by Maren Smith
***
It was a precarious balancing act he was indulging in, with one foot braced on a rickety chicken crate and his other hooked over an upright pallet leaned up against the fence. With most of his weight along that uneven fence top, he had to lean well over in order to see through the part in the curtain. What he saw was as repellent as it was titillating. All women were whores to one extent or another. He’d known that for years, but to have to see her in the act…
Men were fools, and the butcher was no different—lying there on his back, his face between her thighs as she rode his devouring mouth. His hands were on her, his fingers in her, and his cock standing impressively high, waiting impatiently for its turn at her obviously tasty cunny. No, the butcher was certainly no different from any other man.
And neither was he, it seemed. The stirring of his own cock was proof enough of that, although he knew it wouldn’t get hard. Not hard enough to be useful, at any rate. Still, that stirring was enough to infuriate. His breathing was too heavy, he struggled to slow it, even as his inability to pull his gaze from the amorous couple needled at him. The coils of lust twined as he watched her undulations. He locked his body to stillness, but his hips still twitched with the instinctive need to match those circular grinding motions.
As if they were the only two lovers in the world, the butcher kissed and tasted and touched.
He had to do something about this. He had to do something about his own lust.
He had to bring her out of there, or find a way to be rid of the butcher.
The rickety chicken crate shifted and, suddenly, so did his weight, very nearly sending him crashing face-first into the side of the building. His hand hit the window, then the top of the fence. His foot went out from under him and he grabbed convulsively for anything sturdy enough to help him regain his balance.
The couple beyond the window never broke their kiss. On the other side of Harrow Alley, the plump wife of the Fat Man stuck her head out their backdoor and spotted him. “You there, what are you about, then?”
The light from the butcher’s backroom had him fully illuminated and, for all those fumbling seconds it took him to jump down, she saw him. His coat caught on the fence as he fell. Cloth tore, but his feet hit the cobblestones and once more, he was safe in the shadows.
Except he didn’t feel safe.
“Oi, you better run!” the skinny woman bellowed as he took off running. “We catch you, we’ll thump you!”
Her shouts followed at his heels. By the time he reached the first of two corners that twisted Harrow Alley, ultimately emptying it onto Little Sommerset, he couldn’t hear the stupid woman anymore and his steps had slowed to a less conspicuous walk. His heart battered at his ribs. He had to get that woman out of the butcher’s house. There were too many eyes there. Too many potential witnesses. He had to find a way to draw her out onto the streets, where there was more traffic, more confusion, and depending on the time of day, more shadows.
Reaching into his pocket, he clutched the locket. The hinge bit into his palm, but no matter how tightly he squeezed, it didn’t calm him. He seethed, furious with the woman for coming out just then, furious with himself for being so damned clumsy, and furious with the whore most of all for keeping herself so thoroughly out of his reach. He had to get her out where he could touch her. He had to put an end to this threat, and the longer it took, the greater was the risk that she would remember something. He already lived every day waiting to see if a sketch of his face would make the headline in every morning and evening newssheet in the city.
He was almost to Sommerset when he passed the Still and Star public house. That she came stumbling out just then was nothing short of fate. The unfortunate who bumped into him was short, and plump, and she looked so strikingly like the whore that they could have been sisters. In that instant, he knew exactly how he was going to draw the harlot out from under the butcher’s protective eye.
Stumbling, the woman gasped her surprise in a gust of gin-laden breath. She was so unsteady on her feet that, had he not grabbed her arm, she surely would have fallen. She was young, no more than thirty. She was even still pretty, although the hardships of life on the streets of Whitechapel were already etching their lines around her eyes and mouth. But nothing showed her hardship as plainly as her clothes. Shabby and worn, everything she had on was mismatched as only clothes received from church charities or stolen off unguarded laundry lines could be. She was exactly the sort of woman that made his hand ache to grab his knife, and yet she was much too important to cut. At least, not yet.
