Page 2 of One Kiss in the Shadows (Singular Sensation #12)
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M ay 18, 1819
Stoneybrooke Home for the Deranged
Surrey, England
What is taking so long?
It had been three weeks since Lady Mallory Lambert sent out the letter pleading for help to the Duke of Edenthorpe. Three long weeks full of annoyances, blather, and arbitrary rules that made absolutely no sense—perhaps because she wasn’t deranged—and thus far there wasn’t a reply, not that she expected one, for sending off that missive had been her last hope.
Would she truly spend the remainder of her life here in this horrible place?
A soft meow recalled her attention from the window of her bedchamber on the third floor of the renovated manor house—the window where three iron bars had been installed on the inside of the glass to prevent escape—but at least there was still the option of pushing the pane open to encourage fresh air.
“Are you worried too, Peri?” Actually, the Turkish Angora cat held the moniker of Peridot, for her lime green eyes, but Mallory liked the shortened version better. As she stroked the long white hair of the feline, she frowned. “I am.”
The cat flicked her long fluffy tail that held mottled colors of gray and tan mixed with the white parts. That was what her back half looked like as well. She meowed again.
“Yes, well, I haven’t given up all hope, but it is fading.”
It had been nearly eleven years since she’d been placed—forced—into the asylum for the insane, which essentially was an old manor house converted into an intuition to house patients whose minds might or might not be scrambled. The men in charge of the place didn’t seem to care if the patients therein truly suffered from mental breaks; as long as the coin continued to come in to fund the institution.
That didn’t matter much to her, for whether she had been designated as a patient or a prisoner, she’d hadn’t yet found a way to sneak off the property. They were allowed out of their rooms at specific times throughout the day and on fair evenings, but there were always workers—guards—present and watching. The last time someone tried to leave the manor unsupervised, he was never seen again. The “official” explanation given to the remaining patients was that he had tried to steal a horse, but the horse startled and reared, sliced open his head with a hoof, which had resulted in death.
Did Mallory believe that as truth? No, she did not, for she had overheard a conversation between one of the “doctors” and the dead patient’s family member saying the funds that took care of their loved one’s care and feeding at the institution would dry up soon.
And since greed played a large part in the motivation of the caretakers, it wasn’t a secret what would happen to the resident when the coin was gone. Because of that, she was constantly worried over the state of her existence, for when would her mother decide that she didn’t wish to pay to have Mallory housed—remain prisoner—at this place any longer?
That particular outcome was never far from her mind these days, perhaps due to the nature and the reasons why she’d been forced into this intuition to begin with. With a frown, she stroked Peri’s head, which resulted in a rich, comforting purr from the cat.
She had been only fifteen years old when she’d been forced into this place, brought here under the cover of night by a lackey doing her mother’s bidding. Yes, her own mother hadn’t the guts to do the task herself, but the minion who’d had the conveyance of her had said death would be her punishment if she didn’t behave like a lady or did anything the men in charge of the institution didn’t agree with.
When she’d argued that, she’d been given a slap across the face, which should have been her first clue of how things would go over the years. And she was in this institution—prison—because she’d overheard her mother plotting to murder every man who she had deemed in opposition to her plans to rule London’s society illegally and from clandestine sources. Within that order were men who voted against her father in parliament.
Mallory snorted. Father was another of those words that meant absolutely nothing, for she’d long suspected that the Earl of Stover was not, in fact, her father. Who was? She wasn’t quite sure, for her mother had apparently been rather free with her carnal endeavors. Most likely for power or for coin. The woman was greedy for both.
However, there was no question that Mallory’s two younger sisters—by at least a decade— most definitely belonged to the earl, for they had traits of him as well as their mother.
A sigh escaped as she dropped into a hardbacked wooden chair she had moved to the window. “I am almost six and twenty, Peri. I need the assurance there is more to my life than this miserable place.” There had been a chance three years ago that she had nearly convinced her mother to let her leave the institution, but then fate had intervened once more. As she woken from a nap, it was to find her mother speaking with a man who stood in the corridor beyond the room. They spoke in low voices, but the intention couldn’t have been more: she’d ordered the deaths of a group of men who were all part of a club called the Rogue’s Arcade, and the Duke of Edenthorpe especially. Why? Apparently, the duke had wronged one of her mother’s cousins, who was the Duke of Winthrop. What her mother was doing in league with the man, Mallory had no idea, but before she could feign sleep once more, her mother had caught her staring.
And that was the end.
