Scandalous Wager: A Whitechapel Wagers Novella

by Christy Carlyle

  Ian chilled at the thought of such a man walking the streets of Whitechapel, especially when he considered Lizzy had walked the same streets tonight. He had known that Ainsworth’s daughter spent her days working at a charity school not far from his door. On occasion he even allowed himself a detour over to Rutland Street in hopes of catching a glimpse of her as she ended her day so that he might offer to escort her home. Their paths had never coincided, and yet he had spent no small amount of time fretting about her travelling on foot, alone, through Whitechapel, especially as winter approached and the hours of daylight diminished. But now—after kissing her, holding her, coming so close to having her—his desire to keep her safe was as overwhelming as the drive to bring the murders to an end.

  Ian shifted in his bed, unable to find comfort. His mind raced, even as his body craved sleep. Despite the hazard she had risked in coming, Lizzy’s appearance at his door had been an unexpected gift. He smiled at the memory of her, dressed so primly and with ladylike decorum, offering him a treasure he knew he didn’t deserve. But he wanted it. He wanted her, and not just as some last desperate act before she gave herself up to charity work and a lifetime of loneliness. What nonsense to think he wished to marry her sister! He’d dined at the Ainsworth home on four occasions and the younger Miss Ainsworth had barely made an impression, except for her terrible singing.

  From the moment he’d clapped eyes on her, Lizzy had filled his thoughts. The more he learned about her, the more he wished to know. Her reputation in Whitechapel was of a woman of almost angelic qualities—honest, kind, self-sacrificing. But now he knew there was much more to Elizabeth Ainsworth. She knew her own mind, her own desires, and it must have taken a good deal of brass to proposition him as she had. He loved her passion.

  He turned again on his rickety bed, determined to salvage a few hours of sleep before he was due in the station to give a report to Ainsworth. After that, he would seek out Lizzy. She’d asked him for pleasure and he meant to give it to her, whatever it might cost him. It was the only thought that brought him peace and he clung to it as he drifted off. Keeping an image of Lizzy in his mind’s eye kept memories of what he’d seen on Berner Street and Mitre Square at bay.

  ***

  Lizzy woke early, determined to speak with her father. She couldn’t get the murder of the woman in Whitechapel out of her mind, and she knew it hadn’t been the first. Just a month before she’d overheard her father speaking to a Scotland Yard Detective Inspector who had come to visit their home. The impulse to protect the young women she taught and worked with at Tredgard School made her intent to learn the details of the crimes. At the very least, she could warn the young women in her care.

  She tried not to think of Ian Reed, yet his face merged with her every thought, and she was certain she could still detect his scent on her skin. She had a responsibility to him too. She had promised to promote his interests with her father and intended to keep her word. Whether they would ever finish what had started between them... Well, that was far too distracting to contemplate.

  She dressed quickly, left a note for her mother, and made her way out into the early morning chill. Normally she would walk as far as St Paul’s Cathedral before hailing a hansom cab into Whitechapel, but she was eager to speak to her father and hailed a cab not far from the Ainsworths’ front door.

  The H Division headquarters on Leman Street were abuzz with activity, which, from Lizzy’s experiences of visiting her father there, was not unusual for a Monday morning. However, Lizzy sensed something more than the typical hum of a busy police station. As constables passed her, she noted hollowness in their eyes, and it wasn’t just exhaustion. Their countenances shared a haunted aspect, as if they had glimpsed something harrowing and could not shake it from their thoughts.

  She stopped one she knew from his visits to their home, an ambitious young constable her father said would make a fine sergeant one day. He was tall and handsome, with sandy hair and a matching mustache. Lizzy recalled him gazing with particular longing at Sara during each of his visits.

  “Constable Hawke, has my father arrived yet this morning?”

  “Miss Ainsworth, good morning to you. Whatever are you doing in Whitechapel?”

  His question was so strange she didn’t know how to respond. Most of the young men her father commanded, especially those who had visited their home, knew of her work at Tredgard School. She came to Whitechapel five days out of the week. What should be different today?

  “Constable, did you forget that I spend my days here? I wished to speak to my father this morning before I teach at Tredgard.”

  Hawke’s eyes held none of the humor she remembered from her previous encounters with him. Something had changed. A chill of fear turned her skin to gooseflesh and she stifled a shiver.

  “What is it? What has happened?”

  He lowered his eyes, shuttering whatever truth he knew from her. When he looked at her again, a grin that did not meet his blue eyes crested his face.

  “Let me take you to your father, Miss Ainsworth.”

  Lizzy couldn’t keep the frustration from her voice when she answered. “No, thank you. I know the way. Good day, Constable.”

  Lizzy heard him begin to speak again, but she had already turned away and started down the hall. A pang of regret for her rudeness did not allay her frustration. She did not wish to be sheltered as if she were a fragile miss. Her own mother had seen carnage and death while treating soldiers in the Crimea. Her father had been a constable before ascending to the role of chief inspector, and she knew he had encountered all manner of vice and criminality in his years in the Metropolitan Police. But there was something different about the murders of these women and, as a woman who spent her days in Whitechapel, she needed to know what it was.

