I heard a faint cry, not from Peaches' room, but from the one opposite, the attic room I'd not seen. I groped for the door.
I heard footsteps on the stairs, a heavy tread that shook the stairwell. I wanted to shout out, Pomeroy, she's here, but I knew the next instant that it was not Pomeroy.
I tried to turn and ducked when I felt the whistle of the cudgel. It struck my knee, and I started to go down. Then pain exploded in my head. I fell, sick and dizzy. I heard the faint cry again, the voice behind the door asking what was wrong. I tried to climb to my feet.
I was struck again. I fell back to the floor, pain washing me.
Someone grabbed me beneath the arms. I tried to twist away, but I could not get my weak leg under me to rise, to fight. A sack was thrust over my head, cutting off my words and my air, and I was plunged into darkness.
A long time later, I heard a voice-low, sweet, and urgent.
'Lacey. Wake up, for God's sake.'
I opened my eyes. All was black and close, and I could not breathe. I struggled.
After a time I realized that I lay face down on a hard floor, a canvas bag firmly in place over my head. My hands were bound behind me. I tried to draw a breath and coughed.
The bag reeked of human sweat and other odors that did not bear close examination. Its drawstring encircled my throat, not tight enough to choke me entirely, but enough so that I could not dislodge it. My hands were bound firmly behind my back with chafing twine. They had not needed to bind my legs. Any attempt to rise brought excruciating pain.
'Lacey?'
The voice was not Louisa's. The lady sounded far from me, and I wondered why she did not hurry to my side and help me.
I answered, but my words were muffled through the bag.
'Thank God,' she said. 'Are you all right?'
'Not really,' I mumbled.
'I do not understand what happened,' Her voice was thick. 'I was leaving the theatre in Drury Lane. On a sudden, a large man was beside me, and he had hold of my arm. My servants were nowhere in sight. I believe I fainted, which is odd, because I never faint. Then I woke up here, bound hand and foot. I do not even know why.'
I could not tell her, muffled as I was.
I found that if I used my chest and shoulders, aided by my right leg, I could move across the board floor about an inch at a time. The exercise was tiring and the bag stifled me, so I only progressed about half a foot at a time before having to rest.
She ceased talking, but I heard her hoarse breathing. Sick and dizzy from the beating, I could only make for her at a snail's crawl.
A few feet along, I came, surprisingly, to the edge of a carpet. I smelled dust and wool through the cloying bag. The raised lip of the carpet was about an inch high.
I began my arduous climb to the rug, then stopped, frustrated, when the carpet caught on the bag and pulled it tight against my head. I fumed for a few moments, until my buzzing brain made me realize that if the carpet could pull the bag one way, it could pull it another.
I leaned my cheek on the carpet and inched backward. The carpet held the bag in place, and my chin came hard against the cord. I continued to wriggle and work at the edge of the bag with my jaw, until all at once, the cord came loose and the bag rose halfway up my face.
Luckily, my assailant had not tied the cord, only pulled the drawstring tight. I wriggled some more. The bag caught on the corner of the carpet, and at last I was able to withdraw my head.
I lay for a moment, simply breathing, the stale air as sweet to me as that of a spring morning. I smelled a thick, spicy perfume as well, very different from the lemony scents Louisa Brandon wore.
The room was nearly pitch black, but for the faint glimmer of starlight through a window high in the wall. I rolled myself into a sitting position on the carpet. 'Where are you?'
'Here.'
Her voice was weak. I managed to move my right leg under me, but I could not stand.
'Talk to me,' I said. 'I will find you.'
'Lacey.' She sounded tired. 'Why the devil am I here?'
'It has to do with me and my meddling. I am sorry.'
She gave a faint laugh. 'I ought to have known. Where am I, by the by?'
'The Glass House.'
'Truly? How interesting. I had thought it would be a bit more lurid.'
'We are in the attics. The lurid rooms are downstairs.'
'I see. What a pity.'
I was happy to hear the acid in her tone. Any other woman, Mrs. Danbury, say, might have been in hysterics. Lady Breckenridge was frightened, but not defeated.
'The house is closed, out of business,' I said.
'I take it that somebody is displeased about that.'
'Mrs. Chapman owned it,' I said as I struggled to crawl across the carpet. 'But the man and woman who ran it are not happy with me, no. Kensington threatened me with revenge. He did not say he would drag you into it as well.'
'Sordid men think of sordid solutions.'
'He will not have it. Once I get myself free, we will go.'
'Will they kill us?' Lady Breckenridge asked it in a matter-of-fact voice, a lady requesting information, just as she would turn to me at the theatre and ask if I thought there'd be an acrobatics act between plays. 'Perhaps dispose of our bodies in the Thames, as they did with Peaches?'
'Such optimism,' I said. But I could not argue with her. I had no idea what Kensington planned.
At long last, I reached her. Lady Breckenridge lay on her side, facing away from me, her hands and feet bound. Her long hair spilled over the carpet.
The cords about my wrists had loosened a bit from all my crawling about. I knelt and continued working my hands. The twine cut my skin, but little by little, the bonds slackened.
My position, half-raised on my knees, my hands frantically working, was not stable by any means. My left leg gave way in a sudden wash of pain, and I fell over, on top of Lady Breckenridge. It was a fine, soft landing place, but I feared hurting her.
She gave a grunt, and her eyes gleamed in the darkness.
'Are you all right?' I asked.
'Not quite. You must weight twenty stone.'
'Untrue. It only feels that way having it fall on you all in a heap.'
She did not laugh. 'I would be happier if I had use of my hands.'
'So would I. I am almost free, I think.'
I worked madly at the thin rope. My wrists were raw, pain in the darkness.
'I suppose after this,' I said, 'I cannot expect you to speak to me again.' I kept my tone light.
'We shall see. If you manage to free us, I shall be most grateful to you.'
My bonds came loose. My hands, wooden, fell forward. I pushed myself away from Lady Breckenridge and landed heavily beside her. I lay like a drowning man who has just found shore, breathing hard, willing the circulation back into my hands.
'It would be rude of me to cut you after you saw me home safely,' Lady Breckenridge said. Her tone was also light, but her voice hoarse, as though she'd wept.
She was trying to put a brave face on it, the English upper-class bravado that remained calm in the face of danger. Panic was for lesser beings.
I had known a lieutenant in Spain, who, when unhorsed and facing four French cavalrymen, he having nothing but a single-shot pistol with which to defend himself, had said to the lead horseman, 'Move to the right a bit,
