But Theo raised one of his hands, and whatever shout the guard meant to emit stuck in his throat.
Instead, a bubble of brandy spluttered from the man’s lips, dribbling down his chin. The guard coughed, the baton fell to the carpeted floor, and his hand gripped at his own throat before he stumbled back into the wall and fell, unconscious.
Theo released a shaky breath. “We have to hurry,” he said. “Follow me.”
Theo led Patrick to the end of the corridor, where a servants’ passage waited beyond a nondescript white door. A hideously narrow staircase spiraled endlessly into the dark, and they raced down the spine of it, Patrick’s heart thundering against his rib cage. “Where is she?”
“In a coach, headed for the city center,” Theo panted. “I had to wait for her and my father to be clear of the building. He took half the guards with him.” He finally pushed through another door, barreling into a basement kitchen currently occupied by only one Craftsman, stirring the contents of a large steel pot. He looked up from beneath hooded eyes as they raced around the benches and boilers, apparently unsurprised to see them. Theoslipped a handful of coins into the cook’s waiting palm as they passed, then led Patrick to an exit.
They pushed their way into the cellar stairwell, daylight ahead, and scurried headlong up them and onto a drive—the very same passage Patrick had once pulled Nina into, daring her to sneak into the National Artisan House.
Only now, there were overhanging sycamore trees above, and one lone horseless wagon before it, the driver’s seat occupied by none other than John Colson.
Theodore’s face paled at the sight. “I told you to steal a horse from the stable!” he hissed.
But Patrick’s father, dressed in the same navy blue as Patrick, only donned a driver’s bowler and pulled it low over his eyes. “Don’t need one,” he said.
Patrick smiled. He felt the first shivers of hope returning.
“Hand it over, son,” John said, grinning.
And Patrick jumped into the back of the wagon, pulled a vial of ink forth, and gripped his father’s waiting hand with it.
Theodore’s forehead creased. “You’re a wood Mason?”
“The very best, kid,” John grunted. “Get in the fuckin’ wagon.”
Theodore clambered in. John downed the idium, tilting his face to the sun as though seeing it for the first time. Then, groaning in satisfaction, he looked over his shoulder to Patrick.
“Let’s go get your lady.” He winked.
He threw a blanket of burlap over Theodore and Patrick both, and as the wagon began trundling precariously down the drive, the two men lay curled, just barely out of sight, their breaths swarming in the close space.
CHAPTER SIXTEENNINA
I awoke in increments.
I saw first a parade of hovering faces, then intervals of nothing. I blinked back stubborn clouds of film again and again but felt mired in them. I woke briefly when they changed my clothes and had the wherewithal to cover my breasts with my hands. I woke again to a nurse tipping something noxious down my throat. I was terrified of my uninhibited body lying just beyond the fog, where I was unable to defend it. I imagined hands roaming over my stomach, ink slithering into my nostrils and pooling in the corners of my eyes.
Moments or hours or years later, I was being shuffled downstairs on leaden legs, strong hands encasing my arms. Then there were the cobbles rising up to meet me, tripling my nausea. I blinked up at spires and vine-entangled gutters to see the sun, somehow still there, and had the wherewithal to ask, “Where’re you takin’ me?”
I sounded like a child.
“In you get” came the answer, and light dimmed, sound condensed. The bench seat beneath me felt solid and anchoring.
The voice that met me through the fog did not.
A figure sitting across from me. We were closer together than I wanted, our knees touching, walls either side, and a ceiling too low. A coach, I realized. And sharing it with me was a man I knew.
“Miss Clarke,” Lord Terrence Shop greeted, his neck taut, face pinched. “Forgive the interruption to your sleep.”
I blinked. Gripped the wall. “Wh—where?”
“Where are we going?” the lord finished on my behalf. He moved his cane to the side, looked pensively out a window. “Tending to some business,” he said. “My first as Head of House, in fact.”
A dull throb pulsed at my arm, and I looked down to see both wrists bandaged, both shackled.
And the rest came rushing back.
