He walks a little farther into a dark soon impenetrable. What choice is there but to open the panel of the lantern again and shine it around to get his bearings? Still, it is an unwise choice, for here a bright light is irresistible. He hears footsteps, delicate as a woman's, and feels a hand grabbing at his coat. He wrenches his arm away and turns, has to dodge another shadow. The lantern clatters uselessly into the gutter. Was that the glint of a blade? Was that whisper the sound of it slicing through the air? He jumps back and kicks, shoving with all his might past whatever it is that is stalking him, and takes off down the street at a run.
H
e is cruel. She's always known that, but for him to do this—it is beyond anything she imagined. The slap of water just behind her like the lap of a hungry creature, the stinking breeze its breath. Down here on the dock the wind has to find its way through the docked ships and stacked crates. Flyte seems to know his way around—is this another place from his past?
The rope around her wrists scratches her skin. Steiner wound it around and around, but, she wonders, what of the knot? He tied it too quickly for it to be secure.
A few feet away Flyte sits on a bollard and picks at his nails with a knife. "My love," he says, "it would be so very much easier if you told me where it is."
In the dark it is impossible to see his expression. She imagines it—sweet yet exasperated, the look a father might give a child when she has disappointed him. Isn't that about right? In those first weeks of their life together she'd called him Father a few times and felt the force of his hand against her cheek. "No," he'd said gently, "I'm not your father. Don't you understand?" So she'd asked him what he meant to do with her—what did he want with claiming her from the orphanage when he was no relation of hers? An abandoned child— unwanted, left behind. So he'd shown her what he wanted—in slow steps because he wasn't, he told her, a brute. First his hand undoing her dress, then the next week lifting it off her, a few days later peeling off her underclothes so that she sat shivering on the edge of the bed, the small buds of her breasts hard in the cold. He could hardly restrain himself then. But he had. By Christmas, though, he'd had her, and had her every night from then on. Always he'd called her "my love," and the day she was old enough he'd taken her to Scotland and married her.
She was a clever thing; he'd told her so because she'd picked up his tricks quickly. That's surely why he'd put his claim on her before they went in search of men for her to lure—couldn't go actually marrying one of them while she was married to him, could she? A pretty thing, not what she seemed, not his daughter, not a young girl in search of love and a husband. No, indeed. How many foolish young men did they take? She can't even remember. Who'd have thought that it would have been Popham who'd bring it all to an end, when he was the dullest of all of them?
She's so cold that her flesh feels dead to her. He could have given her his coat, but he didn't. Instead he forced her down here still in her underthings. A clever trick, she realizes, for even if someone she could appeal to should happen by, what would they make of her, undressed like this?
"It's all spent," she says.
"My love, even you couldn't be so foolish."
She shifts her weight, tries to feel behind her with one foot for the edge of the dock. "I lived on it. How else was I supposed to get by?"
He clicks his knife closed and stands. "Kitty, Kitty, please don't try my patience. I didn't bring you up to be a fool, did I? You made do very nicely, found yourself a proper English gent to
marry,
in Paris of all places. Well well well; what more could you want? I was out of sight and out of mind, wasn't I? Did you think I wouldn't find you?"
"I had to eat." She turns her wrists this way and that though the rope burns them. Has it loosened? A little, just a little.
He comes close and lays one hand on her arm. "My love, I
under
stand
that you had to eat. I e
ven u
nderstand that you'd go through a sham of a marriage to give yourself a home. But"—he grips her more tightly—"where the
hell
did my money go? I earned it, didn't I? All those years in the clink, I stayed true to you. Didn't tell them what I knew about you, did I, or where you were?"
"You didn't bloody know where I was." She pulls herself away but he grabs her, and it's as well he does—reaching back, her foot has found only air.
He shoves his face into hers, his nose hard against her cheek. "Now, tell me where you hid it. If you don't, I'll be no worse off without you. I'll get into that house, I'll rip it apart, and I'll find it."
