‘There are gardens in the back?’ Henrietta asked in surprise. The shrieker put her all into one final cry and then went still, whether at her own volition or at someone else’s being entirely unclear.
‘Yes, miss.’ The orderly smiled, displaying several missing teeth. Charlotte wondered if they had been missing before, or gone missing due to his work at the mad hospital. ‘So the inmates can exercise, like. The ones as ain’t too wild, that is.’
‘What happens to those?’ Henrietta asked, looking repelled and fascinated at the same time.
The orderly’s eyes went up to the barred windows above. ‘We keeps them safe, miss – don’t you worry.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ said Henrietta reassuringly, and widened her eyes in horror at Charlotte behind the orderly’s back.
‘Righty-ho! There’s the doctor now!’ With evident relief, the orderly pointed at two men coming around the side of the building. ‘There’s your Dr Simmons, miss, and I ’ope ’e can be of ’elp to you and yer poor sister.’
‘Oh, it’s not for her, precisely.’ Henrietta was hedging, while Charlotte gave an excellent impression of being quite as mad as the orderly clearly thought her by staring for all she was worth at the pair of men approaching them along the length of the building.
One was the other orderly. He was of no interest to Charlotte. The other was clearly the doctor. His coat was black, but plainly cut and neatly buttoned across the chest with a double row of buttons over a plain white stock, simply tied. Rather than a wig, he wore his own greying hair pulled back and tied into a queue, making no effort to conceal the receding of the hairline over either temple. His stockings were immaculate.
In short, he was a distinguished-looking man, not at all what one would expect from a mad-doctor. And he bore absolutely no resemblance to the man Charlotte had seen in the king’s bedchamber that morning.
‘That,’ whispered Charlotte to Henrietta, ‘is not Dr Simmons.’
Chapter Seventeen
Henrietta looked at Charlotte as though she suspected her of being a little mad after all. ‘That is what the orderly just called him.’
Charlotte did her best to speak without moving her lips. The result was not an entire success. ‘That isn’t what I meant. That is not the man I saw in the king’s bedchamber.’
‘You mean …’
Charlotte wished she knew what she meant. ‘I don’t know. There must be some mistake.’ Abandoning Henrietta, she ventured towards the approaching men. Raising a hand, she called out, ‘Dr Simmons?’
He certainly appeared to be under the delusion that he was Dr Simmons.
‘Yes?’ he asked slightly impatiently. ‘I am informed that you wish to speak with me.’
It would be tempting to believe that it was a delusion, that he was a patient whose madness had taken on the form of impersonating his own doctor. But too many details militated against that theory. Even if the orderlies hadn’t deferred to him, his clothes were too expensive and too neatly kept to belong to one of the patients. His expression, while irritable, was eminently rational.
Who wouldn’t be a bit annoyed at being dragged from his work to attend a pair of flighty young ladies? He was probably afraid they were there for an afternoon’s diversion, touring the cells of the insane for sport, as they did in Bedlam, where, for a penny, anyone could enter to gawk and jeer. Charlotte had heard visitors were even permitted to bring long sticks with which to poke at the inmates. From the way the orderlies had ranged themselves on either side of the door, it was clear that such behaviour was not allowed at St Luke’s.
But if he was Dr Simmons, who was the man back at the Palace?
On an impulse, Charlotte batted her eyelashes at him and said in a fluttery sort of voice, ‘I had hoped I might trouble you for a consultation. It is my grandmother, you see. I fear she may be …’
‘No longer possessed of all her proper faculties?’ the doctor finished helpfully.
‘I fear so,’ said Charlotte sadly. ‘She has taken to having herself carried around her own home on a gilded palanquin, striking out at any who dare approach her with a sort of sceptre.’
Next to her, Henrietta’s bonnet brim quivered.
‘I see,’ said the doctor briskly. ‘In essence, your grandmother suffers from violent delusions.’
Henrietta stuffed her hands against her mouth to contain a fit of coughing that escaped around her gloved fingers in a series of explosive snorts. The doctor took a discreet step back.
