Chapter 49
After Nightfall
“… but as long as we could be together, nothing ever ailed me, and I never met with the smallest inconvenience.”
Rosalind had not expected being abducted to prove such a dull affair.
In novels it was always terribly thrilling and tended to involve ruined abbeys, mad monks, and the imminent risk of losing one’s virtue. Somehow, there was always a white nightdress involved, and a moonlit flight on bare feet.
Their captors, however, had so far neglected to take her half boots, or provide a nightdress.
The man to whom she had lost the vast majority of her virtue was sitting on the floor beside her with one arm draped around her shoulders.
They speculated about whether their friends had missed them yet.
They talked about Adam’s brother, who might soon become senior clerk at the warehouse where he was employed, and about what his mother had planned to make for their upcoming wedding breakfast. They talked about improvements that might be made to the house on Orchard Street and the fact that Sir David had promised to raise Adam’s wages upon his marriage, and whether that meant they might be able to add to their staff, and perhaps even employ Mr. Goutier or Mr. Tauton on occasion to assist with various inquiries where their experience could prove useful.
They talked as if the door in front of them were open and they might walk through it at any time. As if the day were sunny and they were on their wedding trip. Because to do anything else was to invite panic and anger and blame, and they did not have the luxury of indulging in such feelings.
They paced across the floor, trying to find all the boards that might squeak and give them away. It was a strange, childish game and Rosalind was surprised to find herself smiling once or twice.
At some point it began to rain. The roof proved to be in want of repair. Rivulets ran down the filthy walls, and individual drops plunked onto the floor. The mice rustled and squeaked, and Rosalind wished desperately for a glass to shelter the candle.
They dozed in turns, with one person staying awake to mind their precious light. Rosalind felt sure she could not possibly sleep, but Adam insisted she try.
“You’ll do no good if you’re tired, or if you have a dizzy spell when you need to be clearheaded,” he said.
To her surprise, Rosalind did eventually manage at least a short nap. Adam, enviably, was asleep and snoring the minute he closed his eyes. Later he told her it was a skill he’d learned in his time with the horse patrol.
“You had to be able to sleep anywhere, at any time, because you never knew when you were going to be up all night hunting a highwayman.”
At last, their tiny knothole showed that it was fully dark. Rosalind touched Adam’s shoulder. He came awake as quickly as he’d fallen asleep.
They had one candle left.
“It’s been quiet downstairs,” she said.
Adam nodded. He got to his feet. He went to the door. Rosalind set the candle on the floor out of the way, and then set her back against the door. Adam nodded.
Adam’s careful fingers got a grip on the first pin and drew it out. The door sagged gently against Rosalind’s shoulders. The boards creaked. They both froze, but there was no sound below. Adam put the pin in his coat pocket and reached to find his grip on the second.
We’ll have one chance, Adam had said while they were waiting for darkness. Rosalind knew he was right. There would be no way to conceal what they had done, and nowhere to retreat or to hide if their plan went wrong. Their only chance was to move quickly.
Adam found the second pin and eased it out of the hinge. The door hitched against Rosalind’s shoulders. She pressed it back, trying to hold it level so it would not weigh too much on the last pin and cause it to jam in place.
Still no sound came from below. Rosalind bit her lip. Adam rubbed his fingertips, squatted down, and scrabbled at the third pin. He twisted and he pulled. It drew out slowly. The whole weight of the door leaned itself against Rosalind’s back.
Adam quickly pocketed the third pin. He grasped the door, taking the weight and allowing Rosalind to slip sideways. He peered into the gap between the door and the frame, and nodded to her. So far, the way was clear.
Rosalind blew the candle out.
Darkness dropped at once, impenetrable and absolute. Rosalind squeezed her eyes shut, hard, willing them to adjust. She felt rather than saw Adam moving the door. She stepped backward, just remembering to pull her hems out of the way so she didn’t stumble.
