by Darcy Burke
This was her world. The rookeries were her life.
He could not change that with a simple reappearance.
***
Daniel’s stomach lurched. He should have known he’d have to enter a public house again. The single-floor dram joint was jammed between several other shops on Chapman Street. Set up above were tenements, reached by an entrance unseen from the road. Flaked green paint on the walls revealed bare, rotted wood in areas. A circular sign hung above the street, bearing the image of a three-headed boar on a rampage.
The Three Boars was in short, a public house like any other in the borough of Stepney. His breath came in short, irregular pants.
Devil take him, he wanted—he needed—to see Kate again. She had gone inside, leaving him no choice but to go in as well. He lingered too long at the door, blocking the entrance. People gathered behind him, shouting their inquiries on the wait. That was attention he didn’t need: should the police find out about his reappearance, he would surely be taken back to Newgate to face trial, not only for his escape, but for the murder.
But he had to be something better. He hated the man he was when he drank. His sister, Poppy, claimed he was ready. She supported him, and damn it all, he would not fail her again.
He stepped inside the door.
Almost all of the battered circular tables were occupied by a squalid collection of rogues, men with bleary red eyes and hard grips around mugs of gin. The whole place reeked of blue ruin, assaulting his senses and triggering memories of times after he’d left London, waking up on the floor of another brothel. He remembered fights he’d started because the gin made him wild and reckless.
He leaned on the end of the bar, searching the room for Kate.
“Care for a penny’s worth?” The barmaid ceased wiping the counter-top.
He blinked. Her accent was distinctly East London, yet her speech was polished. The lady had airs that didn’t fit with Ratcliffe. Her head barely rose above the tall counter; if she leaned down, only the simple white cap that confined her raven locks would be visible.
“I’m looking for a woman,” he said.
“And you think this is a brothel?” Her face hardened, brows knit in distaste. “This is Chapman territory. If you leave now, I won’t call them to escort your vile rear out.”
“No, no, you misunderstand me.” He quickly held up his hand. “I’m looking for Miss Kate Morgan. I saw her come in here.”
Recognition dawned in the girl’s green eyes, but she clamped her lips shut, taking a moment to survey him. “What do you want with Kate?”
“She is an old friend from when I lived in London. Please, I just want to speak to her. I don’t mean her any harm.” He scanned the room again. He couldn’t see Kate in the hordes of people. The bar was deceptively large, extending far beyond his view.
The barmaid stared at him a moment longer. Her button nose wrinkled as she thought. “She is at a table in the back.”
“Thank you.” He turned away, the tightness in his chest from the putrefaction of gin weighing heavily on him each breath was a struggle.
The barmaid called after him. “And sir? If you hurt her, not only will you have Chapman Street gang at your back, but I’ll personally draw your claret.”
“I’ve no intent to hurt her, Miss—?”
Her guarded expression was back. “Putnam. Jane Putnam.”
He nodded. “Miss Putnam.”
He made his way through the crowds. Finally, he pulled out a chair at her table. Kate had removed her greatcoat and bunched it underneath her to ward off thieves. Her gaze never wavered as she searched his face. He thought he knew what she saw: a marred image barely resembling who he had once been. His breath sucked inward, a futile attempt to draw in courage with the air.
Kate glowered. “Must we do this again? Whatever you want, Daniel, I’m not interested.”
“I don’t want anything except your company.” He wanted many things: to win her heart back, to prove his innocence, to regain some sense of control over his existence. But for now he’d settle for a civil conversation with her.
She folded her hands over each other. Her gloves were threadbare, the seams about to burst. “Tell me what is so important that you felt it necessary to linger in the exact alley I’d take to get home from the market. I don’t want to think of how long you may have been spying on me, biding your time.”
“I’ve been in London for five days.” Five long days in which he’d holed up at Madame Tousat’s Boarding House and pored over information from his friend, Atlas.
Finally, he had the names of people who might know something about the night of the murder. If he could avoid being captured by the Peelers long enough to figure out who had really killed Tommy Dalton, he might have another chance to prove to Kate he could be the man she deserved.
He glanced at the tables surrounding them. To their left, a group of sailors sat huddled around what was likely a pornographic pamphlet, from their jeers at the contents. One man in shirtsleeves with an anchor tattooed on his neck looked directly at him. Daniel pulled the brim of his hat down lower to shade more of his face, a lump high in his throat.
He couldn’t recognize me, not in this light.
The barmaid came by, setting Kate’s plate of mutton and a glass of ale in front of her. Jane turned to him. “Would you like something?”
“He won’t be staying,” Kate interjected.
Jane simply shrugged, unconcerned.
“I don’t need anything to drink.” Daniel managed to keep the right amount of calm in his voice, like he’d practiced with Poppy. He didn’t need a drink, but he wanted one with every fiber in his being.
As soon as Jane left, Kate turned back to him. “I never thought I’d see the day when Daniel O’Reilly wasn’t thirsty. You used to be a crank man.”
“I used to be a lot of things.” Stalwart, honorable, respectable: those were the terms which had once been applied to him. The taste of crank lingered on his tongue, though he had not drank the blessed gin and water in months.
