-33-

Jem

Instinct sent Jem across the courtyard to the base of the Lady's Tower. He knew that whatever was occurring above him against the backdrop of the night sky, he would never get there in time if he followed the internal route Betsy had described.

At ground level, the tower seemed little more than a pitted ruin, an old gate the only barrier to his entry. It gave to a sound kick that set it clanging against the stonework. Within the shell of the east wing, the layout was confusing. The roof was missing in several places, and many of the floors had fallen through, meaning he could see through to the night sky. In a few areas, great supporting timbers slouched at alarming angles, as if likely to drop without notice and spear him through.

Interestingly, it was the upper portions that seemed to have survived best. The cap house at the top of the tallest tower seemed entirely sound. A fraction lower, he could see sections of corridor nestled between the foot thick stonework.

Beneath one such section, Jem found an open stairwell. The steps were cracked and weathered, slimy with moss, and infested with tenacious weeds that grew between the pointing. Still, it was a way up, and he took it as far as it would take him.

Three storeys up, the stairwell deposited him on a landing open to the elements. The wall of the tower stretched to the side of him, while an internal passageway petered out after a few feet. His only option seemed to be to backtrack or scale the outer wall like some mediaeval invader.

"Jem!"

He turned his head and found Eliza leaning out of a window arch, one leg already over the mantel. There was little more than a sheer drop below her. One could only assume she did mean to scale the walls.

"Go back," he urged, terrified by her fearlessness.

"The door's bolted on the inside. I can't get in, and Mrs Honeyfield has Jane. If I go up, I can shimmy in through that garderobe."

She was both insane and a genius. He adored her even as he despaired.

"It's too dangerous."

"I have to get to her," she retaliated.

Of course, no risk was too big.

"Then at least let me climb." He was better situated.

She drew her mouth into a mutinous pucker that only eased when he pointed out the lack of voluminous skirts to hamper his footing.

"Trust me, Eliza."

Of course, she didn't trust him with such a precious thing as her friend's safety. Men let her down, especially when it mattered. He'd let her down. And a second chance was merely a second chance of being disappointed.

"Look, can you get to there?" He pointed to a particular window. "You'll be able to guide my handholds from there."

"I don't know. I don't think… I don't like this."

Damn her, she was looking for toeholds.

Jem wasn't much for the prospect of climbing either, but he'd rather risk his neck than hers, and he definitely wasn't ready to stand back and watch her fall to her death.

"Please, Eliza. I'm closer." He was also taller, and likely a more experienced climber.

He took the fact she disappeared back inside as proof of her agreement.

Jem found purchase for his hands amidst the crumbling pointing. He did not look down. This was not the worst surface he'd ever climbed, though trees were his more usual choice. Thank God for the countless misspent summers spent tramping the countryside and scrumping apples with his cousins. It meant his muscles recalled how best to balance his weight, and his arms didn't scream too loudly over the effort of clinging on by his fingertips.

"Go right," Eliza yelled, leading him to assume she'd made it to the spot he'd indicated. He pointedly didn't turn his head to look. Her instruction was completely counterintuitive, as the balcony lay to his left.

"I can see them," he said, raising his left hand. Not very well, only as occasional glimpses between the crenulations and not enough to determine which silhouette was which.

"Right," she insisted again. "Jem, hurry."

Not, take care, just hurry. He'd have laughed if his situation weren't so perilous. He had a choice, follow his instincts, or put his faith in her directions. There was only one choice he could make. To act contrary to her wishes, would be to act as all the men who'd failed her before. If Jane perished, then she would forever hold him accountable for believing he knew better.

"Right?"

A stone slipped away beneath his hand and fell for far too long before he heard it smash.

"Eliza, are you sure?"

He could hear the women's voices now: Jane pleading, and the housekeeper repeating over and over that there was no getting around the fact that the brat couldn't be allowed to live.

The woman meant to kill Linfield's unborn son!

The realisation spurred him on. He scrambled sidewards; limbs spread spider-like as he stretched to find invisible handholds. Then, blessed relief when his efforts were rewarded as he climbed onto a window ledge that had been entirely invisible to him from his former position. He was a little east of the garderobe spout she'd initially pointed out as an entry point.

