Heartless (Scarlet Suffragette, Book 3): A Victorian Historical Romantic Suspense Series

by Nicola Claire

  I did not wish to make the comparison, but my wife was equally as delicate as Miss Cassidy.

  My eyes scanned the room for anything else, but it was with the intention of assessing the sergeant. Blackie was built from different stock; his muscles large, his frame broad. He could easily wield such a thing as depicted in these drawings.

  The thought sickened me.

  “Sergeant,” I said. “We are done for the evening.”

  “Aye, sir. Not much more to be gained ‘ere.”

  “I will escort Dr Cassidy home. We’ll start again on the morrow.”

  He nodded his head to me, and then made his excuses to Anna, who watched from the threshold of the room with eyes that spoke of awareness.

  I waited until I could see Blackmore out on the street through the grimy window between the beds.

  “What is it?” Anna asked softly from behind me.

  It was time to tell her. It was time to warn her. If I could not keep her safe on the streets she chose to tread; I would keep her safe in another manner. In the only manner available to me.

  I reached inside my pocket and withdrew the letter.

  Then I turned and handed it to Anna to read.

  You Should Know This

  Anna

  I stared at the letter Andrew held out to me and felt a tumult of emotions storm through my body. Relief that he was finally confiding in me mixed with worry that it had come to a point where confidences must be shared.

  Andrew would only consider bringing me into his nightmare if he believed doing so protected me.

  I reached out and took the offering, opening up the notepaper and staring for a moment at the words. Comprehension finally worked its way through the fog of disquiet, and I spoke aloud as I read.

  “‘Inspector Andrew Kelly. Formerly H Division. Latterly Auckland Police Force under the redoubtable Superintendent Chalmers.’”

  I looked up at Andrew, who studied me with an intensity that spoke volumes.

  “She sent this to you in London?”

  “Yes. Well aware, already, of where I have been and for whom I have been working.”

  That did not bode well. She may have surmised Andrew’s location at some stage, but to know so much about his new place of employment whilst she, herself, had been in the Dutch East Indies was unnerving.

  I read on.

  “‘Cease and desist this relationship, husband, or I shall have one of my little pets end it for you.’”

  I swallowed thickly. The attack was directed at me. At the friendship Andrew and I had. I’d brought this upon him.

  No, I told myself forcefully, Eliza May had brought this upon him. I was merely a convenient means of attacking.

  “Little pets,” Andrew said in his deep timbre, “is the term she has used in the past for those poor souls she manipulates.”

  “The telegraph boys,” I said.

  “Indeed. However, on this occasion, she refers to Emily Tempest.”

  Emily. My one-time friend and the sister of Henry. Henry was now dead, an innocent caught up in the machinations of two evil women, and Emily awaited the hangman’s noose at Her Majesty’s Prison Holloway.

  I looked back down at the letter.

  You’ve already met one, a rather accomplished young lady.

  That was Emily.

  But I was never the sort of person to limit my options. The next might not be so refined. In fact, I do believe his knuckles are raw, and his mannerisms are too, and a demon lurks within him. Can you guess whom he might be?

  I sucked in a horrified breath and looked up at Andrew. He’d turned his back to me and was staring out of the small window. It was dark outside, and the gas lamps that illuminated this part of the city were not as bright as those found on Queen Street. His face was shadowed; the only hint of definition came from the candle I was using to read by. I lifted it up and brought it closer, standing at his side.

  He said nothing, but I noted the harsh glint in his eyes, the tightening of jaw muscles.

  “She plays you,” I said. “This cannot be real.”

  “How can I be sure of such?” he asked, and his tone of voice begged me to offer an answer I could not give him.

  I glanced down at the rest of the letter.

  I know you, Andrew Kelly. And I have done so since the beginning.

  Yours, forever and ever, amen,

  Eliza May Kelly

  She was toying with him. I was certain she was. But those words, that implication.

  “That is why you have fallen out with Sergeant Blackmore,” I said, wanting nothing more than to ball the note up and toss it in the empty hearth.

  “I have no choice but to distance myself.”

  “And will you also distance yourself from me as she asks?”

  “Anna…”

  “She is manipulating you, Andrew. If you cave to her demands, she wins.”

  “If I trust him and he is hers, she wins.”

  “This is James Blackmore we speak of!” He hadn’t mentioned distancing himself from me, so I chose to believe I had not yet lost him. “You have known him for years. This cannot be.”

  “Just because you wish it so does not make it a reality, Anna.”

  He sighed and turned fully to look down at me.

  “I tell you this; I show you this because your safety is paramount to me. You must be made aware of whom to trust and those who may not be trustworthy. Take care when in Sergeant Blackmore’s presence, Anna. I beg you; take care.”

  I reached out and gripped his gloved hand.

  “I will not believe it,” I said urgently. Tendrils of my hair came loose as I shook my head most vigorously. “I cannot believe it of him.”

  Andrew reached up and fingered my hair, then swept the loose strands behind my ear, tucking some under my hat.

  “Darling Anna,” he murmured. “You see the good in people, and yet you see what man can do to man daily. Would that I could keep this horror from you, but Sergeant Blackmore has been visiting with Wilhelmina.”

