Page 3 of Elizabeth’s Refuge (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #16)

It was illegal she knew, to disturb the trees in a royal park, trespassing, a crime, a fine and perhaps a period of jail. The value of the tree branch was certainly far below the hanging sum.

She tried to pull the branch off the tree with a thin little laugh. Better to laugh. Assault, murder, and wanton and premeditated destruction of a tree . They’d have plenty of reason to punish her when they caught her.

The branch bent, but did not snap off.

The tree was still too healthy for a clean crack. Pulling it put pressure on her now swelling ankle, and the stab of pain made her close her eyes and breathe shallowly.

She needed this stick.

Elizabeth gripped the branch firmly, one hand next to where she’d already created a bend, and the other halfway down to the tapering, bare end.

She started twisting the branch around and around, though her ungloved hands squealed in pain at the rough grip on the bark.

Each time around more of the fiber holding the wood to the tree stretched and then snapped, and then the branch twisted around and around easily, with just a strand holding the tree together, and patiently, knowing that in such tasks a hurry always made things worse, Elizabeth twisted and twisted till it came free.

Elizabeth’s hands were now scraped, though not bleeding, and they smelled of the tree’s juices and sap.

The stick also was not a steady cane, it bent and shivered under her weight, but it was better than nothing. Elizabeth carefully hobbled towards the fashionable houses of the British monarchs, trying to not put too much weight either on her injured foot or on her makeshift cane.

One step after another. One after another.

When she reached the streets between the houses, she gratefully used her other arm to support herself on the gates and building walls as she stumbled forward.

She faced a lengthy walk, a full three miles, straight across the city.

Elizabeth’s frozen hobbling pace was slow, and exquisitely painful.

At one time the sky burst into a full rain, soaking her till her underclothes clung around her, entirely immodestly.

She really, really wished she’d chosen to run from the Lachglass House in the opposite direction, towards her uncle instead of away from him.

The freezing wind blew through her. She was colder by far than she had ever been before. Step after step.

When she went through the slums around Convent Gardens, the men there sneered at her, and one grabbed her arm, before he saw the bruises on her face and decided to go elsewhere.

Perhaps it was something in her eyes. She had been prepared to strike him with her head or to twist her body to hit him with her elbow that had also purpled with bruises.

It would be a silly irony if she killed an earl to protect her virtue, and then was raped by a beggar or a common ruffian.

But the prospect did not scare her. She was always told to be frightened of this part of the city, and to never, ever wander there, ideally not even with footmen to protect her.

Despite her hobbling weakness, she had killed one more man than most of the unwashed ruffians who ganged in this poor area.

As she walked Elizabeth used the walls or fences that she passed for additional support beyond that provided by her impromptu staff.

It took three hours for her to hobble the three miles.

She knew that after it had taken so much time her hope that it would be safe for her to ask her relatives for help before running again was no longer sound.

Whatever authorities would be sent out to apprehend her could have easily been already dispatched.

She refused to think about that, and by now Elizabeth was so cold and so sore that she began not to have a care if they hung her in the morning, so long as they gave her a hot drink and let her sleep in front of a nice fire tonight.

Finally.

At last, as it was becoming dark, Elizabeth shiveringly reached Leadenhall market, where beneath sodden tents a few remaining desultory butchers and greengrocers hawked their wares to the last late evening shoppers, mostly the poorer sort, clerks or workmen for the banks and merchants who clustered in this area.

The wealthier sort sent their servants early in the morning to get the freshest of the foods and meats from the markets.

Her aunt and uncle still did so, as despite the reversals in fortune they had faced since the collapse of prices following the victory at Waterloo, they could easily afford two or three servants, and they still owned outright the house in which they lived.

Across the street from her, safety.

The three story house the Gardiners lived in sat on the opposite side of the street from the market. The attic and half the rooms were now rented out to lodgers, one of them Mr. Gardiner’s clerk, and all of them employed in business here in the city.

A cheery light burned from the windows, and from half behind a banked pile of coals that a street vendor roasted chestnuts on, Elizabeth watched.

Something stiff and sore in her kept her from crying out in greeting, as her uncle strode up the street, his beaver top hat keeping his head and ears warm.

The door opened, he smiled at someone within, and the door quickly closed.

Elizabeth closed her eyes and breathed deeply several times.

Safe and home.

The pursuit could not yet have arrived at the Gardiners, as Mr. Gardiner would have been called from his warehouses to see to the matter if it had, rather than walking home calmly at the end of the business day.

And there would have been something less domestic in how he was greeted if the house was on fire with the news that she’d murdered an earl.

Elizabeth put a hand on a cold lamp post. The weather was freezing, and getting colder by the minute as evening fell. Time to be warm at last.

And then, just as Elizabeth was about to start across the street, a hackney cab, driven at the unsafe, hurtling pace that all cab drivers used, pulled up in front of the Gardiners’ house.

Two men stepped out.

One a uniformed constable from the parish association funded to protect the rich district that Lachglass lived in. The other’s face was wrapped up in bandages, Elizabeth could easily recognize him from his size and posture as Mr. Blight, the earl’s man of business.

They walked up to the door and pounded for entry.

*****

Elizabeth hurried away, back the direction she had come. And then she went south, to the waterfront of the Thames.

She reached the waterfront near the flat top of the old London Bridge.

Old people still talked about how the bridge used to be packed four stories tall with houses.

Boats with lamps swinging side to side floated up and down the river, barely visible in the dim foggy evening.

In the distance the last reddish hints of sunlight faded by the second.

The eternal bustle of commerce, barges, stevedores, cats, dogs, and all manner of people and creatures continued doing their business along the dockside at night.

There was a barrel with a fire burning in it for warmth that dockworkers taking a break and chewing tobacco gathered around. Elizabeth cautiously stood next to them, warming her hands.

“Eh, lady! Watcha doin out so late in that dress with no coat? Sick you’ll be.”

“Apologies.” Elizabeth shivered and flinched away from the barrel and the workmen. The man looked after her with a head-shaking frown as she fled along the riverfront away from him.

Cold wind blew off the river, freezing Elizabeth’s face.

She was alone, helpless.

There was nowhere she could go in London. No one she could turn to. Anyone who she stood upon close enough terms with that they would give her shelter without any money, was someone whose connection to her would be easily discovered by the investigators.

And even if a friend hid her, their servants would talk, and turn her in for a reward. There would certainly be a great reward. She had, after all, killed an earl.

She would freeze to death, in the wet and cold.

Was there anyone she could trust to help her at this time?

The name of one gentleman crossed her mind.

He had been named as the inhabitant of a particular house on a square a few blocks from Lachglass’s house.

She had been told that this man was present in the town after the spectacular society marriage of his sister a few weeks ago by a gossiping footman while Elizabeth walked her ward around the streets.

It was a slender hope.

But this man whose name occurred to her had once, in a more fortunate time for her, many years before, told Elizabeth with dark passionate eyes that he ardently admired and loved her. And then she refused his suit out of misplaced spite and misapprehensions.

Wind blew through Elizabeth’s dress, and a proper soaking rain now entertained her.

Elizabeth started back towards where she had started, going towards the scene of her crime once more.

The night was full of cold sleety rains, caught halfway between hail and plain rain, with little flutters of snowflakes melting in the lamplight.

One step after another. That was all it would take. One step after another.

Elizabeth wanted to lie down and cry, and let darkness take her. Her stomach hurt with hunger, and her foot ached and twinged with every step.

But Elizabeth kept walking.