The dark arch in which he sat was wholly without glass, and internal wooden shutters blocked the view of the room within. Jem applied his heel and secured himself entrance. From the smell of it, he'd landed in the former privy. The space was barely three feet wide and entirely comprised of grey stone. He found the stub of an unlit candle in a small cubbyhole, and from that intuited where the exit must be.

He blinked as he emerged into a well-appointed bed chamber. A hearty fire roared in the grate. This, he realised, was where Linfield had meant them to conduct their business far away from the rest of his guests.

To Jem's left, a woman laughed, the sound reminding him of screeching door hinges. One door stood bolted, the other a fraction ajar. He popped the bolt on the former, then tiptoed over to the latter.

Through the inch-wide gap, he could see Jane cowered against the wall, her head tucked low, and her skirts bundled around her feet. The silver of tear-tracks shone on her cheeks where the moonlight caressed her.

"Why are you doing all this? I don't understand," she sobbed.

"Why? Why?" Mrs Honeyfield's voice rose and fell in a sing-song fashion.

She remained out of Jem's field of vision, but he didn't want to charge out for fear of precipitating a reaction.

"Oh, should I tell you a story? I could do that, a story to send you to your eternal rest."

"Was I not kind enough? Did I not—"

"Kind enough? Aye, you were kindly enough. I've heard tell of far worse from folks that've served highborn ladies like yourself. You're not one t' pinch a body, or dock wages for things as trivial as a sneeze. It doesn't change matters though. I 'ave to end it, ya see. Make sure 'is villainy dun't continue. I'll nee 'ave his brat born."

Jane wailed. "You have already killed Linfield, why can't you let me alone?" She edged backward pushing herself further into the corner of the balcony.

"Killed him, aye, but not through design. It weren't suppos't t' be 'im, but you as ate those sandwiches. I brought you tha' pot especial like."

Her menacing shadow fell across Jane's form, who instantly winced away from her.

"His lordship was meant t' survive. T' suffer as I've suffered. Ah wanted him t' feel everything he made me endure. I'd take away 'is pretty little bride, and he'd know it. He'd feel the stab of 't reet 'ere." She thumped a fist to her heart. "Same as I felt when 'e stole me John away."

Jane raised her head a fraction, so she was peeping over the shield of her folded arms. "You were married?" she asked tremulously.

"Aye, love. I were wed t' me John when I were eleven and him fifteen. All those years and hardly any of 'em t'gether." Her tone turned nostalgic. "Years, I'd endured, wed in name but forced apart so 'e could better our lot. We finally got our shop. It twere our dream 'hat shop. I loved it, all polished wood, 'twere."

She breathed deeply, as if she could smell the scent of beeswax and herbs combined in the enclosed room full of apothecary shelves.

"Hours I'd spend watching him mixing his tinctures and powders. ‘Ada m'love,' he'd say. It always gave me butterflies the way he'd say me name. ‘Pass me this or that.' And I'd learned me letters, so I'd know reet away which drawer t' look in."

The longing in her voice tugged at Jem's heart strings; he felt the same melancholic loss when he thought of his parents. His mother smiling at him, ribbons in her hair. The shiny buttons of his father's coat, and how they were always fastened misaligned.

"What—what happened?" Jane ventured.

Yes, Jem silently encouraged. While the housekeeper was talking, she was not about anything more alarming. He sensed a stir in the air behind him and turned to find Eliza approaching with cat-like stealth.

"What—"

He raised a finger to his lips and shook his head, whereupon she quietened until she was right alongside him, and the warmth of her presence had him plucking at his collar and cravat. "What are you stalling for?" she said, leaning in close enough to stir the hairs above his ear.

He shivered, tried to control it, but ultimately failed. It was just what she did to him. "There's only one way in or out. I don't want to startle her into doing anything rash."

"We need a plan."

They did. He also wanted to listen to what Mrs Honeyfield had to say. It was likely stuff they could use when it came to trial, as proof of intent.

"Ah knew… Knew it t'minute he saw me John tha' he were trouble.

"That were the thing about 'im, John. He were different, see. The bonniest man you'd ever seen. Folks 'ud say his kin rowed over with t'Vikings on account of 'is fair hair. He were pretty as a maid. Delicate, reet. Like fine bone China. It weren't reet what Linfield did to 'im, having 'im dress up in frocks and paint 'is face like a strumpet.

