by Maren Smith
The next person who tried to take her from him was going to die.
“Light,” Sergeant Hatman ordered, still perched around the hole, trying now to see into the basement.
Careful where he crawled, Constable New lit the lamp from his belt and passed it over. Peering into the hole alone with his superior, he blanched and quickly looked away. “He’s been impaled.”
Lifting her head out of the side of his neck, Florrie looked at the officers. Though he quickly grabbed after her, she shoved off his lap. Her dress was torn, the dirty hem dragging the ground behind her, and yet Florrie stubbornly fought it out of the way as she crawled back to the edge of the hole.
“Missus, please,” New protested.
Draven started after her. He’d have grabbed her ankle and hauled her back to safety, but he was a good six feet behind her when the floor let out an ominous crack and Draven quickly scrambled back before he sent them all crashing down into the basement.
“Light,” she told the sergeant, whose wary attention had immediately shifted to the floor.
He frowned at her. “You need to leave the building. This is police business now. And anyway, what lies down there isn’t fit for my eyes much less yours.”
Aggravated though he was, Draven had to admire the withering look she gave him, “Then don’t look, but I’m not leaving here until I see for myself that he’s dead. Light. Please.”
Frowning, the sergeant reluctantly aimed the light back down into the basement.
Although the urge itched at him, Draven didn’t need to see it for himself. He knew everything he needed to just by the way Florrie’s shoulders dipped in relief. She turned away, eyes closed, breathing out a slow sigh.
“Congratulations,” he said instead. “Seems you caught the Ripper after all.”
Head snapping up, the sergeant’s frown locked on him. “That is not the Whitechapel murderer,” he announced, loud enough not just for Draven to hear, but for every one of his men gathered down the hallway behind him. “This man is Hesill Stevens, a person of such low moral character that he attempted to kidnap this woman in a fraudulent attempt to collect that ill-advised reward. Fortunately, his nefarious intentions were thwarted before he could do to her as he did to his accomplice.” He turned on Constable New. “Right?”
The younger man cleared his throat. “Right, sir. That’s how I recall it, straight enough.”
The fierceness of the sergeant’s challenging stare locked on Florrie next. “And how do you recall it, missus?”
Hand pressed to her chest, at first Florrie didn’t seem to realize he was talking to her. When she did notice, she cast Draven a wary glance before confronting the sergeant. “I… I don’t think I remember.”
Gathering her skirt, she tried to back away but Sergeant Hatman came around the hole after her, grabbing her arm. Draven shot to his knees, making every bobby in sight shift and tense.
“That’s too bad,” the officer softly warned. “Memories are such fickle things at the best of times. Sometimes, we don’t at all recall things the way they happened, and with your head injury, well… it’s best, I think, not to dwell on them or let your recollections stray too far from the official report. How sad it would be if the only surviving victim of the Ripper had to be committed. For her own good, of course.”
Bristling, Draven would have answered, but Florrie found her tongue first.
“If you ever darken my doorstep again, not only will I remember everything, but I will remember it publicly. Who knows, I might be so loud about it, not only will the papers hear me, but so will your superiors. Don’t forget, an entire street full of people watched you bring them to Draven’s shop and they led me away. You think they won’t remember the man who robbed them of seven hundred pounds?”
Every instinct Draven had could be felt crawling up the back of his neck to perch in warning just under the back of his skull.
Not taking his gaze off her, the sergeant tipped his head toward New. “Get them out of my crime scene, constable.”
Grabbing Florrie as soon as she was close enough, Draven was only too happy to let the bobby escort them out of this crumbling place. He kept his grip locked on her until they were in the tiny courtyard.
“Push on,” New said, his personal thoughts careful masked behind eyes that said he wasn’t paid enough to countermand his superior, no matter how far from the truth he carried this scenario for his reports.
“We should say something,” Florrie whispered, the minute they were through the caved-in warehouse, past Lizzie and the ring of police surrounding her as they waited for a police surgeon to arrive, and once more in the alley heading back to Butcher Row.
“We’re keeping our mouths shut,” Draven said firmly. Spotting two more constables hurrying up the alley in the direction they’d just come, he squeezed her hand to warn her and held his tongue until they were well past them. He watched them go, just to make sure.
Florrie barely did. “But—”
“Shut it,” he told her sternly. “We’re not saying one word. Because if we do, our darling sergeant will for the rest of his life be known as the knob who gave you back to Jack the Ripper. Not only will he be stripped of his rank, but he’ll never get it back and he’ll never advance. He won’t accept that quietly. He’ll lock you away first. At the very least, he’ll try.”
“People need to know—”
“We’ll know.” Draven squeezed her hand. “That’s good enough for the likes of us.”
They were halfway across Commercial Street now. He could see his butchery, with both the Fat Man and his son standing guard over his block and wares. The eagerness to get back home where she would be safe in an environment that felt firmly under his control, picked at him so aggressively that he almost didn’t notice she’d suddenly stopped walking. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
She stared at him, her face a mask of reluctance. “Nothing,” she finally decided, and resumed walking.
