Tight Laced (12 page)

“Don’t be nasty, now. I’m here to alleviate your hysteria. You should be contrite! Grateful!”

Lacy, her head still turned to the side, spoke into damp air. “Grateful? Sir, you bind me, threaten mutilation, and call me mad, and you think that I should show gratitude?”

“With an organ the size of yours, I can see how you might feel as a man would in this circumstance. There is much to learn from your particular confirmation, and I am here to let you know that I have obtained some equipment by which to study it more closely.”

“My so-called
organ
is no bigger or smaller than any other on a female body. Only, I engage with its stimulation more frequently. You do not need calipers or any other piece of equipment to ascertain its limits.”

The doctor cleared his throat, as if he hadn’t heard a word she said, and went right on with his agenda. He ripped the thin sheet from her body, and unlocked the iron bloomers that covered her delicate folds. “Now then, it’s been at least a day since last you’ve engaged in self-pollution. I must take some cursory measurements.”

Lacy grit her teeth as the doctor probed her with his cadre of sharp, cold instruments. There was a pinch and another pinch. Her flesh being pulled and pried at. She clenched her fists and bit her tongue as the pain of his investigation coursed through her body.

Darlington found himself at Highcastle in record time, helped partly by weather that was as mild and cooperative as he dare have wished. For time, he feared, was not on his side.

At the door, he did not wait to be greeted properly, and, indeed, forced himself inside, his forehead wet with perspiration and his gut fiery with anger. Darlington’s head was full of competing thoughts, most of them rallying for first position. He bellowed into the vast, cavernous hall, “Hello?! Lady Bloomsbury! Make yourself available at once!”

In short order came the sound of clackety-clack boots and shushing skirts. It was a maid.

“Sir! What is the meaning of this intrusion? Is our Sarah Jane ill?”

“Sarah Jane is well. I have come for word of the elder daughter.”

“Oh, I … I …”

The maid’s face twisted up in a painful arrangement that Darlington recognized as the contortions of the distressed who might be torn between loyalties. He seized his chance, grabbing the woman by the shoulders, he beseeched her. “You must tell me where she is! She’s in grave danger, Miss. Unfairly imprisoned.”

The maid’s mouth hung open, and she began to utter something unintelligible when they were interrupted by the entrance of Lady Bloomsbury herself, who had glided into the reception hall as silent as a soaring nightingale.

“Perhaps I might enlighten the duke, Tansom. Run along now. Don’t worry about tea; the duke will not be staying.”

Darlington swung round. “You! You evil bat! Tell me where she is! What have you done with her?”

If Lady Bloomsbury was upset, her demeanor did not unveil it. She stood tall and proud, her regal head jutting up from her mourning collar. “Tell me, Duke, how are things at the mine? As bad as we’re hearing?”

Darlington wished to snap her neck in two, and he felt his fingers fidget their way into claw-like talons. “Worse, you heartless biddy. You have forced me into matrimony, and your daughter is safely tucked inside my home, but you must see that Lacy—Lady Lacilia—is freed at once, or I cannot guarantee what I might do…”

“Ha! Your little tart is getting the assistance she needs that she may live a life of grace and worth.”

She stepped closer to him, her finger wagging in his face. “When I told you I didn’t expect you to remain faithful to Sarah Jane, I did not expect you to take up with that whore of a stepdaughter and make us the laughing stock of the country.”

Darlington clenched his jaw. It took everything he had to not push the woman to the floor for her cruelty. He met her rancor with some of his own. “I’ll have you know that your stepdaughter is a virgin. She had planned to carry out the earl’s wishes, and live a life in service to the greater good, and now you’ve seen fit to derail her from her path.”

“The greater good? Holing up with a promised man in an inn of ill-repute with her future brother-in-law? That is this
greater good
you speak of?”

Darlington could not hold back any longer. His hands found their way round the widow’s neck, and he squeezed, “Where is she you wench?!”

She seethed, and coughed out a labored, “So now you will have my daughter married to a murderer?”

He released her and turned his head. “I should kill you, but I don’t have it in me to murder. Pity, that.”

He whipped round once more, and offered a parting shot. “You will burn in hell, you sorry excuse for a human. Make no mistake!”

With that he bolted out the door and fled down the steps to his horse, who was still lathered from the spirited ride. His wits had quite deserted him, and now he was in danger of riding his favorite horse to its death. Oh, the humanity!

