He moved carefully closer. He could now hear her terrified breathing.
“Madam,” he mused, “it looks as though you’re in a bit of a bind.”
Perhaps because this was self-evident, she didn’t reply.
“If what you’ve just tossed down is a satchel full of silver plate, you’d best hurry. I should hate for their rightful owners to awake and shoot you.” Now he was having a little fun at her expense.
“Why would I take silver plate?”
Her voice was a shock. Low-pitched, exquisitely refined, every word as precise as a cut gem. It was like stumbling across a diamond necklace in the dirt.
“Oh... lass...” he said pityingly. “First day at thieving?”
“I’m not thieving.” She actually sounded indignant. “Some... blighter... moved the barrel that I... that I planned to...”
“Blighter!” He was amused. “You’ll never get to heaven using that sort of language.”
And then he became brisk. “I believe you’re going to have to jump. And I’m going to have to catch you, because the sound of human bones crunching against cobblestones puts me right off me feed.”
She said nothing. The only movement was thelashing of her cape about her ankles. It snapped like a sail in the wind.
“My offer is not indefinite, madam. Jump or be caught stealing, it’s all the same to me.”
Daphne finally risked a look over her shoulder.
For a chilling moment she saw no human at all. Only layer upon layer of shadows, all in various shades and textures of black.
It was as though the night itself had been speaking to her.
Fear seeped into her bones like an icy fog.
And then, at last, her eyes were finally able to distinguish the outline of what appeared to be a very large man.
Her slamming heart squeezed into an icy fist.
His face was a pale blur, shadowed by a beaver hat. The rest of him was all in black.
And then, as if he could read the run of her thoughts, she detected a fleeting glint. Perhaps a flash of teeth.
Daphne bit her lip. Her heart slammed like a boot kicking her over and over again in her chest. She had planned it all. And wasn’t planning one of her gifts? Over the span of two days, she had noted the crates. Calculated their heights using her own height as a comparison. Measured the sheets. Tested their strength by looping them around the bed frame. Surreptitiously measured the distance between the crates and the barrel. Noted the easy hop from the barrel to the ground.
And between the time she’d gone in this evening and the moment she’d gone out the window, somehow, for some reason, someone had moved the barrel.
And if that wasn’t a metaphor for her entire life, what was?
“I’m going to count to three.”
His voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. So deep, so resonant, so quiet. So nearly disinterested. As if this was a matter of everyday business for him.
He could be anyone. A murderer. A rapist. A Samaritan. A hallucination.
“One...”
She’d already dropped her valise to the ground. She could not afford to lose a single thing in it, particularly one critical letter. He could have stolen it, she told herself. He hadn’t yet.
She was positive she couldn’t pull herself back up to the window again.
Moreover, she thought she might prefer to break every bone than to suffer the indignities that stalked her inside.
