At that terrible news, a sob escaped her, though, sadly, tears never came. It was as though she were incapable of producing any.
Birch Haven Place had been her home. Her only refuge. And now she’d well and truly lost everything.
The portly Dr. Rosenblatt was audibly short of breath by the time they reached her room, and her weight was primarily supported by the orderly.
“Not a dainty bird, are ya?” Burns remarked. “Well, that’s awright, I s’pose. You’re not like to see tits like those ’uns on a delicate lady.”
The jangle of the keys the doctor pulled from the pocket of his overcoat finally produced a spurt of panic strong enough to slam her heart against her ribs. A trickle of fire started in her scalp and dripped down her spine until her entire body seemed dipped in acid.
Dr. Rosenblatt’s fat fingers seemed clumsy with excitement, his cheeks flushed beneath his gray beard. “I’m going to go first,” he said. “I don’t know where else you’ve put that dirty cod.”
“And ya don’t want to know, neither,” Burns joked, and they shared a masculine chuckle.
Hot tears finally managed to gather behind her eyes and they felt more substantial than the rough hands clamped about her numb arms and waist. Mena wished that she had led the kind of life in which their vulgarity still shocked her. That she’d never known what it was to have a man inside her after she’d said no. Or while she’d cried. Or while she’d struggled and fought. Her husband had taken care of that, hadn’t he?
By the time the heavy door to her room swung open, Mena was able to twitch her fingers. Her strength and blood flow was returning in terrible increments.
Which meant she might be able to struggle—but could she fend them both off?
She doubted it. They were brutes. Two men who mocked her for her height and size when Mr. Burns’s muscle was covered with a layer of softness and Dr. Rosenblatt was simply fat.
They would win, they would overpower her, and then—a gag she was unable to suppress stole her breath.
“Dr. Rosenblatt!” Nurse Schopf’s voice echoed down the hallway like a cannon blast. “Doctor, you must come now!”
A cacophony of madness erupted as other patients were roused, the more unstable of them screeching and making their horrid noises.
“We are being invaded!” the nurse screeched.
“Invaded?” Dr. Rosenblatt visibly blanched. “By whom?”
“The police!”
Lip curling in disgust, Rosenblatt made a nasty comment and then tossed the keys to Mr. Burns. “Put this one in her quarters and use the restraints while I deal with this.”
“With pleasure!” Burns gathered Mena to him and forced her into the unlocked room that had become the stage for her nightly battles with the abyss.
“Not the restraints,” she rasped out, desperation helping her to regain her voice somewhat. “You don’t have to do this. Please just leave me be.” There was a special kind of fear in not being able to move one’s limbs in the night; the fear created its own sort of lunacy as the mind worked while the body could not. Mena imagined all sorts of horrors to combat the chill of being manacled, spread-eagled, on her hard plank bed. An errant fire that she could do nothing about but lie in wait until it consumed her slowly, or London rats chewing on her feet, or spiders crawling on her with no way to brush them off.
And here a new terror was introduced. A man, two men, with unadulterated access to her body and no way for her to struggle, or strain, or even shift to alleviate the pain that came with intercourse.
Some strength began to return to Mena’s hips and shoulders, working its way slowly out from the torso. Everywhere he touched it felt like his skin was made of razors and hers of silk. The ripping sensation was almost audible.
Panic flared as mobility began to return, and Mena tugged against Mr. Burns’s unyielding grip. She struggled to wrench and yank away from him, but knew her movements were weak. “Don’t tie me up, I implore you!” When one of his arms released her to reach for the first buckled leather manacle, Mena’s arm flailed out, her elbow catching him in the chin.
He bared his filthy teeth as he whirled her around and smashed the back of his ham-sized knuckles into her face. He released her as his blow connected, sending her crashing to the hard floor in a pile of weak limbs. Pain exploded into Mena’s cheek and radiated to her eyes, ears, and down her neck, but she caught herself with trembling hands before her head cracked against the floor. The taste of brine and copper trickled into her mouth from where her teeth had cut into her cheek.
Mr. Burns crouched down, the pleasant, unassuming look fixed back on his unfortunate features. “Let me remind ya of something out of the kindness of me ’eart, Countess Fire Quim.” The foul stench of his breath assailed her, causing her already watering eyes to overflow. “Out there, you’re a noble lady expecting everyone to lick your boots and kiss your arse. But in ’ere, you’re nothing but another loony cunt, locked away because no one can stand ya. I’ll tell ya what I tell the others here. If ya make me ’appy, I can make your life easier. If you’re difficult, then life will be difficult, and no one will believe that the bruises I leave on ya weren’t inflicted by your own self.”
All of the large muscles in Mena’s body quivered and twitched with returning blood. Her skin burned, yet she was freezing. Despite all that, she was only aware of the raw black emotion swirling in her soul. Something dark and self-destructive, as though one of the many demons she’d fought in her lifetime had finally been set free.
“It’s Viscountess Fire Quim, you hateful brute,” she snapped, surprising herself as much or more than Mr. Burns. “If you all insist on calling me that ridiculous moniker, the very least you can do is affix the correct title.” To seal her fate, she spat blood in his repulsive face.
He acted just like she’d expected him to, and his next vicious blow granted her the oblivion she craved.
* * *
To Mena, heaven was a difficult notion to comprehend. And, somehow, whenever she pictured it in her mind, she merely conjured an image of home. Her real home. Not Benchley Court, the stately, opulent mansion where she’d resided with her husband these five soul-crushing years. Nor Belle Glen Asylum, where she lay now on the stone floor in a puddle of her blood and grief.
But home. Birch Haven Place, an idyllic country baronetcy in Hampshire. A place as much a paradise as this asylum had become her purgatory.
Floating in the dark folds of her unconscious, Mena could feel the sunshine of southern England on her face. Could close her eyes and still see the light and shadow playing to her in the shade of her favorite copse of birch trees where she used to picnic and read of a summer’s day. She’d gaze over the fields to where the manor house settled, a cozy Georgian structure, too big to be called a cottage and too small for a mansion, with red stone, white windows, and entirely too many chimneys. Her father had once told her he thought the roof rather cluttered. But Mena had loved each seemingly random gable and smokestack right where it was.
When she was growing up, the gardens had been her fairyland, a place to let her imagination roam. The stables, her adolescent refuge, as she was allowed to explore the countryside on horseback until the fields ran into the sea. The grand fireplace in the meager great hall was a warm corner of comfort, where she and her beloved father had huddled their heads together every winter over countless books and shut out the world.