Darlington led the horse to a small brook at the edge of the drive, and the horse gulped water. “Easy, boy,” Darlington soothed, his wits recovered enough to remember to ease the stallion into his sips, lest the horse succumb to bloat.

His mind was still whirling with discordant upsets when he saw the valet walking toward him. Likely ready to dismiss him with a firm warning. The duke steeled himself for the opprobrium.

But when the man reached him, his face was muddled with the same sort of turmoil as the maid’s. This valet was conflicted in his new assignment, and Darlington leapt at his mercy.

“Our earl must be rolling in his crypt,” he offered. “Kent, isn’t it?”

“Your Grace,” he sighed, giving a slight bob to his head as form dictated.

“Certainly, in all your years of service to such a benefactor of good, you can see that the widow has undone much of his legacy in short order?”

The valet sighed again. His eyes were filled with sorrow. Tears threatening to flow from their corners.

“Well then?”

“Your Grace, it is not my place to contradict the Lady Bloomsbury, and she’ll surely have my head, but if I were to remain silent, I could not live with myself.”

Darlington, for the first time since that luxurious night in the arms of his beloved, felt an elation take root beneath his ribs. “Tell me, Man. Where is she? I must know!”

“I will tell you, Sir. But I also must tell you something more. You see, I accompanied the young lady and the earl last year when they traveled to London. They met with a solicitor then. There is a peremptory will, one which has been sealed due to Lady Bloomsbury’s petition and accusation.”

“Accusation?”

“She has convinced the court that she must act as guardian to Lady Lacilia, claiming our young lady suffers from hysteria. If that claim is not disproven, the sealed will and testament of a very good man will never see the light of day.”

The most effective treatment for an unmarried woman showing signs of hysteria is to find a husband.

~ Common advice in the 1870s

T
HE LACES AROUND
her wrists criss-crossed like the binding ties of a corset, but instead of silk, the restraints were made of rough hemp. Every time she moved, the rope cut into her flesh, injuring her delicate arms ever further. Her ankles, too, were tied to some sort of anchor.

Lacilia had been in and out of consciousness, and it was hard to discern if pain, lack of food, or more of the chloroform was to blame.

Her head pounded. Her heart skipped beats. She tasted blood every so often and discovered, much to her horror, that her tongue was now scored with a nasty gash. Had she bitten it?

Though she couldn’t sit up, a glance at the ceiling above confirmed that Lacy was no longer in the observation room. They’d hauled her back to surgery – or perhaps to a laboratory where all manner of experiments might be conducted on her person.

She heard a moan, and a gut-wrenching scream. There were other patients in this room. Other women being treated for so-called female hysteria. She joined the cacophony.

“Help!” she shouted, more to learn if she could still speak, given the status of her tongue. At least her throat had been spared.

The face of the evil nurse loomed above her then. “Shut it!” she snapped. “Or I’ll give you more of the sedative.”

Sedative
? So that explained it.

Lacy kept her voice to herself, and began a circumspect navigation of her body – such as she could without use of her arms or legs. She felt numb in her nether region. Similar to how her fingers felt after hours of needlepoint.

“Have they … did he …”

“You are scheduled for the operation,” said the nurse, her harsh tone only mitigated by the cries of the others in the room.

“When?”

“Today,” said the nurse.

Lacy closed her eyes. So this was it, then. There would be no reprieve. Nobody to fight in her behalf. The world had sought to enslave her now that her father was dead. She would live out her days in drudgery, with pleasure a distant memory.

And what of her sister and Darlington? Was there any hope for their happiness? Surely Sarah Jane was still smitten with the idea of becoming a duchess, but she knew nothing of the duties of such a position. She imagined that her sister would be confined to her childlike view forever. And her duke? He would seek comfort in the arms of various courtesans.

The duke. Even in her state of half-consciousness, even with her delicate folds abused until they were rendered free from all feeling, her insides still burned with desire for him.

Would she ever see him again? Would she ever again experience the divine scent – that mixture of forest, manhood and toil that had caused her heart to flutter and her entire being to burst with the fountain of life?

The Herkimer Sanatorium for Female Hysteria was made of the drabbest stone, and was built into a rocky cliff, and as Darlington approached, he was reminded of storybook warts on the end of witch’s noses. The building was a blight.

His horse was exhausted, and stumbled along the rocky shoal, and Darlington dismounted for the last mile, leading his stallion by the rein, and finding a shelter for him a few strides from the imposing gate.