Nora sat in a soft bed, covered in soft linens, propped high on soft pillows. She wore a soft cotton lawn nightgown, and soft sunlight filtered over the bed from bright windows, their squared edges softened by the white curtains draped softly over them. Her arms were free, and her legs. She could have got up from this strange soft bed if she’d wished, and if she’d had the strength for the endeavor.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so unencumbered. What was this new horror? Or had she finally gone fully mad, and her mind had carried her off so far from the world that she no longer even saw or felt it?
If so, she thought that might be a blessing.
A woman she didn’t know smiled softly at her and picked up her arm in her soft hand. She pressed softly at a point under Nora’s wrist and studied the watch pinned to her white blouse.
The woman wasn’t dressed in a uniform. Her greying dark hair was done up fashionably, and she wore the white blouse with a brown tweed skirt. When she was done staring at her watch, she set Nora’s arm softly on the soft linens.
“Your pulse is much stronger this morning, Lady Nora,” she said in a soft, gentle voice. “Are you feeling clearer?”
Nora understood the question, but she didn’t understand why she should answer. There was a fight to be waged, and her closed mouth was her only weapon.
That seemed strange—ironic, even—but she couldn’t quite remember why.
The woman turned to the table beside the bed and dug into a bag like a medical bag. She pulled out the thing doctors used to listen to a heartbeat. “Do you mind if I take a bit of a listen?”
Was this woman a doctor? Nora didn’t understand, and she didn’t answer.
But she didn’t resist when the woman moved gently closer and tucked her hand inside the soft lawn nightgown to set a cool metal disk on her chest. When she took Nora’s arm and drew her gently from the pillows, Nora let her.
The woman set her back against the pillows and looked down on her, considering. Her pretty, arched eyebrows drew together. “I’d very much like you to try to eat this morning, my lady. Perhaps a spot of tea and a dab of oatmeal? Your aunt says it’s been made the way you like it best, with cinnamon and honey.”
Her aunt? This was a trick, then. A ruse to make her believe she had all the things she wanted and get her to give up her fight. Nora rubbed at her eyes with her free hands and stared hard at the world around her. Still four walls, always four walls that hemmed her in. It didn’t matter that the walls were papered in pretty blue flowers and yellow stripes, or that the windows were large and full of sunlight, or that the air smelled of cinnamon and scented talcum, and not of bodily excretions and rot.
“Lady Nora,” the woman sighed as she pulled up a pretty chair with silk pads on the seat and back. “My name is Stella. Dr. Stella St. John. You’re no longer in the hospital, dear, or the prison. Your family found you, and they brought you here, where you can be well again. Do you remember that at all? The ride to Bath, perhaps? Or being here yesterday? Your aunt sitting with you, talking with you?”
Nora thought about that. The room, she remembered. She’d been in this soft fantasy for a while now, it seemed. Did she remember leaving the hospital? She was in Bath now? Aunt Martha was here?
No, it was a trick. This wasn’t a real place, and she hadn’t ridden anywhere. She was where she’d been. They were trying to make her stop fighting.
But there was a thought—a memory, or a dream only. Strong arms. A voice warm with love and worry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, my darling.
William.
Nora dropped her face into her hands. Even if it was a trick, she wanted to hold onto that memory, or dream, as long as she could.
The woman—Dr. St. John—patted her leg. “I want you to try hard to remember that this is real, all this, right now. Hold to that for me, Lady Nora.”
She rose from her chair, and Nora lifted her head and watched the doctor walk to the door.
“I’ll be just a moment.” She opened the door and stepped out, closing her into this room alone.
Nora stared down at her hands—her free hands. She studied her palms, her wrists—the skin cracked and dark red in bands—her frayed fingernails. She raised her arms high, over her head, then flung them out wide.
She wasn’t bound. Truly, not a dream. Was this place real? She took a deep breath, filled with cinnamon. Did dreams have scent?
Had Aunt Martha saved her?
Or her father—was it Father who’d come for her? It was he who’d thought her mad. She remembered that, the old past, locked in her room while the days and nights rolled in waves through her. Was she locked in this room, too?
