by Maren Smith
He hated this. Hated the reward, hated the crowds, hated feeling as if he was reduced to living in a cage. It wasn’t even his cage. It was Florrie’s, but that only made it worse in his mind. Florrie would never be safe, not with that monster skulking in her shadow. “Two hundred pound,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“Seven hundred now. It’s gone up.”
Draven startled all over again. Not the Fat Man, this time it was Sergeant Hatman sneaking up on him, and he wasn’t alone. His loyal dog, Constable New, followed along just behind him with a man clothed like a dock worker and a clean but shabbily dressed woman in a gown at least ten years out of style. Weaving with every step, she was either still drunk or incredibly hungover. Helping to steady her walk, the dock man held her hand tucked into his arm and, when Draven met his eyes, smiled.
Turning back to the sergeant, he asked, “What’s this, then?”
Indicating the fervor of the impatient line, Hatman drawled, “I told you holding onto her was about to become lucrative for you. How much of that reward do you get, I wonder, for keeping her safe all this time? Lucky girl, getting attacked right outside your shop, yeah? Well done, you, for stepping in.” He made a production out of looking up the street at the long line of people hoping to swindle Florrie out from under his nose. “Good thing you won’t have to do it any longer.”
Hatman smiled, smug and broad. It might have been a friendly smile, but for the lack of any real warmth in his eyes.
“How do you figure?” Draven looked from him, to the hungover woman and the dock man with her. He was straightening his coat.
“Why, because I found them, of course.” The sergeant’s smile broadened as he gestured to the couple behind him. “Our mystery girl is a mystery no longer.”
“And they are?” He didn’t want to know.
“She’s me sister,” the woman said. Her accent was all Yorkshire, something Florrie had none of. “Lizzie Carr, is me. And this gent here’s her husband, Mr. Hesill Stevens.”
“You’ve proof of that, of course,” Draven said, not at all prepared to believe any claim coming from Sergeant ‘Let’s Get Her Into Police Custody’ Hatman. “Not that I don’t believe you, mind you. It’s just I’ve already had me fill of sisters and brothers, and frankly, husbands without so much as a wedding license or a clergyman to vouch for him.”
Stevens’s smile turned distinctly smug. “Sadly, I didn’t think to bring a clergyman with me, either. And we don’t have a license, being as we took up as mister and missus without the help of any man of the cloth.”
“Then you’ve no way to prove it.” He forced his jaw to relax. Already his teeth hurt from clenching in irritation. “I’m sure the good sergeant already informed you of the… difficulty she’ll have confirming your claim.”
“Oh aye,” the woman Lizzie said, sniffing as she looked at his selection of hanging wares. “The Star says she’s off her head. To be honest, she were never on it all that solid-like to begin with. Always wandering off if she weren’t watched.”
“I’ve already verified their claim,” Hatman cut in, frowning.
“Then you won’t mind me verifying it too.” Draven met the bobby’s frown with one of his own.
Now it was Hatman’s turn to look irritated. “Must be hard being this close to seven hundred pound and yet no way of claiming any part for your own.”
“I suspect you’ll find it harder still, yeah?” Draven replied, just in control enough not to snap or growl. “All that ambition and no killer with which to prove your competence to your superiors. You’re no Abberline, of that I’m sure. You know, I met him a few years back. Yeah, I liked him. A real man of the people, that one. Well liked… for a rozzer. And, well…” He gestured to Hatman, waving up and down the length of him as if the shortcomings were too obvious and too numerous to list. “Small wonder you’re just a sergeant, pounding a beat.”
Far from smiling now, Hatman glared. “Be very careful. I can and will arrest you. You wanted to play knight in middling-class armor, and I let you. But now her man has come forward, he has, and you will step aside so those what knows what’s best can do right by her.”
Draven kept his temper, but only just. “Her family, my hairy arse. You hand selected them from a bar!”
“They have proof!” His face reddened and his voice rose.
“Bullocks!” Draven snapped back. “What ‘proof’ could they possibly have?”
