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That there was a knock at William's door at all told him it was Elizabeth, for Victor did not knock, often. Not when he wanted William.
Despite the lateness of the hour and his own state of undress, he opened the door to his fiancee, knowing she had little care for propriety when she found something urgent-- and she must have found something urgent, it being gone midnight.
Elizabeth was a vision in a diaphanous nightdress with her autumn-colored hair all loose around her, and William (not too belatedly, he hoped) snapped his gaze to her eyes.
"Come with me," she said, conspiratorial, and William felt every coherent thought but she cannot mean-- struck from his head with those three breathless words.
"Elizabeth?" he managed, somehow, and she laughed the softest bit.
"I'm going down to see him," she said, "the creature. I want-- I want you to come with me. I want to see if you can see what I see."
Instead of what Victor showed you wafted unsaid. "I-- do you have a dressing gown?"
"I am not cold." His dear, practical Elizabeth.
"I can see right through your nightdress," he said, and she smirked at him a bit.
"It will all be perfectly innocent--" and he hated to interrupt her, he hated to, Elizabeth ought to be allowed to run bare as Eve if it pleased her, but alas--
"We must remember whose domain we are in," William reminded, quietly. "My brother will not respect boundaries that are not enforced."
"I'll get my dressing gown," she agreed, more solemnly, but asked, "Will you come with me?"
"In our dressing gowns, I shall," he agreed, for his own nightshirt was not overlong. "... And shoes, perhaps? At least slippers?" Elizabeth laughed again, at his pleading, and disappeared back into her own room.
They had resolved and promised to be honest with each other, for Elizabeth despised having things hidden from her as though she were incapable of controlling herself, and William got quite enough white lies and misdirections from Victor. His future wife need not hide her mistakes, her mild dislikes and irritations, her changing moods from him. Though they might need to protect truth from others, they would share it together, and lay strong foundations for their marriage thus, or so he hoped.
(They did not need grand, passionate romantic love. She was a lady, an heiress, and he a baron's brother; they were marrying for the future of his house and for her security, a normal thing. But Elizabeth was perhaps the most remarkable woman in the world, and William was capable of noticing that and appreciating it, so they weren't off to the worst possible start.)
William shrugged into his dressing gown, and searched for where he'd left his slippers. His slippers were somehow never where he last recalled seeing them, even if he'd barely unpacked-- there was no certain length to this visit, given Victor's mercurial moods.
Elizabeth had not meant to entice Victor, and this William believed more readily than Elizabeth had seemed to expect. She was brilliant, his fiancee, and beautiful, and she was William's fiancee. There was no doubt that Victor thought if he wanted Elizabeth, William would not stand in his way, for what had William ever had that Victor couldn't grasp, if Victor decided he wanted it? Father's affection, perhaps, but Father had died before William could do much worth being disappointed over, where Victor was old enough to have had thoughts, ideas, goals of his own. Arguments. William had been of an age where a Baron handed his spare back to Nursie when he got stroppy or intolerably sticky.
Altogether easier for a stern, arrogant, brilliant man, as he was told Father had been, to love.
But Elizabeth was her own person, and Victor wouldn't know what to do with her, so William had simply promised her that, if she wanted the engagement broken, he would break it, and if she wanted to become his wife, so she would be, and he would provide whatever barrier he could between her and Victor. He had gone so far as to pull strings and cajole and make excuses to get Victor reinstated as a medical professor, in the hopes that he would therefore want to return to lodgings in Edinburgh and leave the Frankenstein Barony to William's care. Leave William to the estate, the house, and not make him manage keeping Victor and Elizabeth under one (generously-sized) roof.
But now this man-shaped creature in the cellars, and the distinct lack of Elizabeth's uncle...
... The way the creature had flinched at the clap of Victor's hands against bare shoulders, bare skin. William knew that flinch. He'd flinched that flinch. He knew how Victor's personality filled a room, the breadth of his gestures, his sharp, sudden movements. William knew Victor's passions, his tempers.
It had never turned to blows, not for William, but the blows had always seemed to threaten just beneath the surface-- at least until he'd grown enough to realize there were worse things to face than a slap or a switch.
Elizabeth led him down to the cellar, which had once been overflow drainage, a sort of storm sewer but for pumped water, by the light of a single candelabra, a vision in shimmering blue-and-black shot silk, making the dressing gown William had bought as a golden velveteen look rather brown and dull in comparison. He did not mind.
