Fearless (Scarlet Suffragette, Book 1): A Victorian Historical Romantic Suspense Series

by Nicola Claire

  But surely there were better places than this?

  “Your name?” Mr Entrican enquired.

  I couldn’t avoid it, but somehow handing out my card to the addict felt safer than giving my name to this man.

  “Dr Anna Cassidy,” I replied, offering my hand to shake.

  His smile broadened and he took a step towards me.

  “A doctor, you say?” He took my hand in his without hesitation. A handshake given quite freely.

  “Indeed,” I said, now smiling.

  “Well I never. What a wonderful time we live in.” The comment seemed genuine.

  I relaxed a little more.

  He turned and looked at the warehouse. “This is a recent council purchase. But after this evening, I think it might be wise for the City Council to offer it back up for sale.”

  “It is being ill used?” I enquired, surprised he was imparting so much.

  “Some would say so,” he agreed, amiably. “But between you and me, a place such as this will exist in every city. I’d just rather it didn’t in a council owned structure.”

  He laughed at this, offered a “Good day,” and then tipped his hat again. I bobbed my head in return and watched him swing his cane, no hint of its necessity in his ambulation, as he walked off.

  How strange.

  I looked back at the warehouse and then tentatively tried the door. Locked. Not by Entrican, but someone on the inside.

  Letting a breath of air out, I admitted defeat for today. But that didn’t mean the child wouldn’t be back here, his home turf, by this evening. Resigning myself to another night-time foray, I turned on my heel and came face to face with a bleak looking Inspector Kelly.

  Sergeant Blackmore stood off to the side, slowly shaking his head in utter disbelief.

  “Miss Cassidy,” Kelly growled, bringing my startled gaze back to the inspector. “I do hope there’s a damned good reason for your being here. And it has nothing to do with the case.”

  Six

  My World

  Anna

  “Of course it does,” I replied steadily. “And I have a damned good reason to boot.”

  Inspector Kelly looked flummoxed for a moment. Completely taken off guard. I used the opportunity wisely.

  “I must say, I’m rather pleased to see you’ve come to the same conclusion,” I offered, spinning my parasol in my hand casually.

  “What the devil are you talking about?” Kelly demanded.

  “The child, of course. That is why you’re here, Inspector. Isn’t it?”

  Silence. But I didn’t fail to register the flush of anger behind his beard. Nor the rapid beat of his pulse at the side of his throat. His neckcloth was slightly crooked, his coat dusty and torn in places. I took a sudden step forward, hand raised to inspect the damage.

  “Whatever have you been doing?” I demanded.

  “What the hell are you doing?” He took a frantic step back, his limp more pronounced now than ever; he almost lost his balance.

  My hand fell to my side and I looked away. Appalled with myself for making him retreat like that. Mortified that he could not bear to have me touch him.

  I swallowed thickly, then pasted a smile on my face, and looked Sergeant Blackmore in the eyes.

  “Did you find him?” I asked, embarrassed that my voice sounded scratchy.

  “We did indeed, miss,” he said softly, compassion and understanding in his gaze.

  I couldn’t take it; I began to pace.

  “Did the boy see Margaret’s attacker?” I asked over my shoulder. Blackmore was eyeing the inspector sternly. But for his part, Kelly was just staring at the ground.

  The sergeant cleared his throat, when his superior did not pass comment, and then reached into his jacket pocket. “The whippersnapper described a tall man,” Blackmore advised, reading from his notepad. “More precisely, miss, ‘a large black shadow what swallowed the lass up.’ He was quite descriptive, he was.”

  “Please do not encourage her, Sergeant,” Kelly said levelly.

  I threw a disgruntled look at the inspector, who offered a hard look back in return.

  “What else, Blackmore?” I pressed, tearing my eyes away with concerted effort.

  The sergeant flicked a glance at Kelly, but, bless him, answered my question anyway.

  “He said he moved like me.”

