Page 94 of A Murder in Bloomsbury

“Harkness is ready," he said, the moment Bexley had withdrawn. "The petition wants only the names and the date. The moment Edgar signs the order procuring the admission, we answer it."

I had braced for this and still felt the floor shift beneath me. "And the other matter? The man who—" I could not make myself say killed Lydia in my own drawing room.

“We have a name—Murphy. The rest can keep." He set down his stick. “You have news. It’s written all over your face."

He knew me too well by half. Surprising, given our short acquaintance. “The poem survived the fire," I said. "Quennell had it the whole time. He means to publish—not tomorrow, as he first wished, but on the day we lay the challenge. ‘The Mask of Virtue’ will be in every coffee house in London by noon.”

For a moment, Thorne said nothing. Then something eased at the corner of his mouth that, in another man, would have been a smile. "Loud," he said, "and clever, and at the one moment it cannot miss. Quennell has more spine than his nerves advertise."

"That is very nearly word for word what I told him."

"Then we are both right, which I find happens more often in your company than out of it."

I had no chance to decide whether that was gallantry or merely Thorne, because Bexley reappeared at the door. "Lord Charles Merriton, my lady. I did say you were engaged.”

Lord Charles stormed past him as though Bexley were a curtain rather than a man. He was hatless, his hair disordered, his color high. He had clearly come at speed from somewhere.

“Lady Larkspur, forgive me, I would not intrude for the world, only I am this hour back in town and I have heard the most—" He saw Thorne and stopped. Gathering himself with visible effort, he said, "Forgive me. I am interrupting."

“You are forgiven. Lord Charles Merriton. Lord Everthorne,” I said by way of introduction.

In the space of a breath, they took each other's measure. Thorne saw a young man undone by feeling and not ashamed of it. Lord Charles saw a man who had never been undone by anything in his life.

“Everthorne. I know the name." Lord Charles bowed, distractedly, and then abandoned ceremony altogether. “A note was waiting for me from a friend. It said that Westmere had taken Linnet from this house. Forcibly carried her off, and Westmere is saying that she’s unwell. And that he’s taken her to the country to be looked after." The words spilled out of him like something spat. "I do not believe a syllable of it. She was in perfect health when I left for Hampshire. So I ask you plainly, Lady Larkspur, why would a man take his own sister from her home and the sister who loves her? Why has he done this thing?”

It was the right question. But I could not answer it gently, so I did not try.

"Sit down, Lord Charles,” Thorne said.

"I cannot possibly⁠—"

"Sit down," Thorne repeated, in a voice that brooked no disobedience, "and you will be told. Stand there and you will not, because Lady Larkspur will be too occupied wondering whether to catch you when you go over."

Lord Charles sat.

"What my brother wants," I said, "is to be rid of her. He wants her somewhere he need never see her face nor suffer her presence again, and, above all, somewhere the world will never find her." I made myself hold his gaze. "You must understand how my brother sees the Westmere name. As something spotless. A clean line, unbroken, nothing in it to remark upon or apologize for. And in the whole of that gleaming inheritance, there is one thing he cannot bear, one thing he has spent his adult life pretending does not exist." My voice was not quite steady. "A sister who cannot hear. A flaw, he calls her. A blot upon the page. And a man does not display a blot. He makes it disappear.”

Lord Charles had gone very white.

"There is one certain way," I went on, "to make a woman vanish from the world entirely and keep her vanished for the whole of her life, with the law to bless the doing of it." I made myself say it. "He means to have her declared mad and committed to an asylum."

For a moment Lord Charles did not move at all. But then he gathered himself: "On what grounds? She is the sanest creature in London. There is not a court in the land that would entertain it."

"No court," Thorne said.

Lord Charles turned to him. "I beg your pardon?"

"There is no court. That is the first thing you must understand, and the worst of it." Thorne spoke without heat, which somehow made it land harder. "You are imagining a hearing. A judge. Linnet brought before someone and given the chance to speak, to be questioned, to be seen. There is nothing of the kind. There is no hearing at all."

"Then on what authority can he⁠—"

"On the authority of two doctors and a sheet of paper." Thorne let it sit. "The law asks for two medical certificates. Two physicians examine her—separately. They can’t have a financial interest in the house she is sent to, so that no man profits by the verdict. Each signs to say she is of unsound mind. Her nearest male relative signs the order for her reception. The papers go to the madhouse. The madhouse opens its doors." A pause. “That is the whole of it.”

Lord Charles had gone very still while Thorne spoke, the color leaching slowly from his face with each sentence. He looked, for the moment, like a man holding himself together by will alone. “Surely, that cannot be the whole of it."

"It is. No one asks the woman. No one need so much as tell her until the carriage is at her door. She has no warning, no counsel, no soul to stand up and say she is sane. By the time she understands what is being done to her, it is already done." Thorne's voice did not rise, but something behind it had gone to ice. "And once that door is shut, she may not appeal to any court in England. The law stripped that from her the instant the certificates were signed. She can be reviewed by one body only—the Commissioners in Lunacy—and by no one else. Not a judge. Not her family." He held the younger man's gaze. "Not the man who loves her."

"Two doctors," Lord Charles said, barely above a whisper. "Two doctors and Westmere's signature, and she is gone?” He brushed a hand across his troubled brow. After a measure of time, he asked, “For how long?"