Lily stared at him, her whole body gone tense and watchful, like a forest animal about to attack or be attacked. “What do you want?” she said again.
“Just for you to be friendly-like to me, Lily, now that you’ve had such good fortune.” Tom suddenly smiled, revealing cracked and broken teeth and the gleam of one gold incisor. “Your brother’s friendly enough. He likes my girls, y’see. They give him what he needs.”
“You stay away from him,” Lily cried. “This is between you and me.”
“That’s just what I hoped you’d say. You’ve turned into
a pretty one, like your mum. You have her special skills now too?”
Lily shuddered at the tone of his voice, like a slimy slide over her skin. She wanted more than anything to pull out her gun and shoot him right here, right in his smirking, hideous face. But being seized in a cheap gin joint and going to prison for murder, hauled away to serve hard labor, would do no one any good. She had to stay calm.
And she remembered very well that she did still have a deft hand with a whip.
“Why don’t you let me show you?” she said quietly. Right where she could snap his dick off with one flick…
Tom laughed. “I did miss you, Lily girl. We could do so much together. I’m going to rebuild my old network, find some new jobs here in London. You’re just the one to help me.”
“So it is money you want. How much?”
“What’s money between friends? And I don’t just want money.”
“Then quit playing games. Tell me what it is you want exactly and let me take James home,” she snapped.
A group of loud, laughing people suddenly fell through the door from the street, filling the cramped space with their noise. The gin-soaked stupor was broken.
One of the men, a large, burly monster smelling of pipe smoke, seized Lily by the waist and swung her around in the air. Startled, she kicked out at him, but he just laughed and pressed a wet kiss to her neck.
Lily yanked his hair hard and struggled to get free. Every old instinct she had suppressed for so long rushed to the surface, and she fought like a cornered alley cat. She twisted around and sank her teeth into his hand.
“Bloody bitch!” the man shouted. He dropped her hard to the floor and slapped her across the face. Her head snapped back, and she tasted the bitter tang of blood. It only made her more furious.
Above the roaring in her head, she vaguely heard shouts and screams and the shattering of glass. And she wondered how, after years of trying to live quietly and respectably, she had been in two bar fights in less than a month. But there was no time for thinking; she had to move on instinct now, and she had to move fast. She needed to find James and get out of there.
The enraged man lunged for her, but she was much smaller and quicker. She ducked down under a table, away from the tumbling bodies and crashing feet. She caught a bottle as it rolled off the table and smashed the end off to make a dagger of sorts.
The smell of stale, spilled liquor and rotten garbage was stronger there, tinged with blood. Lily swiped the back of her hand over her lip, and it came away smeared with red, but she knew she wasn’t the worst off here. Already men were slumped against the walls, battered by the fight. She quickly scanned their slack faces, yet none belonged to Tom Beaumont.
He seemed to have vanished from the fray. She knew he wouldn’t stay gone for long.
Suddenly she felt a fist close on her ankle and drag her from her meager shelter. She rolled over and brought up her other knee to try and ram her new captor in the groin, but he twisted away from her.
“What’s a pretty morsel like you doin’ here?” he said, and she felt a rough hand grope up her leg. She slung her bottle down on his greasy head, and when he collapsed to
the floor, she kicked him out of the way and leaped to her feet. It was definitely time to get out of there.
She ran through the crowd, weaving her way past flying fists and falling bodies, until she found the narrow, dark staircase at the back of the room. She hurried up it, drawing out her pistol as she went.
It was much quieter there, the sound of the fight a muffled roar as she turned at the top landing and found herself facing a short corridor lined with closed doorways and filled with the scent of cheap perfume and opium smoke. Lily knew those were cramped cribs rented out to whores by the night or hour, a place where they could bring their customers—and possibly drug and rob them. No one here would want the trouble of a fight.
And James was here somewhere.
Lily hurried to the first door. The room was empty, as were the second and third. The fourth held two women and a naked man flung facedown across a small bed. The women looked at her from their kohl-rimmed eyes with no hint of surprise or interest, and the man was far too portly to be James, so she beat a hasty retreat.
