“No—listen to me.” Neil rounded on his cousin, hands gripping Simon’s shoulders until the cloth creaked. “It is a trap. I do not imagine Lord Bramwell supposes it will fool me. But if I arrive with others, he’ll slit their throats before I can even knock on the door, and that simply is not a risk I can take.” His voice dropped to a steadier, colder register. “I dare not trust the authorities; Bramwell’s reach is long. Here is what I want you to do, Simon.”
“Neil—”
“Stay,” Neil said, each syllable deliberate. “Stay here. Keep watch. If I do not return by dawn, then I do not return at all. In that case, you must become the thing the world believes me to be. The Gambling Devil’s name is not whispered without reason; you have the temper for it. There will be nothing left to protect if they are dead. Bury us, Simon, and then avenge us—burn Victor Bramwell to ash. Do what must be done.”
A long, dreadful silence followed. Simon’s face had drained of colour; his jaw worked. Neil hated the command he had laidupon his cousin—could hate himself—and yet the decision was driven by a clarity that left no room for doubt.
At last, Simon swallowed and gave a tight, reluctant nod. “Very well. I’ll do as you ask. Only—promise me you will be careful.”
“I give you my word, I shall not act rashly,” Neil answered, stepping back with a strained attempt at a smile. “We shall meet again, old chap. One way or another, we’ll meet again.”
He let out a ragged breath and turned for the door. He halted as the doorway framed two new arrivals. Mrs Thornton stood there, imperturbably composed as ever, and behind her, Crawford looked careworn but resolute. Both had been called, no doubt; word travelled fast when a child was taken.
“If I may make a suggestion, your Grace?” Mrs Thornton asked smoothly.
***
The burlap sack was ripped from Maggie’s head with a suddenness that stole the air from her lungs. A gasp escaped her before she could think to steady it; the light stabbed into her eyes so fiercely that she had to close them against it. For a moment, she was not certain whether she had fainted in the carriage from terror or sheer exhaustion, nor how far they had carried her. When at last she forced her lashes apart, the world swam into shape.
She was in a low-roofed stone room that reeked of damp and mould. The single, tiny window was set deep into the thick wall and caked with grime; the glass offered no view of the world outside, only a dim, dirty blur. A candle trembled on a low table, its flame guttering and throwing more shadow than light. Straw lay strewn across the flagstones, and the dry, crusted mud that clung to it rasped against her skin when she moved. Whoever had hauled the sack off her head had made no ceremony ofleaving; the heavy door—its wood swollen and the ironwork black with age—was shut fast, and the lock clicked ominously from the other side.
“Maggie?” A small voice, thin with fright, whispered from a darker corner.
Relief struck her like warmth. Emma shuffled forward, blinking in the candlelight, her face filthy and streaked with tears. Maggie’s heart contracted; the sight of the child steadied her as nothing else could.
“My darling,” she breathed, voice rough. “You are here. You’re safe.”
Emma crawled to her and buried her face in Maggie’s skirts, trembling so that the little body sought shelter as if against a storm. Maggie, hindered by the ropes that bound her wrists, nevertheless folded what arms she could around the child and drew her close.
“I don’t know where we are,” Emma sobbed into her shoulder. “That man—the one in the carriage—his voice was… it made me afraid. I want to go home, Maggie. I want to go home.”
Fear closed like a hand around Maggie’s throat. She should have comforted the child with bright assurances; she should have lied and told Emma that all would be well. The truth was a bitter, cold thing in her mouth: she did not know where they were, nor whether anyone—anyone at all—would come for them in time.
“I know, love,” she said at last, and the lie stuck in her throat. “But we cannot go home just yet.”
Emma’s tears had been squeezed dry, leaving streaks of mud on her cheeks; she clung tighter. The candle threw the rest of the room into an uncertain half-light. Where the flame failed, the corners lurked with shadow—hollows that suggested eyes, or rats, or worse. As silence pooled, Maggie began to believeshe could hear something else: a breath beyond the reach of the candle, a rustle like cloth on stone.
She straightened as much as she was able and planted herself between the child and the gloom. “Who’s there?” she demanded, forcing her voice to carry. “Show yourself at once!”
For a heartbeat, the room offered only silence, and Maggie wondered whether terror had already made her mad. Then, from the darkest angle, a scraping sound answered: a shuffling, a hand dragged across the floor. A figure emerged on hands and knees, filthy and thin, clothes once fine now ragged and greyed. His hair was matted; his beard grew wild. When he lifted his head, Maggie felt the world tilt.
The light caught a pair of eyes she knew with a pain that surprised her. They were their same green-gold, tired and small beneath the grime.
“Papa.” The word escaped her before she could weigh it.
Thomas Camden offered a hollow, weary smile. “I had not hoped to see you here, Margaret.”
“You left,” Maggie said, the accusation as much a question as a reproach. “I thought you had run and escaped to the country.”
He shook his head, a helpless movement that spoke of defeat rather than defence. “No. I never truly escaped. I know—” he glanced up, shame reddening his cheeks—“I know how it appears, and I have no good answer. I intended to flee to France and send for you after—”
“You abandoned me,” she interjected, the words blunt and cold.
“I planned to send for you, Margaret,” he insisted, and there was pleading in it. “I am the one who owed such sums to Lord Bramwell. I thought I could settle, and then—then things went wrong.”
“And I watched him kill a man,” Maggie said, the memory surfacing with horrid clarity. She had not meant to say the words so plainly, but they lay between them now like a wound.
Thomas flinched. For a moment, he seemed almost a child, bent under the weight of his own actions. “If your mother could see me now—” he began, voice cracked, as if each syllable were a stone dropped into a well.
