A distant corner of the Campion estate:
"She cannot be."
The words drifted back to Sidney, wind like ice against his brow as the view of Lord Townshend blurred. Raindrops had frozen, clinging to his eyelashes, unrelenting as he tracked the man's progress.
He had released himself from Sidney's grasp, was presently crawling determinedly to a destination that did not exist — to fields and nothing beyond.
Sidney peered after him, wheezing from the breaths that still came short and fast, and resisted the urge to double over, hands on his knees. He winced, instead, tossing his head irritatedly at the fresh onslaught of rain, wiping it from his eyes as the renewed ache made itself known again beneath the tightly bound cloth at his torso.
His boots cracked through the thin veil of ice that had formed, sinking into the pools of water beneath, eyes fixed on the crouched figure. He had half a mind to let him go; to allow Townshend to crawl off unattended and bid him good riddance. The air from his lungs was visible in the rain, and as he watched, conflicted at first of what to do, an unsettling notion presented itself like an unwanted visitor: and it demanded to be entertained.
Awaiting my swift return. Sidney could as good as hear Townshend's words spoken again. Words he likely never intended to say aloud as Townshend had implied the unimaginable: that Eliza had been waiting for him in London. His eyes were caught once more by the large slash, still bleeding at Townshend's brow, grotesque enough to evoke a visceral response to turn away. Eliza had hardly spoken to the man; had often brushed him off at any chance encounter in London with little more than a glance.
And yet, the words had tumbled out of him. So earnestly that Sidney could not simply brush them aside. Words that had returned — back to haunt him, again — planted firmly in his mind, tossing and tumbling about as he sought some idea of what it all meant.
Had there been more beneath the surface? More than a polite greeting, the occasional glance. More he hadn't known about the man whom Linton and Charlotte both appeared to trust: a man who had reportedly taken steps to save his own life.
The very notion made him twitch with unease.
For if he knew of anything, it was Eliza's ability to seize control of a man — to manipulate and use until she had what she needed from him: to reel him in, unawares, and drain him dry. Townshend appeared at present to be little more than the dregs she had left behind, sodden and mud-covered in the rain. Sidney gritted his teeth. It had been ten years for him; and clearly, it hadn't been long enough.
Had she seized control of Townshend, too? Sent him on a mission to do her bidding? To carry out a greater plan?
Charlotte's voice cut through, drifting behind as his thoughts propelled him forward. Townshend turned abruptly at his approach.
Sidney paused halfway to a kneel to examine the sight before him, trying to make out more subtleties in expression than the light would allow as Townshend took in a quick breath, cowering as he offered a hand, resembling a wild animal backed into a corner.
Sidney eyed the man in the shadows — the shallow breaths, the shaking arms — and felt a chill skitter across his shoulders.
He sensed the desperation. God knows he could smell the fear on him. But something else remained. Suspicion whirred in his ears, cut through by each footstep of Charlotte's behind him. "Tell me..." he murmured, at last, "What has she done to you."
The breathing stopped — Lord Townshend reduced to trembling, alone — as Sidney heard another footstep, a spike of ice jolting through to his fingertips. Lord Townshend was looking beyond him, now... to Charlotte.
The man's eyes would not leave her; transfixed, as he trembled again.
Sidney's shoulders twitched in response. He observed as Lord Townshend followed her with his gaze, the unease expanding until he wanted nothing more than to prevent such an expression from crossing the man's face ever again. He seized Townshend by the shoulders, pausing as the light shone over him, the expression transformed to something else as Sidney hovered over him.
How quickly the world could stop, a mind transporting, body reacting as if it were still in a moment he wished he'd forgot entirely. But it was there. Mellowed with time, and somehow still fresh as a cut from a newly sharpened blade; still quite enough to cause him to flinch:
Tom had lifted him from his landing place on the cobblestones that day, the pull of his coat so abrupt he was sure it would burst at the seams, the sound of the crack of his skull still repeating itself in his mind. He could almost feel the wound, blood seeping into the hair at the nape of his neck, transferred to Tom's hands, the cuff of his shirt.
He had been discovered on a forgotten street in London, as far away as he might have been from Eliza Campion after she had rejected him in favour of another man. Eliza. His Eliza. He had tried to escape her that day, battered from the fall she had instigated, certain he would never recover. But even the crowds of London — the most meandrous backstreet — would not be far enough.
