“Since this man works here, I hope you have a lock on your door.”
She nodded. “And if that doesn’t work, I have the knife, with which I am quite proficient.”
“Then go in now,” Beau said, “and I will wait here with this gentleman until you are safely inside. Then he and I shall have a bit of a talk.”
Pip frowned. “Not too much of a talk.”
“Just enough.”
The last thing she saw before running for the kitchen door was the look of dread in the guard’s dark eyes. She supposed she should have felt bad that it made her feel better.
* * *
Beau wasn’t goingto survive this. Walking back to the pub he had made his base, he rubbed at the scraped knuckles on his right hand and let loose the foulest curses he could think of. They needed to find another way of communicating. What if he hadn’t been there tonight? What if she hadn’t reacted so quickly?
He had to grin, though. By damn, she had a deadly knee. Hopefully in the future that guard would reconsider importuning young woman.
“Saw you was in a bit of a scuffle,” the pub owner offered as Beau pushed open the door. “You took care of that pest?”
“You know him?”
“Only seen him around. One of the men works at the sanitarium. Don’t like it. Don’t like it at all, all those poor women and this jackal free on the grounds.”
“Well, I don’t think he’ll be bothering her again. I got there just as she was disabling him with a pretty fierce knee.”
The publican, a red-faced bear of a man, just nodded his head and picked up a stein to fill it. “This one’s on me. We need more gentlemen in this neck of the woods.”
Beau grinned, even though he hardly felt like it. “Why, thank you. So, that’s an asylum? I wondered.”
The man looked up and frowned. “For women. I could tell you stories.”
Beau had been about to retreat to a table in the corner. Instead, he pulled up a barstool and sat.
“You’re not from around here,” the man mused.
Beau took a long draft of a surprisingly nice porter. “I’m not. Hope you don’t mind. I’m supposed to meet a friend to do a bit of private work for me. He got delayed in Portsmouth and didn’t know when he’d get here.”
He got a slow nod. “Why not meet him at home?”
Beau’s smile was wry. “’Cause my wife’s at home, and she objects to me meetin’ a man who soused me out of a monkey.”
That got him honest laughter and eventually stories he didn’t want to know about
Richmond Hills Asylum.
Beau wasn’t sure anymore that he could wait until Drake gave the go ahead before getting Pip out. In fact, he should have kept going with her tonight, rather than let her remain anywhere near that bastard. Or the other bastards, from what he was hearing.
The problem was exactly what it would always be. She would never leave until she could get those women out with her.
It was time for another drink. Lord, by the end of this mess, he’d be drooling and singing sea chanties.
* * *
It wastwo days later in mid-morning when Pip realized something had changed. The atmosphere inside the asylum had suddenly gone tense and whispery, with the longer-term employees formed into clusters, and those clusters looking unsettled. Nervous. Angry. She tried to sidle up to listen to the whispered conversations, but they saw her and immediately dispersed.
Pip wanted to go check to see if Kit Braxton was at his post, but she was unaccountably afraid to leave the women alone. Patients were being led into their rooms and their doors locked. Matron had disappeared into the pantry. Two of the guards entered from the back door and met with the matron, one the man who had assaulted her the night before. Pip couldn’t take her eyes off them, even as she swept the floor in the dayroom.
She was afraid. She didn’t know what to do or how to get a warning out. She couldn’t get to her room to set the candle up. But she couldn’t simply stand by. So she finished her sweeping and wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water. And did her best to listen to the conversation in the pantry.