She opened her eyes and found she could now differentiate between the shadows, which was better than feeling she’d been struck blind.
She could make out Adam as a silhouette in motion against the deeper darkness.
He folded the door backward so it leaned against the wall.
The latch—now the only thing holding the door to its frame—strained and creaked.
Rosalind’s heart leapt into her throat. But there was still no sound from below.
Should that worry us? she wondered, but she did not want to take the risk of asking the question out loud. She tried to tell herself the sound of the rain would drown out the sound of movement, but she could not make herself believe it.
Adam found her hand with his. He leaned in close enough that his lips brushed her ear. “I’ll go first. Keep moving, no matter what. Our only goal is to get out of here.”
She pressed his fingers, signaling she understood. He pulled away and she followed him out the open door and down the stairs.
She tried to move smoothly, to keep plowing forward as instructed, but it was hard. The boards creaked underfoot. The rain drummed relentlessly overhead and the wind whistled under the eaves. The whole house seemed to sigh with the effort of having to keep standing another night.
They reached the bottom of the stairs. Rosalind could smell smoke and the remains of cooked cabbage. A fire had been lit, it told her. Supper had been made. Someone had been here recently.
Where are they now?
She knew Adam was thinking that as well. Dark as it was, she could see the tension in his movements. It was not possible their jailers had left them alone. And yet this house, whatever and wherever it might be, seemed empty.
Perhaps we were lucky. But Rosalind knew better than to put faith in that.
She laid her hand on Adam’s shoulder, turning him toward the cabbage smell.
Whatever sort of house this might be, the kitchen could be counted on to have a door to the outside.
Adam touched her hand briefly, letting her know he understood.
He glided like a ghost down the narrow corridor until they reached the kitchen.
The darkness here was not quite as deep as in the stairwell and the corridor. There was a tiny window, but that only showed them slick fingers of rain streaking down thick glass. What little light there was came from the faint glow of embers that had been carefully banked under a bed of ashes.
Someone had taken care of the fire. Someone meant to come back. But where had they gone?
Adam was lifting a patch of shadow from the dark expanse of the wall.
It took Rosalind a moment to realize it was a cloak.
She bundled herself into it, and then she grabbed the tinder box off the hearth’s mantel and passed it to him along with several splinters from the can waiting there.
There was a lamp as well. She tucked it under her cloak.
Wherever they went, they’d need to see the way, and a lamp would burn more reliably than a candle in this rain.
Her heart was hammering, keeping time with the rain and the one thought occupying her mind:
Where are they? Where are they? Where are they?
Adam turned toward her. She had a glimpse of his eyes, and the hard line of his jaw. He was reminding her they needed to keep moving. She nodded. He pulled the door open and they plunged out into the rain.
It was as if someone had upended a bucket overhead.
Rosalind gasped and would have drawn back, but Adam was already clutching her hand and dragging her forward.
Awkwardly because she had to keep hold of the pilfered lamp, she grabbed her hems. She hiked them as high as she could so she would not trip as they splashed and stumbled their way across a stony yard toward a sprawl of shadow Rosalind guessed to be an outbuilding.
Despite the rain, the faint smell of horses reached her. It’s the stables. Of course. There was no knowing where they were or how far they had been taken from Bath, or anywhere else. If they were to make good their escape, they would need horses.
They would deal with the fact that Rosalind could not ride when that became necessary. Perhaps there would be a wagon, or even the coach that had brought them here.
Adam shoved the stable door open and dragged them both inside. Rosalind felt like she was a drowning sailor suddenly cast onto a dry shore.
A horse—startled and clearly annoyed—whickered angrily and stomped and shifted in its box.
“Eas—” began Adam. But he got no further.
Light exploded around them. Reflex clamped Rosalind’s eyes shut.
“Well,” said a woman. “Nathanial was right.”
Rosalind’s eyes flew open. There, in front of them, with a lantern in one hand and a black cloth in the other, stood Elizabeth Kinsdale.