"John, he says, ‘Now lass, it's just a bit a fun between me and Lord Linfield like', but it weren't funny. And then off to 'em foreign parts he whisked 'im, without so much as a tarra and did who knows what to 'im while they were there. Well, I can tell ya, he weren't the same again afterwards, so it were obvious summat bad."

Her shadow trembled with the volatility of her feelings. Jem had far too clear a notion of what those times had encompassed: a great deal of fornication of the variety that the holy book condemned. His own sins in that regard make him even more hot around the collar. Why were the things that brought joy always tainted by Hell's shadow?

"Three months I waited, and then when he comes back, he came inta shop and put head in 'is hands. Well, of course I was reet pleased t' see 'im, but the moment he looks at me, I could see 'is soul had been ripped reet out of him. All the goodness, all the light, all gone due t' tha' devil.

"He weren't reet from then on. Couldn't focus. He'd always be off in some make-believe, or he'd disappear for days at a time and there'd be no getting out of 'im where he'd been. Then, the next I know, I get word from t' Earl of Bellingbrook's man, who says, me John's gone for good, off t' 'is maker. ‘Well, where's he buried?' I asked. ‘It's only reet that a wife can lay a flower at 'er husband's grave.' But all I'd get was ‘Be away wif ya. And stop ya beefin'."

No wonder the woman was aggrieved.

"Jem?" Eliza's hand rested between his shoulder blades. "Haven't we stalled long enough?"

He was sure it would be a mistake to dart out there without any certainty of what they were facing. "And if she's a knife, or a pistol?"

"She meant to poison Jane in the way she did Linfield. She'd brought up a tray."

"That doesn't mean she's unarmed."

"I still don't understand what this has to do with me," Jane's voice rang with fear.

"Then you ain't been listening," came the reply. "It's why I came 'ere. To do away with ya, t' take from 'im what he'd stolen from me, so he'd know the same agony like. An eye for an eye. Let's see how he likes it when I take 'is precious wife, I said."

"But he's dead."

"And so'll be 'is bairn. Because a course ya were blessed with a little 'un reet away, mind."

"But we weren't," Jane blurted, still cowering from the other woman. She raked her teeth over her trembling lower lip.

"Two months wed and one on t' way! Ya didn't waste any time, love."

"But… It's not his."

Mrs Honeyfield cackled as if that were the grandest joke she'd ever heard. "D'you expect me t' believe ya? A fine lassie such as you, carrying a bun that ain't ya husband's? No! I'll not be persuaded by that. It's 'is all reet. A proper little lording with hair as white and fine as 'is."

"It isn't." Tears spilled down Jane's pale cheeks. "I was pregnant before we were wed. Before I even met him. He didn't know… Our fathers arranged the match. It's why I agreed to it. I didn't have to. I'm past twenty-one."

Mrs Honeyfield's shadow loomed larger. "Brussen, but unconvincing. Stand up now, Lady Linfield, be a love."

"No! Listen to me. It's not his. We never even consummated the marriage."

"That's wholly irrelevant," Jem muttered, but Eliza was done waiting. She wrenched the door wide, which smacked Jem square in the centre of his forehead when he failed to back up in time.

"Ow!" He teetered backwards, bringing his hand up to the point of impact and found a new groove in his brow.

Eliza barrelled straight onto the balcony. She grabbed Mrs Honeyfield by her scrawny shoulders and pushed her away from Jane so that she fell against the stone wall.

"You!" the housekeeper barked. She righted herself and swirled. "How'd you get in?"

The answer hardly mattered, and indeed, Eliza didn't give one. Ignoring the woman, she stretched out a hand to her friend. "Jane, come to me. All will be fine."

It would not. Jem could see that already. There was no way Eliza could hold Mrs Honeyfield at bay and pull Jane to safety without making her back a target. He loomed in the doorway, strove to catch the housekeeper as she hurled herself at Eliza, only to yelp when in the confusion of the ensuing tussle his pocket set alight and then Jane punched into his side. She shrieked as her hands met the flames and pulled away, causing them both to fall back. Entwined, Eliza and Mrs Honeyfield fell hard against the crenulations. Alarmingly, several bricks fell away.

Jem staggered backwards. Now that he was out here, he could feel exactly how unstable the balcony was. It jutted out from the side of the tower supported below by fire-blackened beams. "Get inside," he yelled as he wrenched his arms free of his burning coat and cast it away from himself.

