Scandalous Wager: A Whitechapel Wagers Novella (3 page)

He wanted her. He said he wanted her. Even if he only meant this
moment, this breathless, incomparable moment, it would suffice. The memory of
his words, his kiss, and his body pressed against hers would warm her always.

He was hers for now, hot and blessedly real in her arms. She’d
imagined this, dreamed of it, but her imaginings were nothing compared to his
body molded with hers, his tongue, searing and wet, on her flesh. His scent,
clean and woodsy
, surrounding
her.

Lizzy needed to touch him, feel his bare skin against her own. She
slid a hand up to his neck, stroking the hollow there before slipping the top
button on his shirt.

He lifted his head to watch her hands work. He didn’t offer any
help and then began to distract her—kissing her face, her cheek, her nose, and
nipping at her lips.

Lizzy finally reached the last closure and slid her hands beneath
the cloth.

Ian released a hiss of breath when she traced a line with her
fingers across the carved muscle of his stomach, dipping into the dark patch of
hair above the top button of his trousers.

“Lizzy.” Her name was a plea from his lips, and the heat of his
breath warmed her skin as he spoke. Emboldened, she slipped the first button of
his trousers, then the next, and the—

Ian’s hand closed over hers, stilling her progress. “If you continue,
I will end up taking you against this door.”

“Yes.”
It was the only word Lizzy could muster and her whole body thrummed with the
sentiment. She wanted him here, now, with the battered door at her back and Ian
before her, inside her, overwhelming all of her senses.

She
reached to continue unbuttoning his trousers.

Ian
reached too, framing her hips in his hands and then sliding his hands down to
begin bunching her skirt, lifting, pulling, gathering her petticoats until his
fingers grazed the bare skin of her thighs just above her stockings.

Lizzy
gasped and dropped her head back against the door as he traced the edge of her
stocking, sliding his fingers toward the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh.

“Your
skin is so soft here.” He danced his fingers delicately across her skin as he
spoke.

“Please.”
She wanted him to touch her where no other man had.

He
slid his hand around her thigh and dug his fingers into her skin as he lifted
her leg to his hip.

She
made a sound when her foot left the ground and he grasped her face with his
other hand, cupping her chin between fingers and thumb.

His
dark gaze bore into her, and the desire she saw there stoked her own. But more
than desire, she saw a question, uncertainty about what they were doing, what
they were about to do. But Lizzy had no doubts. This was what she wanted.
Nothing else mattered.

She
nodded her head and opened her mouth to voice her consent, but he stopped her
words with a kiss.

As
he filled her mouth with his tongue, Ian pressed her harder into the door at
her back, grasped her hand, and slid it between them. He pressed her palm
against him, and Lizzy wrapped her fingers around his rigid shaft.

He
was impossibly hard and soft at the same time. The silken skin beneath her fingers
contrasted sharply with the unyielding stiffness. She longed to see him, taste
him,
explore
every inch of him.

He
pulled away from their kiss as she continued to touch him with exploratory
eagerness. He pressed his forehead into the door and seemed to hold his breath
as her fingers roamed.

She
turned her head and whispered against the dark curls covering his ear. “Your
skin is so soft here.” She smiled as she echoed his words back to him.

“Temptress.”
He hissed the word against her neck.

Then,
as if being rudely woken from a blissful dream, thunder sounded in her ears and
the door shuddered at her back. Someone bashed at it three times with enough
force and volume to wake the whole building.

Ian
cupped one hand over her mouth and gently lowered her leg to the ground with
his other.

“Inspector
Reed, we’ve found another one, sir!”

***

Constable
Evans’ frantic tone told Ian all he needed to know about what had been found.
Another body. Another woman slashed and left on display. In a back alley,
perhaps, but someplace she would be discovered. This East End killer wanted
everyone to see his grisly handiwork, and Ian knew the fiend would continue to
claim women’s lives until they caught him. Murder was not rare in Whitechapel,
but it could usually be ascribed to avarice, drunkenness, or a crime of
passion. This was something altogether more sinister.

“Where,
Constable?” Ian called through the door as he pulled Lizzy away from it.

She
began straightening her dress and refastening the long stretch of buttons on
her gown.

“Off
Berner
Street, sir.
Dutfield’s
Yard.”

“I’ll
be there directly.”

“Shall
I send word to Detective Chief Inspector Ainsworth?”

Lizzy’s
eyes went wide at mention of her father’s name and Ian pulled her close into an
embrace. Her body vibrated, and Ian wasn’t certain if she shivered in fear of
the monster loose in Whitechapel or the prospect of her father finding out she
had been in his lodgings this evening.

