“If we do not liberate your daughter, Mrs. Davis,” Jack countered, “your son-in-law can have her committed to an asylum—this very morning—and there will be nothing we can do to help her.”
Susan Davis opened her eyes: They were not the same color as Rose’s eyes, but the black pain inside them was identical, forced to choose between two people whom she loved. “Tell me how my son-in-law took my daughter, Mr. Lodoun.”
Without Susan Davis, they could not procure a writ.
Jack used all of his descriptive abilities to describe what the housekeeper had relayed.
Tears boiled up inside the pale blue eyes made black with pain and spilled down parchment white cheeks. “Rose has such slender arms.”
Jack knew more than anyone how fragile Rose was, both physically and emotionally.
“You said she dropped her umbrella.”
“Yes,” Jack said, watching Susan Davis struggle to regain control, Rose’s future dependent upon a mother’s strength.
“She commissioned painters to paint her home. She wanted a crimson drawing room. I purchased an Oriental vase to sit on her mantel.” Futilely wiping away tears—left cheek . . . right cheek—Susan Davis asked: “Did she drop it?”
The package to which the housekeeper had alluded.
“Yes,” Jack said.
Fleeting regret sliced through him, that he would not see the vase Rose’s mother had chosen for their home.
“Did it break?” she asked.
A question formed inside her eyes, a mother’s plea.
Would Rose break?
When . . . if . . . she was liberated, would they—like “all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men”—not be able to put her back together again?
But Jack had no answer.
He did not know of what Jonathon Clarring was capable. Nor did he know how long it would take the judges presiding over the Queen’s Bench to reach a decision.
“I don’t know,” Jack said truthfully.
Chapter 35
The snick of a lock jerked Rose awake.
Greenish-gray light illuminated a rose-patterned wall.
Memory flooded her consciousness.
Eyes the color of a blue sky.
But the sky had rained.
A rose-enameled door opened.
“Jonathon?” Rose asked, throat tightening.
But Jonathon was not alone.
Rose scrambled upright in bed, cotton nightgown and cotton sheets tangling.
Fear constricted her heart.
A tall, gray-bearded man accompanied Jonathon; he carried a black leather satchel. A tall, sturdy woman dressed in brown wool trailed behind the gray-bearded man, graying hair tucked up into a white cap.
Rose incongruously thought of Twiddledee and Twiddledum in Through the Looking Glass.
“Don’t be frightened, Mrs. Clarring.” The gray-bearded man—Rose judged him to be in his late fifties—set down his satchel on the nightstand beside the bed. He smiled. “I’m Doctor Weinberger, and this is Nurse Williams.”
The smile did not reassure Rose. Neither did the stern-faced woman who nodded in greeting.
Rose was not prepared for this development of events.
If Jonathon thought she was ill, why hadn’t he summoned their family physician?
“I assure you, Dr. Weinberger,” Rose said, heart tripping, “I am quite healthy.”
“That is not what your husband claims, Mrs. Clarring.”
There was suddenly not enough oxygen inside the bedroom for four people.
“Dr. Weinberger, you saw my husband unlock the door.” Rose struggled to keep her voice calm and rational. “I am being kept here against my will: Please help me.”
The doctor’s smile did not change. “That is why I’m here, Mrs. Clarring.” Glancing down, he opened his satchel. “To help you.”
Rose clutched the neck of her nightgown. “What are you doing?”
The doctor pulled out a stethoscope. “This won’t hurt, Mrs. Clarring.”
What did this man know of a woman’s pain?
Her husband had abducted her.
“I don’t want you to touch me.”
“I’m simply going to listen to your heart and lungs.” The doctor sat on the edge of the bed, mattress depressing: Rose tilted sideways. “Be so kind as to unfasten your gown.”
Rose remembered that Dr. Burns—a physician rather than a lunacy doctor—had confided she had once signed an order to commit a woman to an insane asylum.
The girl had never been the same, Dr. Burns had shamefacedly confided.
“I am not insane,” Rose said, calm fleeing.
Too-soft fingers imprinted the back of her hand that clutched her nightgown.
Rose recoiled from the doctor’s touch.
“Of course you’re not insane, Mrs. Clarring.” The doctor’s fingers were confident: One by one he released the tiny buttons holding together the top of her gown. He repeated: “Don’t be frightened.”
But she was frightened.