There was no leaving this property or the clutches of the men who ran the institution. Her arguments had fallen on deaf ears, and one of the last things she’d said to her mother over three years ago was that keeping her a prisoner here wasn’t right, especially since there was nothing wrong with her mind, but her mother had walked away without a word. Never once had her parents or sisters visited. Not even for Christmastide, and neither had there been gifts or sweets delivered.
She twirled a tendril of her light brown hair at one temple, encouraging it to curl about her finger. What might it be like to have a return to her status in society? To luxuriate in a bath of rose-scented water in a claw-footed tub? To have her hair styled and set by a maid wielding an ivory-handled silver comb? To feel the slide of silks and satins against her skin? To have the freedom of flirting with a man from across the room? To know what an elderflower ice from Gunter’s tasted like against her tongue? To have pieces of what other young women of the beau monde took for granted?
Once, someone anonymous had sent her a cat, but she never knew who Peri was from, but she was forever grateful for the companionship. It was a wonder she’d been allowed to have a pet in the first place, but then, her mother had money, and the people with coin in this country could do whatever they wanted without apparent consequence. Perhaps her mother had thought a companion would keep Mallory happy and quiet. It hadn’t, and instead, she’d come up with the idea to write to Edenthorpe.
Yet that had been her life for the past three years, and it was a rather lonely existence.
Peri meowed again, and of course Mallory scratched the feline’s ears and beneath her chin. Her room overlooked the back lawn that was moderately manicured. It was such a beautiful day that she wished she had the freedom to go for a walk but even if she was given permission, she wouldn’t be allowed to do so alone.
“Oh, Peri, there is so much I want to do if—when—I leave this place.” Because she refused to think it would never happen. Even if her hope was fading, she still believed she had a chance at a fairly decent life. “So much I want to experience.”
A meow was the only response.
As Mallory stared out the window, a small knot of four people strolled onto the lawn—two young women with two stout-looking female attendants. “They must be out for their once-a-day exercise walk,” she said to her cat. She’d declined her exercise hour earlier that morning on the off chance that there might be an answer to her letter, for mail was delivered to each room shortly before luncheon.
Peri jumped lightly onto the windowsill. She lifted her head to the errant breeze as she, too, watched the group on the lawn below.
When she’d first been deposited at the asylum, she couldn’t wait to walk outside. It was the only escape from the horrors housed within. Soon enough, she’d discovered just how dastardly the inner workings of the facility truly were.
Many times, the male workers couldn’t keep their hands to themselves, and when they cornered her alone, far too many times they’d forced kisses onto her and put their hands beneath her skirts. She’d become quite adept at fending off their advances and now didn’t hesitate to slap faces or punch noses or put a knee into soft flesh between legs when an assault began.
I might have had many experiences in my life stolen from me, but I’ll be damned if my innocence is taken without my permission.
Coupled with that, many of the female caregivers were jealous of her looks and her pedigree, so they oftentimes tried to steal personal items from her room, which was another reason why Mallory didn’t like to leave. Thankfully, Peri didn’t take kindly to having strangers in the room. She had an impressive hiss, but her bite and claws were quite sharp and went deep, so theft hadn’t been an issue for a good while.
If one could manage to overlook the personal affronts, there were always the days when the inmates of the asylum weren’t fed. Of course, they were never given tea, but there was usually three meals during the day, unless it was one of the times when the people in charge decided to either steal the food for that day or feasted upon it themselves.
After all, who would the patients complain to about such treatment, and who would believe deranged people even if they could? It was their word against the men in charge, and it would be all too easy for the men to say that the residents had, of course, been fed, they just didn’t remember those times since their minds often betrayed them.
That was perhaps one of the most difficult things to accept, that the people assigned to care for the residents of the asylum didn’t truly care. But then, when people like Mallory’s mother dumped perfectly sound family members into a mental intuition, what did she really expect?
None of that even touched upon the fact they were seldom allowed baths, or the fact they could only go outside within the bounds of the terrace or rear flower gardens. Never anywhere else and always in the company of one of the staff. That was the case, too, if they wished to wander within the manor house itself. There was naught to do but read if one could finagle trips to the library downstairs, and that assumed the residents of this even knew how. Thankfully, Mallory had been raised within an earl’s household, most of the social graces had already been ingrained by the time she was hidden away here, but finding books to actually carry with her back to her room was an issue. She’d brought a few of her own, yet there were only so many times one could read them without memorizing large passages of them off by heart.
When Peri meowed, Mallory was quick to give her pets and cuddles.
