The thin sliver of moonlight that pierced the grimy, high window of the storage room was Suzy's only companion, her only measure of the passing hours. It crawled slowly across the dusty floorboards, a pale observer of her misery.
She lay huddled in a corner, the rough planks cold beneath her thin silk dress. Every muscle ached, her head throbbed where Jem had struck her with the pistol, and a persistent, gnawing pain had settled in her stomach. Her vision swam in and out of focus.
A strange, bitter smile touched her cracked lips, a "cruel smile" not of malice, but of a desperate, almost hysterical irony. "So this is it," she whispered to the darkness, her voice raspy. "A duchess, reduced to… this. I guess it's time for me to go… one way or another." The words were ambiguous, even to herself – a flicker of a thought about escape, quickly doused by her profound weakness, or perhaps a darker acceptance of her fate.
