His Love Is a Cage with My Name on It

Chapter Twelve: The Treatment

"Get out of my way, Iris."

I had never heard Damian use that voice on anyone. Iris did not so much as blink.

"You'll want to think, boy, before you finish that sentence." She had not raised her voice either. "I have poured that tea for four brides. Three of them are in the ground because someone in this family got sentimental at exactly the hour you are getting sentimental now."

"Move."

"The first one, you'll remember, was your grandfather's doing. He also thought love was a thing you could smuggle past a debt." Her eyes came to me. "And you, child. You are going to argue that you're different, so let me save you the breath. They all were. One of them was a doctor. One of them figured out the tea in five weeks flat, which is two better than you, and I buried her in November with a rosary in her hands." She stepped aside, unhurried, and gestured us down the corridor like a hostess. "Go and search your cellar. Wake what's under it. I have kept this house through four of these, and I will keep it through the fifth."

We searched the cellar. The room on the old plans was bricked, mortar barely fifty years old, and Damian put his shoulder to it twice before I made him stop, because a restorer knows better than anyone what happens to what is behind a wall you break in a hurry.

Then the household turned.

It began the next morning at breakfast, in front of the staff, and I understood within ninety seconds exactly what it was.

"Madam is unwell," Iris announced to the room, warm as fresh bread. "She's been sleeping badly. Talking to herself in the orangery, poor lamb. Mrs. Dell heard her, didn't you, Mrs. Dell."

Mrs. Dell studied the eggs.

"There's a specialist coming Thursday," Iris continued. "Rest, quiet, and a course of treatment. Nothing to alarm anyone. It runs in the Quinn family, apparently. Her sister mentioned it when she visited."

And there it was. Not poison this time. Paperwork. The oldest trick in the gothic book and the reason it is in every gothic book: you do not need to kill a woman if you can persuade the world she is mad.

I set my cup down.

"How wonderful," I said, to the whole table. "Which specialist? I'd like to write to him before Thursday, with a copy to the family solicitor, and my own physician, and Mr. Halloway at the auction house, who saw me perfectly lucid three weeks ago and who does love a piece of gossip. Shall I do it before or after breakfast?"

The silence had a texture.

"You are learning fast," Iris said.

"I've had a good teacher and I'm running out of time." I stood. "You should know that I've read the diary. Not all of it. Enough to know the handwriting, and enough to know she called you her dearest friend, and enough to know that a woman who was her dearest friend has not aged in a hundred years." I let that sit exactly one beat. "You painted her, madam. I'd love to know what a portraitist charges. I hear the price is very high in this house."

I left before she could answer, which was the only victory available, and I got as far as the orangery before my hands started shaking.

Damian found me there twenty minutes later and put a folded paper on my worktable.

"Thursday's specialist," he said. "I had my office pull him. He signs committal orders. Six of them last year, all for wealthy men's inconvenient wives, all at the request of a family member."

"Which family member requested me?"

He didn't answer, which was the answer, and my stomach dropped through the floor.

"Say it, Damian."

"The application is dated eleven days ago," he said. "And it is signed by your sister."