Page 117

Slow down, she told herself. Don’t barrel into her.

She managed to close the final distance at a reasonable pace. The black-haired woman froze, arms stiff at her sides.

“Effie!” It burst from her. “Effie! It’s you.”

Disconcerting, to behold Anthony’s beauty in female form. The black hair twisted into a thick braid was the same color and texture as his, and she had his heavy brows. She must have been accustomed to plucking them thin, as was the fashion, but during her long incarceration, they’d grown back. They made the look of the pale green eyes set deeply beneath even more familiar.

“Your brother sent me,” Lucy panted. “Anthony.”

Now those pale green eyes glowed with anguish.

“He knows I’m here?” Effie’s voice was rich and fluting, but its music was terrible, rising wildly in pitch. Anguish was giving way to fury. “Where is he, then? Why hasn’t he come?” She twisted her hands together, fingers bending at alarming angles.

“How could he leave me here?” She keened the question. In that haunting sound, Lucy heard the trace of her despair, the terror, rage, and degradation that had been her only companions in these lonely months.

“Shhhhhh.” Lucy made a soothing noise, glancing over her shoulder. Guards and nurses were scattered about, none, as yet, observing their meeting. The sun emerged from behind a cloud and the green of the grounds intensified, barred with jet-black shadow. “He doesn’t know,” she said, softly, stepping closer. “He’s been looking for you. He never gave up. We’re going to get you out of here. I’m Lucy.” She grabbed Effie’s hand, trying to still her restless movements, to communicate strength. Effie’s fingers were ice-cold, but she gripped back hard and, all at once, she calmed.

“I’m a friend,” said Lucy, and Effie seemed to accept this without judgment.

“We should walk,” she said. “Don’t look at me when you talk. They think conversation will excite my nerves.”

She had the same cadence as Anthony, the same elite drawl and easy, dark irony. Her mouth turned down at the corner with disgust.

“They’re watching,” she whispered. “I don’t want them to restrain me. I can’t bear that, not again.”

Lucy found it difficult to look away from that fascinating face. The features were harder and more pronounced than in the Burgess miniature, as though the eyes, cheekbones, nose, lips, chin, had been outlined in ink.

She matched Effie’s shuffling steps, staring at the ground, like the lunatic women who paced the airing courts. How many of those women were mad and how many were simply trapped, coping with an insane predicament? Was there a difference? Lucy shuddered, even though the sun had warmed the air.

“How did you find me?” Effie’s voice reached her, and she lifted her head, just slightly, looking off over the heath. They were high enough that she could see over the wall, see the yellow of spring flowers intermixed with the green, and the woodlands, the ancient trees newly in leaf.

“A wire walker,” she said. “I met her at Rafferty’s Music Hall. She watched them drag you away.”

“Hetty. I lived with her in the boardinghouse after—” The words cut off abruptly.

Lucy hesitated. She didn’t know Effie after all. But it was easy to talk this way, the two of them side by side, speaking as though to their shoes, or the clouds.

“Anthony told me about your husband,” she said.

“Husband.” Effie laughed quietly. “Was he my husband? Hetty warned me he’d leave without me, that he never had any intention of staying, or of bringing me along. He already has a wife in New York, and maybe another in California.”

Lucy was glad Effie couldn’t see her face. Her cheeks were burning on the other woman’s behalf.

The great Charlie Nixon indeed.

They were approaching Miss Fox, still bent over her drawing, and Effie doubled back, walking the way they’d come, but not before Lucy took the young artist in, the slight frame, the pale hair and narrow face. This tiny girl had murdered her parents?

“I don’t regret it,” Effie said, reclaiming her attention.

Lucy watched the shadows move on the grass, slowly, as the clouds shifted, waiting for her to continue.

“I felt free for the first time,” she said. “Traveling with him through the countryside, and even afterward, when it was over and I was alone in London. I liked living on my own, singing. It was always my dream to sing. The only thing I regret is going back home. That was true madness. I had so little money in my new life for necessities, and the closets and drawers of my old bedroom were overflowing with treasures. Gowns, jewelry, my good hairbrush. I dreamed about that hairbrush at night. I wanted to take just a few things, to make my way easier.”

She’d sped up in her agitation, and Lucy touched the sleeve of her plaid stuff dress to slow her. They’d almost reached the stone wall.

“You went home?” she murmured. “I thought—”

“I knew Collins would turn me away at the door, so I went through the garden and climbed through the nursery window, just like Cuckoo and I used to do for fun. Part of me hoped I would find him there, not in the nursery, somewhere in the house. He’d been back for months at that point, without answering a single one of my letters. That has been the worst of it . . . wondering if he knew, if he agreed to this—”