Fearless (Scarlet Suffragette, Book 1): A Victorian Historical Romantic Suspense Series

by Nicola Claire

  I collided with Ethel, knocking her sideways, my hands gripping her arms and tearing holes in the pagoda sleeve of her jacket. The force with which I threw myself sent us both reeling. Mina slumped down on the ground where we left her, as Ethel and I fought for control of her knife.

  I couldn’t think of my cousin, of how she had fared. My sole focus was on the long thin blade Mrs Poynton held, and the fact that she could have more upon her person.

  Ethel? It still made so little sense. How had we got it so wrong?

  The woman was strong, though. That much we’d assessed correctly. But epinephrine fuelled me, fear and worry urged me on, and anger like I had never known consumed my entire being.

  How dare she? The leader of our local chapter. How could she kill her fellow Suffragettes? Women who trusted her. Who believed in her. Who would gladly follow her anywhere.

  And, I guessed, that was the convenience, wasn’t it? They made such easy targets.

  The knife flew from her hand as I screamed my frustration and rage, clattering against stone and landing in a puddle of muck with a soft splash. I scrambled back from her, my gaze catching on the still form of Drummond - he’d be of little help - my chest heaving, my lungs working at capacity, sweat dripping down into my eyes. I brushed at the moisture, and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and then fumbled for my switchblade.

  “Ho!” said Mrs Poynton. “Now, did your father teach you to wield that?”

  “He taught me honour. Which is more than I can say for you,” I spat back. “What did your father teach you? Death?”

  “But of course,” Ethel said in that hollow voice she’d used when first she arrived in the alley. “I was his precious one. I was his special one. I was the one no one suspected.”

  I tilted my head to the side, taking in the way Ethel stood. Feet spread wide, hands raised as if for a pugilist’s battle. Not a lady, but something entirely different.

  None of this made sense.

  “What else did he teach you?” I asked softly, glancing toward Mina, judging the distance needed to get to her side.

  “He was very good at what he did,” she murmured. “Very precise. My work would have pleased him.”

  “The women you killed?” I blurted, so many questions inside my mind, making me less than eloquent.

  “Those women?” She laughed a bark of sound that echoed in the quiet alley.

  The reminder that I was alone - for all intents and purposes - with a murderer did not sit well. I glanced around the deserted space, then brought my eyes back to Mrs Poynton when she shifted. But it was only to lean against the wall; to better watch me.

  “Sometimes a message is best served in blood,” she murmured.

  I shook my head, unable to comprehend this monster. Someone who publicly stood for temperance and prohibition. Someone who fought for equality.

  “A message?” I whispered incredulously. “You are mad.”

  She bristled, a knife of her own appearing in her hand, this one serrated, with a hook on the end. The kind used in surgery to sever tendons and muscle, allowing access to more urgent injury deeper within the body. How many more did she have? How had she come by them?

  I glanced down at Drummond.

  “How do you know the chief surgeon?” I asked, my eyes back on the most dangerous person here. Ethel. I just couldn’t reconcile what I was seeing.

  “Oh, I know him quite well, Miss Cassidy. It’s surprising what a man will tell you when his cock is thoroughly pleased.”

  Oh, my Lord. She’d been his lover. And I suspected he hadn’t known a thing.

  How wrong had I been on so many fronts? How wrong could one person be?

  “So what is this message?” I asked, shifting a little closer to Wilhelmina. I was sure Ethel’s earlier blade to the throat had not done more damage, but I needed to confirm it. I needed to know I hadn’t brought my cousin’s death.

  “You of all people should know the answer to that,” Ethel said. “It’s your fight too, is it not?”

  A shocked gasp sounded out below me; I could have danced for joy at the sound. Mrs Poynton’s insinuation was nothing, in light of the fact that Wilhelmina still breathed our air.

  “My fight?” I said, touching Mina’s shoulder to reassure her. The knife in my hand was steady, but the fingers that patted my cousin shook. “I did not wish for those women’s deaths.”

  “Their deaths?” she barked. “Their deaths are merely a means to an end. For how can they ignore us now, when we are their victims?”

