No Place for a Dame (31 page)

Damnation. Fear was obscuring his ability to assess the situation. “Friend,” Strand repeated, saying the word as though it was badly flavored. “Yes. Well. Truth be told, he’s less a friend than a burden.”

Uttridge tipped his head inquiringly. Like all men in his position, he was a very good listener.

“You see earlier this evening he won a bauble from… a friend of mine in a card game. Nothing of value. A little lock of hair. My friend assures me he would have won the trinket back but, alas, he was called away from the table. When he returned it was to find Demsforth and his little sycophant had decamped.”

“Your lordship is fortunate to have so many friends.”

Good. Uttridge was feeling he had the upper hand. He would not risk mockery, even so well masked, if he didn’t.

“Am I not? At any rate, the owner of that lock of hair is a lady who is, can you warrant this”—Giles opened his eyes wide, inviting Uttridge to share the joke—“
another
friend of mine. She would like it returned before her husband”—he leaned in closer—“decidedly
not
a friend of mine, becomes aware of its existence. And I have offered to fetch it for her.”

“How noble of you.”

Strand bowed his head in modest acceptance of the accolade. Uttridge believed him. He could read it in the man’s face, the contempt that rippled just beneath the surface servility.

But then, why would he question it? This was just the sort of thing Lord Strand, of the roving eye and loose morals and lax conscience, would do: take a lady’s lock of hair as a love token, then wager and lose it in a card game where he’d risked not only the lady’s reputation but his own blood should her husband discover her indiscretion and challenge him to a duel.

“So, there you have it.” Giles shrugged. “I hope now you are more sympathetic to my finding this young man.”

Uttridge’s face twisted with distress. “Sympathetic, yes. But, m’lord, that does not change the situation.”

A cold finger of fear raced down Strand spine. Uttridge’s incomprehensible reluctance to barter for information had dire implications. He didn’t have time for this. Avery needed him.

“Well,” he said with a sigh. “I can at least tell the lady I tried.”

“Yes, m’lord.”

Strand half turned as though preparing to leave, then hesitated and turned back. “You know, since I am already here and it looks like the remainder of this evening is not likely to be nearly as pleasant as I’d hoped, I may as well see what sorts of entertainment you have, eh?”

Uttridge’s eyes glittered with avarice and triumph. “Of course, m’lord. I’m sure we can oblige.”

“Don’t want a big party. Hate a crowd around a table. Makes me nervous,” he confided. “Just a half dozen like-minded fellows with, say, a few hundred quid to spare? Think you can oblige?”

“I am sure I can, m’lord.” Uttridge practically rubbed his hands together. “There’s a room in the back that’s currently unoccupied. If you’d follow me, I’ll see you comfortably settled before finding your lordship some amiable companions.”

“Splendid.”

Uttridge threaded his way through the jostling, noisome crowd, every now and then fixing some drunken lad or laughing, brazen girl reeling into their path with a hard glance that sent the would-be pickpocket veering off to look for other prey.

Soon enough they were in a small corridor pockmarked with a half dozen doors, some hanging halfway open to allow glimpses of the card and dice games within, others closed tightly against intruding eyes. With a bow, Uttridge opened one of these and stepped aside.

Strand wandered inside, eying the room with the air of a connoisseur.

“I’ll send a girl in with some refreshment—”

Strand wheeled around and grabbed Uttridge by the collar, jerking him into the room. With a deft move, he kicked the door shut and slammed Uttridge into the wall along side it. His hands at Uttridge’s throat, he lifted him bodily from the ground so that his toes barely brushed the scarred floorboards.

Every resemblance to a schoolteacher disappeared from Uttridge’s face. His lips curls back over yellowed teeth, his face contorting with
rage. He clawed frantically at Strand’s hands, kicking out violently, but could find no purchase.

Strand dodged his kicks, pressing his thumbs hard into the man’s carotid artery. Uttridge choked, twisting, fear replacing his anger.

“Let me go!” he gasped. “Fer gawd’s sake, lemme go! Yer killin’ me!”