Had she merely been moved to a different kind of prison, a softer, gentler madness?
She turned the covers back, resolved to cross the room and test the door. If it was locked, she’d simply throw herself through one of the bright windows and be done. She managed to stand on her feet, but it hurt—from the bottoms of her feet to the top of her head, she suddenly hurt everywhere, and the room careened wildly around her. She grabbed a bedpost to steady herself and try to ride out the pain and lightheadedness.
Leaning on the mattress with each step, willing away the blades of pain in her feet, and the rocking of the floor beneath them, she eased herself to the end of the bed. Just a few feet more.
The door opened, and Nora froze, terrified. Would they hurt her for leaving the bed?
Dr. St. John stood in the doorway, surprised. “Lady Nora!”
There was someone behind the doctor, a tall form obscured in shadow. A man. Nora let go of the bedpost and stood straight, finding all the strength she could, and resolved to face the next thing that would happen with whatever dignity she had left.
The tall form pushed past the doctor, and when the man came into the room’s sunlight, she knew this was all a trick after all, or perhaps a dream of the madness that had at last taken her over.
“Nora. Oh, Nora.”
William. Even as a dream, he took her breath and weakened her knees. Her legs gave out, and she began to fall, but arms, strong arms, caught her and pressed her to a broad chest. The cotton of his shirt was soft and warm against her cheek. She raised her hands and clenched fistfuls of the fabric.
Her eyes burned and her throat ached. A strange, strangled, rasping sound filled the room.
“Shh, shh.” William whispered above her head. William. “Shh, darling. It’s over now.”
The noise came from her, a raw, desperate wail that belonged in the hospital, chained to an iron bed, bound in a straitjacket, violated with tubes and devices. Not in this bright, soft, gentle room, in these strong arms.
Could it be real? Could this all be real?
Or … the thought came on a soft cloud, and quieted her. Had she perhaps died? Was this heaven? If so, she was glad. Eternity with William, in a soft place like this, was her wildest dream. Earthbound or heavenly, this was where Nora wanted to be. She could breathe.
“Is she hurt?” Another male voice, one she knew well, called from a short distance. Christopher. Her brother. She didn’t want him, and she cried out again.
“She can’t have too much at once,” the doctor said. “Please.” The door closed with a firm click.
Closed off from her brother, Nora felt safe. She took a deep breath, steadied her legs, and looked up. William gazed down at her. William. Deep, hazel eyes, rimmed with lashes that sparkled with drops of dew. Not dew—tears. He cried for her.
He smiled softly. A bit of grey scattered in with the dark of his beard. She’d never seen grey on him before. She raised her hand and touched his face, felt the soft scrape of his beard, lifted one of its new grey hairs on the tip of her finger.
Still holding her firmly with one arm snug around her waist, William lifted a hand to hers and brought her fingers to his lips. He kissed the fingertip that had toyed with his beard. “Hello, my love. I’ve missed you.”
“Are you real?” Nora asked, pushing the words over her raw throat and sore tongue. The sound was ugly and dry, and alien. How long since she’d used her voice for any purpose but to scream? “Am I here?”
“Yes, and yes. Nora, it’s over. You’re safe now, and if you’ll have me, I’ll never leave you again.”
Nora’s heart began to race, ricocheting against the walls of her chest. The room spun wildly around them, as if William had grabbed her hands like her father had done when she was small, spinning her until her feet left the earth and she flew.
Her legs gave out again. William kept hold, but this time, he couldn’t keep her tethered, and she slipped away.
When she woke, Nora lay in the same soft bed, between the same soft linens, but with fewer pillows under her head and shoulders. The light in the room was the same soft light, and she wore the same soft gown. Her arms were unrestrained, and her legs. She was still free. This world was the real one. Or it was heaven. In any event, she was saved.
In an armchair clad in floral damask, set right at the bedside, William sat, his head in his hands. He was still here, still real. The sleeves of his shirt—he wore no jacket or waistcoat—were cuffed back almost to his elbows. She studied the strong angles of his wrists, the dark hair over his arms.
