Six days she has barely talked to him, has avoided his eyes. Now they are looking at her hard and level. She bends down to blow out the lamp.

“Better get ready, Mr. Argyle. We are leaving. Soon.”

“Good. I have said my good-byes. And I know where we go next.”

It irks Livia then that he — wounded, feeble, risen from the dead — so naturally presumes to take charge.

And even more that she is willing to follow.

LIZZY

LIZZY

Lord Spencer comes to the village the same day they ask me to go down the mine. They need me to look after an injured comrade, Mr. Mosley tells me. I know Mr. Mosley well. He’s one of the Union Men, a Voice in the Dark: the one who asked me will I join when I was only fourteen. They had use for a nurse and my father, dying, vouched for me. But then Mother sent me away before the year was out.

When we stand near the mine shaft waiting for the cage to arrive, I see a rider on the hillside, sitting tall in his saddle, looking down. Dark hair, that’s all I can see. I remember thinking: that’s what Mr. Argyle would look like, riding a horse. Thomas. It’s first names for us, now that I have washed him and sewn up his head. It wouldn’t do to kiss a “Mister.”

By the time I returned from the pit, it was the talk of every kitchen. Lord Julius Spencer, Lady Naylor’s son, come to visit us. Asking questions. And bringing news: that the lady’s coach has been attacked, and the lady’s daughter kidnapped, along with two young gentlemen. Only it might be that they’ve escaped their attackers and were wounded, lost in the wilds. Did we know anything?

They told him about the rowing boat they found smashed at the bottom of the rapids and he asked to see it; walked both sides of the riverbank, heading upstream, his dog digging its nose in the grass. It found something, near the cottage of the Mosleys. He questioned Mrs. Mosley most patiently, they said in the village pub that night. Spent a full hour in her cottage. And left her with a good bit of money. For her trouble. She put it all in the village alms box on the Sunday.