“This!” Lizzie interrupted when the dock man elbowed her. Rifling through her worn bag, she held up a thin silver chain and the round locket that dangled from it.
“That doesn’t prove aught to me, missus,” he said, unimpressed.
She opened the locket, showing him a tiny portrait of woman who looked just like Florrie. A little older, perhaps, but the resemblance was more than uncanny. “It’s our mother.”
The first tiny knot began to bind itself in the pit of Draven’s stomach. “Florrie barely remembers her own name. So you’ve a picture in a locket what looks like her, so what? That proves nothing unless she remembers you.”
“Her name’s not Florrie,” Lizzie said. “It’s Alice. Alice Stevens.”
That knot in his stomach not only grew larger, it grew teeth.
Stepping forward, the dock man smiled again, but it was a smile that felt cool and certainly wasn’t reflected in the stoniness of his calculating stare. “If I may, Mr…”
“Grey,” Draven heard himself say.
“If I may, Mr. Grey. I’m not here for the reward. I don’t care a thing about it. You’ve taken good care of me wife, yeah?”
Just the sound of that word on the other man’s lips made Draven ache to hit him.
“I appreciate that care. If more proof is what you need”—he leaned in closer, lowering his voice as he said—“not to be indelicate, but me missus has two markings. Tiny little things, they are. One behind her right knee and the other, well… let’s say it’s a little further up.”
He knew exactly what the man meant. He’d seen both freckle-sized moles the day he’d undressed her for Dr. Phillips’s inspection. Two days ago, he’d spanked one of those marks until her backside was the color of ripe summer cherries. Last night, he’d kissed it.
“There’s no one else quite like my Alice,” Stevens told him. “But enough’s enough now. I’ve come to take her home.”
Chapter 12
“Alice?” Florrie tasted the vowels and consonants of the name and was appalled by the flavor. “My name is Alice?”
“Maiden name of Carr,” the stranger claiming to be her sister cheerfully declared. They sat across from one another at the tiny table in Draven’s kitchen—Sergeant Hatman, Stevens and Lizzie on one side, she and Draven on the other.
Florrie couldn’t stop staring at them, the woman and her… her husband? She couldn’t wrap her mind around it. She didn’t feel married. She didn’t have a ring on her hand and truly didn’t think she ever had. What’s more, no matter how she looked at them, in no part of her did she sense that she knew these people. If one was a sibling and the other a spouse, wouldn’t they tickle some kind of recognition in her? At the very least, wouldn’t she harbor a subtle bloom of warmth or comfort in seeing them, because she didn’t. Not at all. In fact, her skin was crawling and every time she stole a glance at Stevens, her heart beat a little faster, but not in a pleasant way.
He scared her.
He scared her deeply.
So did the locket, and yet she’d still let Lizzie put it on her.
“I don’t understand,” she stammered, her hand drifting up for the third time now to touch the necklace. Just as it had done every time before, her fingers stopped just short of actual contact. Her skin tingled where the silver rested on her skin, and it was so strangely unpleasant that she looked to Draven for help.
He offered none. He leaned against the wall just out of arm’s reach so she couldn’t touch him. His burly arms were folded across his chest; he wouldn’t touch her either. Not on
ce did he look at her, but instead stared straight down at the floor at his feet. A slow tic of muscle bulged in his jaw as he clenched his teeth.
“Alice, luv.” Reaching across the table, Lizzie lay her hand over Florrie’s. “We’ve come to take you home. We’ve been looking all over for you, for days. Apart from that now, what else is there to understand?”
“I—” She hesitated, but her gut was screaming. She didn’t know this woman. Lizzie wasn’t any more her sister than Draven was. Try as she might, she could find only the vaguest semblance of familial likeness in their features. Maybe something in the nose or chin, but nothing in her eyes or mouth. Even the color of their hair was several shades off.
She didn’t want to go with them. But while every fiber of her being ached to cry that to Draven, she couldn’t bring herself to say it. She already had once today and though he’d kissed her, he hadn’t answered her. Not really. What if there was a reason for that?
