, Dear Thomas. Simplistic, absolute Thomas. That was one very clear-cut way of looking at something nuanced.

  “That simply isn’t true.”

  “Would you care to explain that to me?”

  “The staff cleans when the house needs cleaning. They don’t when it doesn’t. I see no need for them to walk around polishing bookcases and railings each day that have a layer of soot upon them again by the following morning. It’s noisy, it stirs the air, and it’s hopeless.”

  Throwing up a hand as if Caroline had just signed her own commitment papers, Thomas looked absurdly pleased with himself. Remarkable really, considering Thomas never looked pleased. Though, if he were to, it would certainly be with himself.

  One might say it was he, Thomas, who demanded absolute spotlessness in his home, or perhaps just liked snapping at the servants for finding a speck on a mantle, who behaved in an absurd way. But pointing blame at her husband was certainly no means of talking herself into freedom, so Caroline withheld the recrimination, and Dr. Rand edged forward in his chair as if trying to find it.

  “So, what does the staff do all day?” he asked.

  “Their jobs. They do have other assignments.”

  “Those do not take all day,” Thomas complained.

  “You play cards and lose money at horse races! If you believe in leisure time, why shouldn’t they?”

  Thomas expelling a sudden, boisterous laugh, Caroline felt the cold melt of regret down her spine. She had made a mistake. Already. Thomas baited her, and she bit. Arguing on behalf of their servants, or even sounding as if she was, was certainly considered a condition of some sort in a woman of means, and Caroline floundered for a way to bring the focus back to herself.

  “I get headaches.” Looking to Dr. Rand, she found his eyes had never left her. Watching for her psychosis to reveal itself. “I get them often and they are unbearable. Too much unnecessary noise and dust makes them worse.”

  “Yes, your headaches. You take laudanum for those?” Dr. Rand asked.

  “It was prescribed for me by my doctor.”

  “Mm hm.”

  Watching him make the note in his leather-bound book, Caroline felt her solid foundation begin to crack. He knew everything, she realized. Every fact Thomas could possibly use against her, Dr. Rand already had.

  “Do you like reality, Caroline?” Dr. Rand stared into her eyes, and Caroline knew the right answer - What else is there? - but it would make no difference if she said it. Even if she executed it flawlessly. Not a flinch. Not an instant’s hesitation. No mistake could put her in this place, and no stream of perfect replies could get her out. She didn’t know why she thought they could. Why she thought it would be different for her. Why she believed, for a single instant, she could talk her way out of this, make anyone hear her reason. All that mattered was her husband said she was mad and was willing to pay this man to believe him.

  Thomas giving a tiny scoff of satisfaction, because he had spoon-fed the doctor all the right questions and knew exactly how this was going to play out for him, the fury Caroline had tempered into vague interest all day consumed her. One glance at his smug, satisfied face, and all thoughts of self-preservation went straight out of her head.

  “Ahh!”

  Flying out of her chair, she saw the surprise on Thomas’s face before she caught him by his shoulders and they tumbled together onto the floor. One knee thrust into his side, she dug her fingernails into his skin, feeling the warm, wet flow of satisfaction as she dragged bloody tracks down his cheeks.

  “Mrs. Ajax.” Dr. Rand rose to his feet, but made only a weak man’s attempt to come between them. Or Caroline was just that strong at the moment. She could feel the slight tug at her shoulder, but it wasn’t half the effort it would take to dislodge her. “You must stop this.”

  As if a verbal scolding could even begin to contain her wrath.

  Thomas fighting back was far more effective, as he restrained one of her wrists, but, even then, Caroline got in another good swipe at him, taking blood and skin away with it.

  “Go ahead.” Through his pain, Thomas turned venomous, spitting the words in a whisper as Dr. Rand moved for the door. “You’re only proving to them you’re insane.”

  “They’re going to put me in here anyway. You should at least feel pain.”

  “A little help in here!”

  Seconds later, Caroline was wrapped up, arms closing around her waist and plucking her bodily off of Thomas.

  “Took you a minute,” Thomas said as Dr. Rand helped him to his feet, and Caroline watched the blood flow from the many wounds on his face with intense pleasure. She may not have saved herself, but at least she knew now how she would spend her next few days, praying some of those scratches would scar. Thomas should have a reminder of this. She certainly would.

  “I hope you’ll be well, Caroline.” Thomas played the part of the grieving husband with flair and dramatics, and it set Caroline’s hair on fire.

  “I hope you’ll ride off a cliff on your… way… bach… ta…”

  Words starting to slur, she glanced down at the syringe that jutted out of her inner elbow. So much cold coursing through her, she hadn’t even felt it go in. The ice in her veins.

  Then, the warmth.

  Then, nothing.

  T he next sounds that woke her were nearer. Neither voice nor song, they came in the form of thumps, soft but intrusive, not far beyond her feet, and it took Caroline’s debilitated brain several seconds to recognize it as the sounds of someone coming through the door.

  Shock bending her upright at the waist, her eyes flashed wide, but unfocused, and she reached out as she swayed, finding a puffy handhold to steady her as she struggled for awareness.

