Chapter 22
The cold was not a presence in the room; it was the room itself. It seeped from the rough-hewn granite blocks of the walls, crawled up through the wide, uneven gaps in the floorboards, and settled deep into the marrow of Thelma’s bones.
She sat on the edge of the narrow wooden cot, her knees pulled tight to her chest to create a hollow of warmth for Liliana. The baby was restless, twisting against the coarse, yellow wool blanket that smelled strongly of damp sheep and old mildew.
Two days.
Thelma watched the narrow slit of a window set high in the opposite wall.
There was no glass, only a pair of rusted iron bars and the relentless, driving rain of the northern moors.
The gray light filtering through it was her only measure of time.
Two mornings of that flat, lifeless gray.
Two nights of suffocating, pitch-black cold.
We are buried alive, she thought, her chin resting lightly against the top of Liliana’s dark curls. Lady Daphne did not even need to dig a grave.
Liliana let out a sharp, reedy whine, her small fists pushing against Thelma’s collarbone. The baby’s cheeks were pale, the vibrant, stubborn energy that usually defined her entirely drained by the freezing air and the hollow ache of an empty stomach.
"I know, little bird," Thelma whispered, her voice cracking in the dry, stale air of the cell. "I know."
She reached for the tin plate sitting on the uneven floor beside the cot.
On it sat a heel of dark, dense bread, so hard she could barely break it with her hands, and a dented pewter cup filled with water that tasted of iron and dirt.
It was the exact same ration they had been given yesterday morning.
Thelma used her fingernails to pinch off a small piece of the crust, dropping it into the water to let it soak. She waited, counting the seconds in her head, before fishing the soggy mass out and bringing it to Liliana’s lips.
The baby turned her head away, letting out a frustrated, wet cry.
"You must eat it," Thelma urged, her hands trembling as she tried to catch the child’s chin. "Please, Liliana. Just a little."
Liliana batted the wet bread away, the small clump falling to the dirty floorboards. The child’s cries escalated into a full, ragged wail that echoed off the stone ceiling.
Thelma squeezed her eyes shut, pulling the baby tight against her chest and burying her face in the yellow blanket.
The tears came then, hot and silent, soaking into the rough wool.
She had failed. She had tried to play a game against people who owned the board, and she had lost the only thing that mattered.
The heavy iron lock on the oak door clunked twice.
Thelma’s head snapped up. She shoved the tin plate aside with her boot and scrambled backward on the cot, pulling Liliana firmly behind the shelter of her own body.
The hinges screamed in protest as the door was pushed open.
The man standing in the threshold was the same one who had dragged her from the carriage.
He wore the same heavy, oilskin coat, though it was dry now, and the collar was turned down to reveal a thick, scarred neck and a jaw covered in coarse gray stubble.
He didn't step into the room. He stood in the doorway, a dark silhouette against the dim light of the stairwell, holding a fresh tin pitcher of water.
"She won't eat the bread," Thelma said. Her voice shook, but she forced the words out, projecting them across the damp space. "She is an infant. She needs milk. If you leave us with nothing but hard crusts, she will starve."
The man looked at the piece of soggy bread on the floor, then at Thelma. His expression did not change. He stepped inside, placed the pitcher on the floor near the door, and turned to leave.
"Did you hear me?" Thelma shouted, rising from the cot so fast that Liliana whimpered in surprise. She took two steps toward him, her hands curling into fists. "She needs milk! You cannot just lock us in here and let her waste away!"
The man paused, his hand resting casually on the heavy iron ring of the door handle. He looked at her with flat, dead eyes. "I don't need the brat to eat. I just need the brat to stay in this room."
He pulled the door shut. The lock engaged with a heavy, final thud.
Thelma stood in the center of the room, her breath coming in fast, shallow gasps. The silence rushed back in, heavier than before.
She backed away slowly, sinking onto the floor beside the cot and pulling Liliana into her lap. The baby was whimpering again, a low, exhausted sound. Thelma dipped her fingers into the fresh pitcher of water and brought them to Liliana’s lips, letting the drops fall into the child’s mouth.
Night fell over the stone house with the subtlety of a heavy blanket being thrown over a birdcage.
Thelma sat on the cot, wrapped completely in the yellow wool, her body curled around Liliana to share whatever meager heat they generated. The rain outside had stopped, replaced by a bitter, howling wind that rattled the iron bars of the window.
