A Splendid Ruin: A Novel by Megan Chance

Author:Megan Chance [Chance, Megan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542022392
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2021-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

PART TWO:

LESSONS

BLESSINGTON HOME FOR THE INCURABLY INSANE

SAN FRANCISCO, NOVEMBER 1904

We did not go far, that was all I knew. The leather curtains on the carriage windows were drawn so I could not see out, the thin lines of daylight peeking from the edges lent a coppery gloom. My captors sat, silent and stone-faced, on either side of me.

The carriage stopped, and the light escaping the curtains dimmed. Before the driver opened the door, my custodians had grabbed my arms again, but when I stumbled from the carriage into a dank and dim porte cochere, there was no place to run. They were closing the wooden gate that had been opened to admit us. Brick walls enclosed the other three sides. Before me was a rounded stoop of shallow stairs, also brick, and a heavy wooden door scarcely illuminated by a gas lamp turned very low.

The door opened; a tall and well-proportioned woman with flawlessly upswept chestnut hair stood waiting. She smiled reassuringly and said, “Hello, miss. Don’t be frightened, but hurry now, before you let the heat out. It’s chilly today.”

I was too stunned to be frightened or anything else. A none-too-gentle push up those stairs, and we followed the woman into a narrow hall redolent with the long-trapped odors of stewed mutton and fish and acrid soap. Steam billowed from an open door—a laundry room bustling with the hazy shapes of women. On the other side, a kitchen with great stoves and blackened kettles. The door slammed shut behind us, the bolt jammed home with a solid click.

I heard moaning, someone singing “Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!”—just that one line, over and over again, and someone else shouting “Ha! Ha!” and a constant and rhythmic clank clank clank, metal hitting metal, murmured voices. We passed a great room where women wearing gray, shift-like gowns gathered on settees and chairs, another with long tables and benches, and then a line of closed doors. Nurses passed with only a cursory glance at me. The combined smells of urine, sweat, unwashed bodies, and carbolic soap stank so unpleasantly that I wanted to pinch shut my nose.

At one of the doors, the chestnut-haired woman paused and knocked. At the grunted answer from beyond, she ushered us into an office before a ruddy-faced man with light brown hair. He was in his shirtsleeves. His eyes were small; when he peered at me I had the impression of shortsightedness, proved correct when he took up his glasses and settled them on the bridge of a bulbous nose.

“Miss Kimble is it?” His brief smile raised my hopes that here was someone who might listen to me. “Welcome to Blessington.”

The man who’d brought me took a sheaf of folded papers from his suitcoat pocket. He handed them to the man at the desk. “I believe everything is in order, Dr. Madison.”

“Hmm.” Dr. Madison barely glanced at the papers before he set them aside and looked again at me. “Do you know who you are?”

“May Kimble,” I said without hesitation.

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