Victor's creature wore little-- bandages, the briefest of undergarments-- but avidly watched them approach, came to the limits of its chains... of his chains to meet them. Elizabeth boldly, fearlessly stepped within the reach of those chains. "Hello," she said to Victor's creature, smiling just for him-- and reaching back for William, who came to take her hand.
The creature fixed his gaze, one eye gleaming nearly orange in the candlelight, on their joined hands.
"I'm Elizabeth. I wanted to come and see you," she said, "to speak with you, if you'll speak with me? With us, perhaps?"
The creature looked up at her, inscrutable, but with a soft expression, and then to William.
Well, clearly the thing to do was to make introductions.
"My name," he said, trying to sound as brave and gentle as Elizabeth, "Is William Frankenstein. Your creator, Victor--"
"Victor," the creature exhaled.
"Yes. Victor is my brother." The creature tilted its gleaming head at him, and William... felt compelled to explain. "We share the same parents, Victor and I, the same mother and father."
"I'm not sure he knows what those are," Elizabeth chided.
"I-- hm. A mother is a woman," William said, "like Elizabeth. A father is a man, like me, or like Victor."
"Victor," said the creature, again, but-- William thought there was a different tone to it.
"Just so. From a man and a woman come children, who grow into men and women themselves. Elizabeth and I-- we shall marry, and with God's blessing, have children of our own."
"Not so singular as you," Elizabeth said to the creature, soft and quite fond, and William... William struggled, for a moment, to try to think of a reply to that, for now he wondered if Elizabeth saw Victor's creation as Victor's child.
"Well," William allowed, with a wry smile, "Likely not so tall."
Elizabeth laughed at that-- not loudly, not enough to echo in the great tiled space, but surprised into it, and lovelier for that.
The creature stared at her in open wonder.
William sympathized.
"She is a marvel, is she not?" William said-- to the creature, yes, but to flatter Elizabeth. "So clever, and so kind. The truest moral compass and sweetest soul. I am the luckiest man on the continent, that she has chosen me."
He reached out to touch Elizabeth's hair, where it hung by her neck, not near her flesh-- and the creature copied his gesture, on her other side.
Elizabeth flushed.
"Oh dear," William said, and pulled his hand away, noting that the creature followed suit, eyes flicking from Elizabeth to William and back. "I'm a bad example. One really ought to ask first."
The creature made a soft noise, and William... William was sure it wasn't a fancy that there was a note of questioning in it. "I suppose if words are difficult, one can ask other ways..."
"How would you ask to touch me without words?" Elizabeth challenged, and William gave it a moment's thought-- exaggerating a thoughtful posture, fingers tapping against his lips, as he did so.
"I suppose, like so?" and he turned, to face Elizabeth more, but still let the creature see him clearly. He stretched out a hand, relaxed with fingers curling in, not splayed to grab or flat to slap, raised his brows over pleading eyes, and voiced a querying, "Hm?" as he gestured to Elizabeth's cheek.
She favored him with a soft smile, a little nod, and stretching towards his hand-- at which point he closed the distance between them and caressed her cheek, a gentle stroke with his thumb over the cheekbone, sweeping in a curve, and gliding his hand away under her jawline and chin.
"William," Elizabeth murmured. "Very good, thank you." Then she looked at the creature. "Can you try that?"
The creature looked from him to her, back and again. "It's quite all right," William encouraged. The creature had touched Elizabeth already; he prayed it would be so gentle with her again.
Two long arms reached out, chains rattling, one long hand reaching for Elizabeth-- and the other for William. Mismatched eyes slid between them, begging, and the iron chains Victor was so sure his creation needed, for his own safety, for Victor's safety, clinked softly in the gloom.
Exchanging a glance with Elizabeth, they both looked to the creature and nodded.
The creature's fingertips were cold.
Not, he was all too familiar with, the cold slack meat of a corpse, but the cold of a person who'd been out in the chill for too long. His touch was clumsy, but the clumsiness of a child trying too hard to be careful as he made to copy the swirl of William's touch on Elizabeth's cheek, as he tried to imitate the motion against two cheeks, one with his off hand.
Whichever hand that might be.
His long fingers brushed Elizabeth's hair, that copper waterfall, then his attention flicked to William as his hand skated up into William's curls. The creature's great brow furrowed as he pulled his hands away and put them to his own head, tracing over the map of scars across his scalp.
