Sunset ^beta

It had been almost two weeks since Newgate Prison had been emptied by Nell Jackson, and Sofia Wilmot had spent much of the morning rereading the news-sheets covering the story, searching for any hints of her own presence in those retellings of the chaos that took place. She had lost track of time doing so, even, and it was only with effort – and an uncharacteristically poor work ethic, evidently – that she had finally sat down at her father’s office desk to take care of some of the paperwork that had been left for her by the Earl of Poynton.

The letter she was working on now was destined for Scotland, like many others which passed through her hands.

Sofia leant forward to blow gently upon the end of a paragraph to make the ink dry faster. Although she wished she could finalise it with a signature and send it off immediately, it was not hers to sign.

Most of the letters she spent writing now weren’t for her to sign, in fact; most were written on Poynton’s behalf, and either required a lack of signature due to secrecy or else were ones which he had instructed of her to leave empty room at the bottom, so he could legitimise them later with his own name – but never hers.

One day, early on in her apprenticeship-of-sorts, her enthusiasm had made her finish what he had asked her to do far too early; so, out of boredom, she had tried to see how well she could mimic his signature. When she had realised how disrespectful she was being to a man who was offering her so much, she had hurriedly thrown her attempts at forgery into the fireplace, getting rid of the evidence and trying to alleviate her own guilt. Even if her act of betrayal was done only absentmindedly and without malice, she still felt ashamed.

Sofia was loyal, and thus far, Poynton had been reliable and generous. He did not need to try to help her with Nell Jackson, and had even suffered physical harm from his attempts, so it was only natural that she allowed him to stay at Broadwater Hall while he recovered. It had been the correct choice, no matter Thomas’s opinions.

Besides, it was not as if she was doing it out of loyalty alone, nor out of charity. She was being paid, after all, and not with something so base and meaningless as money. What use would she ever have for money? What had money ever done for her? No amount of gold could allow someone without talent and knowledge to conjure flame from thin air, yet she was becoming better at it every day.

She still wondered how Jackson had gained her abilities – and what she had traded for it. Her family were hardly peasants, and she was the wife of a captain in the army, but – again – magic and the dark arts weren’t something to be purchased with coin.

Poynton had noticed Sofia’s talents immediately. He had told her she recovered more easily from the ritual than he ever could have, even when he was closer to her age; that she had an affinity for sorcery which he had not seen before. When she had first asked him what it had been which made him believe her to be extraordinarily inclined towards magic, he had given her that slow smile of his – the one that made her feel understood, not at all belittled; he had said that there was no way to be certain, and while it could be her curiosity or dedication, he believed her simply to possess an intangible quality which even he lacked.

Sofia smiled at the memory, shutting her eyes and allowing warm pride in herself to wash over her. When she opened them again and saw her unfinished work, she sat up a little straighter and began to reread the letter which she had finished, to make certain there were no errors.

On its own, the letter was innocuous. However, if paired with some of the other letters locked within a cabinet in her father’s office – her office – it had the potential to be lethal. That was why she kept only some of the letters and documents in the office; others were in her room, several were in the guest room Poynton had been staying in.

The Earl had recently left for London, as he needed to make appearances in court, attend meetings, and otherwise compensate for time lost during his recovery.

She wished she could go with Poynton, so she could meet some of the men he had told of her involvement. Apparently they had been receptive to the news that he had entrusted such power to a woman, and in time she would be allowed to meet them. Although she wished he could at least tell her their names, he did not think it wise to do so until it was time for them to meet.

If it wasn’t Poynton, she wouldn’t trust such claims without any evidence. But Poynton was different – and so unlike every other man she had known. He did not care that she was a woman, nor did he ever bring it up except for when he would apologetically give reasons as to why she could not do something herself. Sofia only wished her own father had treated her ambition with as much care and respect as he did.

He had also promised to bring Thomas home. She worried about the no-doubt-embarrassing state he would find her brother in, but trusted him to return him safely to Broadwater Hall.

Thomas just needed to trust Poynton again, rather than continuing to blame him for his own actions.

Sofia trusted Poynton – and she was not one to trust men easily, especially those in power. She found most to be undeserving of their status, but he had proven himself intelligent and dedicated to his visions for the nation. And even if in moments, she had wondered if she had become the man’s secretary, she knew she was only being impatient, and that not all her time could be dedicated to mastering her magical abilities – even if she wished it could, because nothing else could compare to the joy she felt when she was doing what should have been impossible.

