by KJ Charles
Christiana scanned this for the hidden instructions. “I don’t understand. Can you just tell me what I have to do?”
“Watch my mouth move, will you? You—do—not—have—to—fuck—him.” He enunciated that very clearly. “He goes to see you wherever you’re performing, he thinks you’re wonderful, and if you could give him a smile it would make the silly bastard’s day, but that’s it. I’d smile at someone who stopped me having my teeth kicked in, but it’s entirely up to you. Jerry and I bought your debt, Jerry and I have cancelled it, that’s the end of the matter.”
“The man who was with you? He didn’t say anything about cancelling it.”
“I haven’t told him yet,” Templeton said, with staggering unconcern. “He won’t care, he’s got no more use for you than I have. I really didn’t mean that as offensively as it sounded. He has no desire to exploit your unfortunate situation? Yes, that’s better.”
“He might want his three hundred and fifty pounds back!”
“Easy come, easy go.”
Christiana stared. Templeton shrugged. “Stan asked us to do him a favour, so we did it. If we overdid it, that’s our problem.”
“And this man asked you to come and save my neck because he likes my singing? Nothing else?”
“Apparently so. I can’t comment, music hall isn’t my taste. I’m sure you’re wonderful.”
Christiana massaged her temples. It didn’t help. “Who are you?”
“I told you.”
“Who are you that you’ve got three hundred and fifty quid to chuck around because your friend likes my singing? How did your friend know Kammy was going to have me hurt? What’s your business with Kammy anyway?”
“Oh, that’s much better.” Templeton sounded pleased. “I didn’t think Stan would be a fool just for a pretty face. Rational thought, that’s what we need. Tell me, was it the being nice to gentlemen that you didn’t like, or the stealing, or both?”
“I’m not a fancy piece, and I’m not a thief.”
“Yes, well, I am,” Templeton said. “A thief, that is, not a fancy piece. Christ, that’s a thought. I don’t think I’d be much competition for the telegraph boys.”
“I should say not,” Christiana agreed without thinking. “I meant—uh—”
“No offence taken.” He stood, towering over her. “Now, I quite understand that, as a good honest girl, you might not want anything to do with the criminal element in society, and that’s your choice. You aren’t obliged to do anything at all for anyone. But I do expect you not to cause Stan or me and Jerry any trouble, such as might happen if you flapped your mouth about this incident. That would be ungrateful, and we don’t like ingratitude. Are we clear, Miss Morrow?” His eyes were very hard. She nodded dumbly. “Good. Right, well, I’ll leave you to it.”
“To what?”
He shrugged, as lightly as though he hadn’t just threatened her. “Dressing? Singing? Whatever it is you do, I suppose. By the way, we meant what we told Kammy. If he leans on you again, directly or by proxy, come straight to us and we’ll gut him. Leave a message for John White at the Blue Posts on Holborn, we’ll get it. Au revoir, mademoiselle.”
Chapter Two
STANISLAV KAMARZYN sat alone in the most expensive box in the theatre and wished he was anywhere else.
Blasted Temp and blasted Jerry. He’d asked them to deal with Miss Christiana’s trouble because they dealt with things, but he really had not expected them to do something as dramatic as paying off her debt on a whim. Three hundred and fifty quid! Admittedly they could make that in an evening’s work, but that wasn’t normal. They weren’t normal. The Lilywhite Boys were a pair of lunatics with no care for anything or anyone. And when they did care it was even worse, because then they did things like paying off a bloody great debt, telling the person they’d saved that Stan admired her, buying him a box at the music hall for her Saturday night performance, and all but frog-marching him there with orders to go and see her after.
It was excruciating. Miss Christiana would be sure he was some sort of exploitative swine—of course she would, with Temp cheerfully saying, I told her she didn’t have to fuck you as if anyone could hear a sentence like that without panicking. It was all right for Templeton Lane, six foot four and built like a bridge support. He didn’t have to worry about that sort of thing.
