Page 109 of A Devilish Element
The answer hardly mattered, and indeed, Eliza didn’t give one. Ignoring the woman, she stretched out a hand to her friend. “Jane, come to me. All will be fine.”
It would not. Jem could see that already. There was no way Eliza could hold Mrs Honeyfield at bay and pull Jane to safety without making her back a target. He loomed in the doorway, strove to catch the housekeeper as she hurled herself at Eliza, only to yelp when in the confusion of the ensuing tussle his pocket set alight and then Jane punched into his side. She shrieked as her hands met the flames and pulled away, causing them both to fall back. Entwined, Eliza and Mrs Honeyfield fell hard against the crenulations. Alarmingly, several bricks fell away.
Jem staggered backwards. Now that he was out here, he could feel exactly how unstable the balcony was. It jutted out from the side of the tower supported below by fire-blackened beams. “Get inside,” he yelled as he wrenched his arms free of his burning coat and cast it away from himself.
They were putting too much strain on the structure.
He knew his mathematics. Knew his engineering.
“Now!”
The stones and beams were already groaning in protest, providing a gravelly accompaniment to Mrs Honeyfield’s shrieking rage.
Pain stretched all along Jem’s left side, but he ignored it, stepping into the fray to grab Jane and haul her within. The moment she was over the threshold he about turned to reach for Eliza too.
His love was bound in a deadly struggle with the housekeeper. Her long hair was pulled loose from the knot into which it’d earlier been bound, and her assailant was using it like a tether to pull her closer and closer to the edge where the crenulations were broken.
“You, missy, you’re always meddling. You couldn’t just let ’er go quiet like.” He supposed she meant that in reference to poisoning Jane’s tea, or whatever it was on that tray Eliza said she’d brought up.
Eliza dipped, and strained. When that failed to free her, she drove her weight against her assailant’s middle.
“No!”
Jem knew what was coming as if time were flashing before him out of sequence. The pair stumbled because of their collision and crashed against the crenulations. The mortar gave way. The wall cracked, then with a sound akin to a titan’s hammer splitting a mountainside, the whole balcony parted ways with the tower.
Jem hung in the doorway. He caught a last, terrified glimpse of Eliza’s face before she and Mrs Honeyfield fell into the darkness below.
A moan of utter despair wormed free of his throat. “Eliza!” It could not be so. The world could not be this cruel. He winced as timbers and stone collided with the earth below, sending tremors back up the tower. No one could survive such a fall. She was gone, taken from him before he’d had a chance to rectify any of his mistakes, before he’d had a chance to properly tell her how much he loved her, or how desperately he wanted a second chance to prove himself the man worthy of her affection.
He’d dreamed of sliding a ring on her finger one day, of the home they’d created. How he’d come in from the work shed after a long day, still smeared with oil and grease, and peep around the door of her workroom to spy on her lost in her own investigations into medicines and disease. Of how one day, maybe there’d be a child… A bonny bairn with her warmth and his nose. One he’d share an equal burden in raising.
Beside him, Jane’s shrieking ceased; she fell into a faint. He felt sick to his core. His stomach roiled, pitching bile up his throat, while his legs collapsed beneath him, dropping him onto his knees.
Gone! He could not believe her gone. Eliza, who was so kind and brilliant, who was always so determined to help, who used her knowledge to aid others. She could have idled her days away living in luxury, but she hadn’t. She’d been determined to make her mark on the world instead. She’d lived to better not just herself but the lives of others.
“Help!”
He truly believed he’d imagined it when the cry filtered through his numbed senses.
“Jem… Jem! Please help! I can’t… I’m stuck.”
He could not see her. “Eliza,” he screamed again and again.
Her reply was faint. He couldn’t see her, but beyond the door now lay a sheer drop.
Ignoring the pain in his side, he dropped to his belly to peer over the edge down past the broken timbers, down into the inky gloom and the shadows that pawed at the tower’s sides. It was there he spied her, clinging to a beam trapped betwixt the stonework and one of those hanging supports he’d been so alarmed of when he’d observed them from below. She was wan with terror, but miraculously whole and alive.
“Don’t move, I’m coming.”
“I can’t. Jem, please.”
He stepped over Jane in his haste to act. She was breathing and in no imminent danger. Jem sprinted to the bed, where he tore down the curtains and gathered the linens into a heap. He’d learned knotting as boy, building rafts to ride along the River Ure. He worked quickly, fashioning the fabric into a makeshift rope that he secured both around the bedpost and his waist.
The climb down was utterly terrifying and seemingly endless. He had no choice but to look down to make certain of his footing, and each time he did, he glimpsed Ada Honeyfield’s smashed body spread ragdoll like on the grass, broken timbers scattered around her like kindling.
Eliza’s pale face was turned up towards him. Her hair danced wild around her, caught in the gusts of the evening wind that also pulled at his shirt. Her clothing was torn, and he could see the strain in her jaw from clenching her teeth.
“Hold on. I’m almost there.”