The spell she had cast upon Newgate using Nell Jackson’s comb had distracted her for days now. It had been dizzying, exhilarating – and ended far too soon, and with failure. Almost worse was that fact that it had destroyed the frizzed red hairs, which had been her only tangible piece of the woman for weeks. She had come so close, yet –

Sofia stopped her thoughts there. She knew she had already spent too much time thinking about the woman for one day.

It took her a couple minutes to finish reading all that she had written, and when she found no errors, she stood up and went to the locked cabinet where she kept anything of such a sensitive nature. She found the little silver key for the cabinet tucked discreetly within a book on a nearby shelf; it was only kept there while she was in the office, and she’d take it with her to her room when she went to bed.

The shelves within the cabinet were rather full, as she could not send any of the letters she had finished until Poynton gave her permission; she did her best to add the newest additions to the stack in such a way so that they would not slide or risk a spill if she opened the door too hastily. Carefully, she pressed the door shut and twisted the key to lock it once more.

But then she found herself standing there in front of the cabinet, temptation rising in her as she eyed one of the its drawers. There weren’t only letters and documents locked within that particular cabinet; there were other things in it which Sofia liked to keep close, but hidden.

Sofia looked back over her shoulder at the closed door of the office. Nobody had ever dared to enter without waiting for her to give permission, but she still felt the need to be stealthy as she slid the key into the lock on the drawer and gave it a turn.

The cabinet drawer was pulled open and – inch by slow inch – a drawing of Nell Jackson’s face was revealed to her. It was a wanted portrait, one of three which she kept within the drawer. Sofia had more than three pictures of Jackson, of course, but only three were unique enough to keep in the office; all the others were almost identical to one another, and thus weren’t interesting enough to her to keep them so easily-accessible. There were hundreds of portraits of Jackson now all across England and she couldn’t possibly keep every one she had been brought.

She returned to her desk with the portraits. She couldn’t help but look again to the door, to make sure it was closed, before setting them down upon the desk in front of her. She spread them out before her so that they did not overlap.

There was not a single one in particular that caught her eye, but rather key features in each of them which drew her attention – the eyes in one, the scowl in another...

The devilish horns which poked through Jackson’s tricorn hat in the leftmost portrait were quite attention-grabbing. Her ears had been grotesquely elongated, ending in sharp points. Her expression in it was deeply unhappy and dissociable. She looked more monster than woman, and certainly more like a man, in Sofia’s eyes.

She laughed softly as she gazed down at Devil Nell. Although it was so inaccurate as to be rendered useless for identification purposes, she expected it was frightening to most people, and thus would hold their interests by reminding them of the woman’s dangerousness – something which had become necessary due to the goodwill she had earned with her senseless release of prisoners at Newgate. Still, it was amusing to see such drastic steps taken to make her seem frightening.

Sofia’s little smile turned into a look of disgust, however, when she turned her eyes upon the centre portrait – one so unlike any other depiction of Nell Jackson. It was the only one that had cost money; it had made its creator a handsome profit, she had been told, because the public had a certain fascination with criminals, especially women. Had Jackson been just another Isambard Tulley, even with forty pounds of the Blancheford family’s funds on offer, there would be little fanfare after such a short time in the public eye. Instead, not only was she a woman, but one who fought as if possessed by a demon – and such power was virtually unheard of in any sex.

The person depicted in the portrait before Sofia was Nell Jackson in name only.

The drawn woman had a gentle-looking face with delicate features like a rounded chin and a dainty bridge to her nose; her neck looked soft and smooth and feeble. The artist – though Sofia would be loath to call him such – had taken even her freckles from her. Men’s clothing and curly hair were not enough to justify the idea that it was the famed highwaywoman, especially when almost everything else that made her her had been stripped away.

Most objectionable of all was the reason this portrait was the only one to not centre her face: so that the artist could more prominently display her chest. The collar of her shirt was low – though not so low that it would have been obscene, were it not for the liberties he had taken with female anatomy.