  Her father’s door was closed as she approached, but she could hear raised voices inside. She stood near the door and barely resisted the urge to place her ear against the opaque glass. The commanding boom of her father’s voice was clear enough even at a distance.

  “How dare you? What could you have been thinking? My God, man, I could have your job for this behavior.”

  Lizzy had rarely heard her father so angry. She quaked for whatever poor constable was on the receiving end of his tirade.

  “Chief Inspector, if you would just allow me to explain.”

  Lizzy pressed a fist to her mouth to stifle the exclamation bubbling up. It wasn’t a constable taking her father’s verbal lashing. It was Ian Reed. His low baritone was unmistakable, especially after hearing it just against her ear and in her dreams all night long.

  Somehow her father must have learned of their encounter. Ian certainly would not have told him. Would he? Perhaps, after whatever events occurred last night, her father had checked on his daughters, peeking his head into their rooms as he or her mother hand done when they were children. He would have found Lizzy’s bed empty if he had looked in before the wee hours of the morning when she’d returned from Whitechapel.

  “No explanation could suffice! You behaved with—“

  Before her father could speak another word, before Ian lost his job because of her wanton behavior, Lizzy had to set the situation aright. She pushed the office door open and burst in between the two.

  “Father, I can explain. Please do not blame Inspector Reed.”

  Both men appeared stunned by her unexpected arrival, though her father’s visage looked more angry than startled. Ian looked worried. He even took a step toward Lizzy, and all her lust-addled brain could register was that he looked beautiful in the peach glow of early morning light streaming through the window of her father’s office.

  She smiled at him, Lord help her. Right there in front of her irate father. Facing him, with her back to her father, she whispered, “It’s all right, Ian. I am prepared to tell him the truth.”

  “Lizzy.” Both men echoed her name at the same time, Ian speaking the word softly, quietly, and infusing it with a pleading tenderness that made her
melt. Her father’s pronouncement was louder and a question as much as a declaration.

  “What on earth on your doing here? I asked your mother to keep you at home today. I must speak to you about your work in Whitechapel before it continues.” Her father lowered the volume of his voice as he spoke, his final words delivered in an almost conversational tone.

  Then he seemed to recall Ian and added, “I do not know what possessed you to break in upon my discussion with Inspector Reed, but I assure you it does not concern you, young lady. Please wait outside until we are finished.”

  He didn’t know. Whatever inspired him to rage at Ian, it had nothing to do with how close she had come to letting the man ruin her against the door of his lodgings. She turned back to look at Ian and noticed, beyond his masculine beauty, a weariness in his eyes and the same haunted look she’d seen in the other young men in the station.

  “Lizzy!” She stared at Ian too long, and her father had come around from his desk to approach her. He grasped her arm and began to tug at her, as if he would physically remove her himself if she did not mean to leave his office willingly.

  She turned to her father to tell him she would go, though every part of her wished to stay with Ian, to wrap her arms around him, to take him back to his lodgings where they could finish what they had begun. She ached to do anything that would bring the spark back to his dark eyes.

  “Chief Inspector, Superintendent Allen is here to see you. He is asking for you down the front.” It was Hawke at the office door Lizzy left open when she’d intruded.

  Her father let out a grunt of irritation and released her.

  “Take one of the chairs in the hallway, Elizabeth, and wait for me. Do not leave this building until we have spoken. Do you understand me, girl?” Her father had not called her a girl in years. Looking up at him, she noticed that his cheeks were ablaze, his mouth clenched, and deep lines of worry were scored across his forehead. She could not remember ever seeing him so troubled.

  “Yes, Father.” She had no intention of losing a moment to speak to Ian alone, but there was no point in telling her father that, especially in his current state.

  “Reed, wait for me in my office. I will return to deal with you directly. This isn’t finished, young man.”

  Lizzy shot Ian a wide-eyed look at the echo of words he had spoken to her the night before. When her father had exited the office, Ian grinned at her in reply.

  “What could you have possibly done to earn such ire? I have never seen him so angry.”

  Ian looked down at the carpet for a moment, silence hanging between them, before answering.

  “The murders in Whitechapel. Your father...all of us wish to solve them, to stop them.”

  “Undoubtedly.” Lizzy spoke the word with utter sincerity, but Ian seemed to take it as a lack of understanding and continued.

  “There were two last evening.”

  “Two in one night? By the same hand?” Lizzy knew there must have been many nights in London when more than one person lost their life, but the notion that one man had spent his evening slaughtering women—it was almost too ghastly to acknowledge.

  “I did not immediately send word to your father last evening. That is why he is so angry. As the murders continue, there is increasing pressure on him, on all of us, to solve the crimes.”

  “I see.” For the first time Lizzy felt fear, real hesitation, about working in Whitechapel. There were other charities closer to home in the West End of London that would benefit from her help. Yet she loved Tregard School—the students, the other teachers, and most of all the sense that she was doing the most good in the most dire of circumstances.

  “Your father can be a bit—“

  Lizzy cut him off. “A bit of a bully?” She knew exactly what her father could be and how he expected everyone and everything to bow to his will. Though it was true that he usually exerted his authority benevolently and for the right reasons, his domineering nature could chafe.