  A small room with a door, at last she blinked into view. A cell of some sort? It had to be. The fainting couch she sat on was very much like the one in Dr. Rand’s office, narrow and ornamental, but surprisingly plush, while soft light emanating from somewhere overhead revealed a lack of any additional furnishings.

  All she had time to recognize before the door pressed open, Caroline tried to scurry backwards on the couch. Tried. But her compromised strength wouldn’t carry her far, and it wouldn’t matter if it did. There was no place to go. Whichever direction she moved, she had only as far as the four walls, and that would do nothing but prolong whatever was coming to her.

  She had heard stories about places like this. One couldn’t help but hear them. Madhouses were ripe sources of sensationalist gossip. Even with the new, gentler personas they were trying to promote. But though she had listened, along with everybody else, it occurred to Caroline now, with a stuttering heart and quivering bowel, she had never had any desire to learn how those stories ended.

  “Caroline.”

  Nightmare scenarios vying for dominance in her mind, she didn’t expect to hear her name so softly spoken, nor the voice of a woman speaking it.

  She certainly
didn’t expect to see a woman she recognized, even if only in passing. But she did recognize the woman when she came into view. It was the same woman from the front stoop, the black-eyed, lovely-faced woman who smirked at her bad fortune as she had entered this place.

  “It’s all right.” The woman wasn’t smirking now. Crouching next to the fainting couch, she gazed up into Caroline’s face, eyes once again sympathetic. “Are you all right?”

  Certainly not all right, not even sure she was all right with the woman asking her that, Caroline stared back, wondering whether she might be hallucinating as the light cast its faint yellow glow down over them, sending golden streaks through the stranger’s black hair, giving her an ethereal look like a displaced angel.

  “I’m Lei,” the woman said. “I need you to come with me.”

  “I can’t. I’m…” Weak. Caroline was weak. Terribly and cripplingly so. And muddled. But she couldn’t tell this stranger that. Who knew what havoc the woman might wreak with the information? “I’m sick.”

  “It’s the serum. Now that you’re awake, it will wear off more quickly. Can you walk?”

  “I don’t know. I think so.”

  “See if you can get up.”

  Searching for the floor with slightly numbed feet, Caroline made an attempt. Or, rather, she thought about making it. She didn’t actually move at all. Not on her first or her second try. On the third, with considerable support, she was able to rise, but was so unsteady she fell instantly into Lei and felt like a puppet being pulled on strings.

  “A little unsteady.” Lei’s voice was a breathy whisper against her cheek. “But I think you can make it.”

  “Where? Where are we going?”

  “I’m taking you out of here.”

  Bizarre as the notion sounded, Lei looked perfectly serious, and remarkably calm, as Caroline looked to her in the low light of the room. “You can get out?”

  “I can.”

  “How?”

  “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

  “What if they see us?”

  “It will be all right. Trust me.”

  It was a very strange thing for Lei to say. What reason did Caroline have to trust her? To trust anyone in that place? What choice did she have not to? Too unsteady to walk on her own, she didn’t even have the choice to move without assistance, and staying in that room waiting for whatever might come along next had to be a worse option, so she leaned on Lei all the way out the door of the fainting cell and down the darkened hall.

  “This isn’t the right door.” Not entirely conscious of her surroundings or what was happening inside her own body, Caroline did know that. The wood door she had walked through to enter the house was taller with far more elaborate carvings than the wood door Lei led her up to now.

  “We can’t go that way,” Lei said as she pulled the door open, and Caroline stared into the depths beyond it. The weakly lit stairs. The smell of earth rising up to tickle her nose.

  “I don’t…” Equal parts woozy and trepidatious, she put her hand on the doorframe to stop Lei from maneuvering her through it. “I don’t want to go down there.”

  Lei glanced to her in the shadows, dark eyes searching Caroline’s face, a soft smile coming to her lips that was less amusement than comfort. “It will be all right, Caroline. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”

  Again, Caroline had no cause to believe that. She was in a madhouse. Lei was in the same madhouse. And a complete stranger to her. Caroline knew no more than her name and her face and the words that came out of her mouth. Yet, she did believe her. She did trust Lei when she said it. At least enough to let Lei ease her through the door and down toward the underworld.

  “Where are we going?” Chill seeping through her dress from the stone walls, fear bloomed, wild and rapid, inside Caroline’s chest with every downward step. This was how she expected the place to look from the outside. Dank, inhospitable gray. Like a prison. Or a dungeon.

  “Not much further,” Lei said when they reached the bottom, and they walked on, passing through several narrow corridors, all with the same half-lit gloom, through a doorway to an empty room.

  Empty, that was, but for a second door. Though, it was clear at first glance that door wasn’t a way out. Crafted out of iron, giant gold wheel sitting at its center, an extensive network of levers and dials surrounding it, it was quite obviously the door of a vault.

  “What are you doing?” Caroline asked as Lei settled her against a nearby wall to turn to the vault’s switches.

