Chapter 22
They’d dragged Tilly into a warehouse, then put her in a large wooden crate. After they’d slammed the lid shut and locked it, fear had gripped her, tightening the muscles in her body and making it hard to breathe.
You can’t get out. No one will come for you. How would they find you in here in a city of millions of people?
She’d fought the voice inside her head before it completely consumed her. Ambrose would find her, Tilly told herself. With help from the Nightingales and their clairvoyant skills, she would not be in this prison for long. She repeated the words like a mantra, over and over until she believed them.
When she’d first been forced in here, there had been cracks of light filtering in from outside, which had made her wonder if she was close to a window.
Tilly had pressed her eye to the sliver of a gap in the wood and seen nothing but a grey smear of cold illumination.
Still, those thin threads of light had made her feel like she wasn’t alone, which, of course, she was.
At first she’d heard voices and screamed, banging on the wood with her feet and fists until her knuckles bled through her gloves.
Panic had her yelling until her throat burned.
But no one had come to let her out. No one had even talked to her, and then when she’d had no more strength to fight, she’d lain there with her eyes closed, focusing on something—anything—that would help her through this hell.
Ambrose’s kisses and touches. She’d relived every moment and every sensation. The feeling of his large hand on her body and the wall of his chest beneath her palm. She wanted more of his kisses. She’d wanted to stand in that bookshop and lose herself in Lord Ambrose Talbot.
Tilly knew about what happened between a man and a woman but had believed she would never find out firsthand unless she decided to marry.
But then, how could she do that, given her past?
When Ambrose had kissed her, she had wanted more for the very first time and had felt her body stirring at the thought of it.
Which was now never going to happen, even if it could, because she was going to die here in this box.
Slowly the light went and the dark came, settling around her like a cloak.
The temperature dropped to the point where she started shivering.
Tilly tucked her hands beneath her arms and tried to make herself smaller.
Every time she shifted, the wood would groan, and the sound was loud in the silence.
Her parents would know she’d not come home by now. Would they go to the Watch House? Visit The Iris? How would Ambrose and the Nightingales know if they were not contacted? Surely it would be days before that happened. Would one of them have a vision about her? Lord, she hoped so.
She would not survive days in here, cold and alone. Was that the plan? To leave her here to starve to death?
No! Someone was coming for her, she had to believe that.
Tilly forced herself to sing every song she remembered, her voice sounding like the rusty door hinge her father had once accused her of being.
Thinking of him made her cry, so she pushed him aside and began reciting poetry.
When she had spoken every word she knew out loud, she started again in French and tried not to focus on the panic waiting to pounce if she let it.
“They will not beat me,” she said aloud, and her voice came back to her from the wood on all sides, small and unconvincing. She said it again, louder. And then again. Until it felt like something she believed.
She didn’t know how long she’d been in here when the sound of footsteps reached her. Measured footsteps that told her whoever was coming was not in a hurry. Right then, it could be the devil himself who opened that lid, and she would be grateful.
The lock was opened, and then she had light. Blissful, agonizing golden light from a lamp the man held aloft. Her eyes burned in protest, and she turned her face away, blinking tears she refused to let fall. His face was covered below the eyes, and he was dressed entirely in black.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Get out,” he said in a gruff voice, utterly without feeling. “You can walk and do your business. Then you’re to get back in.”
“What is going to happen to me?”
He didn’t answer. Just reached in with a large hand and hauled her out by the arm as though she were a sack of grain.
“Ouch! Have a care, sir, you are hurting me.”
“I don’t much care.”
When her feet hit the floor, she nearly went down, her legs having forgotten what they were used for. She stomped them hard to drive out the numbness and shook out her hands until the pins and needles faded to something bearable.
Looking around her, Tilly saw the warehouse was vast and dark with shadows beyond the lamp’s reach.
“It is my hope,” she said carefully, her voice only shaking slightly, “that if you have people in your life whom you love, sir, you would pray they are never subjected to what you have done to me this day.”
She slapped her arms to warm them and moved in circles, keeping her eyes on the space around her, cataloguing everything. Crates. A door. The tracks it sat upon. The distance between her and freedom.
“But then, a man such as you likely has no one in his life.”
“I’ve a woman,” he said, sounding genuinely affronted.
“Then she has my sympathies,” Tilly snapped. Now that she was no longer in that small cramped space fighting her fears, some of her resilience had returned. “Because if she is wed to a monster like you, I can only imagine the hell she lives with.”