Each released button further invaded her privacy.
She wanted to slap the stethoscope from the doctor’s hand. She knew that such an action would only corroborate a diagnosis of lunacy.
Cold metal seared her sternum.
“Breathe deeply, Mrs. Clarring.”
Rose took a shaky breath.
“Very good,” the doctor praised. As if she were a child.
Or a deranged woman.
“Lean forward. . . . Yes, like so.” He invaded the back of her gown, body-warmed metal pressing between her shoulder blades. He smelled of damp wool, Macassar oil and strong cologne. “Breathe deeply. . . . Very good, Mrs. Clarring.”
Without warning, Rose was free of both the doctor and his stethoscope.
The mattress sprang upward, relieved of extra weight.
“Is there someplace where I may wash up, Mr. Clarring?”
“Through here,” Jonathon said, familiar voice bringing a lump to her throat.
Rose quickly fastened her gown, hands shaking.
The stern-faced nurse rummaged through the doctor’s satchel: She pulled out a hard leather case.
“What is that?” Rose asked.
But the nurse did not answer.
Cascading water drowned out the thud of hard leather impacting even harder wood.
Glass shone in the shadow of black leather: A perfect rose for a perfect honeymoon.
“Jonathon.” Rose addressed her husband’s back; his navy wool jacket was crumpled. Rose had never before seen her husband in a state of dishevelment. She took a deep breath to slow the drumming of her heart. “Why are you doing this?”
Light flared: Phosphorus burned her nose.
The nurse leaned over the nightstand and lifted up the globe of the rose-colored lamp. Simultaneously, the rush of water stopped.
Jonathon still did not turn around and look at her.
“Mrs. Clarring.” The doctor stepped out from the bathroom. “Your husband is concerned about the fact that you have not conceived a child.”
Rose stared in shocked silence at the pale brown hair that overlapped Jonathon’s white collar.
Surely she could not have heard what she had just heard.
“He brought me here to examine you,” the doctor continued affably. “I know how embarrassing the coming minutes will be for you, but if you will roll up the hem of your nightgown, it will be over quickly. I promise to be as gentle as possible.”
Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the doctor open the flat case the nurse had deposited on the night table: Metal gleamed obscenely in the bright glare of the flickering lamp.
Gray smoke lazily drifted up from a rose-shaped bowl; a blackened match shone through pale pink glass.
“There is no need for this, Dr. Weinberger.” Rose squeezed her thighs together; her flesh, stretched for and by Jack, pulsed with burgeoning anger. “My husband knows full well why I do not have children.”
“Your husband mentioned that he had mumps, Mrs. Clarring, but not all men who contract mumps are rendered sterile.”
The doctor’s prognosis eerily mimicked Jack’s statement six days earlier.
. . . Mumps don’t always make a man sterile, he had said.
Rose had felt naked and alone when answering Jack: Rose now felt utterly violated.
The doctor stood over Rose. “Assist her, Nurse Williams.”
The nurse flipped back the covers.
Rose’s gown had ridden up to her thighs. Cold air lapped her naked skin.
“How dare you!” Rose said, outraged.
Between one convulsive breath and the next, the bed dipped in a squeal of springs.
Rose involuntarily fell backward into the depression the nurse made.
A surprisingly strong arm clasped Rose across her breasts that heaved up and down for oxygen; at the same time an equally strong hand grasped her shoulder and pressed her torso down into the nurse’s lap.
“There’s no need to be afraid, Mrs. Clarring,” the nurse said, stale breath washing Rose’s face, “I’m right here.”
Rose would not let this happen.
Her knees automatically lifted and bent to give her scrabbling feet purchase.
Cold metal slipped inside her.
Rose froze.
“Hold still, Mrs. Clarring; this will just take a minute. . . .”
Rose stared up at the ring of light circling the ceiling.
“I didn’t think, Jonathon”—her eyes were so dry they burned; a matching burn spread deep inside her—“you could hurt me any more than what you did yesterday: I was wrong.”
“Mr. Clarring, were you aware that your wife is wearing a Dutch cap?”
“No,” Jonathon replied, voice muffled.
Rose more sensed than saw the movement of the doctor: straightening . . . turning . . . bending over the bed.
Metal navigated through the metal speculum.
What one doctor had given, another doctor took away.
Rose clenched her fists; the antiseptic smell of the nurse churned her stomach.