He marvelled at it: the way each second seemed etched in him, as if her capricious casting off had been written, letter by letter, over his skin. Permanent and brutal as it had been.
Had Lord Townshend lived it, too?
"Please," the man was trembling, a steady vibration beneath Sidney's fingertips, "I beg of you—"
Sidney looked down at his own trembling hands, "Tell me what she has done." The words had emitted in a torrent, as if he had held his breath, waiting for the chance to speak them aloud.
"Please," Townshend said, "you must allow me to—"
"You will not leave until you speak a degree of truth," he cried out, expecting to see fear in Townshend's expression; for him to cower or resist. But he remained still, rain washing a rose-coloured stream from his forehead, the look in his eyes indecipherable.
Sidney huffed out a cloud of steam and found he hadn't the heart to inhale.
He thought back to that day, after Tom had discovered him so far gone he couldn't stand, hours spent trying to forget the woman he couldn't imagine living without. Eliza, on the arm of another; the prospect of a life with him exchanged in favour of status and finery. The woman who might have been his: the realisation that it would never be so.
He hadn't forgotten.
For bruised and battered as he was, the chance at one more conversation, a single hour with Eliza Campion would have been enough to tempt him all those years ago. To have even a chance of feeling the rush only she could give. Even after such betrayal, loathed as he was to admit it, she would have had his loyalty. He shuddered to think what he might have done, then, to win her.
Ragged breaths met his ears as Townshend struggled to break free, twisting until Sidney gritted his teeth in pain, his arm extended too far.
Why would Townshend have a care in the world about Arthur or Georgiana — whom he had never met? And yet, here he was, desperate to get away after finding out that Eliza was not in the place he expected.
Who, Sidney thought as Townshend stretched him further, as the pain nearly overtook him, was he trying to protect?
"For God's sake!" he seethed, baring his teeth as Townshend pulled himself free, then charged after the man. "Try that again and I will leave you to rot in the reeds."
He had caught Townshend by the cravat, wrenching him backwards.
But a hand had gripped him tightly about the arm.
"This man," he croaked, shaking Townshend more furiously with every word, "cannot be trusted."
A small palm forced him backwards, breaking his hold, an uneasy shiver moving over him. "Enough," Charlotte's voice came into the foreground, her tone so livid he was certain she was ready to strike. "What is wrong with you?" she stepped closer.
But his eye was back on Townshend, who was presently slithering away so rapidly he made a move to follow. The snake.
Something caught his overcoat, his progress halted before he had the chance to take a single step, "Stop threatening him," she said through her teeth.
The anger welled up again, and he tilted his head, distracted momentarily by the gleam in her eyes. It blinded him enough to attempt a reply, "And how would you expect a man in my position to act?" Her brow furrowed in response, but the hand had yet to move from his arm, "You would expect me to go easy on a man who just admitted Eliza was waiting for him in London? Do you see nothing even the least bit suspect?"
"So you tried to force information out of him?" her voice shook as she moved closer, "when you might have been even the least bit civil."
"You wish for me to be civil to a man who as good as betrayed us all?" he asked, incredulous, and leaned closer, "He could be a danger to you; to all of us."
"Will you listen to yourself," she cried out, exasperated.
His gaze had been drawn back to Townshend, the thought still pressing. There had been desperation, yes, but had there been guilt in the man's eyes as well?
"Look at him!"
Charlotte's words washed over him, delayed and yet he bristled all the same. He turned back to her and felt as if cold fingertips were skating over the back of his neck, up the sides of his face: ice that transformed into flames.
He had seen it. Not only desperation, nor guilt. The pull he had once felt toward Eliza — it was there, written across Townshend's face.
"You don't know what it's like," he muttered under his breath, and stepped away, needing distance more than anything at that moment. For until one had been subjected to a trap laid by Eliza Campion, they knew little about how easy it was to be lured.
"If you are seeking evidence of his being trustworthy," Charlotte's voice cut through to him, and he stilled, a partial imprint on the ice beneath his foot. She appeared before him, the pale curves of her face visible, "—consider the fact that I am here standing in front of you rather than—"
Her voice had thickened before she broke off, and he watched as she took in a lilted breath, tears springing from her eyes. "He might have died in that carriage, all in the name of protecting me—" She motioned to a spot over Sidney's shoulder — where Bridges lay, unconscious, still. "But I see that isn't enough for you, is it?" Her words had grown louder as she spoke, competing with the din as raindrops fell around them.
