Chapter 4

Ciel's POV:

My escape seemed to be going well. There'd been no hue and cry raised at the house, so no one had seen me leave. Perfect. I made my way down the road, hoping that Sebastian would appear, but when he did not, I kept going. There was no reason for me to go back and every reason for me to keep going.

Still, I was worried. It was not like Sebastian to just...disappear like that. I could always count on him being there. I knew he would remain by my side whether I told him to or not, and to not have him with me was strange and more than a little unsettling. Where was he? Why hadn't he come yet? I still had the mark, so he wasn't dead and our contract was still valid. Whenever I got myself into difficulties, Sebastian was there, protecting me and getting me out of them.

It seemed I had come to take such things for granted. I would have to work on that; it would not be a good idea to become too dependent on someone else, even if that someone was a demon. When you began to take things for granted others could attack and take advantage of you before you realized they were a danger.

I kept moving. The day was cool and there was a hint of rain in the air, which I hoped would hold off until I got to someplace resembling civilization. Then, it would be possible to send a wire to London and arrange for transportation. Once I got back to London...well, we would see.

All right, as a plan it was less than perfect, but it was all I had.

I kept walking, trying to squelch my rising worry for Sebastian. I'd never known him to go so long without being by my side. There were times when I was convinced that he...well, enjoyed being in my presence, not because he felt affection for me but because...well, being near me was something he needed. I didn't quite know how to explain it. The fact that he was gone was more strange than I could say. I only hoped that he was all right. A servant who was ill or injured could not perform his accustomed tasks. That, and...well, that.

I was cursing my shoes within an hour. They were appropriate for wandering the house and the gardens, but not for moving over country roads for any length of time. I could feel every stone, pebble, twig, and rut in the road and my feet were killing me. I was pretty sure I had blisters forming and I'd turned my right ankle a little on a stone. I'd never quite appreciated carriages before this, and now I appreciated them so much that I was sure that I'd never take them for granted again.

One day, I resolved to myself, I was going to make sure that I would be in a condition to handle anything physical. It shouldn't be this difficult for me to get away! A few riding lessons and fencing lessons a week and strolling around the garden was not cutting it for me for exercise! I might have to install a place where I could work out at the manor. I could count on Sebastian keeping me on track...when I found him again...when we got home.

I could just see smoke rising from the fires of a nearby village when I heard the sound of a cart. Where was it? What were the chances the farmers around him would realize where I came from and try to take me back there? A second later the cart crested the hill ahead and I relaxed; it was a woman driver. She was likely a farmer's wife, either a dairy wife or henwife, taking out milk or eggs to sell. She wouldn't think twice about a boy on a country road, possibly headed to town on an errand for his mother. If she did stop to ask questions, I would just hand her that story and be on my way.

The cart drew closer and I fixed a friendly, innocuous smile on my face, hoping she would drive right by...

"Stephen?"

I froze. I knew that voice.

"Now, what are you doing all the way out here?" Mrs. Partridge asked, putting the brake on and tying the reins to the cart. "Does anyone at the house know where you are?"

My first encounter with Mrs. Partridge had not gone well. I'd wandered into her kitchen by accident, she'd scolded me, and then she started to feed me. It was only Jim looking for me that got me away from her, and he wasn't here to rescue me a second time.

She moved fast for such an ample woman. She was off the cart, had hold of me, pulled me up onto the cart beside her, and proceeded to lecture me about how dangerous it was for me to wander off like I had. Somehow she was managing the reins and keeping hold of my arm at the same time, making it practically impossible for me to jump off the cart and get away. I tried to pull away, protested that she was hurting me, but she kept hold of me the whole way back the house. As we pulled up to the house I could see the front door was open. Jim was standing in the door, talking to the doctor and a few other adults.

"Jim!" Mrs. Partridge called. "If you're looking for Stephen, here he is!"

The looks they were giving me would have killed a lesser man.

"What on earth were you doing; going off like that on your own?" Jim demanded, pulling me down from the cart and setting me on my feet. "Do you have any idea how worried we all were? What made you do something so stupid?"

I glared at him. "I was going home!" I snapped. "I don't want to stay here any more!"

"Nonsense," Jim said. "Don't do this again, do you understand me, Stephen?"

"Let go!"

"That's enough, Jim," Mr. Caldwell said. "He's not in the mood to listen to anything right now. He needs some time alone, I think."