Staggering back a step, she recovered her surprise enough to tug her slipping shawl back over her shoulder. “Watch where you’re going, yeah?” she slurred. “You almost knocked me down.”
“Sorry, luv,” he demurred, forcing himself to smile. “My fault, that.”
“Oi, well. If you’re in a mood to make amends, I won’t say no to a pint.” She laughed, whapping his shoulder as if they were sharing a joke. She wasn’t joking; she wasn’t subtle, either.
Holding onto his forced smile made it seem as if he were using someone else’s face, but he kept it. She didn’t seem to see anything amiss as he dug a shilling from his pocket and held it up. “Are you inclined to say no to this? I’ve two more just like it, if you’re interested.”
“Oh, aye. What do I have to do?” She stared at the coin, her blue eyes rounding. Not the right color blue, he realized. Her hair wasn’t the right shade of blonde either, but it was a close enough match to the woman in the locket and it would do for what he needed.
“Are you particular?” he asked.
She snorted. “Not for one shilling, and certainly not for three.” Tearing her gaze from the coin at last, she looked at him. “What are you wanting?” Lowering her voice, she sidled closer, the alcohol on her breath turning his stomach. “Are you wanting up the bum or something?”
His hand itched to grip his knife and take the familiar press of it into his palm. Outwardly, he only smiled. “No, luv. For this shilling here, all you’ve to do is come home with me, yeah?”
“Home with you?” Suspicion darkened her eyes, but the lure of the coin was stronger. “Why?”
“Because what I need you for, luv, you can’t do unless you’re sober.” He took her arm to lead her from the pub. She staggered, but she followed.
“Ah,” she tsked, making a face. “I only had me a little drink. I’m good for hours yet.” Weaving as she walked, she bumped his arm or shoulder with every other step. “What’ll you have me doing, did you say?”
“I’ve lost someone very important to me.”
“Oh, I see. Your wife run off, did she?”
“You’re going to help me get her back, you are.”
“For three bob?” She laughed. “Luv, I’d help you murder me mum for less than that.”
“Only if we’ve time,” he promised, and laughed along with her when she slapped his arm again.
Chapter 11
Draven made his normal purchase at the auction early the next morning. He slaughtered and hung them up to age, selected what he hoped to sell that day from what carcasses were already hanging, and brought them inside. He washed up, sharpened his knives, stocked his shelves, and then took another stab at trying to scrub the stink of spilled pickling brine out of his floorboards. The sun wasn’t yet up when he cut a few sausages for breakfast and took them upstairs to cook on the hearth. While they sizzled in a pan, he watched Florrie sleep.
She was beautiful, lying on her stomach with tendril twists of blanket barely covering her hips and one leg. The curve of her breast was hidden behind her arm. One tiny hand pillowed her cheek; the other was tucked under her chin. Her tussled hair was a halo of pale gold spread out across the pillow and down her back. He’d worn her out. Just thinking about it made him smile.
He’d loved her all night long—on the floor, the stairs, backed up to the wall a second time, with her arms and legs wrapped around him until they were both sore f
rom it. He’d taken her on her knees, with her long blonde hair tangled around his fist, her back arching, and her luscious ass the perfect pillow for his driving hips. Ironically enough, the only place he hadn’t taken her yet was in his bed. Mostly because he wasn’t a beardless youth any more. He needed time to recover and after that third time, frankly, he was done. But he’d still had his fingers and his mouth, and he’d continued to use them well up until her coming cries were mixed with pleas for, “No more! Please, no more!”
Last night had been one of the best nights of sleep he’d had in years and certainly better than sleeping in that chair. Waking up this morning with the warm heat of her back pressed to his chest and stray wisps of her hair tickling at his mouth and nose, had also been the best in years.
The scent of cooking sausage and warm tea finally reached his Florrie’s nose. She stirred, lifting her head first to bury her face in the mattress between her hands and finally just sitting up. Her hair all sleep-tussled, she pulled the blanket up to cover her hips and her breasts.