"Hair grows," Elizabeth assured him, then bit her lip.
"And yours will," William at least could assure that. "It's only shaved right now so that your hair can't stick in your scars, can't impede their healing." Elizabeth looked to him in surprise, and William admitted, "I've been keeping more track than I think Victor knows. I-- I believe the hair should be brown, though I wouldn't lay money against multiple shades of brown."
"Brown," she repeated. "Do you know what texture it might be? Straight, like mine," she said, smoothing her own hair, "or curls like yours?" She reached up to tweak William's forelock.
Alas, he could only shake his head. "It wasn't noted."
"A pity. He might like to know."
William wasn't altogether sure the creature understood much at all of what they were saying, but he had no doubt there was more understanding, more intelligence there, than Victor believed. Or perhaps than Victor wanted to let on.
... Or, perhaps, than Victor understood.
How much patience would it take, William wondered, to teach a mute foreigner to understand the local language? How long before an infant, born with no knowledge of anything, uttered its first word? Did Victor have that much patience? What nursemaid was he handing his creation off to when the poor... thing? Man? When the poor fellow got stroppy, or sticky, or needed something Victor was too proud to provide? (Certainly the conspicuously-absent Harlander wasn't filling the nursemaid's position.)
"What's life without a few surprises?" he offered Elizabeth, instead, and...
And.
And they spent a rather pleasant hour, the three of them, introducing Victor's creature to words like velveteen and silk and the feel of the corresponding textures, to hair and leaf and William and Elizabeth. Despite the gift of a leaf nearly the color of her hair, Elizabeth was clearly a little saddened that the creature couldn't or wouldn't say her name when prompted, even when introduced to the idea that the throat was involved in speech, as well as the mouth.
"It's all right," William assured them both. "As tricky a pair of syllables as vick-tore is," he said, wildly over-enunciating his brother's name-- and then following suit with his fiancee's-- "Ell-izz-ah-beth is even more of a mouthful."
"Mm," Elizabeth seemed to agree-- and caught on to the exaggeration. "Will-yum. Perhaps he'll learn your name next."
Perhaps it was a pity neither of them used short forms of their names-- Ella, Will, Lizzy, Liam, Beth, Bill. Something simpler.
"... We ought to go," Elizabeth said, sadly, but correctly.
"It takes a rested mind to deal with my brother," William agreed. "May I have a moment?" It was perhaps ungentlemanly to send her out first, but Elizabeth nodded, and moved to the edge of the room first.
So William, having absorbed some of Elizabeth's confidence with regards to his brother's creature, moved close and quietly said, "It is all right if you fear my brother. I always have. He would never believe it, but Victor is a frightening man."
Elizabeth left the room fully, the candle's light going with her.
"You should not go near it," Victor's voice echoed round the corner, faint for that, but the creature looked up at the sound.
William acted on the instinct of a childhood spent tucked out of the way, with a temperamental young Baron whose word could not, by anyone in the household, be properly denied.
He clapped one hand over his own mouth, and the other over the creature's mouth.
Those odd eyes held surprise, even in what little light there was without Elizabeth and her candles, and the creature put his hands over William's hands, doubly covering first William's mouth and then his own. William nodded, trying to beg with his eyes, only taking a bare moment to make sure his nose was free. Stay silent, stay still. I cannot protect you properly, not against Victor, but this I can teach you, how to stay silent and still when someone else has his attention.
He regretted that it was Elizabeth who had Victor's attention, but Elizabeth had the strength to stand up to him, and the liminal position from which to do so-- not yet his younger brother's wife, not yet having brought her dowry into the Frankenstein family, but a fiancee only, William's fiancee, who he suspected Victor wanted to win away. Victor had to take care how he pressed Elizabeth, for she could yet choose to quit the whole engagement.
It was all William could do to listen, to hold back the fears of a child, silently and pained, as Elizabeth defended Victor's own creation to him. Victor saw no spark of intellect, which was-- patently false, but the part of William trained to defend his brother insisted that Victor was so brilliant that he likely saw no spark of intellect in much of humanity. That the creature could move, walk, gently touch, was sign enough for William. That he understood silent signals, may I, you may, stay silent was a sign of the fine sympathetic feeling William so prized in Elizabeth.
