For once, Elizabeth was grateful she could see only dim, blurry shapes.
Harris turned Annabelle away. “Head down, luv. Don’t look. Go find ’im some clothes, a blanket, anythin’ t’ cover ’im.”
Bella hurried off as Elizabeth handed Harris the key. Her hands shook too much, her sight too poor. The moment Harrisunlocked Jasper’s shackles, her husband slumped into his friend’s arms.
Together, they half carried, half dragged Jasper between them, blinking into the bright glow of Finch’s gilded office. There, Annabelle wrapped a wall drape about him for modesty, as Elizabeth searched for water but found only spirits and port.
Jasper drank the port in fits and starts, hunched in Finch’s large desk chair. Harris, meanwhile, pulled Annabelle’s knife from Finch’s body. He wiped the blade on the dead man’s sleeve and handed it to her.
“I must return t’ the tables—my men await me signal. Remain here with Jasp and trust only those who give my name if they approach.”
Annabelle gripped the blade and nodded.
“And the bloke at the door’s out cold, shouldn’t stir, but if he?—”
“Never mind him. Make haste,” Annabelle told him.
Elizabeth barely registered the kiss Harris gave her sister. She stood behind Jasper, unsure if she might touch him. He continued to gulp port beneath the heavy drape, buried in its crimson folds.
She did not dare.
Annabelle fetched one of Finch’s bottles and stood watch beside the guard’s unconscious body. When the fellow groaned, she removed a kerchief from her pocket, doused it with drink, and smothered the man’s face.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
In the end, escape was easier than Elizabeth expected, for Mr. Harris chose a thief’s exit over a warrior’s.He let his men play out their coin to keep Finch’s dealers and thugs no wiser, taking but a handful with him to smuggle Elizabeth, Jasper, and Annabelle out.
They left Finch where he lay and his guard’s unconscious body at the door in greeting. Harris thought it best the East End assume Jasper Audrey had slit Hieronymus Finch’s throat. It wouldn’t be the first time Jasp had escapedThe Canary’s Lair.
The hansom ride back was silent. Harris kept Bella close, and Elizabeth supported her husband’s weight, his body still wrapped in Finch’s thick drape. As her sister curled deeper into Harris’s arms, Elizabeth listened to her husband’s ragged, rapid breaths. He leaned so heavily against her shoulder it began to ache.
When the hansom pulled up to Milton’s townhouse, Harris jumped from the carriage to run inside, bringing servants back with him to whisk Jasper from Elizabeth. Before she knew it, Gerald was helping her out and barking orders for the doctor to be fetched. Soon Murdoch was leading her upstairs to her room,where Ginny’s voice soothed,All will be well, ma’am. Leave it t’ Murdoch an’ Gerald. Some warm milk before bed.
Elizabeth protested—she wished to see Jasper—but Murdoch insisted the doctor be allowed to do his job. Elizabeth might go later, after. Ginny’s voice lulled her more as she was stripped of her wig and bawdy dress, then tucked into bed and plied with milk. Elizabeth’s head sank into the softness of the pillow, eyes closing as Ginny smoothed her brow with a warm cloth.
Before she knew it, she’d drifted into a deep but troubled sleep, only to awake in a sweat, heart racing with visions of blood flowing from Jasper’s split head, drowning them all in a wave of murky red that rushed like rapids through Finch’s cavernous, glowing vault. Elizabeth leapt from her bed and flew to her husband’s room to make sure he lived, breathed.
She was stopped dead in her tracks by the sight that met her.
Gerald sat slumped in a chair beside his master, snoring faintly, with Mutton sprawled at his master’s bare feet. And Jasper, poor Jasper, lay on his chest, his back riddled with wounds, his flesh wickedly flayed. They’d washed and stitched his injuries, but the slicing cuts and striped lashings?—
Elizabeth bit her knuckle to stem the cry about to burst from her pounding chest.
She forced herself to look, to burn her husband’s wounds into her brain, while she quietly, bitterly wept. She knelt beside him, careful not to wake him, and though she knew she ought to ask permission, she brushed a curl from his pale forehead and traced the lines of his gaunt, exhausted face.
He was returned to her. That was all that mattered.
She remained on the floor beside him until her head fell to his bed, matching him breath for anguished breath.
“Lizzie.” Milton’s voice startled her awake. “Go.”
For a moment she wasn’t sure where she even was. Her knees felt stiff and sore. “Jasper.” She raised her head, confused. “I?—”
“Go,” he ordered more forcefully.
“But—”
“Leave!”His voice was harsh, his eyes fierce, burning.
