digging into the loose skin that hung there.
“Grace,” Mrs. Clay said. “Can you hear me?”
She nodded, fingertips still buried deeply in her malleable belly. “B-b—” She tried to speak, but the word she needed most wouldn’t come.
Mrs. Clay pulled her hands into her own. “The baby’s lost, dear, I’m so sorry. Listen to me—listen!” she said, clamping Grace’s fingers together as the girl’s mouth contorted into a soundless cry. “Heedson has to make sure you’re going to be all right after losing the baby. I’ve seen a few women on the farms get sick after, and I can tell you it’s not the way you want to go.”
Grace barely nodded, her dilated pupils fixed firmly on Mrs. Clay’s. “I . . .”
“You’re doing brilliantly, dear,” Mrs. Clay encouraged her, wiping cold sweat from her brow. “To hear your voice is a lovely thing. Keep trying. You what?”
Heedson came through the door, rolling his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. Grace cried out, whatever hard-earned word she’d been trying to form lost entirely as she scraped the sheets into a pile to cover her nakedness.
“Spare me, girl,” he said. “My only interest in you now is seeing that you don’t die on my watch. Your father would have my head.”
“A fine thought,” Mrs. Clay said through clenched teeth. “After what she’s been through on your orders.”
Croomes and Marie filed into the room behind him. Marie’s eyes were swollen from crying, and she wiped them with her apron as she set instruments on the table next to the bed, their metal edges banging against each other.
“What—” Grace’s panicked eyes shot toward the noise.
“Ah, talking now, are you?” Croomes asked. She pulled Grace’s wrists above her head and pinned her arms back in a meaty grip. “You’d best sit quiet while the doctor looks after your welfare. I’m happy to put you back in the sheets.”
Mrs. Clay cradled Grace’s face in her hands. “Listen to me, Grace. This needs to happen. You can die if you’re not looked after properly.”
“Enough,” Heedson said. “Grace, the less you squirm, the quicker I can be,” he said as he worked a hand between her knees. She lashed out instinctively, the sheet sailing with her movements as she kicked. Marie yelped and slipped sideways, sending the instrument tray to the ground amid a clattering of metal. Croomes’s grip bit down on her wrists, and Grace’s hands tingled as the nerves sang, but she didn’t stop fighting. Her blood-smeared feet scissored in the air, striking the doctor’s hands and knocking Mrs. Clay aside.
“God damn it,” Heedson yelled. “Have it your way, then, idiot girl. Let her go, Croomes. Let her rot from the inside out if that’s what she wants.”
The second the pressure released her wrists Grace lunged for the doctor, humiliation fueling her past the bounds of energy. She dove for a metal instrument and lashed it across his face in a vicious arc, sending his spectacles flying.
Then Croomes was on her, throwing her to the ground and grinding her face against the cold rock as if she would make flour out of her cheeks. Mrs. Clay struggled to her knees, picking her way over strewn instruments to Grace’s side.
“Grace,” she whispered. “What have you done?”
“What’s she done?” Heedson said, his voice towering over the women huddled on the ground. “She’s earned herself a place in the cellar.”
“Oooh.” Croomes leaned over to crow in Grace’s ear. “That’ll be a treat. Not quite the European tour, but a sight you’ve not seen yet, nonetheless.”
“Dr. Heedson, please.” Mrs. Clay struggled to her feet. “In her state . . . it’ll kill her.”
Heedson wiped the blood from his cheek, fingering his swelling lower lip. “The Board is coming for inspection tomorrow, Mrs. Clay. I’ve been attacked by a demented patient who’s been given every chance to show that she can behave better. One look at this exhausted, bleeding slip of a girl and they’ll have my certificate. She’s going with the worst, down to the cellar, where the Board won’t think to look for patients.”
Grace lay flat on the floor, all of her fire spent on the attack. Croomes didn’t bother to help her to her feet, simply dragged her into the hall. Grace watched dispassionately as her toes trailed through her own blood and the sound of Mrs. Clay’s crying dissipated in the dark.
“Nobody’s gonna look after the welfare of people in a place where ain’t no person able to live,” Croomes said, when they came to the cellar door.