  I sucked in a breath of air.

  “If not for yourself, then for her, you must take heed of this warning.”

  Mina and Blackie. Alone in the garden. And Mina so frail and easily persuaded. Eliza May could reach out through Sergeant Blackmore and do far more damage to my cousin than opium or cocaine had ever done.

  My breathing sped up, my chest almost heaving with worry.

  I did not want to think the worst of Sergeant Blackmore; I did not want to be manipulated into doing so by that woman. Were it only myself I had to consider; I would dismiss the note and the words written therein. But I had to think of Mina. I had to protect my cousin.

  My thoughts went to the meal we’d shared this evening. At the low Mina had sunk to after Blackmore’s visit. At the thought I’d had of asking him to visit more frequently.

  Why must everything conspire against us?

  “You see it, don’t you?” Andrew murmured. “We have no choice.”

  “I…” I couldn’t think. I couldn’t speak.

  First I deny her the dreamstick. And now I would deny her Blackie.

  I turned and paced the room, placing much-needed breathing space between us. A part of me, a very much unwanted part of me, wanted to hate Andrew Kelly for doing this. He brought this to our door, to our city. Had I not met him, had my father not befriended him, what would my life have been?

  Would I have married a man like James Entrican? Would I have children even now and Mina, having not been exposed to such horrific dependency, care for them as well?

  I stopped pacing and stared at the dusty floorboards; a chill swept up through the cracks and chilled me.

  Would I have still been independent enough to make the journey to London and to the Women’s School of Medicine to gain my degree?

  Looking back never helped anyone; I refused to look back on what might have been now.

  But that did not make the next step I needed to take any easier.

  �
�And us?” I asked. “Where does this leave us?”

  Andrew said nothing for a long moment and then, slowly as if the words were torn from his heart, he said, “There can be no us.”

  “She wins,” I said, dully.

  “Only while I chase her and end this.”

  I turned to look at him. His eyes shone briefly in the dim light of the candle, and then he stepped up to me, his limp barely noticeable, and peered down at my face; his eyes pleading with me.

  “I cannot ask you to wait, Anna. And yet I find myself longing for your answer.”

  He had not asked a question, but I knew what he needed.

  “There will never be another for me, Andrew,” I said.

  “She has thwarted me before,” he warned. “She may do so again. This could take years to achieve.”

  “Where else would I go? With whom would I go?”

  “There are many who would ask for your hand. Chalmers’ has insisted I find such a gentleman for you.”

  I blinked. “Did he now? And why, pray tell, was that?”

  Andrew shook his head as if that would satisfy me.

  “He wishes to have me confined in the chains of holy matrimony. Is that correct?”

  “He merely believes you require…a firm hand.”

  “Merely?”

  “I do not agree.”

  “And yet he tasked you with finding me a husband, did he not?”

  “I was not in a position at the time to disagree.”

  “Andrew!” I snapped. How could he?

  And then he leaned forward and kissed any further words I might have had on the subject from me.

  Part of me believed he did it intentionally; to silence me. But a bigger part of me thought, to hell with it!

  I clung to his long coat and kissed him back with all the passion and longing I felt and could not act on. Andrew kissed me with a determination that spoke of rumpled sheets and sweat-soaked bodies and most definitely did not hint at finding me a husband to keep me busy.

  My parasol fell from my fingers. The note I’d still held followed. Thankfully, I’d already placed the candle on the windowsill, so I was free to wrap my arms about Andrew’s neck and kiss him soundly. He made a sound which I had heard now on no fewer than three occasions. A sound that did strange things to me. He shifted closer, pressed his hard body down the length of mine, and then placed a hand on my bustle and pulled me firmly onto his manhood.

  It felt thick and long and hard as it rested upon my lower stomach and thighs. I was not unaware of the physiology of the male body, and I knew that if we did not stop, Andrew would swiftly become uncomfortable, for his shaft had not yet been released from its confines and resolutely pointed downhill and not up.

  I rubbed myself against him, creating a friction that consumed me.

  He spun us and took me down to the nearest cot, disregarding of whose it had been or where we were. His lips lay a trail of fire down my neck, his tongue laved across my rapidly beating carotid artery. He suckled the skin there as if he wished to devour me through the lifeblood that pumped in my veins.

  His hand came around to the front of my bodice and undid the stays easily, my corset followed, revealing my chemise. He lowered his head and found a nipple through the soft material, and suckled there instead of my neck. I arched my back and moaned as a hand found my free breast and pinched it soundly. I bucked, and Andrew cursed, and then he was pulling back and shifting himself within the confines of his trousers.

  I watched as the long shaft I could see outlined by the material shifted into what I assumed must have been a much more appealing position, and then he was lying down on top of me again, settling into the V of my thighs, pressing his engorged manhood against the centre of me. My skirts hindered any lower extremity movements on my behalf, but that did not stop Andrew from rocking against me and finding exactly the right spot to make me gasp.

  I cried out as he rocked and sucked and pinched and held me. My eyes closed as all breath left me. He kept up a steady rhythm until I had no further knowledge of where I was or what was happening.

  Excitement swelled.