“What time is it?” she asked around another yawn.
“Early yet.” Returning to the hearth, he poured her a cup of tea and pulled the cooked sausage from the pan. “I have to go to work. But you, you can sleep all day if you like.”
She shook her head, covering a little more of her breast when he pulled a chair up to the bed and sat. Her leg remained intoxicatingly bare, that gentle pale slope of inner thigh leading his downright scoundrel gaze into the shadows where all that blessed heat from the night before remained hidden from view. Stabbing a piece of sausage, he offered it to her and tried not to stare.
“No?” he echoed.
“I don’t know. It’s getting a little cramped up here, to be honest. There’s not a lot to do except think, and the things I end up thinking about are kind of nightmarish. I was wondering”—she took a bracing breath—“as scary as it is, maybe I could help you downstairs today. I don’t know what I’ll wear, seeing as how my dress got torn, but at the very least, I can sweep the floor and keep my eyes out for sticky fingers.”
He snorted, offering her the first bite off his fork. “Dirty fingers don’t bother me, pet. It’s the sleight of their hands, I take exception to. That and the depths of their pockets. I still got a couple of Elise’s dresses in that trunk back there.” He thumbed over his shoulder to the corner. “She was about your size.”
He stuck the next piece in his mouth before he said something foolish, like: The blue one would match your eyes. Or, I’ve always been partial to the green and white one.
“It wouldn’t bother you?” she asked softly.
“Doesn’t do anyone any good all boxed up. Wear it if you like.”
Her shoulders eased and she smiled. “Thank you. Thank you for the food too. This is good.”
He touched his fingers to the brim of an imaginary cap. “No one goes hungry in a butcher’s shop. Besides, they ain’t hard to make. I can teach you, if you like. Just not today.”
About to take the next slice of warm sausage he was offering, she hesitated. “Why not today?”
“I guarantee, at least half them journalists yesterday had your sketch and description in their rags and the papers on the streets by nightfall. The rest will be there this morning. By noon today, your face will be more popular than the queen’s. Soon as I open me doors, that’s when I expect they’ll start coming.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Looneys, scoundrels… anyone who thinks you look like the long-lost wife of their dressmaker’s sister’s cousin’s best friend’s chimneysweep. Or those what think there’s a penny to be made by taking you home. Don’t worry, luv. Somewhere in that mix, I’m hopeful your relations will turn up. I’ll be right here the whole time. I’ll make sure it’s the right people what take you back where you belong. Safe and sound.” It didn’t matter how he said it, the thought of her leaving still hit him square in the chest. “Just like I promised.”
She studied the bite of sausage he cut for her, her brow worried, her mouth frowning. “What if they don’t show?”
“Eat,” he said gruffly. He already knew he wasn’t that kind of lucky. For her sake, though, he did his best to sound positive and unconcerned when he added, “They’ll come.”
Her frown deepened. So did that mix of worried confusion slowly taking over her eyes. “I-I don’t know… I don’t think…” Shaking her head, she ignored the bite he’d offered her, insisting instead, “What if they don’t? What if I don’t have anybody? What if I’m a horrible person and no one wants me?”
He put both fork and knife down. “That sort of thing will land you across me knee, dovey. You’re not horrible.”
“But how do you know? We don’t either one of us know the real me! I…” She cast her increasingly desperate stare out the window, shoulders flopping in a small and hopeless shrug. “Maybe I’m a wanted criminal.”
He snorted.
“I could be a drunk and a prostitute.”
“And yet here you are,” he countered. “Sober as the day is long. Also, me Nan and mum both had to make that choice, and more than just a time or two. Ain’t a woman in this place, and some men neither, would say aught against you. We all do what we have to in order to survive.”
“But—”
“Eat,” he ordered, holding the fork that much closer to her lips. “Whatever you did before, it doesn’t matter anymore. I certainly won’t send you back to it.”
