//CLARA//
I’d spent the last twelve hours playing a high-stakes ga of hide-and-seek with a man who owned the very floorboards I was stepping on.
It was an exhausting, frantic dance. In my ti, I could have handled this with a tap. If a guy said sothing that made the vibe turn radioactive, you just left him on read.
You ghosted until the digital dust settled. You blocked the notification and went to a different club just to let off steam.
But there was no block button in 1879. I was trapped in a listone fortress with a 6’3" railroad tycoon who looked at like I was his most prized—and most infuriating—acquisition.
Every ti I heard the heavy, rhythmic thud of Casimir’s boots echoing through the halls, I pivoted. I used the back servant stairs, ducking into the shadows of the pantry or hiding behind a massive Grecian urn whenever I heard him coming my way. I wasn’t ready to face him. Not after the Marriage Bomb had detonated in my face.
I skipped breakfast. I napped through lunch, or at least I stared at the ceiling and counted the ornate moldings until I went cross-eyed.
"Your woman, but... not exactly soone you’d ever marry?"
The words were looping in my head like a scratched record, skipping over the sa agonizing beat.
But Casimir was relentless. He didn’t chase , which was worse. He simply existed in every space I needed to be.
Every ti I turned a corner, he was there, a dark silhouette against a floor-to-ceiling window. Every ti I tried to sneak into the library for a mont of peace, he was already seated, his eyes boring into the newspaper as if he could read the ink through the back of the broadsheet.
We hadn’t spoken. Not really. Just the bare minimum—stilted good mornings and thank-yous that felt like shards of glass in the air.
I was going to lose my mind. This silence was sucking the oxygen out of .
Then, just as the sun began to cast long, bruised-purple shadows across the Turkish rugs in the drawing room, the letter arrived.
"From Mr. Whitfield, miss," Hattie said, handing a folded paper.
I broke the wax seal with more gusto than was strictly dignified. I needed a distraction. I needed a crisis that didn’t involve my own heart rate.
Miss Thorne—Urgent at the factory. The copper suppliers have pulled back, and the casting chanism is failing. I need your eyes on the strategy before the morning shift. Please, co now.—Oliver.
I practically skimd the lines without truly absorbing the technicalities. All I saw was an exit ramp. A way out of the suffocating awkwardness of this house. A reason to breathe air that did not sll like Casimir’s cologne and my own humiliation.
"I have to go," I said, already standing. "An ergency with the Linotype."
Casimir looked up from his newspaper. His eyes searched my face. "It is nearly dusk. You cannot—"
"I need to. Bye."
"Eleanor!"
I grabbed my coat and walked out the door. I was out of the mansion before Casimir could even formulate a reason to stop .
The carriage ride was a blur of anxious energy and darkening streets. I stared out the window as the gaslights flickered to life, watching the city transition from day to night. The crowds had thinned. The vendors were packing up their carts. A fog was rolling in from the river, softening the edges of the buildings and muffling the sound of the horses’ hooves.
I should have at least brought soone with . I should have read the letter more carefully to make sure I understood what the ergency was all about.
But I had wanted to escape. So I had not.
The factory—no, the warehouse. I still thought of it as both—was a dark silhouette against the bruised purple sky. No lights burned in the windows. No carriages waited outside. The building was utterly still, utterly silent, and the sight of it sent a cold trickle of unease down my spine.
Oliver always left a lamp burning. He said the dark made the machinery feel like ghosts.
"Wait here," I told the coachman as I climbed out, my boots hitting the damp cobblestones with a hollow thud. "I will only be a mont."
The door was unlocked. That was wrong too. Oliver always locked up before leaving. He was particular about his tools, his sketches, his prototypes. He said he did not trust the neighborhood.
I stepped inside.
The air was warm and thick with the sll of dust, and oil. The machinery sat where Oliver had left it, half-assembled, waiting for morning. The tall windows let in just enough twilight to turn the space into a maze of shadows and silver light.
"Oliver?" My voice echoed off the brick walls. "Oliver, are you here?"
No answer.
I walked deeper, past the workbenches and the crates of raw materials, toward the back where Oliver kept his office. The shadows seed to shift as I passed, reaching out from the corners, retreating when I turned to face them.
I found a lamp and lit it. The fla flickered, casting long, wavering shadows across the floor. I pulled the letter out of my pocket, holding it close to the light.
My heart did a nervous rhythm against my ribs. In the better light, the ink looked... off. The letter was too careful, too elegant. Oliver’s handwriting was rushed, barely legible, the ink always smudged from his excitent.
Oliver wouldn’t have used Miss Thorne, not even in a crisis. He would have written Eleanor. We were well past the formalities.
Oh no.
Soone had tried to copy his style and failed.
A floorboard creaked behind .
I spun around, my heart slamming against my ribs, but the darkness revealed nothing. Just the machinery. Just the crates. Just the silence pressing in from all sides. I stared into the shadows, waiting for sothing to move, sothing to breathe, sothing to prove that I was not imagining it.
Nothing.
But I was not alone. I could feel it.
"Hello?" My voice ca out as a whisper. "Is soone there?"
No answer.
I backed toward the door. The lamp flickered, casting dancing shadows across the floor.
"Who is there?" I called out, trying to keep my voice steady. "Show yourself."
A soft, scraping sound ca from the darkness behind the office, and that was it. My composure shattered and I bolted.
My skirts tangling around my legs, my breath coming in sharp, burning gasps. I burst out into the street, the cold fog hitting my face like a slap.
"We’re leaving! Now!" I shouted, lunging toward the silhouette of my carriage.
But I stopped dead three feet from reaching the door.
The coachman wasn’t in his seat. He was a heap of dark wool slumped on the cobblestones, his hat rolling away into the gutter, unmoving.
My brain stalled. What the hell is happening?
I opened my mouth to scream, to call for the watchman—but I never got the chance.
A hand like an iron vice clamped over my mouth with a cloth, the fingers digging into my cheeks with bruising force. A massive chest pressed against my back, pinning my arms to my sides. I thrashed, my heels scraping uselessly against the stone.
I tried to bite the hand, to kick, to fight, but then a cloth was pressed tight against my nose and mouth.
The sll hit instantly—a sweet, cloying, chemical rot that made my stomach heave.
Chloroform.
I tried to hold my breath, my eyes wide and stinging as I stared at the blurry street, but the hand held firm, forcing to inhale. The world began to tilt. The orange gaslights stretched into long, glowing streaks. The fog rushed inward, turning the edges of my vision into static.
My knees buckled. The strength drained out of my limbs, leaving heavy and useless as a rag doll. The darkness at the edges of the fra rushed toward the center, swallowing everything.
The last thing I heard was the voice, soft and almost gentle, whispering in my ear as I slipped away.
"Sleep, Miss Thorne. We have a long journey ahead."
Then the world went black.
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