The Second Escape

Dust motes drifted through the Butler Estate Library's afternoon light, never quite reaching the shadowed corners. Eleanor Butler straightened her spine at the locked writing desk. Her hands trembled as she met Sarah Ponsonby's eyes across the polished wood.

"We must leave tonight."

Sarah's fingers found Eleanor's arm. Her touch steadied them both. The soft voice Sarah used with her benefactors—all those apologetic "perhaps" and "if I may"—fell away.

"Perhaps— No." Sarah bit her lower lip. "Yes. We must."

Eleanor's formal diction fractured. Words tangled on her tongue.

"I cannot—this is our only chance."

A floorboard creaked. Mary Carryll materialized from the shadows like smoke given form. Her apron pocket bulged with men's clothing and provisions gathered over weeks. The maidservant's eyes assessed the room's exits with practiced efficiency.

"That route won't work." Mary's working-class brogue cut through Eleanor's philosophical rhetoric. "Here's what will."

Sarah wrapped her arms around herself. The gesture made her look younger than twenty-three.

"Mary, if we're caught again—"

"You'll be caught if you take the main road." Mary touched her pocket. "Lady Frances has men watching. But the tenant path through the south woods, that's clear."

Eleanor clasped her hands to still their shaking. Years of family dismissal whispered in her mind—willful, unmarriageable, destined for the convent. She looked past Mary to the window seat facing Wales across the Irish Sea. Freedom visible but unreachable.

Until tonight.

"We go at midnight," Eleanor said.

The locked desk held her forbidden correspondence, her philosophy books, her maps of Wales. All the evidence of a mind that refused to be caged. She pulled the key from her bodice.

Sarah quoted poetry—something about birds and open skies. Her voice gained strength with each line, the apologetic qualifiers vanishing like morning mist.

Mary stood still as stone, listening. Twenty years of invisibility had taught her when to disappear and when to act. This was time to act.

"I'll have the horses ready at the south gate." Mary's hand moved to her apron pocket again, a tell Eleanor had learned to read. Nervousness hidden behind pragmatism. "Wear the cloaks. Keep your heads down."

The plan crystallized between them. No grand speeches. Just three women choosing impossible over inevitable.

---

Pre-dawn darkness swallowed them whole. The worn traveling cloaks smelled of wool and rain and Mary's careful planning. Eleanor's heart hammered against her ribs as Waterford Harbor materialized through the gloom.

Fishing boats creaked against their moorings. Gulls wheeled overhead, crying accusations. The harbor reeked of tar and brine—freedom's threshold or betrayal's stage. Eleanor couldn't tell which.

Sarah's fingers found hers beneath the cloak. Squeezed once. Released.

They moved toward the Wales-bound ship with measured steps. Not too fast. Not too slow. Just two men seeking passage across the Irish Sea. Eleanor felt the gangplank beneath her boots—the one they'd only dreamed of crossing.

Wood groaned under her weight. Salt air filled her lungs. Wales waited across that water.

"Butler!"

The shout cracked the morning like a whip. Eleanor's self-doubt flooded back—cold and familiar as family contempt. She spun.

Lady Frances's men. Three of them. Blocking the dock.

Sarah's hand slipped from hers. The loss of that touch felt like drowning.

"Take them."

Rough hands seized Eleanor's arms. The cloak tore. Men's clothing revealed. Sarah cried out—a sound Eleanor had never heard her make. Pure animal fear stripped of poetry and politeness.

"No!" Eleanor's voice fractured completely. "We were— I cannot—"

The words died. The gangplank receded as they dragged her backward. The ship's rail. The promise of Wales. All of it slipping away like water through desperate fingers.

Sarah struggled against the man holding her. Bit his hand. He swore and tightened his grip. Sarah wrapped her arms around herself—seeking the comfort Eleanor could no longer provide.

The salt-laced air mocked them. So close. Close enough to taste freedom and watch it dissolve.

They hauled Eleanor and Sarah into separate carriages. Eleanor's last view of the harbor: that gangplank they'd crossed for thirty heartbeats. That was all. Thirty heartbeats of freedom before the chains found them again.

The carriage door slammed. Darkness. The creak of wheels turning away from the sea.

Eleanor clasped her hands in her lap. They wouldn't stop shaking.