She relaxed a little. ‘Have you brought any food?’ she asked.
Robert wondered how she’d gone from violence to food so quickly. His confusion must have shown on his face.
‘When people come in it’s either to hurt me or bring me food,’ she said calmly.
Robert Fleetwood, hardened soldier and celebrated war hero, felt his heart go out to this scared young woman. In that instant he vowed silently to help her. Even if she wasn’t the Louisa Turnhill he was looking for, he would make sure she was properly looked after, somewhere a long way from Lewisham Asylum.
‘Will you tell me how you came to be here, Louisa?’ Robert asked.
She stood, the chain attached to her wrist jangling as she moved. He saw she was thin—a year of asylum food didn’t seem to provide much nourishment. Her hair was long and straggly, falling most of the way down her back. There were bruises on the pale skin of her arms and dark circles under her eyes. She was in a poor state, but despite all of this Robert saw the spirit burning in her eyes as she watched him look over her. In her time at the asylum they hadn’t broken her.
She came and sat on the bed next to him, making sure there was as much distance as possible between them.
‘There’s no point,’ she said, turning her face towards him, ‘you wouldn’t believe me anyway.’
It was said with such certainty that Robert knew he had to hear her story. He wondered if she was deluded, whether she would tell him a different tale if he came back tomorrow.
‘I might,’ he said simply.
‘If you stay here overnight, there’s lots of screaming,’ Louisa said. ‘And moaning and shouting. Do you know the most common thing people shout?’
He shook his head.
‘They shout “I’m not mad”—’ she paused ‘—or “I shouldn’t be here”, which is much the same thing.’
Robert couldn’t imagine spending a single night in this hellish place, let alone over four hundred as she must have done.
‘Everyone says it,’ she said with a small smile on her face. ‘But I actually mean it.’
‘You shouldn’t be here?’
‘I’m not mad,’ she said, ‘or at least I wasn’t when they put me in here.’
He didn’t know how to respond. He’d expected howling and writhing, he’d been prepared for that—this cool, detached statement of sanity he didn’t know how to react to.
‘I probably am a little bit mad now. Anyone would be after a few months in this place.’
She looked at him and Robert got the sensation she was assessing him, weighing up whether he was worth revealing more to.
‘I said you wouldn’t believe me.’
‘What happened?’ Robert asked simply, not trusting himself to say more. He got the feeling this strange young woman was very astute—she’d know if he lied to her.
‘You actually want to know?’
‘I want to know.’
‘I had an evil guardian,’ she said, then giggled. ‘Your face is a picture.’
Robert hadn’t realised he’d moved a muscle.
‘My evil guardian locked me up here after I refused to marry him. Lecherous old sod.’
Sometimes she sounded so normal, so sane, but Robert knew there were some lunatics like that. So caught up in their fantasy world they could make others believe it was true.
‘He wanted the money my parents had left to me. When I wouldn’t give it to him through marriage, he bribed a doctor to certify I was insane and dumped me here. I should imagine he’s worked his way through most of the money by now. Not that it’s any use to me in here.’
Robert knew he shouldn’t believe her. He knew he was probably being manipulated, conned into believing her fantasy, but the disbelief in his mind was giving away to horrified realisation.
He’d received a letter eight weeks ago, a confession of sorts. It had been sent the day before his great-uncle had died. In the letter his great-uncle confessed to committing a grave sin and asked Robert to put it right. The only other information the old man had supplied was Louisa’s name.
Surely this wasn’t the sin his great-uncle had talked of. Robbing a young woman of her fortune was one thing, but to rob her of her freedom and label her as insane was worse than murder.
He cursed the man again for not providing more details of his crime.
‘And who was your guardian?’ he asked, trying to make his tone casual even though he was holding his breath in anticipation of her answer.
‘Thomas Craven,’ she said. ‘The name I curse last thing every night and first thing every morning.’
Robert felt the foundations of his world rock. This young woman must have been the ward of his great-uncle, Thomas Craven, otherwise there was no way she could have given him the right name.
When Yates had tracked Louisa down to the asylum, Robert hadn’t known what to expect. He’d wondered if his great-uncle had somehow played a part in this young woman’s descent into madness, maybe by robbing her of her innocence, an event she hadn’t been able to recover from, and for which his great-uncle had rightly blamed himself. No part of him had been prepared for the possibility she’d been wrongly imprisoned for over a year.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, patting him on the hand in a sisterly gesture, ‘you don’t have to believe me.’
Robert stood and paced to the other side of the tiny room, trying to buy himself time to figure out what he believed.
‘I want to take you away from here, Louisa,’ he said eventually. ‘I want to take you somewhere safe whilst I figure out exactly what’s happened.’
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Robert surmised she hadn’t had much reason to trust people in the last few years. She wrapped her arms around her body protectively and started to hunch into herself.
‘I promise I won’t hurt you,’ Robert said, kneeling down in front of her and gently taking her hand. ‘I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.’
She flinched as his skin touched hers, not pulling her hand away, but cowering a little as if she expected him to hit her.
‘Do they beat you here?’ he asked, suddenly catching sight of the bruises on her arms for a second time.
She laughed in disbelief. ‘Of course.’
Robert felt the rage building inside him, rage he thought he’d managed to control for so long. He didn’t know if this young woman was mad or the victim of a very heinous deception, but either way she didn’t deserve to be beaten. She shouldn’t be chained to the wall, frightened of every person who entered her dismal cell. She deserved more than that, every human did.
‘Trust me,’ he said quietly.
Louisa regarded him for almost a minute in silence, staring into his eyes, and Robert felt as though she’d studied his soul. Eventually she gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.
Robert rose to his feet, strode the couple of paces to the door and thumped hard on the wood with his fist.
He waited until he could hear footsteps approaching, then thumped again.
The female warden unlocked the door and stood aside for him to come out.
‘Get me Symes,’ he commanded. ‘And give me the keys to unlock this poor girl’s manacles.’
The warden just stared at him.
‘I