Sunset ^beta

Chapter Text

A warm blanket. An absence of wind. Only the faintest notes of birdsong.

Sofia was indoors.

She had slept in her shift, nothing else. No stays were digging awkwardly into her torso; no skirts were there to trip her when she would eventually get up.

There was a dull ache that ran all throughout her body; it had been there for almost two months, but it had been easier to ignore when she did not have the comfort of a bed with which to contrast it.

In spite of her awareness of where she was not – a forest, a barn, a shed, an overturned rowboat, or any of the other pitiful shelters they had used, when available – she struggled to remember where she was and how she got there.

It took a shameful amount of time for her to even will herself to open her eyes. There was a small part of her that couldn’t help but worry that if she did, she would see the green and gold floral-patterned canopy that hung above the bed she shared with her husband.

She opened her eyes and saw only a plain wooden ceiling above her. Better yet, the bed she had slept in was not built for a second person. It was very narrow, the mattress was nowhere near as soft as any bed she had slept in before her exile, the sheets were rather coarse – but it was entirely hers.

The room itself, however, was not.

There was an unpleasant scraping sound coming from nearby. Just to be sure she wasn’t having yet another hideous nightmare, she lifted her head to look towards the source of the noise.

Nell Jackson was looking directly at her, and she had the handle of a spoon sticking out of her mouth. Her eyebrows raised as her gaze drifted up from the blankets covering Sofia to her eyes. Jackson turned away quickly when she was caught looking at her.

‘Mm-mmm-mm,’ came Jackson’s garbled greeting. Even when she swallowed and took the utensil from her mouth to gather up another spoonful of some thick liquid food, she didn’t bother translating what she had said.

Memories were trickling in slowly, but she could only work through them in reverse. Her bad dreams of her marriage – some of which inaccurately included Nell Jackson – she discarded swiftly as unworthy of further inspection. Charles Devereux’s eyes glittering with the fireplace’s sparks; Thomas’s unusual babbling; the bottle with L and M. The exiting of the shared room –

She drew the blankets up to her chin, trying to ignore the sounds of the other woman eating. The memories of the previous day continued to play out behind her eyelids, which still felt unbearably heavy.

Then she caught the scent of the food Jackson was eating and – despite her stomach being nowhere near as empty as it had been for over a month – she perked up.

‘I thought you said the man caring for my brother wasn’t providing us with food.’

This time, Jackson bothered to swallow before speaking.

‘No, I never said that.’ Her smug laugh annoyed Sofia. ‘No, what I said was that he didn’t have children for you to eat.’

Sofia rolled her eyes, sinking back into the pillow. Her lip and cheek ached as if to remind her again of her fight and the events which followed it the day before – as if to remind her not to let her guard down.

She did not want to get up, but she did not want to fall back asleep either and risk having more bad dreams of being married. In her time on the run, she had rarely even thought about that point in her life, and she could only blame herself now for the dreams; she should not have spent so much time brooding over such things before falling asleep. She tried to will herself to get out of bed, because she doubted Jackson would allow –

‘You can stay in bed for as long as you want.’

‘Oh.’

She was surprised, but sceptical.

‘Thank you...’

Sofia waited for the jab she knew Jackson would be unable to resist adding.

‘You’re easier to put up with when you’re asleep.’

‘Ah.’

Jackson scraped again at the bowl. It was hard to judge whether she was intentionally being loud or if she was simply not very self-aware. Sofia suspected both things were true.

‘Is Thomas awake?’

‘No, whatever he’s been given is keeping him asleep.’

Sofia lifted her head again to look at her. Her eyebrows drew together in concern.

‘But his condition is stable?’

Jackson shrugged. ‘So far as I know. Oh, and we’re calling him Robert. Charles came up with it.’

Sofia rolled her eyes. ‘And have I too been given a new name?’

Sofia watched Jackson lick her spoon clean. The woman’s eyes were narrowed thoughtfully – which made her worry that she was trying to come up with an alias for Sofia on the spot.

‘If you haven’t already told them a name, then let me choose –’

‘Margaret. There ya go. No, wait!’ She laughed and pointed at her with the spoon. ‘Maggie. That’s it. It’s perfect.’

Maggie was certainly not the name she would have chosen for herself. But it could have been worse, she thought, as she frowned at the ceiling.

‘Has Thomas slept this whole time?’

‘Do you mean Robert?’ Jackson pointedly asked. ‘Didn’t ask.’

Considering it was his health which made their two hunters agree to help them, she would have thought she would show marginally more interest in his well-being than was evidently the case.

‘Will I be allowed to see him?’

‘So long as you can keep quiet and not draw attention.’

‘My speciality,’ she muttered.

Despite Jackson’s invitation to stay in bed, Sofia finally sat up. The lopsided feeling of her head reminded her of how little progress she had made in taming her hair the night before. It was with reluctance that she took the comb from the bedside table and braced herself for another round of pain.

The comb snagged immediately when she put it to her hair.

‘Look...’

‘What?’ Sofia grunted in pain. She had no interest in whatever it was that Jackson was about to say, but she was trying not to antagonise her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jackson set the bowl down and get up from her own bed.

‘The way you’re going about it, that’ll take you all day.’

‘I have the time,’ Sofia pointed out, but she was ignored.

‘Come on, get up,’ Jackson said as she drew nearer. ‘Up, up, up. Off the bed.’

Sofia complied with a roll of her eyes.

‘Now... turn around,’ she instructed.

‘No,’ Sofia immediately said; she was not even thinking about why the instruction was given, she simply hated the idea of Jackson being behind her.

Jackson scoffed and plucked the comb from Sofia’s fingers. Even when Sofia realised that Jackson only meant to help, she still panicked and tried to move away.