For laughable reasons which Sofia understood but did not like, the cleft between Jackson’s breasts had been raised so unnaturally high that it seemed to begin far above the clavicle, nearly onto the neck itself. Had there not been such an attention to shading, she would have thought it was an error – a random swipe of a pen which had gone unnoticed. It would be comically wrong even if Jackson wore stays beneath her men’s clothing – which she did not, as far as Sofia’s memory of the woman’s chest served.

It was a portrait made to feed desire, not enable the capture of the criminal. For a small price, men could pay to leer at the infamous woman; they could take it home, stare at the pretty face whenever they pleased, and imagine having Nell Jackson doing whatever they liked. It hurt Sofia’s heart to think that if there had been nude versions available, the demand for them would be too great for the tawdry amateur printers to keep abreast with.

The only praise Sofia could give to the piece was that her eyes – surely through a stroke of luck, rather than talent – were the nearest to Jackson’s in all the portraits she had seen. The distance between them, the shade of the irises contrasting with the large black pupils, the shape of brows and the tilt at the edges – someone had finally gotten them correct. There was a vaguely-teasing look to those eyes, as if she was trying to goad the onlooker into something.

Sofia set down the crude portrait between the other two and leant back in her chair – although she did not remember when she had picked it up for a closer look. Although she tried to move on to the next one, it still drew her eyes, as if it possessed a type of magnetism. Hastily, she flipped it over so she would no longer be tempted by it.

Her hand went to hover over the final portrait of Nell Jackson – which was, in fact, one of the very first that had been circulated within news-sheets. She pulled it towards her and set it upon her lap, giving the door one more look before turning her attention to it.

This portrait was one which bore the most resemblance to Jackson by far – a testament to how quickly her story and image had become distorted in those weeks since she had fled Tottenham.

The Nell Jackson before her was the only one that even aspired to convey the medley of feminine and masculine which Sofia associated with her. It was not flattering, as she looked harsher and far crueller than Sofia knew her to be; but the proportions were the closest of any of the portraits that she had set eyes upon. If she could keep only one of the dozen or more portraits she had collected, it would be that one.

She allowed her eyes to unfocus, so that the vivid lines melted away and left behind only an impression; and for a second, Sofia clearly had Nell Jackson’s face inside her mind.

It was the face she had seen that day her father was killed. A face full of rising panic on a woman who had mistakenly believed that the truth mattered more to Sofia than family. Whether Jackson knew it or not, it had been cruel of her to ask her to give up her brother. How could someone with siblings – younger siblings – believe it possible to make any choice but to save them, no matter the cost? The world did not need another disloyal fool.

There was a knock at the door and Sofia rushed to get the woman’s face out of her lap. Once all portraits were face-down on the desk, she raised her voice to grant the person permission to enter.

‘Miss Sofia,’ the servant Mrs Belgrave greeted her, stopping to give a respectful curtsy. ‘There are a group of men here. They say they have Nell Jackson.’

‘Jarrold’s men?’ Sofia asked, standing up immediately.

‘I don’t believe so, miss.’

‘Not Jarrold? But... they have her?’ she asked, unable to hide her doubt. ‘Here?’

‘So they say. I did see them dragging someone –’

Sofia was already halfway across the room when she interrupted: ‘Where are they?’

‘In the cellar, miss.’

She couldn’t help but smile. It was the last place she had seen Jackson; the location chosen by Poynton for their ritual. It seemed fitting to imprison Jackson within a room which had been – for a short time – connected by magic to Newgate.

‘Tell the household to be at the ready, should she escape.’

‘Yes, miss.’ The woman gave Sofia a nervous, meaningful look. ‘We all know what she’s capable of.’

Sofia gathered up her petticoats so she could walk faster, descending through the storeys of the house in a hurry to reach the cellar. The door was opened for her by a servant who had been waiting beside it, and she gave her thanks in the form of a nod.

The first person she saw inside the cellar was one of the men – tall, strong, and still no doubt incapable of putting up a fight against Jackson on his own. She found it suspicious that he hadn’t so much as a single bruise upon his cheek.

‘Let me see her.’

The group of men backed away to afford her more room; they moved off to the side, rather than getting behind the woman, so they could still see her face.

There she was: gagged, bound at her bruised wrists, and waiting for her upon her knees. Her red coat and hair seemed to stand out in the dim lighting.

It seemed too good to be true, even before Sofia began to notice the details which did not align with her memory of Jackson – like the sleekness of her hair, the smallness of her.