Giles shook him violently, part of him aghast at the bloodlust singing in his veins, the fury that drove him.
But this man had Avery
. He shook him again. “Where is she?”

“Who?” croaked Uttridge. “Ain’t no high class mort here! Not tonight, not never!”

Had he said “she”? Worse and worse. “Not she, you fool.
He!
Where’s the taffy-haired young man and his friend?” He eased his hold on Uttridge’s neck, allowing him to catch his weight on the tips of his shoes.

At once Uttridge tried to knee him but Giles anticipated the move. He grabbed Uttridge’s arm and twisted it behind him and spun him around, locking his forearm around Uttridge’s neck and shoving his face into the wall. He yanked Uttridge’s hand high between his shoulder blades. Uttridge howled.

“Quiet,” Giles ground out.

“Ye’ll never get off this street alive,” Uttridge panted.

“Right now all you need to worry about is whether you’ll get out of this room alive.
Where are they?
”

“Go to hell.”

He jerked Uttridge’s hand higher. Uttridge squealed in pain. “Last chance. Where?”

“Top of the stairs! Second door in!” Uttridge yelped. “I got nothin’ to do wid what ’appens to ’em once they’re in that room. Nothin’!”

Strand let him go, shoving him away as he did so that when Uttridge spun around, his arm swinging in a roundhouse punch, he easily ducked it. He blocked another blow and stepped close, feinting left as he pulled short and drove his fist into the man’s gut. Uttridge doubled over and Giles felled him with a sharp blow to the back of the head.

Then he headed for the stairs.

Chapter Thirty-Two

A
very huddled in the corner of the room, watching impotently as the bull-necked man she’d noted downstairs stood astride Neville’s unconscious form and went through his pockets. Her whole body trembled, her heart thundering in her ribcage and her breath coming in little gasps.

She had never been so afraid in her life.

The woman who’d begged Neville’s aid in helping her stumble up to her room—Nan? Nancy?—sprawled amidst a pile of dirty bed linens and discarded clothing on a narrow cot pushed to the side of the room. Every now and then she’d pour herself a drink though she never took her eye off her confederate, no doubt to keep a close tab on exactly what the man was taking off Neville.

“Check under his boots, Bill. I bet his stockings is made of silk.”

“Shuddup,” the man, Bill, replied, but nonetheless moved to Neville’s feet and began tugging off his boot.

Avery closed her eyes, pulling herself into as small a ball as possible, trying to be invisible. Part of her was appalled at her own cowardliness, but a much greater part of her held close to the simple desire to survive.

Poor, gullible, chivalrous Neville had offered resistance and been knocked senseless for his trouble.

Avery slit an eye open, nausea rising at the sight of the cut oozing blood down Neville’s face. The boot popped off into Bill’s hand and Neville moaned. At once, Bill raised his cudgel to deal him another blow.

“No!” Avery squeaked. “No.
Please
. He’s not any threat. He’s not even awake. Don’t hit him again. Please.”

The man eyed her. “Listen to ’im, Nan. ‘
Please
!’ This little squeak makes a prettier plea for his mate than any you’d make for me.”

“His mate’s a sight prettier lad than you,” Nan snapped back.

The man lowered his cudgel. “Just keep yer maw shut,” he told Avery, “and ye might make it home with all yer teeth, boy,” he muttered and went back to peeling off Neville’s sock. He gave a humorless laugh. “’Less, that is, they be really
nice
teeth…”

Avery shivered and once more desperately searched the room for any way out. There was none.

As soon as Neville had helped “poor, sick Nan” into the room, Bill had appeared from behind, shoving Avery in after them. The ensuing struggle had been sadly short-lived. Within minutes Neville was unconscious, and she’d been pitched into the far corner of the small, windowless chamber. A short conversation between Bill and Nan followed during which her fate was discussed and summarily dealt with. Surprisingly, it had been the man who’d argued for restraint.

“Look at ’im. He’s scairt as a leg-trapped cunny. He ain’t goin’ make a peep, are ye, boy? No reason to hurt him. Might break ’im permanent-like.”

