Elizabeth tremblingly moved her hand to hold over his still mouth, to feel if there was any breath.
A hard knock on the bedroom door startled her up.
“Milord, Milord, are you well?”Mr.Blight’s nasal voice called out.
Lachglass’s still and silent body made no reply.
They’d hang her for this.
And Elizabeth had no liking for the notion of being hung.
She had to escape.Now.The apartment suite door must be unlocked again if Mr.Blight was at the bedroom door.
Elizabeth silently stepped on the balls of her feet next to the door.Mr.Blight cautiously opened the door, saying, “Milord, apologies, sir,” again as he did so.And as the gentleman’s gentleman blinked at the earl’s still body, Elizabeth struck him in the jaw, just below an ugly scar on his face, with a hurled elbow, the force in it gained by twisting her body as hard and fast as she could.She’d kept her palm open, as taught, so that the bones in her arm pounded into him.The sharp point of the elbow gashed open his skin.
The pugilist had told her that if she was ever in any serious danger, she must hit far harder than she even thought she could.She could not leave any shred of muscle power unused if she wished to protect herself.And he’d taught her that the elbow was a vastly better weapon than her soft and easily breakable hands.
Elizabeth ran past Mr.Blight, not giving him a chance to recover, and she didn’t want to attack him with another weapon and kill a second man.The door was open, as she’d hoped, and she ran through it, and stumbling, hurled herself down the stairs.
She tripped at the bottom and fell down the last four steps, but though she thought her foot should have been twisted from the fall, she peculiarly felt no pain.
And then she was up, to the main door.Thrown open.The world seemed to appear in moments caught in portraiture or pencil sketches rather than as a smooth reality.
She ran.
The earl’s house was on a fashionable square, with an oval gated park in the middle surrounded by quiet cobblestoned streets shaded by tall elms and oaks.The buildings were made of a handsome grey and brown stone.The day had a grey sleety February sky.Elizabeth did not pause as she dashed out the house and down the staircase to the building’s entrance.She took the first street that turned away from the garden in the middle of the square.
Elizabeth ran.
Mr.Blight would recover, and come after her with anger and blood.
And she ran from the dead sack of manure of a body she’d left behind in the room.Elizabeth took another turn, at random, except she was confident this alleyway kept her runningawayfrom the house.Then yet another turn.She barely had a sense of where she was.
Without meaning to she hit a major road.Bond Street, emptier than in summer, but still full of carriages, and fashionable ladies and gentlemen strolling up and down and stopping in the expensive shops.
Tall white plastered buildings, and handsome red brick façades on either side.
She must appear so strange.The people she saw from the corners of her eyes stared at her.She full of fright ran across the road, without properly looking to both sides, or waiting.
A careening carriage carrying two ladies gripping their ostrich feather hats tightly to keep them from flying away, and a laughing gentleman in a beaver hat missed her by bare inches.The extra thrill of coming close to death only made her run faster once more.
Elizabeth had always been athletic, and she liked to run when she was in a park and not observed, but it had been years since she had run very much.In the cold air her lungs ached.They felt like they would collapse.They hurt so much, but she was still terrified, and she needed to get as far from the house as possible.As far away.Just get away.
Her legs were rubbery and they wanted to give up with every hurtling step.
She ran.
She ran down a thin street lined on both sides with handsome buildings, and reached Grosvenor square, with its tall palatial buildings and townhouses, and the large garden square with many benches.She ran past the fronts of the expensive houses, a blue streak conscious of the curious who may be observing her.Her footsteps were strangely soft for how fast she ran, as she was wearing house slippers instead of proper boots.
Out of the square.
Her chest ached hideously with each and every gasping difficult breath.
Elizabeth’s brain still dwelled on the sensation as the vase cracked over his head, splintering and leaving the top in her hands, pieces turning around in her palms and nearly cutting her.The thud of his body hitting the ground.Blood from his crumpled nose and head.So much blood.
Elizabeth burst into a giant park.
Gravel pathways and tree-lined boulevards were almost empty due to the cold of the day.A thin frozen drizzle wisped from the skies.In shady spots under grey, denuded trees patches of snow remained from a snowfall a week before.The cold sweat stuck to Elizabeth’s body and dress.