Left to himself Stan would never have gone to see Miss Christiana sing again out of sheer horror of what she might think, but he had not been left to himself. Stan was in his element with jewels, clock parts, locks, and negotiations on other people’s behalf. Fencing a fortune in diamonds was child’s play. Standing up to Jerry and Templeton when they decided to pick on him was another matter.
They were taking the piss, that was what they were doing. In their several years’ association Stan had never once been interested in a girl, so of course they’d milked this for all it was worth. Bastards. And now here he was in his Sunday best, alone in a box, waiting to see her sing.
He wasn’t sure if it would be worse if she noticed him or if she didn’t.
She was on early-ish, being low down the bill, which was an insult for a performer of her talents but suited him now. He wasn’t interested in anyone else and the longer he sat here, the more he’d think and the worse he’d feel.
At least it was a nice place. The Grand Cirque was one of the classier music halls, in Holborn rather than the East End, and had been tricked out recently, so it wasn’t the tawdry, gaudy, sordid sort of theatre he was used to, but a palace of gilt and velvet lit with bright white electric. It still smelled like a music hall, though: oranges, beer, tobacco, bodies, perfume, the burning smell of the stage lights. The air seemed thick, or maybe his lungs weren’t working properly.
He sat through a patter man and a pair of jugglers, not caring to pay attention, and then she came on. Miss Christiana, tall and lovely, with hair upswept into an elaborate arrangement, tendrils falling round her face. She wore a high-necked dress with big skirts and a lot of ruffles. The audience whooped and catcalled.
“Well, thank you,” she remarked. She had a wonderful voice, a rich light tenor that could have been called a contralto. “I don’t know what you’re all doing getting so worked up at the sight of a lady.” She paused to let the torrent of yells subside. “Of course, it’s no business of mine.”
Stan cheered too as the piano launched into the introduction. This was an old Arthur Lloyd number, a music hall classic for good reason.
“I met Lucy Bell t’other evening,
With her nephew going out for a walk;
And of course whenever she saw me,
She stopped and began a long talk:
About her dear little nephew,
Who she said was between eight and nine.”
Miss Christiana’s pause was a masterpiece.
“Some say he isn’t her nephew;
But of course it’s no business of mine.”
The audience yelled out the last line with her, drowning her out. Stan wished they wouldn’t: Miss Christiana’s delivery was too perfect, the self-righteous busybody made flesh.
“A friend of mine yesterday told me,
Last Sunday he’d had such a lark;
He met Mrs... well, never mind who,
Taking a walk in Hyde Park,
He offered the lady his arm,
And took her to Richmond to dine,
I won’t tell you when they came back;
For of course it’s no business of mine.”
Miss Christiana moved up and down the stage as she sang, looking into the crowd. She always built a connection with her audience, but Stan felt his enjoyment ebb as he realised she was doing more than that. She was looking for something. Someone. Him. He tensed his muscles against a cowardly urge to duck under the edge of the box.
Miss Christiana embarked on the last verse, and as she did, she looked up at the box, and kept her gaze there for a couple of seconds too long. He had no idea what she could see against
the glare of the stage lights, but he had a bad feeling it might be everything.
Applause rang out as she finished the song. Miss Christiana curtsied and smiled. “You’re a cheery lot, I must say. We can’t have you tiring yourselves out so early in the evening when you need to save your energy.” She acknowledged the raucous laughter. “Here’s a song to make you think, and maybe shed a little tear or two for the pity of it all.”
The piano struck up.
“Not long ago in Westminster,
There lived a rat-catcher’s daughter;
And she didn’t live in Westminster,
’Cause she lived t’other side of the water.
Her father caught rats, and she sold sprats,
All around and about that quarter;
And the gentlefolk’s all took off their hats
To the pretty little rat-catcher’s daughter.”
“Doodle dee! Doodle dum! Di dum doodle da!” roared the audience, but not Stan, because Miss Christiana was looking right up at him again. He stared back, knowing he was rumbled.