He blinked, flicking his gaze away to a point over her shoulder, feeling the hatred rise in his lungs, knowing without a doubt how little he would have trusted himself all those years ago, and as his own brow furrowed in return, he shook his head. "No," he said, jaw set, "It isn't."
"You are insufferable," she said, "—assuming without even entertaining the fact that I might know more than you."
"That is not—"
"It is easier for you, isn't it," she cut in, "making him the villain."
"There is more to it than that, I assure you."
"Is there?" she moved closer, challenging, and all he could do was swallow back the retort that had been dangerously close to spilling out, "because if I were to assume anything from your actions, they were influenced by a great deal more than suspicion."
Sidney blinked. He could hear her breathe, could feel the heat as it travelled over him.
He stilled in the silence, absorbing the implied meaning as if waiting for raindrops to dry on his skin. Surely, she did not believe he was—
But next to his own theories, there it was. As if it had been sitting unnoticed in a far corner, awaiting the day recognition would dawn.
Ten years, it had been. Ten years and the feeling struck him again, familiar in its own way. That feeling... It had enveloped him, consumed him whole.
It washed over him, now; each drop of rain like a blow to the system, building gradually into thoughts so damaging he wanted nothing more than to tamp them down again. And yet, he had known from the start. That he had nothing of substance to offer her; that he wouldn't have for some time. For when this journey was through, free as he might be of Eliza, he would be penniless: an unsuitable prospect at best. More unworthy of the woman standing before him than he had ever been, and God knows he hadn't been worthy from the start.
He moved instinctively towards her — a hand outstretched briefly, then retracted — as Charlotte turned away. "Either calm yourself and help or leave him to me," she sniffed.
And in the seconds that stretched before him, he did not know which was worse: absorbing fully the air of disappointment coming from her direction, or the sense that were it all to end in his favour, he might never become worthy of the woman who was presently walking away.
She stood a distance from him; an olive silhouette as her pelisse caught the light. He could still make out the stitching that ran along her shoulders — lines in which he had often lost himself during the journey, so focused was he on following the path from neck to shoulders, resisting the impulse to trace them. He could feel the urge rise again; could feel it travel along his skin. What he wouldn't give to go back, for the only concern to be that of a scandal at Gretna Green — for thoughts of marriage to linger, there beneath the surface as his eyes traced the seams again.
Sidney released a breath, steam obstructing his view briefly as the pain registered in his palm. Fingernails had gone into flesh.
----------
A Passageway on the Campion Estate:
"Tell me I am wrong." Georgiana examined the face before her, the flame of the lantern reflected in his eyes, a small part of her still waiting for him to react.
It was only a theory. Something she had pieced together and yet, the paper she carried, tucked away in her pelisse would be justified were there something more between Lord Townshend and Mrs Campion than met the eye.
"I...," Otis started, as clumps of dirt and debris dropped to the tunnel floor behind them, wafting in clouds until they breathed it in, "I cannot," he finished in defeat.
She was surprised by his honesty — had half expected him to feign he had no clue. "You knew," she said.
"It isn't what you think," he whispered, sounding almost injured at her accusation, "Whatever they had... it was long ago."
"You might say the same about us," she said, "one day."
"It is not the same."
"Not the same? You would regard me differently if we had reunited a year from now? Three? Would I mean nothing to you, then?"
"That is not what I—"
"Not what you meant?" she finished for him, stepping closer, "How can you be so certain that Lord Townshend feels no emotion when he is near her? That he wouldn't fall back into whatever trap she had laid for him?"
"Because he is fighting for a greater cause." The light moved over Otis's face, somehow making it look more severe as its source swung below them. "When will you believe that the man is not out for his own gain?"
She stared back at him, anger welling within her chest. "So you assume he could push an entire history aside, just like that? With no consideration—"
"He despises her, Georgiana," Otis cried, "And everything she stands for."
Silence fell as she eyed him. A clump of earth dropped, not far from where they stood, its pieces scattering like broken glass. "If you honestly believe that," she said, "... you are a greater fool than I might have known."
She stepped back against the wall, far enough to force his hand from her waist, smarting as the weight transferred to her ankle. Her shoulder hit the wall, the force enough to make her teeth chatter. But she stared obstinately back at him, chin raised in defiance as she adjusted the ledger in her arms, "I am quite capable of standing on my own."
