Unknown by Yennhi Nguyen

popular with fences; her own goals were loftier, of necessity—she needed to meet Mrs. Smythe’s rent. She held the ribbon wonderingly; it slithered through her fingers, a satiny snake. Heaving a practical sigh, she used it to tie her large clean hair back from her face.
    Her toilette thus completed, she took a tentative step outside of her room. Honestly, what could one step possibly hurt? She would read Gideon Cole’s stuffy little book. In a moment.
    The quiet of the house was unnerving; the smallest sounds, creaks of doors opening, distant voices—servants?—made her start. The very absence of noise was almost like the loss of hearing itself. And so she took another step, for the comfort of hearing her own feet strike the marble.
    Her one step led to another. And then another and another, until she was halfway down the marble-tiled hall. The walls went up and up; ornate molding marked the place where they ended and the ceilings began. Sconces were spaced evenly, the candles in them freshly trimmed and unlit. Wax candles, from the looks of things, not tallow. An unspeakable luxury.
    I’ve gone and fallen into one of my own stories.
    Delight and trepidation quickened her heartbeat. Just a few more steps forward … she thought. Then I’ll return …
    Quite a few more than a few more steps later, she found herself in a gallery of sorts: a series of portraits lining a curving flight of stairs. Ancestors, perhaps? Men in wigs, women in outlandish enormous ruffs. Dark-eyed boys posing with frolicking dogs, men with muskets. She inspected each of them as she scaled the stairs. Here and there a suggestion of height recalled Gideon, and those dark eyes seemed to run through the family throughout the centuries. But not a single bloody ancestor was anywhere near as handsome as he was.
    Then again, she didn’t know how anyone could paint light into hair, or fathoms into eyes.
    McBride, Lily thought, as she rounded a curve in the stairs, would have fits in this house. A single silver candlestick—and there seemed to be candlesticks everywhere, even in places that surely one didn’t need to light—would set her and Alice up for months, years even. She could just tuck one of those candlesticks into her overlarge sleeve and—
    Be hauled off by her ear to Newgate by Gideon Cole.
    She felt a twinge of guilt at the thought of him; perhaps she should return to her room and read the odious little book… She did, in a sense, owe him thirty pounds…
    When I’ve run out of stairs.
    She paused to impishly trace the plump little buttocks of a carved cherub; hundreds of those little blokes cavorted up the banister, entangled in carved grapes and vines. Up and up she went, past nooks sheltering blank-eyed marble busts; they gave her the shivers, those sightless eyes and bodiless heads; she moved past them quickly.
    If the bloody stairwell seemed enchanted, she could only imagine what the rest of the house was like: no doubt as vast and complex as all of London. And as soon as she began to think of the house as another sort of London, it began to seem less intimidating, for she’d managed London well enough. It wasn’t the house’s fault it was so grand.
    And there wasn’t a bloody speck of dust anywhere . For a moment Lily thought she wouldn’t mind that job; polishing those whimsical cherubs, giving them names: Oi, Denis, can I dust yer bum for ye ? She covered a giggle with her palm.
    When Lily finally ran out of stairs she found herself in front of a door leading into an intriguingly darkened room. Naturally, she stopped to peer in.
    “Who goes there?”
    Lily jumped back.
    “I know you’re not a servant, m’dear, and you’re most definitely not my nephew or any of his friends.”
    Lily froze, panicked. “But how did you know?” she finally blurted.
    There was a pause, during which Lily could practically hear a smile.
    “By your gait. And I know you are a young lady by the lightness of your step. Gregson, you see, walks