Page 79 of A Murder in Bloomsbury

You may rest assured that her welfare is being attended to.

E.

That was all. No direction. No name of a house. No opportunity for reply. Just certainty.

Cold.

Absolute.

Final.

My hands began to shake. The words on the page swam and blurred, then sharpened again, each one worse than the last.

“Lark.”

I barely heard Miriam as I sank down onto the nearest chair.

A physician.

Certifications.

Future care.

I knew precisely what those words meant. Only hours earlier I had stood inside Elmwood House. I had walked its corridors with my heart in my throat. I had heard the answers given by a smiling clergyman. I had heard the screams that no amount of polished oak and fresh paint could muffle. I had watched a woman claw at iron bars and beg strangers for help while the proprietor spoke gently of nerves, and delicacy, and the great kindness of removing such unfortunates from the world's notice.

Now physicians would examine Linnet. Certify her in need of care. And lock her away the rest of her natural life. She was barely eighteen.

The room tilted. I pressed my palm flat against the cold tabletop until it steadied.

“Did anyone accompany him?” I asked, without looking up.

"A gentleman I did not recognize, my lady. Possibly a solicitor." Bexley had followed us into the room and stood now just inside the door, his hands folded before him with the stiffness of a man holding himself together by discipline alone. "He carried a leather case and said very little."

My stomach dropped further. Of course Edgar would bring a solicitor. He would have come in good order, with a man of business at his elbow to note the date and the hour, so that whatever he did this morning would wear, ever after, the appearance of duty soberly performed.

"Did Linnet go willingly?"

The butler hesitated. "No, my lady. His lordship was forced to carry her into the carriage."

My eyes closed. And though it grieved me, I was glad. I was glad she had fought.

She had been frightened. She had been distressed, and most surely terrified—because Linnet would have understood. She missed nothing. She read faces the way I read print, and she would have read Edgar's, and the stranger's, and Bexley's helpless one, and known in an instant exactly what was happening to her.

And I had not been here.

I had been in Kent. Miles away, congratulating myself on my cleverness, walking the corridors of one such house to gather what I might use against him—while the door I had left unguarded swung open behind me.

“Did she leave a message?” My voice had gone very quiet. “Some word. Anything. She would have tried.”

Bexley looked regretful and older than I had ever seen him. “She was not allowed to, my lady.”

I had to know where he’d taken her. Think. Think. There had to be something. A name. An address. The physician's direction. A clue carelessly let slip. Edgar was thorough, but no man was perfect, and I had unraveled tighter knots than this.

But there was only the letter. One sheet of folded paper that told me everything of his intention and nothing of her whereabouts. He had given me certainty in place of facts, knowing certainty was the crueler gift.

A knock suddenly sounded on our front door. None of us moved. I could not have risen if the house were on fire.

When the knock sounded again, Bexley said, “I best attend to that, my lady.”