She tilted her head, challenging him to retort. But he simply narrowed his eyes, "Fine," he said through his teeth, "if you find me so repulsive, I'll not offer assistance to you."
They glared at each other, a fresh cloud of dust coming at them again. "I was doing perfectly fine before," she needled.
"Oh, you were, were you?" he said, lowering his voice, dipping his head closer, "You would have been captured in moments." She thought back to the men who had chased after them, the hounds that would have tracked her. He was right.
"I would have found a way."
"A way?" he looked amused at the thought, "And what way would that be in your condition?" She gritted her teeth in annoyance again, wanting nothing more than to wipe any trace of amusement from his face.
"Any way that didn't involve being trapped in this blasted tunnel with you." Silence, again. So uncomfortable she was relieved to hear more of the ceiling crumble to the floor.
Otis's eyes widened. Why did she not feel better having struck a nerve? Her fingertips clung more tightly to the ledger. It would be so easy to reach out, to relent to the impulse coursing through her now.
"I see," Otis said, shaking his head slightly as he bit his lower lip, "If that is really how you feel—"
"It is," she said before she thought better of it.
"Then, perhaps we should go our separate ways," Otis said, at last, "if you wish it."
The ledger shifted, freeing her fingertips briefly. She curved them around it again, breathing through the sinking sense in her chest — the swell of hatred at his striking of a similar nerve. She wanted to shout, to push him away, conflicted by the part of her that remained steadfast, heightened by his presence, by his refusal to step back from her.
The challenge in his eyes had softened. She hadn't realised why until the action had already been done. One inch, then two. The proximity between them narrowed so marginally it was barely noticeable or would have been to anyone else. Another inch; an exhale echoing down the passageway, back to the start.
The light had dimmed, shadows formed that hadn't existed a moment ago, the air somehow cooled enough to make the hairs stand upright on her forearms.
"Otis—"
"I could never despise you," he said, so slight she nearly missed hearing the words.
Dirt spattered the floor next to them, overshadowed by the sound of his breathing. Or had it been hers, she thought absently.
More earth crumbled above them in response. Then, air. Cool, as it washed over her.
Something had cut out the light.
The creak of the extinguished lantern was the very last sound to enter her ears before the rumbling began.
The sound was deafening as it echoed down to them. Clumps of earth turned into streams, surging toward them like a tidal wave. And suddenly, she couldn't breathe anything other than dust, as if the oxygen in the tunnel had been replaced by it.
A hand was at her waist, the weight on her ankle lifted again.
His voice was reduced to reverberations in his chest, travelling through her shoulder, words gone unheard as he swung her closer to the door at the end of the passageway.
The tidal wave had reached them, the coolness of earth surrounded one ankle, then the other, rising like water around them, intermittent stones cracking against the door.
Otis shouted something in her direction, drowned out by earth and dust.
Then a latch rattled as Otis ran a shoulder into the door, his breathing strained.
She felt the earth rise until it pooled around her skirts, condensed them; buried them.
Was this how it would end? Would she be discovered one day, buried next to Otis, hands still clinging to this blasted ledger?
And what of Arthur? Would he make it out of this alive if she didn't reach him first?
She felt it, then. A stone washing into the back of her leg, large enough to sting considerably.
The latch rattled again as Otis drove into the door, panting in exertion.
He wouldn't be able to sustain it; not the amount of force one would need to break through.
"STOP," she shouted, hoping he might have a chance at hearing her.
She held the ledger out, passing it to him, then dug her hands in the earth that had covered her ankles.
The stone was nearly the size of her hand, capable of doing some damage were it thrown from a distance. But she had other plans.
Her fingertips skated over the door, searching for metal rusted and worn.
"Georgiana," Otis shouted next to her. But she had already begun, striking the latch with all she had. Each time, the ping of stone to metal sounded. And Otis joined, putting all his weight against the door.
Then, a sliver of light, so bright it might have been the sun, and the hand returned to her waist, pulling her from the rubble.
She was left gasping, a solid surface at her back. Traces of dust lingered, then cleared.
A cough sounded next to her, but her eyes remained fixed ahead.
"Welcome to Hemlock Hall," said Otis, as they looked upon the endless corridor that stretched before them.
She hadn't expected this — to emerge from the passageway out in the open, exposed. Perhaps some distant corner of the servant's quarters would have been more fitting, a place where the Campions locked away anything or anyone they didn't wish to escape.
