A heavy four-poster bed carved in rosewood loomed against the far wall. Cream bedclothes embroidered with flowers were spread across it. Then came the dressing table, its three-piece mirror swathed in black fabric. She sighed. It was the first looking glass she had seen since leaving the station. Time to assess the damage done by her tumble in the mud.
Placing the towel back on its rail, she walked over and sat on the stool. She drew the black material aside. It was a foolish superstition: covering mirrors to stop the dead from becoming trapped. Nothing was held inside the glass except three blonde-haired, brown-eyed women, each one a sorry state. Her gauze veil fluttered at the nape of her neck like a netted crow. Windblown curls frizzed around her forehead and, despite her brief wash, a smear of mud remained on her right cheekbone. Elsie scrubbed until it melted away. Thank goodness she had refused to see the servants.
Slowly, she reached up her weary arms to remove her bonnet and cap, and begin the long task of unpinning her hair. Her fingers were not as nimble as they used to be – she had grown accustomed to having Rosie do it. But Rosie and all the comforts of that past life were miles away.
A pin snagged on a tangle and made her gasp. She dropped her hands, upset beyond reason at this small annoyance. How did this happen? she asked the dishevelled women before her. They had no answer.
The glass here was cold and harsh. It did not contain the smiling, pretty bride she had stared at such a short time ago. Unbidden, a scene rose up in her memory: Rupert, standing behind her that first night and brushing her hair. Pride in his face, flashes of the silver-backed brush. A feeling of safety and trust, so rare, as she considered his reversed image. She could have loved him.
The marriage was a business relationship, cement to secure Rupert’s investment in the match factory, but that night she had truly looked at the man and realised she could grow to love him. In time. Alas, time was the one thing they did not have.
A tap at the door made her start.
‘Buttons?’ Sarah’s voice.
‘Yes. Come in, Sarah.’
Sarah had swapped her travelling dress for an evening gown that had seen better days. Black dye mottled it in uneven patches. She hardly looked presentable, but at least she’d plaited her mousy hair. ‘Have you chosen a gown? I could ask one of the maids if there is a flatiron . . .’
‘No. Please just dig out a nightgown.’ If Jolyon wanted her to grieve, that’s what she would do. She would act exactly as he had, after Ma. That would serve him. He would see how irritating and useless it was to have her whimpering upstairs.
Sarah’s reflection twisted its hands in the mirror. ‘But . . . dinner . . .’
‘I’m not going down. I have no appetite.’
‘But – but I cannot have dinner alone with Mr Livingstone! What would people say? We are barely acquainted!’
Irritated, Elsie rose to her feet and went to find a nightgown herself. Had Sarah really been a lady’s companion? She should know better than to stand and argue with her mistress. ‘Nonsense. You must have spoken to Jolyon at the wedding.’
‘I was not at your wedding. Mrs Crabbly was taken ill. Do you not remember?’
‘Oh.’ Elsie took a moment to pull a nightgown from a trunk and arrange her face before she turned. ‘Of course not. You will have to forgive me. That day . . .’ She looked down at the white cotton in her hands. ‘It all passed in such a happy blur.’
Honiton lace, orange blossom. She had never thought to be a bride. One put aside such fancies after the age of twenty-five. For Elsie, the prospect had seemed even less likely. She despaired of finding someone she could trust, but Rupert had been different. He carried something in the air around him, an aura innately good.
‘I understand,’ said Sarah. ‘Now come here. Let us see about that dress.’
Elsie would rather have changed by herself, but there was no choice. She could hardly tell Rupert’s cousin that she owned a buttonhook – only whores were meant to use them.
Sarah worked deftly, her fingers moving over Elsie’s shoulders and down her waist like the lightest taps of rain. The gown fell whispering into her hands. ‘Such fine material. I do hope the mud will wash out.’
‘Perhaps you can take it downstairs for me. There must be a scullery maid who will put it in the copper without telling for a crown.’
Sarah nodded. She folded the gown and hugged it to her chest. ‘And . . . the rest?’ She shot a coy look at the cage of petticoats, spring steel and hoops holding Elsie in. ‘You will be able to manage—?’
‘Oh yes.’ Self-conscious, she put her hands to the tapes securing her crinoline. ‘I didn’t always have a maid, you know.’
It was Sarah’s silence and stillness that made Elsie’s flesh creep. Her eyes fixed on Elsie’s waist and expanded, darker and strangely glittering.
‘Sarah?’
Sarah shook herself. ‘Yes. Very well. I’ll be on my way.’
Elsie looked down at her body, confused. What had made Sarah stare? With a painful jolt, she realised: her hands. She had taken her gloves off to wash her face and revealed her hands in all their chapped ugliness. Work-hardened hands, factory hands. Not a lady’s hands.
But before Elsie could say anything in her defence, Sarah opened the door and walked out.
ST JOSEPH’S HOSPITAL
It appeared overnight. No sooner did she lift her head from the pillow and wipe her gritty eyes than she saw it. Alien. Wrong.
She stumbled out of bed, her feet slapping against the cold floor. It hung before her. She narrowed her eyes. It hurt to look, too bright, but she dare not remove her gaze. Yellow. Brown. Swirling lines and shapes.
It had arrived without her knowing. If she looked away, would it move again? Though it was mute it seemed to scream, to crash inside her head.
She could not go back to bed; she had to hold it at bay. Daylight trickled through the high windows, stark and limewashed like the walls. Its beams crept across the floor, then past her. At last the door clicked open.
‘Mrs Bainbridge.’
It was Dr Shepherd.
Without turning, she raised a shaking hand and extended her index finger.
‘Oh. You have seen the painting.’ The air shifted as he arrived by her shoulder. ‘I hope it is to your liking.’
The silence stretched.
‘It brightens the place, does it not? I thought that, since you are not permitted to go in the day room and the exercise yard with the other patients, you might appreciate a bit of colour.’ He transferred his weight to the other foot. ‘This is the direction our hospital is taking. We will no longer subject our patients to bleak cells. This is a refuge for recuperation. There must be cheerful, stimulating things.’
She saw now what the artist had tried to capture: a nursery scene. A sunlit room with a mother cooing over a crib. Her dress was like a daffodil, her hair like spun gold. There were white roses in a vase, standing upon a table by the baby.
‘Does it . . . Does it trouble you, Mrs Bainbridge?’
She nodded.