Chapter 18
Sylvia stood at the top of the back stairs, wondering how she would survive this catastrophe. I allowed my disgust of that damned Lothario to overrule common sense. Now I must make a deal with the devil. And his bloody daemon.
Jonas grunted as he dragged the rug, blood darkening through the weave. Derek fumbled with the other end, his face chalk-white. The air filled with the copper tang of blood as his boots slipped on the landing.
“Hold it steady,” Jonas growled.
“But—” Derek’s mouth hung open. “He’s—”
Jonas hissed sharp between his teeth. “Shut it.”
They manoeuvred the bundle down the back stairs—the narrow ones servants used when they didn’t want to be seen. Dolly had hid there once, small and trembling in the half-dark, listening when she shouldn’t. A single swipe with a strop cured her.
Now the steps groaned under dead weight.
At the foot, Jonas straightened, sweat streaking his temple. Sylvia stood in the hall, wrapper drawn close, her face a mask over trembling hands.
“Leave it,” she ordered. “Here. And not a word, either of you.”
Derek shifted from foot to foot, throat working like he might choke on the silence. Jonas clamped a hand around his sleeve, enough to still him.
Sylvia pressed a coin into Jonas’s palm. “Go to the Forge. Ask for Mr Roark. Say it’s a house matter.”
Jonas hesitated, just long enough for her to see doubt flicker. Then he nodded. “Aye, ma’am.” He hauled Derek with him into the fog.
* * *
Catherine sat in her small chamber off the landing, perched on her trundle bed.
The door remained open as she waited for Sylvia.
She glanced up as a man stopped and peered at her.
A pale scar cut across his cheek as he measured her in an instant.
He stepped on, followed by a shadow—a presence slid by her door, gone before she fixed it in her sight.
The air tasted metallic, bitter—like a coin pressed to her tongue.
She shivered.
* * *
Sylvia waited in the parlour, lamps turned low. Time thickened with every tick of the mantel clock. Upstairs, the house muttered with the usual creaks—but she could not stop hearing the silence that followed Walton’s last breath.
The door opened without waiting for answer. Roark entered first, grey eyes sweeping the room. Behind him, on the back stair, a darker shadow waited. Soundless.
The air filled with the scent of oil, iron, and leather. She didn’t need to see him. Reeves.
Roark stood over the bundle.
“He was a drunk. A nobody,” she said, hating how her voice thinned.
Roark lifted the carpet flap. Grunted. “He was Walton,” he said. “That makes him a someone.”
“He cannot be found here.” The plea tasted of bile.
Roark’s gaze hardened, flat as stone. He gestured. The shadow from the stair glided in, lifted the rug as if it weighed nothing, and vanished again into the night.
Sylvia’s mouth had gone dry. The tick of the mantel clock mocked her.
“You’ve made me fat purses, Sylvie,” Roark said at last. “But you’ve gone soft.”
He turned without another word, took two steps, and stopped.
“You’re dust.”
Her knees struck the rug before she knew they had bent.
She scrabbled for the brandy—the stopper clattered across the floor—and sloshed liquid across the table, her hands refusing to obey.
The decanter fell. Shattered. She seized the amber vial instead, uncorked it with her teeth, and swallowed until the fire in her throat gave way to the cloying sweetness. Bittersweet. Blessed.
The mantel clock ticked on. She welcomed the numbness creeping in, the tremor leaving her hands, the cold rising from the floor—and let it take her.
* * *
Fanny Murray’s, October 1816
Sylvia had taken to opium.
Not daily. Not at first. Just enough to sleep, she claimed. Just a sip to steady her nerves. Catherine didn’t question it. She noted the dosage, the frequency, the bottle’s diminishing weight.
The vials came from a French apothecary off Soho Square. Amber glass, each stoppered, sat beside the silver-backed hairbrush on Sylvia’s dressing table, arranged as if they belonged to a lady.
Catherine knew the signs. The softened eyes. The slack jaw. The way Sylvia begun forgetting which girls had worked which clients. Once, she repeated herself three times in a single conversation. Another night, she dozed through the accounts and woke furious, convinced someone had stolen from her.
She hadn’t always been like this. Once, she counted every coin herself. Stood over the steward like a hawk. Now, she napped through breakfast, left slippers in corridors, and quoted poetry she hadn’t read in years.
And Catherine—Catherine waited.
She did not press. Did not volunteer. She simply stepped forward when others faltered. Sylvia praised her for it.
“My girl. You always know what I need,” she said once, voice thick from laudanum.
Catherine only nodded.
The girls whispered, of course. About Sylvia’s pallor. Her absences. Her inattention.
“She’s dying,” one said in the laundry. “She must be.”
Catherine slapped the girl’s face. Hard. “Open your mouth again, and you’ll the strop.”
Gossip ceased, at least when she was in the room.
When Sylvia called for her, Catherine came.
When she asked for hot water and brandy at midnight, Catherine fetched it. When her weeping broke into heaves, and Catherine held the basin firm.
Not once did she offer comfort. Not once did she speak when silence would do. That was the trick. The others clucked and cooed like birds. Catherine let the storm pass. Let Sylvia crawl back towards dignity alone.
And still, the woman trusted her.
She knew where the keys were kept. She knew which ledgers were false. She knew the name of every man Sylvia blackmailed and which drawer held their secrets.
She learned what time the maid brought tea. How long it steeped. Where Sylvia kept her personal tinctures and which cabinet was always locked by morning but open at night.
The bottle Catherine planned to use looked no different from the others.
The house was quiet the night she made her final calculation. Sylvia had eaten very little. Had complained of dizziness. Catherine helped her to bed and tucked her in. She poured the usual dose of laudanum. Then added one drop more.
The third clung to the lip of the bottle. Catherine tilted her wrist, waited—too long. Sylvia shifted against the pillow, a sound catching in her throat.
Catherine steadied the glass. The drop fell.
Three in total.
Not enough to kill her—not yet. Just enough to make the coming days slower. Cloudier. Easier to navigate.
She pressed the bottle to Sylvia’s lips. “Just a little,” she whispered. “To settle your nerves.”
Sylvia drank it down and sighed, already drifting.
Catherine watched the rise and fall of her chest. Counted. Measured. Noted how long it took for the rhythm to change. Then she rose, drew the curtains, and left the room.
Tomorrow, she would do it.
Properly.