Darke London

bleeding. “It’s Barchester.”

“But it can’t be! That’s…” Nellie lifted the oil lamp higher. Like a bruise the yellow glow crept over the woman’s face. “Barchester is my name…”

“Then I must be you. I must be Nellie Barchester.”

No. No. But the woman behind the bars was indeed herself. Her eyes were rolling, her hair crazed, her dress filthy, and her face smeared with drool and snot and unspeakable things. But she was unmistakeably Nellie Barchester. Locked up and forgotten. Legally dead. Buried alive.

Horrified, Nellie stepped back. The lamp slipped from her grasp. It crashed to the floor and burst into flame, setting her dress alight.

Nellie shrieked. The flames leaped up and ravaged her face. She clawed at her cheeks. The pain, oh, the pain was unbearable…

A vortex of agony sucked her up. Fire and darkness shuddered and roared before abruptly dissolving. Her eyes peeled open, and she realised she’d been dreaming. A terrible dream, an unspeakable nightmare, but she was safe, she wasn’t in the asylum. She was lying in bed and her heart was pounding—

A face swam into her vision. A face bent and buckled and folded, with a gaping cleft splitting his upper lip and eyes like beads sunk into his doughy flesh. The face of a man-beast, a pagan creature… Someone screamed; she realised it was her. The creature frothed at the mouth, his guttural grunts sounding like an antagonised bear. He flapped his arms at her…except one of his hands was not flesh and bone but an ugly metal pincer, gleaming with menace as it lunged towards her.

She thrashed her arms at the man-beast as her screaming continued. Bellowing and sweating, the animal held her down by the shoulder. The cold metal of his pincer burned her skin. Her body shrieked with pain as the sensation of flames engulfing her face intensified.

“I’m here, Figgs,” a male voice spoke. “No need to panic.”

Her breath caught on a sob. That voice, so familiar and yet so strange, so comforting and yet so fear- inducing. Her heartbeat stuttered, then hammered faster. A dim shape hovered over her. She strained to make him out, but the effort only increased the itching agony searing her face.

“Hush, now,” the man said.

Hush now. She’d heard him say that before. Hush now. You’re safe. But how could she be safe when she was trapped behind bars? Her skin burned, her muscles convulsed, a scream built in her throat, but when the stranger placed his hands on her wrists, the sensation was oddly soothing, his calloused palms cooling the maddening itch, chasing away the fire ants crawling over her skin.

She moaned and blinked harder, struggling to make out the features of her comforter, but the fog around her curdled and swallowed her up, leaving behind only the imprint of his fingers on her wrists.

Nellie opened her eyes. For a few moments she wondered at the light around her, before she discerned it was weak sunshine seeping through a crack in the curtains. Dust motes floated in the milky light. She turned her head to look around but winced as instant pain seized her neck and shoulders. The room wavered around her. She shut her eyes and waited for the dizziness to subside before resuming her inspection.

She was lying in a large comfortable bed with clean linen sheets and quilts keeping her warm. A fresh fire burned in the grate. The room was haphazardly appointed with dark, old-fashioned furniture. Heavy damask curtains drawn across the windows maintained a dim twilight. It was quiet, and she was alone. Bandages encased her head, with apertures for her eyes, nose and mouth. Beneath the bandages her skin felt tight and raw and itchy.

Panic quavered in her stomach. Where was she? Why was she lying in a strange bed? And what had happened to her face?

The door opened, and a young man entered the room. His expression altered as soon as he caught sight of her.

“Ah, you’re awake,” he murmured, moving closer.

His voice sparked recognition in her. This was the man who’d chased away the man-beast of her nightmares. He’d saved her, and yet, as he approached the bed, she found herself shrinking away from him. Was this stranger friend or foe? He seemed so tall, and his eyes, deep-set in his angular face, were pitch black and intensely focussed on her.

He paused as he noticed her distress. “Don’t be alarmed. I wish you no harm.” He drew up a chair next to her bed. “My name is Julian Darke. I live here with my father, Elijah. We’re both doctors.”

He spoke as if being a doctor implied a certain trustworthiness. But her father was a doctor, and in the end she hadn’t been able to trust him. This young man didn’t look like the degenerate her father had become. He was rugged and masculine, dressed rather untidily, his necktie flopping loose, his black hair awry, his jaw lightly stubbled. His swarthy, earthy appearance was not unattractive, but she could not afford to trust him—or anyone —wholeheartedly yet.

She opened her mouth to speak, but her lips were chapped and her tongue so dry her throat seized up. The man quickly poured her a glass of water and held it to her lips. The cool liquid eased the aridness of her mouth.

“My name is Nellie,” she eventually managed to croak out. “Nellie Barchester.”

She didn’t pause to consider why she dissembled about her surname, but every instinct warned her to tread with care. This young physician might have rescued her, but he was a total stranger and his motives might not be as pure as they appeared.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Barchester.”

“How—how long have I been here?”

“Three days. You had a fever, but it’s abating and the danger has passed.”

Her heartbeat faltered. Was the danger truly over, or was it still threatening?

She moistened her lips. “Where are we?”

“This house is called Monksbane, and we are a few miles north of the city.”

The location meant nothing to her. She’d been in London only a few weeks and knew very little of its environs. If they were away from the city, that must account for the peacefulness outside.

The man leaned towards her, his expression tentative. “Miss Barchester, do you remember what happened to you the night of your attack?”

Ice flooded her veins. Even as her brain went blank, horrifying images flashed across her mind’s eye. The ride in Sir Thaddeus’s carriage. Hope turning to disbelief as he delivered her into the arms of her abductor. The deserted dock and the stench of the river. Fear and abject desperation as the knife blade slashed repeatedly into her. Falling to the ground, dirt and blood on her tongue. The terror of dying alone in the darkness.

“Miss Barchester?”

She had to get away. She must escape. She tried to pull herself upright, but her muscles refused to obey her.

“Miss Barchester! You must stop struggling or you’ll hurt yourself.”

Why could she not free herself from the cursed bed linen? Why was she so limp and feeble? She pushed and pulled at the sheets, dully aware of a growing ache somewhere in her body, until finally she managed to thrust her arms out. She stared at the bandages wrapped around her left hand, at the gap where two middle fingers should be.

“My hand,” she gasped. “Oh…” She drew in a slow, quivering breath as the amorphous ache in her body crystallised around the stumps of her missing fingers. Her flesh was swollen, tender, but the physical pain was not as great as she might have imagined. Rather, it was the idea of the mutilation that made her mind go blank with horror.

“Your hand is healing well,” Julian Darke assured her quickly. “The threat of infection has passed.”

But how ugly her hand appeared. This…thing had no right being attached to her. She could barely look at it. She hid her left arm under the sheets. Using her right hand, she tentatively fingered the bandages around her head. “And my face? What happened here?”

He shifted in his seat as his expression grew wary. “You do not recall?” he asked gently.

Memory returned like a flood of boiling water. She remembered the flashing blade as it scythed towards her, her bleeding hands raised in defence, and then a faint stinging across her cheeks like the flick of a fine whip,