But what would happen when he discovered she was a woman? And what could she do about it? Nothing. Her hands fisted in her lap, terrifyingly aware of her helplessness and vulnerability.

A scant few hours ago she had been jubilant, filled with her own consequence and importance. She’d imagined toasts raised in her honor. She’d imagined basking in Strand’s sardonic yet gentle gaze. Instead, she was shivering under Nan’s implacable glare. Likely, Avery’s antecedents were little different from hers.

Avery, too, might have reached adulthood unschooled, untutored, and illiterate. She might have drifted to London in search of work and
ended up in a place like this, as so many girls with no family and no skills did. Only her father’s chance encounter with a highwayman’s bullet may have separated her fate from Nan’s, stood between luring men into your bedroom to rob them and naming a comet.

Her great achievement.

It all seemed so terribly senseless now.

For years she’d focused on making a fantastic astronomical discovery, something that would gain her fame and accolades, because by doing so she could manufacture a sort of faux nobility for herself, one that would allow her to see herself as… as Giles’s equal. There. In this, her desperate hour, she admitted it.

But now, she didn’t care about the comet or prestige or nobility or
anything
except seeing him again.

Because she loved him. Lord, how she loved him. She always had.

She shut her eyes again, conjuring his image as a charm against fear.

She had spent her life with her gaze fixed above her, so that she needn’t see what was right before her. Because she’d known that what was before her was as beyond her reach as those stars. Perhaps that was why they meant so much to her. Giles and the stars: perplexing, fascinating, beautiful, and unattainable.

She bit back a sob. It wasn’t fair that she should die before she had a chance to experience what passion could mean. She wanted to feel Giles’s arms around her, urgent and needful. She wanted Giles to kiss her, Giles to hold her, Giles to… to
love
her, a thing infinitely more precious than the discovery of any star could ever be.

“Your turn, squeak.”

Bill’s voice shattered the cocoon into which Avery had retreated. Terrified, she watched him negligently roll Neville onto his back. He’d stripped him down to his shirt and a pair of underdrawers.

“Come on, now. Sooner begun, sooner done.” He held out his hand and twitched his fingers impatiently, motioning her to stand.

Frantically, Avery scurried back, drumming the floor with her boot heels. She clutched her coat tight across her chest and shook her head violently.

The man sighed.

“Gar, Bill. Just grab hold of the little puff-guts and have done. Why’re you treatin’ him with kid gloves?” Nan called out resentfully.

“Lookit ’im. He ain’t gentry. He’s just some squinty-eyed bumpkin what found himself in the company of swells. Can’t fault him fer wanting to stay there.”

“Aye. That’s right. No one’s t’blame fer nuthin’,” Nan said sourly.

“Stubble that,” Bill said. “Stand up, mouse. Let’s see what yer guardin’ under that coat.”

“Please,” Avery pleaded, shrinking back. “I don’t have anything. I swear. Please, let us go.”

“I’ve had enough of this shit,” Nan said, propelling herself off the bed and stomping across the room. She grabbed Avery’s collar, hauled her to her feet, drew back her arm, and swung hard. Avery tried to dodge it, but the blow still found her.

Her spectacles flew off and lights exploded across her field of vision. Her knees buckled as she fought against unconsciousness. She reached out, grabbing for Nan’s arm.

“Ah, Nan…” Dimly, she heard Bill protest. She felt herself yanked back to her feet, the coat collar cutting into her throat. Something warm dripped down her cheek. She choked, stumbling, and out of the corner of her eye saw Nan draw her arm back again.

“Let him go.”

And that quickly Avery was free, falling down on her knees with bone-jarring impact, catching herself on the flats of her palms. She looked up, blinking through the star-sprinkled room.

Giles stood in the doorway. But a Giles she barely recognized.

Everything about him suggested violence barely held in check. He moved too carefully, with a coiled predatory grace, stepping forward and almost gingerly shutting the door behind him. His gaze glittered with cold, deadly assessment as it swept the room. Tension seemed to hum through him. In his hand he carried a pistol that he pointed directly at Bill. His thumb rested on the hammer.