‘Very well, if it means you’ll stop asking. Thomas was engaged to a very beautiful, charming, talented and well-connected young woman. It was a passionate affair – too passionate, as they were both of a fiery nature. Her father is the 1st Earl of Halsbury, a judge and a government minister, among other things. There was an understanding between the families that there would be a marriage, but Thomas didn’t want to wed. The whole affair had gone too far, however, and there was a great risk of embarrassment for both families if the union didn’t go ahead.
‘His sister Helen is a strategist, a very shrewd young woman, and politically she had to insist the marriage go ahead. Thomas begged her to help un-arrange the arrangement, so to speak. If he married that girl, he knew he would be under the command of her father, he would be reduced to a mere whipping boy in a family much wealthier than his. Thomas needs to be free – oh, Susannah, he would have been miserable as the henpecked husband in the house of an earl – but Helen wouldn’t hear of it. There was no elegant way to exit such a partnership without causing scandal and animosity, not that Thomas ever cared about the fragility of such relationships. So, you understand, he married you in a somewhat prolonged fit of temper. Helen was livid of course, and humiliated, but it was the only way to put an end to the matter. That is why you have never met Thomas’s family, and why there was never going to be a visit here or to Abbingdale Hall.’
‘I still don’t understand – why me?’
‘Because you are no one, Susannah. You have no immediate family, no relatives, no benefactor, no one to cause inconvenience or ask questions. Thomas had affection for you, he spoke fondly of you, but he’s so special, you understand, his attention could never be engaged by an ordinary woman. If it could not be kept by a great beauty – the daughter of an earl, no less – it was never going to be kept by you. I knew it wouldn’t work. He bores easily. It’s a sign of great intellect, some say. I did try and tell him it wouldn’t end well, but when he gets an idea into his head, as you well know…’
She bent down to pick up the remaining contents of the tray. When she stood up again, I was staring past the wall.
‘See?’ she said. ‘This has upset you. Sometimes it’s best not to ask, in case you receive an answer.’ She gazed down at me, tethered as I was to my bed, with such pity, I felt a torrent of rage.
‘I saw you together,’ I told her. ‘I saw you on the stairs. You called him “Thomas” and stroked his face.’
The look of pity disappeared, and her face assumed its stony-faced owl expression.
‘You have a monstrous mind,’ she said. Her hands trembled and she threw the tray to the floor with a crash, scattering those things she’d already picked up. She stalked out, slammed the door and locked it shut behind her.
33
By November, Mrs Wiggs had taken off my ankle restraints. It was not an act of kindness, but to give the marks on my skin time to recover ahead of my visit from Dr Shivershev. I assumed he was needed to co-sign the lunacy order that would have me confined. I was still locked in my bedroom, but I made no attempt to escape. What would be the point? The outside world was as inhospitable as a snow-covered mountain. I had neither the money nor the resources to survive by myself. Locked in my bedroom was where I was most comfortable, and the laudanum numbed me. I was not frightened of my captors, though I should have been. It was my cowardice that kept me trapped. I could have opened a window and screamed for help; that would have brought the police. I could have climbed down, but I didn’t. What would the police have done? Most likely hand-deliver me back to my husband.
Thomas himself looked remarkably different the next time I saw him. His black whiskers were back to perfect symmetry, the silver sparkle in his eye had returned, and Mrs Wiggs was behind him, his eager shadow.
‘You don’t think she looks too thin?’ He addressed Mrs Wiggs as if I wasn’t in the room.
‘Well, what would you have me do?’
‘Pale, she looks pale.’
‘Isn’t that the point? She’s not meant to look well, is she?’
‘You don’t understand!’ he shouted suddenly, making both of us start. ‘He won’t sign if… He won’t sign if he thinks she’s being mistreated.’
He peered at me as if I were a specimen, hands clasped behind his back like a doddering old lord inspecting his rose bushes.
‘How are her arms?’ He grabbed one of my hands and pulled up the sleeve of my nightdress to see where Mrs Wiggs had been injecting me. Both arms were a riot of bruises, albeit fading ones.
‘No! What have I told you!’ he shouted.
‘I’m trying my best, Thomas,’ she said, on the brink of tears.
‘She looks as if she’s been bloody tortured!’ He dropped my hand. ‘No more injections! Tincture only. We have to let the bruising go down. Dr Shivershev wants to see her this week and when he comes, make sure she has her sleeves rolled down.’
‘Tincture? Which bottle is that?’
I had never seen them like this: fractured, bickering. They were like a pair of old seagulls snapping at each other.
As I stared at the two of them, in silhouette, free to observe them uninterrupted, I had a startling revelation. A realisation that should have been plain as day but had taken my confinement to see what was right in front of me. Thomas’s hairline had a lopsided widow’s peak. I knew that, of course. It was quite distinctive. Now that I was looking at Mrs
