crescendo that gave way to chirping and shrieks. Her stomach twisted. “What is that?”
Muttering a black curse that carried through the tunnels, the man raced back and snagged her wrist.
“What? I don’t—” Her words ended on a squeak as he yanked her through the tunnels.
Verity tripped and stumbled, her heavy skirts slowing her. The wool dragged in the water, and frustration welled within her. “What is that?” she cried for a second time, this time her question nearly drowned out by a deafening uproar; it licked at their heels.
And her captor became the unlikeliest savior, pushing her ahead, propelling her in front of him. Her feet numb, her body trembling with a combined fear and cold, she allowed him to shove her on.
Her breath rasped, noisy in her ears.
Or was that his?
She paused to glance back and found his focus singularly forward.
“Move,” he thundered.
Verity stumbled, and righting herself, she pressed on.
They reached the end of the tunnel passage, and he yanked her by the back of her dress, wrenching her close. Except . . .
“My slippers,” she cried out. Only they weren’t hers. They were Livvie’s. Livvie’s favorite pair. Livvie’s only pair.
“You’re off your head,” he shouted down at her. “If you go back, you’ll find your feet a feast for a thousand rats and no need for any damned slippers.”
Before she could formulate so much as a thought, he hefted her up and tossed her atop a two-foot-wide ledge; the path led onward through a narrower, darker tunnel.
Her sudden savior drew himself up as easily as one drawing oneself upon a swing. “Get moving,” he clipped out, nudging her lightly between the shoulder blades.
Bile stung the back of her throat.
At his order.
At being caught alone with this lethal figure.
At herself for having made so many mistakes this night.
Going off with this brute, however, would mark the height of the greatest folly.
Verity considered the five-foot drop down.
“That would be a mistake.” He sounded almost bored as he correctly predicted her intentions.
A moment later, a sea of black came rushing forward.
Verity swallowed a cry and told her legs to move. To no avail. She stood frozen, her bare feet locked to the brick floor, and she closed her eyes, prepared for the rising flood of water and rats to gust over her.
And then she was lifted off her feet. Propelled up. Verity tried to scream. Tried to breathe through the wave.
Only . . .
Her eyes flew open as she was jarred by the quick footfalls of the stranger. She reflexively twined her arms about his neck and clung tight as he raced onward; with the added weight of her sodden skirts and frame, he may as well have moved with the same ease as when Verity had once carried Livvie as a babe.
They—he—continued on, and after an endless path of twists and turns, he crashed through a wide opening. And the coal-tinged air had never smelled safer. A faint glow bathed the bricks, heralding their return to Earth.
“Loosen your damned grip,” her captor muttered.
Only, was it truly fair to think of him in that light? Given that he’d saved her life no fewer than three times in that short span? Those efforts had made a lie of his threat of death. And—
“Are you going to faint?” he snapped.
Verity bristled. “I don’t faint.”
“Aside from you removing your talons from my skin, I don’t care what you do or don’t do.”
She glanced down at her fingers, curled like claws into the fabric of his wool coat.
“I’m not interested in your services,” he said tautly.
“My . . . ?” Verity followed his pointed stare to where she gripped his chest. She gasped and released him. “I assure you, I am not selling services.” Quite the opposite, really. She was searching for her story, the source of her security, and soon to be the reason for her unemployment. Verity burrowed into her cloak, her efforts to find warmth futile. Even so, she rubbed her gloveless palms together frantically in a bid to bring warmth back into the digits. As she glanced around, dread, an increasingly familiar feeling, pitted her belly. “Wh-where are we?”
“Ludgate Street.”
“Wh-what?” she whispered; her shivering intensified, racking her frame until her teeth rattled painfully in her mouth. Bertha would be waiting. Wouldn’t she? Surely, with all that had happened since she’d descended into the sewers, the thirty minutes had passed. And with nothing to show for it.
Nothing but bare feet, feet which had at some point gone numb from the cold. “I