Furiously he removed his own clothing, letting her see his excitement. Baring himself the way he desperately wished she would bare her thoughts. Her eyes widened. She bit her lower lip as he stepped close to her once more, until her heat bathed him. Her hips moved, urging him to enter her. He had to force himself not to close his eyes.
“Tell me.”
Again she pressed her hips forwards. Her body begged him, but her lips made no sound, and it was her words he needed.
“Tell me!”
“Please . . . ” Her calves wrapped around his waist, her wool stockings slightly rough against his bottom. “Please.”
It was something. Not what he’d demanded, but something. Maybe she deserved a reward.
A reward for her or for him? Slowly, oh so slowly, he thrust into her. Her eyes fluttered closed, her head fell back.
He pulled out, all the way. Her eyes flew open. Her calves jerked, trying to force him back, but he held fast. “Tell me you want me. Say it!”
“Oh God . . . I want you!” The cool, sweet voice he’d heard earlier was rough, desperate. “I want you, I want you, oh please . . . ”
The litany of her capitulation was lost in the roaring in his ears as he drove into her, hard, and kept driving, slamming into her with a speed and ferocity he’d not felt in years. He dug his fingers into her hips, bent to nibble at her throat. Her body thrilled him almost as much as her submission.
She found his mouth, sucking his lips, biting them softly, as her arms stole around his neck and her legs urged him faster, deeper. “Mr March,” she gasped, her fingers tightening, gripping his shoulders almost painfully. “Do I have the job?”
“Yes, God yes!” Mrs Richards would have to stay.
Chapter Two
Whitechapel, London
5 September 1888
The pile of laundry sat on the floor in the hot, damp kitchen. Glancing around to make sure the cook and scullery maid were still outside, she started yanking clothes out of the pile. One white shirt after another, all limp and smelling of her employer.
Her employer . . . her lover. She hadn’t expected that to happen so quickly.
She hadn’t expected to enjoy it so much, either. From the moment he’d propositioned her during her interview, to the moment he took her on the desk in his office, they’d hardly kept their hands off each other. And when they weren’t together, she thought about him. Remembered him.
It scared her. If her suspicions were correct . . . she shook her head. What did it matter? If her suspicions were correct, it would be worth it. If they weren’t, it was worth it even more. John March was a truly talented man.
The shirts were clean. No spots of blood marred the white linen.
She hadn’t really expected there to be any, not really. Surely a man cunning enough to commit the murders – a man the press was now calling “Leather Apron” – wouldn’t put his bloodstained clothing in with the rest of his week’s washing, not when servants talked as much as they did. It had been worth a look, though.
She stood up, peering once more out the window. The heavy skirts of the two servants were still visible through the dusty glass. Good. Now if she could get into his bedroom without being seen, she could search there, too. John had spent the night at his other home in Westminster, and she had spent the night at her room on Leman Street. There hadn’t been much reason for her to be at the house if he wasn’t, and of course neither of them would dream of suggesting she accompany him to Westminster.
His bedroom was dark. She lit the candle that stood on the small shelf by the door, not wanting to open the curtains even though the sun was barely risen. Most fashionable homes were dark to keep the sun from fading the beautiful fabrics and expensive furnishings, but John went beyond the desire into something of a mania. Three sets of heavy red brocade curtains hung on all of the windows on the second floor, and woe betide any maid caught opening them while the sun still floated in the sky.
There was nothing in any of the drawers, either. No weapons, no small boxes filled with locks of hair or bits of cloth.
Sighing, she sunk to her knees by the bed and felt around on the dusty floor. She should really get the housemaid in here to clean. Shameful to let things get dirty like that.
Under the bed was even worse. She stuck her head and shoulders beneath it, wishing there was enough room for a candle.
“Euphemia?”
Oh, no. “John?” She was acutely aware of her skirted bottom poking up into the air, of how embarrassing a position this was to be caught in.
“My dear, what are you doing?”
Oh please let me think of a good lie. “I was lonely,” she said. “So I decided to come wait for you in here . . . but one of my hairpins fell out. I think it went under the bed.” She paused. Did he believe her? “You ought to speak to Mrs Langley. It’s very dusty under here.”
The amusement in his voice was at once a relief and a further humiliation. “We can’t have you getting dusty while you clamber around under my bed, can we?” His footsteps were quiet, but Euphemia felt them vibrate the wood floor just the same. She scooted out from under the bed, her feet hitting his legs in her haste, and straightened up, still on her knees but no longer bent over.
“Did you find it?” In the wavering light of the candle she’d set by the bed his eyes glittered. His skin looked almost eerily perfect, his handsome features slightly distorted. He was at once handsome and a little scary as he knelt on the floor just behind her. She had to crane her neck to look at him, but could not tear her eyes away.
“I’ll look later,” she said. “You’re here early today.”
“I’ve been here for an hour or so, in the office,” he said. “I didn’t see you there.”
“I was in the kitchen.” Her heart beat a little faster. Did he know what she’d been doing? Had he heard her opening drawers? He may even have stood and watched her doing it. She’d noticed he was incredibly silent when he wanted to be. “I was hungry.”