If he loosens his hold now she'll fall, the water will rise over her head. She can't swim, not really, can barely stay afloat, and won't even manage that with her hands tied. Even with them free her chances wouldn't be good: the water is cold, and filthy, and full of hazards that could cut her, or entangle her, or pull her under.
He hugs her to him. He even presses his lips against her neck.
"Darling Kitty," he says, "my love, my heart. I'd hate to lose you. You know that, don't you? You'd sink like a stone, right to the bottom. A terrible accident. Oh yes, tragic."
She shudders, says quietly, "It's all spent on him. He didn't have much—we lived on it." She works her wrists, twisting, pulling. Although the rope is loose, she can't pull her hands free.
He holds her more tightly. His coat is warm against her skin. "No," he whispers into her ear. "No, no, that's not how it was."
"Yes." She leans her head back, away from his shoulder. "Every last farthing. All spent on him."
"Oh, Kitty." He kisses the corner of her mouth. "My lovely Kitty, what a fool you've been." Then he opens his arms and lets her fall.
She doesn't make a sound until the water takes her.
Chapter 36
T
he river has an oily look to it. For a quarter hour by the chimes of the church clock Jane has stood here staring into it. One old soul— a woman so bent that she walks as though searching for something lost on the ground—stops and says, "That's the way, isn't it? A man gets you in trouble, and that's how you end it."
Jane looks around. The wind whips her hair around her face, for her cap is long gone, lying trodden into the dirt somewhere between here and Cursitor Road. "It's all gone wrong."
"You can put it right, or have someone do it for you. Unless"— she nods as best she can at Jane's belly—"it's too late for that."
"What do you think I am?" She glares at her, this crooked old thing with her shawls and her wrinkled sack of a face. "It's not like that."
She lets out a rough laugh. "Go on, jump if you're going to. It's painless, so they say." She limps away along the bridge, this thin strip of city stretching over the river. Mist gives the lamps the glow of halos, marking her path. Soon her figure is indistinct, her footsteps erased by the rumble of a grand carriage coming over the bridge. Jane turns away. She leans onto the parapet and stares at the water rushing beneath her.
It is late now, very late indeed.
Chapter 37
H
e's gone. She's gone too. The widow comes downstairs and looks about her. No one in the morning room, or the study. Not even a servant. No one in the dining room either. Did everyone disappear overnight? She rings the bell and waits.
It is Cartwright who eventually comes up the stairs, slowly, stately, as though nothing about this morning is unusual. "Cartwright," she says. "I'll need breakfast, and then I'd like my trunk brought down and a cab."
His cheeks flutter slightly. "Yes, ma'am?"
"Yes, indeed." She folds her hands together. Shouldn't he go, now that he has his instructions? What does she need to do next?
He stands on the corner of the carpet, silent and unmoving.
"Go on then," she says, and pushes her hands through the air, shooing him away.
"Very good, ma'am."
He closes the door, then walks away to the back stairs, where he pauses and raises his eyebrows. He blows his breath through his teeth and mutters to himself, "Blimey, not losing any time, are you, young miss?"
Down in the kitchen Mrs. Johnson is cracking eggs into a pan. She says over her shoulder, "Her, was it?"
"Wants breakfast. Then a cab."
"Told you," she says. "Guilty conscience, isn't it? Wanting to take
off like that just when Mrs. Robert is gone missing and Mr. Robert is at his wits' end?"
Sarah comes in, carrying the housemaid's box. "I can't do it all on my own, you know."
Mrs. Johnson tosses an eggshell into a bucket, then starts beating the eggs. "We can't be letting everything go, just because the household's all upset."
"Who's going to notice?"
"Mr. Robert when he comes back, that's who."
Sarah lets herself drop into a chair and shakes her head. "He's got his mind on other things. He's not going to be worried about whether the rooms are all made up."
"He won't want to be worried about it on top of everything else." Mrs. Johnson taps her fork on the edge of the pan.
Cartwright pulls out a chair and sits down too. "He'll be calling in the police, I'll bet. Not much more he can do on his own, is there? Wasn't much point trying, if you ask me."