He barely heard the rest of the song. He waited out her performance, and sat in the box for ten minutes afterwards, not paying attention to the dog-and-hoop act that followed.
The fact was, he was terrified.
Some people might have thought that he wouldn’t have a nerve in his body. He’d been picking locks for reasons of larceny since he was ten, and fencing the spoils from fourteen; he ran a shop of which the sign read, vaguely, Kamarzyn Repairs, and which was mostly a front for planning, preparation, and passing on stolen goods. He’d been convicted once, did six months, and had emerged from chokey with an iron determination never to see the inside of a gaol again. Some people would have achieved that by living a blameless life. Stan preferred not to get caught, so he took real repair jobs at Kamarzyn Repairs, conscientiously paid tax on his lawful income, and never dressed up or flashed his cash.
In fact, he was a cautious man in a risky line of work. He didn’t get a thrill out of theft, let alone danger; he frequently had a dodgy stomach the day before a trip to Antwerp or Amsterdam. He worked with Jerry and Templeton precisely so they could do the scary part and he could stay in the shop. He planned. He thought ahead. He did not act on impulse, because that got you caught.
Only, it must be a year ago or more, he’d dropped into the Hoxton Britannia to get out of the rain, and a female impersonator had come on stage, and his heart had stopped.
He’d heard of this sort of thing happening, or at least heard people claim it happened, which wasn’t quite the same thing. “I looked at her and I knew at once!” they said rhapsodically. His mate Annie had said it at least three times to his knowledge, always about a different girl. A coup de foudre, Uncle Louis had called it, being French and therefore emotional. That meant a thunderbolt, although if you asked Stan, the right word would be malfunction. A cog jumping in the brain, a thing going wrong. It didn’t make any sense to stare at a stranger and think, Yes, oh yes.
It certainly didn’t make sense for Stan. Miss Christiana was a stunner, no question, with those huge brown eyes and that smile, but that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t about her looks, or anything like that. It was just...there she’d been, brightening up the world, singing as though the cramped stage of a penny gaff was a wonderland and the Prince of Wales watching her, and Stan had thought, Bloody hell.
He’d gone to see her, unnoticed in the crowd, ever since. That was enough. He’d never thought of bothering her; she surely had better things to do, and it wasn’t as if he wanted anything from her anyway. He wouldn’t have done a damn thing if he hadn’t heard about Kammy Grizzard.
Fucking Kammy. If all this meant he couldn’t come to see her again, he’d...well, he’d do the man a bad turn some day, that was for certain. He picked up his things and made his way down towards the back of the theatre.
There was a man at the stage door, evidently to keep out the crowds of admirers, although there weren’t any currently. They’d be around later in the evening for the artists at the top of the bill. Stan clutched his sadly wilted bunch of flowers. “Um. I don’t suppose—could you—Miss Christiana?” He thrust out the flowers.
The doorman didn’t take them. “Name?”
“Kamarzyn. Stan Kamarzyn.”
“Stan?” The doorman gave him a look up and down, and made a face that suggested he wasn’t sure what the fuss was about. “If you say so. Go in.”
“What? But—”
“You’re expected. In you get. Third on the left.”
He made his way into the corridor—the gilt and velvet stopped on this side, he noted, it was all very functional, not to say bare—and knocked at the door. A voice called, “Come in.”
So he did, and found himself staring at someone who looked like a man.
Miss Christiana was wearing light grey trousers, a linen shirt, a grey waistcoat, a light jacket. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing flash. She’d taken off the paint, or at least Stan couldn’t see any, and her face looked different in a way Stan couldn’t quite define. Less armoured, perhaps, or less confident. She had short black hair, nothing like the luxuriant curls of the wig, but those big brown eyes were just as brown and just as big, and there was nothing any the less perfect about the curve of her lips.
“Christopher Morrow,” the stranger said. “And you must be Stan.”
“Uh. Yes.” He held out a hand and realised too late it had the flowers in it. “Right. These are—I mean, if you want them.”