The conversation fell to murmurs, for a moment, and the next thing William heard clearly was Victor nearly accusing Elizabeth of finding his creature attractive.
William's blood ran cold.
This, this was why Victor had fixated on her, for Elizabeth held no shame in any part of herself. She sought to understand people, if they reached out to her, or if she found them compelling, or if she had some hope, as she had with Victor, that they might understand her. That she was as warm and loving as any woman, and as sharp of intellect as the most brilliant of men. William was not her equal, to understand her on that level, but he understood that level was there, he understood that as her husband he would need to shield her to the best of his ability from those who would seek ways to dim her.
Victor, at least, did not want that-- he only wanted her to be his, to sing his praises and add her intellect to his, her work to his goals. He wanted her to want him. But he therefore believed that any sign of her happiness, her intellectual interest, her infinite sympathy, must be a sign of her attraction. Victor was intelligent enough to challenge her, which she enjoyed, therefore Victor was certain she desired him. Victor's creature was new and fascinating and pitiable, therefore Victor was certain she desired him.
William wasn't at all certain Elizabeth desired anyone, and was possibly more accepting of that than a future husband ought to be.
"Your heart?" Elizabeth said, voice edged with bitter laughter. "Of all the human anatomy, that is the organ furthest from your understanding. Only monsters play God, Baron."
And thank God, thank God, that Elizabeth did not want Victor. That he could not give her the understanding that she so craved, because though they might be intellectual equals? Victor's heart had no room for anyone else to be a person to him, whole and complete and human.
Elizabeth's footsteps faded away, and William waited, hands over mouths, until he heard a second set depart, until he was sure Victor was gone.
Then, he tugged at his hands, and the creature moved his away. "He makes me such a coward," William whispered. "I do what I can, but-- he makes me a coward. I cannot stand against him, not properly, not fully. I am so sorry for that. I-- what protection I can give, I must give to Elizabeth first," and he looked up at the creature, begging him to understand.
"El," the creature said, and "Izza... beth."
"Elizabeth," William agreed. "Elizabeth first. But I-- I will not leave you at Victor's mercy longer than I must."
If he framed it the right way, flattered Victor enough, spoke of the creature's needs as a burden on Victor's work, his intelligence... It could work.
"Victor," the creature intoned.
"My brother," he confirmed. "Your creator." Had God had a brother, what would his relationship be to Adam? He would ask Elizabeth; she had a more religious upbringing than William did, and would enjoy theorizing if he asked her. ... At some point. Amid all the other things he must do and say.
The creature pressed his head forward, like a girl seeking a kiss, or a cat seeking her ears massaged. "Will-ee-um."
"William. So I am." He looked up at the creature, smiling, though he worried it wasn't a good example of the expression. "And what a clever fellow you are."
It took a moment more for it to feel polite to leave the creature-- Elizabeth could leave with barely a word, but William had to feel polite-- and he returned to his own room, to get what sleep he could. (He hoped Elizabeth had listened to him, and hadn't properly unpacked either. He hoped they could be ready to leave at a moment's notice.)
In the morning, he would tell Elizabeth that the creature had said her name, and share what he had of a plan with her, to see what she thought and what she might add-- to the practicalities. It was William's duty to flatter Victor into doing something approaching the right thing, never Elizabeth's. Victor would see it as an invitation, from her, and as mere practicalities from William, for William was ever seeing to all the mundane practicalities. And he would do so again, in the morning, after breakfast with Elizabeth.
In the morning, before breakfast, Victor showed him the corpse of Heinrich Harlander, and tried to tell William that his creature had murdered Elizabeth's uncle.
For a moment, for just a moment, William wanted to play along fully, bundle Elizabeth back into the carriage, and set off with her for Vienna as Victor suggested-- or anywhere but here. The Americas, maybe. India. Somewhere far from Victor Frankenstein, with plenty of interesting insect life.
"All the more reason," William said, instead, "to let me see to the creature now. Or-- not me directly. Elizabeth and I have so much to do to prepare for the wedding, and-- there will be more, now, with her inheriting her uncle's estate. We may have to push the wedding date back a few months, to allow for proper mourning..."
"Did you hear me, William? It killed Harlander."
"Do you know what that spares us, Victor?" he asked.
"... Spares us," Victor echoed. "What might it spare us?"
"Handle the body with care," he said, "Heinrich had syphilis."
"You knew?"
