I will get to my knife.
Laughing in cruel wheezes like the rasp of a hacksaw, he shoved me facedown over the arm of the sofa in the drawing room after he had dragged me there, filling my nose with sweat and leather and lust, and I knew what happened next, had already faced the prospect. His bones bruised my wrists where they were pinioned, his other hand clumsily jostling at my skirts as he raised them.
“D’ye squeal like cows hereabouts, or just eat ’em?” he asked, rancid teeth brushing my neck.
I heard the approach of measured footsteps on the drive, and the front door opening.
Reader: I screamed, and if I could have screamed loud enough, I would have pierced him clean through.
“Damn ye straight t’ hell,” he growled.
A scorching pain blazed through my head as my assailant seized me by the follicles and led me into the shadows of the large chamber; the noises from the hall ceased.
“I’ll see the whole lot o’ ye vipers in hell,” my captor hissed.
He pressed pocket-warm metal against my gullet, and I had no choice save to follow as he dragged me by the scalp. When Mr. Thornfield and Mr. Singh burst into the room, I yet supposed the weapon a dull knife, but after the brute brandished the thing, I saw that it was a pistol in his hand.
Upon glimpsing my assailant, both men’s faces distorted as if a sword had met their bellies.
“How is it possible you’re yet alive?” Mr. Thornfield cried, unsheathing the blade he carried.
“Oh, aye, always so shocked when the rent comes due,” crooned the man holding me hostage. “Give me the small one who knows where the bounty is buried—or else the trunk, better still—and we’ll argue nae further.”
“We don’t have it,” Mr. Singh protested urgently. “And Miss Stone knows nothing of your monstrous intrigues. Let her loose or—”
“Or what?”
“They aren’t lying to you,” I croaked, still feeling the phantom clench of a fist round my throat.
“It’s nae in the Punjab.” He rubbed against my cheek, boar’s bristles abrading me. “It’s nae in jolly old London town. And ye claim it’s nae here, but mayhaps a bullet will jog someone’s faculties.”
“No!” Mr. Thornfield cried.
“Oh, d’ye prefer this aimed at you, then?”
The scorching grip against my hair blazed into a bonfire even as the badmash removed his gun from my neck and swung it in the direction of Charles Thornfield.
Mr. Singh, whose movements were generally so calculated you could have set your watch by them, lifted a futile palm in horrified protest; the master of the house looked endearingly relieved, as if having a pistol aimed at his forehead was preferable to its being aimed at mine. My immediate circumstances branded themselves upon my memory—the setting half-moon, the distant scuffles as the servants were roused, the fact Mr. Thornfield was gazing into my eyes rather than the barrel of the weapon now levelled at him. The sheer horror of the scene nearly finished me.
It did not, however—because the blackguard now had one arm devoted to a gun cocked at Mr. Thornfield and the other to tearing my scalp from its moorings; so I whipped out my knife and stabbed blindly backwards with all the fervour men devote to war.
? ? ?
I do not know whether the casual reader of novels is acquainted with an anatomical curiosity known as the femoral artery; without too much medical meandering, although you might suppose that cutting a man’s throat would be the fastest way to slaughter him, a good jab to the thigh will do.
Fainting in front of Mr. Thornfield and Mr. Singh was never my object, but faint indeed I did for the second time in my life. Not due to fright—pain swept me under its carpet. It must have been a brief respite, however, for when I came to, I was tucked deep in the settee with a blanket covering me, and Mr. Thornfield was shouting for towels, hovering over the pitifully whimpering brute. Mrs. Garima Kaur was there, looking haggard, twisting her fingers in violent worriment before running to obey the master of the house.
Walls tilted and furniture swam, and perhaps ten minutes later Mr. Thornfield was not shouting for anything anymore, merely gazing with dark satisfaction at what seemed a corpse and a crimson pond upon our floorboards.
The fact of my fifth murder at first slid off my consciousness like water from a goose feather; but I knew instinctually I could not remain in the same room with the dead man lazing in the pool of blood. Wrenching myself upright, I attempted a graceful exit.
“Wait a moment, Jane!” Mr. Thornfield cried.
“I can’t stay here.”
“You’re reeling from hurt and shock, you’ll injure—”