The strip of cloth tightly tied over her mouth was peeled away, revealing red marks where it had dug into her cheeks. The woman pushed the bundle of fabric that had been stuffed inside her mouth out with her tongue and began to cough.

‘This is her. We brought you Nell Jackson,’ said one of the men, nodding to the woman in front of Sofia.

The woman finally looked up and there was a sparkle to her eyes; a little thrill where dread – or at least defiance – should have been. Annoyingly, those eyes were looking in the direction of the men, rather than up at the woman standing in front of her.

‘This is not Nell Jackson.’

Sofia heard the men to her side shifting nervously, along with a whispered swear.

‘My Lady, how can you be certain? She admitted to being Nell Jackson.’

‘Then, she is a liar.’

She reached out and put her hand upon the top of the woman’s head, forcibly tilting it so that she had no choice but to look up at her. It gave her a better view of her face, but she hated what she saw, because everything about it was wrong. Her nose was upturned, her eyes – though light brown – were shaped differently than Jackson’s were, and of a different shade. She even had too many freckles.

She was a pretty girl, yet Sofia couldn’t help but look at her as if she was hideous.

It was only the colour of her hair and the soldier’s coat she wore that matched the description of Nell Jackson, and the smooth hair and clean coat in no way suggested the lifestyle of a highwaywoman.

‘What are you playing at?’ Sofia asked as she turned to the men. ‘How could you think that this –’ She gestured to the girl as if she was a pile of rats. ‘– is Nell Jackson?’

‘Ma’am –’

‘Easy now –’

‘It was his idea!’

‘We can explain!’

When four of the men all began to talk at once, Sofia shut her eyes and rolled them hard.

‘My Lady,’ said the man she assumed to be the leader, loudly cutting off the others. ‘We have no intention of deceiving you – but are you certain –’

‘I am Nelly Jackson!’ said a voice that was far too young and girlish for her words to be true.

‘How did they catch you, then?’ Sofia asked her dully. Though she did not bother to turn to the men to look more closely at their faces, she felt confident enough to say, ‘You are the only one with bruises, as far as I can see.’

‘They – well – they just did.’

Sofia smiled bitterly.

‘You’re a terrible liar, and they are fools to have believed you. Not only that, but were you Jackson, you would never admit to being such.’

The girl bit her lip, visibly chagrined.

‘What is your name?’ Sofia asked, swiftly and formally. ‘Your real name. You’ll gain nothing from continuing to pretend to be someone you’re not. Not that you had anything to gain from it in the first place.’

‘I... Jane.’

Such a plain name suited her, Sofia thought.

She had noticed that the girl had a tendency to look over at the men whenever she spoke. It was as if she considered them to be her true audience, or like she cared more about their reactions than she did Sofia’s.

‘Look at me, not them,’ Sofia said, gripping the young woman’s chin, forcing her to look up at her. She refused to stoop to get any closer to her, and because the woman was still on her knees, it meant she had to angle her head rather far upwards.

The girl’s eyes once again darted in the direction of the men in the room. Perhaps she wanted them to save her.

‘Look – at – me.’

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the men moving towards them, no doubt thinking he could somehow salvage the situation.

‘Don’t interrupt,’ Sofia snapped, making the man come no nearer. ‘You’ve already embarrassed yourselves enough.’

‘Who are you?’ Jane’s voice sounded slightly muffled, but Sofia didn’t soften her grip, even when she hastily added, ‘Ma’am.’

‘Lady Sofia Wilmot,’ said one of the men. ‘The person offering forty pounds for your – Jackson’s – arrest.’

Now the woman looked at her with genuine interest.

‘Oh! My Lady, I am Nelly Jackson!’

‘Do you,’ Sofia asked very slowly, ‘think me stupid?’

‘No! No, absolutely not!’ she stammered. ‘But... you are wrong.’

‘You just said your name was Jane. You just admitted to not being her.’

‘Oh.’

She tried to look down at the floor, but Sofia prevented it.

‘Well, that was a lie. I really am her! Honest!’

‘How old are you? Fifteen? Sixteen?’

The girl’s mouth opened and shut, then turned into a grimace when Sofia’s grip tightened.

‘You are an idiot,’ Sofia flatly told her, to the audible amusement of the men.

