When they broke through to the front and took a breath, they each fished out their finds and shared a grin when they counted almost two shillings’ worth between them, more than a day’s wages around these parts. Today might make them rich, if they played it right.
They were about to scamper around the half-circled arc to dive back into the other side toward the building when the entire crowd made a collective gasp and took a step back, leaving them strangely exposed.
He barely heard the disbelieving whispers, so intent was he on his mission.
“She’s in shreds…
“What sort of animal…?”
“…no more than a child…”
Cutter turned his back on the river and made to dive back into the safety of the throng when Dorian’s hand clutched his wrist with an iron grip.
He said nothing, but he didn’t have to.
The demon that had haunted him all day now roared.
It scratched and clawed and cut deep enough to sever a limb. That was truly what it felt like. Something had been cut out of him. Off of him. Something vital and dear. Gone.
Amputated.
He already knew before he turned to look.
Before he saw the strands of identical golden hair sullied with river filth waving like soft reeds in the little dam created by a concrete dock. Before he registered the red abrasions at her wrists and bare ankles, or the ridiculous pattern of last spring’s coat, the one he’d given her, only one arm haphazardly shoved into the sleeve.
Before it dawned on him that even such polluted water was never so red.
The coin in Cutter’s hands fell to the earth. He stepped on them as he lunged forward, her name released to the sky by the devil who’d stalked him. Surely it had to be. Because no human creature could have made such an inhuman scream.
Caroline.
Chapter 1
London, 1880, Twenty-Five years later
Prudence no longer desired to be good.
Or, rather, to be a Goode.
It was why she stood at the gate to Miss Henrietta’s School for Cultured Young Ladies at midnight, her chest heaving and her resolve crumbling. She’d come all this way. And she wanted this. Didn’t she?
Just one last night of freedom. One night of her own making. Her own choosing.
One night of pleasure before her father foisted her off on the highest-ranking noble desperate enough to have her at nine and twenty.
Three months. Three months until her life was irreparably ruined, and she’d have to love, honor, and obey the most notorious spirit-swilling, mistress-having, loud-mouthed, and fractious idiot in all Blighty.
George Hamby-Forsyth, the sixth Earl of Sutherland.
He’d marry her because she’d an obscene enough dowry to cover his debts and still maintain a generation or two.
Not because he loved her.
God, what a fool she’d been!
For the umpteenth time, the tragedy of her gullible nature slapped her until her cheeks burned. Had it only been yesterday she’d found out her happy engagement was a farce? That everyone around her knew she would be wretched and humiliated, and still expected her to go through with it?
That the two people closest to her in the world hadn’t loved her enough to tell her.
The scene forever tormented her, illuminated just as clearly as it had been in the brightness of the late afternoon sun the day before. Every decision she’d made a perfect mix of timing and luck until she’d stumbled upon her own tragedy.
Pru had been pleasantly exhausted after spending a day with the seamstresses for her extensively fine wedding trousseau. Her sister Honoria had accompanied her, along with their oldest friend and neighbor, Mrs. Amanda Brighton of the Farley-Downs Brightons.
“Do let’s go to Hyde Park,” Pru had gestured expansively toward the park in question, shaking Amanda’s arm in her eagerness. “I’m dying to sweep by Rotten Row and take a few turns on Oberon.”
“I’m game for it.” Honoria, her eldest—already married—sister, had lifted her nose and squinted into the distance where the horse track colloquially known as Rotten Row bustled with the empire’s aristocracy, both human and equine.
Amanda was more Honoria’s age than Pru’s—which was three years older—but she and Amanda shared a blithe and energetic nature that made them natural mischief-makers and thereby the swiftest of friends.
Honoria, though a beauty, was born to be a dreary proper matron, and fulfilled her vocation with dreadful aplomb.
“I wouldn’t at all mind examining the new stags on the market,” Amanda said with a sprightly grin lifting her myriad of freckles. She tucked one arm into Pru’s and the other into Honoria’s,