“Nothing?” he echoed, eyebrows arching. “Don’t give me ‘nothing’, pet. I’ve been married. I know what that means. Give over.”
She shook her head.
Catching her arm, he stopped her where they both where. “Give over,” he said gently.
Reluctance played with regret in the blue of her eyes. She looked from him to the Fat Man and his son, to the people milling about both in and outside his shop. The long line of fakes and frauds was gone, leaving only the genuine customers remaining.
“Later,” she said with a sigh. “Go to work. We’ll talk about it later.”
This time when she walked away, he let her go. In his mind, he was already turning over all the possible topics most likely to come up in this ‘later’ conversation… and all the reasons for why she didn’t want to talk about them now. He came up with more than a handful of both. None were either easy conversations or happy reasons.
She was going to leave, he knew it.
He also knew, under no circumstances was he going to let her go.
***
Flora sat at the kitchen table, staring at the necklace she’d wasted no time at all in taking off and dropping as far away from her as her arm and the table would allow. All she kept thinking was, she couldn't tell him the truth.
It didn't matter how much one person loved another, the moment the words 'I come from the future' were spoken, someone's sanity, sense of humor, or ability to tell the truth was going to get questioned. She couldn't prove such a claim anyway, since she’d brought nothing except this locket with her when she’d come. Fat lot of proof this thing was. It wasn’t like it came with buttons, knobs, dials a girl could set, or even an instruction manual. For all she knew it was a one-time use sort of time machine with no guarantee that it could or would take her home. If she opened it right now and touched the painting, she could end up looking at dinosaurs for all she knew. She’d survived Jack the Ripper today; tomorrow, she could end up running from a T-Rex.
To be perfectly honest, if going hom
e meant leaving Draven behind, she wasn’t sure she wanted to do that.
She could always take him with her, whispered the devil on her shoulder. The angel was far more practical: Would he even want to come? Leave everyone and everything he knew and loved behind him to follow her into the future? That was a tall order for anyone when it came to someone they barely knew. How would he get a job, a driver’s license, or a birth certificate? And if by some miracle she did manage to convince him to come, there was no guarantee she could make the locket work.
Burying her face in her hands, she tried to figure out her next move. Funny, how fast the day went when she had an awkward conversation coming and no idea what to say in it. Before she knew it, the sun was setting, the constant commotion on the street outside was dwindling away, and then she heard it. The tromp-tromp-tromp of Draven moving back and forth as he brought in what hadn’t been sold, moving some out to the aging shed, cutting up others to drop into the pickling brine. She knew he had the barrel open; she could smell the spices through the floorboards.
Eventually, the strength of that odor diminished and yet, he lingered downstairs. The heaviness of his footsteps wandered as far as the bottom of the stairs, but then they stopped and everything went silent.
He was the closest to truly loving a man that she had ever been, and that surprised her considering how short a time they'd known one another. He had comforted her, protected her, and both disciplined and made love to her so thoroughly that every nerve in her body had sung his name.
He didn't want her to stay, how could he? Surely, that was why he was still down there, unwilling to come up here because then he’d have to say as much out loud. Just look at all the trouble she’d caused him so far. Just because the Ripper was out of the picture now, that didn’t mean she was going to have it easy. In a time before women’s rights, without any means, on a continent where she had no idea how even to count the money… how was she going to live here?
How was she going to live without Draven?
Her heart panged just as the door to his flat opened. Draven came inside with a slab of pork in a pan. It was already cut, mixed about with potato and onion, but uncooked. He said nothing as he slipped behind her, adding more fuel to the fire and coaxing the flames back to life before setting the pan in the hearth to cook.
She watched, stomach sinking, as he paused with forearms resting on his knees to stare into the fire. Nodding once, as if to himself, he got up and came to her.
This was it, the talk that she’d been dreading for hours. She was no better prepared for it now than when she’d first come home.
Home… God…
She buried her head in her hands again, but only until he took her by the wrist.
“Draven,” she said, wanting to apologize. For everything, and yet she stopped when she realized he wasn’t taking her to the door. He was taking her to bed. Her breath caught when he drew her around the footrail. He was unsmiling when he drew her to him, but his eyes—oh, his eyes. There was such a depth in the emotion of his gaze, in the hand that cupped her cheek, and in the arm that wound about her waist. There were too many clothes between them. She couldn’t feel his heartbeat when he tipped her mouth to his, the warmth of his lips first caressing, then nibbling, and finally consuming hers, but her own was beating hard enough for them both.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, breaking down into tears.
Her knees bumped the mattress when he turned her. Capturing her lips beneath his own, his mouth never broke from hers when he bent, his arms locking around her waist and her thighs as he lifted her, her feet completely leaving the ground an instant before he lowered her to the bed.
There was no such thing as sorry in the way his weight settled on top of her. There wasn’t room enough for it to exist between them when he nibbled his way along her jaw to her ear, shifting his weight back and forth as he worked her skirt up to her waist. There was no sorry in the first touch of his bare fingers, sliding into the slit of her drawers, setting the whole world between them on fire.