‘I don’t want to be touched by you.’

‘Sure you don’t, but I’ll be needing my comb back eventually, so we might as well get it over with.’

Jackson blew out a breath and tried to find the ends of her hair.

‘Did you really not try to keep it in a plait? It’s common sense.’

Sofia had put her hair up to try to protect it, but only after she and Thomas had put a safe distance between them and the home Jackson had forced them to leave. The fight against Poynton, the horse-ride – it had made her hair hopelessly untidy, and tying it back did little, as she would later realise. It had not been her intention to allow it to go to rack and ruin, but she had no options.

‘My comb was –’ She stopped herself short of saying it was stolen. ‘I lost it. By the time I had a chance to stop and try to fix my hair, it was too late. Pins, too, are easy to lose when you’re running for –’

‘Oh?’ Jackson asked, sounding almost cheerful. ‘Running for what, exactly?’

Sofia refused to answer.

The truth was that the expensive comb had been taken with the rest of Sofia’s belongings – along with the documents, books, jewellery, and everything else she had rushed to take on her way out of her ancestral home, after Jackson had put her on the run.

‘I had nothing but my fingers to use for almost two months. As it turns out, they aren’t very good for the job.’

The sound Jackson made was almost sympathetic, but not quite.

Sofia had not realised that she had already started combing, because the expected level of pain never came. Carefully, she turned her head just enough to see Jackson’s hands, and that’s when she felt it – the painful pulling of hair behind her ear, but also near the top of her scalp and all the way at the back – so bad was the matting, it was connected seemingly everywhere.

‘Keep your head straight,’ Jackson instructed. ‘Pretend I’m not here.’

‘God, if only you – ah!’

‘Accident!’ she teased in singsong.

Sofia decided to ignore her presence. Her body still ached, but she did her best to keep rigid; she kept her back as straight as if she was still wearing her stays.

After several minutes, Jackson spoke.

‘Well, now we’re getting somewhere. By somewhere, I mean closer to the root, so there ain’t much I can do to keep it from hurting.’

‘Says the person who greeted me yesterday by punching me in the face.’

Jackson used her little finger to lightly poke at the bruise on Sofia’s cheek. It would have smarted even if she had gently stroked it. Sofia clenched her jaw, trying not to show pain.

‘Yeah, well, I could have done worse,’ she told Sofia. She prodded it again, and this time Sofia flinched.

‘Why didn’t you?’ she asked, batting her hand away. ‘I’ve seen you fight like a demon.’

It took her a while to respond. In the silence, Sofia could hear the comb’s teeth sliding through her hair.

Finally, Jackson said, ‘Since you wasn’t throwing fire or making the trees attack, I saw no reason for it.’

Sofia had not considered using the trees as weapons. As useful as it would have been, it was not something she could have done without a proper ritual, anyway.

‘Well,’ she began, turning her mind away from a tempting vision of having a whole forest of deadly trees at her command, ‘it sounds like you practised more restraint with me than with anyone else who has ever fought you, my brother included.’

‘He’s an arse,’ Jackson scoffed. Sofia didn’t disagree, but she waited to see if she’d elaborate. ‘And then you... Well, you are a lady.’

Sofia wasn’t sure she ever truly felt like one, but it was especially unconvincing when she looked as she did: knotted hair, a shift that barely fit her, and somehow still filthy enough to be mistaken for a pirate, despite her great efforts last night to clean herself with a rag. She was a disgrace in every sense of the word.

‘And you aren’t a lady?’ she asked with an unhappy laugh.

‘Me? No.’ She laughed. ‘I mean – I’m not a lady, y’know?’

‘No, I don’t know. I had assumed the Queen elevated you in some way as a reward.’

‘Right, but even if she did, I still – No, I’m –’ She huffed and seemed to think about how she would have liked to define it, but ultimately only said, ‘It don’t matter what I am. But you’re a lady, so...’

‘That didn’t stop you from punching or kicking me.’ Sofia turned her head – regretted it immediately – and gestured to her split lip. Jackson hastily leant back to put distance between their faces, but her hands were still tangled in Sofia’s hair.

‘Yeah,’ she said with a frown. ‘But I didn’t fling you around or nothing.’ Jackson studied Sofia’s face for a moment, as if with suspicion or else cunning. ‘I could have slung you all the way to Slough, if I’d wanted. Glad I didn’t?’

‘I’d have preferred that to being kneed in –’

‘Look.’

To both interrupt Sofia and to show off her progress, Jackson drew a lock of smooth black hair towards the front of Sofia’s face. When Sofia lifted a hand to reach for it, Jackson let her take it. Sofia ran it through her fingers, handling it like a once-loved doll she hadn’t seen in years.

Her annoyance melted away.

If it wasn’t Nell Jackson, she would have thanked her – repeatedly, even. But it was Jackson, and thus it felt wrong.

‘You’re welcome.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, after gathering herself.

‘Such manners.’

‘You’re lucky I even –’ Sofia hissed when her hair was yanked far too hard to be accidental.

The two of them went back and forth like that for half an hour. For all her complaints and unsubtle threats about cutting the rest of her hair off if Sofia didn’t watch her sarcasm, Jackson dutifully kept at the task Sofia herself had given up on the night before.

She had noticed, at one point, that Sofia was having trouble standing for such a great length, and pushed at her shoulder to force her to sit down on the bed. As Sofia pulled at the neck of her shift, uncomfortable with how the ill-fitting thing had slid at the woman’s touch, Jackson looked over at her from where she had been plucking hairs from the teeth of the comb.

‘Turn yourself so I can get to the back without having to get on the bed with you.’

Sofia obliged, spurred into action by the uncomfortable thought of Jackson kneeling behind her on the mattress.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured without thinking, like she would have with a maid.