"You didn't? He couldn't hide it from Elizabeth, and she wouldn't hide it from me." Victor winced to hear that, and-- good. Good, let him understand that much about Elizabeth, that she did not shy away from difficult truths. "He hid it well, but I doubt his luck would have held much longer, and then we'd be dealing with that tarnish marring your partnership and Elizabeth's reputation. I assume the creature pushed him, and he fell? An accident, in a moment of high emotion?" Victor nodded, slowly, looking at William as though he'd done something entirely unexpected. "Thus we remove the creature from the equation entirely. Harlander simply fell. If we must say how, he slipped in the wet and fell through that hole in your laboratory-- I meant to have a balustrade put around that, a railing, I've no idea why that wasn't done--"
"It would have disrupted the flow of the electricity, so I struck it from the plans," Victor said.
He'd what.
"Victor! That thing is a death trap! You've no-- you aren't having work done here by the unskilled, the replaceable, it's all you! However brilliant you may be, you aren't immune to physics, to a wet spot on a tile floor! You might have said something about the electrical currents-- railings can be built out of nice, non-conductive materials like wood."
Victor blinked at him, owlish, over Harlander's corpse.
"You might have a point," he allowed. "But about the floor, not about the creature. Let you see to it? After it killed Elizabeth's uncle?"
"You have your true proof of concept in that creature, Victor," William said, "you have made life from disparate dead. But what the creature needs now is... something akin to convalescence."
Victor leveled William his flattest stare. "You want to put it to bed?"
"You are a surgeon, Victor, a scientist. You provide the cure, you perform the surgery, you work the initial miracle of life. What your creation needs now is a nursemaid or twelve-- someone to wash it and teach it to wash itself, to feed it, to tend its incisions and give praise for swallowing medicine-- or peas-- without spitting at anyone."
"You speak of it as a child," Victor said. "It is not. It is dangerous."
"Not like a child, Victor. Like a soldier with a very impressive brain injury that we are all hoping will heal in due time," William said, and Victor--
God be praised, Victor tilted his head, a considering light in those dark eyes.
William barrelled on. "That sort of care is beneath you. It's beneath you as a surgeon, and it's beneath you as a baron. I know a place I can secure quite quickly-- clean and comfortable, a good place to heal-- and I can staff it discreetly. Guards, nurses used to working with terrible injuries, cooks and cleaning staff who can mind their tongues.
"Let me prevent any more accidents such as befell Herr Harlander," William said. "Let me install your creation somewhere out of sight, and the next time you see it will be when it is..." He did not feign groping for words. He'd hoped to have another few hours to plan this, and Elizabeth's input. "When it is more capable of behaving like a gentleman."
"You will keep Elizabeth away from it," Victor said, and ah, there was the rub.
"Elizabeth is a lady," William said, and did not lie. He let his haughty, dismissive tone lie for him. "That sort of caretaking is beneath her, as well, except perhaps in the case of a close relative-- a parent, if hers lived, a sibling, though she has none, or her own child."
"That is all I could truly ask," Victor said, shoulders sagging. "If you would take it from here, take this, this--"
"Burden," William said. "You should be celebrating your successes, reviewing your process, resting and reviving yourself so you may be sharp when looking for places where refinements might be made, not drudging away trying to coax words out of a brain more focused on movement."
"... Movement. You think-- you think it's developing movement, coordination, before language?" Well, William already knew he was going to have to have someone sending progress reports back to Victor if he was to give the poor creature any peace.
"Victor, tell me truly which you'd rather have at this point-- a creature with admirable command of language, or one with full command of its bladder and bowels?"
This had the intended effect, as Victor stared off into nothing for a long moment, clearly trying to picture wrangling his creation into a clean nappy several times a day. "William," Victor said, quietly, "you introduce me to blessings I did not know to be grateful for. If you can find the staff-- they cannot know its origins, not until I'm ready--"
"He was a soldier," William said, "who was terribly injured and has undergone an experimental treatment. His every inch of progress may save countless lives in the future. Is that not the point, after all? Today, the hard work of life from death, tomorrow... tomorrow, when a soldier has lost his head, his limbs may spare a comrade from life as a cripple. Tomorrow, no fear of death on the operating table, no worries about running out of time-- repair the patient's body and then revive them, good as new."