“Hmmm.” His hands found her waist and moved lower, stroking her hips through her heavy skirts. “I’m a little hungry myself.” He gently guided her back to her hands and knees before him.
Fear added an extra bit of spice to her excitement as his hands continued to roam, unbuttoning the long row of ivory buttons up the front of her gown, pulling the dress down off her shoulders to her waist. She waited for him to untie the strings on her plain brown corset and remove it, too, but he did not, instead he pushed the dress over her hips and tugged her drawers down. She felt the waistband slip out from under the bottom of her corset and the cool air that now caressed her exposed bottom.
Surely it was wrong to enjoy this so much. To know that her employer may well be evil, but to still crave the feel of his fingers on her skin, slipping between her legs to caress her soft wet flesh. To crave the moment when his fingers disappeared and were replaced by something even more satisfying.
It was shameful, and Euphemia Richards knew it. But that did not stop her from crying out her satisfaction when John started thrusting into her, sending shivers of pure delight through her body with every stroke. His fingers dug into her hips, urging her to push back against him, to match his rhythm.
Her head swam. He moved so slowly, so steadily, as if they had all the time in the world. She tried to push against him faster, to intensify the sensations that already made her body shake, but he would not comply.
“Only one of us is in charge here, my dear Euphemia,” he murmured. The words were almost enough to send her over the edge. Whatever this meant about her as a woman she did not want to analyse. All she needed to know was that he could control her with as much ease as he sipped his tea. A part of her she had never known was there responded to him like she had never responded to anyone else.
One hand left her hip, sliding down to touch her belly, to slip through the hair that covered her modesty and tease her most sensitive spot. She gasped and struggled to open her legs wider, but she could not.
/> The hard smack on her bottom caught her off guard, made her yelp in surprise.
“Only one of us is in charge,” he said again, more forcefully. At once he froze in place. “Perhaps you need to remind yourself who that is.”
She wiggled her hips, knowing what his reaction would be and shamefully craving it, too.
He smacked her again, harder this time. The imprint of his hand on her skin burned through her entire body.
“Who is in charge?”
She wanted to wait. For years her ability to stay calm, to stay controlled, had been her greatest charm. No silly giggling or ribald jokes for Euphemia Richards, née Euphemia Harte. She’d been born dignified, her mother once told her, and, as she grew up and realized she was too plain for such things anyway, she’d learned her composure attracted men as much as girlish simpering.
But something about John destroyed that placidity, as easily as a glass dropped onto a marble floor.
“You are,” she whimpered. “You’re in control.” Just saying the words had a physical effect.
“Good girl.”
His fingers found her again and he resumed his movements, thrusting into her hard and fast, his free hand bracing her hips in place.
It was enough. It was too much. Without warning or preparation her body clenched around him and burst apart, an explosion of pleasure so intense she was light-headed. She cried his name, her voice ragged and unfamiliar to her ears, and heard John join in her ecstasy, felt him jerk out of her to spill his seed on the candlewick bedspread beside him.
No man had ever made her feel like this, not her husband, certainly not any of the men she’d been with since becoming a widow and a sometime-prostitute in quick succession.
He lifted her gently, helped her onto the bed, and she lay there weak and shaking, wondering if it were possible to experience such pleasure and not actually die from it. And even worse, if it was possible to experience such pleasure at the hands of a monster, if one could fall in love with a man one could not trust.
Suddenly John spoke.
“Here it is.” He leaned over to pluck something from the floor by the bed, kissing her knee as he did so.
It was a hairpin. “It wasn’t under the bed at all.”
Euphemia smiled and took the little pin. “Thank you,” she said, but something cold and watchful had awakened in her breast. The hairpin, a cheap wire pin of the sort worn by local prostitutes, did not belong to her.
Chapter Three
Little Ilford Cemetery
6 September 1888
The setting sun cast long shadows as the women walked back to the road, leaving the grave of Polly Nichols behind them. On the dirt path the horses pulling the two mourning coaches made dull thumps, echoing the slow beat of Euphemia’s aching heart. She had not particularly liked Polly. Polly had not been her friend. But Polly had not deserved to die. Neither had any of the others.
“Any news, Euphemia?”
They’d been waiting to ask her this, Mary and Peggy and Caroline. All through the short service she’d felt their eyes on her. Now the other funeral attendees were barely out of earshot. Euphemia glanced around, hoping someone would be near so she did not have to speak. But she was unlucky. No one was there to overhear.
“I found something,” she said reluctantly, pulling the cheap hairpin from her pocket and handing it to Caroline. “But it was in the bedroom—”
“So he had a prostitute in his bedroom.” Mary snatched the pin away from Caroline and held it up to the sun, one eye closed. “You know, they think he might be killing some of them privately. In his home, I mean. And then bringing the bodies out. They say that might be why nobody’s seen him.” Her high-pitched voice never failed to get on Euphemia’s nerves, more so today. It was unholy, somehow, that bright, tinny chatter in the silence of the homes of the dead.
“Just because he might have had a prostitute in his room means nothing,” Euphemia said.
“It means he sees prostitutes,” Peggy replied. Her bushy eyebrows lifted, making her hooded, beady eyes appear a little bigger. She took the pin from Mary and repeated the latter’s actions, even sniffing it.