She felt the bed sink as Jackson took a seat beside her. Sofia held herself around the middle, feeling unsafe with her back to the woman; one of her hands was up at the neck of her ill-fitting borrowed shift, holding it shut in case the other woman looked over her shoulder. She felt the woman’s bored sigh stir the half of her hair that was no longer knotted.

‘If it gets like this again, I won’t help you with it,’ she scolded her.

‘Don’t ever speak to me like I’m a child,’ Sofia said through gritted teeth.

Jackson responded only by turning Sofia’s head to reach the far side. Every so often, her hand would bump against her skin and Sofia would recoil from it like her touch burnt.

Eventually, Sofia reached up carefully – slowly, so she wouldn’t spook her – and touched her hair, checking her progress. When her hand got in the way, Jackson would swat it aside, and Sofia would wait a few seconds before going back to touching it again.

‘Right, so... Your brother,’ Jackson said after a few minutes of silence. Sofia could hear her cleaning the comb, then felt its teeth sink back into her hair.

‘What of him?’

‘If he recovers...’

Sofia swallowed.

‘I don’t see how you two are going to keep living for much longer, what with how bad you are at robbing people.’

Sofia sighed in relief, despite the grimness of the topic. After all, had Thomas not been injured, she could have kept them alive.

Except they were starving even before he was hurt. By her instruction, they had exercised perhaps too much caution; they had avoided roads that would be too busy, only ambushed small carriages with minimal guards. The gains had been meager – nowhere near enough for the survival of two people. Thomas had never had the chance to fully recover his strength after Poynton’s magic had nearly killed him.

No matter how much she had blamed it on Nell Jackson, Sofia had known a large part of it to be her own fault. And now, with that very woman’s hands tending her hair – albeit not with the most patience – she had a hard time laying all that anger upon her.

‘How did you do it alone?’ Sofia asked, careful to keep any admiration out of her tone. ‘How were you – without assistance – able to hold up carriages? Did you tell them who you were so they would comply out of fear?’

Sofia couldn’t tell if she was trying to think of a response, or if she had no intention of answering the question. 

‘Listen,’ Jackson said almost patiently, ‘I don’t want the two of yous causing more trouble. So, no more hurting people, or stealing from anyone, or scaring –’

‘The only alternative, then, is to die.’ Sofia turned her head, interrupting the combing, so she could look into Jackson’s eyes when she said, ‘Is that what you want?’

The two of them locked eyes for several seconds, each unwilling to be the one to look away first.

‘Fuck,’ Jackson sighed, turning back to her task. ‘You must have people that won’t care what you’ve done. Friends?’ She laughed at her own suggestion. ‘No, probably not those. But family, maybe.’

Sofia thought of their uncle in London, their cousin and his family in Northumberland.

‘Has Broadwater Hall been occupied?’ she asked.

‘You really think I’m letting you go back –’

‘I meant, has my cousin moved in yet? I’m not asking to go home – I know I don’t have one anymore.’ The unspoken ending of the sentence was, ‘Thanks to you.’

‘Ooh, I can’t imagine how that would feel!’ she said obnoxiously.

‘Would you answer my question?’ Sofia asked with forced politeness.

‘Yeah, there’s a new Lord Blancheford.’ Her flippant shrug insulted Sofia. ‘Your dad’s nephew, I suppose?’

Sofia pulled a face.

‘Not on good terms?’ she asked, not sounding very interested.

‘I barely know him.’

‘Well, if he’s part of your family, then he’s probably rotten, anyway.’

‘You make a lot of assumptions about people you don’t actually know.’

For whatever reason, Jackson was smiling when Sofia went to glare at her again.

‘To be fair, you’ve given me a lot to assume, what with your arse of a brother and your witchery-pokery –’

‘Witchery-pokery?’

‘Yeah?’

Sofia laughed, in spite of herself. She opened her mouth again with the intention of saying something else, but instead could only repeat, ‘Witchery-pokery?’

There was something so funny to Sofia about describing the rituals she had experienced in such a ridiculous way; and it was even funnier to her because Jackson didn’t seem like she was trying for comedy.

Ignoring Sofia’s laughter, Jackson continued, ‘After how you used Moggerhangar, it’s no surprise she’s let the papers have free rein with your image and what-for.’

‘I haven’t seen any drawings of myself in over a month.’

‘Well, you’re hideous,’ came her cheery reply. Out of the corner of her eye, Sofia saw Jackson’s lips twitch. Now she was trying to be funny. ‘They’ve made you look very witchy.’

‘Witchery-pokery?’ Sofia asked.

‘No, no – That’s not how you use those words.’

‘Oh, how foolish of me.’ Sofia’s dry tone was met with a tut.

‘Anyhow... The papers have been doing you a favour, without meaning to, by making the two of yous so bloody ugly.’

‘And the reward for our capture? What is it up to now? I assume it is the reason you have sought us out.’

When Jackson didn’t reply, Sofia turned her head as far as she could, in spite of the pain, to try to read her expression.

‘For all I know, you could have sent word to London. There could be –’ Sofia grunted. It was hard to tell if that pull was intentional or not. ‘– guardsmen on the way right now.’

‘Well, there ain’t,’ Jackson said simply.

‘Are you not, then, intending to turn us in?’ she asked disbelievingly.

Jackson gave her a sly sort of look, which Sofia did not like.

‘If you do,’ she continued, ‘you’ve wasted this man’s medicine. You know that Thomas and I will be hanged. Any trial we get will just be for the benefit of the newspapers.’

Jackson still refused to meet her eyes.

‘Don’t you want me dead, Nell Jackson?’ she asked quietly.