The girl almost-bashfully shrugged, as if somehow pleased by the men’s laughter, while Sofia only seethed.

‘But I’m an idiot worth a lot.’

‘You’re worth nothing,’ Sofia growled, making the girl’s defiant smile slip away. ‘Did you really believe that you could pass as Nell Jackson? What, because you have dressed like her?’ The girl made a little pained noise when Sofia tightened her grip. ‘A red-haired dog wearing her hat would be more convincing.’

Jane laughed nervously along with the men, as if unsure of whether she was allowed to find it funny or not. There were beads of sweat forming on her brow.

‘Now, tell me what you know about Nell Jackson,’ Sofia instructed, keeping her voice at a conversational volume. ‘And don’t lie to me. I despise liars.’

‘I know nothing about her, I just –’

‘You knew enough about her to impersonate her.’

The woman tried to tilt her head at her in confusion, but Sofia didn’t allow it.

‘Anyone could. She’s in every news-sheet from here to – uh, y’know – north.’

‘What is it that you seek to gain by impersonating her? Clearly, you could use a lesson in geography, but I doubt that you’d take to any education well.’

Sofia turned the woman’s face to the side so she could observe her reddening cheek.

‘I wanted the forty pounds.’

‘Of course you did, and I’m sure you’ll have so much use for it when you’re hanged.’

‘Wait!’

The girl stared up at her with wide, pleading, wrongly-shaped eyes. Sofia dug her nails into the softer flesh just below her chin, making her panicked expression even worse. She could tell that the girl was struggling against her bindings.

‘Don’t kill me.’

Sofia leant in close and whispered, ‘Consider yourself to be lucky that you are not Nell Jackson. Pretending to be someone whom all of England wants dead shows an incredible lack of intellect.’

‘I suppose...’ she said, flinching from the proximity.

‘I don’t know why you believed that you could eat your cake and have it, too.’

‘Huh?’

‘It’s an expression.’

‘Oh.’

‘You are a stupid girl,’ Sofia told her as she straightened up. She stepped closer to her so she could still hold her by the chin. ‘Did you know that?’

The laughter that came from the men only served to make Sofia more irate. She didn’t want their approval; she wasn’t trying to entertain them.

‘You do understand that if you had been brought to someone other than me, they would punish you no matter your innocence? Nobody would care.’

‘Please,’ was all the girl said, averting her eyes.

Sofia lowered her voice to a menacing whisper: ‘Parading around in men’s clothes, pretending to be a criminal. You could be strung up for your brazen foolishness, as a warning to all others who get between us and Jackson’s rightful capture.’

‘You’re hurting me!’

Sofia couldn’t help but laugh when she realised that the girl had started to cry.

‘Am I?’ She slid her hand past the girl’s chin, loosely putting her hand around the front of her neck; she was careful to apply no pressure to it, however. ‘Well, imagine a noose here instead next time you want to play stupid, dangerous games.’

She felt the pulse quicken even more at her warning, but there was no satisfaction in having her hand around the throat of anyone besides the real Nell Jackson.

The girl’s watering eyes spilt over onto her cheeks and Sofia watched the trailing tears distort her freckles.

In that moment, she felt that she might have killed the girl if doing so would get her any closer to Jackson.

It was that conscious thought which made her let go, stepping back hastily but continuing to glare down at her. It was easier to hear the girl’s panicked whimpers now that she was not touching her, and they seemed unnaturally loud within the cold, dark room.

‘What do you want us to do with her, Lady Wilmot?’ asked one of the men.

‘With this girl?’ she distractedly asked.

The man gave her a questioning look and a nod.

Sofia looked once more at her as she said, ‘Release her, of course.’

‘You’re certain?’

‘She is not Nell Jackson,’ Sofia said in an obvious tone.

‘You are certain?’ he pressed, as if she hadn’t just admitted such. He must have seen the forty pounds slipping away and felt it better to put an innocent girl to death than to lose his chance at getting a piece of the reward.

‘I’m not her!’ cried the imposter, her girlish voice so different from Jackson’s mature one.

‘She has done nothing wrong, except participate in the same foolishness as every other woman dressing in men’s clothes and emulating that murderer.’

In her mind, she saw her father falling backwards. She saw Thomas – no – she saw Jackson’s pistol firing its last bullet. Then she forcibly turned her mind away, lest the clarity of Jackson shooting her father dissolve and other thoughts creep in.