That was how I found myself bundled upstairs and placed on my bed with explicit orders to stay put. I was furious and more than ready to murder whoever was in front of me, but I paused when I saw that it was Mr. Caldwell. For some reason, I couldn't lose my temper with this man. He...made me uneasy. I had a strong feeling that if I hit him, he wouldn't hit me back, but he would do something that was worse than being struck. I didn't want to know what that was.

"Stay here," he told me quietly. "I'll be up to talk to you later."

Waiting was not pleasant. I was nervous and the waiting was not helping me calm down. I fiddled with a jigsaw puzzle for a while, and then I tried to read a book, but I was not in the mood for fairy tales. Why on earth couldn't they have a few good books, some that would be something of a challenge to read and actually be interesting?

It wasn't long before I became hungry. I'd lost my lunch, missed tea, and now it was past dinner time. I knew it wouldn't be long before my stomach started to hurt from being empty. Sooner or later, they'd have to feed me, wouldn't they? I really, truly wanted to go downstairs to dinner, but Mr. Caldwell had told me to stay where I was. What would he do if I disobeyed him? If I disobeyed Sebastian (not that he actually had the temerity to give me orders) then all the retribution I could expect would be a large serving of vegetables at the next meal and possibly some small joke at my expense disguised as a conscientious butler's duties. I'd learned to live with such things long ago since I wanted his services far more than I minded the occasional minor inconvenience. Mr. Caldwell...well, I didn't know just what he would do in response to disobedience.

I groaned. Why on earth was I worrying about this?

Easy answer. I was undercover.

Footsteps alerted me to someone coming down the hall. The door opened and there stood Mr. Caldwell, holding a vision of heaven: a full supper tray.

"Hello, Stephen. Are you calmer now?"

"Yes," I told him, my eyes fastened on the tray.

"Hungry?"

"Very."

He placed the tray on the table for me and I wasted no time in sitting down and starting on the stew and dumplings in front of me. I paused long enough to give him a hasty "thank you."

"You're welcome," Mr. Caldwell said easily, sitting down across from me. "Stephen, can you tell me why you ran away?"

Ran away. It sounded so childish. "I wasn't running away. I was going home."

"You have a home here," he pointed out.

"I didn't ask for it."

He smiled. "Did you ask for the one you had with your uncle?"

"I was glad to have it," I snapped. "If Uncle Lewis hadn't taken me in, I could have ended up in a workhouse or orphanage or worse. Uncle Lewis gave me a home. No one had any right to take me away from it."

"To take you away from a man who beat you and barely fed you?" Mr. Caldwell said, raising his eyebrows in surprise. "Oh, of course we wouldn't have an obligation to a child to make sure he isn't harmed. Perish the thought."

I fought down the urge to gouge out his eyes with my spoon. I took another bit of stew to keep that from happening. Making him angry would not serve any purpose just yet.

"Mrs. Partridge said that she'd never been so surprised when she saw you on the road," he continued.

"I don't doubt it," I said, bisecting a dumpling and popping half into my mouth. If he was driving to a point, then I couldn't anticipate it. The best course of action for me at this point was to stay silent.

"I must confess, I was rather surprised at your actions, myself," he continued. "I keep asking myself the question, 'Why would a boy do such a thing?'"

Any answer I gave him would be exceedingly rude with plenty of words unbefitting a gentleman, so I kept my mouth shut. It did not do to lose one's temper.

"It makes me wonder..." Mr. Caldwell trailed off. "You know, Stephen, we give you relative freedom here."

The temptation to lose my temper was overwhelming, though. If I spoke, I'd start shouting about his ridiculous ideas of "freedom." Why wouldn't he just get to the bloody point? I finished the last of my stew, sopped up the gravy with bread, and started on the baked pudding while he fell into a brown study. I had an odd feeling that he might try to take the tray away from me if I didn't eat it quickly.

"Slow down, I'm not about to take that away from you," he said, sounding rather surprised. "You'll choke if you eat so fast."

I stopped and glanced at him, but I did slow down after that.

"Stephen, you lost your mother when you were younger, is that right?"

I nodded. "Yes, that's right."

"I wonder if some of your restlessness is due to not having a mother's care for so long," he said thoughtfully. "Do you miss your mother?"

My remaining appetite disappeared. "I'd rather not talk about it."

He nodded. "I see. I'll let the topic rest, for now. What we need to do this moment is think of a suitable punishment for you. You had every adult here worried sick when you disappeared."