Charlotte followed him, winding her bonnet string coyly around one finger and doing her best to look adoringly daft. But not too daft. She didn’t want to find herself in hot vinegar up to her ankles. ‘I have heard that in such cases,’ she said breathlessly, ‘where the subject is prone to violence, that a form of restraining waistcoat might be applied.’
‘Ah,’ said the doctor. ‘You mean the straight waistcoat. I highly recommend it as a means of convincing the patient that violent behaviour will not be tolerated.’
‘What do you think of vinegar treatments? I’ve heard wonderful things of vinegar treatments as a means of moving the humours. And blistering. In multiple places.’
‘Each of those may be efficacious in its proper application. The blistering, in particular, often does wonders to drive away delirium. Of course, I should need to see the patient before recommending a course of treatment.’
‘That would be delightful, Dr Simmons!’ Charlotte clapped her hands together in a very ecstasy of delight. ‘I shouldn’t like to take you away from your other patrons, though, if you were engaged elsewhere.’
‘That shouldn’t be a problem, Miss—’
Charlotte began backing away towards the carriage. She hoped he didn’t know enough about the peerage to recognise the crest on the side. ‘Oh, thank you! I really must be getting back. We don’t like to leave Grandmama for too long. She starts throwing things,’ Charlotte confided in a stage whisper. ‘Coming, Dulcinea?’
‘Dulcinea?’ demanded Henrietta as they collapsed breathless back in the carriage.
‘I had madness on the mind,’ said Charlotte apologetically. ‘So Dulcinea seemed to fit.’
‘I suppose I should be grateful that you didn’t make me Ophelia!’ Henrietta impatiently yanked at the ribbons of her bonnet and tossed it carelessly onto the seat beside her. ‘Now will you tell me what that was all about?’
‘I think,’ said Charlotte thoughtfully, ‘we can safely say that Dr Simmons has not been retained by the Prince of Wales. If he had been, he wouldn’t have been nearly so eager to treat my poor, dear Grandmama.’
‘And the straight waistcoat and all that?’
‘Currently in use on the king.’
‘Oh,’ said Henrietta, sobering.
‘If this Dr Simmons is to be believed, everything being done to the king is medically sound.’
‘It still sounds like torture to me,’ said Henrietta, with a shudder.
‘And to me,’ admitted Charlotte. ‘Especially having seen it.’
A sombre silence fell over the inside of the carriage as the two friends contemplated the plight of their king.
When Henrietta finally spoke, she voiced what they were both thinking. ‘If this Dr Simmons isn’t treating the king, who is? There couldn’t be two Dr Simmonses, could there?’
That would be by far the simplest explanation, but it also seemed the least probable. ‘Not at St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics, I shouldn’t think. The doctor treating the king specifically mentioned returning to his patients at St Luke’s.’
‘Perhaps your Dr Simmons got the name of the hospital wrong?’
‘What doctor mistakes his own hospital?’
‘Hmm. Good point.’ Henrietta lapsed again into silence.
Staring out the window, Charlotte struggled to recall that uncomfortable interlude scrunched up against the side of the cabinet, scrounging for any clue that might unravel the bizarre tangle. What was she going to tell the queen? Her simple assignment had
suddenly become very, very complicated.
Outside, the early winter dusk was already falling. Charlotte could see her own face reflected in ghostly double in the windowpane. She frowned, and her shadow self frowned back at her.
A seemingly insignificant detail niggled at the back of Charlotte’s mind. ‘Colonel McMahon said that it was Sir Francis Medmenham who had recommended Simmons.’
‘The real Simmons, or the false one?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Charlotte. ‘He might have recommended the real one, never knowing an imposter would interpose himself. Or he might have put forward the false candidate for purposes of his own.’
‘What cause would Medmenham have for inserting an imposter into the king’s household?’
‘He is a member of the prince’s party,’ said Charlotte slowly, ‘and should the king go mad, he might benefit immensely from it.’
‘You’re not implying—’
A bizarre sort of picture was beginning to form. Charlotte wasn’t sure if it was the true one, but it did make its own sort of sense. ‘If the king goes mad for long enough, the prince will advance another Regency bill. And if he becomes Regent—’
‘Medmenham will have his pick of plum positions,’ Henrietta finished for her. ‘If it’s power that he’s after.’
