by Maren Smith
Wondering if she was visible enough, she moved down onto the bottommost step. Should she turn around, or just stand here? She wasn’t sure, but she felt beyond silly.
The touch of a hand on her arm startled her. A skinny man in brown tweed was studying the cloth of her dress. “You come from money, luv?”
“Like someone with money would be whoring in Whitechapel with a maniac on the loose, yeah?”
“I said ‘come from money,’ didn’t I? You can come from it without still having it, can’t you?”
“I said no questions,” Draven said from behind the counter, winning some grunts from those intent on cooperating with his edicts and some disgruntled glances from a handful of others.
That he didn’t protest she wasn’t a whore stung. But then, she didn’t know what she was, nor could she stop that whisper in the back of her head that kept insisting: When it came to prostitution, it wasn’t a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’ for the women of Whitechapel.
The journalists went back to their sketches, Draven went back to his customers, and Florrie just stood there. For all that Draven had made it clear, that she could vanish back upstairs if she needed to, the idea of running away bothered her. She was running every time she closed her eyes. When was enough enough? She needed to know who she was. She desperately needed to know if the movie-reel snippets of strange things she kept catching glimpses of in her head were real or… or what? Figments of her imagination?
“Has to be from money,” the second man said, just before she felt the subtle tug of fingers in her hair.
She hadn’t realized anyone was that close to her. Her heart jumping, she whipped around yanking her hair out of his fingers. She slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me!”
The man’s eyes widened. So did his grin. “American! Well that ought to narrow down the search.”
“Oi!” Over the tops of the few customers waiting around his counter, Draven pointed at them with his cleaver. “Mind your hands, or I’ll be minding them for you.”
No one touched her again.
“You’d think a bloke would be more careful than to go making threats like that, what with the Ripper still uncaught,” muttered the newly chastened journalist, not quite under his breath.
“What does that mean?” Florrie asked, sharply. She should have kept quiet, but his tone struck her as both sly and accusatory and her skin was still crawling from the way he’d fingered her hair.
“I don’t mean aught by nothing.” Bowing his head to his sketchpad, he made a few notes. “Only that you don’t remember the attack, right?”
Every fine hair stood all the way up on her arms and across the back of her neck. She wished she could say yes. She wished she remembered, but everything before she awoke in Draven’s bed was nothing but blackness and tiny snippets that her brain refused to focus in on for more than an instant at a time.
Pausing in her own sketch, a woman rounded on him. “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “Like she hasn’t survived enough, now she’s got to put up with you lot?”
“But that’s just it, yeah?” The man smirked, casting them both a conspiratorial wink before nodding to Draven. “Who’s to say he wasn’t the one what did both the attacking and the rescuing, eh? Who’s to say he isn’t Jack the Ripper?”
“The butcher?” the first man scoffed.
“Who’s to say?” he repeated, shrugging.
“He was seen,” the woman coolly reminded. “Chased another man off her and away.”
“Seen by who, other butchers?” He looked at Florrie. Although standing on the bottommost step, she was just short enough and he just tall enough, they were now eye to eye. “Like this lot ain’t thick as thieves already. One thumb on the scale as it is, they stick up for their own, don’t they?”
Florrie stood frozen in his stare, denials of every fervent flavor leaping to her lips, and yet going no further. She couldn’t remember. She had only the vaguest memories of the fire she’d seen, the room, the body—but the Ripper himself was a shadow, despite knowing he’d been well-lit at the time. She’d seen him. She’d seen his face, she was sure of it, but her mind refused to show her. But surely, surely it hadn’t been Draven.
She couldn’t remember running for her life, but the panic of knowing she had and knowing she still ought to be was sometimes so strong that she could practically taste it, like cold copper in her mouth. It was right there, a blazing red sense of danger thumping like the pulse of her own heart in her head. But when Draven was in the room, he banished it. More than that, he made her feel safe.
“He has nothing to gain from keeping me alive,” she said. “Even less if he’s the Ripper.”
