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Fourteen

“Why did you do that?” The words burst out of him as soon as the doors closed behind them and they were out on the street.

Eliza didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t walking too fast for her, but he was taking them back toward the main street, and she was having trouble watching her step and his face at the same time. He looked…not angry, like she’d first assumed…but desperate.

“Should I not have?” she asked.

He glanced at her, his brow furrowed as if questioning the state of her sanity. “We’re not courting, Eliza.”

He’d called her by her first name. The little skip her heart gave had her pausing to catch her breath. He stopped to give her a moment, but he didn’t drop her hand. He still held her hand.

“I know that we aren’t,” she finally said. “Is that the only reason to kiss?”

He looked at her and she felt the heat of it all the way to her core. “We’re not doing that, either.” There was no doubt about what he meant by that.

Hot flames touched her face, those words stoking the fire that always simmered between them.

They called up the memory of his nude backside, and her imagination went ahead and embellished, filling out his front side and remembering how it had felt to be pressed against him that night in her bedroom.

Perhaps they should do that. At least once.

“Isn’t there a space in between?” she asked instead.

“Not for us.” He looked straight ahead and continued walking, his long strides eating up the cobblestones and leading them back to the busier area.

She kept pace beside him, fumbling for what to say that would bring back the closeness they had shared in the music hall. Kissing him had felt natural and right. He’d felt it, too. She knew he had. It was why he had ended it. She simply wanted it back.

“But why? Simon…” She pulled him to a stop. “I simply want to know you.” It was as honest as she could be. What would come of knowing him? Nothing, except she would have the memory of him to ruminate over in the coming years of perpetual boredom.

Part of his allure was the adventure, the fact that he represented something totally different from the life being laid out for her, but that wasn’t all of it.

There was something about him, the essence of him and who he was, that wouldn’t allow her to look away.

He was from this place but he had made his way to Montague Club and a new life, driven by some spark inside him that she didn’t understand.

Yet. She wanted to understand, though. He’d intrigued her since the first night they had met, and she couldn’t let it go.

She didn’t want to let go of this fascination.

He was important to her life in a way that she couldn’t understand yet.

“You want to know me?” he asked. There was a challenge in his words.

Fine, she’d accept. “Yes, I want to know who you are and what you feel and why it means so much to you to leave here.” She raised her free hand up to encompass the area.

He shook his head. “You don’t know the first thing about this place.”

“It’s no Mayfair or Belgravia, but in some ways I prefer it here. The people are real.”

“Is that so?” He held out her cloak for her.

She turned and allowed him to drape it over her shoulders.

“Yes, it is so. I’m not as naive as you seem to think.

I lived near the Bowery back home, and my mother sometimes took us into the Tenderloin district when she had a friend performing at a playhouse there.

” Though the area hadn’t been known as the Tenderloin when she was growing up.

“The Tenderloin?” he asked. His fingers absently tied the edges of her outer garment together.

“A district in Manhattan with brothels, taverns, music halls, and cheap playhouses,” she explained. “According to a friend of my mother’s, the police get paid extra by the brothels for protection, so they eat beef tenderloin for dinner instead of the cheaper fare a policeman’s salary provides.”

“What sort of friends does your mother have?”

She smiled, sensing that she might get further with him if she told him a little more of her family secrets.

“She was an actress until she met my father.” Mr. Hathaway was her true father, not Mr. Dove, but that was a story for a later time.

After Mr. Hathaway had taken up with her mother, he’d forbidden Fanny from performing.

He didn’t want her anywhere near those sorts of theaters to fan the flames of gossip about his illegitimate family.

His gaze fell upon her face as if seeing her anew. “I told you the truth.” She took his hands in hers and held them between their bodies. “We are more alike than you think.”

He looked away and blew out a breath of air. “It’s not the same here.”

“No, it’s not. I understand that.” Before she could stop herself, she touched his face, drawing his eyes back to her.

“I know that the poverty you experienced here is different. Growing up without your mother, or any parent. It’s not the same.

I know that. I only wanted you to understand that I didn’t grow up with all of the advantages that you seem to think I did. ”

For the first time since walking out of the music hall, there was a chink in his armor.

A shimmer of longing came into his eyes as his gaze dropped to her mouth and back up to her eyes.

Her hand moved to rest on his chest. His heart thumped a steady rhythm under her palm.

She wanted to kiss him, but she knew better than to spook a stray kitten.

“Will you show me more of this place?”

“Do you mean to go farther in?”

“Yes.”

