In the flash it took for Gabe to flip the square of worn paper, searching for any other details, the boy was gone.
A twinge in his gut told him trouble lay ahead. He’d sought out their mother for Sara’s sake, but the woman had rarely brought either of them anything but misery. The notion of being dragged into her web of intrigue again turned his stomach.
Still, he stomped toward the cab stand and hired a hansom, barking his childhood address to the driver. Sara and her betrothed were attending a musical evening at Jane Morgan’s. Gabe had insisted he’d be working too late to attend but would join them for supper. A short trip to Whitechapel and back would allow him to keep his promise.
Traffic through the city proved unexpectedly light, and the cab man dropped him in the dark lane within an hour.
No light illuminated Niven’s window, though with the layer of muck clinging to the building, he couldn’t be sure from the street. In the pitch-black stairwell, he placed his feet warily on the rotting wood. The entire house groaned and creaked at him with every step.
“That you, Ragin’ Boy?” the wily old woman called down, her scratchy voice accompanied by the cock of a pistol’s hammer.
“You invited me, Mrs. Niven. Try not to shoot me.”
Her cackling laughter echoed down the stairs, and after several thumps, she appeared at the top. “Come on with ye, boy. ’Aven’t got all night.”
Gabe held back when he reached the top of the stairs, scanning the room behind her. Something wasn’t right. Nothing he could see or touch. Just a sense. Intuition. The twist of his gut.
“Come in, boy, come.” She hunched over her cane and shuffled away from the threshold. “Got a tale you’ll wish to ’ear.”
Gabe stepped into the lodgings warily. Without a single candle or gas lamp lit, the room was cast in shadows but for a slice of moonlight splashing in through a bare window.
“Is my mother here?” He didn’t sense her. Couldn’t smell the cheap rosewater scent she favored in the air. He sniffed, and his blood turned to ice.
Another smell. Slightly sweet. Almost pleasant. A herald of evil.
Gabe pivoted to bolt, but before he could take a single step, a gun muzzle slammed into his cheek.
“Best not to go quite yet, my son.” Rigg spoke around the edge of a smoking cheroot, his dark eyes dancing with glee. “My how you’ve polished yourself. Barely recognize the creature I dragged up from the gutter.”
Gabe clenched his fists, calculated, then made his move. He jerked one hand up to push away the gun’s barrel, jabbed Rigg in the gut, then hooked a fist up to knock him back.
As the old bastard stumbled, behemoths charged Gabe from the shadows. The full weight of two men barreled into his side. Turning against the force, he raised his fists, thrashing one of the men on the shoulders and head in quick, scissoring strikes.
The other man straightened, whipping back his arm to strike. Gabe ducked, tucked his head, and charged at the man’s middle.
The second thug tumbled back, crashing down on his backside.
“Enough!” Rigg pointed his gun at Gabe again. “Sit down, my son.”
“I’ll stand.” Gabe swiped at the blood dribbling from the cut on his cheek. He glared at Niven, who’d scurried off to a far corner of the room. “Nice ruse.” No such thing as loyalty in Whitechapel.
“ ’Course it was, boy.” She shot him an ugly smirk. “Peg’s been dead for ages. Know it for yerself, you would, if you’d given a damn.”
Gabe swallowed down the fact of his mother’s death. He considered how Sara would take the news, then pushed the thought away. He couldn’t be distracted now.
“Never mind that, boy. Rigg ’as got a proposition for you, ’e does.” The old rotter loved to speak of himself by name, as if he was both the body and some wicked marionette pulling his own nefarious strings. Along with everyone else’s.
“Not interested.” Gabe raised his fist and grinned when Rigg shrunk back. He pointed a finger at the puppet master. “I’m done with you, old man.”
Rigg sucked on his cheroot, a fiery point of light in the room’s overwhelming murk. He blew out a cloud of smoke without removing the cigar. Bending his head to stare at the dust-covered floor, he tsked. “Stubborn as ever, are ye? Damned pity, my son.” Like a whip, his head snapped up toward the corner near his back. He nudged his chin up. “Soften ’im up a bit, boys.”
