Rob left the two of them alone in search of information about the theft of the motorcar. He left with his flat cap pulled over his eyes and the stolen ring in his pocket in the hopes of selling it on. Kit peered through the dirt-covered window as he left, anxious to know how far the police had already looked and how long they had until they needed to be on the run. He thought about the stolen Rolls Royce hidden in the garage and smiled.

After years of waiting and dreaming, the motorcar was his. Sure, he hadn't taken it the way he wanted to, but he finally had it. He wondered what his parents would say if they saw him in it. They always told him he'd never amount to anything, never own anything other than the scraps of fabric on his back. Kit loved the idea of rubbing their faces in it, but he knew the danger it posed.

He stepped away from the window, approaching Emily, who refused to sit on the couch and had instead found a spot on the concrete floor. She drew her knees into her chest and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin. Her eyes stared straight ahead, but Kit wasn't sure if she was looking at anything. He'd seen that same look in people at Newgate. A hopeless, vacant expression.

Kit could hardly blame her. Sleeping on a straw mattress, unable to go outside, and eating lukewarm, undercooked eggs was hardly the life she would have known. He remembered the comment she made the day they argued, the coldness in her voice. Was life with all that money really as bad as she made it out to be?

"Why'd you come with me?" he asked. He slowly lowered himself to the cold ground beside her, his leg fighting his every movement.

"I couldn't stay there. Not with him."

"But a life on the run? That something you've always wanted? I ain't got a penny to my name, well not yet anyway, and starting again in a new place ain't going to be a picnic."

"It doesn't matter." She lifted her head from her knees and looked at him. "Anywhere is better than being stuck in that house with my father."

Kit whistled. "Must've been bad for you to think Rob's cooking is better than that."

"Leaving with him was like being in gaol. He never let me do anything unless he was there, wanted me to be the perfect housewife, and didn't care for what I wanted. Before my brother died in the war, he wasn't too bad. I became his sole focus, his only heir, and it made him relentless. To tell you the truth, I was thinking about running away long before you showed up, but when you did, I thought—"

"—That I could help you?"

Emily nodded, running her hands down her legs.

"So that's why you spent all that time in my room. Why didn't you just ask? You must've known I got those bruises in a fight, and you sure as hell knew that the ring wasn't mine."

"I thought you would laugh at me. You said yourself that I don't know anything about the real world. I've spent my whole life sheltered. I've never had to make a living for myself, earn money, or even cook. I wanted freedom, but I didn't know how to get it. Until you."

"What would you have done if I never turned up? If your father had never hit me?"

She shrugged. "Stayed where I was. Running away was a dream. When I was little, I used to dream that I was a princess waiting to be rescued from a tower and that one day a brave knight would rescue me. Waiting for that knight was freedom in its own way. It gave me an escape."

"Well, I ain't a knight."

"No, but you gave me my freedom."

Emily smiled for the first time since leaving her father's house several hours before. Kits stomach twisted itself a little and for a second he wondered if it was the bad eggs Rob had given him, but he knew it was more than that. Far more than that.

No one had trusted him in the way she did. Emily was willing to give up everything, the good and the bad, for a life on the run with someone whom she had known for a little over a week. She saw him as a hero rather than a villain, a knight rather than a bandit. He'd always thought of himself as a lone wolf, destined to spend life alone on the run, but she changed that.

Although leaving the city in that last bid for freedom would be difficult, or impossible, Kit was willing to try. If Emily had already trusted him that much, then he wasn't going to let her down. She was right about not knowing how to survive in the real world with nothing but the clothes on her back. He knew all that and more.

Whatever information Rob came back with — good or bad — Kit intended to do the best he could with it. He refused to let Emily go back to her father, and he had a feeling there was more to her story than she was willing to share with him. She didn't appear affected by the handprint-shaped mark on her cheek and he knew that it must not have been the first time.

He wasn't going to mention it, though. If she didn't want to tell him, that was entirely up to her.

"Where do you want to go?" Kit asked after a few minutes of silence. "Once we get out of the city, where can you see yourself living?"

"By the sea. Somewhere we can hear the seagulls and see the sunlight reflecting off the water. I haven't been to the seaside in years."

"I've never been."

"Do you think we could? Once we sold the ring?"

Kit shrugged. He'd never thought about how much money it would take to leave the city. All he thought about was whether he had enough to keep a roof over his head and food in his stomach. "Maybe. It might get us some way there, but we'll have to get the rest from somewhere else."

"Where?"

He didn't reply. Kit stared across the room, listening to the rumble of cars just outside the door, the people driving them oblivious to the two people hiding from the world. The seaside would be hard to get to, but if Emily wanted to go, he was going to get her there, no matter the cost. 

~~~

First Published - February 5th, 2024