She struggled to her feet and winced as her knees protested against holding her up.
“Here, sit down, luv.” One of the women, hardly older than herself, patted the edge of the wooden bench to her left.
Annabelle sank onto the seat, trying to control the tremor in her limbs. The enraged, nasal voice of the officer she had punched was still blaring through the carriage walls.
“What is happening?” she asked, sounding dazed to her own ears.
Before anyone could reply, the carriage door swung open again and an officer climbed aboard.
Thank God, not the one she had hit.
The cart lurched into motion, nearly toppling her off the bench again.
“Sir,” she said hoarsely, “where are you taking us?”
The young officer avoided her eyes. “Please, no talking, miss.”
She stared at him, and he stared just as stubbornly ahead.
“They’re taking us to prison, luv,” said the woman next to her.
Prison?
“I must ask you to be quiet,” said the officer, more sharply now, and he placed his truncheon across his knees. On the bench across, a small blond woman in a crumpled green sash began to sob.
Barely fifteen minutes later, the cart halted in front of an imposing building. The iron letters above the entrance gate told Annabelle exactly where she was: Millbank Penitentiary.
* * *
They were made to wait for an hour in a musty antechamber. At the sound of a bell, she was marched into a musty office. The clerk at the desk did not as much as glance at her when she took her seat. His eyes were on the voluminous ledger before him, his pen at the ready.
With a flat voice, he asked for her name and place of residence, and told her to turn in her reticule.
Then he moved the ledger toward her.
Next to her name, it said Obstruction and assault on a public servant.
Annabelle scrawled a shaky signature. “Sir. What is going to happen now?”
The man didn’t even look up, only reached for the bell on his desk.
“Sir,” she said pleadingly. He glanced at her then, and then he squinted, as if he had unexpectedly looked into bright light. His hand lowered back onto the desk.
“Well, miss,” he said, “you’ll know more tomorrow.”
Panic rose like bile in her throat. “I’m to stay here overnight?”
“A normal procedure, miss. Unless someone fetches you beforehand and posts bail.”
“Bail,” she whispered. She had no money to post bail. No one even knew where she was.
The clerk picked up the bell.
She leaned toward him imploringly. “Sir, could you have a message sent for me?”
He hesitated, then shook his head regretfully. “I’m afraid not today, miss.”
“Please, one message. To Lady Catriona Campbell.”
“A lady?” The sympathy faded from his eyes and was replaced with suspicion.
Of course. She didn’t look as though ladies would keep her company. She had lost her hat; the buttons of her coat had been torn off; her bodice, too, was missing buttons; and God knew what her hair looked like. If she bandied the name of the Earl of Wester Ross himself around, they might send her straight to Bedlam.
She sank back into the chair. “Never mind.”
* * *
She was reunited with the women from the cart in a cell. There was a single window high in the wall, a wooden stool, and a narrow cot on the left. The fetid stench of filth and desperation welled from the cracks in the old floorboards.
The woman with the northern accent who had offered her a seat in the cart flung herself onto the dirty cot. The blond girl timidly sat down beside her and clutched her arms around her slim frame. “Why are we here?” she whimpered.
“Me?” The northerner stretched her legs. “Obstructing an officer in his attempt to pinch me breasts.”
The girl still standing next to Annabelle cackled. “Yous are riskin’ Millbank o’er a li’l slap an’ tickle?” she said. The heavy Cockney made Annabelle look at her properly for the first time.
Hard eyes glared back at her from a hard face.
“What are ye looking at,” the girl snarled.
“You’re not a suffragist,” Annabelle said.
The girl’s expression turned derisive. “Nah. Me, I was picking pockets there, they say.” She sniggered. “Had nuthin’ on me, thank the Lord, or else—” She drew a finger across her scrawny neck.
Annabelle sagged against the wall and slowly slid to the floor.
She was in prison. Sharing a cell with real criminals.
But she had made a police officer bleed, so that probably made her a criminal, too.
The room began to spin.
She’d be prosecuted. She’d be imprisoned. She’d lose her place