She rushed out, hit the button to open the double garage door, and slid onto the driver’s seat of her Bentley—not noticing how the airflow between the open garage and the open windows in the living room prevented the house door from closing behind her. Pushing the ignition, she pointedly ignored the flood of adrenaline and the deep recesses of her brain that were forever hardwired to be afraid of driving. She backed out of the garage, her neck craned so she could see over her shoulder, down the drive, onto their street. Then she cranked the wheel left and pointed the car toward the city, silently cursing Simon and Henry, her mother and the Regency, even though she knew that none of this was anyone’s fault.

When she pulled up, the Regency valet opened her door, and Winston was at her side within moments. “Ms. Collins—”

“Just take me to her,” Clare said, cutting him off as they entered the double doors being held open for them by two uniformed doormen. “I promise to sign all your paperwork after. But I want to speak with her first.”

“Of course. Her personal therapist is in speaking with her now.”

Clare nodded, wondering if her mother, in one of her mental time travel episodes, ever went into an apoplectic fit over the idea that she now saw a mind meddler—and twice a week at that.

“Here we are,” Winston said as they arrived at Ella’s private rooms. “She is calmer now, but would you like the therapist to stay? Just in case.”

“No,” Clare said and opened the door herself. “I think we’ll be fine.”

“Very well. If you change your mind—”

Clare waved off the rest of his sentence with her hand. When the door opened, the therapist rose from her chair in the corner with a smile. “We’ve just been—”

“Thank you,” Clare said. “I know how to call if I need you.”

“Yes, um…of course. I’ll be…it’s just that…”

“Thank you, Doctor Keen.” Winston cued the woman to wrap it up and leave. “Ms. Collins will let us know, should she need us.”

Without any more broken sentences, they both left the room, closing the door without a sound behind them. Clare had half expected to find her mother lying flat on her back in bed, wrists and ankles secured at her sides by two-inch leather straps. Or in wilder thoughts incited by asylum scenes in old movies, her mother may have been forced into a dingy, once-white straightjacket of some kind.