  I let a slow breath of air out and stared at the woman I had watched corral a crowd and unite masses. This woman who led by example and displayed a level of dedication had that left me feeling ashamed. This woman who had worked tirelessly towards a franchise that meant a change for our world. Our society.

  Who was she? How had she become this?

  “You killed them,” I stressed pointedly, “for a cause.”

  “I did what needed to be done!” she shouted. “But there were benefits.” The tone immediately polite. I narrowed my eyes, my mind whirring. One minute she was enraged; a bull about to charge. The next she was as quiet as a mouse.

  A soft breath of air escaped me.

  Double consciousness. Dédoublement, as it was called. Could it explain the letters? The fact that the writing appeared altered from one missive to the next. What else?

  “What benefits?” I asked, keeping her engaged as I frantically sought a solution to all of this. There was none, that I could see.

  Save death.

  Mrs Poynton looked me over with a sneer; the chill once again consuming her.

  “He had no right,” she said in that hard voice. “He killed him.” Who? “It was because of his persistence that he suffered a stroke. And with father gone I was nothing.”

  Holy hell, this made so little sense. But then, mental disorders rarely did.

  I glanced back down at Mina, my heart in a quandary.

  Mrs Poynton needed help. But wielding a knife towards me made me less inclined to offer.

  “Revenge?” I queried quietly, lest I enrage her further. “Revenge upon whom?”

  She smiled; it was warm again.

  “Men have it easy, don’t they, Miss Cassidy? Sometimes it’s nice to even the scales.”

  “And you’ve evened them, Mrs Poynton?”

  “Hardly,” she snarled.

  The knife in her hand lashed out, flashing in the dim light of the alleyway. Giving a mere second of warning, before it hit the bricks at the side of my face. Wilhelmina squealed in fright. I raised my arms up to shield me, receiving a slice across my forearm, but thankfully no more. The curved blade did not throw well.

  When I lifted my head, my breaths filling the eerie quiet of the lane we were in, another knife rested in Ethel’s hand. This one more inclined to fly true.

  I needed to calm her, to make her talk or walk, I was not sure. But long enough for someone to check this alley. To take a shortcut, or better yet, for Inspector Kelly to wonder where I was. Surely he’d have missed me by now. But then, if he was preoccupied with arresting Entrican - the completely wrong man, it seemed - then he could be delayed some time.

  I had to occupy the monster on my own. While keeping her attention off my cousin.

  I moved away from Mina, passing her still slumped but conscious body, and drawing Ethel’s focus farther down the alley. It was a balancing act; too far and she could cross the small lane and grab Mina. Too little and Wilhelmina would remain in Ethel’s peripheral vision, a target all the same.

  “Your skill with knives is impressive,” I commented, keeping her eyes on my face. “So many on your person. And yet you used only one on Margaret Thorley. Where, pray tell, did you acquire such talents?”

  “I told you,” she said, attempting to circle me. “My father, like your father, taught me well.”

  I halted in my tracks, a sudden, uncomfortable thought occurring.

  “Who was your father?”
r />   “A far more accomplished man than yours.”

  “Not a chief surgeon?”

  She laughed; that hard, harsh sound of before. “He was physician-in-ordinary to the Queen herself.”

  My mind reeled with the implications. Frantically trying to remember names and dates and who was currently Queen Victoria’s household doctor.

  It came to me in blinding clarity, as though reading the name from a list.

  “Sir William Gull,” I said, astounded. “You’re the daughter of a baronet.”

  “Didn’t see that coming, did you, Miss High-and-Mighty? My father was respected far more than yours. You think so much of that position of his. So much,” she spat, “you had to make assertions against a decent man.” Ethel looked down at the slumped form of Dr Drummond.

  Revenge. Had those taunting letters and gifts been because of that?

  “Who is Ethel Poynton?” I asked, feeling numbed by reality.

  “Some whore my father hadn’t managed to get to. But I took care of her for him and no one’s the wiser.”

