Yeah! Look who updated back to back! Now who's a good author? *smirks*

  Dedicated to Augousta
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   My stomach grumbled about its empty status for nearly a day and I cursed everyone and everything, trying to make up new cursewords as I had run out of my vast, yet limited Arabian and Portuguese vocabulary in the past few minutes,hours, days? I had no idea.

  I stretched my aching toes to drag the weight of my generous derrière and the rest of me along with the chair towards the stool, and the distance between us reduced by, you guessed it, another few milimetres. The one with the bottles and glasses and other stuff on it, remember? Well, I had had the brilliant idea of dragging myself to it to look for something to cut these ropes with.

  The first few tries had been enthusiastically carried out, the idea of getting out of this stinking hell hole in the middle of god knows where motivating me enough to move around a few centimetres. When the aching tiredness in my limbs settled a few moments later, the motivation started fading like a piece of ice in the Sahara desert.

  It would have been so nice to just relax myself and fall asleep against the wall of stinking barrels, which contained litres of some alcohol, but the thought of being actually rescued by Mr. Ambrose like a damsel in distress was the only thing keeping the feminist in me going. Dalgliesh's threats only added to my already rapidly shrinking motivation, but nonetheless, I was somehow grateful for it.

Turns out that when Dalgliesh had decided to punch pretty little me in the face and I had ducked, he had (I think) accidentally punched the barrel just behind my head, cracking it and making small rivulets of alcohol spread out all over the uneven floor. The constant smell was what I think was the culprit behind my head feeling heavier than usual, of course except for the cut.

  The dried blood from it was mixing with my sweat as I engaged in the most mundane mind numbing and toe dropping idea of my own rescue.

How heroic!

  Heroic my behind!

  Pull. Drag. Wait for a moment. Feel your toes. Resume.

  Pull. Drag-

  "Ouch! Blast this bloody broken tile! I think I bloody stubbed my toe on one! Blast that Dalgliesh! And blast that stone faced miser! And blast that stupid file of his!"

