Authors: Dark Desires
She had left him in the earliest hours, though a part of her had wanted to stay in his arms forever, to never leave the secret joy of his chamber. But as the dawn had crept mercilessly closer, Darcie had slipped from his bed. Glowing with a private rapture, she had crept through the sleeping house, wishing she could surrender to the bubbling urge to dance, to twirl, to sing. Instead, she had noiselessly ascended to her chamber, avoiding the third stair, which she knew would creak and betray her wandering.
Damien had not wanted her to go.
“Stay,” he had said simply, holding one hand out in invitation, watching her intently as she dressed. She was reminded of the first time she had brought him a tray to his study. He had bid her stay that day as well. “I have no care for what small minds think. Come back to bed, and the world be damned.”
“You have the luxury of such sentiment. I do not. The reality remains that it is I, rather than the world, who will be damned.” She had said the words with the sincerity of truth, and with a complete lack of rancor. She had made her choice with eyes wide open, and she harbored no regrets. In fact, she was wickedly delighted with her decision.
“You shall not be damned for this choice, Darcie. Never will I let you suffer for it.” Damien had stared at her, his eyes burning brightly as he spoke. “Now come back to bed.”
Ignoring his softly voiced command, Darcie had kissed his beautiful mouth and slipped away. She was not ready to share their passion with the world, not willing to have the household staff intrude on their secret liaison.
Now, with eyes closed, she lay on her bed, reveling in gorgeous thoughts of Damien, his lips, his hands, his—
“You worked late last evening,” Mary said.
Darcie's eyes popped open. She had not heard the other woman’s approach, but Mary stood over her now, a frown marring her brow.
“I thought you'd gone down already,” Darcie said, her cheeks hot with embarrassment at having been caught in her secret imaginings.
“I went down hours ago. But now I've come up. To tell you that the doctor was called away. He said he'd return quite late. He left you this.” Mary extended her right hand, offering a sealed note.
Darcie sat up and reached for the folded sheet. “Thank you, Mary. I feel bad that you had to come up to give it to me. You have more than enough to do already.”
“I didn't ‘ave to come up. I was curious.” Mary shrugged. She leaned forward a bit to peer closely at Darcie's face and press one palm to her brow. “Are you feeling poor? You look flushed...but you feel cool.”
“I-I feel very well, thank you.” Darcie fanned herself with the folded note.
Mary glanced down and skewed her lips to the side. “Well, what's it say?”
Lowering her head, Darcie stared at the note in her hand, unwilling to open it in front of the other woman. She wanted to savor the message in private, but Mary couldn't know that. She thought the note was just a missive from employer to employee. As she slowly slid her thumb under the seal, Darcie recalled that Mary could not read. Should the need arise, she would simply dissemble, she decided.
She unfolded the sheet and stared at the bold masculine writing, wishing she could press the page against her heart. A surge of disappointment tugged at her when she realized that the words were not those of a lover.
Darcie,
The day is yours to do with what you will. John Coachman is at your disposal. Perhaps you wish to have a carriage ride in the park. I expect to return late.
Damien Cole
So much for love words and heartfelt emotion, she thought, her brows rising then falling, her shoulders slumping. She felt deflated, like a bellows with all the air forced out. Though she had enjoyed a previous outing to the park, the idea held little appeal this morning.
Mary cleared her throat, reminding Darcie of her presence.
“The doctor will be away for the day,” Darcie said, refolding the page and carefully pinching the crease between her thumb and forefinger. Dropping her gaze, she ran her fingers back and forth, accentuating the fold. “He will return quite late.”
“Oh. Well, I told you that already,” Mary said with a huff and an inflection to her voice that implied she thought the note rather odd. “Why did he need to leave the note at all?”
Darcie wondered the same thing herself, and her mood brightened a bit. Perhaps he had left it just so she would know he was thinking of her. Her disappointment over the distinctly unlover-like tone of the missive evaporated at the thought.
“I'd best get back downstairs.” Mary turned to go.