Nora reached out and brushed her fingertips over his arm, felt the contours of his strength.
He lifted his head and gave her a smile. “Nora. How do you feel?”
She tried another word, and a truth. “Lost.” Her voice was a dusty, disused relic.
He clasped her hand between his. “You’re found, darling. Not lost anymore. Nora, can you forgive me?”
Like a book left out in the weather, the memory had faded, and parts seemed to have washed away, but she remembered his leaving, and the feel of it. She hadn’t been angry at him, hadn’t blamed him. It was Christopher, and her father, she blamed.
“My father … is he here?” She swallowed the pain in her throat.
“No, love. He doesn’t know. Would you like him to?”
Relief suffused her at once, a bubble popping in her heart and adding air to her veins. He wasn’t here; she wouldn’t be locked away. She was safe. “No. He … no. I don’t … everything feels … confusing. You’re real? This is real?”
William opened her hand and kissed her palm. “Yes.” He stood from the chair and leaned over her to press a kiss to her forehead, and to her cheek, and finally, lightly, on her sore lips. “Yes, Nora. This is all real. Your brother’s here, too. And your Aunt Martha. Would you like to see them?”
Not Christopher, no. He’d sent William away. Aunt Martha … her feelings were strange and twisted around her. Too strange and too twisted to sort out yet. She shook her head. “Just you. Don’t go.”
“I won’t, as long as you want me here.”
“Forever, then.”
He smiled and rested his forehead on hers. “Forever.”
A knock on the door prompted William to strand straight. The doctor, Dr. … St. John, stepped in. “I thought I heard voices, and glad I am to hear them, too. Good morning again, Lady Nora. How are you feeling now, dear?”
She met William’s eyes and felt less lost, less confused. “Better, I think.”
“Excellent!” She came to the bed and collected her stethoscope from her medical bag. Understanding what she wanted, Nora sat up. The room tilted, and she sagged, but William’s arm was there, somehow, supporting her.
The doctor cocked an eyebrow at Nora as she listened to her heart. When she was finished, she said, “Might I urge you to try to eat? We’ve got a nice pot brewed, and perhaps some toast?”
Not eating had been important. She’d fought that way, stayed strong inside that way, refused to let them have her. There’d been a reason, a real fight—women’s suffrage, it had been suffrage she’d starved for—but in the end, the fight had been her own, for her own justice, her own self. She hadn’t given them what they’d wanted.
The past weeks flowered to vivid reality in her still wavering mind, and she pressed her hands to her head to slow their flow. The beatings; the tube down her throat; the icy, endless baths; the black closet with its rank reek and the scratching of rats in the walls; the device between her legs, with men around her, watching. The cold. The loneliness. The despair.
“Nora?” William’s worry reverberated in her name.
“They … made me … they … did … they …” She couldn’t say it, not any of it.
The mattress sagged at her hip, and William pulled her into his arms, onto his lap. “I know, darling. I know. They’ll never touch you again.”
“I only wanted to be myself.”
“And you will never have to be anyone else. I’ll make sure of it.”
But she wanted to do it for herself.
The memories settled back to lurk at her edges. She sighed and rested against William’s chest. She needed him.
“Will you try some tea and toast, Nora?” he asked, his lips moving on her cheek.
“Yes.” Her fight was over.
But she hadn’t won.
Each day, Nora felt a bit stronger, and the world seemed a bit more real. Time settled back into its place in the calendar, and she understood that she’d been at Bedlam for a month, and in Holloway for two weeks before that. Six weeks out of the world.
No, far longer than that. Since the summer, when her father had rushed her home from London and locked her away. It was January now. Six months out of the world.
And out of it still. The only people who knew who she was and why she was in Bath had been in this quaint little cottage with her. All the rest of the world, any who cared to think of her at all, thought she was missing.
She didn’t yet know what had happened to Kate, or to Maude, and she didn’t want to speak their names to ask, lest she put them at some risk. She didn’t understand all that it meant, that she had been missing.