James was in the fifth room, almost the last one along the corridor. As Lily pushed open the door, she glimpsed him sprawled out in a chair, his head arched back and his shirt open. A woman’s dyed-red head bobbed energetically between his spread legs.
“Oh, I did
not
need to see that,” Lily muttered, and spun away from the sight.
“Lily!” James shouted, and she heard the chair crash to the floor as he leaped to his feet. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I charge extra for a threesome,” the whore said sullenly.
Lily waited until she heard the rustle of fabric that told her James’s trousers were up before she turned to face him. James was staring at her, fury and embarrassment written across his handsome face as he raked his hands through his light brown hair. The girl still knelt on the floor, her bodice tugged low to reveal rouged nipples.
“I think the gentleman might want to wait until another night for that particular extra,” Lily said. “Considering I’m his sister.”
The whore just shrugged. “Ain’t nothing I haven’t seen before. Are we gettin’ on with this or not? I got lots of work to do tonight.”
Lily crossed her arms over her waist, not looking away from James as he fastened his shirt. “I’m sure you’ve already been paid. The constables are probably already on their way, so you might want to get out of here.”
“Constables!” the woman shrieked.
James groaned. “Lily, what have you done?”
“I have done nothing, except come here to get you and find myself in the middle of a fight. I suppose you’ve been far too occupied in here to notice what’s going on downstairs,” Lily said.
James’s eyes widened, and he seemed to notice for the first time her bloody lip and torn dress. “Oh, God, Lily, I’m so sorry! What happened? How did you know I was here?”
Lily shook her head. “There’s no time now. We need to get out of here.” Before Tom found them. She turned to the woman, who had tugged up her dress and tied a shawl over her shoulders. “Do you know of a back way out of this place?”
“Follow me,” she said, all brisk matter-of-factness now that she had earned her coin and had to avoid arrest.
Lily grabbed James’s hand and pulled him with her as they followed the woman to the window at the end of the corridor. The whore climbed out onto an unsteady ladder that led down to the alleyway.
Lily pushed James out after her and tucked up her own skirts before she scrambled down the rungs. The whore was already gone before James even reached the bottom. He caught Lily around the waist and steadied her for the last few steps, and Lily couldn’t resist throwing her arms around him for a quick, hard hug. He smelled of cheap ale and the whore’s perfume, but he was
here.
She had him back, and they were safe.
Or almost safe. She heard a splintering crack of wood and shouts, and she whirled around to see that the fight was spilling out into the alley. A bottle flew over her head, only narrowly missing her before crashing into the wall and shattering.
“Come on!” James shouted, and dragged her into a run. They turned at the end of the lane and rushed on blindly, not knowing where they were going or what would be around the next corner. They just ran and ran until Lily was sure her lungs would burst.
This part of the city was like a maze, a squeezed-in rat’s warren of close-packed old buildings and twisting alleys that ended in blank walls or hidden courtyards. Anyone could lose themselves here and be hidden forever. It was as far from clean, white Mayfair or the gilded splendors of the Majestic as anyone could get.
The people who lurked in the doorways or peered out the broken windows didn’t stop them as they ran past; in fact, they didn’t seem to notice them at all.
They careened around a corner, and Lily’s foot slipped
into a hidden hole in the slippery dirt. Her ankle gave a painful wrench, and she cried out as she felt herself falling.
James spun around and caught her up in his arms. “Lily, what is it? Are you hurt?”
Spasms of pain shot up her leg from her ankle, and she cursed their bad luck. Just as they were about to make it away!
She held on to James’s shoulder and tried to put her weight on her foot, but it buckled under her.
“I can carry you home,” he said. Lily looked up at him and saw the concern written on his face. She had forgotten how very young he really was, so young and foolish. Her sweet brother.
Lily shook her head. “Too far. We need to find a safer street and hail a hackney, if one can even be found at this hour. Or…” She quickly studied their surroundings, trying to find something familiar. The lanes were a little wider now, a little cleaner. She glimpsed a grocer’s sign she had seen before at the end of the street, and she knew where they could stop long enough to see to her ankle.
“Carry me just around the corner, James,” she said. “I know of a place there.”
James looked around suspiciously. His arms were tense as he lifted her up higher. “Are you sure?”
