“Help your cousin up the stairs,” Steamer said through his pipe. “Kirby!” he hollered.
As they went up the stairs, a boy of about twelve met them at the top. He wore all black, and looked at Darcy and Elizabeth with some surprise. His shoes were scuffed and his hair unkempt, but although his clothes were a little large, they were new.
“Kirby, clear out and return to your mother’s.” The boy looked at them, and his eyes expressed the question he did not ask. “Never you mind. You had best stay with your mother for a few days.”
“What about my books? If I bring them home, my mother will sell them.”
“Is she still drinking gin?” Steamer asked.
“When is she not?” muttered the boy.
“Well, leave them here, and go on home.”
Kirby gave a frustrated yet acquiescing sigh and approached the stairs.
“I am sorry for your loss,” murmured Elizabeth. “For whom do you wear black?”
She had been leaning heavily on the railing, and Darcy had wondered what she was aware of. But even made drowsy bylaudanum, even while abducted and afraid for her life, she wanted to console a little boy she did not know. Rather than answer, the boy turned red and ran down the stairs.
Steamer barked a humourless laugh. “We fit him in black in expectation of his father being hanged. Fortunately for you, missy, they sentenced him to two years in Newgate instead. Otherwise, Markle would have had me do something far worse than kidnap you.”
Darcy felt his blood turn to ice, but Elizabeth did not react at all. Steamer opened the door to a room with a high porthole window where trunks, boxes, and books covered the floor in every direction. A bed and a washstand were scarcely reachable without tripping. The entire house seemed in an uncomfortable state of litter.
Elizabeth carefully stepped around the mess and made her way to the bed. She took off her bonnet, slipped off her shoes, took off her pelisse, removed her gloves, and left them all on the floor and sat against the headboard, her constricted pupils staring at nothing. Darcy hoped she would not become so sedated that her breathing slowed. Or stopped.
Darcy turned to the man at the door and said, “How long do you intend to?—”
Steamer stepped into the corridor, slammed shut the door, and turned the key in the lock.
Darcy’s sense of helplessness was devastating. He could do nothing but make sure Elizabeth kept breathing until the laudanum wore off.
Chapter Three
When Elizabeth woke up, she realised she was no longer in the carriage, but sitting on a bed in a cluttered room, and Mr Darcy sat on a box next to the bed. His greatcoat, hat, and gloves were piled on another box, her own things near to his. When she looked about, stretching her neck and trying to reason how she got here, Mr Darcy stood and peered into her face.
When she drew back, he said, “I want to look at your eyes.” He said this so purposefully that she met his gaze. He nodded. “Your pupils are not as constricted as they were earlier.”
“Have you been sitting there, watching me?”
He nodded. “I wanted to make certain you were breathing normally. I assumed you are not a regular laudanum user and”—he looked down—“I was afraid you might stop breathing.”
The care in his voice struck her, and Elizabeth rubbed her eyes to avoid looking at him. “How long was I asleep?”
“You were not asleep,” he said, pulling out a watch, “but I would say you have been insensible for two hours.”
“No,” she cried. “I must have been asleep.”
Mr Darcy shook his head. “Your eyes were open, but you saw nothing, and it was plain that you did not hear me. Do you remember leaving the carriage?”
“I was insensible all that time?” She could hardly credit it, but he had no reason to lie to her. “Did you—did someone carry me in from the carriage?” She felt that she would have remembered something as intimate as that.
“No, you walked in on your own. They brought us to a small house in a village I do not recognise, and we are now locked in this cluttered room.”
Elizabeth searched her memory for anything that happened after she drank the laudanum and blindfolded Mr Darcy. “I remember a boy in mourning clothes. Did that happen, or was it a hallucination?”
She was afraid of the answer, but he gave a half smile. “He was real. I think he had been squatting in this room, or at the least avoiding his mother’s house by hiding in it. The room is a mess, but none of the belongings appear to be a boy’s.” She looked around and saw that someone had cleared a path to the door, to the box Mr Darcy had been sitting on, and around the bed.
Elizabeth walked to the small round window, but it was too far above her head to see out. She did not bother to try the door.
