“Also, I needed the firelight to see by. My night vision isn’t what it once was as a young man, and the stitch work was intricate…and important…” The Hammer slid his hand from my elbow, up my bare arm, and across my shoulder to graze the flesh beneath his handiwork. “It will not leave too much of a scar, I think.”
My breath trembled, and my thoughts scattered.
The Hammer was not a young man, I noticed. Grooves next to his hard mouth, and fine creases branching from his eyes advertised that time was currently having its way with his youth. But his hair remained free of silver, and he carried himself like a gentleman in his prime. He could have been anywhere from a hard-won thirty-five to an age-defying fifty.
I looked away from him, finding a rather queer display case straight ahead the safest target for my gaze.
“Are you feeling like a sacrifice, Fiona?” he asked.
“What?”
“The Shofar.” He gestured to the curls and grooves of what appeared to be a ram’s horn. “Among many things, it is a symbol to my people of the goat Abraham slaughtered in place of his son, Isaac, to honor God. You are familiar with this, as I understand it is also in your Bible.”
I frowned, feeling the skin between my brows pinch together. “I did not realize you were fond of religious iconography.” Especially as nothing he did seemed pious in the least.
He shrugged his insouciance, but a current of something deep and dangerous shimmered in the air around him. “It is meaningful to me. It is a reminder of the story of which I am a part.”
“Ancestrally, you mean?”
His mouth twisted in a wry wince. “Metaphorically.”
“Who are you in the story?” I queried, arrested. “Metaphorically speaking. Are you Abraham or Isaac or…God?”
He gazed at me for a long time before his lithe fingers reached toward my throat. “We are not well enough acquainted for me to answer that question.”
“Then tell me this,” I said tightly. “What happened to my blouse?”
With a heavy breath, he dropped his hand. “You bled all over the eyelet lace collar. It’s completely unsalvageable.”
It was my turn to quirk a half-smile at him. “I can get blood out of anything. That’s sort of what I’m known for.”
He stood, startling me a little, and walked to a covered window across from the settee, pushing the drapes aside to gaze into the night. It astonished me sometimes how tall he was. How, even in his hastily rolled-up shirtsleeves and without a jacket, he cut such a sophisticated profile.
“Your blouse was ripped from your body. It is in tatters and no longer here. Do not ask for it again.”
He did not look back at me, and thereby missed the drop of my slack jaw. Ripped from my body? Had he done the ripping?
Or had the Ripper?
The word unsettled me a great deal. As did the images it evoked.
I recovered my composure after a pregnant pause. “Where is here?” I tried again.
“Why, the Velvet Glove. You’ve been here before.”
“I’ve never been in this room.” I’d been in what I assumed was his office on the ground floor, a sumptuous affair done in crimson and crystal from which he lorded over the Syndicate.
This place was a world away from that one.
“I call this chamber Shiloh,” he murmured, his chin touching his shoulder. “I wonder, was my establishment your destination when you were pulled into the alley in which you were found? Or was your course somewhere more…official?” He gestured out the window.
Possessed an excellent sense of direction. I always know which way is north and, at the moment, it was a little behind me. Which meant, the Hammer’s window overlooked the south and east.
Toward Scotland Yard.
I became overwhelmingly aware of how dangerous his question was to me.
“I hoped for an audience alone with you, actually,” I hurried to say, remembering my original purpose. “I needed to tell you—”
“As a…purveyor of flesh, you can see why the return of Jack the Ripper would trouble me, especially if he struck not a stone’s throw from my establishment.” He turned to me with a hard stare, confident that it wasn’t necessary to repeat his previous directive.
As I related my frightening encounter in the alleyway, the Hammer strode behind the golden screen and reappeared, carrying a few implements along with a blue and white woolen wrap. The latter he settled around my shoulders before he reclaimed the seat next to me, soaked the corner of an absorbent cloth in fragrant oil, and made to press it against my neck.
Without thinking, I caught his arm. “What is that?”
He glanced at my hand, small enough to barely span the forearm above his wrist.
As did I.
I expected we both considered how he planned to react to the physical challenge, even one as thoughtless and feeble as this.
Every interaction with the Hammer was about power. Sometimes, power a roar. Other times, it was a whisper. With the Hammer, it was a dance, one to which he always knew the steps and forever took the lead. So long as he remained in control, there was less to fear from him.
“I-it hurts to touch,” I demurred, relinquishing my hold on his wrist, and on my own sense of fragility—perhaps a bit more than strictly necessary.
The razor glint in his gaze softened. “Olive oil, lavender, and frankincense.” He held the cloth beneath my nose. “Good enough for your Messiah, but not for Fiona?”
I sniffed the cloth and wrinkled my nose at the camphor-like essence but then tilted my head slightly to give him better access.
“It will protect you from infection, and even help with the pain…”
I could sense the warmth of his elegant fingers even through the cloth and, yet again, I shuddered, wondering if the roaring fire in the marble-white hearth was purposely burning up the chamber’s available oxygen.
“So tonight, Jack the Ripper followed you from a murder in Whitechapel and dragged you into Crossland Alley, where you proceeded to rebuke him for killing your friend while he had a knife to your throat…and he still let you live?” He summarized my story with what I considered to be inappropriate levity.