What if she was looking at that reason right now? Hesill Stevens. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up. His smile made her shudder.
“Don’t be foolish, pet,” Stevens said. “We’ve had our rows, but you’re still me missus. I’ve come to take you home, and that’s that. Thank Mr. Grey for all he’s done for you, and let’s be on our way, yeah? The babies’ve done naught by cry for their mum since you’ve been gone.”
Babies? She stared at him, her eyes huge, waiting for something—some hint of loss or eagerness, even just a wisp of intangible memory that she might not be able to grasp just yet, but which might at least give her hope that any of this was real. It never came. She didn’t feel like a mother. There was no yearning deep down inside for the missing presence of a beloved child, much less more than one.
“Babies?” Draven looked up for the first time. His dark eyes were hooded. His unsmiling face a mask of cool indifference.
“Two,” Stevens specified. “Our lad, James, and sweet Rosie luv, who’s not yet one. She’s always been a wee sickly. When the missus went missing, that’s what I thought she was about. A quick pop down to the apothecary to stop our Rosie’s cough. Only she never came back.”
“And you never reported her missing,” Draven said.
“Like I said”—Stevens smiled—“Alice wanders sometimes, especially when we’ve had our rows. But she always comes back, ain’t that right, Lizzie?”
Staring between her and Stevens, Lizzie almost missed the question. “Right,” she quickly agreed. She pulled her shawl up over her shoulders, straightening her back and nodding. “Right.”
Florrie looked to Draven. He stared back at her, and then abruptly turned and walked a few short feet away. He stared at the wall, hands on his hips. So he wouldn’t have to look at her, she suddenly realized, and he wouldn’t have to say goodbye. Not because he didn’t want her here, but because it was hurting him too.
She was awful, Florrie realized. She was married, with children she’d abandoned and who she apparently thought so little of that they struck no chord of fondness in her now. All she cared about was herself, what she wanted. To stay here, with Draven, in the warmth and safety of his arms and his bed, a man who was not her husband. She really was horrible, and that had been her worst fear. She deserved to be married to a man who made her skin crawl.
I don’t want to go, her gut still cried, but Florrie stood up anyway. She looked to Draven one last time. I love you. Her throat closed, her own breath choking her. “I’ll send the dress back to you, once I’ve something to replace it with.”
He turned an ear to her, but did not look back. “Keep it. I’ve got no use for dresses.”
She wanted so much to hug him, or even just to touch him one last time in farewell, but she couldn’t. Not with Lizzie, Stevens and the sergeant in the room, watching her. Judging her. She’d hurt everyone enough as it was.
“Get your coat, pet,” Stevens said. “If you have one.”
Draven’s head cocked that much further. “You don’t know if she has a coat?”
Her husband’s already chill smile cooled another degree. “With her, mate. I don’t know if she brought it with her, is what I meant.”
“She might have lost it running from the killer,” Lizzie suggested as Florrie slipped past everyone to collect her torn dress from where it lay on the chair by the table. When her gaze fell on the ripped front, her eyes grew wide. “Lor’, look at that. The murderer tore all them buttons off too?”
“Someone certainly did,” Stevens slyly said.
Looking from her to Draven, Lizzie pinched her mouth in silent disapproval. “Oh.”
Oh. Just one word.
Until then, Florrie hadn’t thought it possible that anyone could—or even would—make her feel bad about what she and Draven had shared last night, but she did now. She not only felt bad, she felt ashamed.
Hands clasped behind his back, the sergeant bounced on his bootheels. He met Florrie’s flush with a half smirk and a sniff. He didn’t hold her gaze, but before he looked away, his stare dropped first to her breasts.
“Off we go,” Stevens announced, seeming to enjoy her discomfort. He held out his arm and, having no other option, Florrie went to him. She tried to avoid touching him, but the moment she was near, his hand came to rest on her shoulder. He leaned in, murmuring for her ears alone, “How very good to see you again. Pet.”