She gave a snorting laugh. “I’m not the one who landed us in that cheap gin joint, now, am I? Trust me. We’ll be fine there, as long as no one followed us.”
“How did you know where I was, Lily?” he said as he scooped her up in his arms and carried her where she pointed. “Do Mama and Father know?”
“Do they know the low company you have been keeping?
No, and they don’t need to if you’ll stay away from places like that from now on. As for how I found you…” A cold wave of weariness suddenly washed over her, and her head felt very heavy indeed. The sheer nerve that had carried her through the fight was ebbing away. She let her head drop to his shoulder. “That is a very long story.”
They stopped in front of a locked door. The building was dark and silent, and Lily only hoped someone was there as she pounded on the door. She had no energy left to decide what to do next.
After several long moments, there was the scrape of a bar being drawn back, and the door opened. Robbie, the prizefighter turned barkeep, help up a lamp as he peered out at them suspiciously. His eyes widened when he saw them.
“Miss Lily?” he said. “What’s happened? Get in here at once!”
“How does that feel?”
Lily looked down at Nick’s dark head as he pressed a hot, damp poultice to her swollen ankle. Robbie had vanished somewhere after he took them to this little sitting room behind the theater, and James sat across the room with the woman who came in with Nick. James was starting to look hungover, as well as embarrassed and angry. He watched Lily as if he had never seen her before.
She rested her head wearily on the back of the chair. She didn’t blame him for looking at her like that—she didn’t feel like herself tonight. She felt like a stranger, someone seen from a distance.
“Much better, thank you,” she said. “It was kind of you to take us in, Nick.”
He laughed as he wrapped a binding around the compress to hold it in place. “Nonsense. Things have been too quiet since the last time you were here. We needed a little excitement.”
The pretty blonde he was with looked as if she certainly didn’t agree, but she didn’t say anything. Nick pushed himself to his feet and reached for a bottle on the table to pour everyone a dram of whiskey. The dark liquor was burning and bracing as it poured down her throat.
“So there was a fight at Jefferson’s place, was there?” Nick said as he tossed back his own drink. “Serves the bugger right, with his watered-down gin. But how did you happen to be in such a place, Miss Lily? And all alone?”
Before Lily could answer, James said, “I’m afraid she went there to find me.”
Nick’s gaze narrowed on James. “Is that so? And who are you?”
“He’s my brother,” Lily said. “And it’s all a bit more complicated than that.”
“Interesting,” Nick murmured.
Suddenly the door opened with a bang, and Aidan stood there. His blue eyes swept over the room, taking in the scene with one glance. He wore elegant black-and-white evening clothes, as if he had just left some society ball, but his cravat was loosened and his waistcoat unbuttoned. Perhaps wherever he was he had spent his time dancing with Lady Henrietta Lindley.
Lily knew she should be surprised to see him and angry that one more complication had been added to an already nightmarish evening. But she wasn’t surprised at all, and a warm feeling of something that felt suspiciously like relief swept over her.
“Lily?” he said roughly. “What’s happened? Robbie said you were hurt.”
“I’m not,” she answered. “I twisted my ankle, but it’s much better now.”
Aidan knelt down beside her chair and reached for her foot. He set it on his thigh, and his long fingers moved over it gently as if to assure himself she wasn’t hurt. His other hand curled around her calf, warm and steady through her knitted stocking.
His touch might be gentle, but his voice held a touch of steel in its depths. “How did you get caught in a gin-joint raid?”
Lily straightened her shoulders back against the chair. “I went to find my brother.”
“Your brother?”
“Er, I’m afraid that would be me,” James said sheepishly. “I’m James St. Claire.”
Aidan’s eyes narrowed as he peered across the room at James in that cold, steely look Lily had come to be wary of. She reached down and grabbed his hand in hers.
“It’s not his fault,” she said quickly. “It was… someone else who lured him there. I only went to fetch him. I didn’t know the place would be raided. I didn’t know where else to go when we ran away, and Nick was kind enough to let us in. He didn’t need to bother you, though.” She glanced over his fine clothes again. “You must have been… busy. With family and society duties.”