They were putting too much strain on the structure.

He knew his mathematics. Knew his engineering.

"Now!"

The stones and beams were already groaning in protest, providing a gravelly accompaniment to Mrs Honeyfield's shrieking rage.

Pain stretched all along Jem's left side, but he ignored it, stepping into the fray to grab Jane and haul her within. The moment she was over the threshold he about turned to reach for Eliza too.

His love was bound in a deadly struggle with the housekeeper. Her long hair was pulled loose from the knot into which it'd earlier been bound, and her assailant was using it like a tether to pull her closer and closer to the edge where the crenulations were broken.

"You, missy, you're always meddling. You couldn't just let 'er go quiet like." He supposed she meant that in reference to poisoning Jane's tea, or whatever it was on that tray Eliza said she'd brought up.

Eliza dipped, and strained. When that failed to free her, she drove her weight against her assailant's middle.

"No!"

Jem knew what was coming as if time were flashing before him out of sequence. The pair stumbled because of their collision and crashed against the crenulations. The mortar gave way. The wall cracked, then with a sound akin to a titan's hammer splitting a mountainside, the whole balcony parted ways with the tower.

Jem hung in the doorway. He caught a last, terrified glimpse of Eliza's face before she and Mrs Honeyfield fell into the darkness below.

A moan of utter despair wormed free of his throat. "Eliza!" It could not be so. The world could not be this cruel. He winced as timbers and stone collided with the earth below, sending tremors back up the tower. No one could survive such a fall. She was gone, taken from him before he'd had a chance to rectify any of his mistakes, before he'd had a chance to properly tell her how much he loved her, or how desperately he wanted a second chance to prove himself the man worthy of her affection.

He'd dreamed of sliding a ring on her finger one day, of the home they'd created. How he'd come in from the work shed after a long day, still smeared with oil and grease, and peep around the door of her workroom to spy on her lost in her own investigations into medicines and disease. Of how one day, maybe there'd be a child… A bonny bairn with her warmth and his nose. One he'd share an equal burden in raising.

Beside him, Jane's shrieking ceased; she fell into a faint. He felt sick to his core. His stomach roiled, pitching bile up his throat, while his legs collapsed beneath him, dropping him onto his knees.

Gone! He could not believe her gone. Eliza, who was so kind and brilliant, who was always so determined to help, who used her knowledge to aid others. She could have idled her days away living in luxury, but she hadn't. She'd been determined to make her mark on the world instead. She'd lived to better not just herself but the lives of others.

"Help!"

He truly believed he'd imagined it when the cry filtered through his numbed senses.

"Jem… Jem! Please help! I can't… I'm stuck."

He could not see her. "Eliza," he screamed again and again.

Her reply was faint. He couldn't see her, but beyond the door now lay a sheer drop.

Ignoring the pain in his side, he dropped to his belly to peer over the edge down past the broken timbers, down into the inky gloom and the shadows that pawed at the tower's sides. It was there he spied her, clinging to a beam trapped betwixt the stonework and one of those hanging supports he'd been so alarmed of when he'd observed them from below. She was wan with terror, but miraculously whole and alive.

"Don't move, I'm coming."

"I can't. Jem, please."

He stepped over Jane in his haste to act. She was breathing and in no imminent danger. Jem sprinted to the bed, where he tore down the curtains and gathered the linens into a heap. He'd learned knotting as boy, building rafts to ride along the River Ure. He worked quickly, fashioning the fabric into a makeshift rope that he secured both around the bedpost and his waist.

The climb down was utterly terrifying and seemingly endless. He had no choice but to look down to make certain of his footing, and each time he did, he glimpsed Ada Honeyfield's smashed body spread ragdoll like on the grass, broken timbers scattered around her like kindling.

Eliza's pale face was turned up towards him. Her hair danced wild around her, caught in the gusts of the evening wind that also pulled at his shirt. Her clothing was torn, and he could see the strain in her jaw from clenching her teeth.

"Hold on. I'm almost there."

Finally, he was able to straddle the support beam and clasp her to his body. "I have you now. It's going to be all right."

He felt every tremble that shook her body as he loosened the makeshift rope and bound it fast around her waist instead.

"I think I may have broken my arm," she said, tears spilling.