Another thug had been crouching in the darkness, but he jumped to his feet at Rigg’s signal, lunging for Gabe.
Gabe put up a forearm to fend off the man’s grab, slamming his fist into the rotter’s face with a left hook. Then a vice encircled him from behind. One of the first set of behemoths squeezed him like a twist of tobacco, nearly lifting Gabe out of his boots.
“I’ll be seeing ye, my son.” Rigg tipped his ratty top hat Gabe’s way.
“Go to hell.” After he spat the words, the man in front began pummeling his stomach in rhythmic, punishing jabs. Right fist. Left fist. Gabe kicked the beast at his back, stomping his heels on the man’s massive jack boots. Then the thug in front of him wound back and landed a blow to Gabe’s temple.
He shook off dizziness. Pushed away the blurry blackness, brought his fists down again and again on Behemoth’s hold. Then another blow came to the side of his head. And another. Then darkness. Silence.
When he opened his eyes again, Gabe struck his arms out, lashing at his attackers, but there was nothing but air in front of him and a brick wall at his back. He’d been dumped in the alley behind the lodging house. A rat skittered along the wall as he got to his feet.
After shaking the muck from his coat, he removed a handkerchief from his pocket to swipe at his bloody face. Dizziness made him stumble, but he forced himself to straighten, willed himself to keep going, one boot after another toward the main crossroad. He glanced at the corner, toward Fisk Academy.
If Rigg knew to send a messenger to Ruthven’s . . .
Around the corner, the windows of Fisk Academy and a shop nearby were the brightest along the row of buildings. Gabe picked up speed, but kept to the opposite side of the street. He couldn’t allow Clary to see him like this, but he needed to know she was all right.
He approached a closed-up shop across the street, tucking himself under its awning. Through the windows of the school, he saw several girls gathered in the main room, huddling together, but no sign of Clary.
A few yards down the street, a man burst from the narrow lane between buildings, shifting his gaze nervously up and down the pavement. When a pedestrian passed, he ducked into the shadows. Gabe didn’t need gut instinct to tell him the man was up to no good.
Tucking his head down and his collar up, Gabe ambled toward the man.
The man shifted nervously, sinking farther back into the darkened lane.
“Oy,” Gabe called to him.
“Didn’t mean to do it,” he said miserably.
“Do what?”
At a constable’s high-pitched whistle, Gabe winced, and the shifty man’s eyes ballooned. He began backing away. Gabe reached out to snag his jacket lapel, but the man ducked out of his hold and sprinted down the dark passage.
“Wot are you lingerin’ ’ere for?” the constable called to Gabe.
“A man’s run off.” He pointed toward the diminishing shadow.
“ ’As he now? And wot about you? We’ve ’ad a report of a young woman attacked hereabouts.” The constable gazed up at the sign above the school. “Right ’ere at Fisk Academy.”
“Who?”
Helen emerged from the front door of the school and approached the copper. “Thank goodness you’re here, Constable. You’ll want to go around back. He ran off from there.”
Rather than wait for the policeman to act, Gabe started toward the narrow passage the man had bolted down and broke into a run. As he splashed through a puddle of rainwater, broken glass crunched under his boot heels. Every footfall was like a fire poker to the pain in his temple, but he kept on. He to
ld himself he could catch the bastard.
The passageway emptied into an alley behind several buildings. Gabe scanned the dimly lit lane, but the man was nowhere in sight. Then he saw a flash of movement. A boot sticking out behind a cluster of barrels near the alleyway’s mouth.
He raced for the spot, grabbed the man’s boot, and dragged him into moonlight. “Keene. Isn’t that what they call you?”
The same blighter who’d confronted Clary that first day he’d seen her in Whitechapel. Gabe had wanted to thrash the man that day, but he’d held himself back because she was standing nearby. Nothing restrained him now. His blood was up, his body ached, and after years of fighting, he knew nothing was better for pain than battling through it.
He hauled the man to his feet.
“I didn’t mean to,” Keene sniveled, tears and blood and mucus collecting on his lips. “I’d never ’urt the girl. I love ’er.”
