From the road came a heavy scrabbling sound of claws in the dirt. There was a rushing overhead—the birds, this time, still silent, flying upward en masse. The entire woods denuded of birds in a single, soundless exodus. Over the roar of my own pounding heart in my ears, I heard something breathe—the harsh rasp of panting, deep and throaty.
My foot in its clumsy boot slipped, and I fell, bumping and careening into a low, wet ditch, the mackintosh acting like a slick toboggan. I came to rest on my back in a puddle of cold water, staring up into the rainy trees.
There was no time to escape, not now. I froze by instinct, going still, my breath stopping, like a mouse or a shrew when it feels an owl fly overhead. My legs clenched; my mind went white. All thought stopped, all motion, as I lay and waited.
The smell came first. An overpowering rotten stench, damp and greasy. The bushes shifted and tore as something large came through them, up the rise, the heavy grind of paws gaining purchase in the loamy earth. There was a gasp and a growl, and the thing hit the top of the rise and launched itself over me.
I could not scream. A whistle of air squeezed through the back of my throat, its sound lost.
I could not see all of the creature in the fog. I glimpsed long, sprawled legs, muscled almost like a human’s, and vicious paws like hands. A chest thick as a barrel, covered in a ruff of long, filthy fur. And a long body, leaping over me in my icy ditch in a single, soundless move, the belly passing within arm’s reach of my face. Its head was lost in the white mist, though a vicious, drawled growl came from its unseen throat and trailed after it in the air.
I pressed myself into the puddle of water and watched in terrorized silence as Princer’s stomach, matted and foul with a coppery stench like blood, passed before my eyes. Of their own accord, my hands gripped the camera pressed to my chest, and my finger clicked the shutter.
Then he landed on the ridge of land at the other side of the ditch, I glimpsed a heavy curl of tail, and he was gone.
I lay shivering as my hands went numb on the camera and the water in the ditch soaked my hair. The fog swirled past my unseeing eyes. It was a long time before I realized that the birds were singing again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“My goodness, Mrs. Manders—what happened?” Mrs. Perry dropped her chopping knife on the counter and came toward me as I stood in the kitchen doorway.
“I’m all right,” I told her. I had pulled off Frances’s rubber boots, caked with mud, and left them on the floor of the vestibule alongside the filthy black mackintosh. “I just need a towel, if you please, so I don’t track water all through your tidy kitchen.”
She picked a towel from a cupboard and snapped it open. “I didn’t even know you were out of the house. Did you have an accident?”
“Yes.” I rubbed the towel over my soaked feet in their torn stockings and avoided the curious gaze of the maid staring over the cook’s shoulder. “I was taking pictures in the woods, and I’m afraid I fell. I’m a mess, but I’m not hurt.”
Mrs. Bennett came into the kitchen, spotted me, and joined Mrs. Perry as I explained. “You’ll catch a fever,” she proclaimed, her hands on her hips. “You need tea and a hot bath.”
After walking home, soaked, through the foggy forest, I would have married Jack the Ripper for access to either. “Yes, thank you. I’ll just go up the back stairs and—”
“Tildy, go with her,” Mrs. Bennett barked at the maid.
“No, please.” I straightened, the dripping towel in one hand, and pushed my hair back from my face with the other. I gave both of them a beseeching look. “I’d rather Mrs. Forsyth not know. She didn’t know I was out at all, and with the engagement party today . . . It was just an accident. More embarrassing than anything, really.”
Mrs. Bennett and Mrs. Perry exchanged understanding looks. “Take the servants’ stairs, then,” Mrs. Perry agreed. “I’ll put the coat and boots away. Tildy will bring up tea in a few minutes.”
But as I picked up my camera and crossed the kitchen to the servants’ stairs, Cora Staffron walked in. “Do I smell tea biscuits?” She looked at me, and her eyes widened at my disastrous appearance. “Oh. Mrs. Manders.”
I sighed. “It was an accident,” I said.
She bit her lip. She was wearing a thick, quilted dressing gown decorated top to bottom with twines of flowers that strongly resembled wallpaper. Her blond bob was carelessly combed, her neck protruding gawky and thin from her collar. I realized that she was just as embarrassed as I was.
Mrs. Bennett came to our rescue, since we were both frozen in humiliation. “The tea biscuits will be ready any minute, Miss Staffron,” she said. “I’ll have some sent up to you, along with tea for Mrs. Manders. Will that be acceptable?”