Page 93 of Dukes All Night Long

“I don’t care what you say,” Lady Jo Everly huffed, striding quickly to keep up with the determined couple. “If the table starts turning and spinning, I’m leaving. And don’t worry about me; I’ll find my own way home.”

Lord Matthew glanced over his shoulder wearing the familiar smirk that never ceased to make his little sister’s blood boil.

He dodged a few passersby in the seedy, narrow alleyway, barely avoiding a collision.

“No, no, that’s just what they call it. I don’t think the tables actually move.

” He paused, checking with his wife. “Do they?”

Lady Anne hugged his arm tighter, patting it for extra measure.

From behind, Jo watched her sister-in-law’s mouth tighten as she turned to her husband.

“I don’t think so…” she said—unconvincingly, to Jo’s ears.

“I believe it’s mostly sounds and knocks and things of that nature.

Although I can’t be too sure. It’s my first time too, you know. ”

Jo let the matter drop as the trio ventured further into the dimly lit passages.

Just off the east end of the London docks, the Limehouse District was the kind of place that deserved one’s full attention.

Eerie and cramped, with uneven cobblestone paths and roughshod buildings that seemed to have been thrown together with a few bent nails and a couple of prayers, the area had a labyrinthine quality that made one feel like they were walking at a tilt.

The air was just as cloistered, briny, fetid scents mixed with tobacco and sweat suffocating Jo with their acrid aromas. The veil she wore over her face did little to keep the smells at bay, and she was forced to hold a palm over her nose as she continued to follow the couple.

Jo was no stranger to the docks; however, Limehouse had a distinct, disarming quality unlike anything she’d encountered.

It was terminally quiet, and yet the shuffling of boots, the scurrying of rats, and the unmeasured drips of water from the shanty roofs had the effect of Picadilly Circus at midday.

Because she had an audience.

Jo caught them out of the corner of her eye, squeezing deeper into corners, retreating from their windows the instant her group walked past. She was being watched, considered, as if this alley maze were a giant test to discover her worth.

Jo lowered her head. “Brother?” she asked, wincing at the apprehension in her voice.

“Yes, yes,” Matthew replied absently, his heels clipping faster on the cobblestone. “It should be just right up here.”

He veered right, ducking into a narrow-sloped archway that led into a ramshackle courtyard.

Lanterns hung at various intervals, blurring the foggy atmosphere with their scant coronas.

Under his breath, Matthew counted the doors at his left, eventually halting at the fourth.

He gave his wife a firm nod and knocked on the inauspicious door.

Jo sidled up next to the couple, angling closer.

A small, soot-covered window looked outside, but the curtains were drawn.

No lights bled through, but after a few simmering seconds, she heard a rustling.

A petite woman answered the door, so short her head barely came to Matthew’s shoulders.

Her face was round, her eyes large and almond shaped.

Raven-black hair was left loose, hanging down the sides of her head.

She surveyed Matthew for a long pause, her nose tilted up, her jaw severe with scrutiny. Then her lashes flicked down and she gave a curt nod and turned, retreating into the space.

Once more, Jo’s brother looked to his wife for guidance. Anne didn’t stop to give any; she was already following the woman inside.

Jo was quick on her heels—not because she wanted to go in, but because the thought of Anne being anywhere alone in this forbidding place was unconscionable.

Jo walked into a tiny room that she could only describe as a makeshift parlor.

A small, round table sat in the middle with four unmatching, rudimentary chairs hobbled around it.

Five candles were lit on top of a simple bureau situated against one wall.

Drab, heavy curtains covered the large bay window looking out into the alley, cutting off the paltry light and noise.

Jo’s imagination immediately conjured a coffin, but even that macabre thought couldn’t temper her disappointment.

When Anne had first told her about visiting the witch, Jo’s mind had jumped to skulls stacked in corners and cobwebs glittering from a sloped ceiling, broomsticks above a boiling cauldron, and pointy shoes lined up outside the door.

This space was boring and mundane. Ordinary.

Frumpy and dark, but hardly sinister. Nothing screaming dark arts.

Anne reached for a chair, but then pulled her hand back, rethinking the presumption. “Thank you for seeing us. It’s Miss Devine, yes?”

“ Mrs . Devine,” the witch replied gruffly. She placed one hand on her lower back and tossed the other out to the chair, which Anne accepted as an invitation to finally sit. Matthew followed suit.