“Tell it to the rozzers.” Gabe got a good hold of the back of the man’s coat and shoved him forward. “Walk. Quickly. Before I change my mind and pummel you into the pavement.”
Gabe pushed the man along toward the back side of Fisk Academy. A gaggle had assembled. The constable had been joined by another uniformed copper, Helen, and a few older students. Clary stood just outside the rear door.
“Gabriel.”
His name on her lips was like a balm, making him forget everywhere he hurt. Clearing the hatred of Rigg that boiled inside him.
“That’s the man,” Helen said, her voice firm and decisive as she pointed to Keene. “Girls, go back inside.”
“Where is she?” Keene called.
Gabe gave the man a hard shove, then jerked him back. “Speak only to the rozzers. Leave the ladies alone.”
The fool didn’t listen. He did what he’d done the first day Gabe saw him. He made a terrible choice. Twisting back, he began swiping blindly, attempting to strike. Gabe arched back, avoiding his blows.
Releasing the fabric of Keene’s coat, Gabe let the man wheel around to strike. When Keene came at him with a roundhouse swing, Gabe ducked the blow, landing his own on the man’s jaw. Another to his midriff, and then Gabe took Keene down with a swipe of his boot behind the man’s ankles. Keene didn’t move from where he landed, moaning and crying, mumbling his defense for whatever heinous acts he’d committed.
“That was magnificent.” Clary rushed up and stopped short when she drew near, raising a hand to her mouth. “What did he do to you?”
“Wasn’t him.” Gabe grasped her wrist when she reached for him to keep her from getting blood on her fingers. He glanced toward the school as the constables came forward to collect Keene. “You’re all right? He didn’t harm you?”
“I’m fine.” She looked away for a moment before lifting her gaze to his. “He lured Sally out to meet him and turned violent when she wouldn’t . . . respond as he wished.” She shivered, and Gabe could feel the tremor in her wrist. “She fought him. Scratched him. I should have taught her to punch him in the throat.” Her voice quavered, and her eyes shone in the moonlight.
Gabe drew her into his arms. She fitted herself against him, and he rested his chin atop her head. Underneath his overcoat, she wrapped her arms around his waist.
Bruised and bloodied as he was, he let out a ragged sigh. She was warm, soft, sweet-scented bliss, and her trust in him was a gift he didn’t deserve. Too soon, she lifted her head and squinted at him in the darkness.
“You dispatched Mr. Keene quickly.” She slid her hand down to his, caressed his knuckles, where his scars were stinging like in the old days. “You were a fighter once?”
“Once. Tonight. Does a man ever really change?” Gabe unlatched her arms from around his waist and set her away from him.
He hadn’t changed. Not truly. Fighting Rigg’s thugs, taking Keene to the ground, striking out, fist to flesh, had sparked those bone-deep instincts he’d honed for years on Whitechapel’s streets. Some awful part of him had enjoyed every second of besting Keene. And he’d loved the flash of fear he’d seen in Rigg’s coal-black eyes.
“Come inside. Let me at least clean your cut.” She’d taken his hand, tugging at him, despite his determination not to follow her. He didn’t wish to involve her with this part of his life.
“I need to get home to my sister.”
She didn’t release his hand, and he couldn’t bring himself to let her go. “Do you wish for her to see you like that? You can tidy up inside.”
Sara had seen much worse. She’d been the one to stitch him up after many of his fighting ring injuries.
There was such determination in Clary’s face, mixed with real concern. When he was near her, she reminded him of the man he wished to be, the one he pretended to be, not the one he’d left behind.
“Just for a moment,” he said, relenting and stepping toward her.
She gave him one of those smiles, and he feared they’d be his undoing. When she looked at him like that, he was apt to follow her anywhere.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“We can use Helen’s office.” Clary led him by the hand because she liked how the strength of his grip grounded her after the night’s events. Also, she suspected if she let him go, he’d bolt in the opposite direction.
He took in the small, meticulously organized room with an appreciative glance. He and Helen shared fastidiousness in common when it came to their work space.