Sarah props her elbows on the table. "Run off, hasn't she. Told you she was a dark one."
Mrs. Johnson lifts the fork and points it at her. "That's enough of that. You hear me? Now, get on with you, and be grateful the widow's off today, or there'd be her to see to as well."
Sarah scowls, but she gets to her feet and picks up the box again. She doesn't say another word, and that's unusual for her. Mrs. Johnson doesn't notice, and neither does Cartwright, for she's saying to him, "Maybe we should tell the police about her taking off like this. Can't let her just go, can we? Not without Mr. Robert knowing about it."
J
ust before ten o'clock, when the cab pulls up in front of thirty-two Cursitor Road, Cartwright calls for Sarah to help him with the trunk. She doesn't answer. In fact, she cannot be found. In the end he has to shout down to the kitchen for Elsie, and she slouches her way upstairs in an ill humor. Together they carry it, and though it is small they knock it against the banister one moment, the wall the next, because Elsie falters and shifts and complains all the way down to the hall.
Mrs. Johnson is standing there, hands knotted together and hair unkempt from taking off her hat too quickly. With neither apron nor cap she looks odd, as though she's missing a layer of herself. "Well?" hisses Cartwright as he struggles with the trunk.
"No," she says. "They won't come."
"Bleeding idiots," he huffs. "What are we supposed to do?"
She shrugs.
The three of them are still standing there when the widow makes her way down the stairs. She comes close to missing her footing when she notices them—the cook, the butler, and an ugly young girl who must be one of the maids, all standing next to her trunk as though they mean to delay her.
She lifts her chin and walks along the hallway to where they wait. They do not move. They do not speak. "Thank you," she says, but her hands stay folded together at her waist—no handshakes, no tips to thank them for their trouble.
She looks towards the door and the seconds pass, doled out by the tall clock in the hallway. She fiddles with her gloves. She touches her hat, her coat—all black, of course. When the clock chimes out the hour they all turn.
Cartwright nods for Elsie to get the door, and together they carry the trunk outside.
The widow follows at a respectable distance, as a lady would. Once the trunk has been stowed by the driver, she climbs in. Not a word more to Cartwright or Elsie, no smile of thanks. They walk back up the steps to where Mrs. Johnson is watching. For a moment the widow's face looks out at them, then she disappears and the cab moves away.
"Good riddance," says Mrs. Johnson. "Never did trust that one."
Cartwright looks at her. "Still going to get Mr. Henry's money, isn't she?"
"Not necessarily. Mr. Robert will know what to do." She makes to wipe her hands on her apron, but it's not there. "Better get myself dressed," she says. "And you'd better find Sarah. If she's taken off, she's in for it this time."
But they don't find her. Instead Cartwright, who makes the rounds of the bedrooms, finds Mrs. Robert's jewelry box forced open.
W
hen Sarah comes in, Cartwright and Mrs. Johnson wheel around where they are sitting, spoons held high. "You!" they say together.
Elsie merely glances at her, then goes back to her plate of stew. She mutters, "You're really in for it now," and gives a snort that sounds like a laugh cut off too soon.
Sarah stares back at them. "What?" she says. "What's up with you lot?"
"Been out somewhere important, have we?" Mrs. Johnson sets down her spoon.
"It's not like I was that long."
Cartwright gets to his feet. "Over two hours. I'd call that long. Wouldn't you, Mrs. Johnson? Enough time to get up to all sorts of no good." He folds his arms.
She goes a little pale and reaches for a chair. She's still in her coat, but she doesn't try to undo it. "Never minded before, have you?"
Mrs. Johnson looks down at her plate.
"Have you?" Sarah says more loudly. "But then, it was convenient not to notice, wasn't it? Just like I didn't notice things either. All those joints of beef from the butcher's he charges us for—we could have been feeding an army, couldn't we? All those bottles of port we buy and Mr. and Mrs. Robert hardly touch. I never told them what was going on, did I? I didn't say a word because I know how it is— got to get through each day, haven't you? Got to save a bit for a rainy day?"