She could feel the push of the door at her back, strained as earth slapped against it on the other side, building into something more permanent. She took in a breath, eyes caught by the corridor as the door nudged at her shoulders. "Where does it lead?"
"Where everything else leads in this infernal place," he said.
"The fountain court," she finished, as if she had been fresh from a tour. She could almost see the housekeeper walking ten paces ahead, so eager to show them the most impressive part of the house, located at its very heart. "Yes," she murmured. "Yes, of course."
----------
And back, again:
He might have called out to her. He might have known exactly what to say.
Instead, he found he could not formulate the words as he stood, ice forming around him, looking on as Lord Townshend rose to his feet a distance away.
Had he honestly misjudged? Were his suspicions of betrayal little more than speculations of a jealous man, determined to conquer at any cost?
It was enough to make his breath stop, forming fists at his sides as Charlotte's hand drew Townshend's face closer, inspecting the cuts at his forehead, his chin.
His fingers twitched, the same urge to bound over and separate them rising, and with it the realisation he had had all those weeks ago as Lord Townshend spun Charlotte about the room in London — as he had been left standing off to the side, counting the seconds until the music stopped.
Lady Susan's words had lingered that day, continuing on long after they had been spoken, spinning round him every time Lord Townshend looked down into Charlotte's eyes:
Oh, it was beautiful. More arresting than any illustration, any work of art.
His heart thudded in his chest, going still between each thunderous pulse as he looked upon them, now.
It rather stopped me in my tracks — squeezed at my heart in a way I had never experienced in my life.
Sidney brought the back of a hand halfway to his mouth as their surroundings pressed in, Charlotte and Lord Townshend at the centre. It dropped on its own, falling helplessly back to his side.
As if you were looking upon something greater than yourself, he had replied then, knowing the conversation had deepened. And as he had watched them, so suited to one another, as the gaze of other spectators followed them through every turn about the room, perhaps his reply was exactly what he believed. Torn from his own chest.
For he had witnessed the prospect of a different life for Charlotte that day. A life of high society and marble halls, of titles and country estates: a life she deserved. A life he could not provide.
His eyes found her again, off in the distance, standing paces away; an anchor to this dizzy spell that was approaching blind panic.
What right did he have to offer himself to her? To risk dragging her into ruin along with everyone else? When she might have had more.
Her skirts billowed, the wind forming ripples among the reeds beyond, hair wild and untamed as it caught the light. A sight more beautiful than any he could recall — more than any he might witness ever again.
His eyes travelled back to her shoulders, skating over them until Lord Townshend's pale face appeared again.
A pang darted through his chest, bringing intense longing, then anguish with it in waves.
Townshend was speaking to her, now. Words that were carried off, unheard. Words he wasn't intended to hear.
How endless it seemed, the torture more acute as time wore on, as he watched someone else in the very place he desired beyond anything else.
Sidney's throat tightened, and for a moment, he had no idea what to do. She had become harder to see, dimmed in the waning light of the lantern, the bowed seams at her back no longer visible.
Part of him wanted to break his gaze, to put an end to this torment. But the feverish trembling had already begun — starting at his fingertips, rising upwards until the scene before him shook. Townshend's words had reached him, delayed and melded together, but they remained, reverberating in his eardrums:
"I never intended to do this. But I... I find there is no other way."
And at that moment, the scene before him took shape for what it had been all along.
How foolish he had been — too distracted, too enamoured to notice the change in the set of her shoulders. As if they had been cast in stone. Arms rigid at her sides.
"My God," he choked on the words.
Her name evaporated on his tongue, wiped away in a sudden gust — replaced by the splintering of ice beneath his feet.
"Why are you doing this," she called out, as the wind roared against his eardrums, each crack of ice underfoot ricocheting, faster as his heart shot upwards to his throat.
Lord Townshend stood to full height, shadows cast.
"You have no need to understand. And I have no wish to harm you but I—"
Sidney.
He was grasping Townshend's coat, pulling him swiftly away, the man's face so close he could feel the heat of his breath. "Sidney, no!"
Charlotte's voice punctured, then floated around him, lingering on the edges.
His mouth slackened, breath caught as he looked into Townshend's eyes.
A steady roar had pushed through — waves of sound pierced by the rain — the source just behind him. Charlotte.