“Miss Bennet!” I called again. “This is no place for a lady like yourself.”
She didn’t answer me again.
There was a doorway here, opposite the front room. I went through it and the room here was dark and full of dead leaves and broken tables and chairs. Some had obviously been smashed for firewood. She wasn’t in there.
I retreated and started up the stairs to the next level. They were quite rickety, and they swayed as I climbed. “Miss Bennet,” I called again.
She appeared at the top of the stairs. “What is wrong with you, sir? I have asked you, again and again, to leave me be, and you—”
“This house is going to fall down at any moment, and it will collapse on your head, and I shall not be responsible for your death,” I said, heat in my voice.
“Oh, it is not going to collapse.” She gestured above us.
I looked up at the roof. “There are holes in the ceiling, Miss Bennet.”
She had noticed that too. “All right, all right.” She stepped one foot onto the steps, and there was a cracking noise, and she shrieked and backed off of the steps, eyes wide.
I went still.
She was standing above me, at the top of the stairs, on the second landing. The stairs swayed under my weight, and I suddenly realized that I was going to fall if I didn’t do something.
I scrambled up the stairs.
Why up and not down?
I haven’t any notion. I was close to the top, I suppose? I was going that way, anyway?
The stairs splintered under my feet, and I flailed in the air, and she screamed, and I fell forward, and she caught me, and then we were both yelling and I was trying to scramble about for purchase and she was trying to pull me onto the landing, and we both yelled out a number of orders to the other, none of which were followed.
We pitched back and forth, her almost falling onto the steps and me sending her tilting backward, and then she lost her balance and hurled down onto her backside, and I went with her.
At this moment, the stairs completely splintered and fell away, and I was left clutching the top of the railing, which was bolted to the wall, my feet on nothing, just on the air, and I managed to pull myself onto the landing just as the railing pulled free from the wall and tumbled down on top of the ruined steps.
I sat there, peering down at the bottom level, trying to catch my breath.
She crawled over next to me, letting out tiny little noises with each breath, worried noises, and we both looked all the way down at the tangle of the lumber of the steps below us and then scooted backwards, all the way backwards, until our backs were against the wall.
“Oh, dear,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “Quite.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Look what you’ve done,” said Elizabeth.
I turned to her, absolutely flummoxed. “WhatI’vedone.”
“Well, yes,” she said.
“You’re not blamingmefor this, are you?”
“You were obviously too heavy for the steps,” she said. “I had no issues climbing them. You broke them with your great, heavy, massively large shoulders and all of… that.” She gestured at me.
“Madam,” I said in disbelief, “I am not the person who insisted upon coming into this house.”
“Well,” she said, sitting up straight, “I believe I told you more than once not to follow me.”
I glared at her.