“And he certainly wouldn’t be letting us lot in here to sketch her up for the papers, if he were the maniac,” the woman journalist added. “You’re naught by causing trouble.”
“Florrie,” Draven called.
Glancing over the crowd, she spotted him, coming out from behind the counter. He pointed out to the front of the shop, where an older man was pointing up at a hog’s head. Draven waited, watching her until she feigned a smile and a nod. She was okay, even though she wasn’t. And although grateful for his concern, she was not a child and it was past time she started showing she could take care of herself. Especially in a situation that was awkward and uncomfortable, but certainly not dangerous.
Draven shoved his way to the door, pausing at the threshold long enough to check on her one last time. Then he was gone.
No, not gone. He never really left her sight, but outside on the street, with two huge panes of poured glass, all these people and the thick, swaying curtains of well-marbled meat between them, he might as well have been miles away. A handful of people followed him to the door, most looking back at her as they went. That left just her and the journalist, and the old man who promptly put another tin of meat in his pocket, until he saw her looking at him. He returned it to the shelf.
Eyeing the door to make sure Draven was out of earshot, the smirking man sidled closer to Florrie. Lowering his voice, he asked, “How did you do it, luv? How did you survive that monster?”
Her stomach clenched in hard. “I almost didn’t. If Draven hadn’t interrupted him, I wouldn’t be standing here now.”
“Do you remember what he looked like?” another asked. Although his seemed more an expression of sympathy, the vast majority of those around her watched Florrie with macabre fascination. “Anything at all, his hair, his eyes?”
Outside, the hog’s head was gone and Draven’s cleaver whacked three sharp chops, cracking open a leg bone for another customer while his red-headed helper came in long enough to retrieve a length of sausages. Florrie’s stomach twisted queasily.
Hailing her attention back with a wave of his hand, the man in tweed asked, “Did you know him? Had you seen him before?”
“Did he say anything?” another from the back interrupted.
“What did you see first?” the smirking journalist demanded. “Him or the knife?”
“Aren’t you one for the questions?” the woman snapped. “Are you trying to upset her?”
Outside, Draven cleaved a slab of meat in two. The heavy blade scraped the bone, sending shivers through her and dredging up murky images of splayed legs with the meat cut away. The echoes in her mind began to mingle with the sounds coming from Draven’s butcher block.
Her muscles tensed. She pressed her hand to her chest, making sure she was still breathing. She glanced outside and her gaze clashed with Draven’s as he wrapped the cut he’d just made and passed it to a woman. He hesitated, but Florrie quickly looked away. She didn’t want to be needy. She didn’t get to panic just because she was asked uncomfortable questions.
Without thinking, she covered her nose, trying to block out the horrible smell. It seemed to be growing stronger, but she knew that wasn’t right. The more she breathed, the less she was supposed to notice it. Wasn’t that the way it worked? Because it wasn’t working like that right
now.
“Are you all right, luv?” the sympathetic woman asked.
“‘Course she’s fine,” the smirking man said. “We’re just talking. It’s not like we’re doing anything to her.”
“Yeah, I’m just… I’m fine, I…” Florrie tried to turn away, as if that alone might somehow make the smell easier to bear, but she stopped. She didn’t want any of these people at her back where she couldn’t see them. Already, a niggling itch was growing between her shoulder blades, whispering that someone with a knife was behind her. There wasn’t. It was five short steps to the staircase landing and a wall behind her, but the whisper would not be silenced. It buzzed in her head like the flies buzzing in and out through the open shop door, droning louder until it was deafening and yet it never quite managed to drown out the sharp, staccato slaps of hard-sole shoes running up the cobblestones behind her.
Except there were no cobblestones, and Florrie knew it. The only thing behind her was the wall, the rapidly darkening shadows lurking in the periphery of her, and that awful, awful stench of fresh dripping blood that filled her nose with every ragged breath.
“What if he comes for you, have you thought of that?” someone asked.
