Day 6 of 31 Stories - Butlers and Housekeepers #502

So now I'm two days behind, and this one was a struggle. Well, it's better than no words, even if I'm not hugely happy with it personally, and with luck I'll be able to come back to something I enjoy more tomorrow. Here's day 6 - Butlers and Housekeepers #502

She wasn't sure how she'd managed to fall into a role of leadership in the union, but here she was. She'd only joined the union, originally the Scullery Maids United, back when she first started in her first job of service, because her mother had always told her to join a union if one was offered. It helped with her pay, since staff were guaranteed a basic minimum, even if there were some households that refused to hire union labor. She'd heard stories from some of her friends who'd ended up working in those households about how they treated their servants, and she was grateful that she had help from the union to find jobs that followed union rules. She doubted she would have made it through those first few years, especially with that first "gentleman" and his wandering ways, if it hadn't been for the union.

It had just made sense, then, to keep active with the union, to keep going to the local meetings and speaking up about the needs of her neighborhood, and slowly she'd become known as someone who paid attention, someone who cared about the other people in her area who also served, and someone who was willing to fight for everyone to have the rights they were promised. Before long, she was leading meetings, making a name for herself and taking people to task as they needed to be, and people knew who she was. She'd never intended to become someone who was important; she'd wanted to keep her head down and just do her job, but somehow, somewhere along the lines, that stopped being something she could do.

That's probably how she ended up here, in the cellar of some old building, tied to a chair in the dark. She'd been on her way to a meeting, when she'd ended up with a hood over her head and several pairs of hands manhandling her into the back of a car she hadn't seen or heard coming up behind her until it was too late. They'd done it in broad daylight, too, the very cheek - they could have waited until after the meeting, when it was dark, the way a civilized villain would have done. But no, she was plucked off the street by some common vandal, and now she sat, in the dark, alone, waiting to find out why they'd taken her and what they were going to do with her. She tested the bonds on her hands again, just to see if they'd somehow loosened since the last time she'd checked, but they'd been unforgivably rude and stayed stubbornly tight against her wrists.

A door opened directly across from her chair, light flooding into the room and blinding her. She flinched involuntarily, but refused to give them the satisfaction of looking away. "I don't know why you're bothering with such tactics," she stated in her iciest tone. "Trying to scare me won't do you any good. All you'll be doing is causing more trouble for yourself when I'm found and the constabulary take you into custody. Now stop being silly and let me free, and I may put in a good word for you." She kept her posture as perfectly erect as she could, considering her placement against the chair, and glared in the general direction of the silhouette in the doorway.

There was no response that she could hear, only a muffled cry as someone was thrust into the room and the door was slammed shut once again. She waited, listening to the belabored breathing of whoever had been dumped unceremoniously into her cell, and heard the turn of a key in the door and the fading footsteps moving away from the room. There was no light coming through the cracks around the door anymore, so whatever light source had accompanied her captor had been removed as well.

The breathing of her new companion had changed from a struggling gasping for air to a stifled sob, and she closed her eyes to brace herself. It would figure that, if she was to be kidnapped, she would have to share a room and, potentially, a fate with a sniveling child. She counted backwards from ten, giving the newcomer an opportunity to pull themselves together, before she said anything. At the end of her count, the sobs had subsided to a disgusting sniffling noise, which was even worse. She couldn't hold back any longer.

"Oh, do get up and help me out of this chair, and stop that sniveling." Her voice still held the tones of command, even as she had lowered the volume so she wouldn't be heard by those standing guard outside the room. She was under no delusion that they had left her alone after locking her into the room; after all, if she had kidnapped someone, she would make sure to leave guards behind. It only made sense.

The response to her order was something of a surprise. She heard a gasp, and the sound of cloth rustling as though someone were rummaging through their pockets. The sniffling had stopped, at least, for which she was grateful, but she would be even more so if the person would get themselves off the floor and over to her chair, where they could do something useful. The sound of a nose being blown into (she hoped) a handkerchief destroyed any hope for stealth, but it gave her an idea of where her new companion was in the room as they began to move around.