“No,
Evans. Let’s determine what we have first. I’ll meet you on
Berner
Street.” Ian could hear Evans’s heavy footsteps fade as he made his way back to
the yard.

Ian
turned to speak to Lizzy, but she was gone. He heard the clink of dishes and
stuck his head into the tiny room that housed his sink. She was washing the
teacup she’d used earlier.

“I
am quite capable of my own washing up, Miss Ainsworth.” He said the words with
as much lightness as he could muster considering what awaited him on
Berner
Street. Then he held out his hand to her. “Come,
Lizzy. I’ll fetch you a cab down the road and see you into it before I head
out.”

“Is
it another young woman? My father won’t speak of it at home, but I saw
something in the newspaper.”

Ian
was not surprised to hear that Lizzy read the newspaper, nor was it unexpected
that Chief Inspector Ainsworth would want to shield his family from the horrors
his division investigated. But it made Ian doubt, made him stop and wonder what
Lizzy could find so appealing in him, a man who spent his time face to face
with such ugliness.

“I’m
sorry to keep you from your work.” There was sincerity in her tone. A chief
inspector’s daughter would know better than most the challenges of the work he
did.

He
crossed the distance between them until he stood next to her, as near as he’d
been before he pressed her into the door and lifted her leg with the intention
of taking her, thrusting so deep inside her that she would know she was the
only woman he wanted. Not her sister, not any other woman, just Lizzy, the
straight-laced schoolteacher who yearned for carnal pleasure.

She
closed her eyes when he leaned toward her and trailed light kisses down the
side of her face, lingering at the shell of her ear. “Do not dare apologize for
what we started here tonight.”

She
turned her head away from him. “Perhaps it was a mistake. Maybe I should not
have come.” She spoke the words quietly and the tension in her body screamed
uncertainty.

His
hands were on her waist, holding her physically, but he sensed she was
retreating emotionally. The last thing he wanted was for her to have any
regrets. He sure as hell didn’t. His only regret was that they would not be
able to finish what they started, at least not this night. But they
would
finish
it. He would have her. He was determined on that now, and, if he was lucky, he
would have her as thoroughly and as often as he was able.

He
reached up to hold her face between his hands. Her gaze still held the same
desire he had seen when she walked through his door. Whatever doubts she
struggled with, they hadn’t tamped her hunger for him. The realization fired
him with a surge of yearning.

He
kissed her, slowly, savoring the taste of her. When he finally pulled away, a
heady sense of certainty filled him.

“This
isn’t finished between us, Lizzy.”

The night had been the most exhausting he could ever recall.
Before they could remove the first woman’s body, another had been found less
than a mile away in
Mitre
Square. The second body
bore more severe words than the first, though neither woman survived their
attack. It seemed the killer had been disturbed during the first assault and
chose another victim to fulfill whatever insatiable need drove him to destroy
women.

As with the other victims, the wounds followed a pattern and bore
a similarity that convinced Ian they were the work of the same killer. With
each new body found, some doubted that they were the assaulted at the hands of
the same man. But most officers merely feared there would be more. Now, after
two in one night, the whispers at the scene had been that next time there would
be three, as if the murderer was invincible, unstoppable, and could take all
the time in the world to perform his deadly business.

Ian chilled at the thought of such a man walking the streets of
Whitechapel, especially when he considered Lizzy had walked the same streets
tonight. He had known that Ainsworth’s daughter spent her days working at a
charity school not far from his door. On occasion he even allowed himself a
detour over to Rutland Street in hopes of catching a glimpse of her as she
ended her day so that he might offer to escort her home. Their paths had never
coincided, and yet he had spent no small amount of time fretting about her
travelling on foot, alone, through Whitechapel, especially as winter approached
and the hours of daylight diminished. But now—after kissing her, holding her,
coming so close to having her—his desire to keep her safe was as overwhelming
as the drive to bring the murders to an end.

Ian shifted in his bed, unable to find comfort. His mind raced,
even as his body craved sleep. Despite the hazard she had risked in coming,
Lizzy’s appearance at his door had been an unexpected gift. He smiled at the
memory of her, dressed so primly and with ladylike decorum, offering him a
treasure he knew he didn’t deserve. But he wanted it. He wanted her, and not
just as some last desperate act before she gave herself up to charity work and
a lifetime of loneliness. What nonsense to think he wished to marry her sister!
He’d dined at the Ainsworth home on four occasions and the younger Miss
Ainsworth had barely made an impression, except for her terrible singing.