Pulling the plate closer, Kate cut into the mutton with gusto, as if it was an epicurean treat served by her father’s old cook.
Daniel lowered his voice, deciding to play it safe. “Do you know a man named Atlas Greer? They call him the Gentlemen Thief.”
Kate drew back from him. “Do you really think I’d be foolish enough to confess my associations, so that you have something to hold over me if I don’t comply with what you want?”
“Christ, Kate, why do you think I’d do that?”
She gave him a look that told him exactly how little she thought of him.
“I asked because he’s a friend of mine. I wrote to him a few months ago to ask him to look into my case.” Daniel had penned that letter a month into sobriety, but he held that information back. “Atlas is a savant when it comes to puzzles. He sees conspiracies in a simple trip to the market. I thought maybe he’d find something the constable missed.”
“When we were together, you never once mentioned your friend Atlas.” Kate’s eyes held a hard glint.
“I’d been appointed your father’s assistant. Somehow I didn’t think it in my best interest to confess my affiliation with a known thief, brilliant lad that he is or not. That doesn’t matter much now, does it?” He’d always wanted Kate to meet Atlas, but not like this.
“No, I suppose not. All those hours Papa spent grooming you to take over the company, and you threw it away as if it was nothing. I don’t understand you, Daniel.” She spoke around bites of mutton.
“Your father was never going to let me lead the company.” He had known Morgan had plans for him, but he couldn’t see himself as the head of a large shipping company. Her father had never specified that Daniel was his successor.
“Why do you think he introduced you to all his damned suppliers, his business partners? Because he believed in you.” She hissed the last word as though it was the gravest insult.
Once you believed in me, to
o.
“When you got arrested, Papa’s good name was dragged through the ditches. Everything he’d done for you, and instead you brought shame to our door.”
“I’m sorry.” He’d been a fool to not imagine what wide-reaching effects his departure would have.
“Apologies won’t bring back the company or my life.” She wouldn’t look at him, gaze intent on the mutton.
He was so unimportant to her he didn’t deserve her attention.
They lapsed into silence. She patted at her hair, parted in the middle with short curls on her temples. When he had last seen her, she had worn her chocolate curls in ringlets with silk flowers. He liked this new, simpler style better. It felt more genuine.
He let his gaze run down her frame. She had always been tall, but she was gaunter now—her thinness was emphasized by the swell of her wide skirts, the puffed sleeves of her azure dress.
Yet she remained the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Kate finished her mutton and took a swig of ale. He watched the line of her throat as she swallowed, imagined the taste of the frothy brown liquid on his tongue. Her fingers curled around the clay mug. An angry scratch ran across her wrist, in the space between her glove and sleeve. Dark circles lined her eyes.
I doomed her to a life of hard labor and injustice.
“After I left…” He didn’t know how to finish that sentence without hurting her, and so the words spilled out like the rapid clip-clop of horse hooves on cobblestone. “What happened to you? Why did no one help you when the company collapsed?”
He didn’t add what he truly wanted to know: why didn’t you marry? Could you still love me?
She sat up straighter, spine stiffened. “That is none of your business.”
When Atlas had told him she lived in the rookeries, he was aghast. She was the daughter of an upper middle class merchant; someone in her social class should have helped her. Even without her father’s money, she should’ve been able to marry well based on her beauty alone.
“You should have better than this, Katiebelle.” He leaned forward, pretending the smell of her soap pierced through the haze of gin.
“And who shall give that happy future to me? You?” She gave a harsh, guttural laugh.
“I could.” He hated the pleading tone of his voice. “If I can prove my innocence, then I’ll be able to find work in London again.”
She snorted.
“I deserve your scorn.” He deserved far more than that, yet he kept silent, lest he give her ideas on the best ways to throttle him from across the table.
“Damn right you do,” she muttered.
“But if you give me a chance, I’ll show you I’ve changed.” He searched her face, deluding himself into believing he saw a ghost of compassion in her brown eyes, in the slight quiver of her bottom lip.
Slowly, her posture rigid, she rearranged her thick skirts. She patted the greatcoat underneath her, where she had slipped the pistol. “You have five minutes to tell me what the Gentleman Thief has discovered.”
Chapter Two
When her father died, Kate had not cried. Her body had ached with a sadness she could not begin to fathom, but she kept those emotions hidden, to be released only when she was finally alone in their Bloomsbury townhouse.
But that privacy had been short-lived, for after Richard Morgan’s death, representatives from Lloyd’s Bank descended upon the townhouse, seizing everything as payment for the unpaid loans. The company her father had built from the ground up—the very company he’d always claimed would secure her future—was bankrupt. Emporia Shipping had already been under scrutiny since Daniel had escaped arrest, and the papers ate up this new scandal. Broadsheets caricaturized the failing of a company once rivaling the East India Trading Company in strength.
She’d absconded with four gowns worn on top of each other, her father’s greatcoat, and the flintlock pistol. The bank notes she’d managed to stuff in the pocket of the coat had run out all too soon.