"Mrs. McCormac? Can that really be you?" The voice came from much closer than she anticipated, and only the ropes holding her so tightly against the chair kept her from leaping in surprise. The voice came as a whisper, which she couldn't quite place, but it was familiar, and that gave her some modicum of hope. She heard the other person's breathing as they moved behind her, and she felt the ropes around her wrists being traced gently as the person determined where the knots where and how they were tied.

"Yes, that's me," she said in return, dropping her voice not quite to a whisper, but to an even lower volume than before. "And I'll thank you very much for getting me out of this predicament if you can, as I don't seem able to handle it myself at the moment. To whom do I owe the pleasure?"

"I'm surprised you don't recognize me, Mrs. McCormac," the whisper said, having moved to stand directly behind her now. They began working on the knot that held her hands together, and she could feel a few pinches as the rope bent and twisted under the stranger's fingers. "Then again, I guess you didn't get a good look at me. I'm glad I found you, though. The members of the union were getting really worried about you, when you didn't show up for the meeting."

"Yes, well, as you see, I was a bit indisposed," she replied, fighting the urge to attempt to help her companion pull at the ropes. She knew that anything she did right then might have the reverse impact on freeing her hands, but she had never been one to sit idly by while work needed to be done. "So you came looking for me, did you? How did you find me?"

"We received a message, saying that these people had you, and they needed one of us to come and pay your ransom before they would release you. We put together the money, and I volunteered to come out here, but of course, they double-crossed us. They were never intending to let you go, and I suppose they decided that I was too much of a liability, as well. Thus, here I am."

She twisted in her chair as far as the ropes would allow her, trying to get a look at the shape of her companion's face. There was no light coming into the room, of course, so it wasn't as though actually looking at them would have helped her see, but she felt as though it were necessary either way. "Ransom? Who demanded ransom for me? And who paid it?" She was geniunely curious as to how much she was worth in this situation, but felt that it wasn't a question a lady would ask. Still, a ransom, like something out of a penny dreadful! It was nothing to sneeze at, that was certain.

"The union paid it, and we're still not sure who demanded it," the whisper continued as they patiently worked on the knot at her wrists. "They just said that the union was getting to be too big and powerful, and that no, ah, well, no woman of your standing should be able to demand an audience with any peers of the realm." She could almost hear a blush forming on the unseen face of her co-inmate, at she could only imagine what words were actually used to describe her and the ways in which she demanded attention from those best positioned to provide service to the union. She gave a deep sigh, resigned once again to the idea that she would always have a stigma to her status.

Suddenly, her wrists were free, and the tension that released felt like a flood in her arms and wrists. She was able to move her hands around to her front, and she began massaging them, working the blood back into her fingertips and trying to shake away the pins and needles feeling that came rushing in. "My thanks," she said, allowing her relief to carry on her voice. "Now what do we do?"

Her guard was down; that was the only reason she could give herself for what happened next. She was so certain that the person thrown into the room with her had been sent to rescue her, and had released her hands in order to help her, that it didn't occur to her that something else could be afoot. That was why she didn't notice, until it was too late, that the voice that whispered to her didn't sound like someone who had been sobbing; that the person's breath came back to them far too easily for one who had been panting heavily upon landing in the room; that the person had been able to find her in the room, in the pitch black, when she'd only spoken once. There hadn't even been the slightest hint of confusion around where she might be - the voice had simply gone from sniffling somewhere in front of her to whispering next to her ear in the blink of an eye. But by the time she noticed all of this, it was too late.

Five minutes after throwing him into the room, his employers came back with a dark lantern to see what progress he'd made. His face stood in sharp contrast against the woman's dark blue dress, as he carried her over his shoulder and out of the room. "Well?"

"She won't be a problem anymore," he replied, and his voice was clear and high with no trace of accent or tears. He was a professional, after all, and emotion was weakness in his line of work. "I'll take her back out to the road, make sure the constables find her and report her incident. I expect my fee to be waiting for me."

"Of course. We appreciate your work." The man with the lantern moved aside, and Mrs. McCormac's head bounced down the hall toward the door. The problem was solved in the end.