It was the wind that carried the voices.
Thelma’s eyes opened in the dark. The sound was faint at first, a low, rumbling vibration that seemed to travel up the chimney breast embedded in the far wall.
She carefully disentangled herself from Liliana, tucking the blanket tight around the sleeping baby, and crept across the freezing floorboards on her hands and knees.
She pressed her ear against the cold, rough stone of the hearth. The flue carried the sound up from the room directly beneath them.
"I'm telling you, the rider didn't show."
It was the voice of the man who brought the water. He sounded angry, the words sharp and bitten off.
"He could be delayed by the mud," a second voice replied. This one was lighter, thinner, with a wheezing quality to it. "The roads out of Yorkshire are a slop-pot right now, Silas. The lady said the payment would come by the end of the week."
"The lady said Tuesday," Silas growled. Thelma could hear the scrape of a wooden chair against stone, the sound of a heavy body shifting.
"It is past Tuesday, Cobb. She was supposed to send the rest of the coin to the drop at the crossroads.
I waited there for three hours in the rain. Nothing. No rider, no coin."
"Maybe she couldn't get the money out of the house without the duke noticing."
"Or maybe she realized she doesn't need to pay us at all," Silas said, his voice dropping into a dark, ugly register that made Thelma’s stomach turn.
"Think about it. We took the nurse. We took the bastard.
We brought them to a hole where nobody is ever going to look.
Her problem is solved. Why would she send a purse of gold out on the road where it could be traced back to her? "
There was a long silence from the room below. Thelma held her breath, her cheek pressed so hard against the stone, soot smeared across her skin.
"You think she's going to leave us holding the bag?" Cobb asked, the wheeze in his voice more pronounced now.
"I think people like her don't like leaving loose ends," Silas said. "We know what she did. As long as we're sitting here waiting for her money, we're a risk to her. I wouldn't put it past her to send a few of her father's gamekeepers down here to cut our throats instead of paying up."
"So what do we do? We have the girl and the baby upstairs. We can't just let them go. The duke would have the magistrates on us before we made it to the coast."
"We don't let them go," Silas replied slowly. "But if the lady won't pay for them, maybe somebody else will."
"Who?"
"I don't know yet. But a woman like that, dressed the way she was when we took her? She didn't come from the gutters. Somebody, somewhere, is missing her."
Thelma pulled away from the stone, her heart hammering against her ribs. She crawled back to the cot, her hands shaking so violently she could barely pull the edge of the blanket over her own shoulders.
They are going to ransom us.
The thought was a terrifying, jagged edge in the dark. If they tried to ransom her, they would need a name. They would need a destination.
The rest of the night was an agonizing stretch of wakefulness. Thelma lay staring at the ceiling, turning the fragmented conversation over and over in her mind. Lady Daphne had betrayed her hired men.
It was exactly the kind of arrogant, shortsighted mistake a woman like Daphne Vane would make. She assumed people below her station were simply tools to be used and discarded, forgetting that tools could cut.
By the time the gray light began to bleed back through the iron bars, Thelma had made a decision.
The lock clunked midway through the morning.
Thelma was sitting on the cot, Liliana awake and chewing fretfully on her own fingers. When the door opened, Silas stepped into the room. This time, he didn't just carry a pitcher of water. In his other hand was a small, cloth-wrapped bundle. He tossed it onto the cot beside her.
Thelma didn't flinch. She kept her eyes fixed on his face as she reached out and unwrapped the cloth. Inside was a heel of bread, slightly fresher than the day prior, and a thick wedge of hard yellow cheese.
"Eat," Silas said. He crossed his thick arms over his chest, leaning his weight against the heavy doorframe. "Can't have the merchandise starving to death before we get a return on our labor."
Thelma broke off a piece of the cheese, crumbling it into small, manageable pieces for Liliana. The baby seized the food greedily, shoving it into her mouth with both hands. Thelma watched her eat for a moment, making sure she didn't choke, before she slowly lifted her gaze back to the man.
"You want a return on your labor," Thelma said, her voice quiet but remarkably steady. "That means the woman who hired you did not pay."
Silas’s eyes narrowed. "You have sharp ears for a nursemaid."
"I am not a nursemaid."