He’d assumed she would still be Miss Christiana offstage. Maybe he was wrong and it was just a job. Or maybe not, but she’d known he’d be coming, and she was dressed like a man and had named herself as one, so that was a pretty clear message.
Christiana took the flowers, and put them on a dressing table. She—he, Stan reminded himself, take the sodding hint when it’s given to you—didn’t toss them down, but he didn’t say thank you either. There was a sort of false head with his stage wig on it, boxes of grease-paint, a box of paste jewellery, his dress hanging over a screen.
“Well,” Morrow said. “Your friend Templeton said I should expect you.”
“Oh Gawd. Sorry about that. Temp’s all right, really. He’s a bit, you know—”
“Intimidating?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Are you going to tell me his bark’s worse than his bite?”
“No,” Stan said honestly. “But he’s not going to hurt you. Nobody’s going to bother you, not me, not anybody else. That’s what I came to say.”
“That was what he said too.”
Stan scowled. “I bet. Because the thing about Jerry and Temp is, they say ‘No, no, don’t worry at all,’ and you lie awake all night wondering what the hell you’re in for. Pardon my French.”
Morrow’s mouth twitched, just slightly. “It wasn’t the most reassuring reassurance I’ve ever had.”
“Well, I just wanted to tell you, you really don’t need to worry, all right? Kammy’s been paid off, and nobody else is going to trouble you.”
“Your friend said, if he bothered me again, to tell them.”
“You should. They’ll have him.”
“Why?” Morrow said abruptly.
“Just how it works. If he messes them around they’ll mess him up right back.”
Morrow was shaking his head. “No. Why did your friends come to help me in the first place? Why did you ask them to?”
Stan hesitated. “Look, I’m happy to talk about this if you want, but you don’t have to, all right? I can just go if it would be easier.”
Morrow put a hand on his hip. It was a very familiar gesture from the stage. “Does that mean you’d rather not spend time with me after all?”
“Mate, I’m not the one who’s been bought and sold and mucked about and left to sit around wondering what’s going to be asked of me,” Stan said. “I’m fine, so you tell me what you want, all right?”
“I did tell you. I want to know what this i
s about.”
“All right. Can I sit down?”
Morrow found him a folding chair amid the clutter. They sat opposite one another. Morrow crossed a long, slim leg over his other knee. He looked like a young gentleman. Stan felt like a sweaty crook. “Go on.”
“Right. Well. I know people who know things, right? So I hear things, and I hear a lot about Kammy these days. He wants to be the big man, he’s looking to scare people. There was a woman who got caught thieving from some banker for him. She was going to squeal in court—”
“He had vitriol thrown in her face, as a warning to others,” Morrow said. “He told me all about that when he said what he wanted me to do.”
“Son of a bitch,” Stan muttered. “Well, I heard the other week there’d been another job gone wrong, that the girl legged it instead of doing what she was there for. I heard he was going to make an example, and that it was a music hall girl, a female impersonator. So I asked around, and I found out it was you. And.” He swallowed. “I didn’t think he should do it, that’s all. He shouldn’t do any of it. It’s not right, and vitriol’s bloody evil.”
“Wait,” Morrow said. “What? He was going to use vitriol on me?”
“That’s what I heard.” Morrow’s skin, normally tawny, was going distinctly sallow. Stan felt a stab of guilt. “It might have just been talk, and either way he’s not going to do it now, all right? He’s got his money, and the Lilywhites will rip his balls off if he mucks them about. He really won’t touch you. Do you need a drink?”
“Just give me a moment. Christ. I didn’t think—I thought they were going to beat me, not... Oh my God.”
“It didn’t happen,” Stan insisted. “You’re all right. It’s just what I heard, and I didn’t like it, and I asked the boys to lend a hand. That’s all.”
Morrow did a bit of deep breathing, then straightened up. “So that was what happened. But why did you spend all that money on me?”
“I didn’t spend anything. I just asked them to stop Kammy doing whatever. Paying him off was their idea.”