  Oh, good Lord. I’d found Jack the Ripper. At least, I’d found his daughter.

  “That’s why you changed your name,” I guessed. “So as to draw attention away from him.”

  Her smile was slow in coming, but it left a sick feeling inside. There was more here to uncover, but I was running out of time. Ethel’s eyes darted down to Wilhelmina, her intent quite clear.

  I moved to intercept, but I’d forgotten; the Suffragette murderer was cunning to the extreme. A madness laced with intelligence, cultivated in the depths of a Machiavellian mind, and altered, to be sure, with opium.

  She moved. But not in the direction I’d anticipated. And far too quickly for a woman of her years. Her hand wrapped around my throat without any resistance, her blade lost to the folds of her jacket, as her free hand smashed my wrist against the wall at my back. My knife clattered to the dirt, as my feet left the ground, and sharp brick scoured my back and shoulders, my hair snagging on mortar, my hat ripping a few pins out as it fell.

  I gagged, unable to swallow past Ethel’s hold on my neck, my feet kicking ineffectually, my head becoming dizzy in a matter of frantic heartbeats.

  I’d forgotten the phenylisopropylamine, too. The inhuman strength as a result of a stimulant.

  “Interfering usurper!” she growled, spittle coating my face. “You think you’re better than me. His name should be my name. Just like yours is your father’s.”

  A bastard. She was Sir William’s bastard daughter.

  She thrust me back against the bricks, knocking my head hard enough to see stars.

  But by then, I was out of air anyway. My vision blurring, dimming, closing down. My heart fluttering like the useless wings on a snared bird.

  Had Margaret fluttered? No, she’d fought back.

  I let go of Ethel’s arms and scratched at her face. But I was wearing gloves, soiled with the blood of my cousin, but unable to effect any damage. I wanted to sob, but couldn’t draw breath to achieve it. I tried instead to kick her, but my legs felt like dead weights, my muscles cramping from lack of oxygen.

  I didn’t see her move, but suddenly Mina’s face appeared over Ethel’s shoulder. I tried to shake my head, to warn her away. Run! I screamed inside my head. Run while you can, dearest.

  She held my gaze, a dull look to her eyes that broke me. Tears streamed down my face as she raised a knife and brought it towards Ethel’s shoulder.

  Mrs Poynton must have seen something in my gaze. A reflection. A glint of hope. Whatever it was, she thrust me to the side and spun toward Wilhelmina. Landing a backhand to her face that sent her flying.

  I watched from my crumpled vantage point as my cousin lifted off the ground, arcing gracefully backwards, until her head hit the brick wall and her body collapsed in a pile of loose clothing.

  Oh, God. NO!

  I made to follow her, to go to her, to do something, anything - but I was certain I was too late - when Ethel’s heeled boot splashed down in a puddle before my eyes, halting my movement.

  She reached down and hauled me to my feet, this time holding my cloak and not my throat to achieve it. I sucked in a breath of air to scream, and she landed a punch to my face, ending it.

  I fell in a heap at her feet, sobbing, retching, aching. I felt more than saw her crouch down at my side, the sleeves on her jacket all but gone, her chemise ripped to shreds under it. I found the marks. The ones that Margaret had left. Scratches, several inches long on Ethel’s forearms. She’d mauled her, while Ethel had held her aloft and the knife had been driven into Margaret’s torso again and again and again.

  “Bastard!” I spat - the word having more than just one meaning - and swung my body around, pushing her to the ground with a sickening thud. It was futile. The last flutters of a dying bird.

  She brushed me off with such ease. Her strength immeasurable compared to mine.

  “Phenylisopropylamine,” I cursed, rolling onto my side and trying to rise again.

  “You were always too clever for yourself,” Mrs Poynton commented mildly. “That’s why I penned those letters. Keeping you busy with false ideas and misleading clues, all the while guiding you only where I wanted you to go. To who I wanted you to go to.” She smiled; it was chilling. “Taunting you as you taunted Drummond.”

  It had all been a lie. Every stroke of the nib on parchment. All lies.