‘I can’t really see Sir Francis necessarily serving in an official capacity, can you? He’s no Charles James Fox. But it might be enough for him to be the silent power behind the throne. He would like lording it over a prince regent, wouldn’t he?’
Just as he obviously enjoyed lording it over a certain duke of her acquaintance. If a mere duke was a coup, how much more so the ruling power in the realm?
‘We need to know more about Medmenham,’ pronounced Henrietta, in the air of one delivering a royal command. ‘Besides, I find him oddly intriguing.’
‘Henrietta!’
‘Not that kind of intriguing! I meant as a potential villain. I have excellent instincts when it comes to spotting wrongdoers.’
‘We don’t know that Medmenham is a wrongdoer. The real Dr Simmons may very well have cured his aunt.’
‘Does he have an aunt?’ asked Henrietta.
Charlotte raised both hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘For all we know, he might have a dozen.’
‘That’s easy enough to find out,’ Henrietta said decidedly as the carriage drew up before Loring House. The waiting footmen advanced to open the door and unroll the folding stairs.
‘It may be even easier than you think,’ said Charlotte, gathering her skirts to descend. ‘I hear that he intends—’
A dark figure loomed up out of the night. Charlotte caught at the steadying arm of the footman as she nearly tumbled off the second step.
Blending with the bushes beside the house, he seemed huge, a monster out of myth, the dark cousin to the unicorn. As he stepped into the square of light cast by the drawing room windows, it became clear that it wasn’t a monster but a man. When she saw which man it was, Charlotte wasn’t sure she wouldn’t prefer the monster. At least a monster had a certain élan to it. Perfidious men were as common as the muck on the street.
‘Charlotte?’ Henrietta came careening down the steps after her. ‘What – oh.’
The Duke of Dovedale bobbed stiffly at the neck. He looked as though the high points of his shirt collar pained him. ‘Lady Henrietta. Cousin Charlotte.’
‘To what do we owe this … er …?’ Henrietta looked from Robert, stiff as the iron railings, to Charlotte, prickly as winter rosebushes, and lapsed into silence. Not even the most optimistic hostess could possibly call his appearance a pleasure.
‘I fear that when I visited this morning, I inadvertently left a bagatelle behind me.’
‘Your dignity?’ suggested Charlotte, her breath misting like smoke in the cold air.
Behind her, she could hear Henrietta’s swift intake of breath, half horrified, half amused. Charlotte didn’t care.
Something like appreciation flashed through Robert’s blue eyes. Or perhaps it was just the light from the torchères burning on either side of the door. ‘My snuffbox.’
Charlotte folded her arms across her chest. ‘I don’t think it’s in those bushes.’
‘My dignity, you mean?’ said Robert blandly.
Charlotte narrowed her eyes at him, hating him with every bone in her body. It was unforgivable of him to sound like that, amused and urbane, so very like the man with whom she had fancied herself in love.
‘Your snuffbox,’ she said, a little too forcefully.
‘Well, that’s easily solved, isn’t it?’ Quickly interposing herself between them, Henrietta threaded her arm through Charlotte’s in a mingled gesture of support and restraint. With a swooping gesture, she indicated that the duke should precede them through the open door, where the footmen waited on either side, silently storing up every detail to repeat in the servants’ hall later that evening. ‘I’m sure Stwyth will be happy to help you recover it – your snuffbox, I mean.’
Turning back to Robert, Henrietta asked, ‘Where did you leave it? The snuffbox, that is.’
With Robert in it, the entry hall, which could easily fit at least two of Charlotte’s grandmother’s tenants’ cottages, felt ridiculously small.
‘I left it in the morning room,’ he said, speaking to Henrietta, but looking at Charlotte. ‘This morning.’
‘Morning is an excellent time to use the morning room,’ commented Henrietta to no one in particular. ‘And the snuffbox is-?’
Robert frowned in that way men do when asked to describe trumperies. ‘A snuffbox?’
‘Stwyth?’ commanded Henrietta.