From the moment he’d clapped eyes on her, Lizzy had filled his
thoughts. The more he learned about her, the more he wished to know. Her
reputation in Whitechapel was of a woman of almost angelic qualities—honest,
kind, self-sacrificing. But now he knew there was much more to Elizabeth
Ainsworth. She knew her own mind, her own desires, and it must have taken a
good deal of brass to proposition him as she had. He loved her passion.

He turned again on his rickety bed, determined to salvage a few
hours of sleep before he was due in the station to give a report to Ainsworth.
After that, he would seek out Lizzy. She’d asked him for pleasure and he meant
to give it to her, whatever it might cost him. It was the only thought that
brought him peace and he clung to it as he drifted off. Keeping an image of
Lizzy in his mind’s eye kept memories of what he’d seen on
Berner
Street and
Mitre
Square at bay.

***

Lizzy woke early, determined to speak with her father. She
couldn’t get the murder of the woman in Whitechapel out of her mind, and she
knew it hadn’t been the first. Just a month before she’d overheard her father
speaking to a Scotland Yard Detective Inspector who had come to visit their
home. The impulse to protect the young women she taught and worked with at
Tredgard
School made her intent to learn the details of the
crimes. At the very least, she could warn the young women in her care.

She tried not
to think of Ian Reed, yet his face merged with her every thought, and she was
certain she could still detect his scent on her skin. She had a responsibility
to him too. She had promised to promote his interests with her father and
intended to keep her word. Whether they would ever finish what had started
between them... Well, that was far too distracting to contemplate.

She dressed quickly, left a note for her mother, and made her way
out into the early morning chill. Normally she would walk as far as St Paul’s
Cathedral before hailing a hansom cab into Whitechapel, but she was eager to
speak to her father and hailed a cab not far from the
Ainsworths
’
front door.

The H Division headquarters on Leman Street were abuzz with
activity, which, from Lizzy’s experiences of visiting her father there, was not
unusual for a Monday morning. However, Lizzy sensed something more than the
typical hum of a busy police station. As constables passed her, she noted
hollowness in their eyes, and it wasn’t just exhaustion. Their countenances
shared a haunted aspect, as if they had glimpsed something harrowing and could
not shake it from their thoughts.

She stopped one she knew from his visits to their home, an
ambitious young constable her father said would make a fine sergeant one day.
He was tall and handsome, with sandy hair and a matching mustache. Lizzy
recalled him gazing with particular longing at Sara during each of his visits.

“Constable Hawke, has my father arrived yet this morning?”

“Miss Ainsworth, good morning to you. Whatever are you doing in
Whitechapel?”

His question was so strange she didn’t know how to respond. Most
of the young men her father commanded, especially those who had visited their
home, knew of her work at
Tredgard
School. She came
to Whitechapel five days out of the week. What should be different today?

“Constable, did you forget that I spend my days here? I wished to
speak to my father this morning before I teach at
Tredgard
.”

Hawke’s eyes held none of the humor she remembered from her
previous encounters with him. Something had changed. A chill of fear turned her
skin to gooseflesh and she stifled a shiver.

“What is it? What has happened?”

He lowered his eyes, shuttering whatever truth he knew from her.
When he looked at her again, a grin that did not meet his blue eyes crested his
face.

“Let me take you to your father, Miss Ainsworth.”

Lizzy couldn’t keep the frustration from her voice when she
answered. “No, thank you. I know the way. Good day, Constable.”

Lizzy heard him begin to speak again, but she had already turned
away and started down the hall. A pang of regret for her rudeness did not allay
her frustration. She did not wish to be sheltered as if she were a fragile
miss. Her own mother had seen carnage and death while treating soldiers in the
Crimea. Her father had been a constable before ascending to the role of chief
inspector, and she knew he had encountered all manner of vice and criminality
in his years in the Metropolitan Police. But there was something different
about the murders of these women and, as a woman who spent her days in
Whitechapel,
she needed to know what it was.

Her father’s door was closed as she approached, but she could hear
raised voices inside. She stood near the door and barely resisted the urge to
place her ear against the opaque glass. The commanding boom of her father’s
voice was clear enough even at a distance.

“How dare you? What could you have been thinking? My God, man, I
could have your job for this behavior.”

Lizzy had rarely heard her father so angry. She quaked for
whatever poor constable was on the receiving end of his tirade.

“Chief Inspector, if you would just allow me to explain.”

