Page 18 of My Darling Mr. Darling

“My governess used to rap my knuckles,” Serena said softly. “I thought even that unfair, honestly, but this—this—” She brandished a letter, shaking it for emphasis. “This is beyond cruelty. This isbarbaric. For God’s sake,prisonersare afforded more courtesy than this. Beatings and starvation—”

“They called it their special slimming regimen.”

“They can call it whatever they like, but it wasstillstarvation!” Serena shrilled. “And this—this confinement chamber—”

“The Coffin.” The words emerged from her throat in just the barest whisper, in precisely the same tone in which the girls at Mrs. Selkirk’s had referred to it.

Serena made a horrible little sound deep in her throat, her eyes sheening with tears. “Theycalledit that?”

“No. No—that’s what we called. Us girls.” When they had dared to risk speech between them at all, and then only in muted whispers, beneath their breath. In nightmares. Violet licked her dry lips, rolled her shoulders to relieve the tension. “In the cellar, back behind the storage for the turnips and onions, there is—a very small closet. It’s hardly wide enough to fit at the shoulders, and you certainly can’t turn around.” Her lungs felt as though they were constricting, suffocating her. “It’s cold at first. So very cold, colder than a grave—from the stone, you know. At least, it starts out cold. But gradually it warms, and the air becomes hot and thick, and there is no light at all—” A candle hissed and sputtered, and Violet flinched. “And of course, buried beneath the house like that, there is no one to hear you scream. That’s why we called itthe Coffin, I think. Because it is so dark and so lonely that you might as well be dead.” Buried in the bowels of that great hulking school, where no one could hear you. Where no one would aid you even if theycouldhear you.

It was as if some ghost of that terrible time had stretched out its gnarled claws and caught her by the throat, pulling her back into the past. She hardly heard Serena’s horrified whisper: “How many times did they put you there?”

“Once a week at least.” For so many reasons. Failing to look properly cowed after a beating. Vomiting up gruel after a week of nothing but water. For taking an infection after a particularly severe beating and requiring the aid of a physician. Many times for things that hadn’t even been her fault, but that she had accepted the blame for, because she had been so much stronger than the other girls. Her breath rasped in her throat. “The last time—the last time they left me in there for three days. I was insensible when they pulled me out.” Her fingers hand tangled into knots, inseparable. “I learned later that I was only supposed to be there overnight. But they had forgotten about me, you see. I—” A grating laugh burned in her chest. “I nearly died. I thought Ihaddied. I could hardly move at all for nearly a week, and then—the moment I could stand on my own again—I fled.”

“Of course you did,” Serena said. “Oh, Violet, I am so sorry. I am—” Her voice broke, and she brushed away a few tears that had managed to escape. “So very sorry.”

Somehow, sympathy made her feel worse, even more of a coward. “I still cannot abide enclosed spaces,” she said. “Did you know most households lock the maids in their rooms overnight?” She’d lost a position early on when she’d heard the key grate in the lock and screamed her throat raw in sheer terror. “And the darkness—sometimes it was unbearable. I was dismissed once for stealing extra candles.” Because that choking darkness sometimes overwhelmed her. Sometimes she awoke in the night with the musty smell of turnips in her nose, a scream lodged somewhere in her chest. Most nights she successfully swallowed it back.

Serena’s hand grazed hers, landed on her sleeve, closed gently over her wrist. “I shan’t say a word if you light the whole of the house in candles at any hour,” she said. “You’ll have as many as you need. As many as you like.” An ugly sniffle escaped her. “Could I have your permission to speak to Grey? I know he would want to help—with Mrs. Selkirk’s, I mean. I couldn’t bear it if any other girls—”

“That’s not necessary,” Violet said.

“But what if—”

“No, no, I mean…it’s notnecessary,” Violet said, and her hands jerked as she thumbed through the papers in search of the one that revealed the worst of it, thebestof it. “Here,” she said at last, fishing out the page and shoving it into Serena’s hands. “Read it.”

Serena slanted her an odd look, but accepted the page, cleared her throat, and began to read:

Mr. Darling,

Fortunately, it will not be necessary to bring Mrs. Selkirk and her staff up on charges. Per your suggestion, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, Mrs. Selkirk has agreed to close her academy and leave the country. The remaining students have been returned to their families, who are most grateful to have avoided the scandal of a trial.

Regrettably, none of the girls our men have spoken with have any knowledge of Miss Townsend’s whereabouts, though I have included the direction of the families for you should you wish to speak with them directly.

My thanks, Mr. Darling, for your diligence in pursuing this matter. Were it not for your insistence, I doubt not that the horrors visited upon these young ladies would have continued unchecked.

Yours, etc.

Archibald Swift

Bow Street Magistrates’ Court

Serena let out a shuddering breath, wilting on the sofa. “I see,” she said on a heavy sigh. “I suppose that’s something. That the school is closed. But I wish Mrs. Selkirk had paid for it.”

Violet curled in on herself, her knees tucked beneath her. “It would have been such a scandal,” she said. “Can you imagine it? A public trial? Those letters made common knowledge? The stain of it would cling to every girl who had ever attended. One ofthoseSelkirk girls, you know.” She shook her head, blinked her aching eyes. “I wish someone had lockedherin a closet,” she whispered. Or a cell in Newgate. Or a prison transport ship. “But it would have served nothing except….” Except to ruin girls she had already ruined once before.

“Yes,” Serena sighed. “I suppose you’re right. And there is some manner of comfort in knowing that the school is closed for good.”

That was the best of it. It was such a relief that Violet wanted to weep with it. Like a terrible weight had been lifted from her shoulders, knowing that the other girls were home, they were safe, they werefree. Never again would any other girls be shoved into that tiny, dark closet, and left to suffocate on her own breath. There would be no beatings, no scars hidden beneath skirts, no stomach-gnawing hunger.

“I suppose Mr. Darling is to be commended for it,” Serena said. “I can’t imagine it would have been a simple task to collect so much evidence—or to persuade Mrs. Selkirk that it would behoove her to close the school rather than to take her chances on a trial.”

Andthatwas the worst of it. Because John had saved the girls trapped in that miserable existence. He had saved every girl who might have had the misfortune to be sent there.

That heavy knot of guilt tied around her heart cut a little tighter, becauseJohn Darlinghad come to the rescue of those girls still lodged within Mrs. Selkirk’s, but she…she had simply abandoned them.

Chapter Seven