  Words tumbled from my lips in a most fervent manner. He groaned when I bucked beneath him. And then the moment came, the sensation of ripeness engulfed me, and I cried out in sexual contentment. Orgasm it was called. From the French word orgasme. Or perhaps the modern Latin orgasmus. In any language, it was simply divine.

  I panted and blinked as Andrew sucked in gulping breaths of air and hung suspended above me; his body shook, his eyes were tightly closed, sweat beaded his brow. I reached up, amused to note I still wore my gloves. I ripped one off and allowed my bare fingers to caress his forehead; his whiskers-roughened cheek.

  “Anna,” he growled and then quickly turned his head and kissed the palm of my hand. “I am almost undone,” he whispered.

  Some part of me formerly hidden and contained within society’s strictures awoke. And I reached down and rested a hand between us on his erection. He groaned. His eyes flicked open, and he stared down at me.

  “Do it,” he urged.

  I gripped him as tightly as I could through the material while my eyes stayed locked on his. Lust and desire and hunger and more stared back at me, and then he bucked into my hand and swore.

  Reaching down, he undid the front fastening of his trousers, then pulled the material away, exposing himself to me. My hand slipped in between the gap greedily and found him; hot, hard, smooth, rigid. Waiting.

  “Stroke me,” he said.

  A shiver raced through me.

  I wrapped my fingers around his wide girth and stroked slowly.

  “Faster,” he rasped.

  I gripped him more firmly and watched as his eyes almost rolled back inside his head. A smile teased the edges of my lips as I gauged his reaction to my touch and to how exactly I was touching him. I slowed down when he looked in pain. I sped up when he caught his breath again. I repeated the action until he was groaning and bucking in my hand, and fire danced in his eyes as he devoured me with a heated gaze.

  “I will spill,” he said urgently. “Do not be alarmed.”

  I was fascinated.

  He looked at me for as long as his body would allow, and then with one wretched breath in, his eyes closed and he let out a resounding moan. His shaft jerked in my hand and hot liquid splashed against my wrist and arm, and possibly most of my skirt.

  Andrew’s body shuddered above me, convulsing as he orgasmed. It lasted longer than I thought mine had, and for a brief moment, I was jealous.

  I let out a small giggle.

  Andrew’s eyes snapped open, and he looked down at me.

  “You laugh,” he murmured.

  “I am jealous of your prowess,” I admitted.

  An arched eyebrow was my only answer.

  “Yours seemed somewhat more invigorating than mine,” I explained.

  “Then I did not do my job correctly.”

  “You, sir, outdid yourself,” I said.

  He smiled down at me.

  She would not have this, I thought. She would not take this from us. From him. It might not be right in the eyes of society, but it was right in my heart and his. How could God condemn such an act? Would He? I doubted it.

  There was something primal about it. Something necessary. Something, I was certain, we had been made for.

  Andrew reached up and cupped my cheek.

  “Did I scare you?” he whispered.

  “Scare me?”

  He studied me for a moment, then said, “No. You do not scare easily, Anna Cassidy.”

  “You should know this,” I pointed out.

  He grinned at me.

  For a brief moment, the outside world did not exist. Rules and laws were forgotten. Scriptures and morals ignored. All that was left was us.

  Andrew let me see how much he adored me.

  I let him see how much he held of my heart.

  And then glass shattered above our heads as a brick came flying th
rough the window and landed on the dusty floorboards between the beds.

  Andrew was up and off my body immediately. The candle flickered, and a foul breeze stole in.

  The coolness of the night invaded my body.

  Or that was more likely the absence of Andrew’s heat and the icy hatred of Eliza May Kelly.

  We Are In Trouble

  Inspector Kelly

  I tore out of the room and down the stairs; taking them two at a time to reach the front entrance to the boardinghouse. My mind was racing as I debated the wisdom of chasing the perpetrator and leaving Anna unattended in this part of the city.

  And the way I had left her!

  It did not bear thinking about, and yet I could not stop myself from remembering her flushed skin, her panted breaths, the moans she’d made as she’d reached her climax of orgasm. What a beautiful and stunning sight.

  And then her hand. On me. So sure and yet so inexperienced. I felt myself stiffen again, even as I acknowledged that now was not the time to be distracted.

  I came out of the boardinghouse and stood on the near-empty street. A dog barked somewhere. A shout sounded out in the tavern farther up the street. Someone coughed; wet sounding. A breeze ruffled my sweat-soaked skin, on it a hint of the sea; I wiped my forehead with a handkerchief.

  Turning my head, I assessed the street. There were many a shadow here, and from them, I felt eyes upon me. Whether they belonged to who I chased, I could not tell. But for a moment, nothing moved; nothing seemed to breathe.

  Then Anna exited the boardinghouse behind me. My cane in one hand, her parasol in the other. I had no doubt she had also uplifted the letter from the floorboards, as well as the diagram of the device the Bohemians had constructed for the murderer. A delicate flush still marred her cheeks. It made her look ravishing.

  What had I done?

  I stared at her as she stared at me.

  “There was no message on the brick,” she said.

  “The message was in the delivery.”

  “And in the timing of said delivery.”