‘You know, not everyone’s interested in killing people, even if they hate ‘em, Sofia.’

She rolled her eyes.

‘As for the papers... I can’t say I’m pleased with the way they’ve already gone right back to spreading lies.’ Once again, Jackson passed a finished segment of hair for Sofia to observe. ‘Assuming, of course, that you haven’t been poisoning wells and sacrificing people’s goats.’

‘Not to my recollection, no, but it has been a long two months.’

Sofia caught a short exhale – a disguised laugh – and felt a flicker of pride. Growing up, she had rarely felt appreciated for her humour, by most people, so it pleased her now to have earned the amusement of a woman who hated her. 

‘Listen, if I wanted to kill you, why would I be putting myself through this right now?’ she asked, giving Sofia’s hair a little tug for emphasis. ‘Ah, what I’d give for a pair of scissors.’

It was an exhausting task, to be certain, and Sofia still wasn’t sure what had compelled the woman to do it; she found it difficult to imagine that it was solely out of a desire to have her comb back sooner. Her fingers moved gently enough that it seemed that she was taking care not to cause unnecessary damage or pain – besides when she was punishing Sofia for ‘taking the piss’, as she had put it.

It went on and on for so long that both had fallen silent, after a while. Sofia took to complying wordlessly at Jackson’s touch, turning her head or angling her shoulders to give her access just based upon where her hands landed.

Finally, only one small tangle remained; it was near to her temple, close to the root. She was surprised the woman didn’t just rip it out of her head, as even Sofia herself might have been tempted to; but instead, she worked with the little string of hairs, unwrapping them from one another; Sofia squinted the eye closest to it, which had begun watering from the pain.

She drew in a shaky breath of relief when Jackson’s hands pulled away. The woman got up from the bed, leaving Sofia’s back colder.

‘Look-it, I’ve a present for you.’

It was a large bundle of black hair, rolled loosely.

She reached up for it, but before she could take it, Jackson tried to fling it at her; Sofia caught it upon the tips of her fingers before it could hit her, to the woman’s visible disappointment. Seeing the size of it, she was relieved to have plenty of hair left on her head.

As if reading her mind, she said, ‘You’ve still got more hair on your head than half this town combined.’

‘Then, you’ve finished?’ Sofia was running her fingers through her freely-flowing locks to inspect it herself, rather than waiting for an answer.

‘Lord, I hope so. Anything still there, you’ll have to figure out yourself.’

She looked up at Nell Jackson, who stood with her hands on her hips, looking down at the ball of hair Sofia had cupped in her hands.

‘Here, give it to me. I’ll dispose of it outside. Maybe there’s a family of birds that’ll find good use for it.’

When she turned away, brushing her hands together to get rid of any hairs that clung, Sofia murmured one last thank-you.

Even after two nights together without Sofia trying to kill her in her sleep, it was still hard for Nell to get used to waking up and finding an enemy in the same room as her. It was even stranger, for some reason, to look over and see her sleeping peacefully, looking harmless as a lamb.

In reality, there was nothing harmless about Sofia, and judging by the open glares she gave her during all her waking hours, she didn’t want Nell to forget that.

But she was asleep, just then; all limp and devoid of her usual palpable malice. Nell curiously got a little closer to her, quietly as she could; although she didn’t know why she even wanted to risk waking her and drawing her ire – or why she even wanted to look at her more closely.

So, she convinced herself that it was because she couldn’t see her breathing.

What a nightmare it would be for Sofia to die – having to explain being found next to a dead body again. Rather than reaching out to shake her or check for a pulse, Nell drew near enough that she could see her face clearly, besides the parts that were covered by her now-smooth hair.

She wasn’t hideous or nothing. Her features were sort of sharp, and probably good for striking fear in any of her enemies – other than Nell, of course. Even there, with her mouth slightly open – enough to drool on her pillow, if her lips didn’t look dry just then – and with her expression making her look dotty, Sofia was pretty.

Remembering why she had come over, Nell looked from her face to her neck – but that wasn’t moving, either, so she reluctantly looked down further. After several seconds of staring at her chest, she was able to confirm that it was moving – she was breathing.

Nell herself breathed, too, in relief.

Then, to her horror, Sofia’s eyes opened; they locked onto Nell, wide with fear. She pulled the blanket up to hide her body, even though it wasn’t like Nell was even looking at her like that and –

‘It’s not like that – I’m not – Don’t be –’ Nell jabbered, before Sofia could even say a word.

The fear in her eyes faded into confusion, then outrage.

‘What in God’s name are you doing?’ Her voice was rough with sleep and shook with rage. ‘Why are you near me?’

‘You wasn’t breathing.’ Nell rolled her eyes, more at herself than Sofia. She shakily explained, ‘That is, I couldn’t tell if you was or not.’

‘What?’

‘You wasn’t breathing!’ Nell repeated more loudly, as if the woman was half-dumb upon waking. ‘That is to say, I couldn’t –’

‘Get away from me!’

‘I just thought that maybe you was dead, is all!’ Nell calmly said as she held her hands up and backed away.

Sofia muttered something under her breath – probably threatening, if Nell had to guess.

‘All right, not dead. Breathing. All them good things.’

How many nights more Nell would survive, she wasn’t certain.

There was something strange about seeing an unfamiliar woman in just her shift. It was usual enough at night – albeit still peculiar, because of who it was – but in the daylight, it felt at least slightly indecent, and both of them knew it.

The shift didn’t fit Sofia very well, either. The woman who it belonged to was very tall – taller than Roxy, maybe even taller than Moggerhangar – and wider about the shoulders than Sofia. Sometimes the neck of the dress would slide, showing too much of her shoulder, which made it even more uncomfortable for them both.