Taking his cue, Stwyth shuffled off to hunt for what Charlotte was sure would be the latest in invisible snuffboxes. If you couldn’t see it, could it still be in the height of fashion? Goodness, she was so angry she was positively giddy with it.
Her only saving grace was that Robert, for all his vaunted urbanity, looked as uncomfortable as she did. Good. Charlotte took a small, malicious satisfaction in his catching his foot on a roll of drapery fabric that was unaccountably lying half unrolled just inside the front door.
‘Oh, dear,’ Henrietta clucked, making distressed hostess noises. ‘That really shouldn’t be out here. Will you excuse me for a moment?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m sure Charlotte will entertain you in my absence.’
Charlotte wasn’t feeling the least bit entertaining, unless one was talking about the sort of entertainment that involved goring gladiators.
‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ she said, not looking at Robert. It wasn’t quite so easy as it sounded. Not looking at Robert made the corners of her eyes hurt.
‘Nonsense,’ said Henrietta blithely. ‘I’ll be right back.’
With a swish of petticoats, she was gone, off to run an errand as imaginary as Robert’s snuffbox. Charlotte looked grimly after Henrietta’s retreating back. She knew exactly what her best friend was doing. Finding Robert on her doorstep twice in one day, Henrietta had obviously concluded that the pull of true love had overcome whatever temporary madness had driven Robert from Charlotte’s side. Or, as Henrietta would put it, that Robert had finally come to his senses. And she had left them alone to get on with the grand reconciliation she was sure would ensue. Knowing Henrietta, she was probably currently planning what to wear to the wedding. Charlotte was not amused.
She had had enough. Completely, utterly, up to here, enough with everyone thinking they could run her life for her, from Henrietta, who tried to marry her off by leaving her alone in an entry hall, to ridiculous Robert, who couldn’t decide whether they were speaking or not speaking but definitely knew that he didn’t want her to go riding with Medmenham.
As far as Charlotte was concerned, they could all take a long, cold bath in the Thames.
Buoyed with righteous anger, Charlotte turned on her sometime knight in shining armour, who was as much the possessor of a snuffbox a
s she was the queen of England. Did he really think she was ninny enough to buy that ridiculous story?
A nasty little voice in the back of her head reminded her that she had, in fact, been more than willing to swallow any story he cared to tell her not so very long ago. The thought of it only made her angrier.
‘Why are you really here?’ she demanded, glowering at him like a grand inquisitor with a heretic in his sights.
If Robert was taken aback by her tone, he didn’t show it.
‘I’m rather fond of that snuffbox,’ he said mildly. ‘It has a very attractive painting of Carlton House on the lid.’
Charlotte doubted he even owned a snuffbox. Robert made a most unconvincing dandy. The finicky clothes he had adopted since coming to London sat oddly on his athletic frame, like someone trying to swaddle a sword in lace draperies. Unless, of course, this lace-clad Robert was the real Robert, and the roughand-ready soldier the act he had put on for her at Girdings. Which was real? Trying to sort it out made her head spin. That just made her even crankier.
‘Did you take snuff much in India?’ she jeered. She had never known that she had it in her to jeer. It was amazing the new talents one discovered under duress.
Robert wandered idly towards a marble-topped table, where the day’s correspondence sat piled on a silver tray. ‘Perhaps my new station demands new habits.’
‘Do you change your habits so easily as that?’ Charlotte didn’t bother to hide the scorn in her voice.
She was punishing him, she knew, for not being what she had wanted him to be. It might not be fair of her, but it wasn’t any more fair of him to keep coming back when he had promised to stay away. Funny, to think she would once have given almost anything for his promise to come back. Now, all she wanted was for him to leave her in peace.
Perhaps, if she repeated that to herself often enough, she might even start to believe it. She had, unfortunately, got into the habit of daydreaming about him. While his habits might change easily, hers never had.
His eyes met hers, reflected in the hall mirror. It was rather uncanny, looking at his reflection instead of the man. But wasn’t that what she had been seeing all along? Only a reflection and a distorted one, at that, as pocked by untruths as this one was by the bevelling in the Venetian glass.