Jo studied Mrs. Devine, noticing the exhaustion in her voice, the bags under her eyes, the threadlike wrinkles cracking through the youthful skin on her forehead, the way her hand seemed to wander from her lower back to the tiny mound of her stomach.

“When are you due?” asked Jo.

The witch’s head snapped for the first time to her, the bit player in this event. Nothing softened at the mention of the baby; if anything, Mrs. Devine’s fearsome countenance hardened even more. “The summer.”

Jo returned a curt smile. “Your first?”

The witch nodded, apprehension showing through the cracks. “A girl. Jane.”

Anne’s breath caught, and Jo’s scrutiny increased.

It was no secret that there were women who claimed they could predict the gender of babies using any number of old wives’ tricks, but Jo had never experienced any person so certain as Mrs. Devine.

She spoke about her unborn child as if it were already a fully formed person just waiting for her time.

It unnerved Jo, though the witch took no notice.

A silence fell around them. Mrs. Devine made herself comfortable in her seat, not appearing to be in any hurry, and Jo wondered if she charged by the minute.

She could feel her sister-in-law’s anxiety pulse next to her, the tiny tap-tap-tap of Anne’s toes against the wide floorboards.

Matthew reached for his wife’s hand, settling both of theirs under the table in her lap.

Jo looked around the room once more, searching for something she might have missed. A deck of cards, a holy cross with some far-off origin, herbs drying from the ceiling, a mysterious relic…but nothing struck her. Anne’s gaze pricked at her, and Jo returned a comforting nod to her friend.

Anne straightened her shoulders. “I’m not sure how to start—”

“Five pounds,” Mrs. Devine announced matter-of-factly to Matthew.

He reached into his jacket pocket, his cheeks reddening at the blatant talk of money. “Of course,” he replied, disguising his discomfort while he found the correct amount and placed the coins on the table.

Mrs. Devine was not ashamed in the least. She slid the money off the table, stuffing it in the pockets of skirts with a businesslike suavity.

“Good.” The witch stretched her hands along the table, her palms up. A thin black eyebrow arched like an accent over one critical eye. “You.”

Anne swallowed the lump in her throat as Mrs. Devine curled her fingers, beckoning. Slowly, Anne placed her hands on top of the witch’s.

“What do you want to know?” Mrs. Devine barked in her signature abrupt manner. Even Jo blanched, and she was hardly averse to frank speech.

Anne’s bloodless lips quivered before she finally said, “Children.” Her thick eyelashes fluttered nervously as she spared her husband another glance. “We’ve tried…and nothing has happened. I suppose we want to—”

The witch sighed. “You want to know if children are in your future?”

Anne’s voice shook. “Yes. I want to know if I should give up hope.”

Jo leaned forward, craning her slender neck to snag her friend’s attention away from the witch. “You should never give up hope,” she said with a pointed look. And you shouldn’t base anything on what this frightening woman says.

Mrs. Devine narrowed her eyes at Jo, like the woman had just listened to her thoughts.

Jo arched an imperious brow. One didn’t need to be a mind reader to know what she thought of this whole charade.

She’d only come because Anne had begged her.

And after everything Anne and Matthew had done for her, refusing them was something she could never consider.

Even if it meant spending a Thursday night in the squalor of the Limehouse District.

Jo felt Mrs. Devine’s displeasure slink off her like a wet woolen cloth, slow and uncomfortable.

It reset back on Anne. “I can only tell you what I see. People come to me. Spirits, ghosts, apparitions, whatever you want to call them. Sometimes they tell me things; sometimes they don’t.

I question and I listen. That’s all. Do you understand? ”

“We understand.” Matthew wrapped his arm around his wife’s shoulders, and Jo’s heart surprised her with the tiniest ache.

Over the years that ache had been whittled down to something she could easily ignore, but then it would pop up again at the oddest moments, as if to remind her that it would always be lurking, like the people outside in the alley.

Mrs. Devine stared at the couple for a few more breaths before she closed her eyes.

Jo’s ears were sensitive to everything in the small room: the chairs creaking under the strain of their bodies; a whistle wheezing from her brother’s nose.

Anne’s breathing was fast and shallow, and her hands clung to the witch’s, grasping more and more tightly as the seconds dragged on.