“It’s too danger—” He paused and something caught his eye. There was movement back the way they had come. He grabbed her arm and began walking at a fast pace toward the Whitechapel High Street.

She glanced back over her shoulder but couldn’t see very much. It looked like a man was walking behind them, but she didn’t see anything that made her think he was following them. “What’s happened?”

“We need to leave,” was all he said.

After they entered the busy area, Simon made to cross the street, but paused at the curb. Two men were directly across the road from them. She had never seen them before, but they looked hard and menacing. Their eyes locked on Simon, and she knew for certain they didn’t like him.

Simon cursed under his breath and changed course again.

The man behind them had disappeared into the crowd.

Simon took hold of her hand and walked so fast she was practically running beside him.

They went toward the White Hart, the pub they had seen earlier that she’d wanted to go in.

It occupied a corner with a street on one side and an alley on the other.

He took them through the open double doors from the street, threading them through the crowd inside.

They darted out the other side and toward the alley.

The mouth of the alley was marked by an arched tunnel that might have been charming in the daylight, but at night it was a little forbidding, like an entrance to another world.

The narrow cobblestone lane was barely wide enough for four people to stand shoulder to shoulder.

Tall brick walls of tenement buildings hemmed them in on either side and stretched several floors overhead.

It felt oppressive, like they were running into the mouth of danger rather than away from it.

A handful of women in tattered dresses lounged against the sides of the buildings.

They wore large hats like the ones Eliza had noticed back at the theater.

A few of them called out to Simon while giving her curious glances.

They were prostitutes peddling their trade as they waited for customers to come stumbling out from the pub.

Simon hurried them through so fast that she barely got a good look at them.

It was dark and frightening here with no proper light to show them the way, which meant she had to pay attention to the crumbling roadway so that she didn’t trip.

The only light here was an open fire far in the distance.

It became quieter as they left the merriment of the tavern behind them.

The change in atmosphere was immediate. Instead of feeling jolly and festive, the very air felt stifling and dark.

Almost as if something cynical watched them from every doorway and window they passed.

“Where are we going, Simon? Why are we here?” she asked, her voice lowered so that whatever was in the shadows didn’t hear them.

“Because we can’t let them catch us.”

It was such a simple statement to cause such terror to grip her heart.

“What happens if they catch us?”

His eyes said it all. Nothing good.

She grabbed up her skirt and sprinted with renewed verve.

He took them down one dark alley after another.

She knew she’d never be able to find her way out without him.

Finally, he slowed and they walked. He kept her close to him, though, his arm at her waist as they moved through the alleys.

She wondered if whatever awaited them in the dark might be worse than what trouble followed them.

Several times different men came to attention when they approached.

Simon would call out some variation of a greeting that would see them stand down until they passed.

Sometimes they’d greet him by name. Twice he tossed a coin over in what seemed like pay for their safe passage.

She lost count of how many times they hurried past figures moving in the darkness against a wall.

Grunts and soft cries filled the air, leaving no doubt in her mind what was happening.

Women found customers at the pubs and brought them to the alleys.

“This is what it’s like,” he finally whispered when their hearts had slowed.

It seemed they had lost their pursuers. His voice was soft but resolute.

“The people that live here work hours every day for pay that doesn’t cover rent and food for themselves, let alone their families.

They’re left to make up the difference at night. ”

She tried to imagine how hopeless it must feel to labor all day and then be forced to turn to prostitution at night in an alleyway.

The truth was that whatever she imagined was a pale comparison to the experience of living it.

She and her family hadn’t had very much, but they’d never been forced to sell their bodies to survive.

As much as she sometimes struggled with her decision to sell her hand for a title, it wasn’t the same as being taken by a drunk man against a wall that smelled of human waste.

She tightened her fingers around Simon’s and he squeezed them gently.

The next street was a bit wider, wide enough for a carriage to easily traverse.

It was a smaller and grittier version of Whitechapel High Street without the interlopers.

An open sewer ran down the middle of the street.

Plaster crumbled in the wide gaps between the bricks, and some of the walls were covered in crude drawings and words.

The paint around the street-level doors and windows had long ago peeled away.

They had no sooner left the opening of the alleyway than several men solidified from the shadows. Simon tightened his arm at her waist and pushed her behind him. She held on to him and peered over his shoulder.

The only light here was from the moon overhead, but her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The man before them was of average height with a solid frame. He gave the appearance of being well-fed, which she couldn’t say for most of the people they had passed in their run through the maze of streets.

“Good evening, Cavell,” he said.