“Every man sees prostitutes, Peggy.” Why the casual judgment of her friends was so upsetting to Euphemia, she had no idea. Hadn’t she been just as certain that John was the killer? Hadn’t a cold rush of pure dread run through her body when she’d found the hairpin?
Since then she’d managed to find a thousand explanations for it. None of them convinced her. She had to admit there was still every possibility that John was the killer she sought, that the man whose hands made her tingle and shake, whose smile made her weaken, could be the same man who slit throats and eviscerated women she cared about.
“Every man may see prostitutes,” Peggy said. “But not every man has them in his home. Your John did. No lady of quality wears such things in her hair.” She said it as if she had intimate friends among the gentry. “So if he’s the kind of man who needs a woman for an entire night . . . well, he must be doing something special with them, mustn’t he? Something most men don’t do?”
The words sent a shiver of violent memory through Euphemia’s body. The things John did . . .
“If she doesn’t think he’s the killer, we should listen,” Caroline said. The other two rolled their eyes.
“We said we would all decide,” Peggy said. “That when someone was ruled out, it would be because we all agreed.”
The women were at the entrance to the cemetery now, ready to go their separate ways. “Do you have enough proof to convince us he’s not guilty?”
Euphemia shook her head.
“Have you been able to account for his whereabouts during any of the murders?”
Again, she shook her head. John had a habit of going out at night. She had no idea where he went. She didn’t always spend the night either, so she didn’t know what he did when she was not there. Loath as she was to admit it, both because of what it said about herself and what it said about him, she could not rule him out at all.
“In fact, this hairpin seems to prove he’s up to no good, doesn’t it?”
Sometimes she really hated Peggy. “I suppose so,” she mumbled.
Peggy sniffed. “Then get back there and do what you promised to do. Find us a killer, or prove he isn’t one.”
The three of them swept away, leaving her standing at the gate of the cemetery alone.
The Royal Alhambra was hot and crowded, just as it was every opera night. John paid his shilling to walk the promenade, past families – the women tired and clean-scrubbed, the men resigned to a late start at the public houses and dreaming of their first pint. He could smell the desperation of the women, the attempts to inject some happiness and semblance of respectability into their lives by doing something as mundane as attending the ballet.
Beyond the families, and in some cases intermingled with them, were the whores. Less of them than usual, since the murders had started, but still more than enough. Some people wondered why they didn’t just get off the streets. John knew why. They needed to eat. They needed their gin. There was no other way to escape the misery of their lives, their terrible huddled existences spent with their legs spread and their chests pressed against walls while men they did not know took them from behind.
It was a life he could not even imagine. The misery and pain, the struggle to survive. But John knew what it was like to hate yourself for what you must do to live. He’d long ago made peace with that part of his nature that required violence. He’d had to. It was that or kill himself, and somewhere in the darkness of the everlasting night, he’d realized there were too many good things in the world. Things he did not want to leave.
Through the crowd he spotted her. She could be his tonight. Her pale hair was gathered under a tattered bonnet, her blue dress clean enough under the gaslights.
She was not Euphemia. She was neither as lovely nor as dignified. But none of them were like Euphemia. One of these days he would te
ll her how special she was becoming to him. How important. Maybe then he could tell her what he was, what he did, and she would forgive him. Maybe she would join him.
He could only hope and think of her as he crossed the room to talk to the frail blonde, the music from the ballet making his pulse beat in time, a steady rhythm. Already the taste of her blood was in his mouth.
8 September 1888
Whitechapel, London
“Another murder.”
“Another murder.”
Everywhere Euphemia went the same words fell from everyone’s lips. Annie Chapman. Murdered. Eviscerated. Discarded like a tattered stocking not five feet from the back steps of a rooming house. What devil could have done this – and done it undiscovered? How had he disappeared so quickly, fading into the shadows of the night while steam still rose from the body?
The brows of the shopkeepers furrowed as she walked past. Women she knew eyed her with suspicion, and she knew why. John. He’d come to Whitechapel only weeks before – just before the death of Martha Tabram. Euphemia and her friends were not the only ones who suspected him. He kept to himself. He never went out during the day.
She had not seen him the night before. Mrs Langley had not seen him either, swore he’d not been in his bed when she’d arisen at five. But when Euphemia arrived at seven he was there, asleep.
Annie had died half an hour past five. Lizzie Long had seen her, about to earn her bed money with a dark man wearing a deerstalker hat.
John had a deerstalker hat.
Was this possible?
No. It couldn’t be. She knew John. It had only been a week since the day she’d walked into his house, but she knew him. The way he spoke to her, the things they talked about, the way he called responses from her body and soul she’d never thought herself capable of experiencing.
No. No man who encouraged her to speak her mind so freely, who held her so tenderly, could do such a thing to a woman, to any woman. The words ran through her mind, a pleading litany, as she entered the house and placed her purchase – three new pens – on John’s desk. She snuck into his bedchamber. On the shiny dark floor lay a pile of white linen in a graceful heap. The shirt he’d stripped off when he climbed into bed.
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