"The trouble is, all the parts must be good as new," Victor said, leaning against the slab. "Harlander-- Harlander wanted his brain put into a new body. But the syphilis--" Victor shook his head.
"... Why would he ask for that, and not for you to work out a way to cure syphilis?" Because for one, Christ, Heinrich, do something the easy way for once. For another, William didn't doubt Victor could, if he put his mind to it, cure the clap, and that would manage to enrich the Frankenstein name more than Victor's campaign to conquer death ever could. And for a third--
"... why in the hell didn't he just ask me to develop a cure for his blasted syphilis?" Victor started, and went off on a rant half addressed to Harlander's corpse, half to the invisible audience, perhaps of students, that Victor seemed to believe he had at all times, and not at all to William himself.
So, for a third thing, it was a very effective distraction.
William had the coachman take Elizabeth to the nearest reputable inn, to which of course she protested. "You cannot shut me out of this!"
"Victor doesn't want you near his creature," William explained, and as Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest, quite reasonably, he went on, "So we shall not let him see you near his creature. That's all. Well, that, and I'm not entirely sure how to fit all that leg and a crinoline into a carriage this size," which netted him the exasperated smile he was hoping for. "Besides, I am not asking you to stay at the inn. One of us must flatter Victor until the carriage is moving away with his creation inside, and the other must procure something for the poor fellow to wear."
"If those are the only two pressing duties, I do have a preference," Elizabeth agreed, and kissed his cheek before the coachman drove her well away.
William turned his hand to keeping Victor busy-- making notes on every detail of his creature's treatment so far, what should continue to be done for him, medically speaking, what information he would want as time went on, what sort of feeding schedule Victor had set up. (Victor fed himself, and his creature, when he remembered to do so. Victor slept when he remembered to sleep. William considered them all lucky that the creature hadn't tried to bite anyone and discovered men were made of meat, and edible in extremis. At least it had access to water, reasonably clean due to being rain runoff.)
"You cannot treat it like a man," Victor said at one point, almost warning.
"I must," William said, "for that is what the staff must believe, to maintain secrecy. Fear not, Victor, I won't forget the truth of the matter."
And so William was at least able to get the creature out of shackles, and bundled in a blanket, before loading him into the coach when it returned. The coachman's eyes were full of questions, which William acknowledged with a tilt of his head, but Victor preferred to think of servants as a sort of extra-useful type of furniture, and William didn't tend to deflect Victor's attention in their direction unnecessarily. He would explain later.
The creature proved difficult to get into the carriage-- not out of his chains, though Victor had packed a set, and was fearful of having his creation loose in the carriage with William. "It's stronger than it looks," but William had watched the creature entertain himself with tiles, and leaves, and the textures of fabric and hair.
"I believe the novelty of the carriage will be occupying enough, for a while. I'll manage," he promised. "If there seems to be any trouble, I'll use the shackles then."
To his dismay, the creature found the carriage horses fascinating; to his relief, the horses did not seem at all bothered by this under-dressed gentleman. The coachman swung himself down to demonstrate how not to get kicked or bitten by a horse, while William buried his face in his hands.
"Are you sure you don't want to set out with the chains on?" Victor asked, mocking just that little bit.
"They're a bit heavy to use as a leash," William sighed, "which may be what I chiefly need."
With a great deal of chivvying, and one reminder to Victor that horses are easily frightened, William did, eventually, get the creature into the carriage, and the carriage moving away from Victor's laboratory.
What Victor would do next, William was willing to leave in fate's hands. To a creature utterly fascinated by tufted upholstery, William promised, "Elizabeth and I will be taking care of you, now."
"Elizabeth," the creature said, and, "Victor?"
"Victor stays," William said. "We go. You, Elizabeth, William-- we all go. Together."
"Elizabeth," the creature said again. "William."
"And you," William agreed. "Just so."
What he'd do ultimately, William wasn't sure. The plan to see the creature cared for properly wasn't a bad one, and keeping Victor informed would require sending regular progress reports. Worse, he didn't truly have a place in mind; his first instinct was to bring the creature home, to the Frankenstein estate. But-- he could do this, he could, and if he had to do it a single small step at a time, so be it. The next few steps were simple, first, keep the creature calm and entertained on the carriage ride. Second, reunite with Elizabeth.
Third, get the poor fellow properly fed, and into a decent pair of trousers, whichever could be managed first.
Simple. Simple.
William would get it to work.