“I’m a good husband!”
“How can you be if you would treat a total stranger as you have treated me?”
“‘Ere, what’s all the noise?” These words were followed by another man, smaller than the first. He materialized out of the shadows with a lamp of his own. “You’ll alert someone we’re here if you keep that up.”
“She said I’m evil and my Bess has her sympathies having to put up with me.” He sounded genuinely wounded now, which Tilly found extraordinary considering the circumstances.
“Who bloody cares?” The second man had the lower half of his face covered too. He looked at Tilly with flat, dismissive eyes that were more frightening than the outrage of the other man. “Get her back in.”
“Are you another gutless coward who would harm innocent women, sir?” Tilly demanded.
She walked away from both of them toward the far wall and heard them follow.
Her father had once said he feared for anyone who was shut in a room with Tilly, as she could talk them into their final resting place.
She planned on doing exactly that tonight—not the final resting place part, she amended silently, but very much the escaping part.
“Get back here!”
“I’m warming myself up, as you did not see fit to supply me with anything but a thin blanket. And I do need to”—she waved a hand in a deliberately vague way—“relieve myself?” She added the last mortified, but knowing it was entirely necessary. Necessity had overtaken dignity in the crate.
“Women shouldn’t talk of such things,” one of them muttered.
“What? Bodily functions that are perfectly natural things that all women deal with daily? Are only men permitted to speak of them, then?”
They exchanged a look. Behind them, at the very edge of the lamplight, Tilly thought she saw something shift in the darkness. A shadow that moved. She did not acknowledge it and just kept her eyes on the two men.
The longing to go home swept through her so suddenly, it made her knees weak. Tilly wanted her parents. She wanted Ambrose and Violet. The thought of not seeing them again had tears stinging her eyes, but she held them inside. She would not show these men weakness.
“It’s the way of things,” one of them said.
“How remarkably convenient for you that it is. That women have no voice, no say in anything that is done to us or around us.”
“It’s just like he said. The women at that bloody club have too much to say for themselves,” one of them muttered to the other.
Tilly pounced. “How do you know about my club?”
The men looked uncomfortable now, like they’d said too much.
So she was here because of The Iris. Someone had decided she mattered enough to silence, but was that due to her forming a women-only club, next door to a man’s one, or was it because of what sat below it? “Are you Freemasons?”
“Get her back in the bloody box,” the second man said, something sharp entering his voice now. “It’s the only way to shut her up.”
“Are you happy for me to relieve myself inside the crate, or am I permitted to do so before I am incarcerated again?”
The men looked at each other, then at her.
“Incarcerated means—”
“I know what it means!” the first man roared.
“Well then?”
“There’s a pot in there,” he said, pointing to a narrow door half lost in the shadows. “Use that. But don’t try any funny business.”
“As there is nothing remotely humorous in my situation, I’m not sure how I could,” Tilly said and walked toward the door.
“Bloody women,” he muttered.
She opened the door, and when the stale scent hit her, she lifted her scarf over her nose, breathing carefully through it.
The door slammed shut behind her, and the dark settled around her again.
She ran her hands along the walls to find an escape route, but there were no loose boards, no windows, or gaps.
Nothing. Just another small prison inside the larger one.
When she opened the door again minutes later, one of them stood directly outside, arms crossed, eyes hard above the cloth covering his face.
Now, Tilly.
She pushed both palms into his chest with every ounce of force she had. He stumbled backward with a grunt of surprise, not expecting her actions. Then she ran.
“Grab her!”
The second man lunged, and she dodged, her heart now hammering violently against her ribs. Reaching the door, Tilly seized it, dragged it along the tracks with both hands, and felt the cold air of outside.
Hands grabbed her from behind, but Tilly was not giving up. She fought again with everything she had left, kicking and screaming for help, but she didn’t see the fist that caught her jaw until it was too late, and then she felt herself falling.
“Men are stronger. Maybe you should remember that,” one of them said.
“Never,” Tilly said, but the word came out weak.
They dragged her back across the floor to the crate and threw her in. The lid slammed shut and was locked.
“You’ll not be there for long, so enjoy the quiet because that will be changing soon.” These words were followed by laughter.
The shivering started again, and this time when the fear came, she couldn’t force it away. The hopelessness of her situation drained the fight from her body. Suddenly, she no longer had hope.