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“No!” Lucy turned to her, interrupting, and their eyes met. Despite the odd nickname, there could be no doubt as to whom Effie meant.

“Anthony would never have agreed to it.”

Effie heard the conviction in her voice, and perhaps something more. Her eyes roamed Lucy’s face before she dropped her gaze again, turning so they shuffled once more toward the big tree and Miss Fox.

Her body was habituated to this course, back and forth, back and forth, scant yards between the stone wall and the plane tree. How many times had she walked it?

“A maid heard me in my bedroom. She summoned Collins, who took me down the hall to my father, who condemned me as a thief. I’d taken my own earrings, my own brushes, my own stockings, but he said they belonged to his daughter who died.”

Her laughter was harsh as a sob.

“He looked unwell. His hands were shaking, and he raved. He said he was being drugged, that he trusted no one. He wanted me to taste his lemonade. You’ll find it bitter. He kept saying it. Blast your lemonade, I said. You need a doctor. But he wouldn’t listen. He was always stubborn and cold, but this was different. It was . . . unhinged. When I asked him where Anthony had taken lodging, he shook his head so violently I thought his neck would snap. He said he’d written a new will leaving the estate to Daphne, his favorite setter, the only creature on earth who’d never disappointed him.” She took a ragged breath. “Daphne has been dead for ten years.”

“What did you do?” Lucy saw the guards corralling Miss Fox, who’d risen from her chair, hustling her back toward the cottages. More nurses and guards were marching alongside patients on the path. Time for tea, perhaps, or treatment. A picture came to her, Miss Fox screaming, plunged into an ice-water bath. She shivered.

Effie was watching the progress of staff and patients across the lawn. She glanced at Lucy. “What did I do?” she repeated. “I didn’t know what to do. I went to my father’s dearest friend, Robert Yardley, and told him everything my father had said and that I feared he had taken leave of his senses. He agreed the situation was serious and said he’d send for a doctor. I gave him the address of the boardinghouse, and he said he’d come with Anthony.”

A smile ghosted her lips, suggested that her cheeks, too, held dimples in potential, ready to flex on a merrier occasion.

“I was almost happy. It was horrible to witness my father in that state, but I felt relieved, seeing Robert, knowing I was finally going to see Anthony. And I had my hairbrush.”

The smile widened until it reversed into a frown, then vanished.

“The coach came that very night. My father acted faster than I’d imagined possible. I don’t know how he found me at Rafferty’s . . .”

She cast her eyes down, trailing off.

Lucy stared, aghast. Didn’t she know? Couldn’t she guess? She’d given Yardley the address of the boardinghouse. He’d had her followed. He’d sent his conspirators to Rafferty’s. Yardley had committed her, not her father. He’d committed her because she knew that her father wasn’t in his right mind, had written some kind of document that proved it.

Because she knew her father feared poison.

Her thoughts skipped in all directions. Had Yardley drugged the duke, to disorient and manipulate him?

It was too much, too much to comprehend and too much to convey to Effie. Weston the elder had raised his children with loathing, and they’d learned to loathe him in return. With their enemy looming so large, so close, they couldn’t see the harm done to them in his shadow.

Lucy said only, with more ferocity than before, “We’re going to get you out of here.”

“My father will find a way to stop you.” Effie’s face rounded with vulnerability, and she looked younger, looked, briefly, like the girl in the miniature.

Lucy felt as though the air had turned to tiny pins. Her mouth dried until it was hard to swallow.

No one had told Effie that her father was dead, had died shortly after the night they dragged her away. She’d been locked up, isolated, instructed, perhaps, that her claims about herself, her identity and sanity, were dangerous delusions. She wasn’t Lady Euphemia Philby. She was Euphemia Nixon. Useful, that a married name could erase the traces of who a woman had been.

Lucy shook her head, trying to think of what to do next, and saw Kate out of the corner of her eyes. She was waving from the path, then bounding toward them, the porter trailing. As she reached them, a bloodcurdling scream rent the air.

Miss Fox, surrounded by guards, had managed to break free and was off like a shot across the grounds. Shouts rose, and whistles blew. Nurses and guards gave chase. Miss Fox had no hope of escape. She was running a random pattern, wailing and beating at the air.

But they had hope of escape. The porter had abandoned the gatehouse, and the staff was distracted.

It only took half a second. Kate looked at Lucy, who looked at Effie. Then they were running too, the three of them, running as fast as their legs could carry them, breaths tearing at their lungs, running down the slope toward the pauper bunkers and across the long stretch to the gate in the wall. Kate pulled ahead, legs flashing, skirt tugged up to her hips.

A cry formed in Lucy’s throat as she watched a guard coming out of the men’s bunker cross the lawn on the perpendicular and tackle Kate around the waist. She went down screaming and kicking, and then Lucy was past her, chest and legs on fire. Her breath and Effie’s breath sawed in her ears.

She’d get Effie out and go back for Kate.

That was her last conscious thought. The impact came from behind and sent the air from her lungs, wiped her mind. The only thing that mattered was her next breath and how long it was taking to arrive.

Dimly, she understood she was on the ground, that a great weight pressed on top of her, that she was screaming soundlessly, and that the darkness she saw, edged with red, was filling in, red and deeper red, and the scream would not become sound, because there was no air to carry it.