  Grumbling a few newly invented curses under my breath, I waited until the pain had subsided before pulling forward again.

~~~~~Two centuries and three months later~~~~~

  Okay, I think I might have exaggerated a tiny bit, but I swear it certainly felt like it when my hand could finally, finally reach the table. My toes were feeling like they had ceased to exist a long time ago and I had to literally talk out loud about the paycheck I would recieve when I would get out of here, in order to not fall alseep. The only sounds in the room were the occasional human voices around the door and the continous pitter patter of the raindrops beating heavily against the roof.

  Are you sure your motivation has been the paycheck, or the one signing it?

  It doesn't matter. What matters is I reached the stool.

  Really? As if you have not been talking about him to yourself, telling yourself to reach it because you will see him once you are out of here.

  Shut up.

  I squinted my eyes observing the objects on the table that could potentially aid my rescue( finally!) and groaned. Some of the bottles were broken and the glasses were stained with something I would rather remain ignorant about. That's it. There was no kind of knife or weapon that I could use. Unless...

  Carefully picking up a broken shard of glass nearest to my hand, I gave a deep sigh and another string of curses as I got on to the next part of my rescue; cutting the ropes.

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  In the penny dreadfuls, rescues are always easy, the hero getting not even a scratch on him as he rescues the damsel in distress and the love of his life, sweeping her off her feet and defeating the evil villain with a few special (read as suspiciously all useful) powers and married her and they lived happily ever after.

  In real life, rescue was mind numbingly boring and could actually put you to sleep if you dared to observe one, let alone carry out your own rescue. My subconscious tiredly but persistently pressed the sharpest edge to the rope back and forth repeatedly, on the same hand, fraying it (looking at my bloody hand with various cuts and nicks, you guessed it right how I found out the sharpest edge), while my conscious mind wandered in thoughts flickering from the contents of the file to Mr. Ambrose to Dalgliesh, my aunt and sister and friends...

  But it kept on returning to conjuring different theories about what could have been so terrifyingly life altering for someone to leave their home and parents, and solidly freeze a child's heart, no older than fourteen? What could have been so abominable to create such a dangerous enemity with someone else? To have such an intense level of hatred for each other?
To make them willing to do absolutely anything to bring down the other?

  I did know who Mr. Ambrose was as a person. He was the stingiest piece of a frozen hearted statue of granite, who was a bit too much obssessed with his only friends which were carved out of gold and silver and could be traded for various goods of immense value in the market. Some also prefer the term 'money'. He was the most cold, calculating son of a bachelor south of the north pole, but what I did not know was what made him like that. Nobody was born like that.

  Enough of the depressing thoughts. Think about something else. Like Ella, Patsy....

  Crap! I had nearly forgot about it! I had been avoiding my friends, especially Patsy, since the last week, when she had almost perforated me with her extra sharpened parasol when I had been unable to spout a convincing instant lie for why I had not attended the suffragist meeting last Wednesday and I did not have the guts to face her wrath anytime soon without my 'convincing excuse'. And since I could not exactly inform her of  my small pasttime of fetching files for a certain tyrannical businessman, I was unable to find any excuse which could ensure my survival.
 
  Yeah, you're afraid to even lie that you have not been travelling deep into the Amazonian jungles with two men, looking for a treasure which had a major chance of not existing. If she even doubts that you had been trying to tolerate the company of two men without a sharp parasol by your side, let alone seduce one of them, you'll cease to exist, immediately.

  Dangerous images of forbidden desires and hot passion in the sweltering heat of the jungle swirled in my mind and my cheeks grew warmed.

  The loosening of the bonds on my hand thankfully caught my attention before I could nick my skin, again, and a new wave of motivation washed over me as I warily relaxed my sorely paining wrist, which felt like another of my limbs about to drop off.

  The excitement about finally, actually getting out of here brought me out of my sleepy stupor and I quickly used my free hand to cut through the rope.

  Ah! The freedom of unrestrained hands! Standing on my half wobbly and numb legs, I stretched myself, relaxing my sorely sore and aching muscles all over and a huge alligator size yawn left my mouth.

Collapsing into the creaky chair, I let my eyes relax, closing them against the dim light of the bulb. Well, well, who knew that rescueing yourself was such hard work? I had earned myself the right to a small nap, hadn't I now?

  There was a moment of silence except for the sounds of the rain outside, which was suddenly interrupted by a muffled shout and few thumps and footsteps and I pushed one heavy eyelid open.

  There was a jingle of keys near the door and I dragged my aching derrière out of the chair, groaning and complaining under my breath. Can't I have a break?!

  If Dalgliesh was here again, then, well, that would potentially mean that my rescue went in vain, and on no account I would allow that! I picked up one of the broken bottles as my handy weapon and wondered why broken bottles were not used as regular weapons; after all they were less cubersome, less costly and yet just as lethal as most other knives. Well, I gave a shrug, most men are too stupod to notice the various ways regular household items could be used as weapons.

  Giving myself a pat for this wonderfully innovative invention, I tiptoed over the suspicious piles of dirt and the alcohol and positioned myself exactly behind the door. This position was absolutely the best, even if you fully enter the room and close the door behind you, there was a 73.04 percent chance that you will fail to notice someone standing there, giving him or her the element of surprise and a free reign to attack first.

  How do I know, you ask? Well, I have tried it out successfully many times when my dearest aunt is searching for me, to drag poor little me to another of her balls. Quite a handy trick, I must say. It has saved many lucky suitors from my heels and parasol.

  Clutching my weapon with both hands, I was ignoring the rush of adrenaline throughout my body and  concentrating on the door, when it was thrown open, literally on my face!

The bottle fell from my hand as clutched my nose and rubbed it with both my hands. Bloody son of a bastard! Who the hell opens blasted doors like that?! Leaning against the nearby barrel with my head down, two familiar pairs of shoes appeared in my vision, and a huge wave of relief and other indecipherable emotions took over me.

  Admit it, you don't feel so scared anymore now that he is here!

  What do you mean?! I was never scared in the first place! Stop lying!

  Really?

  Shut up!

  Ignoring the man in the suit, I met the eyes of the one with a beard and turban with my most ifrit like dangerous glare I could muster with my hands still rubbing my nose, and he looked back with the strangest mix of emotions as I spoke.

  "Come here to return my gun, have you, Karim?"

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Dear ladies and gentlemen,

  I know this is a shorter chapter as compared to the previous few, but it had to be ended here because of the chapter content I have planned. Anyways, it is a double update today! Enjoy!

Finally, finally our knight in his ten year old mint conditioned tailcoat is here! Albiet a bit late, i.e. after the self rescue, but still, prepare yourselves for a bulk of Lambrose in the next chapter!

P. S. I would like to specify that even if this seems like another version of what is going on in the original series, however, it is a complete coincidence as I had come up with the kidnapping idea from another fanfiction on wattpad itself weeks before Sir Rob published that chapter on even Radish. Also, I would like to stick to what could actually happen, combining both mine and Sir Rob's writing style. Even though mine is nowhere near his level, please do not say that I have tried to copy his idea.

P. P. S. Don't forget to vote, comment and enjoy!

(Published 1 Feb, 4:01)