"I don't know what you are talking about, miss," she says with a broken voice and half smile. She throws back the covers and makes to rise. I stop her with a hand on her forearm. She looks at it like my hand, free of its glove is a serpent ready to strike.

"I know everything," I say, "I know more than you. The madhouse..." I trail off, unwilling to tell her I would have locked her away for freedom.

"Madhouse, miss? Where your mother was?" Still she tries for ignorance.

"No, Sue. The madhouse where you would send me for my fortune." I swallow. I had said it, part of it at least.

"Oh miss!" She says with a gush of breath, a shock in her voice, "How could you think such a thing! You are not well."

"I am quite well. You and Richard both are in on it. I know. But," I hesitate, "we can make it ours."

She looks at me, sees the truth of it, sees the possibility.

"I will give you half my fortune," I say, "the half that was to be Richard's."

"Half?" She says softly. Something passes over her eyes. She begins to tremble. Then I realise it. Richard would swindle me. He would leave me dead or dying and be gone.

"The bastard!" I say, not minding my tongue. She starts and blushes to hear me speak such a word or perhaps because it is the truth. I grip her tightly, "We will cheat him," I say. "We will have him done."

"Done?" She whispers. She trembles harder. I still do not know if she thinks me twisted or sane.

"Do you love me?" I say, clutching at her shoulders. "Tell me. Tell me what you did meant something. Tell me you felt it. If you did, then we may cheat him."

She looks at me, her colour up, returned to her cheeks. Her chest heaves beneath her thin cotton nightgown. It gapes above her breasts like a wound. She turns her gaze from me, hair falling, disguising her face. She looks back and searches my face. What she thought she would find I do not know. Her mouth opens and closes. Finally she speaks.

"I felt it," she says softly with a quaver. And with that Richard was lost. He had no sway. With that we would cheat him, make his plot our own. With that we both would be free.

"We will do it," I say. "We will think of something."

"How can you, miss? You are marrying the prig tonight, or had you forgotten?" She hisses.

I must admit, that the notion of marriage had left my thoughts. I frown, "We need only be rid of him."

Sue shook her head, "I'm a thief, not a murderess like what my mother was."

I smile. Now her act was gone, now I knew where I stood with her. I touched her cheek softly, she jumped at the feel. 'Perhaps', I thought to myself, 'I was the greater villain, more of a villain even than Richard'. "Then I shall kill him," I say coldly, meeting her eye, "tonight."

"Oh miss!" She lurches from me, "You can't kill 'im."

"Why ever not? He would do it to you. He would send you to the madhouse in my stead." There, I had revealed the other part, exposed the villainy in me.

"'e never would," she says, but there was a hesitation, a crackle of uncertainty to her voice.

"He would," my eyes had grown wild with the telling of the truth and Sue shrinks from me. "'Here is the filthy little fingersmith come to fool you', he would say, 'you must become her and she you'." My voice was harsh and full of hate; hate for Richard, hate for what he was making me.

"You lie," she breathes, a kind of panic in her voice.

I sit back, the feathers of the bed heaving about me. "Why should I lie?" I say.

"Why shouldn't you?" she counters.

I find my gloves hiding in the linen and pull them on, perhaps to steady myself, perhaps to firm my resolve. "Look at the truth of it," I say. "You have my dresses, you eat my food, and your hands have become soft. You look, as you say, quite the lady."

She laughs and grins, "Any doctor that fancies me a lady needs 'is 'ead examining. It'd never work, you're both gone."

"Madhouse doctors, Sue," I say, "madhouse doctors who will be led to believe the lady thinks herself a maid and common place girl."

"Oh!" she cries and cringes. She scrabbles from the bed, the mattress askew, her limbs catch in linen. "Oh, you fiend!" she shrieks. I do not know whether she means me or Richard. "Oh, to think I thought you good. To think I would want to save you from 'im! You are wicked."

I look at her across the bed, the morning light shines on her thinly, glaring through her nightgown. I can see the shape of her. "Wicked like you?" I say.

Her mouth opens and closes like a hooked fish drowning in air. She says nothing. Perhaps she is too shocked. Possibly she no longer thinks me simple and slow.

"You would do it too," I continue, "you had plotted to send me there, to a place of cold stone walls and locks and straps and shrieking women. Am I that much more wicked for doing the same?"