Faced with starvation or selling her flesh, Kate had chosen a third, seldom-considered alternative. She’d formed a plan: use her knowledge gleaned from years of cataloguing Emporia’s export and import inventory and set up as a fence for stolen property. It had been a good plan, and damn it, it continued to be one. Though she had few funds, she decided her own fate.
Yet as she sat across from Daniel O’Reilly in the boisterous Three Boars, she was eminently aware she’d fallen through a vortex that would consume her if she was not careful. She’d been foolish before, and her naiveté had led to far worse hurt than him leaving. Daniel saw the woman she had once been, pure and untainted, not the new scars upon her soul.
“Atlas has gone over every record he could get of the murder. Several names have come up repeatedly.” Daniel’s eyes never left her face, tracking her reaction. “But he can’t find any other commonality between Tommy Dalton and me besides the fact that we both worked for Emporia.”
“As far as I am concerned, you are partially responsible for Emporia’s failing, so don’t you dare continue with that line of thought.” She clenched her fists, eyes narrowing until she saw him only through thin slits. “When you were arrested, the investigation started into Papa’s company. They discovered the deficit, and from there Lloyd’s made certain Emporia would never rise again. Leave it be, Daniel. Much like our relationship, the company is in ashes.”
And in ashes their life together needed to stay.
“Emporia was a very large company,” Daniel said. “Morgan can’t be held responsible for the actions of all of his employees. If someone knew Dalton and had an involvement in his murder, don’t we owe it to Dalton to bring his murderer to justice?”
“We don’t owe him anything,” she corrected. “You should have talked to the constable when you were arrested.”
“I didn’t know who had set me up to be bummed. I still don’t—even if I had, the constable wouldn’t have listened. He was delighted he’d found his man without any real work.” His voice was tense, yet so quiet she almost couldn’t hear him over the disharmony of the public house. “But if we keep digging into the past, we can find proof that I was innocent. Atlas has been combing through Dalton’s personal life, and he’s discovered connections to a gang of resurrection men. Maybe even to the London Burkers.”
She shook her head. “Then you don’t need to dig about in the past. Bishop and Williams have already been hanged. The entire City is abuzz since the trial of the Italian Boy’s killers. If they were responsible, then they’ve already paid the price.”
“Maybe it isn’t related. Maybe it means nothing, but I have to find out.”
“Find out without me. If the Peelers come looking for you, I can’t risk that they’ll dig into my fencing.” She pushed back her chair, but his words stopped her.
“Someone paid an affidavit woman to say she saw me with the knife in my hand. Dalton was dead when I entered that alley, you have to believe me, love.”
Kate squeezed her fist tighter. He sounded so desperate and raw. There was that word again: love. His brand of love ripped her to pieces, left her with only the bite of gin to remember him by. If she let him back in, he’d take her for all she had once more. She’d barely managed to create this new life for herself. Free of him, and free of other men who wanted to use her as a punching bag.
Learn from your past mistakes, Papa had always said.
“The next time you think of contacting me, change your mind.” She stood and as she did, a man from the next table rose too. He bore an anchor tattoo that she recognized. She snatched her greatcoat up off the chair and threw it on. A quick escape would be necessary.
Al McNair was a caper-witted porter, but he was at least a full head taller than her and twice her weight. He lumbered toward them, worn top boots pounding into the planked flooring. Dust sprang up as he walked and his ham-fisted hands swung to and fro with every stride. His linen shirt was stained with grease and his loosely tied neckerchief bore the same.
“Someone you know?” Daniel asked, following her gaze. He stood up from the table.
“If by know, you mean despise, then yes,” Kate said. “He is a member of the Chapman Street gang and as bacon-brained as they come.”
People parted at the sight of him, moving quickly out of his way. Soon he was across from them.
“Must we do this now, McNair?” Her patience was thin. She didn’t even bother to disguise the irritation in her voice.
“Ye owe me fer cuttin’ me outta th’ dock job.” McNair’s bushy black brows knitted together as he stared her down. “An’ I wan’ my share.”
Kate let out a long, melodramatic sigh. “We all want things, McNair. For instance, I wanted to never see your daft hide again, but here you are. You know I was only on the end part of that job. I didn’t have anything to do with payment. See Jason Baines if you’ve got complaints.”
Daniel’s shoulders were back, his legs spread wide. That stance, full of righteous indignation, had been enough to make her quiver for him at one point.
She didn’t need him to save her.
McNair snorted. He turned, his bleary gaze appraising Daniel and taking in his worn clothes and the red locks peeping out from the brim of his hat. “Ye got my money, Irish? Or were ye too busy sayin’ th’ Holy Mary?”
Daniel searched his pockets but came up empty. McNair stepped forward, looking like he was ready to punch them both. Daniel lifted his chin, determination etched in his face.
Kate pushed Daniel back and crossed to stand in front of him. Her hand closed around the pistol stowed in her greatcoat. In such close quarters, the shot would attract far too much attention. Better to use the butt of the gun to bludgeon McNair, and escape when he was down.
McNair stepped forward, his hand going to the sheath at his side. He drew out a knife, the long blade serrated. The remains of the last victim were dried on it in stomach-turning brown dots. “I oughta show ye what I do to pope worshippin’ bastards like ye.”