“What the hell kind of question is that?” someone else demanded.
Florrie didn’t see who. Her legs were shaking. All she could see now was a tiny pinprick, filled up with faces and the black of the shadows closing in around her. She concentrated only on breathing and staying upright. Jesus, her knees wouldn’t stop buckling!
Shoving to get through the men, the woman journalist put herself directly in front of Florrie. She caught her by the hand. “Do you need to sit down, luv?”
“If she knows him by sight, that’ll right guarantee he comes to finish the job,” someone commented, and Florrie’s gut twisted hard. So hard that she was sure she was about to be sick.
“Stop it, the lot of you!” the woman snapped over her shoulder. “Look at what you’re doing. She’s white as sheets, she is. Where’s your head?”
“Up your bum,” the man in tweed joked.
The woman gasped.
Snatching his hat from his own head, an older man reached over two others to slap the younger one upside his head. “Here now! Watch your mouth, you vazey ratbag!”
More than one man laughed at that, but before the rude journalist could spout a returning insult, the fight was interrupted for good.
“Shop’s closed,” Draven announced, coming back through the front door. Grabbing the two men nearest to him by the backs of their jackets, he shoved them out onto the street. “Get out, the lot of you.”
The crowded shop began an immediate mass exodus through the narrow door, sporadically hurried along whenever Draven physically hurled those slow to cooperate outside.
“I’m not done sketching,” complained the rude journalist. His smirk was long gone, and when Draven started toward him, he quickly threw up both hands. “I’m going, I’m going.”
Catching the scruff of his jacket and the back of his pants, Draven made sure of it. And through it all, all Florrie could do was just stand there. Tears stung her eyes. She didn’t understand it. Draven was in the shop with her, so why could she still hear that dreadful chopping sound? That horrid scrap of blade on bone?
Soon, the woman was the only journalist to remain, and had she not grabbed Florrie’s arm when her wobbly knees at last gave out, she would have fallen. As it was, the woman guided her down onto the stairs.
“Sit, luv,” she ordered with a brisk cheerfulness that did not quite cover her concern. “Poor lamb,” she told Draven, who came quickly to grab her other arm. “Rest is best, I think.”
“I-I’m fine,” Florrie gasped, eyes and mouth open wide. She pressed both hands to her chest now. She was panting, but she wasn’t getting any air. Fingers plucking at the front of her dress, she rasped, “I c-can’t breathe… I can’t…”
Switching his grip from her arm to her collar, Draven ripped it down the front. A rain of tiny buttons scattered across stairs around their feet.
“Oh, you’re going to give her brain fever for sure. She’ll be laid up in bed for weeks!”
“You want her to pass out instead?” he shot back, but Florrie didn’t care about lost buttons or her torn dress. She didn’t care about anything but the twin fingers he used to hook the top two laces of her corset and then the glint of light sliding down the sharp edge of the boning knife that appeared in his other hand. Florrie stared at it. Calmly, or so she thought, as the whole of the world seemed to fix and focus in on the blade coming at her.
It seemed to be with someone else’s ears that she heard that high-pitched warbling scream. Certainly, it had to be someone else making that noise. The first that Florrie realized she might be that someone else, or that she was moving, wasn’t when she crab-crawled backwards up the stairs, but when she shoved across the landing and slammed into the opposite wall.
She whacked her elbow, sending a twang of pain all the way up into her shoulder, and that was when the panic hit her. Like a punch to the gut, it stole all her breath—and yet, she screamed and screamed. It filled her, icy and hot at the same time, spurring her clawing hands and kicking feet to scramble her faster, away from the knife. Away from Draven and the round-eyed woman, both of whom stared after her in raw dismay.
The hem of her dress ripped under the kicking heel of her shoe, but Florrie rolled onto her hip and at last her scrambling feet found purchase enough to get her moving. She both ran and fell up the second flight of stairs, banging her chin when she tripped on the skirts of her dress.
