They put iron cuffs on Clara's wrists.
"Please," Clara said to them, "my sister is very ill. She cannot be left alone. Please, she has no one else."
"Not our concern, miss," said the constable—not unkindly, just tired. "Come along now."
"Clara!" Polly was trying to get out of bed, coughing, sobbing, reaching for her. "Clara, no! Don't take her, please don't take her!"
"Stay in bed, Polly!" Clara called back. "Keep warm! Remember what I told you—remember!"
And then she was being pulled down the dark stairs. The last thing she heard was her little sister crying her name over and over, until the street door slammed shut and cut it off.
Outside, on the corner across the road, a large black carriage with two gray horses was waiting. The window curtain was drawn back just a little; Clara could see a pale face behind the glass, watching. Then the curtain fell closed.
They put her into a rough wooden cart and drove her through the cold, gray streets of London. Clara knew where they were going long before they arrived; she recognized every turning. The high black walls rose up ahead of them: the great iron gates, the narrow barred windows—Newgate Prison, the same prison where her father had died eight years before.
They led her down a long stone passage, so cold and damp that the walls dripped. A jailer with a ring of keys unlocked a heavy door and pushed her inside a small, dark cell: a bench, a bucket, and a tiny barred window high up in the wall.
The door slammed behind her; the key turned in the lock.
Clara stood alone in the darkness. Somewhere in this terrible place, her father had lain dying, writing his last letter to her, promising her that the truth still existed, promising that someone would help. Nobody had helped him; nobody was coming to help her.
Clara sank down onto the cold stone bench and pressed her chained hands against her face.
"Papa," she whispered into the dark. "Papa, I'm here. I'm here where you were, and I don't know what to do."
There was no answer—only the slow drip of water down the black stone walls. And nine days away, in a church full of roses, the Duke of Ravenshire was going to marry Lady Cecilia Marlowe.
To understand what happened next, we must go back a little: back to the night of the scissors, back to the tall, silent figure standing on the gallery above the great hall.
Because Henry Ashcombe, Duke of Ravenshire, had not walked away that night because he did not care; he had walked away because he cared too much, and because he was afraid that if he stayed one moment longer, he would ruin everything.