  “Like you?” I queried, unsure I’d paid much attention to Sergeant Blackmore’s gait before now.

  “Like a pugilist,” Kelly offered, and then frowned when he realised he’d “encouraged me” by speaking at all.

  I smiled sweetly at him, receiving a disgruntled sigh in return, and shifted my attention to Blackmore.

  “So we’re checking the pugilist rings?” I asked, tightening my grip on my parasol. Readying myself for battle.

  “You are not checking anything, Anna,” Kelly practically shouted. The battle had begun.

  “And why not?” I demanded, facing his looming form again.

  “Because this is dangerous work!”

  “Of course it is,” I threw back with great exasperation. “This man killed Margaret. Stabbed her fourteen times.”

  “Eighteen,” Blackmore offered efficiently. And when I glanced uncomprehendingly in his direction, he shrugged, looked chagrined, and muttered, “Drummond.”

  “Eighteen times,” I said more quietly.

  Kelly appeared as if about to burst. He took a step toward me, throwing a determined look in the direction of the sergeant while he was at it. Making the man cough into his fist, mutter something indecipherable under his breath, and then shuffle off some distance away.

  He really did have a certain thuggish movement to his step, I noticed.

  Then my attention was drawn back suddenly to Inspector Kelly, as his shadow fell over my face.

  “Eighteen times, Anna,” he said quietly. But the volume only indicated rage.

  “So I hear,” I offered. He let out a long sigh.

  “What, pray tell, are you doing here?” He sounded about as frustrated as a gentleman could get.

  “The boy. He was hiding under the stage,” I started.

  “Blackmore advised me. We searched for him all bloody night.”

  “And found him,” I added, a swift smile gracing my lips.

  Kelly stilled, his eyes on my face for a stretched moment, and then he looked away, reaching a free hand up to rub his face, and leaning back with his other on his cane.

  It would have been easy to have dismissed the motion as inconsequential. But I was certain he was placing considerable weight on the stick.

  “He was not so easy to find,” I surmised.

  “No. He was not,” came the answer.

  His eyes shifted off to the council owned warehouse. He inhaled deeply through his nose for a moment and then took a step toward the grimy windows. He hid the limp well. I wondered what it was costing him.

  I waited, knowing what was coming and unwilling to facilitate its arrival. The sun had risen in the sky, Mechanics Bay becoming louder as the morning progressed. I lifted my parasol and opened it up, seeking refuge under the umbrella despite it being too early in the day to care.

  I never ventured far without my parasol. When entering areas, at least, that could bring me harm.

  And here was the inspector thinking I was unprepared.

  I smiled to myself, just as Kelly turned around to look at me. His face set in a harsh mask.

  “Did you enter here?” he demanded.

  “No,” I offered in reply.

  “Would you have? Had we not arrived in time to prevent it?”

  “I have entered far worse locations than this, Inspector.”

  He let out a growl and stormed toward me, his cane coming down in loud thwacks with each step.

  “You do realise what this warehouse has been used for?”

  “Quite,” I said pleasantly. “A fine location for the child to pick pockets.”

  Kelly stopped mid stride and rocked back on his
heels. Then looked over his shoulder again and stared hard at the filth on the windows. He didn’t say anything, so it was difficult to tell if he was impressed with my deductive skills or not.

  And then he turned back around and stared at me hard.

  “I know this is difficult for you to comprehend, Anna,” he started, voice deep and sharp edged. “But the Police Force is more than capable of investigating this crime.”

  “I needed to…” I began, only to have him speak over me.

  “Placing yourself in dangerous situations is not aiding the situation.”

  “I wasn’t…”

  “And this is perhaps the most dangerous place for you to have tried.”

  “It’s not…”

  “I can’t keep an eye on you and do my job as well.”

  “Now wait just one…”

  “For once in your life, won’t you please just act like a lady!”

  My lips snapped shut in reply. I stared up at him, breaths coming too harshly, teeth gritted enough to cause pain. He’d never insisted I be anyone other than who I am before. He’d never made such a point of disliking how I behave.