Drawn out of her reverie, Darcie reached out and caught her friend's hand. “Thank you, Mary.”
“For bringing up the note? It was nothing. Like I said, I was curious.” Her tone clearly implied that her interest had been for naught.
Darcie shook her head. “For being my friend,” she said softly.
Mary stared at her for a moment, tears welling in her green eyes. She ducked her head and cleared her throat, then gave Darcie's hand a reassuring squeeze. Turning, she took a step towards the door.
“There's a plate of food for you in the kitchen,” she said over her shoulder as she departed, her voice thick. “I covered it to keep it warm.”
For a long moment after Mary departed, Darcie stared at the empty doorway, wondering why she had not taken the opportunity to talk with her about so many things: the questions and suspicions surrounding Janie's disappearance, the bizarre conversation with Poole. Well, not about the entire conversation. She did not feel she could share the private matter of her embrace with Damien outside the carriage house. That was something she preferred to lock away in her heart, to cherish secretly and silently. Besides, bringing up that embrace might lead to a conversation about other stolen moments, and Darcie was not ready to talk to anyone about the night she had spent in Damien's arms. Those memories were her own private treasures. With a sigh, she realized it was a question of trust.
Darcie rose from her bed and quickly performed her ablutions. She ran her hand over the plain black bombazine of her dress, and for a moment, she felt utterly sad at the thought that Damien had only ever seen her in this, a plain, serviceable old dress, or worse, in the rag she had arrived in. She recalled the pretty dresses of her youth, soft and ruffled, adorned with lace. Little girl dresses. She shrugged and thrust all regret from her mind. Wishing that she had a beautiful gown to wear for him wouldn't make it so. As she slipped the dress over her head and fastened it, she smiled as she recalled that Damien had, in fact, seen her in something other than an ugly black dress.
He had seen her in nothing at all.
The thought should have given her pause. She was a woman raised with the expectation of marriage and children, reared with a keen sense of propriety. But the reality of a harsh life had intervened. Her current circumstance ought to be abhorrent to her, yet as she thought of Damien's embrace, his caresses, she refused to feel ashamed.
Darcie reached up and wound her long hair into a smooth coil, humming softly to herself as she moved, her thoughts far from her attic room. She scratched up her hairpins from the stool by her bed and slid them between her teeth, closing her lips around them. She then took one at a time to push into the thick mass of hair, securing it in place. As she removed the last pin from her mouth, it slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor. Getting down on one knee, she reached under her bed to retrieve the hairpin, but found nothing. She rested one hand on the mattress, and ducked her head down so she could see beneath the bed.
“There you are!” she murmured as her fingers closed around the pin.
From the corner of her eye, she spied a pale mass shoved far beneath the bed—the ink stained newspaper that she had thrust there days ago. She had saved it with the intention of revisiting the article about the Whitechapel murders. Straining forward, one arm extended to the fullest, she reached far into the shadows and brought forth the stained and folded paper.
Darcie sat on her bed, placing the newspaper down before her. Carefully, she opened it and smoothed the creases until it lay flat on the coverlet. The small window above her head filtered in the daylight, and she shifted the newspaper until it lay directly in a beam of sunlight. The ink stain from the spill obscured the bottom half of the newspaper, but stopped short of rendering unreadable the article of interest. Hitching up her skirt, she crossed her legs and leaned forward, her attention fixed on the article. She began to reread the text she had started days ago.
Another murder of the same cold-blooded character as those recently perpetrated in Whitechapel was discovered early yesterday.... London will talk and think of nothing else except this new proof of the continued presence in our streets of some monster or monsters in human form, whose desperate evil goes free and undetected by force of its own dreadful audacity, and by an as-yet-unrebuked contempt for our police and detective agencies. The series of shocking crimes perpetrated in Whitechapel culminated in the murder two nights past of one Sally Booth, who is connected with the other victims only by her miserable mode of livelihood. All ordinary experience leaves us at a loss to comprehend the cruel slaughter of three, possibly four women. The single male victim is now believed to have been the recipient of an unrelated attack.