Now I was beginning to get nervous. Punishment? When I'd been younger, my parents had punished me by sending me to my room, making me sit in a corner, not having sweets, etc. They always made sure that any punishment they gave me was reasonable and related to the offense I'd committed, but these people... "You're going to punish me?"

"I think that the situation warrants it," Mr. Caldwell said. "Everyone else has left the punishment up to me."

He was going to punish me? Oh, no. "Are you going to whip me?" A child who'd been living rough in the East End would logically conclude that such a punishment would be given, and often it would be given for even the most trifling offense.

He looked shocked. "Certainly not! What a barbaric idea! No, something else is needed, not a whipping." He stopped and appeared to think. "I feel that since you didn't appreciate the freedom you already had, it might be good for you if you experienced real constraint."

I didn't like the sound of this. "What do you mean?"

He looked at me, and for one insane moment, the man reminded of Sebastian! "Have you finished eating?"

I swallowed hard. I didn't think I could eat anything else with the way I was feeling. "Yes."

"Then come with me."

I leapt from my chair and backed away. "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me where we're going!" I shouted. I was afraid now.

"I'm taking you upstairs to the adults' floor. There's an empty bedroom up there. That's where you'll spend the next week. You'll take all your meals there and you'll do your studying there. At the end of the week you'll be brought back down here to the other children. Do you understand?"

I looked for a way to escape, but he was between me and the door. (It should be a requirement for all house builders to give each room two doors!) "You're going to lock me up?" Being locked up could always make me panic. I'd been kidnapped once while Sebastian had been trying to fend off an attacker and my kidnappers had locked me in a closet. Being in that confined space had brought back memories of my captivity and by the time Sebastian had found me and gotten me out of there I'd been catatonic. It had taken a full day for me to come out of that fit.

"No, I won't lock you up," Mr. Caldwell said patiently. "Your door will not be locked unless you want it to be. I do not care for being locked up myself, so I would not inflict it on a child."

He sounded so reasonable that I could feel myself calming down. "I'll have the room to myself?"

"Yes."

"No one will come in during the night?"

I could tell what he was thinking: What has this poor child lived through that's made him so afraid? He didn't say it, though. "No one. If you like, I'll even post a guard."

I shook my head. "Should I bring my school books?"

"Bring whatever you think will help you stave off boredom," he told me. "You'll be on your own a lot."

That was generous. He was giving me a chance to bring things so I wouldn't be bored out of my skull. I packed my school books, a few volumes of poetry, and a drawing pad and pencils in a pillowcase and followed him out the door. All of my instincts were screaming at me to turn and run, but for some reason I could not fathom, I kept following him. Down the hall, up a staircase, down another hall, and into a room tucked under the eaves. Someone had been there ahead of us and had prepared it for me: There were fresh linens on the bed, a fire in the grate, and a pitcher of hot water on the washstand. On the bedside table was a carafe of drinking water and a glass.

One thing occurred to me. "Where's the bathroom on this floor?" I prayed there was one. I hated chamber pots!

"Directly across the hall," Mr. Caldwell informed me. "If you're not in this room, then the only other room you're allowed to be in is the bathroom. Do you understand?"

I nodded and placed my belongings on the single chair.

"Good. Now, I think it will be good for you to go to bed a little early tonight. Don't forget to wash up. Good night, Stephen."

"Good night."

Once he was gone, I went through the motions of washing up and changing and sank with a weary sigh into the bed. Maybe I would know what to do about this whole mess in the morning.

Sebastian's POV:

My recovery continued at the same glacial pace, unfortunately. Even more unfortunate was a related fact: I still could not move or even sit up on my own. I could move without pain now, but only if my "nurse" helped me to move. I wanted, more than anything else, to get up and start exploring this house for my master, but I could not.

I wanted to scream my frustration, but I didn't even have the energy to sustain it for very long. Instead, I was...flat. Flat in bed, and so flat in spirits that one could have slipped me under a door like a letter. Such a thought, I was sure, would have amused the young master to no end. Lately I'd been having a lot of thoughts that I was sure would amuse him, but I couldn't share them with him. Very, very trying, that.

It wasn't long before I had two nurses. I hadn't believed Augustus when he'd told me that he had a human daughter. If a demon cared for a human, it was because he had a contract with that person, not because he wanted the joys of fatherhood. What demon in his right mind would take on the care of a human child?