Lizzy pressed a fist to her mouth to stifle the exclamation
bubbling up. It wasn’t a constable taking her father’s verbal lashing. It was
Ian Reed. His low baritone was unmistakable, especially after hearing it just
against her ear and in her dreams all night long.

Somehow her father must have learned of their encounter. Ian
certainly would not have told him. Would he? Perhaps, after whatever events
occurred last night, her father had checked on his daughters, peeking his head
into their rooms as he or her mother hand done when they were children. He
would have found Lizzy’s bed empty if he had looked in before the wee hours of the
morning when she’d returned from Whitechapel.

“No explanation could suffice! You behaved with—“

Before her father could speak another word, before Ian lost his
job because of her wanton behavior, Lizzy had to set the situation aright. She
pushed the office door open and burst in between the two.

“Father, I can explain. Please do not blame Inspector Reed.”

Both men appeared stunned by her unexpected arrival, though her
father’s visage looked more angry than startled. Ian looked worried. He even
took a step toward Lizzy, and all her lust-addled brain could register was that
he looked beautiful in the peach glow of early morning light streaming through
the window of her father’s office.

She smiled at him, Lord help her. Right there in front of her
irate father. Facing him, with her back to her father, she whispered, “It’s all
right, Ian. I am prepared to tell him the truth.”

“Lizzy.” Both men echoed her name at the same time, Ian speaking
the word softly, quietly, and infusing it with a pleading tenderness that made
her melt. Her father’s pronouncement was louder and a question as much as a
declaration.

“What on earth on your doing here? I asked your mother to keep you
at home today. I must speak to you about your work in Whitechapel before it
continues.” Her father lowered the volume of his voice as he spoke, his final
words delivered in an almost conversational tone.

Then he seemed to recall Ian and added, “I do not know what
possessed you to break in upon my discussion with Inspector Reed, but I assure you
it does not concern you, young lady. Please wait outside until we are
finished.”

He didn’t know. Whatever inspired him to rage at Ian, it had
nothing to do with how close she had come to letting the man ruin her against
the door of his
lodgings.
She turned back to look at
Ian and noticed, beyond his masculine beauty, a weariness in his eyes and the
same haunted look she’d seen in the other young men in the station.

“Lizzy!” She stared at Ian too long, and her father had come
around from his desk to approach her. He grasped her arm and began to tug at
her, as if he would physically remove her himself if she did not mean to leave
his office willingly.

She turned to her father to tell him she would go, though every
part of her wished to stay with Ian, to wrap her arms around him, to take him
back to his lodgings where they could finish what they had begun. She ached to
do anything that would bring the spark back to his dark eyes.

“Chief Inspector, Superintendent Allen is here to see you. He is
asking for you down the front.” It was Hawke at the office door Lizzy left open
when she’d intruded.

Her father let out a grunt of irritation and released her.

“Take one of the chairs in the hallway, Elizabeth, and wait for
me. Do not leave this building until we have spoken. Do you understand me,
girl?” Her father had not called her a girl in years. Looking up at him, she
noticed that his cheeks were ablaze, his mouth clenched, and deep lines of
worry were scored across his forehead. She could not remember ever seeing him
so troubled.

“Yes, Father.” She had no intention of losing a moment to speak to
Ian alone, but there was no point in telling her father that, especially in his
current state.

“Reed, wait for me in my office. I will return to deal with you
directly. This isn’t finished, young man.”

Lizzy shot Ian a wide-eyed look at the echo of words he had spoken
to her the night before. When her father had exited the office, Ian grinned at
her in reply.

“What could you have possibly done to earn such ire? I have never
seen him so angry.”

Ian looked down at the carpet for a moment, silence hanging
between them, before answering.

“The murders in Whitechapel. Your father...all of us wish to solve
them, to stop them.”

“Undoubtedly.” Lizzy spoke the word with utter sincerity, but Ian
seemed to take it as a lack of understanding and continued.

“There were two last evening.”

“Two in one night? By the same hand?” Lizzy knew there must have
been many nights in London when more than one person lost their life, but the
notion that one man had spent his evening slaughtering women—it was almost too
ghastly to acknowledge.

“I did not immediately send word to your father last evening. That
is why he is so angry. As the murders continue, there is increasing pressure on
him, on all of us, to solve the crimes.”

“I see.” For the first time Lizzy felt fear, real hesitation,
about working in Whitechapel. There were other charities closer to home in the
West End of London that would benefit from her help. Yet she loved
Tregard
School—the students, the other teachers, and most
of all the sense that she was doing the most good in the most dire of
circumstances.