Page 37

Leo walked between the governor’s and chaplain’s homes, the residences matching in their towering, crenulated design.

They looked medieval and austere, which wasn’t, she supposed, entirely unfitting for a prison.

A ripple of movement at the back corner of the Chaplain’s House snagged her attention.

Leo slowed as she caught sight of a wine-red cape fluttering as it disappeared behind a tall hedge planted close to the house.

It was the same wine-red hue of the velvet cape hanging in the front hall of the Stewarts’ home the other day, when she’d called on Emma Bates.

With a skip in her pulse, Leo started for the hedge. If it was Emma, she wasn’t about to let the woman disappear.

The chaplain’s home had the shuttered, serene air of disuse.

No sound came from within as she rounded the hedge and entered a small yard.

The same tall brick wall that ran the perimeter of the prison grounds also bordered this side lawn.

Leo took a few steps into the yard, where several young fruit trees were budding. But there was no one in sight.

She turned to retrace her steps—and jolted to a stop.

Emma Bates, her expression stony, stood less than an arm’s length from her. “Why are you here, Miss Spencer? Have you followed me?”

Leo blinked rapidly, her reply delayed by incomprehension. Emma had lingered here on the secluded side of the chaplain’s home. But why? Awaiting word from Miss Hartley, perhaps?

If that was the case, she might not have seen Leo’s arrival earlier in the company of a Scotland Yard detective.

“No, I…I wanted to call on Geraldine, but the warder turned me away,” she lied. “Did he deny you as well?”

The young widow quizzed her with a sharp look, as if weighing whether to believe her. But then, she sighed. “He did. Apparently, women are only allowed inside if they have committed a crime.”

After an awkward pause, Leo gestured toward the main walkway. “Perhaps if we apply to the warder together, we can convince him.”

Being here alone with Emma on this side of the chaplain’s home, out of view of anyone passing on the walkway, suddenly felt perilous.

Emma smiled tightly. “Optimistic thought, but I don’t believe that will persuade him. I think I’ll try my luck another day. Good afternoon, Miss Spencer.”

She turned on her heel and started swiftly for the front of the house and the walkway that would lead to the road. She was going to run. Leo hurried to stay with her.

“There is a coffee shop just down the road that we passed on the way up. Perhaps if you’d like?—”

Emma whirled to spear Leo with a glare. “ We ? Did you not come here alone?”

Leo bit her tongue and cursed herself for the asinine blunder.

Before she could concoct an explanation, a commotion of clattering wheels and whinnying horses sounded beyond the perimeter wall, coming from the direction of the entrance gate.

Then, the voices of men. Sensing danger, Emma latched onto Leo’s arm and hauled her close with surprising brutality.

“What have you done?” she seethed as the men’s voices carried. A handful of them dashed along the walkway, which was just within their view. It was Sergeant Lewis and a few uniformed constables on his heels. Close enough to signal.

“Serg—!” The sharp point of something hard dug into Leo’s waist, and she gasped, her voice cutting off.

Emma pushed Leo back toward the secluded side of the chaplain’s yard. The woman’s fingers clutched her arm in a bruising grip. A shock of pain lanced through her side as the blade of what appeared to be a penknife jabbed her.

“Quiet or this goes straight into your liver,” Emma hissed.

Briefly, Leo considered attempting to wrest the penknife from her hand. But with the knife blade still poking into her skin, there was a steep chance of failure. She knew her own strengths, and physical prowess was not one of them.

“Actually,” she said, trying to breathe evenly and not cause the blade to lodge any deeper, “the liver is on the right side of the body. As this is my left, you’d likely pierce my spleen or descending colon.”

Emma shrieked in frustration, and hot pain flashed along Leo’s side.

“You think you are clever, do you?” she spat out. “A clever woman would have left well enough alone, not pressed her luck.”

She dragged Leo toward the corner of the house again to check if the path was clear. It wasn’t. Just outside the entrance gate was a police wagon and a constable in uniform standing guard.

Emma slowly backed them out of sight.

There was no more point in lying. “Inspector Reid knows you ordered that female warder to kill Geraldine,” Leo said. “He knows you are behind the bombing involving Constable Lloyd. Porter Stewart told us everything. They are here to arrest you.”

Inflaming the unhinged woman’s temper might just result in the blade being plunged deeper into her body. But Leo would not be cowed by fear or pain.

“Shut up,” Emma ordered. Then, with a twisting tug on Leo’s arm, she said, “You and I are walking out of here, and you’re to do so without drawing attention our way.”

Arm in arm, they would look to be bosom friends to the constable at the gate—should he not see the knife between them. A fine sweat erupted on Leo’s chest and back as Emma rushed them toward the gravel path.

“And where will we go from there?” Leo asked. “You are only going to kill me afterward.”

“That is your own fault. You and your inspector have ruined everything,” she said, sounding petulant and desperate. “I should gut you now. It would be kinder than the punishment my family will show you.”

“Ah yes, the Spitalfields Angels. Is Clive Paget your father, then? And is Miss Hartley truly your sister?”

Emma startled, surprised that her connection to the Angels had been uncovered.

