Murder in the East End - Jennifer Ashley Page 0,51

who’d be less conspicuous than I was in this area.

“Very well. Good evening.” I gave both men a civil nod, which they did not deserve, and turned to retreat the way I’d come.

I found a third man blocking my way. The blond man, who continued to bare his teeth in a smile, gestured down a lane that opened at my right, a narrow passageway that would take me straight to Seven Dials.

“Off you go, missus.”

“I will return to the church, if you please,” I said in a hard voice. Though I longed to run, I knew a firm tone and a frown would do me more good among these sorts of toughs.

“You’ll go where we say,” the large bearded man said, his voice a rumble.

“Bugger that,” I snarled and sidestepped the third man to continue my march to the church.

The next instant, the bearded man seized me by the arms from behind and hauled me into the air. “No, ya don’t, love. You do what we say, or ya pay the price. That’s how it is ’round here.”

13

The bearded man’s friends brayed with laughter as I kicked and squirmed, frantic to get loose.

The man had hands like bear paws, huge and strong, pinning my arms to my sides. I did not like to think where he’d carry me, or what he and his friends had a mind to do when he did.

Unfortunately for him, I’d grown up on streets where the genteel feared to walk. I’d learned to fight for my life at an early age, not to mention defend myself against my husband when he was in a pique.

I gave a hard kick backward, aiming my boot heel at the vulnerable spot between his legs. My captor flinched, though he blocked my kick with his very hard thigh.

It was enough, however. Before he could recover, I wrenched myself from his grasp, gained my feet, and fled.

I had no choice but to dash down the lane southward, which was exactly where they’d wanted me to go. I heard laughter behind me and then swift and heavy footfalls. They were giving chase.

In those moments I learned what it was to be a fox hunted by a pack of hounds. I prayed I could be as agile as those animals, as my boots slipped and skidded, and my breath came too fast.

But I knew how to run. I’d done it as a child on London’s cobblestones and then as a youth, and nowadays long hours on my feet kept me robust.

It was dark here, no gas lamps to light the way, and the pavement came and went. I leapt over broken stones and bodies of sleepers, both human and canine. The smell was ripe.

I came to Seven Dials, the circle with a pillar in its middle, with seven roads radiating from it. I’d heard that this area, once affluent, had become a slum soon after it had been built, nearly two hundred years before.

Things had not much improved in the time between. Seven Dials was the home of gin halls, doss-houses, brothels with courtesans of both sexes, and streetwalkers for every taste. The area contained not only pickpockets but desperate thugs who would knock a person to the ground and steal all they had, right to their undergarments and the shoes on their feet. My dress and coat alone, though secondhand and nowhere near finery, could feed a household for days.

The men from the building site had chased me here deliberately, knowing I would be prey.

I cursed them at the same time I went cold with fear. My only hope was to keep running, to wend my way to a more salubrious part of the city and find a public vehicle to take me back to Mayfair.

A gin house, brightly lit and noisy with music, spilled people into the street. A man who’d stumbled from it drunkenly grabbed my arm.

“Come in and dance with me, missus.”

He was only inebriated, not malicious, and I jerked from him. “No, thank you. Good evening to you.”

He laughed and doffed his cap. “You come back any day, missus. Ask for old Jim.”

His friends jeered at him, and old Jim vanished.

I broke through the crowd but heard my pursuers, who’d not been content with simply driving me off. The gin hall had given me an idea, and as my would-be captors called to one another, searching for me in the growing throng, I ducked into a tavern.

Taverns were slightly more reputable than gin halls, if only just.