Chapter 20 #2
Liliana woke after thirty minutes, her round face puckering as she looked around the dark, rattling interior of the coach. She did not cry; she reached out her fat fingers to poke at the leather buttons on Thelma’s sleeve, letting out a small, questioning grunt.
"We are going home, little bird," Thelma whispered, her forehead resting against the cold glass of the window. "We are going back to the valleys where the sun is warm. We don't need his stone house. We don't need his gray eyes."
Her inner thoughts mocked her. You wanted to stay.
The realization was a sharp, physical pain in her side.
She hadn't just stayed for the baby; she had stayed for the sound of his boots on the stairs.
She had stayed for that single, terrifying second in the nursery when she thought he might close the distance between them and take her hand in the light.
She had fallen in love with her enemy, and this was the bill the viscount had warned her about. The ledger had balanced, and she had been left with nothing but the debts.
The carriage slowed down suddenly, the wheels grinding to a halt not at a bustling coaching inn, but in the middle of a high, empty dip in the road where the stone walls had broken down into piles of rubble.
Thelma’s heart leaped into her throat. "Why are we stopping?" she asked aloud to the empty coach.
The carriage door was wrenched open from the outside.
The morning light rushed in, cold and blinding. Two men stood in the gap. They did not wear the dark livery of the Vane stables; they wore heavy, oilskin coats with the collars turned up, their hats pulled low over faces that were nothing but grey shadows in the mist.
"Out," the first man said. His voice was rough, carrying the thick, flat accent of the western ports, not the sharp vowels of Yorkshire.
"This is not the border," Thelma said, her voice rising as she scrambled back against the opposite seat, her arms wrapping around Liliana like a shield. "Lady Daphne said the inn was—"
The man didn't answer. He reached into the coach, his large, scarred hand grabbing the wool of Liliana’s blanket with a violent, practiced twist.
"No!" Thelma shrieked, kicking out with her boots as she lunged forward to keep her grip on the child. "Leave her! Take the bag, take whatever you want—"
The second man climbed onto the iron step, his heavy hands catching Thelma by the shoulders with the strength of a blacksmith.
He hauled her forward, his fingers digging into her collarbone until she gasped for breath, his weight pinning her against the wood of the doorframe while the first man wrenched the screaming infant from her arms.
"Liliana!" she screamed, her fingernails clawing at the oilskin of the man’s sleeve, leaving long, pale streaks on the dark fabric. "You can't take her! Roman! Your Grace!"
The name left her throat before she could stop it, a useless, pathetic prayer to a man who was ten miles away in a warm library, thinking her a monster.
The man holding her did not speak. He dragged her down from the step, her thin slippers striking the wet gravel of the road, her knees buckling beneath her as she was pulled across the narrow track toward a second carriage that had pulled up in the fog behind them…
a heavy, black coach with the blinds drawn tight.
"Get in," the man grunted, throwing her toward the dark interior with a force that sent her sprawling across the floorboards.
She scrambled to her knees, her hands catching the edge of the leather seat as she turned back toward the open door.
Through the mist, she saw the first man lifting Liliana into the green brougham, the baby’s red face contorted in a silent, breathless scream of terror.
Her small hands were waving wildly in the cold air, reaching for the gray gown that was no longer there.
"Please!" Thelma sobbed, her body throwing itself against the door frame as the second man stepped back. "Take me with her! Whatever she is paying you, I can find the money…my family…"
The heavy oak door of the black coach slammed shut, the iron bolt on the outside sliding home with a sharp, metallic clack that ended the world.
The carriage lurched forward with a violent, sickening jerk that threw her against the back seat. The blinds were pinned down from the outside, leaving the interior in a thick, suffocating darkness that smelled of old horsehair and stagnant vinegar.
The hours disappeared into the steady, rhythmic torture of the road.
Thelma lay on the floor of the coach, her face pressed against her arms, her body shaking with a wild, dry grief that had no tears left to shed.
The carriage did not stop for the toll gates; she could hear the distant shout of the keepers, the rattle of the iron bars being lifted, and then the immediate, furious acceleration of the horses as the driver used the whip without mercy.
They were moving south. She could tell by the tilt of the road, by the way the air inside the carriage grew heavy and lost that sharp, clean salt-tang of the northern moors.
Her mind was a spinning wheel of horror.
Where are they taking her? What will Lady Daphne do with a child that doesn't exist?
The answer came to her with the cold certainty of a winter frost. Lady Daphne didn't need the baby dead; she only needed her hidden. She needed Liliana gone so completely that Roman would never look for her, so completely that the story of the bastard nursemaid would remain a closed ledger forever.
"I should have known," she whispered into the dark velvet of the floor. "I should have known the moment she smiled."
The carriage slowed after what felt like half a lifetime, the wheels turning over stone flags that suggested a courtyard rather than an inn yard. The horses stopped, their breath coming in long, rattling wheezes through the wood of the panels.
The door opened. The man in the oilskin coat stood there, his face an unreadable block of shadow against a high, gray stone wall that she did not recognize. The house was old, the windows narrow and covered with heavy iron bars, the ivy growing thick over the lintels like dark hair.
"Up," he said.
Thelma did not fight him this time. Her strength was gone, her knees sliding on the gravel as he hauled her out of the carriage and down a long, cold stone corridor that smelled of dry rot and old tallow.
They climbed a narrow spiral staircase, her boots clicking softly against the stone, before he pushed open a heavy oak door at the top of the tower wing.
The room was small, the walls whitewashed and bare save for a single wooden cot and a low stool by the hearth.
Sitting in the middle of the cot, wrapped in a coarse, yellow wool blanket that did not belong to Langley Hall, was Liliana.
Her face was swollen from crying, her small chest heaving with those long, shuddering sighs that come after the tears have run dry.
When she saw Thelma, she let out a small, broken whimper and held out her arms.
"Oh, God," Thelma sobbed, throwing herself across the room to gather the small, damp body into her arms. She pressed her lips to the wet forehead, her tears finally breaking to wash the dust from the child’s cheeks. "I am here, little bird. I am here."
Behind her, the heavy oak door upstream swung shut.
The sound of the iron key turning in the lock was loud, three distinct, heavy clicks that echoed off the high ceiling like miniature gunshots.
Then came the sound of the man’s footsteps, fading slowly down the stone stairs until there was nothing left but the wind whistling through the narrow casement window.
Thelma sat on the edge of the low cot, her arms wrapped tightly around her niece, rocking her back and forth in the gathering dark. The room grew cold as the sun dipped below the unfamiliar hills outside, the white walls turning a dim, ghostly grey.
She thought of the entrance hall at Langley. She thought of Lady Daphne’s polite, melodic voice offering the carriage as a charity, the fine lace at her wrists brushing against the dark wood of the door frame.
She should have known. She should have known that kindness from a woman like that was the most dangerous thing in the world, a velvet glove hiding an iron vise that had just closed around them both forever.