She glanced toward Leo, distracted. On Leo’s next stride, she swung her ankle out and brought it back against Emma’s in a sweeping motion.

Emma tripped and, in her stumbling, the knife slid down the side of Leo’s torso in another blaze of pain.

Her leg tangled with Leo’s, and they both landed hard on the ground, the agony in Leo’s side debilitating.

In a blink, Emma was on top of her, pushing her onto her back.

Leo kicked and thrashed, but the woman’s weight was more than she could combat.

“Oi!” the constable at the gate called out before starting toward them.

The tip of the penknife came to rest underneath Leo’s chin.

“Stay back!” Emma screamed. He did, holding out his palms in surrender.

Emma’s mouth twisted into a deranged expression of loathing as she loomed over Leo.

The blare of a police whistle came from within the prison walls. It shivered up Leo’s spine as she lay on the cold, gravel path. Emma’s face went stark white.

“You have no chance of escaping,” Leo said, her heartbeat threatening to rip straight out of her chest. “Put down your knife and turn yourself over to Inspector Reid.”

Emma looked toward the constable with a truncheon in his hand. He’d come closer. The knife touched the underside of Leo’s chin. “I said stay back!”

He obeyed, taking a few steps in reverse.

It wasn’t the first time Leo had been held at knifepoint.

In March, Andrew Carter had pressed his knife just below her eye, demanding that Jasper relinquish a suspect he’d arrested so that Andrew could kill him.

Andrew Carter’s hand had been steady with deadly intent, while Emma’s was now trembling with panic.

Oddly enough, it was Emma, not the East Rip, who struck Leo as more dangerous with a weapon.

However, Jasper had his revolver. If he came through the porter’s gate and saw Emma Bates with a knife to Leo’s throat, he would use it.

Even as unstable as Emma was, even with all the pain and destruction she had wrought, Leo did not want to see her killed.

She was a disturbed woman, a woman who had fallen in love with the wrong man and gone to extremes to attain him.

A woman who’d been raised by criminals. Perhaps there had never been any hope that she might break free from a life of lawlessness.

None of that, however, excused what she’d done.

“You stole that valise. You arranged for the bomb,” Leo said as shouts within the prison wall grew closer. Emma’s rattled gaze clapped onto the porter’s gate as it began to groan open.

“I’m sure your family even selected Constable Lloyd to deliver it by means of coercion. He was on the take, after all, indebted to the Angels. What did they do? Bribe him? Threaten his family?”

“He was a rotten copper, with no allegiance to anyone,” Emma sneered. “He was just supposed to plant the bomb. It wasn’t supposed to go off when the fool was carrying it. But I’m not sorry.”

The void of feeling in the other woman’s eyes left Leo feeling cold pity.

“I imagine you’re not sorry about Niles Foster either.

He tried to blackmail Mr. Stewart, so you tapped your family again to eliminate the threat he posed to the man you love.

You will be found guilty of both murders, Mrs. Bates.

But if you do not lay down that knife, I swear to you, the Inspector will shoot you as soon as he has you in his sights. ”

Leo knew this as keenly as she knew the moon would rise that evening, and the sun would chase it come morning. Jasper would stop at nothing to protect her.

The resounding commotion cleared the porter’s gate and flowed into the courtyard.

“Drop your weapon!” Jasper’s deep-throated command rang out, and from her peripheral vision, she saw he had, in fact, aimed his Webley at Emma Bates.

“Don’t shoot her! Please!” Leo called out.

“Get off Miss Spencer,” Jasper commanded as several uniformed warders fanned out around him. “Now!”

Emma bared her teeth in a grimace—and then held out her arm and opened her fingers. The knife fell onto the ground, and Emma released a sob as she collapsed to the side. Leo sucked in a breath and rolled to a sitting position, her side stabbing with pain.

“Cuff her,” Jasper ordered the constables as he holstered his revolver and rushed toward Leo. He crouched to grasp her arms and help her to her feet. His eyes slid over her, his honey- blond brows pulling taut as he peered at her side. “Christ, you’re bleeding.”

She put a hand to her waist. Her palm came away with blood, though less than she’d anticipated. Pulling up the hem of her short coat, she opened the ripped fabric of her shirtwaist and saw just how shallow the wound was.

“I’m all right,” she said. “It looks and feels worse than it is.”

He crouched again, this time to look closer at the wound. Worry still etched his brow. “Are you certain?”

“Positive. It’s just a slice, nothing deep,” she said. “But what happened inside? How is Mrs. Stewart?”

“Miss Hartley was in the cell when we arrived, but she didn’t have the chance to harm Mrs. Stewart. She’s been taken into custody.” He grasped Leo’s hips and pulled aside the sliced and bloody fabric. “This isn’t shallow. I’m taking you to the prison’s doctor. You need sutures.”

“I am fine .” She took hold of his wrists. As if realizing the intimacy of being on bent knee, her hips in his palms, Jasper got to his feet and released her.

“You are sure?” he asked.

Leo nodded. “Although it might have been better for me to come into the prison with you, after all. Do you see what happens when I’m forced to stay back?”

He laughed, a grin trembling over his lips. “I don’t know why I even bother.”