“I’ll go and fetch some water and a cloth.” At the door, she turned back. “You’ll still be here when I return?”
He gave her a single nod, and she took the gesture as his promise he wouldn’t duck out the back door.
When she’d asked him about violence, he’d shuttered, closing himself off from her. Clearly, he wasn’t a man who liked speaking of his past. But the more time she spent with him, the more she needed to know. What haunted him? Why did he guard his secrets so tenaciously?
After filling a basin in the kitchen and retrieving a few clean rags, she returned to find him settled on the stool, his head tilted back against the wall, eyes closed. But he didn’t look peaceful. Lines pinched his brow under a fall of glossy black waves. His mouth had firmed in a tense grimace.
She breathed deeply, steeled her nerves, and focused on the injury to the side of his head. He’d been bashed, perhaps more than once, and his cheek bore an abrasion too. Blood had dried on his face, near his ear, and trickled down his neck, completely saturating his crisp white shirt.
“You must be in a great deal of pain,” she said softly, causing his eyes to flicker open.
“I’m fine.” When he saw her approach with a damp rag, he reached for the cloth. “I can do this. You needn’t get blood on your hands.”
“Let me.” A tug-of-war ensued, though he didn’t fight her with much might. “I’ll be quicker.”
He let his shoulders slump and turned his head so that she had a clear view of the area in need of cleaning. Without a single wince or flinch, he allowed her to wash the area, casting his gaze toward the floor as she worked. The abrasion on his cheek wasn’t bad, but he’d have a fearsome bruise.
“How bad?” he asked, once she’d started wiping at the injury at his temple. “Will the cut require stitches?”
“I don’t think so. It’s more of a large abrasion than a cut.” She applied the cloth gently, desperate not to cause him more pain.
“The sight of blood doesn’t bother you?” He glanced up at her. “Most young ladies would be appalled. Or faint dead away.”
Clary bit her lip before replying, weighing how much she should reveal about her childhood preoccupation with tales of horror and garish drawings. “When I was a girl, I spent a good deal of time up in the nursery, drawing and painting.”
“Based on what I’ve seen, you’re very skilled.”
She waved away his compliment. “I tended to draw bloody scenes.”
He tilted his head back to narrow an eye at her.
“I read a lot of penny dreadfuls,” she confessed with a
shrug. “Every single issue I could I get my hands on. And Kit taught me to love Shakespeare’s plays, which are brimming with violence.”
“So you’re a lady with cutthroat tastes.” He stared at the floor again. “Who loves flowers.”
For a man who’d suffered real, painful injuries this evening and used his fists on another man, her interest in fictional violence must have seemed childish to him. Frivolous. Naïve.
“Why are you in Whitechapel tonight?” she asked quietly. “Who did this to you?”
He ignored her questions as if she hadn’t spoken.
“What are those?” he finally asked, pointing to long rectangles of butcher paper hanging on the wall.
“Sketches for the ladies’ magazine. We’re trying to design a masthead.” Clary had worked up a few ideas for The Ladies’ Clarion. They needed a symbol that represented women and knowledge and inspiration, all at the same time. A few of the students whom Clary tutored in art had worked on sketches too.
“You’re still determined to make a go of your project?” He flicked her a rueful grin. “I thought perhaps a few weeks in the office would put you off Ruthven’s altogether.”
“Not at all.” She reached for another clean rag, returning his grin. “I’m more interested in the business than ever before.”
“There’s a bit more to publishing than charming vendors and dousing yourself with printing ink.”
She let out a wry laugh and nudged his shoulder. “I’ve always loved the smell of books and paper and ink, but to see so many people working together to create books is truly impressive. To watch the presses steaming away and know all the work that’s gone into printing a single page. It’s breathtaking. Inspiring. I’m excited to come to work each day.”
“Daughtry must be a good teacher to have such an enthusiastic student.”
“You’ve taught me a few things too.” Her breath tangled in her throat, and he looked up, his gaze glittering and intense.
“What are you doing?” He caught her hand in his when she reached up to untie his neckcloth.
“Your collar is ruined. There must be blood underneath.”
How to Woo a Wallflower Page 14