Draven caught up with her then, catching hold of her ankle first and dodging the reflexive kick that cost her not just her shoe but her legs. He had her by her shins first and then her knees, hitting his own when he knelt midway up the stairs. Dragging her back to him, he hauled her kicking, bucking and shouting down onto his braced lap and into his struggle-confining arms.
“Florrie!”
She clawed and punched, but he managed to grab her wrists, pinning them in one hand. His arm was around her waist, hugging her. Her back was to his chest, his head tucked to protect his face from the wild thrashing of her head as she fought to break away, and when she couldn’t, her whole body stiffened, every muscle locking so tight that it hurt. She was one giant cramping spasm, and yet her mouth snapped shut and she stopped screaming.
“You’re safe, dovey,” Draven said, letting go of her wrists to clamp his hand over the cut on her neck. Reflexively, she knocked his arm back. It wasn’t until she saw the fresh blood on his fingers that she realized she’d opened the cut on her neck and he was trying to stop the bleeding.
“Shh, shh,” he whispered, catching hold of her again. “I’ve got you, luv, you’re safe.”
Her breaths became ragged gasps and shuddering sobs that were at first dry and tearless, though that didn’t last.
“It’s all right,” he whispered, crushing her that much closer as she keened a whimpering breath through clenched teeth. Her whole body shook, and in the next breath, an ocean of pent up tears and great, wracking sobs poured out of her. “Let it out. I’ve got you.”
When exactly the other woman slipped back out of the stairwell and crept from the shop, Florrie didn’t know. One moment she was standing there, all wide-eyed and silent compassion a few steps below Draven, and in the next she had gone, leaving Florrie and Draven alone, crushed together in an embrace that he did not relax.
Twisting around on his lap, she flung her arms around him, straddling him to get as close as she could. She clung to his shoulders and neck, losing her fingers in the tangle of his long, brown hair. He slipped his fingers into her hair too, the heat of his palm cupping the back of her head while his burly arm hooked around her waist. Her gasping sobs shook them both, but he only pulled her closer.
“You’re safe, pet.” The deep rasp of his voice was a soothing balm. It loosened the knots in her stomach and at last she felt relief. It soothed the viole
nt shaking that had taken hold of all her limbs; gradually, the trembling died away. So did her tears, leaving her lying limp against his chest while he rocked and stroked her, comforting her with every wandering caress of his big hands. Over and over, he murmured, “I have you, and you’re safe.”
His hands shifted. His thumb caressed the side of her cheek as he relaxed his grip only enough to draw far enough back to look at her. And then at her lips.
They were belly to belly, hip to hip, and when he stroked her hair back from her teary eyes, suddenly every trembling nerve inside her realigned its focus enough for her to feel the stirring hardness of his cock now swelling to meet the heat between her legs. Her thighs twitched, an involuntary movement of their own, but an age-old one meant to hug and hold him. And in that moment, a second wave swept over her, every bit as powerful as the panic had been but infinitely more primal.
Cupping the back of her head, he kissed her, softly at first, almost reluctantly. But when her hesitant lips returned that kiss, the reluctance vanished. So did the softness. It melted away, much the same way she melted into him as his mouth turned ravishing. His hands on her body became demanding. No longer content to be stationary, they wandered, touching and caressing and spreading their heat everywhere. Up her back, down her bruised throat to her breasts. He cupped, then squeezed before his hungry hands dropped to catch her now grinding hips, pulling her full on the bulging hardness that tented his pants.
She whimpered, fighting now not to break free of him, but to work a hand between them far enough to touch his imprisoned cock. She needed that hardness cupped in her palm, to squeeze him in return. She got only as far as his belt buckle before Draven rolled her under him there on the stairs. His shirt came off, though where it went she had no idea. His mouth was all Florrie knew. His mouth and the scalding heat of his kisses as he devoured her—from lips to chin to chest. He yanked her already torn dress apart, freeing her breasts from her corset to be consumed in the fire of his suckling mouth.