For once in her life, Nell wished she had packed a dress. She almost wanted to tell Sofia to put back on her ruined dress, for decency’s sake, but the thing did not look like it would survive a wash. Sofia’s own stained shift was in too poor condition to even rip up for rags.

And so, Nell just had to ignore her as best she could; she tried not to look at her, at least nowhere besides her face. Funny, really, that the face of the woman who had tried to kill her was easier to look at than her body.

Strangely enough, Charles did not seem all that bothered by her state of partial undress. The day following their arrival, sometime after Nell had spent an hour unravelling Sofia’s hair, they had gone down for her to see Thomas, and the sight of Sofia – so different-looking with her hair made tidy – had made Charles laugh; and his laughter in turn made Sofia look as if she wanted to slap him across the face; Nell had even stepped between them, in case she had decided to act upon her humiliated anger. After all, if anyone was going to slap Charles, Nell thought, it sure wasn’t going to be Sofia.

They were downstairs again. It was supper time, and the healer had been kind enough to feed them, in part because Nell was slipping him extra money. In truth, she had never returned much of the lolly which she had stolen, and she didn’t feel so bad about it because most of them had been toffs who had more than they knew what to do with – at least, that’s what she told herself, and she hadn’t seen any reason to re-examine that belief.

It was a little sickening to watch Sofia spoon-feed her brother, not in least because he never did get his shirt put back on. He wasn’t hairy, at least, but Nell still would have preferred not to look at him. Every so often, Sofia would miss his mouth and have to wipe the hot food off his skin while he winced.

‘Sorry, Thomas,’ Sofia murmured to him, dipping a rag into a bowl of cool water and cleaning a few drops of the mashed food off his collarbone.

‘Robert,’ Nell corrected her.

Through the back of her head, she could almost see Sofia’s eyes rolling.

‘Maggie,’ Thomas said with an unpleasant little snigger. At least one of them liked the name she had come up with for Sofia.

Sofia leant back and set his food aside. Yet again, she reached up to tug at the shoulder of the borrowed shift. Suddenly, Nell remembered the other night; the moment when she had grabbed Sofia’s sleeve to harass her. She began to fear that – had the room not been as dark as it was – she might have seen –

‘Nelly?’

‘What?’ she said to Charles, perhaps a little snappish. At his feigned look of offence, she tried again: ‘Sorry. What is it? And I ain’t Nelly.’

‘Oh, do you want a new name, too?’ he whispered, getting a little too close to her ear. ‘Let’s see...’

She rolled her eyes, leaning away from him.

‘Need something, Dev?

‘Do you know what I was thinking when I woke up this morning?’

She angled her face up so he could see her disinterested frown.

‘I ain’t swapping with ya. You wouldn’t last one night with her.’

‘No-no-no – Oh, please! Yes, I would! I’m very charming.’ He scoffed at Nell’s expression of doubt. ‘But what I was going to say was that you’ve never actually met any of my friends in London.’

‘What about those idiots you used to steal with?’

He waved away her question. ‘No, I mean my real friends. Bosom-friends.’

Charles’ hand-waving caught Sofia’s eye and she looked upon them with open suspicion.

‘Do speak up,’ she said, ‘so that we all might be able to hear whatever it is you’re planning.’

‘We ain’t planning anything.’ Then, lowering her voice so only Charles could hear, Nell said, ‘Look, right now I’ve got enough to worry about with them two.’

‘And afterwards? ’

‘They’ve got to be my focus right now, at least until I’ve decided what to do with them.’

He gave a dramatic sigh, which once again earned them both a glare from Sofia.

‘At least recognise the sacrifices I’ve had to make by sleeping here with him, uncomfortable and stuck hearing him mutter in his sleep. I could have sworn he hissed at me, once, like he was possessed.’

‘If he were, that’d explain some things.’

Charles laughed and sent Sofia his best smile; she looked at him like he was a puddle of mud.

It wasn’t like Nell was enjoying their company, or the responsibility of keeping them safe. But even once Thomas was back to full health, letting them go would be like releasing an animal in a place it had no hope of surviving in. They’d just go back to thieving, to hurting people and eventually she’d find out they killed someone, and then it would be her fault for letting them go.

No. As much as she hated them both, and as much as she wished she could wash her hands of them, she had to figure out a better plan.

Besides, she wanted Billy. Sometimes when she looked into Thomas’s cold eyes she fancied she could see her little friend trapped behind them; it wasn’t too hard to imagine that the awful man was only behaving himself because Billy Blind was doing everything in his power to hold him back.

She couldn’t – wouldn’t – abandon Billy.

To Sofia’s relief, Thomas’s fever had broken on the third day. Although his arm and abdomen still ached, he had impatiently thrown aside the blankets he’d been buried under, grumbling to Sofia about the stuffy little room. The medicine whose bottle she had struggled to read was called laudanum; it made him drunk, but too drowsy to be obnoxious.

On the fourth day, his pain had lessened enough that, with her assistance, he was able to get out of bed. She helped him reach a window to sit beside – one which faced only an open field, so he would not be seen by anyone. Jackson and Devereux occasionally went outdoors to speak privately, and once or twice they had – seemingly unknowingly – stood within their view.

‘I saw him steal a bottle,’ Thomas murmured. ‘Just last night. He said he doesn’t know what the drug does, he just thought the bottle was pretty.’

‘What a waste of a knighthood.’ Sofia leant forward so she could see Jackson better through the glass. ‘They’re a pair of thugs, nothing more.’

‘He claims his father was noble, but that he has inherited nearly nothing because of his father’s foolishness.’

She transferred her glare from Jackson to her brother. He had a faint smile on his face.

‘Maybe, before his father could squander it all, he should have –’

‘Stop.’

‘Then we’d have even more in common.’