I rise up now. I move across the bed, standing and go to her. There is anger in my voice. There is shame,

"Don't you touch me!" She says and steps back into the room. I stand short, uncertain. She glares at me with a mad eye, "Don't you dare!" She points an accusing finger, crooked finger. Her hand shakes, there are tears in her voice. "Fuck!" she says harshly and wipes at her cheek, her finger still on me. "Fuck," she says again. She sees the whole of it. She must trust me now or have nothing.

"We shall not kill him, " I say, "I must marry to secure my fortune after all." She looks at me as I had looked at Richard. A darkness comes across my vision and I grin slyly. I catch her gaze, "We shall send him to the madhouse," I say.

She laughs and throws back her head. Her arm droops and the finger no longer points. "Send Richard Rivers to a madhouse? You'll not send 'im there, 'e's more twists and turns than a prigging dodger."

"And do you not think," I say, "that I have a few twists of my own?"

"If you did, you wouldn't be 'ere."

"Perhaps I have never had the opportunity. Perhaps I have not been desperate enough. Perhaps", I say softly now, "I had not previously had reason."

"Your fortune," Sue spits like venom.

"No, Sue," I say, "you. I would cheat him for you."

"You're fucking with me," she says.

I shake my head and take another step. She allows me that. She looks at me with such hurt and bareness that it cuts. "I love you," I say.

She lets out a breath and seems to droop. She does not say it back but nods and shudders. I touch her and she stills. She looks at me and melts. Tears come again. We will make Richard's plot ours. We will send him to the madhouse.

"I love you," I say again and pull her to me. She comes, rests her head against my shoulder. I kiss lightly at her hair. She binds herself to me. I feel her warmth through thin cotton.

"How will it be done?" she asks. Her voice is steady now, resolved. She had weighed it all like silver cutlery and balanced it against her heart. Her heart wins out.

"We will leave tonight," I say. I fear we are bound to Richard's plan. Yet, there must be a flaw. There must be some thing that we know that he does not. I am sure of it.

She nods against me then draws back, "You must get dressed for breakfast, M-...Maud," she says and meets my eye. It is the first time she says my name without a Miss before it. I colour. I feel the pull of her. She tilts her head and cups my cheek in her hand. A look so soft comes over her that I shudder.

"I love you," she says, and everything changes.

All that long day she packed in secret. She did everything, things of which I would not have thought. She had bags, she had gowns laid out. She had found some small thing of Richard's. 'Prigged it', she had said, from where I had no idea. She gave it to me to take to my uncle. I was to leave it in his library.

I went to my uncle as usual to sit amongst his filthy books. All that day I thought it would be my last, the end of it. Richard left and the house was glum, like the sun behind a cloud. I did not care if I could hear Charlie wailing downstairs and the crack of Mr Way's belt against his bare bottom. I did not care that Mrs Cakebread sent me eggs instead of soup. Sue ate them whilst I watched and schemed, I was villainous and wicked. I was as amoral as my uncle had taught me to be.

The plan was this. I would marry Richard and appear mad. I would seem common. I would have been forced to conform to his plan for fear of my life. Sue would grow sleek and pretty. She would shine her hair; she would present herself. The finer she became, the more wretched I would appear. Richard would think us both ensconced in his swindling plot. Richard would write his letter to the madhouse doctors; but I would have written mine before I had even left Briar. I wrote it whilst I schemed and Sue ate eggs. I hatched it and sent it on its way with Mr Inker for the post the next day.

I wrote to my mothers, to my childhood guardians. This was my twist. I was in trouble and did not know to whom else I should turn. I had married and my husband was not all he appeared to be. He had swindled me to gain my mother's fortune, locked until I married. He kept me and my good maid prisoner, having seduced me and pled for my elopement. I was too green, too much a lady by now to know otherwise. My husband was a fiend who fancied himself a gentleman. Although in truth I knew not who he was, only who he pretended to be. I did not know if even my married name was true.

My husband had pressed our knife boy for his affections, giving him trinkets and bad coin. I feared my husband to be perverted. He had stolen rare books from my uncle. I did not know if my husband was in his right mind. He dressed my maid in finery and left me in rags. He was conspiring to have me and my maid put away like my mother and have my fortune for himself. They were my only salvation. I daren't return to my uncle for I had been spoiled by a brute and was ashamed. My husband was to send madhouse doctors to fetch us. They must help me if they had ever thought kindly of their little nurse.

Let Richard send for his doctors. It would be him they watched; not Sue, not me.

And so the time came. I stole into my uncle's library and removed four of his most prised books. I left the small thing of Richard's, a neckerchief, in a darkened corner. It looked like a coiled snake in the dimness. We placed the books in the base of Sue's bag and stole secretly from the house in a night as black as ink.