Darcie tapped her finger lightly against the page, lost in thought. There was something about the words she had just read that nagged at her. The first time she had read the paragraph, days ago in Damien's study, the part about Steppy—the single male victim—had upset her greatly, blotting out all other considerations. But as she read the sentences now, there was something else that bothered her.
Her eyes were drawn to the name, Sally Booth, and the reference to the woman's miserable mode of livelihood. A shiver crawled up her spine.
The name: Sally Booth. The reference to her miserable mode of livelihood could only mean that she was a prostitute. Darcie slammed her eyes closed, trying to block out the realization that overtook her. The girl that she had met at Mrs. Feather's, the one that Damien had treated. Her name was Sally.
She shook her head against the implication of her reasoning. The name was common enough. Surely there were many women of the night called Sally. But even as she tried to reassure herself, the terrible certainty lodged in her chest, making each breath heavy and choked.
Returning her attention to the newspaper, Darcie read on, unwillingly drawn into the recitation of the deadly fiend's horrific acts.
The details of Booth's murder need not be referred to here at length. It is enough to say that she was found, early on Wednesday morning, lying with her head nearly severed from her body and mutilated in a most revolting way, her heart torn from her breast. She was found in the backyard of 10 Hadley Street, Spitalfields. She was an occupant of the house, which is known as a house of ill-repute. It is nearly certain that, for the purpose of privacy, she made her way, together with her murderer, into the yard, which is easily accessible through the house at all hours of the night. It appears unlikely that she was killed in another place and then carried to the spot where she was found. The fact that no cry from the poor woman reached any of the inmates of the house shows that the assassin knew his business well. The wounds inflicted by him were carried out with a precision and knowledge that lead authorities to suspect the perpetrator to be a man of medical knowledge.
Darcie read the words a second time, then a third, her entire body shaking. 10 Hadley Street. Oh, God! Mrs. Feather's House. Sally Booth
was
the girl she had met when she accompanied Damien there. Another massive shudder racked her frame, and her teeth began to chatter as though she were caught in a bitter wind.
Burying her face in her hands, she moaned softly, thinking of the terrible fate that poor girl had suffered. She drew in a trembling breath, dropped her hands, and scanned the words once more.
The room seemed to spin, and Darcie's stomach rebelled as she reread the words yet again, fixing her utmost concentration on the small, black letters that blurred and swam before her eyes. Sally's heart had been torn from her breast.
Her heart...
With a cry, Darcie jumped up from her bed, flinging the newspaper from her. Her throat felt tight and strangled. Her stomach churned, rolling with a terrible nausea. She could not be still. She paced the narrow chamber, feeling as though the walls were closing in on her.
Sally's heart. Sally's heart.
Darcie had spent the day on Wednesday making endless sketches of a human heart. She remembered asking Damien whose heart it was. Frowning, she tried to recall what his answer had been.
Does it matter?
he had asked, unconcerned.
At the time, she had thought it did not. Now, she thought it mattered more than anything in her life ever had. Frantic, she paced three steps forward, then whirled and paced three steps in the opposite direction.
Oh, dear God! Did the heart in Damien's laboratory belong to Sally? And if it did, how had he—
Suddenly, she recalled the night that she had watched Damien through the open door of his chamber. What night had that been? Monday? No, Tuesday. Tuesday night.
With trembling hands, Darcie poured water from the pitcher on the washstand into the chipped basin. Leaning forward, she splashed the tepid liquid onto her face, trying to calm her racing pulse, to cool her fevered brow.
Finally, she straightened and dabbed her face with a folded square of linen that lay beside the basin. She recalled the bloodstained shirt she had seen through the open door of Damien’s chamber. He had drawn it from his shoulders before throwing it in the fire. The assumption she had made at the time was that he was destroying a shirt that was stained beyond repair, but now nagging doubt plagued her. She had seen Damien in a blood-soaked shirt on Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning someone had found Sally's mutilated remains.