Her stomach dropped all the way to her toes. For a moment she couldn’t breathe, her own throat choking her off. The fire popped in the hearth, making lumps of coal and Florrie both jump.
Cloth burning on the fire… raining drips of blood falling on the floor…
It was a phantom of her imagination that made her believe she could smell it just then. She knew that, and yet the stench of blood, bile and entrails became instantly overwhelming.
Draven whipped around when she gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth and nose.
“Now, don’t you go making a fuss,” Sergeant Hatman said, stepping up to block his way. “Won’t be no hardship for me to arrest you after all the trouble you’ve caused me.”
“This is my house,” Draven warned.
“Aye, and she’s his wife, with nippers at home what’s needing their mum, no less. You’ve taken all the advantage I’m inclined to let you, butcher. Back off. Stop interfering with the business between a man and his missus.”
“Come on, you.” All business, Lizzie took her arm. Together, she and Stevens steered Florrie out the door and down the wooden stairs to the butchery. For some reason, the smell wasn’t getting better.
Her knees began to shake. By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, it was no small miracle that she hadn’t fallen.
“You are off your head,” Lizzie said, almost annoyed.
“I’m sorry.” Florrie struggled to pull herself back under firm control.
“You should be.”
The barely disguised venom in the other woman’s voice took Florrie by surprise.
“Leaving your babies to go off shagging another man? You’re lucky you got a man what still wants you back.”
“Keep walking,” Stevens said mildly, pushing them both now out the door onto the street. It was a cool November day and the streets were packed. Long lines of gawkers craned to get a good look at her. Some erupted in boos and shouts, a few even threw garbage, snatched up off the street.
“Oi, you priggers!” Lizzie shouted back. “Bunch o’ thieves, every one.”
Stevens only laughed, his gaze moving over the crowd, restlessly bouncing up and then down the busy street. He took Florrie’s arm, holding her captive in his supporting grasp. “Come along, Lizzie.”
The woman snorted. “No worries there. You’ll not be rid of me just yet.”
They started to cross the street, but Stevens pulled them to a stop when Sergeant Hatman shouted after them. “Hold up!”
The grip on her arm tightened almost painfully as her husband turned, his momentary irritation vanishing behind another thin smile. “Yes, s
ergeant.”
Jogging to catch up with him, the officer answered that smile with one of his own. “I realize you must be in a hurry to get her home and…”
“Settled in?” Stevens inquired when the sergeant hesitated.
A slow flush stealing over his face, Hatman tipped his head. “Well, you have been parted a while. Still, my superiors will want to know when they might expect to question your missus.”
“Would this evening be too soon?” Stevens politely inquired. “Her legs are quite unstable right now. Perhaps you could send a coach to the address I’ve already given you, around… let’s say… four o’clock?”
Taken aback, Sergeant Hatman recovered quickly. “That would be fine. More than fine, in fact. I shall happily call for you and your wife at four o’clock.”
Beyond Hatman’s shoulder, Florrie spotted Draven coming out of his shop. Making no move to return to work, he stopped in the doorway and looked right at her.
Her heart hurt.
His jaw clenched. His body turned partly sideways, as if he were about to go back inside, but in the end, he didn’t. In that frozen moment, that stance evoked a memory so strong that for a moment Florrie found herself standing in the dark, at face level with a broken window. The rough curtain fabric was all but in her fingers as she pulled it back far enough to steal that ill-fated peek inside. Draven became the Ripper, his powerful body cocked at just the right angle. The brightness of the fire in her mind rivaled all the patches of sunlight that touched along Commercial Street. His muscular forearms bunched and flexed as he wiped his hands.
Florrie whipped around, staggering and almost falling as she sucked for fresh air. The middle of Butcher Row was not the place to find it. All she could smell was blood, offal, and broken flesh.
“I’m going to be sick,” she moaned.
His arm hooking her waist, Stevens pulled her to him. Were it not for his grip, she’d have fallen. She was already dizzy, but when he spun around, she grabbed onto him with both hands.