But Nora felt a kind of luxury in it, in the power to be missing. She could claim her name and title if she wished, or she could reject it and be someone else. Someone, perhaps, whose life held more promise than hers had.
While her mind found its moorings, her body still faltered. Though she took food now as often as she was asked to, and she kept most of it down, she continued weak and fatigued. Her muscles ached from lack of use, and the bottoms of her feet seemed filled with broken glass when she tried to walk, or even to stand. It was the pressure of her bones on the soles of her feet, Dr. St. John told her. Her body had lost so much of itself there was no cushion left between her skeleton and the world. So she kept eating, kept trying to be strong again.
When she wouldn’t see him, Christopher returned to London. After a short, awkward visit at her bedside, Aunt Martha went with him, to prevent any comment that might be made if she, who rarely left the city, took a long, unexpected absence from London. A few days later, when Nora could move about the cottage on her own, Dr. St. John returned to her practice, promising to be back for weekly visits, and to hurry back should she be needed urgently.
Thereafter, in the little cottage were only Nora and William, their only company the housemaid, Nell. In the world before, it would have been the height of scandal, to be here, unchaperoned, with a single man. But here, where she was anyone she wanted to be, knowing or being known by no one, it didn’t matter.
This was a life she could love, this tiny life.
On the first night that they were alone together, William covered her legs with a soft blanket and sat beside her before the fire. Nell had washed up after tea and excused herself for the evening. She lived away, elsewhere in town. Nora and William were entirely alone.
Sitting beside her in his shirtsleeves, his collar off and his braces loose at his hips, his cuffs rolled up and his top buttons undone, showing a hint of the hair on his chest, William was the picture of cozy domesticity. His hair was just a bit disordered, and just a bit too long. A few threads of grey at his temples matched the scatter in his beard. Oh, he was handsome.
He reached out and brushed his fingers through her hair. She didn’t like him, or anyone, to touch the butchered mess, so she tipped her head away. When Aunt Martha had handed over the mirror she’d demanded, Nora had wept. She was a horror to behold—her skin dry and sallow, her eyes and cheeks sunken into a death’s mask, her hair dull and chopped like an urchin’s. Old, blotchy bruises and crusty scabs marred her mouth.
Nothing about her was beautiful any longer. She hadn’t thought she’d cared about her appearance—she’d thought, in fact, that she hated it, the only aspect of her that anyone seemed to see or care to see—but now that her beauty was gone, she understood that it had been part of her, and important.
At least to look like herself, if not to be beautiful any longer. If only she could recognise the woman in the mirror.
William knew the direction of her thoughts, if not their destination. “Nora, your hair will grow back. Your bruises will fade.”
“I know.” Her voice was stronger but still huskily unfamiliar. “It’s not that. I hope it’s not. It’s … I’m not sure.” Her months of drugged disconnection had worn thin spots on her ability to arrange her thinking. She took her time and worked her ideas out aloud. “I don’t think I know who I am anymore. I don’t recognise myself inside or out.” She was a blank slate, she told herself, and could be anyone she wanted.
But what she wanted was to be herself. The woman she’d clamored to be before. The woman her father had locked away. She’d never had a chance to be herself.
“I’m afraid I’ve lost who I was. Father tried to take her away from me, and I’m afraid he succeeded.”
He picked up her hand. “I’ll help you find her.”
“William, you can’t. Don’t you see? I have to find her myself.”
“What do you need? What would you like me to do?”
He wanted to save her, to heal her. She loved him for that, and for so many things, but he didn’t understand. Neither did she, entirely. Melancholy enveloped her, but she gave him a smile and brought his hand to her mouth.
His shoulders sagged. “Do you want me to go?”
“No,” she answered at once, adamantly, and clutched his hand to her chest. “No, no, no. Please no.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her lips—still only gently, carefully, with no intent but love and comfort. “I’ll stay with you forever, Nora. As long as you want me with you. I swear it. Wherever you want to be, if you want me there, I will be. I love you. I never should have left. I should have fought for us.”