She leant towards him and said in a whisper, ‘Just because the truth got out doesn’t mean I want to be reminded of it.’

His empty eyes appraised her; she knew he was trying to decide whether or not to push his luck.

‘You’d shoot our own father,’ she hissed, ‘but not the man the other day whose food we needed?’

‘Evidently, you aren’t as convincing as Poynton was.’

She stood up, looking down upon him.

‘You’ll find your own way back to your bed, I’m sure. You are, after all, looking so much better.’

Before leaving, she threw one last bitter look at the woman in the field, upon whom she wished she could still lay all the blame.

At the end of the fifth day, Sofia overheard something which necessitated a prompt change in plans.

Jackson, ever the restless one, had gone with Charles into the town – to do what exactly, Sofia did not know. This left Sofia and Thomas alone in the house with the married couple whose hospitality they were benefiting from – and, she suspected, they were paying well.

Thomas had spent most of the day out of bed. Though he stumbled and his speech was no better than when he was drunk, he had made his way outside to breathe in the fresh air he hadn’t had in days; he tired of it quickly, however, and told Sofia that he’d had plenty of it over the last two months.

Sofia too had grown weary of her surroundings. The house was small, and the space which they were allowed to roam within it was even smaller. At one point, Charles had tossed a book at her, telling her that her boredom was obvious and painful to watch. Then he had winked at her, and she almost wanted to throw the book back at him. She was growing tired of being handed objects via them being lobbed at her, even if that mostly came from Jackson.

After Thomas had become drowsy from his medicine, she left him for the evening. Quietly she took the stairs, trying to be considerate as to not disturb the married couple, whose bedroom was not far; it was easy for her to hear them when they were speaking, so she knew that they would be able to hear every creak of the stairs.

‘Are we even sure she’s Nell Jackson?’

She stopped, just a few steps from the top of the staircase.

‘How many women prance about in men’s clothes?’ came the voice of the woman whose shift she wore.

‘But why would Nell Jackson help the Blanchefords?’

‘She’s bewitched, I tell you.’

‘I’d be able to tell, surely,’ the husband said. ‘There would be some medical signs, I’m positive.’

‘Magic has nothing to do with medicine!’

For a moment, silence fell. Then, the man said, ‘Do you really want to do this? I’ve spent almost a week tending to that man – all for him to be hanged?’

‘It’s ninety pounds, Henry. Even just one of them – even just the girl –’ Sofia held her breath. ‘– with her thirty-five pounds would mean never worrying about money again.’

‘I know. I know. I...’

Sofia had heard enough, and would not risk being caught by them by staying there on the stairs; she silently went into her room and awaited Jackson’s return.

‘We need to leave.’

‘Fuck! What have I said about waiting by the door?’

‘Sorry,’ Sofia said, not trying to sound sincere.

‘Leave?’ Jackson asked suspiciously. ‘What did you do, Sofia?’

‘I did nothing – Nothing except overhear a very concerning conversation.’

Jackson gestured for her to continue.

‘They know who we are. They are making plans to hand us over – I do not know how soon.’ Sofia had taken to pacing. ‘Oh, and they believe I have bewitched you.’

‘As if you could bewitch me!’ Jackson said, looking Sofia up and down. ‘You ain’t –’

‘Are you ever going to tell me what your plans for us are?’ Sofia interrupted.

‘You mean, beyond having done you a massive favour by getting your useless brother help?’

Sofia’s jaw clenched. She thought about saying thank you but couldn’t bring herself to do it, even sarcastically.

‘And after he’s in good health?’

‘I have a plan,’ Jackson said so defensively that Sofia was sure it was a lie.

‘Will it lead to us two being hanged?’

Jackson leant against the wall, facing Sofia but not looking at her.

‘You don’t actually have a plan, do you?’

‘No, I do have one – did have one – but now I’m realising that it won’t work.’

‘You should have used the one I gave you months ago.’

‘Oh, the one you started ordering me to do after killing Poynton?’ she asked, finally looking up at Sofia.

‘It was a good plan. Nobody would have had to suffer, if you could have put aside vengeance for one moment.’

‘You’re something special, Sofia,’ Jackson said in a low, dangerous voice. ‘You come up with lies that easily all the time? Schemes and plots and shit?’

‘Yes,’ Sofia said emotionlessly. ‘I do, in fact.’

‘You sound proud.’

Sofia frowned up at Jackson. Her mind was like a book with infinite pages, and she flipped through it for all the things she could say to her: words that could hurt her, words that could anger her, words that could perhaps earn Sofia sympathy; small truths, small lies, bits of both that were so well-blended that Sofia herself could barely separate them; lies that she needed to force herself to believe to have the courage – and the depravity – to go on.

It was a family album. Her mind hit something painful – something that bore a resemblance to her father – and the book was slammed shut. She sat upon her bed.

‘I am what I am because I needed to be,’ was ultimately all she was willing to confess to.

Sofia expected more scorn, but instead Jackson averted her eyes. It gave her the privacy to openly stare at her.

‘Should I not take pride in my good intellect?’

‘Good intellect isn’t worth a pig’s shit if you haven’t any common sense.’ Nell’s disgust for her showed on her face as she looked around the room. ‘If I were you, Sofia, I wouldn’t talk up my intellect in front of someone who knows you – knows what you’ve done, who you’ve done it with, who you’ve done it to...’

‘You don’t know nearly as much as you think you do.’

‘Right, because I’m stupid – because I’m poor.’

‘No,’ Sofia said, forcing patience upon herself. ‘Because there are things that I haven’t told you.’

‘Oh, God.’ Jackson rolled her eyes.

Except, patience wasn’t Sofia’s strong point.

