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"Mad," he muttered. "The lot of you."

He stomped off down the corridor with Elias right behind him, leaving Abigail alone in the dim hallway. She leaned her head back against the cold wood of the door, trying to still her shaking hands and bleeding heart.

"Abigail?" Graham's voice, muffled but close, came through the door. "Are you still there?"

"Always," she said, pressing her palm flat against the wood as if she could reach through to him.

Silence stretched between them, broken only by the sounds mad men made in the night.

"I don't suppose," he said finally, his voice so low she had to strain to hear it, "you might have some of that brave I could borrow just now?"

Tears welled in her eyes, sliding silently down her cheeks. "You can have it all," she promised, her voice breaking on the last word.

She closed her eyes, imagining him just on the other side, his hand pressed to the same spot as hers, separated by inches of wood but connected by something stronger than asylum walls or iron bars.

The minutes passed as the long night crept toward dawn.

CHAPTER 26

"You look like something the Thames spat back," Lincoln Wallace remarked, shaking rainwater from his enormous beard like a bear emerging from a river. His shoulders nearly filled the doorway.

Graham looked up from his hands where he’d been flexing his knuckles and watching the blood ooze. The consultation room at Hallowcross was marginally better than his cell—at least it had a proper table and chairs rather than bare stone—but the iron bars on the windows and the sour smell of fear were no less oppressive.

"Your bedside manner remains abysmal," Graham said, then added after a beat, “Thank you for coming.”

Lincoln's beard twitched with amusement, but his eyes—sharp as a surgeon's blade—missed nothing as they took in Graham, seeing far past the sleepless night and fresh cuts and bruises.

"Did you imagine I wouldn't? With Admiral Birkins pounding on my door, bellowing about dukes in asylums?" Lincoln settled his substantial frame onto the rickety chair across from Graham. "Though your duchess is nothing short of formidable. Between her, the admiral, and those two aristocratic bulldogs pacing the corridor, poor Hodge nearly suffered an apoplexy."

"They're still here?" Graham's throat tightened. "I need to leave, Lincoln." The words scraped out of him. "I have a hearing in Chancery Court this morning. My nieces—their future depends on it."

“Yes, I’m well aware.” He fished a notebook and pen from his greatcoat and put them on the table. “But first, we talk.”

"There isn't time?—"

"There is precisely thirty-seven minutes before I must leave to make Bow Street before court convenes,” Lincoln countered, implacable as a mountain. "Tell me about the flashbacks."

Graham's fists clenched beneath the table. "Spain. The frigate. The usual specters."

"And?"

"And what?" Graham snapped.

"What else came for you in the dark?" Lincoln's gaze never wavered.

Graham stared at the wall behind Wallace's head, focusing on a water stain shaped vaguely like the coast of Cornwall. "The mugger. Abigail's attack. Over and over."

Graham closed his eyes briefly, seeing the man’s bulging eyes, feeling the desperate thrashing, hearing Abigail's voice cutting through the blood-rage. "I nearly killed a man right in front of her.”

"You've killed before."

"This was different." The savage pleasure of crushing the life from him sickened him in the light of day. "I wanted it. Not for king and country. For me."

Lincoln made another note, his expression betraying nothing. "Interesting that this particular memory recurred most frequently."

"Is it?" Graham's laugh was brittle.

“You stopped that night. Why?” Lincoln sat back, stroking his beard as he waited for Graham to answer.