She shook her head against his cheek. “Father and Christopher would have had you deported. I would have wanted the chance to choose for myself, but they wouldn’t have let me have it. I don’t know how I could have got away to be with you then. I wouldn’t have been able to imagine what they were capable of then. You didn’t leave me. They took you from me.”
He didn’t respond immediately. When he did, he changed the subject. “How can I make way for you to find what you need?”
She liked that question better than the one he’d asked before, but she didn’t know its answer, either. “I don’t know. I’ll have to find my own way. If you can be patient and be with me whilst I do.”
“That’s the easiest thing anyone’s ever asked of me.”
Their cottage had three bedrooms and a small library, as well as the main rooms. Nora had the largest bedroom. William had a small room upstairs. Though they might have appeared scandalous, the cozy walls were packed with propriety.
But on the first night that Dr. St. John was away, Nora felt the dark quiet of the house too keenly. The yellow stripes of the wallpaper—grey in the moonlight—seemed like bars of a cage. The wind blew briskly, rustling bare branches, and every brush of one against the windowpanes was like a hopeless moan of a shackled woman.
She lay with her eyes open, watching the riotous shadows on the ceiling, like wizened arms and clawed hands grasping, and felt trapped and alone, afraid to close her eyes lest she open them and find that she was still at Bedlam.
Finally, she could stand it no longer. She had to be sure she wasn’t locked in. Casting back the covers—she wasn’t restrained, at least—she minced on her sore feet to the door. The knob turned freely, and she opened it.
The corridor was dark, but a ruddy glow came from the front of the cottage, swelling from the entry to the parlour. With her hand on the wall to keep her feeble feet steady, she went forward.
Peering around the corner, she saw William, standing before the fireplace, his back to her. His shirt was loose from his trousers and possibly open, and his feet were bare. As she watched, he tipped his head back and drank from a glass, then set it, now empty, on the mantelpiece. He leaned on the mantelpiece, his hand beside the empty glass, and his head sagged forward.
Behind her, the ornate clock began its mechanical workings. She heard the woodcutters pick up their Sisyphean task of sawing a log they never would finish, while a pretty Alpine tune played. Then the cuckoo chirped once, twice, and was quiet. Two o’clock.
“William?”
He spun on his heel. His shirt billowed open, and she saw his bare chest, and remembered it. That night, that beautiful, perfect night, the one time since she’d been made to put up her hair and lengthen her skirts that she had been herself, purely, happily herself.
“Nora! What’s wrong? Are you ill?”
She went to him, slowly. When she wobbled, he closed the distance and held her, and she was safe.
“Are you ill, darling?” he asked again.
“No.” No more ill than he already knew. “I can’t sleep. The dark—with the house so empty, it’s filling up with phantoms.”
“What can I do?”
She hadn’t known that there would be an answer until he asked the question. “Will you come to bed with me?”
His brow drew in. The firelight flickered in his eyes and made them flame.
She didn’t mean the thing that seemed to confound him. “I want you to hold me, William, if you will. I want to feel safe when the ghosts come.”
He stared on, silently, and Nora wondered if there were more he waited to hear. When she would have asked, he dipped low and swept her into his arms, cradling her, and carried her into her bedroom.
William laid her in the still-warm spot she’d left, and he walked around the bed and turned the covers back, sliding in next to her.
His clothes were still on. “Will you be comfortable?” she asked.
“More comfortable than I’ve been for a long time.”
Smiling, he reached for her. She turned and tucked herself inside the sweep of his arm, resting her head on his chest. A fold in his open shirt bothered at her cheek; she lifted her head to push it away. She lay on his bare skin, felt his heartbeat thud calmly at her ear. Her hand rested on his belly, lifting with each of his steady breaths.
There would be no moaning, no grasping claws, no ghosts. She was safe now.
As if she’d said the words she’d only thought, William answered them. “I will always keep you safe, Nora.” He kissed her head and snugged her close. “Always.”
Rest came on her with a sigh, and she closed her eyes. She wanted to find her own way back and be her own self, find her own strength, but not alone.
Never alone again.