Footprints marked the frozen ground, leading away from the building. Arch swore under his breath.
He stepped out into the rear yard, scanning the darkness beyond, but the alley behind the premises gave onto a warren of narrow passages where a man might vanish within seconds.
Behind him, the struggle in the loft subsided.
“Manners!” Baines called.
Arch remained where he was a moment longer, his gaze fixed on the direction Kendall had taken. Then he turned back.
The loft was secured within minutes. Those who had resisted were subdued. Those who had attempted escape had been intercepted below. The weapons were gathered together, the room searched, and the remaining men bound under guard.
Thistlewood stood against the wall, held firmly by two officers, his expression no longer fervent but cold and calculating. The transformation from visionary to prisoner had occurred with remarkable speed.
Fielding wiped his hand across his sleeve, his breathing steady despite the exertion.
“One dead,” he said quietly, glancing towards the fallen officer.
Arch nodded once. It was the only loss, and yet it was far from nothing.
Renforth entered the loft at last. He took in the scene with a single sweep of his gaze: the captured men, the weapons, the body on the floor.
“It is done,” he said.
“Not quite,” Arch replied.
Renforth’s eyes settled on him. “Kendall?”
“Escaped.”
Then Renforth inclined his head slightly. “Then we will go after him.”
The night was not yet over.
CHAPTER 22
Francesca had not imagined that waiting could so entirely unnerve her.
It was not the sort of trial she had been trained to endure with composure, for it offered no clear enemy against which to marshal one’s courage. Instead, it demanded that the mind remain suspended in uncertainty, drawing from its own dark recesses every possible misfortune and examining each in turn with a dreadful, unwilling thoroughness. Had she been required to act—to decide, to intervene, to oppose—she believed she might have acquitted herself with tolerable composure; but, to remain still, to know nothing and yet suspect everything, was a far more exacting test of fortitude than any she had previously encountered.
The cottage, though modestly appointed, afforded her no refuge from such thoughts.
On the contrary, its very adequacy rendered it intolerable. There was warmth enough, and food enough, and space sufficient for comfort, and yet no occupation that demanded her full attention, no necessity that might compel her to think of anything beyond what might even now be unfolding in London. The fire burned in the hearth, its glow casting soft light dancingacross the narrow room, while the winter evening gathered beyond the small window with a quiet inevitability that seemed wholly indifferent to human anxiety. Nelly moved about with a practical diligence, tending to small tasks that scarcely required tending, as though she, too, understood that stillness was the enemy of composure.
Francesca found herself unable either to sit or to move for long without feeling equally constrained by both.
She had tried, at first, to apply herself sensibly to the examination of their surroundings, persuading herself that knowledge—even of so small a domain—might provide some measure of control. Together, she and Nelly had inspected each room and considered with care the extent of their provisions, yet such efforts could not disguise the truth that they were isolated. The door, it was true, was not locked, as Kendall had been at pains to assure her; but the absence of a lock did not equate to freedom when the distance to London was unknown and the means of traversing it equally so.
In thus unprofitable fashion, the hours stretched, and with them, her thoughts.
She had not meant to dwell upon what had passed with Major Manners, yet the memory returned with a persistence that no effort of discipline could entirely dispel. Indeed, it seemed to her now that the events in the garden had taken on a quality almost unreal, as though they belonged not to the present, but to some earlier and more innocent chapter of her life, before she had been brought face to face with the consequences of misplaced trust and dangerous ambition.
What had happened between them?
Outwardly, she understood it perfectly well. She had been warned and instructed. Measures had been proposed, and she had eventually agreed to them. There was nothing in that whichcould not be accounted for by reason. Yet reason had very little to do with the matter that troubled her most.
For although her rational mind insisted that everything she had experienced must be understood as part of a carefully constructed illusion, something within her—something far less obedient to logic—refused to accept so tidy a conclusion. The memory of his voice, low and unguarded when he spoke her name, lingered with a force she could neither explain nor resist; the warmth of his hand upon hers seemed still present, though hours had passed since the contact; and worst of all, the recollection of that brief, astonishing moment when his lips had touched her wrist returned again and again, not as a stratagem, but as a sensation.
It had been a performance. Every element of it had been designed for observation, for effect, for the benefit of unseen watchers whose suspicions required careful management.