‘But you are stupid, yes.’ Sarcastically, she said, ‘I completely agree.’

That got Jackson to look at her.

‘If you turn me in, you’ll be putting countless lives in danger. There will be a war.’

Jackson pushed herself off the wall and walked closer to Sofia.

‘You’re that important, are you?’

‘No, not at all.’ Sofia took pleasure in the flicker of confusion that passed over Jackson’s face, knowing she subverted her expectations. ‘But when you so kindly cast us out of our home, I –’

Jackson cut her off. ‘Wait, is this about where all your stuff went?’

Sofia paused, knowing that as soon as she said more, Jackson would laugh at their misfortune.

‘We were robbed by highwaymen,’ she muttered.

Sure enough, Jackson threw her head back and laughed.

‘Ah, shame,’ she said, grinning.

‘They took everything.’

‘Well, yeah. That’s the proper way to do it.’

‘They took more than our clothes and money, Nell.’ Saying her given name alone was too strange, so she quickly added, ‘Jackson.’

‘Yeah, yeah – all your valuables and keepsakes, I’m certain.’

At some point, Jackson had begun to pace restlessly around the room.

‘There were incriminating letters, documents and other items which Poynton had brought with him to Broadwater Hall.’

Jackson stopped, looking over at Sofia. She took a step backwards to better see her face, but kept her expression neutral.

‘Amongst them are contingency plans, in case some meddlesome person showed up to ruin everything.’

Jackson raised her eyebrows and gave Sofia a cocksure grin, recognising herself in the statement.

Sofia shrugged and said in a nonchalant tone, ‘I’d like them back, obviously, but even if you don’t think I should have them, I’m sure you realise the danger they pose to the nation if they are left out there.’

‘Oh, Sofia.’ She laughed and took just a step closer to her. ‘You think I care about this?’

The smile on Sofia’s face fell.

‘Well, you should care,’ she argued. ‘I care about this country –’ She had to wait for Jackson to finish sniggering. ‘– no matter who is the monarch.’

‘Right,’ she laughed.

‘Believe it or not,’ she said with the expectation that Nell wouldn’t believe, ‘I have no strong opinions on Queen Anne.’

‘Keep that to yourself. I swear to God, Charles is arse over tit in love with her.’

Sofia blinked, then decided to ignore her.

‘If I have the documents, maybe I can use them to bargain for my life.’

‘You mean with the Queen?’ Nell gave her a knowing look. ‘Or are you hoping to get back in all nice and cosy with the Jacobites?’

‘I’ll take whoever will have me,’ she reluctantly admitted.

‘Toffs are toffs, I suppose.’

‘And you’re a coward.’

‘I beg your fucking pardon.’

‘So much for the Queen’s heroine.’

‘Hero!’ Nell whispered fiercely as she took another step towards her, clearly trying to look menacing. She glared down at Sofia – who stood up to try to get closer to eye-height.

‘Coward.’

Sofia was not sure what she expected to gain from provoking her, but she really should not have been so surprised when she found herself suddenly shoved back onto her bed. She lay there for a second, stunned and waiting – but for what, she did not know.

Jackson only stood there, glaring down at her. Sofia thought of magic; she thought of using something to push her back, without even having to get up.

Then Jackson stepped further away from the bed, her expression one of discomfort. Sofia quickly checked her shift, but it was still covering her fully. When she looked back up at Jackson, she saw her turning and walking towards the door.

‘What are you doing? Where are you going?’

All she said was, ‘Charles.’

Sofia was stunned for several minutes more before anger took hold.

Desperately needing to get away from Sofia, Nell took the stairs so fast that she tripped on the third step from the bottom, tumbling spectacularly.

‘Ooh, that looked painful,’ came Charles’ voice, unfortunately. He stepped towards her to offer her a hand, but she was too quick for him to get to her in time.

‘No – it was fun – you should try it,’ she fired back in a rush; before he could reply, she continued, ‘I need to talk to you.’ She looked up from where she was rubbing her aching elbow and told him seriously, ‘Privately.’

‘I’m all yours.’

‘I’m sorry, you pushed her?’

‘That part doesn’t matter,’ Nell said dismissively. ‘What matters is that –’

‘Then what happened?’ Charles asked in unabashed delight. ‘What did she say? What did you do?’

Nell looked at him as if he was an idiot, but to him, she was absolutely the stupid one.

‘She ain’t hurt. I’m sure she’s offended, but that’s all.’

‘Too funny,’ Charles mused.

She shook her head, looking unhappy. They were outside, plotting in the dark like a pair of villains in a play – not that Nell was anything but heroic.

‘I don’t trust her. I only helped her at all because of...’

‘Pity. Obviously.’

He smiled when Nell nodded.

‘Like a good hero,’ he added.

She stopped pacing and turned to look at him almost sternly. He didn’t see why she would react that harshly to the little joke.

‘Fuck,’ she sighed. She ran a hand through her hair, but it only served to make it untidier. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Why, we’re going after the stolen items, of course.’

He knew that for all her debating, she wouldn’t be able to resist. She knew it, too.

‘But what do we do with those idiots?’ she asked, throwing a hand in the direction of the house.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, pushing his sarcastic tone to the point where he almost sounded silly, even to himself. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t discard the only people who know both what exactly we’re looking for and the looks of the highwaymen who took those things?’

‘Are we really going to put up with them for that long?’

‘Well, he and I get along well enough.’

It was true. Once the man’s delirium had faded, he’d been open to chatting. Charles had soon found in Thomas the unsurprising arrogance which set most countryside nobles apart even from their city-living counterparts – an added layer of poshness cultivated by the rare need to interact with anyone who isn’t a household servant.

