Kasey Michaels - The Bride of the Unicorn

Leticia tipped her head to one side, pressing a finger to her thin lips. “I shall have to ponder that a moment…. No, I don’t believe so, Dulcinea. I thought you told me that Mr. Jenkins confined himself to the occasional proboscis. But truthfully, my dear, I don’t know why you bother going over to the public side at all.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially as she added in a near whisper, “A lady shouldn’t say this, I suppose, but they’re all as mad as bedlamites over there, you know. As mad as bedlamites.”

Caroline turned her head away from Miss Twittingdon who, after five years in the private side of the asylum, had yet to recognize that she, too, was an inmate and not a pampered visitor. Perhaps if she visited the public side she might begin to understand the precariousness of her position, for if her brother—“the Infernal Laurence”—ever chose to stop sending quarterly payments to the proprietors of the asylum, Leticia would soon find herself in one of those narrow, unheated cells. But then, what good would frightening such a dear, harmless old lady do?

The only wonder was why she, Caroline Monday, hadn’t been reduced to madness herself in the year she had worked as a servant of all work at the Woodwere Asylum for Lunatics and Incorrigibles. From her first day there, when one of the inmates had flung his own excrement at her, Caroline had known that her move from the Glynde orphanage had provided no great stepping stone up to a better life.

But Caroline had survived.

She had survived because the only alternative to survival was the unthinkable failure of death. Or, as Peaches had suggested, she could travel to London and join the ranks of the impure who hovered around Covent Garden hoping to make a passable living at “a fiver a flip”—at least until her teeth loosened from a bad diet, her body showed the ravages of one or more of the many venereal diseases rampant in the area, or her love of blue ruin, one of Peaches O’Hanlan’s many colorful names for gin, left her “workin’ the cribs for a penny a poke.”

Peaches hadn’t really wanted Caroline to become one of the soiled doves of Covent Garden. Caroline knew that now. She had simply intended to frighten her into realizing that a life spent as general dogsbody in an asylum full of raving maniacs was preferable to following in the footsteps of so many of the orphans who were pushed out of the foundling home to make their way as best they could.

“Will you have time for lessons this afternoon, Dulcinea?”

Caroline shook herself from her reverie and looked to the older woman, smiling as she saw the apprehension in her face. Miss Twittingdon hated to be alone and in charge of filling her own hours, for she often found them stuffed with unladylike thoughts concerning her brother, thoughts that frightened her. “And of course I do, Aunt Leticia, don’t you know,” she answered. “Don’t I do my best to make time for you every day?”

Miss Twittingdon frowned, shaking an accusatory finger in Caroline’s direction. “No, you don’t—or else I wouldn’t be hearing snippets of heathen Irishisms slipping back into your voice. We do not begin our sentences with ‘and’ and then tack a ‘don’t you know’ on the end of them. Both are appalling examples of Irish cant. To speak so is a sure sign of low breeding. You will remember that, won’t you? You must! Or how will you be able to show yourself to your best next Season when you make your come-out?”

Caroline rolled her eyes. She had been listening to this insane business of her come-out ever since first meeting Miss Twittingdon, who had immediately demanded that Caroline address her as “Aunt.” She hadn’t been very impressed with the notion at the beginning and complied with the daily lessons only because Miss Twittingdon seemed to have an endless supply of sugar comfits in a painted tin she hid under her bed.

But over time she had grown fond of the woman and enamored of the lessons and the books her “aunt” read to her as well. Not that improving her speech, memorizing simple history lessons, and learning the correct way to attack a turbot with knife and fork—and Caroline had never so much as seen a turbot—were of much use to her here at Woodwere.

But Leticia Twittingdon’s room was warm in the winter and there was always a fresh pitcher of water for Caroline to use to wash herself, and there was something vaguely comforting about having someone to call “Aunt,” so that it now seemed natural for Caroline to listen to Leticia’s grand plans for her “niece” without stopping to wonder at the futility of the thing.

Or even of the pain Leticia Twittingdon’s grand schemes for Caroline’s future caused, late at night, when Caroline lay on her thin cot in the attic, knowing in her heart of hearts that Caroline Monday, unlike Dick Whittington’s cat, would never look at a king.

“Caroline! Caroline! Come quickly! There are people here to see you. Downstairs, in old Woodwere’s office. Have you done something wrong? Did you filch another orange while you were in the village? Woodwere may keep Boxer and the other attendants away from you, but even he can’t pluck you from a jail cell.”

Caroline watched as Leticia uncrossed her legs and rose to her full height to stare across the carpeted floor at the doorway, where Frederick Haswit, a remarkably homely dwarf standing no more than three feet high, was jumping up and down on his stubby legs in a veritable frenzy of apprehension. “Is that any way to enter a lady’s chamber, sirrah?” she asked, arching one thin eyebrow. “Really, Ferdie, the disintegration of manners instigated in this modern age by hey-go-mad gentlemen such as you is appalling. Simply appalling! Furthermore, there is no Caroline here, but only Dulcinea and myself.”

Caroline smiled at Ferdie, another of her friends at Woodwere, who had been installed at the asylum six or seven years previously, when he was no more than thirteen. He had been placed there by his father once the boy’s doting mother had died, as the man did not appreciate having “a bloody freak” cluttering up either his impeccable lineage or his Mayfair town house.

Ferdie stamped one small, fat foot. “Not Dulcinea, you ridiculous twit! Caroline! Caroline! Oh, never mind. You’re too addlepated to know chalk from cheese.”

“At least I can see over the top of the dinner table to find the cheese, you abbreviated little snot,” Miss Twittingdon responded, looking down her long nose at the dwarf.

“Who is asking for me, Ferdie?” Caroline inquired quickly as the dwarf stuck his small hands in his pockets and struck a belligerent pose, obviously ready to go into battle with the woman, a move that would do Caroline no good at all. “Do I know these persons?”

“Of course you don’t, Dulcinea,” Mrs. Twittingdon pointed out in her usual reasonable tone, a tone that had played accompaniment to many an outrageously splendiferous notion. “You are not yet Out, and so you know nobody. I wouldn’t allow it. Why, as your guardian, I haven’t as yet even given you leave to put up your hair!”

“Of course,” Caroline echoed meekly, refusing to snap at the woman. Besides, she had enough to do wondering whom she might have offended lately with her sometimes sharp tongue, or what sleight of hand she had indulged in while visiting the village—picking pockets was one of the skills her first mentor, Peaches, had taught her—that might now have some back to haunt her. “You will forgive me, I hope.”

But Miss Twittingdon was speaking again, and Caroline tamped down any niggling fears in order to listen. “Did these persons leave their cards, Ferdie? You know we receive only on Tuesday mornings from ten until two. There is nothing else for it—they shall have to leave calling cards, as civilized people know they ought, with the corner bent down to show we did not receive them. As you should have known, Ferdie, if you were civilized, which we all are aware you are not. Then, if we so choose, we will condescend to receive them next week. Do toddle off downstairs now and pass on this information, if you please, and don’t hesitate to remind these people, whoever they may be, that certain basic rules of civilization must be maintained, even here in this benighted countryside.”