“It would appear he tried to slit my throat,” I needlessly reminded him as he tended to the wound. “And I wouldn’t say I rebuked him. I just…”
“I would not tolerate one of my girls speaking to me thus.”
In a way, I was grateful when he said such things. It reminded me who he was: the man who held the sword above my head. My life depended on his tolerance.
Standing, I pulled the shawl tighter around me. “I am no whore.”
“Everyone is a whore, Fiona.” I felt rather than heard when he unfolded himself from the settee. He wasn’t so much a warmth or an essence behind me, but the absence of either. “We each offer different parts our ourselves for use, do we not? Our sex. Our blades. Our muscles. Our minds. Our time. Our souls.”
He might have been right, in a way. I didn’t allow myself to contemplate the bleak note beneath his composure, however.
“I’ve never sold…that.”
“We must assume this is why all of your organs remain inside you, and your throat is, for the most part, intact,” he speculated.
“A reasonable assumption.” I’d be a liar if I claimed the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.
“That you are a virgin has likely kept you alive all this time.”
Unconsciously, I crossed my legs. “How do you know I’m a virgin?”
That dangerous smile again. Did he borrow it from the devil? “Categorically, I did not…until now.”
I blushed and glared and scowled at him.
Mostly blushed.
Pleased with himself, he continued, “What we must wonder, then, is why the Ripper killed this Frank Sawyer, and what he wants with you.”
A chilling question, that. I contemplated it for a moment, doing my best not to focus on the towering man at my back. What if my visiting a known pimp
upset the Ripper enough to strike out at me? Yet, how could he have known the Velvet Glove to be my destination? Had he been watching me? Did he know my habits?
My secrets?
Had he been the one to summon me to the Sawyer murder, only to question me about it later? Had he truly meant for me to survive this night, or had my intended slaughter been interrupted?
Jack the Ripper had been disrupted mid-kill before, on the night of the double murder of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes.
“When you found me in the alley, was I alone? Or did someone chase my attacker away?”
“I am told you were alone and unconscious.”
“Told?”
“Night Horse found you cataleptic and bleeding. He carried you here, knowing I could treat your wound.”
“Mr. Night Horse,” I gasped, whirling on the Hammer in a fraught panic. “Where is my pelisse? Did he search the pockets? Did he take anything?”
The Hammer’s sound of mirth was both dark and dry. “Your prejudice is showing, madam. Not all American savages are thieves. Just like not all the Irish are useless, temperamental drunks.”
“And not all Jews are money-lending usurers?” I quipped, appreciating the irony in my words every bit as much as I didn’t appreciate the insinuation in the Hammer’s tone regarding my people.
“Do be careful, Fiona.” A subtle warning reverberated through the joviality of his voice. “You amuse me, but there are limits to my serenity.”
Once again, he disappeared behind the screen to produce my soiled pelisse. Returning it to me, he stood close. Too close. Awaiting the reveal. “What have you in the pocket of your pelisse that frightens you enough to make your tongue so reckless?” He gifted me with a justification for my behavior. I'd be a fool not to take it.
Reaching into the right pocket, I blew out a gusty breath of relief as I produced the tiny spheres of condemnation.
The Hammer made a cup of his hand, and I let the cool stones roll from mine to his.
My knuckles grazed the rough skin of his palm.
“Turquoise?” A husky note underscored his bemusement. “What does this have to do with anything?”
“Doesn’t your Mr. Night Horse have several necklaces, bracelets, and other adornments made from these stones?”
“You know he does.”
“Have you noticed any missing?”
“My associate’s jewelry does not rank high on my list of concerns.”
Associate. A gentle word for assassin.
I’d never actually been formally introduced to Aramis Night Horse, but he’d delivered a few corpses to me, along with terse directives from the Syndicate. Even though he never acknowledged my polite gratitude, I always erred on the side of civility during our incredibly brief interactions.
Just in case we should ever meet in a dark alley someday.
Well done, me. It seemed to have garnered enough favor with Night Horse to save my life.
And so, was I now to endanger his? Did I have a choice?
“I found these beads in the puddle of blood beneath Frank Sawyer’s exsanguinated corpse,” I revealed in a voice low enough for intrigue, even though we were alone. “Any conjecture as to how they came to be there?”
The Hammer inspected the innocuous little rocks in his hand. Such a pretty color. Vibrant, coarse, and foreign in urbane environs such as the Shiloh room. “I thought you said Jack the Ripper claimed Mr. Sawyer’s murder in the alley before he rendered you unconscious.”
“He did. But he accosted me on my way to deliver these to you.”
A grim calculation tightened his features as he regarded me. “You would have accused Mr. Night Horse of the Sawyer murder?”
“It is not my place to accuse anyone,” I stated carefully. “But answer me this, do you believe that if Aramis Night Horse had found these upon my person in that alley, I would have made it here alive?”
The Hammer said nothing, his features remaining impassive, but his long fingers closed around the beads until his hand became a fist he dropped to his side.
“How long has Mr. Night Horse been in London?” I ventured quietly.