She grabbed his shoulder and he stopped, but only long enough to take her hands and pin them above her head. With gentle force, he made her hold the cool bars of the metal headrail.
“Let go,” he warned, “and I’ll tie you to the bed. God knows, I may never let you up again if I do.”
She nodded, breathless, and down his hand went, disappearing beneath her skirts and setting all her nerves to quivering when he found her clit. Her back arched and her eyes closed, only to snap open the instant his other hand slid under the back of her head and seized hold of her hair.
His weight balanced on his elbow, his dark gaze locked on hers, he brought her to gasping, to bucking and rolling in a helpless match to the stroking movements of his fingers. There was no sorry asked for as he slipped them into the wetness her body cried for him, or given when the growing tension that his deeper strokes caressed from her finally snapped. In a burst of intense pleasure, she arched and shook and rode his thrusting hand until the waves eventually stopped.
Trembling, she stared up into his eyes.
Shifting into the valley between her splayed legs, he did not relax his grip on her hair. With one hand, he unbuckled his belt and opened his pants.
She wrapped her legs around him, holding him the only way she could without letting go of the headrail. “Oh please, yes…” she sighed as he entered her.
Slow and deep, he filled her. Took her. Owned her so completely that every thought, and sinew, and fiber of her was fixed only on the unbelievable ecstasy of his hold on her hair, his hand on her throat, and the bump and thrust and unbelievable friction of his cock moving inside her.
“What do you want?” he asked, low as a growl.
She could have cried. “You. I want you. I want you!”
For the first time, the darkness in his stare faltered as vulnerability crept into him. “I want you too,” he told her. Letting go of her hair, he folded her in his arms. “I want you too.”
She let go of the bars and clung to him instead. He never did tie her to the bed, but cheek to cheek, heart to heart, he wound her up one slow thrust of his hips after another. Wound her up, until every movement was an agony of unbearable pleasure.
Wound her up, until he shattered her, breaking her into countless quivering pieces and making her whole all at the same time.
For a long time, they lay together in the aftermath, with the dark of night interrupted only by the flicking of the flames as the fire gradually died. His hold on her broke only long enough for him to get up, stir the coals and their supper, cooking in the pan. Then he’d come back to bed, crawled in behind her, put his arms back around her and cradled her once more.
“I don’t want to do that again,” he finally said. “Not the loving part,” he specified before her heart could do more than pang. “The rest of what happened today, though…”
She twisted her head back far enough to see him over her shoulder. “I’m very sorry that you had to be involved…”
“I don’t care about being involved, dovey. What I care about is not knowing when someone else might come to lay his claim to you. I can’t take watching you walk out the door, knowing that, at any moment of any day, I might lose you completely. That’s what I can’t—”
“I’m not married,” she blurted, and then just lay there in the shelter of his arms and the awkwardness of the silence that followed. For all that she’d decided she didn’t want to go there, the door to the whole ‘oh great, she’s insane’ conversation was thrown wide open and she’d been the one to open it. She was committed. She braced herself for the consequences. “My name is Flora O’Bannon. I’m from New Orleans in Louisiana. I had a little museum there, in a house in the French Quarter. I went to school; I’m fully educated. My parents died when I was young, so my grandmother raised me. She died four years ago. I have never been in trouble with the law. No one from my past will ever come looking for me.”
His head tipped as he cautiou
sly asked, “How did you end up here?”
And here it was. The moment that would forever be branded in her mind as the biggest regret of her life. Did she tell him the truth and risk losing everything by expecting him to believe the impossible, something she would never have believed herself were their situations reversed, or did she swallow her pride and principles and lie to the man of her dreams?
Flora made her choice. “I don’t know. My first memory of here is what I saw in Miller’s Court.”
That was sort of the truth, since that was where the locket had dropped her, technically making it her first memories of this period in time.
Brushing her hair back from her forehead, he looked at the bump and gash on top of her head. Both were still very evident and probably would be for at least another week or more. “No man, then,” he said, accepting her word and her memory loss.
“None,” she said, her mind made up.
That tic of muscle leapt furiously as it became his turn to brace himself. “You do now, Florrie luv. If you want him.”
If she wanted him? Flora couldn’t move. What did that mean ‘if she wanted him’?
“I’m not perfect,” he told her. “I’ve got good part and bad ones. You’ve probably noticed, I don’t have a lot of patience for people.”
“You’ve always been more than patient with me,” she said, trying and failing not to tear up even as she smiled.
He smiled too. “Aye, well. You were singing a different song when I dusted your skirts the other day.” Smile dying, he became serious once more. “This is who I am, dovey. I’m set and I’m stubborn. You may not always have pretty things, but I promise you’ll always have a roof over your head, a bed to sleep in, and food in your belly.”
“No one starves in a butcher’s shop,” she said through tears.
Cupping her cheek, he brushed them away with the calloused pad of his thumb and vowed, “You might not always be able to sit, but you’ll never starve.”
Rolling over, she threw her arms around his neck. “I can live with that,” she whispered into his neck and chest. Laughing through her sniffles, she added, “Well, so long as you don’t expect me to come running every time you decide to go all spank-happy on me.”