  I’d thought him on my side. I’d thought him my sole champion. Like my father had been. Like I needed Kelly to be.

  But not this.

  Never this.

  I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. How to parse this new revelation. This new dynamic in my life.

  Kelly had been there since my father had died. Kelly had been the one constant that had made his passing somewhat easier to bear. Wilhelmina helped, as much as she was capable of helping. But often I spent more time caring for her than she cared for me. Oh, she loved me, as I did her. But Mina required too much of her strength to survive each day, there was never enough left over to ensure that I had managed it intact.

  But Inspector Kelly had strength enough for all of us. A bottomless well of energy and dedication. He had been my rock. The one thing I could cling to at the beginning.

  But it was clear now, that the beginning was at an end.

  I looked down at my mourning dress. Black satin, beneath a black woollen cloak. I suddenly wanted to be clothed in something other than ebony. I suddenly wanted to be bathed in red.

  Scarlet, Kelly had said. I resolved to empty my closet as soon as I returned home, and order a complete new wardrobe. In every shade of red.

  “Anna?” Inspector Kelly said quietly. “You know I say this only for your own good.”

  “I know no such thing, Inspector.”

  “Oh, Anna,” he said softly, as though it pained him as much as it was paining me.

  We stood silently for a long moment, the sounds of the dockyard rising above the buildings, mixed in with the odd cry from a gull overhead. I twisted the parasol handle around in my hand, watching the shadow it cast on the ground as it spun.

  I hadn’t told him yet. The letter had only arrived a few days ago. There hadn’t been a chance.

  And now I wasn’t certain it would change a thing.

  I let a slow breath of air out, the weight of disappointment making it hard to stand straight. Blinking my eyes quickly, I looked up and across the small square, spotting Blackmore as he spoke with a dock worker, jotting down notes in his ever present book.

  “He’s a dedicated officer,” I remarked. Kelly shifted to stand beside me and looked out toward where Blackmore did his job.

  I wondered how long the inspector would entertain me. How long it would take before he waved down a hansom cab and packaged me up to send on my way.

  “He’s a good man.”

  “He fights?” I asked, not sure what else to say to keep him with with me. Not sure why I was still troubling myself.

  “Very successfully, from all accounts.”

  “You’ve not watched him?”

  “I see him in action every day, just not fisticuffs in a ring on a wager.”

  I smiled. I could just picture Sergeant Blackmore having a secret second life.

  “What amuses you?” Kelly asked, the words barely above a murmur. I hadn’t been aware he was looking at me. But maybe the man had good peripheral vision.

  “I’d like to see him fight,” I offered.

  “Out of the question,” came the immediate and resolute reply.

  “Because I’m a woman?” I demanded, rounding on the man.

  “Because you’re Anna!” he shot back, leaning forward to deliver the words. And then he blinked, stunned at his own passion.

  “Well, that was telling,” I announced, picking up the edge of my skirt as I began to walk away.

  “Where are you going?” Inspector Kelly demanded.

  First he doesn’t want me here. Now he doesn’t want to let me go.

  “I have a surgery to run,” I replied, anger edging my tone.

  “Oh, well, yes,” he managed in somewhat of a stammer. “Very good, then.”

  “Yes, I thought that might cheer you up, Inspector.”

  He huffed out a breath of laughter behind me. The man was mercurial.

  “How did you get here?” he pressed, matching my fierce stride. I tried not to pay his limp too much attention, but my need to soothe his aches won out.

  I slowed my pace. His cane came down even harder.

  “I hired a cab. A hackney to be precise.”

  “Damnation, woman! And the driver let you off here?”

  “With several warnings.”

  “Warnings are hardly enough where you are concerned,” Kelly muttered. “I’ll drive you,” he added at a more normal volume. “My curricle is just over there.” He nodded down a side road that led onto Custom House Street. A direct line back to Queen and toward my house.