  “I suppose I should thank you for at least attempting to come to my rescue.” He moved closer to her, far too close to be appropriate if anyone happened by the open office door.

  “I hated to hear how he was berating you. I would have told him the truth. The fault was all mine anyway.”

  He lifted a finger to her mouth as if to stop her words, but the press of his touch turned into a caress as he traced her lips and then slid his fingers across her cheek. He bent toward her and she opened her mouth slightly, eager for the taste of him again.

  When his lips were a hairsbreadth from her own, he stopped and lifted his head. “We should close that door.”

  Lizzy left his side and latched the door, slipping the lock for good measure, and then returned to him. She didn’t wait for him to touch her this time. After lifting her hands to his face, she pulled him down for a kiss. A trickle of fear that someone might see them, that her father might return and catch them, made her hesitate only a moment before the bliss of tasting him again blotted out everything else.

  Chapter Five

  Ian meant to resist her, to pull away from her kiss, to sit her down and speak sense to her. But she addled all his senses. She smelled like lavender and fresh air, and she tasted like a delicacy, a rich indulgence he did not deserve.

  Her kiss was gentle, as if she sensed how exhausted he was, how much he needed comfort. But the horrors of the night made him want the opposite of gentle. He wanted to lay her down on her father’s desk and take her, possess her, make her his so that he could protect her. For the first time since he had come to London ten summers past he wanted to leave the city and return to the southern countryside where he had been raised. But what would he do there? How could he earn the wage required to deserve Lizzy Ainsworth?

  Ian wrapped his arms around Lizzy and pulled her close. Breaking away from their kiss, he pressed his mouth to her neck and breathed her in, nuzzling the tendrils of hair that had escaped their pins and hung in loose curls against her ear.

  He grinned against her skin when he felt her body melt into his, felt her press herself more tightly against him, embracing him with the same fierce need.

  “What is it?” She spoke the words quietly, nearly a whisper, and they were infused with a tenderness that tempted him to unburden himself of the dreadful scenes he had witnessed during the night. However, those memories—that brutality—was exactly what he wished to protect her from.

  But there were other things he needed to say to her. Pulling back, he gazed into her eyes. “There is something I must say to you before you continue to distract me.”

  “Am I such a distraction?” She seemed surprised to acknowledge her effect on him.

  “The very best kind, Lizzy. But I must say this to you before your father returns, and hopefully I will have a question for him when he does.”

  She scrunched her face in a sort of consternated pout, and he felt his heart tip even further.

  “Surely it is best for you to speak to my father after I have. I promised I would support you with him, and I will. And with Sara.” She paused in what had been an impassioned declaration and turned her head away from him, as if she was suddenly shy. “No matter what has or has not occurred between us.”

  If she was going to start on about her sister again, he feared he might just turn her over his knee and paddle her arse, though the image that accompanied the thought seemed much more erotic than punitive. He still held her in his arms and had the urge to kiss her so thoroughly she would never doubt his intentions again.

  When he said nothing, stalled by images of spanking Lizzy, she filled the silence. “I apologize for coming to your lodgings last—“

  He kissed her, stopping her words, willing her to read his intentions in his actions, but she seemed as stubborn-minded as she was passionate.

  He pulled back and she blinked up at him.

  “I am certain your sister is a charming young woman, but I don’t give a damn about her at the moment.”

  Lizzy opened h
er mouth, and he thought she might protest, but he continued on.

  “I am not interested in marrying your sister.”

  A flicker of pleasure lit her eyes at his admission, but he was far from finished.

  “And stop regretting last night.”

  “I do not—“

  “You offered me a gift, and I want it. I want you, but not for what you might say to your father and certainly not for your sister. How could you believe such a thing?”

  “Everyone fancies Sara! She is charming and accomplished and—“

  “You must mean her singing?”

  She stifled laughter by pressing her fisted hand to her mouth. “It was an unfortunate moment.”

  Ian didn’t stifle his laughter, but he only allowed himself a bit of it. He wanted Lizzy to know that his feelings, his intentions, were true. “I hardly noticed. I was too busy watching her sister.”

  “Were you?”

  Was she being coy or had she truly failed to notice how he watched her each time he had visited the Ainsworth home? The scent of her clung to him and he still had her flavor in his mouth and she still doubted him.

  “I have wanted you since you the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

  “Ian.”

  He had never heard his name spoken with such tenderness.

  The door to the office began to rattle and her father’s voice boomed his name with anything but tenderness. “Reed, why in God’s name is this door locked?”

  Even as Ainsworth spoke the words, Ian heard a key scratching in the lock and hardly had time to remove his hands from Lizzy’s body before the office door swung open, thudding against the wall behind it.

  When Ainsworth saw them both standing in the middle of his office, his eyes went wide and a swath of red spread from his cheeks to his neck cloth. For a moment he gargled and stuttered, as if he was choking on his own tongue, and then the tirade began.

  “Reed, what in God’s name are you doing locked in the office with my daughter? Damnation man, this morning I threatened a formal censure and now I find you... I find you alone with my daughter.”