broken by tears.
My jaw set. Where were Hawke’s footmen? Thugs, the lot, but they should have been here.
I crept forward another meter, and found my answer. A man groaned as my foot came down on a limb, twisted and sent me nearly toppling to the earth.
“You ’ear that?”
“Shut up,” snarled the sailor, his voice a lash. I heard muted sobbing, now, and the whisper of women held at bay.
I grinned fiercely in the dark.
This was not my strongest moment, but I can only say now that I had no real care for my well-being. I wanted only something to take the sting from that terrible need in my belly, and this proved the first opportunity. As I crouched over the still figure of the coshed footman, I measured the distance between where I hid, guarded by foliage, and the location of the voices.
“Ca’mon, ’urry up,” complained a man, a third one, now. Three to my one, and at least two women.
A sprint, then. If I could break up whatever hold they had on the girls— “Hsst!”
I looked up by instinct, though I couldn’t say now why I looked directly up and not over either shoulder. Buried memory, perhaps. A voice carries a distinctive quality when spoken overhead.
Nothing but black.
“Hsst!”
This time, I turned, looked across the narrow confine between my hiding place and the path.
I met dark eyes, near-black in the reflected light of the red lantern nearly concealing him. The boy, his shaggy dark hair hanging into his eyes and his teeth bared in a grin, pointed at me.
I cocked my head.
A child. Perhaps ten, or a well-formed eight. More, I’d bet my last dregs of laudanum that this boy worked at Hawke’s circus; if the way he clung to the post was any indication, he was at least one part agile monkey. His grubby bare feet propped around the ornate iron post as if glued in place.
As I raised my eyebrows, a burst of raucous laughter erupted from the gathering I was afraid would not remain tame for much longer. The boy doffed an imaginary cap, scrambled to the very top of the post and darted over nothing.
He did not fall.
Instead, as the lights dipped and swayed, I glimpsed his nimble figure, a faint silhouette colored by the lights, as he sprinted across the lantern line—as smooth as any tightrope walker as I’d ever seen, back the way I’d come and to find, I assumed, help.
The husky-voiced woman shrieked. “You keep your hands off her, you bleeding sodomites!”
“Keep ’er still, damn it.”
I heard the unmistakable sound of something weighty against flesh.
“You whore,” roared a man, and there was my cue. I leapt over the prostrate form of the useless footman, barreled through the hedge and directly into the broad back of a man in my path. Fortuitous chance. He bellowed like a bull, and all I glimpsed was a frothy pile of blue tulle, blood like a crimson smear against the lace-frosted edge, and a still body upon the ground.
Sweet, golden-haired Talitha, the theatrical “sister” to Jane, who fought in the hands of two other men.
I had no time to take in other details. As I rode the man to the ground, my knees in his back, I reached for the knife slatted into my high-necked collecting corset. It whispered out, obscenely loud in the shocked silence.
The man beneath my weight shifted, shoulders squaring as he braced both hands against the ground. He could easily shake me off. At least until the point of my blade dug into the nape of his neck, impossible to ignore.
He froze. Muscles bulged beneath his shirtsleeves.
“Evening, lads,” I said, pleasant for all my heart pounded in my throat and fear conspired to send sizzling waves of energy to my limbs. I forced a smile. It came too easily. “Collector’s business. What say you fine gents move along?”
Three of them. Blast it. They circled Jane, the hand of one man curled around her throat, but her wide eyes telegraphed a fury the likes I’d seen before.
Huddled in the dark, two more sweets. I didn’t recognize either
My jaw set. Where were Hawke’s footmen? Thugs, the lot, but they should have been here.
I crept forward another meter, and found my answer. A man groaned as my foot came down on a limb, twisted and sent me nearly toppling to the earth.
“You ’ear that?”
“Shut up,” snarled the sailor, his voice a lash. I heard muted sobbing, now, and the whisper of women held at bay.
I grinned fiercely in the dark.
This was not my strongest moment, but I can only say now that I had no real care for my well-being. I wanted only something to take the sting from that terrible need in my belly, and this proved the first opportunity. As I crouched over the still figure of the coshed footman, I measured the distance between where I hid, guarded by foliage, and the location of the voices.
“Ca’mon, ’urry up,” complained a man, a third one, now. Three to my one, and at least two women.
A sprint, then. If I could break up whatever hold they had on the girls— “Hsst!”
I looked up by instinct, though I couldn’t say now why I looked directly up and not over either shoulder. Buried memory, perhaps. A voice carries a distinctive quality when spoken overhead.
Nothing but black.
“Hsst!”
This time, I turned, looked across the narrow confine between my hiding place and the path.
I met dark eyes, near-black in the reflected light of the red lantern nearly concealing him. The boy, his shaggy dark hair hanging into his eyes and his teeth bared in a grin, pointed at me.
I cocked my head.
A child. Perhaps ten, or a well-formed eight. More, I’d bet my last dregs of laudanum that this boy worked at Hawke’s circus; if the way he clung to the post was any indication, he was at least one part agile monkey. His grubby bare feet propped around the ornate iron post as if glued in place.
As I raised my eyebrows, a burst of raucous laughter erupted from the gathering I was afraid would not remain tame for much longer. The boy doffed an imaginary cap, scrambled to the very top of the post and darted over nothing.
He did not fall.
Instead, as the lights dipped and swayed, I glimpsed his nimble figure, a faint silhouette colored by the lights, as he sprinted across the lantern line—as smooth as any tightrope walker as I’d ever seen, back the way I’d come and to find, I assumed, help.
The husky-voiced woman shrieked. “You keep your hands off her, you bleeding sodomites!”
“Keep ’er still, damn it.”
I heard the unmistakable sound of something weighty against flesh.
“You whore,” roared a man, and there was my cue. I leapt over the prostrate form of the useless footman, barreled through the hedge and directly into the broad back of a man in my path. Fortuitous chance. He bellowed like a bull, and all I glimpsed was a frothy pile of blue tulle, blood like a crimson smear against the lace-frosted edge, and a still body upon the ground.
Sweet, golden-haired Talitha, the theatrical “sister” to Jane, who fought in the hands of two other men.
I had no time to take in other details. As I rode the man to the ground, my knees in his back, I reached for the knife slatted into my high-necked collecting corset. It whispered out, obscenely loud in the shocked silence.
The man beneath my weight shifted, shoulders squaring as he braced both hands against the ground. He could easily shake me off. At least until the point of my blade dug into the nape of his neck, impossible to ignore.
He froze. Muscles bulged beneath his shirtsleeves.
“Evening, lads,” I said, pleasant for all my heart pounded in my throat and fear conspired to send sizzling waves of energy to my limbs. I forced a smile. It came too easily. “Collector’s business. What say you fine gents move along?”
Three of them. Blast it. They circled Jane, the hand of one man curled around her throat, but her wide eyes telegraphed a fury the likes I’d seen before.
Huddled in the dark, two more sweets. I didn’t recognize either