Her despair turned instantly knowing. “You can make that promise all you want to, but even I know you can’t keep it.”
“Watch me. Last time I’m telling you,” he warned. “Eat or I’ll dust your backside for you.”
She frowned. He arched both eyebrows. He knew how to be stubborn too, and he was all done having to think about her people, her situation, or her leaving.
She took the bite, and he had the next piece cut and halfway to his mouth before, in a soft and uncertain voice, she asked, “What if I don’t want to go?”
There was no place for soft men in a world like this, but hearing her say that made that thump in his chest split wide open. It hurt, in both the best and the worst of ways.
“What if I want to stay here,” she repeated. “With you?”
He was silent for too long. He didn’t for a second think that was going to happen, and not because he thought she didn’t want to. He wanted it too, desperately. If she did, he knew he would love her for all the days of his life. But it was never far from his mind that she might have a husband out there—one who couldn’t or wouldn’t care for her, one who let her roam the street, one who sure as hell didn’t deserve her. One he’d have no choice but to give her back to.
“Is that what you want to do?” he heard himself ask, every bit as softly as she’d been.
She didn’t answer, but turned it back on him instead. “Do you want me to stay?”
With all his soul, but he couldn’t tell her that. Not if she belonged to someone else.
Reaching to cup the back of her neck, he drew her to him, resting their foreheads together, only for a moment before he kissed her.
He never should have slept with her. It was just going to make it that much harder to part, this time now for both of them.
***
There were eleven people waiting outside his shop when he opened his doors and starting carting meat out to the hanging racks. By the time he was ready to sell, that number had swelled to twenty, and from there it only exploded.
He shut his shop doors to limit the chance of anyone getting inside or sneaking up the stairs without his knowing. He interrogated everyone at the butcher block with his cleaver in his hand. Before it was halfway to noon, he’d rid the queue of three crazies, five con-artists, twenty-seven false siblings, at least one lecherous ‘uncle’ that he was pretty sure ran a brothel two streets over, nineteen parents (both singles and couples), and forty-two would-be husbands. None of them brought any evidence whatsoever. Most could give basic descript
ions of her, but nothing more than what was given to the journalists.
“What color’s her hair?” he asked one.
“Blonde,” the man replied.
“What color blonde?” Draven had drawled.
“What are you, daft now? The yellow color, mate.”
“Piss off, or I’ll cave your skull.” He’d meant it too, and his patience only grew thinner as the day went on.
Sometime around midday, the Fat Man took pity on him and brought over one of his older sons. “He knows his business, so you can tend to yours,” he said, nodding to the line that extended now the length of Commercial Street as far as he could see.
It wasn’t made better by the cries of a newsboy only eighty yards away. “Ripper Woman Has No Memory; Desperately Seeks Own Identity. Two-hundred-pound reward to whomever solves the mystery!”
“Well,” the Fat Man sniffed. “That’ll do it. Every greedy bastard in the East End’ll be knocking your door down now.”
“Like this wasn’t circus enough,” Draven growled. “Who the hell thought it a good idea to put up a reward?”
“Fifty pound from the Financial News, and a hundred-fifty from the Lord Mayor.” The Fat Man smiled wryly. “According to what I read this morning.”
“Two hundred pound,” he breathed, appalled.
Clapping him on the back with a large hand, the Fat Man said, “Best mind your doors and windows tonight. Close your drapes too. The missus chased off your visitor last night, but this’ll bring more, this will.”
That got his attention. “Visitor?”
“Window peeping on your back-lot fence. Like I said, the missus chased him off.” Folded arms resting on his belly, the Fat Man turned and waddled back across the road. His son stayed, sidling up to take Draven’s spot at the butcher block, while he stood frozen in the shade of his awning, thinking about his backroom, what they’d been doing there last night, and who would have had an interest. There was only one that he could think of: the Ripper.
The urge to go inside and double check the back was extreme, but he’d locked it and he knew it. He always locked it.