To Charles’ great interest, Thomas seemed to be just as much a scoundrel as he was a haughty noble. It seemed that the time he did spend in London, he had spent in many of the more lowly, disreputable establishments with which Charles was more familiar.

It felt at times when talking to him that Charles was looking at a distorted reflection of himself. Thus, Thomas Blancheford’s company was far from the worst he had suffered.

But Nell’s look reminded him that these were thoughts he should never share with her.

Charles regretted his flippant reply immediately. ‘By which I mean –’

‘Huh, Charles? You want to tell me more about how the piece of filth who killed my dad really ain’t all that bad?’

He held up his hands and took a step back for good measure.

‘Apologies. I’d forgotten, since I wasn’t there.’

She held her glare for another moment before turning away.

‘Would your father have liked me?’

‘No,’ she said without any hesitation whatsoever. ‘Definitely not.’

‘Oh, but women’s parents usually like me!’

‘Yeah, because you lie from beginning to end.’

‘No, no. At the end, I’m too busy stealing to lie.’ 

‘Yeah, my pa would’ve fucking loved you.’

‘You’d be surprised by how far my charm can go,’ he smoothly said as he took a step towards her.

‘I’d love to see how far it can go – away from me.’ She didn’t even try to sound like she was flirting for the first part of the sentence, like he would have.

And that was why he liked Nell Jackson. She always had a reply for him, at least in the form of a groan or a roll of her pretty hazel eyes. 

‘Wouldn’t you miss me, though?’ He said it like a joke, but he wondered, nevertheless.

‘Eh,’ was her reply, paired perfectly with a disinterested shrug. She delivered it as a joke, but he wondered...

‘You know their shit won’t be that valuable, don’t ya?’

‘Oh, you mean treasonous letters full of secret instructions to an unknown number of people involved in a conspiracy to –’

‘Look, I know, but I just don’t...’

‘– want to be stuck with these two?’

In truth, he couldn’t understand why it mattered to her so much. If they were too unbearable, surely they could bind and gag them somehow, only letting them speak when they needed information. Maybe the woman – Sofia – would be dangerous, but he had not actually seen so much as a glimmer of the magic she supposedly possessed.

Nor had he seen Nell do anything that any other strong woman could have done, ever since meeting her again. He’d been tempted to provoke her to the point where she’d throw him, just so he could have evidence that she still had it in her.

‘It’s not that.’ She unfolded her arms and put her hands on her hips instead.

‘Does she smell? Is that it? If it’s because she smells, we can find more soap.’

‘No, she smells nice now.’

He tilted his head at her, watching her frown at her feet.

‘Do you really want to go home, Nell?’

The look she gave him made it clear that she was trying to hide her guilt with anger.

‘Well...’ He puffed out a heavy sigh. ‘I suppose that if you’re going home, it will just be me and the Blanchefords.’

‘Huh?’

‘They are two dangerous individuals. We can only hope I’ll be able to keep myself safe, should they prove to be as treacherous as they were before.’

‘Now, hang on...’

‘And I’m sure that even in the best of situations, we shall be pitted against some very dangerous Jacobites who won’t take kindly to –’

‘All right!’ she interrupted. ‘Stop taking the piss.’

‘Do you want me to beg?’

‘What? No.’

‘Because I’ll do it!’

He clasped his hands together and walked towards her, causing her to step back to get away.

‘On my knees?’ he said as he looked down at the ground, trying to judge if it was worth getting his breeches dirty just to be more annoying.

‘Why would I want that?’ she asked, sounding disgusted.

He committed to it, plunging to his knees in front of her.

‘Will you please come with me on this exciting adventure?’

He shuffled towards her, dirtying his knees further.

‘So that you can protect me from those terrifying Blancheford siblings and all the nasty Jacobites we’ll surely encounter along the way?’

He knew he had her when she muttered a ladylike stream of curses and tiredly rubbed at her face. He got close enough to take her hand, to draw it towards his –

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she asked, pulling her hand away. He made a mwah noise as it went.

In a couple seconds, he was back on his feet with a smile.

‘So, we’re leaving tomorrow?’

‘Maybe even tonight. Don’t want to give them the chance to peach on us.’ She shut her eyes and sighed. ‘He’s good enough to ride a horse?’

‘I should say so, but if you want me to go back and purchase that cart from that woman for an absurd amount of lolly, I’ll do it – if you’re paying.’

‘If it’s as dangerous as we think,’ Nell said, and he could swear he saw a hint of a smile on her face, ‘then let’s keep just the horses.’

And just like that, they were back where they belonged: planning their next adventure. As they discussed it in hushed tones, Charles rubbed his hands together for warmth; Nell seemed unbothered by the cold – or at least unwilling to show weakness in front of him, even after everything.

‘We should head in.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you’re eager to apologise to that nice lady you left up there on the bed.’

Her eyes widened and he could tell he caught her off her guard because of her very visible struggle for words. He wanted to probe, but instead let her have her chance to respond.

‘I’m not sure you could possibly have gotten more things wrong in just a single sentence, Dev.’

He sceptically tilted his head at her, trying to give her the impression that he knew more than he did.

‘Fuck off. Make sure you’re ready to leave in a few hours,’ she said as she scanned the outside of the house. ‘We won’t give ‘em any chance to catch us by surprise in the morning with a little army of people hoping for a piece of the bounty.’

‘As if you wouldn’t relish a chance to single-handedly fight off such an army.’

She looked at him again and gave a humble sort of shrug.

‘I’ll go make sure the idiots are ready,’ she said with a decisive nod.

He smiled wistfully as he watched her disappear through the door.

That was their relationship, at the end of the day: relentless teasing, pretending they weren’t friends. He couldn’t imagine even a Nell who returned his affections to openly show it. But still, he had to try, didn’t he?