Oh, the irony in that question! At any rate, Augustus brought the girl to meet me. She was a slender, white-blond creature with a kind soul...and a rabid nursing complex. I wasn't safe from her "ministering angel" spirit. I just knew that the girl owned a copy of Florence Nightingale's Notes on Nursing and had memorized it! I'd read the same book myself when the master had first fallen ill and I recognized Florence's influence in how Cecilia watched after me. (I knew, without any doubt, that I was this girl's nursing guinea pig. She was learning how to nurse someone by following the instructions in the book and by making me miserable.)

The biggest trial was the fact that she thought I was human, which meant that she brought me meals...constantly! I didn't like to eat human food since to me, it tasted bland and insipid...it was amazing to me that something like it could actually nourish humans. At any rate, Cecilia kept bringing dish after dish to me, trying to get me to eat. I could tell that my thin frame worried her to no end, so she would appear at all hours, usually with a full tray of dainty little dishes that were designed to tempt an invalid's appetite. While I admired the artistry in their preparation and presentation, I was not prepared to eat them. Besides, if I ate a large human meal I would be sick and miserable for a day or so. Just because humans regarded something as nourishing food didn't mean that it was good for demons.

I complained to Augustus after close to a week of this, and he told me that I would have to eat the next meal she brought and I wasn't to worry; it would be something I could enjoy and ingest without a problem. That afternoon for my lunch Cecilia brought a beef soup filled with shreds of meat and I could tell that several herbs had been cooked in the broth before being removed. They would poison a human, but they were good for a healing demon. Also, they made a bland meal taste rather good. While too much human food could make us ill, a little bit here and there wouldn't hurt, as long as they had those herbs and she kept bringing small meals.

As I gained in strength, Augustus began to spend more time with me. He would talk about commonplaces like the weather, the things the children were up to, the other adults in the house, and so on. He only mentioned my young master if I brought him up. (Most irritating.) When we didn't talk, he read to me. While I slowly gained my strength, he read aloud books, magazines, and newspapers. Occasionally he would bring out a deck of cards or a game for us to play, like chess or backgammon. When he couldn't be there to spend time with me, he would set up a phonograph and play music for me while he was gone. I became quite fond of Tchaikovsky after some time.

Cecilia would sometimes come to my room to keep me company, too, but the things she read aloud were usually novels that young ladies were interested in. While I had no objections to the Brontes or George Eliot, I drew the line at Jane Austen! I could only take so much of human social satire!

When she wasn't feeding me or reading to me, Cecilia was taking care of me: bringing fresh bed linens every day, fresh nightshirts, helping me with my morning wash (that was just face, arms, hands, and neck, thank goodness!), combing my hair, etc. Since my gloves were long gone she had plenty of time to examine my mark of contract and my demon-black nails and I was very surprised when she didn't comment on them. I knew she'd noticed them...was it possible that Augustus had told her what I was?

Wouldn't that scare a normal human girl? Shouldn't she have been cowering in fear of me rather than bossing me about the sickroom?

"Yes, Cecilia knows what you are," he said a few days later when I took the chance to ask him.

I tried to wrap my mind around this. "She does?" I thought about it. "Does she know what you are?"

He nodded. "She's known for some years now."

I kept my mouth shut. If I said what I was thinking...

"To her, I am still 'Papa.' It doesn't matter to her what I am, I am still the father who raised her and loves her. Your master is a child and he isn't frightened of you, so why sould Cecilia be afraid of me?"

"My master knows that the contract keeps me from devouring him," I reminded him. "Do you have a contract with Cecilia?"

"Certainly not," he said lightly. "One isn't needed. I regard her as my child. Oh, speaking of your young master..."

Just like that, I was worried. "What happened?"

"He ran away. Mrs. Partridge spotted him on her way back from town and brought him back."

"Is he all right?"

"Perfectly fine," he assured me. "He's being punished right now."

I knew that my young master would not be taking this well. "Punished how?"

"Not to worry," he said, giving my hand a pat. "It's nothing too bad; he's just confined to one of the guest rooms for the next week."

Panic rose up and nearly strangled me. "You've locked him up?"

He stared at me, surprised. "No! Not at all, good heavens! There's no need to shout, Sebastian. No, his door is not locked. He understands that the only other room he's allowed to go to is the bathroom. Don't worry."

I was worried. Very, very worried. He wouldn't take such confinement well, even if the door was unlocked. He would be irritable at first and then he would become depressed and that depression...I didn't want to think about it.

"I do have some good news. A lady friend of mine will be visiting, and I'm anxious to have her meet Ciel."

Great. Just great. Now I was REALLY worried.