  “Just one second.” Lei’s eyes already scanned the levers and dials, tight smile jumping to her lips as she started to flip and to slide them. Mere seconds later, with a gratified spin of the wheel, she pulled the vault door open and light spilled from its interior, quite unexpected, but entirely welcome in the otherwise dreary space.

  “Caroline.” Lei held out her hand, and, pushing off the wall, Caroline shuffled unsteadily to her side, relying on Lei’s strength and embrace when her knees gave out as she reached her.

  Gold? Jewels? Her only guesses as to what might be inside, Caroline managed to be absolutely stunned by the vault’s contents.

  Dressed up like a room, or rather a portion of a room, with an armchair and an oval side table on a red Persian rug, elaborate floor lamp producing the light that filtered from its recesses, the vault held what had to be the most elegant specter Caroline could ever expect to see.

  That specter was perched in the armchair, dressed in a dark green coattail jacket over a dusty rose bodice and a lighter green skirt, the absolute picture of grace and civility. The picture of grace and civility with a sly grin and a silver pocket watch clutched in her hand.

  “Incredible, Lei. That’s your fastest time yet.” Sliding the watch into her jacket, the specter turned brown eyes on Caroline, and Caroline felt faint and afflicted under their focused attention. “Hello, Caroline,” she said. “I’m Dr. Todson.”

  Chapter 2

  Eirinn

  1862

  I f daggers from the eyes were actual, physical daggers, Paul Browning would be dead in the middle of Tavistock Square. The sniveling little ratbag.

  Perched on a bench at the edge of an abnormally balmy London day, Eirinn felt the chill of the shade at her back and the fire of fury upon her face. She knew envy only punished the sufferer, but she couldn’t help but pick at her own wounds. Watching Paul Browning take his praise, the pats on his back, the boys clambering to be in his orbit for managing barely passing marks felt like a direct mockery of her and all that she wanted in the world. Not only was Paul Browning a bully who made a point of reminding Eirinn of her place every opportunity given him, he was also an idiot. An idiot who would succeed. Because polite society dictated that he should. He was simply too well-born, too connected, and too male not to.

  “Want me to break any of his limbs for ya? Or all of ‘em maybe?”

  Hearing the footsteps approach from behind before they landed at her shoulder, Eirinn wasn’t worried. While she had little doubt any one of these unlicked cubs would stab her in the back if they thought they could get away with it, she knew her back was well-guarded and the punishment for them would be quick and severe.

  They knew it too.

  Which was good.

  Especially now.

  This academic season had been a particularly vitriolic one. The new professor, Mr. Hays, recently transferred from King’s College and a proponent of women in higher education, had decided to make an example out of Eirinn. To show the world women could, and should, learn just as well as men. To that end, he had the audacity to call on Eirinn frequently for answers, and, when he did, Eirinn had the audacity to answer correctly. It was a dangerous game with no clear-cut winners when Eirinn wasn’t supposed to be officially playing.

  “I can lure Braining around a building with the smell of slop. No one will know it was me who did it.”

  Smile quirking her lips - both at the insult and the offer - Eirinn glan
ced to where Rand stood amused with himself, but ever alert, behind her, like a soldier in service to a queen. A fact that was somewhat humorous in its own right. Were they at home, it would be Rand causing her grief and Eirinn doing the threatening.

  “My God, Rand. I appreciate your willingness to take out Braining, but it’s hardly worth the risk to your future. You’re worth ten of him and a million more men.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” Coming around the bench’s end, Rand sat down beside her, but at a respectable distance with his hands on his knees where any nosey passersby could see. Not for their own sakes - who cared what others thought? - but for the sake of Eirinn’s parents. It was already a talking point that the Todsons allowed Rand to serve as her chaperone at all.

  Can you believe it? A male servant, and a YOUNG man at that , they whispered to each other after church and over tea.

  Everyone knew Rand’s mother, Mrs. Ballentine - Bally to those who knew and adored her - would be the far more appropriate choice. But Eirinn’s parents weren’t particularly susceptible to arbitrary rules or idle gossip. Nor were they willing to take a risk. Many of the boys at University College didn’t want Eirinn in their lecture halls, regardless of the fact she was only allowed to sit and listen and not to actually matriculate, but no one was going to make as much of a deal out of it with a six-foot-two pillar of protective muscle close by.

  “You ready to head home?” Rand asked after a few quiet minutes.

  “I suppose there’s no reason to continue to sit here,” Eirinn said.

  That was the brutal truth of the matter. She could sit all day, glaring and brooding, but it wasn’t going to change anything. The young men she had spent the past few weeks with would still continue on in their studies and be awarded their degrees to practice medicine, and Eirinn would be coddled for her shocking interest in human anatomy, given a condescending smile, and be sent back to the home sphere to do womanly things with womanly virtue.

  D inner was at seven o’clock. Dinner always endeavored to be at seven o’clock in the Todson household, and Papa always endeavored to be in his chair on time. What point is success, he asked Eirinn once, bopping her on the nose, if one isn’t home to dine with his family? And though she was only a young girl at the time, Eirinn had always remembered it.