Sofia herself stepped around the girl to remove the binding around her wrists.

‘Take her away. Bring her home, wherever that is. Don’t just leave her on the side of a road or anywhere else where she might be preyed upon. Do her no further harm,’ Sofia instructed the men, calmly watching the girl cry into her hands. ‘Do you understand?’

The men did not say anything until she fixed them with a look, at which point they all nodded and murmured their promises.

‘Jane.’

The girl looked up at Sofia, squinting as if she was bright sunlight in her eyes.

‘Tell any of the other foolish girls you know who are doing this to stop, lest they be punished far more severely than you were.’

Her quick journey back up to the office was a blur of angry tears – although anyone witnessing her walking past them likely would not realise her emotional turmoil. After all, she had a lifetime of experience in holding back feelings.

‘What a stupid child,’ she whispered, leaning back against the door after closing it.

Sofia lifted the hand which she had threatened her with – inflicted pain upon her with – and felt ill just from looking at it. She was aware that she had been crueller than necessary, but it had felt good to force her to look up at her, and she had enjoyed the fear in the girl’s eyes.

‘Damn it.’

It took far too many blinks for her tears to subside and for the office to come back into focus. For a moment, she couldn’t remember what she had been doing before she had been interrupted. As she walked towards the desk, it all started to come back to her, and she seized the opportunity to distract herself from what had happened.

From the desk, she snatched up the drawing in the centre – the one she had hidden from herself even before she had been interrupted; the one Sofia hated almost as much as Nell Jackson herself.

It was disgusting to her for any woman to be transformed into this simple, flat object of men’s lust. If Sofia could have prevented it from ever having been made, she would have – even if Jackson was her enemy.

Perhaps some of her indignation over its existence was a remnant of the minor infatuation Sofia once had when she was an adolescent. Tales of the audacious girl down in the village had always left her curious. She had sneaked down to the Talbot for her sixteenth birthday, and that was the first time she had come face-to-face with her. And although Jackson was rather rude and drunk, and did not know who she was, Sofia still had carried a small fondness for her familiar name for years to come. Had Jackson invited her to be her friend in any way, she wouldn’t have hesitated.

But that was practically another life. They were both women now. They were both widows. Nell Jackson was the only woman who Sofia had ever known to purposely wear men’s clothes for reasons other than to disguise herself; and the way she wore them...

It had felt wrong to see her in a dress in Slough. It was like walking in on her when she was not fully-dressed. When she had – during the course of the fight – torn away her petticoats and revealed the breeches underneath, Sofia had felt something resonate within her, although she did not feel any strong need to wear men’s clothes. Sofia’s heart’s pace had quickened at the sight, far more stirred by the woman’s boldness than by the action taking place in front of her.

And this artist had taken her clothes and how she wore them – taken her name and eyes and well-earned mixed reputation – and turned her into a commodity to be sold to men, and Nell Jackson, no matter her unnatural strength and the cunning she demonstrated by successfully evading capture for so long, could do nothing to stop them.

Sofia respected the woman far too much to let such a thing continue to exist in the world.

She flicked the paper into the air, where it then hovered in front of her, the breasts at level with her mouth. As she glared at them, the bottom edge of the portrait began to flicker; embers crept along the paper unnaturally slowly, as if savouring the meal.

Sofia lifted her gaze to Nell’s face as the flames crawled up the sides of the paper and then across the top edge, where they met to form a fiery frame around the vile image, then the empty space around Nell was burnt away. She watched as the fire ate away at the woman depicted, from her abdomen upwards. Sofia’s smile was more of a grimace by the time the poorly-drawn breasts were removed from existence. The portrait’s rounded lips were parted by a growing hole in the paper, then the fire’s touch gave the black-and-white curly hair its characteristic red tinge before devouring it, too.

Before it was over, Sofia stepped so close that the heat of the magic stung her face, just so she could watch those eyes – the only accurate part of it – light up, as if finally filled with a comparable hatred and passion to that which she held for Nell.

Then she was gone. No matter how carefully she had tried to manage the magic to make it last as long as she could, it was still over far too soon.

Sofia looked down at the ashes she had created, which were piled neatly just beyond the edge of her skirt.

‘You’re welcome.’