“Surely, you don’t think he’s Jack the Ripper,” he scoffed. “You told me, yourself, your assailant sounded like an invert. Aramis has curious diction, but his voice is masculine, and his accent singular.”
I didn’t naysay that.
I also didn’t say that Aberline had often suspected Jack the Ripper didn’t work alone. I didn’t note that the Blade was partly a moniker coined for the method of murder favored by the assassin. Wet work, some called it. Done by a specific knife, which closely resembled the very dimensions of the weapon used in the Whitechapel murders.
The Hammer assessed me as though unsure whether to catalogue me as loyal or a liability.
I said nothing.
With every part of myself, I wished I’d gone straight home after the Sawyers’ and thrown the turquoise beads off the London Bridge.
But then, I’d never have encountered the Ripper. That, in itself, was a double-edged blade.
He was a man I endlessly searched for.
One I hoped never found me in the darkness.
“I brought these to you in case you knew Frank Sawyer. In case you ordered his death and…in case you didn’t. I thought maybe Mr. Night Horse acted without your consent.”
The air around us changed, and I abruptly knew I was out of danger. My loyalty had been noted.
“Were you acquainted with Frank Sawyer?” I pressed.
“No, I never met the man. Nor did I wish him dead.” He seemed to consider something for a moment, then asked, “Fiona, did the inspectors see these beads?”
“No. I was able to keep them from notice,” I answered honestly. “But Croft does suspect you might have had a hand in the murder.”
His broad forehead furrowed. “Why on earth would he?”
I shook my head, as stymied as he. “Because of the manner in which the corpse was positioned?” I postulated. “Upside down, hanging by one foot, the other tucked behind him. Hands tied.”
“Pittura infamante,” he murmured. “I wonder what it means regarding this Frank Sawyer.”
I scowled. Had everyone heard of this pittura infamante but me?
“A bit of a mystery, then, how these beads came to be with Mr. Sawyer if he was, indeed, the victim of the Ripper.” The Hammer glanced toward the partition.
“You doubt it?”
“I do not doubt your story, my dear. I doubt everyone else in it. The illumination of your disclosures only serves to create more shadows.”
I looked away from him then, a dark thrill rising inside of me. “If Jack the Ripper is killing again…maybe, he can be found. Maybe he can be killed.” I could say this to the Hammer. Unlike Aidan or Croft, he would understand my motivation. He would approve of it. I knew my appreciation of this did little to recommend me to most decent folk.
But it recommended me to the Hammer.
He looked at me, then, for a long time. “Why are you here, Fiona?”
“I already told you—”
“No, why are you here in this godless city? Why not fuck away off to America? There are more of you Irish there than are left on your starving island. The Ripper is not there. You would be out of even my reach. You have the money, why not go?”
“I have Aunt Nola to look after,” I hedged.
“You could lock her in a box and ship her there in five days.” He waved off my excuse for exactly what it was.
Malarkey.
I knew how unyielding my eyes were when I looked back at him because my heart was twice as hard. “I have Mary to look after.”
“Yes. Yes. Your revenge.” He went to his desk and leaned upon it, folding one long leg across the other at the ankle. The very picture of a reclining rake. “You know what they say about those who dedicate their lives to revenge?”
“They say lots of things.” The infamous they. The invisible they. The all-knowing they.
“Dig two graves, Fiona. One for your enemy… And one for yourself.”
Once again, I had nothing in way of reply and found myself wishing for an escape. Yet, I didn’t want to go back out into the night alone.
Alone, and rather undressed.
“I could ask you the same thing.” I redirected the conversation back to his favorite subject: himself. “Jews are faring as well as the Irish in America, by all accounts.”
“That won't last,” he predicted dryly. “We never fare well anywhere for very long. While Prime Minister Disraeli is still remembered fondly by the Queen, we are more or less safe here. And I have heard that the Irish are gaining power in New York by sheer force of population.”
“A boon for the Irish, maybe,” I murmured. “But not for the population of people already claiming that land as their home.” I thought of Mr. Night Horse and wondered what had brought him here, so far from his native land. America was an incomprehensively large place…but no one seemed to believe it large enough to share with the indigenous peoples.
“Yes, well...they say the land of the free, but they don't mean everyone, do they?”
“Better the chains you know?” I lifted a brow at him.
“Or no chains at all.” He opened his arms as though to advertise his liberty.
Pushing away from his desk, he stalked toward me like a cat. His eyes focused on my every ticking muscle, and yet he came at me sideways. A finger traced the coarse wool of the shawl he’d given me, dipping beneath it to skim my bare shoulder. His head dropped below his shoulders toward mine. “Some restraints are velvet.”
As was his voice.
My breath became the canary in a cage, sensing the danger and beating wildly in search of escape from the confines of my ribs.
“And some fists are iron.” I made certain my reply was as frigid as he was scorching, his body throwing off heat in waves.
He pulled back as though stung. “You fear me, even now.”
“Tell me I have no reason to.”
He regarded me for a long time. “Sometimes, what we want and what we fear are one and the same.”
Before I could retort, a door behind the partition opened and clicked shut as someone entered.
The Business of Blood Page 7