“The turnkey’s lodge,” LordGray muttered.
Sophia paused to glance into the two cramped rooms on either side of the center chamber. Each contained a stool, a table, a cot, and nothing else.
“I said move quick-like, miss,” Hogg snapped. He reached out to tug Sophia forward, but before he could lay a finger on her Lord Gray’s walking stick sliced through the air and landed near Hogg’s arm. He didn’t strike him, but he’d made his point, nonetheless.
“Don’t touch the lady.” Lord Gray didn’t raise his voice, but his low growl was far more menacing than a shout would have been.
Hogg blanched, and didn’t reach for her again. He took them through the turnkey’s lodge to a passage on the left, then down narrow, shallow stone steps into the dungeons below. From there they passed into a serpentine maze of narrow stone passages with what seemed an endless series of heavy iron gates between them.
Sophia had been to Newgate once before, to see a friend of Lady Clifford’s who’d been imprisoned for debt, but the female debtor’s ward was a palace in comparison to the filth and misery of the dungeons. She resisted the shudders wracking her and plodded along silently behind Mr. Hogg until they emerged from the maze of passageways into what could only be described as a tomb.
One lone prisoner was slumped against the damp stone wall. What little she could see of him in the darkness made Sophia’s stomach clench. Hogg lit a candle, and the gloom receded. She drew closer, and the shape of the man on the floor emerged from the shadows.
That was when Sophia’s calm deserted her.
Chapter Nine
Jeremy’s condition was so terrible as to defy description.
His wrists and ankles were cuffed with wide iron bands, their heavy chains attached to an iron ring in the floor. Filthy, naked skin gaped through the scraps of clothing covering him. His emaciated body was crawling with lice and other vermin and riddled with seeping sores. He seemed to have been singled out for the harshest sort of treatment at the hands of his guards, as well. Sophia could see at a glance his cheeks and jaw were bruised, and his legs were a mess of festering wounds.
Sophia rushed forward with a soft cry and fell to her knees beside him.
“Oh, Jeremy. Oh, sweetheart.” He’d looked so feeble in the courthouse, and Sophia had prepared herself for the worst, but this…
She’d seen appalling suffering in her life—drunkenness, starvation, disease, women and children beaten bloody by the very hands of the people who professed to love them—but never in her life had she seen anything more shameful than this. Dear God, it was a miracle Jeremy was still alive.
But someone was doing their best to see he didn’t remain that way.
“Jesus.” Lord Gray’s voice was hoarse. He followed her to the corner of the cell and crouched down on Jeremy’s other side. “Ives?”
Jeremy’s chin was slumped on his chest, but at the sound of the deep voice, his head came up.
“Jeremy.” Sophia touched his cheek. “Can you hear me?”
He blinked, as if he thought she must be an apparition kneeling beside him, but then he burst into a flood of tears. “I didna think ye’d come,”he choked out.
“Remove his irons,” Lord Gray ordered.
Sophia looked up. The lantern light slanted across Lord Gray’s face as he turned toward Hogg, and she caught her breath. His skin was stretched tight across the sharp bones of his face, and he’d gone dead white. His eyes had all but disappeared under a lowered brow, and his full mouth was a thin, grim slash in his face.
She’d never seen a man more enraged in her life. His features looked as if they’d been carved from ice.
Hogg shook his head. “Nay. He’s a dangerous one, milord—”
“Do it now. Then get out.” Lord Gray rose to his feet, and the candlelight threw his enormous shadow onto the stone wall behind him. He looked like a demon sent straight from the netherworlds.
Hogg gulped, then hurried forward, fumbling with the heavy set of keys dangling from his waist. “No mor’n a few minutes, milord. Ye promised.” Once he freed Jeremy from his irons he leapt backwards, out of Lord Gray’s reach.
The moment Jeremy was free, he threw himself on Sophia’s neck. “I didna think ye’d come, Miss Sophia.”
“Hush now, sweetheart. Of course, I came.” Sophia brushed his limp hair away from his forehead and did her best to give him a reassuring smile. “Have I ever abandoned you, Jeremy?”
“Nay.” Jeremy sniffled, and dragged his arm across his eyes. “But the man yesterday said as I’d done a bad thing, an’ I thought ye wouldn’t like to see me again, nowI’m a bad man.”
Hogg snorted, and Lord Gray turned a frigid look on him. “I told you toget out.” He didn’t spare Hogg another glance, but the man took to his heels readily enough, the clang from the iron door ringing like a death knell long after he’d slammedit behind him.
Sophia tried not to flinch at the sound, and turned her attention back to Jeremy. “You’renota bad man. Did you hurt anyone?”