"We can get Bell to splint it."

That made her splutter something approaching laughter. "Oh, Jem, I'm such a fool. You were right. I shouldn't have charged out there. I could have killed us all."

"You weren't to know it was unsound. None of us did."

"It's my fault Mrs Honeyfield…" She turned her head away from the shattered body, pushing her wet face into the crook of his shoulder. "I'm always so sure I'm right, I forget to listen."

"Eliza, it was not your fault." She peeped up at him with watery eyes. Jem pressed his hands to either side of her head and drank down the vision of her while his heart rioted inside his chest. They were in no position to be exchanging any sort of tendresses, but he pressed his lips to her brow, nonetheless. "I'm going to get you down from here. I think I've enough length to lower you to the parapet below. It was a mere ten feet or so, rather than the thirty he estimated the ground to be.

"Promise me your knots will hold."

"They'll hold," he promised, and pressed another desperate kiss to her brow.

She nodded her assent, and he gingerly began to lower her. It was almost worse dangling her at the end of a line than making his arduous crawl down the tower wall. Ten feet had never felt so interminably far. When she finally landed, he gasped deep lungfuls of air. His heart was ready to burst right out of his chest.

Eliza freed herself of the rope, then still holding fast to the end, waved for him to follow.

"Perhaps I missed my calling as a sailor," he said when he was finally on a level with her again.

"Well, I'm glad that you didn't take to the sea, else we might never have met."

"It's good to have met you, too." He smiled, as did she, right before both their brows knit and their expressions crumbled into frowns.

"What now?" she asked, turning away.

Jem winced, feeling the rejection as keenly as the wound on his side.

Her head jerked towards him again. "You're injured."

"Some," he concurred. Neither of them had got away unscathed. He finally looked down at the damage. His shirt was stuck to his side, and the flesh there was red and bloody. "My coat caught alight. Jane's hands," he muttered recalling she'd fallen against him.

"How?" Eliza asked.

"I don't…" The little amber rock he'd picked up had been in his pocket. "I…I think I found one of the missing pills. It wasn't as I expected…I didn't recognise it as… I mean it didn't look like something you'd swallow, more like a speck of amber you might pick up off the beach. In the scuffle, it must have—"

"It's unstable in the air. It's why the pills are coated with silver, and generally stored in water."

"And you say that you're not a chemist!"

She winced as she snort-laughed. "I'm not. I've only read Lavoisier."

Jem shook his head, wearily bemused. "I should introduce you to my cousin Pip, he'd talk your ears off about the subject. He used to correspond with Lavoisier before… Well, before the revolution took its toll."

"I should like that." She blessed him with a smile. "I should like very much to do something as ordinary as drink tea and converse with your learned cousin, but first we should find a way down from here, and then you must get Doctor Bell to dress your wound."

"Shan't you do it?" he asked. He'd much rather her hands on him than Bell's. It wasn't that he didn't have faith in the former, only his bedside manner wasn't half so endearing. Plus, he was loath to part company with her so swiftly after so great a shock. His mind was still catching up with the fact she wasn't dead. He thought the image of her falling away from him would stay in his head forever.

"My arm," she reminded him. "And if it weren't so sore, my hands are not so steady at the moment."

She was shaking from head to foot, but he wasn't faring much better.

"Jem, someone needs to fetch the magistrate. Also, where is Jane? Is she all right? I didn't see her fall. She didn't, did she?"

He'd temporarily forgotten Lady Linfield. "Only into a faint. I'm sure she's roused by now. We can go to her." They were back at the top of the stairs he'd forced his way up earlier. They would take them down to the tower base, and from there wherever they wished. "You don't need to worry about summoning the magistrate either. I saw to it. I sent Linfield's man. Hopefully, Sir Cyril should be on his way."

She sighed as if a great weight had lifted to hear that was the case. "Then let us collect Jane and get our stories straight before they arrive, for there's a deal of explaining to do, and I expect some of the details—"

"—ought to be lost," Jem finished for her. For definite the precise details of Linfield's relationship with Ada Honeyfield's husband ought to be side-stepped, and nor would there be any suggestion of misconduct on Lady Linfield's part.

"Also, the Cluetts will need to be handled…"

Ah, yes. George's blackmailing scam.

Supporting one another, they hobbled their way into the house.