“A Dutch cap has no lasting effect on a woman’s ability to conceive.” The hard metal slipped free of her aching vagina. The doctor straightened. “You’re very fortunate, Mrs. Clarring: I see no abnormalities in either your vagina or cervix. I believe if you refrain from these Chinese traps, you stand an excellent chance of becoming a mother.”
“Dr. Weinberger.”
Jonathon spoke, but not to Rose.
Not to the woman who had held him in her arms while he cried his tears and she leaked his seedless sperm.
Arm and hand relaxing, the nurse slid out from underneath Rose.
“Yes, Mr. Clarring?” the doctor asked.
Rose did not move.
“I am understandably upset at my wife’s duplicity,” Jonathon said, but it was not the Jonathon she had married. “I think it will be some time before I can bring myself to touch her again. We were recently intimate. Is there any chance that she can still become pregnant, now that there is nothing to block my sperm?”
Chapter 36
Jack stepped into the office of James Whitcox.
A large teak desk was sandwiched between a high-backed, black leather chair and two smaller chairs. Glass-fronted bookshelves framed the wood and leather. Black leather hugged the far wall. Above the sofa, rain slithered down thick, uncurtained glass. Two wing-backed, brown leather chairs faced a black marble fireplace. A smaller teak desk guarded a second wall of glass-encased bookshelves.
Both furniture and books were well used.
This was where James Whitcox had spent his time while Jack had spent time with his wife.
“Mr. Tristan.” Jack nodded at James Whitcox’s clerk, also a man who had been called to the bar, but who, like his own clerk, did not practice law. “You know Mr. Dorsey.”
The two men—one black-haired and twenty-five, the other brown-haired and twenty-seven—nodded cordially.
Big Ben tolled nine bells.
Rose had been in Jonathon Clarring’s house now for seventeen hours.
There was no time for finesse, so Jack was brutally frank. “Whitcox is on his way to petition the Queen’s Bench for a writ of habeas corpus.”
“Yes, sir,” Avery Tristan said, voice expressionless. “Mr. Whitcox rang.”
“So you know Mrs. Clarring is being held by her husband.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you know of the relationship between Mrs. Clarring and myself,” Jack said flatly.
“Yes,” Avery Tristan said.
Nathan Dorsey said nothing.
But he had already known.
“Mrs. Clarring—because she is now residing inside her husband’s domain—may now officially file for a separation,” Jack said.
Burning coals snapped inside the marble fireplace.
Jack wondered if Rose was warm. Jack wondered if Rose was safe.
Jack wondered if he would ever again see Rose.
“Mr. Dorsey suggested that because her husband does not perform his conjugal duties”—Jack closed his eyes against the desire that had briefly sparked inside Jonathon Clarring’s eyes; opening them, he confronted brown eyes so dark they appeared to be black—“we file on the grounds of desertion. The court, of course, cannot command a man to perform matrimonial intercourse. However, because he deserted the marriage bed, we can argue that he has willfully deprived Mrs. Clarring of her womanly right to bear children, and plead that she be granted the right to live separately.
“In view of recent events, however, we may now plead Jonathon Clarring has treated his wife cruelly and unforgivably.” Jack glanced over dark brown eyes and caught Nathan Dorsey’s green gaze. “It is our job today, gentlemen, to write a petition that will leave a deciding judge in no doubt as to where his duty lies.
“A habeas corpus will grant Mrs. Clarring temporary liberation: We must permanently remove her from Jonathon Clarring’s custody.
“Whitcox and I are in agreement: Because of my relationship with Mrs. Clarring, the petition cannot be filed in my name. You, Mr. Tristan, will lodge it on behalf of Whitcox and Mrs. Clarring. Mr. Dorsey is familiar with the judges and their clerks: He will accompany you to the courthouse.”
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Chapter 37
“My lords.” James addressed three men who wore scarlet robes and bob-wigs. They were not jurors: They were judges of the High Court of Justice and bore the rank of Knight Bachelors. Hand-picked by the Prime Minister and appointed by the Queen, the law—and the law alone—was their conscience. “I would like to express my gratitude to this court for addressing this extraordinary writ. The Magna Carta Libertatum is the Great Charter of Freedoms. This charter provides that no man or woman be unlawfully detained or imprisoned. Yet, my lords, that is what has happened to Mrs. Rose Clarring.”