He was waiting, true to his villainous word in a small boat. There was bearly enough room for the three of us and the bags, so we sat silently, Richard rowing and I with one eye on Sue. She tried to smile in the thin moonlight but only looked deathly.

"He will not touch me," I had told her, "he will not lay a finger upon me. He has never wanted to."

"Suppose he does tonight, because he can?" her voice had shaken.

I shook my head, "He is incapable, but if he tries, I shall do something despicable to him."

She had nodded and smiled, perhaps imagining the despicable thing, but still she sat now not unlike a corpe in a grave. I clutched at her hands with my own gloved ones and Richard thought it fear.

And so I married him. I wrote my name in the register. I took to the marriage bed and Richard bled upon it. He did not touch me. I became common. Sue became sleek. The doctors came from London. Richard presided over it all, pacing, wringing his hand, appearing concerned; and Sue and I played our roles. We played them well, as seasoned actresses might.

The coach came sooner than I thought. Richard locked us in it and it took us all away, but for whom it had truly come we were not to know until this:

Dr Cristie made a bow.

"Good day," he says, "Mr Rivers, your key please?"

Richard hands over the coach key and smiles across at Sue. He is smug, he is dark looking.

"Miss Smith. Mrs Rivers, you remember me of course?" he says.

He holds out his hand. He holds it out to Sue. She blinks a moment, fright clouding her eyes. She looks at me, then back at the doctor's hand. Richard sits forward like a boy tormenting an ant with a magnifying glass in the sun. I sit silent, like stone. In truth my heart is in my throat, throbbing. This is the time of it. If I fail, we are done for.

"Come now," says Dr. Christie, "don't be frightened.

Richard puts his hand to her, to push Sue from the coach and the doctor nods.

"There, now! There we have it, see?" Dr Christie shouts. "Come quickly now, you as well."

He looks at me. I blink. I smile. I rush from the coach, pushing Sue before me. We stumble and fall nearly to the ground. I feel Richard behind us. He can do nothing, our skirts fill the narrow door. His way is barred by a bag full of stolen books. He shouts. The door slams and the doctor makes it fast with Richard's own key.

Richard's eye appears at the glass lozenge. It is wild. It is wide. He yells. The coach rocks. I clutch at Sue; she clutches at me. We both shake. Doctor Christie looks upon us as the pigeons we must surely appear to be.

Richard shrieks, swears, beats at the sides of the coach.

"That's enough of that, Mr Rivers!" Dr Christie shouts. "Drive on!" he bellows and thumps the rear of the coach himself. The driver shouts. There is the crack of a whip.

All I see as the coach lurches is that eye, peering, staring, mad and glaring with hate. He does not know how it has happened. I suppose he never will. Likewise I know not where he is to be taken. Nor do I care, for we are free.

Epilogue

We had done it. Just as Maud had wanted. It had worked, Richard was gone. Now there was only one more thing to do. We could not go back to Briar for fear that Mr Lilly would have us locked away himself for running off like that. The only place we could go was the only home I had ever known...London...Lant Street.

Dr. Christie, in his kindness arranged us passage on a train and then fare for a cab to take us. I had said that my own good aunt would care for Miss Lilly until she was able to gain a solicitor. He believed me. He had no reason not to and Maud was eager to see London. What she thought she would find there I do not know. Whatever it was, it was not what she expected.

We arrived at Lant Street after dark. There was a smut to the air and muck on the cobbles. I breathed it in like it was my life's breath. It made Maud sneeze and squint.

"Is this your house?" she asks when I bang at the door.

"Not mine, Mrs Sucksby's and Mr Ibbs'. It is a locksmith's," I say.

"It is your den of theives," she says.

I colour, but she is right. I knock again, louder. I imagine Mr Ibbs rushing about inside hiding things. The door rattles then pulls inward. Dainty stands there. She has a black eye and her face is red and shines. She steps back to let us through. Warm air fouled with sweat and the smell of piss pots comes gusting. Maud coughs. I grin and grab her hand, dragging her into the entry way.

We go through to the kitchen. There stands Mrs Sucksby. She stands very still. She places an infant into a box on the floor and stares at Maud.

"Where is Gentleman?" she asks. Still she does not look at me.

"Gone," I say, "drug off to the madhouse or to gaol or both."

Mrs Sucksby smiles then. She reaches a hand to Maud. Maud flinches and looks at me. I smile. Mrs Sucksby looks at me then and licks her lips.

"Good girl," she says.

The End.