Georgina ducked under his arm, out of his touch, and started down the steps.
He reached the bottom quicker than she did. “Mr. Fancourt is hardly the man you think him, Miss Whitmore.”
“It is late. Please move.”
His hands found her arms, his face dipping closer. Too close. The reality that she was alone with him—without servants or guests inside the house—raised her skin in bumps of discomfort.
“Man has peculiar ways of bearing reality, Miss Whitmore. Some disappear from their responsibilities. Others play them away with strong drink and dancing and”—his gaze flicked to her lips—“and passions, of sorts.”
“I wish to leave now. You will send for me, of course, if Simon returns during the night?”
“I think you must come to terms with the fact that he, like the cuckoo, has left his young and flown.”
“You are wrong about Simon.” Despite the words, old fears reared within her. “Verywrong.”
“We shall know, I wager, soon enough. But do not despair, my dear.” He released his grip and took a step back, his wonted grin already flashing in the moonlight. “Like the goldfinch, I am more than willing to take charge of what the cuckoo left behind.”
Another fist snapped Simon’s head back. The chair overturned. His face scraped gritty stone, and he tasted dirt before the chair was yanked upright again.
The room spun.
Blackness everywhere, save for the lantern swinging and creaking from an overhead beam. Crates were stacked along grimy brick walls. Bottle stands, chimney ornaments, embroidered pole screens. The overwhelming aroma of too many perfumes, mingled with the metallic scent of his own blood.
The fist struck again.
Then again.
With the third strike, Simon’s chair thudded the wall behind him, wood splintering beneath him, pain screaming along his face. He strained against the ropes, vision blurred. “My children.”
“The letter.”
“My children first—”
“Your children nothing.” The figure scurried into a dark corner of the room. When he returned to the sphere of lantern light, he brandished a stout wooden board.
Shadows played on his face. He was thin, tall, middle-aged, with gleaming black hair fluffing over his ears. He wore rolled-up shirtsleeves and black trousers, with an expression that seemed almost…similar to someone else.
“We can go on much longer,” the man panted.
“Go ahead.”
A swing, a sickening thud, pain exploding at Simon’s temple. Blood gushed down the left side of his face, and though he tried to hold up his head, his chin slumped to his chest.
The man raised for another—
“Enough.”
From the gray-splintered stairs across the room, a figure watched from the shadows. One Simon had not noticed before. The voice rang with familiarity, one he knew well, too well, but numbness was already seeping across his brain.
“He will talk tomorrow” was all Simon heard before the world went void.
“Hmm, that is odd.” Mamma scooped a dollop of orange marmalade onto her toast. “Is that not odd, Byron?”
“Yes. Quite.” From his seat across the breakfast table, Mr. Lutwidge kept his gaze on his plate. Anywhere but at Georgina.
Mamma seemed oblivious to the strain. “Well, perhaps Mr. Fancourt is off to Astley’s Amphitheatre. While ladies flit away to balls and millinery shops for pleasure, men are always skipping to ridiculous mills or circuses. Yes, I imagine the amphitheatre is just where he is gone.”
The steaming eggs and brown toast increased the turmoil in Georgina’s stomach. She wished Mamma was right. She wished Simon was so absurd as to run off to the circus. Or that he had abandoned everything, as Mr. Oswald believed.