  “SF,” I murmured. The liar’s initials.

  “Semper fidelis,” Ethel supplied. Always faithful. To her murderous father. A father who wouldn’t let her carry his name. Not a lie.

  “And the book?” I said, pulling myself up against a dirty brick wall, placing my front to Ethel, ready for that final attack. Or at least, ready to face it. I did not want to die with a knife in my back. I wanted the monster to look in my eyes while she delivered death.

  Not that Mrs Poynton had ever shied away from such, it appeared. Raised to admire Death’s precision. But it was all that kept me going. That and Mina. Lying so still, so silent, that I feared the worst.

  “Ah, now the book. What a grand message. Did you figure it out?”

  I shook my head, too exhausted to play this game anymore. Too sore and heartsick to pander to a madwoman.

  “Deadly nightshade,” Ethel supplied.

  “I know what the flower is.”

  “But do you know its significance?”

  This was it. The secret. I wasn’t ready. Just as I wasn’t ready to die yet.

  “I know it’s a poison, that it kills. As does opium. Why the dens?”

  She smiled; amusement flickering in her eyes. But she let me have my deflection, too eager to show her prowess.

  Or as if a spider playing with a fly before it eats it.

  “My father liked to experiment, you see? A little of this, a little of that. I took it one step further. How eager they are for their next fix. How eager they are to succumb.” Ethel smiled. The chilling one. The one that told me that the Ethel I knew was no longer there. “The people want it, they crave death, just like that whore of a mother of yours.”

  “My mother was not a whore!”

  “Wasn’t she? How did she pay for it? Because I’m telling you now, your precious father would never have financed such a thing.”

  “She did chores. Washed other people’s laundry,” I argued, a sense of dread and helplessness invading my very soul.

  “She lay on her back and spread her legs, while her hand stretched out for the dream stick.”

  I wretched sound escaped, a heartbreaking wail I didn’t realise, until Ethel started laughing, that I’d made.

  “They’re all the same, Anna,” she said softly. My Ethel back again, but only briefly. “That’s why Father liked to kill them.”

  I was going to be sick. I could feel it. Bile rising up my throat, threatening to choke me more efficiently than Ethel’s super human hands ever could. I swallowed it down, lifting my head and straightening my shoulders. My eyes narrowed wh
en they found Mrs Poynton’s impassive stare.

  “You carried on his work, but not prostitutes. Why is that?” I asked, forcing myself to my feet.

  She watched, bemused but uncaring. She was far better at this game than me. She didn’t make a move, not even attempting to. She didn’t need to prove a thing. She was faster and stronger than me; courtesy of a synthetic stimulant. But I would not go down without a fight.

  Margaret had fought. Mary would have too, if she’d been able. And there was no way Helen wouldn’t have lashed out, if this vile creature hadn’t drugged her. I wasn’t drugged. I had no excuse. I had every reason to fight with my last breath, to mark this woman so Andrew Kelly could find her. To leave my own message behind.

  “Couldn’t bring yourself to kill those like your own mother?” I suggested, once I’d made it to my feet.

  “Think what you will. You can ask her yourself, when you see her in hell, in just one more minute.”

  She reached into her now dishevelled cloak and pulled out the knife she’d held earlier. The one ideal for throwing.

  Throw it, I silently begged. Throw it!

  “An opium peddler. A murderer. And a liar,” I said, standing stock still, making as big a target as I could muster.

  “‘A liar?’ Where do you get that one from, Miss Cassidy?”

  I smiled, the effort required almost cracking my fragile cheeks.

  “You’re nothing like your father.”

  She gave a hearty laugh and then sobered. “Are you sure?” she asked, flipping the knife in her hand.

  “Positive,” I snarled in reply.

  “But don’t you want to know what the flower means, before I prove you wrong?”

  The flower. I had almost forgotten. It was too much to face right then. My breath caught, my body shook, and the monster saw it all.

  Ethel smiled, her lips spreading in a parody of mirth.

  “Deadly nightshade,” she murmured so softly I found myself leaning forward. “The mark of a murderer.”