Once a week all the patients were assembled in the drawing room to sing songs while one of the staff played the piano. She hated those days because they always ended with an argument between a patient and a caregiver, and usually over something petty.
Or not, if the topic was not being fed. Those days resulted with the patient being quickly escorted back to their room, and sometimes the rest of them didn’t see them again with no explanation.
On Sundays, the residents were made to attend a makeshift church service in the orangery because there was always the hope prayers could “remove the devil” from their minds and bodies, regardless of the fact that some of them had nothing remotely wrong with their minds, and if they did, imploring the notice of a deity couldn’t have that sort of effect.
But what Mallory had always looked upon with disfavor was the times once a month when they were assembled in the dining room where a man would show them expensive pieces of jewelry then instruct them on how to remake them with jewels of paste or sometimes glass. Once, when she asked what the false pieces were for, she’d been smacked across the face for impudence. And then she’d been summarily removed from that month’s crafting session, but she suspected the residents were being used to make copies of the genuine jewelry. The men in charge would then try to sell those copies as the real item to unsuspecting collectors or desperate women wishing to make a splash in the ton .
Another meow from Peri tugged Mallory from her thoughts.
“Yes, I know these people are horrid, and I know we need to get out more sooner than later, but I can’t do it alone, and you don’t have opposable thumbs.” Another glance out the window revealed that the group traversing the lawn had gone into the flower gardens that contained fruit trees and ornamental bushes and shrubberies as well as flowerbeds. “At this point, I think we need to start hoping for a miracle. I don’t know how much longer I can last here.”
And when she did escape? Well, she had a little secret that would make things better for her and allow a bit of freedom. One of the pieces she’d worked on last month never made it back into her captor’s hands. Made of silver, it had rectangular shaped sapphires set in the delicate filagree work with small round diamonds between each one. Perhaps seven of each stone, with each sapphire measuring one inch long and half and inch wide, it would fetch a nice tidy sum if she chose to pawn it as a whole or sell off the gemstones piecemeal.
In a safe place, she could plan her next movement without worrying or wondering if her mother’s goons would track her to earth.
She smiled as Peri made a warbling noise at a pair of sparrows who alighted on a branch near to Mallory’s window. “Perhaps we’ll move to a place where you can run to your heart’s content in a garden to play with birds and rabbits and mice.”
Even now, that sapphire and diamond necklace resided in the hem of her favorite day dress, the one she wore every other day. She’d sewn it securely between the layers of that hem to make certain it wouldn’t move or fall out, and hopefully it would never be detected... since laundry was rarely done in the asylum.
She’d been fortunate to steal it, for she was also an opportunist. When a fight had broken out between two of the residents, and when the guard was distracted by breaking up the fight, she’d switched the real piece for one of the fake one, then had gone on to pretend an “incident” in which she’d temporarily “gone insane” and wiped everything from the table to the floor. With the real piece safely tucked into a clever pocket she’d ripped and then tied beneath her skirting, she’d spirited the bracelet away shortly before a female staff member was called to escort her back to her room.
Of course, she’d received a punch to the jaw for her “antics” in the dining room and the time it would take for the servants to clean the mess, but she’d considered the pain and bruising as a sign of victory and the first step onto the path to freedom. The letter had been the next step. When she was able to leave the asylum, she intended to make a collar out of part of the necklace, for the feline would be as good a place as any to store the valuables.
Following her beating, the people in charge had not allowed Mallory to leave her room for three days. Meals were few and far between during that time, but it allowed her to formulate the next step of her plan—to write for help. She would escape. There was no other option.
“Meow.”
“Agreed,” Mallory said with a grin. One of the female residents had broken away from her guards and currently fled across the lawn while at the same time relieving herself of various pieces of clothing. There was no mistaking that Agnes’ mind was indeed not quite right. Seconds later, one of the carers ran after her.
Moments of hilarity were few and far between at the asylum, which meant she would succeed in the plan to escape, because she wanted to actually live her life before it was over. No more wasting away here, for there were dreams she still persisted in having regardless of her hopeless status. Beyond that, her mother would pay. The woman who was supposed to care for and protect her children was naught but a monster who abandoned the same. Mallory wanted freedom, romance, love, possibly babies and a loving husband, a chance at a life that didn’t contain abuse, pain, or fear.
However, first she wanted to enjoy everything she was shut out from that a daughter of an earl should have had, everything life had to offer, to have the chance to make decisions on her own, to wear pretty clothes and attend a ball.
Then perhaps the nightmares would stop.