  “Thank you, but I’ll manage. I made it here, unaided, did I not?”

  “Why do you do this?” he demanded, grasping my wrist and pulling me to an abrupt stop. I didn’t look up at him.

  Slowly he reached under the parasol and took hold of the handle, lifting it up high enough for him to step under. It was uncomfortably intimate, in such a public setting. My heart beat too loudly inside my chest.

  “Why do you scratch with your claws?”

  I arched my brow at him.

  “Why do you push me away?” The words were out before I could stop them. I sucked in a deep breath, but the damage had already been done.

  Opening myself up to this kind of pain was something I had promised myself I would never allow to happen again.

  “Oh, bother,” I muttered, letting go of the parasol and ducking under the brim. Taking the necessary steps to get me away.

  I would have kept running, if I hadn’t heard that blasted cane.

  I stopped on the corner of the block, beside a small service alley behind another ubiquitous warehouse. The place was a rabbit warren, I didn’t remember passing it on the way into Mechanics Bay. The sound of Kelly’s cane slowed down, until finally it stopped. Right at my back.

  “We make a fine pair, do we not?” he murmured.

  I couldn’t talk past the dryness in my throat.

  “You must know how I admire you so, Anna,” he added.

  “Please,” I managed. I couldn’t hear anymore carefully offered platitudes. My heart wouldn’t take it. But my voice was lost in amongst the bustling sounds of the dockyard.

  “You are a fine surgeon,” he added, making me close my eyes. Close my fists. Fortify my heart. “One day the world will accept that. I am sure.”

  I wasn’t. But I was fighting for it.

  “These are difficult times,” he forged on, having received no discouragement from me. “This murder will raise tempers on the streets. Make for high tension situations. Throw in opium or cocaine into the mix and you have a volatile cocktail waiting to explode.”

  He spoke as though he had experience of these things. I turned around and looked down at his cane. He shifted on his feet slightly; always so acutely aware when his injury was centre stage.

  “I promised him,” he said, voice thick with emotion.
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  My eyes shot up to his face.

  “Anna,” Kelly pleaded. “I promised him I’d keep you safe.”

  I let out a shattered breath of air, unable to meet his searching gaze any longer. With desperation I lifted a gloved hand to the brick wall at my side, my legs trembling, my chest heaving. The world spinning.

  “Anna?” Kelly said with some urgency.

  “I’m fine,” I managed. “Give me a moment, if you will.”

  “No, Anna,” Kelly pressed, coming along side me, his hand slipping into mine, pulling it free of the wall. “You’re hurt.”

  Hurt? I stared down at my new, clean gloves, only they weren’t so clean anymore.

  Scarlet.

  “That’s blood,” I whispered, lifting my eyes to the wall and following the trail. “Oh, dear Lord,” I murmured, taking two steps into the darkened alleyway.

  “Anna, stop!” Kelly ordered, moving ahead of me and blocking my view. He made a sound. His cane coming down hard against the wall in a terrible show of anger. “Sergeant Blackmore!” he yelled at full volume. I almost lifted my hands to my ears, but the flash of red on the glove caught me.

  “Are they alive?” I asked. “Do they need a surgeon?” I offered, forcing myself to move, to think, to speak.

  It all came so easily. So much more easier than facing Inspector Kelly’s disinterest had been.

  Kelly turned to look at me; shock and horror and a grim determination marring his handsome façade. He searched my face, coming to some decision I couldn’t possibly fathom.

  And then he said, “If you please, Miss Cassidy. But be warned, ‘tis surely a most gruesome sight.”

  I nodded in understanding, preparing myself for what I would see. Just as my father had taught me. Just as he had always done himself. Blackmore’s footsteps could be heard over my shoulder, approaching at a rapid speed. Kelly remained close to my side; a comforting shadow in the approaching darkness. My feet took me deeper into the alleyway. Deeper into a world I had always known existed, but had never visited alone until recently.

  My world.

  One look at the body and I knew.

  Death stalked here.