When We Touch (39 page)

She had been here, and he had remained in London. Perhaps he had felt the pressure of his position. Perhaps he had felt that they needed time. Perhaps he didn't mind at all having her as a lover, a mistress, and had no intention of anything further. That didn't mean that he didn't care. Nor did it mean that he wanted a life together.

And if not . . .

What was she going to do about the child? Not the beautiful little Ally, happily living here, beloved and adored. Her own child. She was almost positive. . .

She knew she could never, in a thousand years, give up a babe. And her heart bled with a greater concern for those poor women she had known, so often forced to the streets, and turning to gin as their only escape from unbearable lives.

Perhaps that was what suddenly gave her chills again. Thoughts of the East End . . .

She was staring at the stove, the fire poker leaning against it. She reached forward, picking it up.

And turned.

And he was there.

She didn't know he had gotten into the kitchen, if he had made his way into the cellar and come silently up the stairs, or if he had jimmied the back lock.

It didn't matter. He was there.

He had changed considerably once again, since they had met. His face appeared sucked in; the cheekbones were very prominent. His chin appeared sharp, and his hair had grown out more and fell in a strange, mousy way, in a single length covering a skull that seemed too large for his body. He had grown a shabby, untrimmed mustache, and his sunken cheeks looked all the worse for the scraggly growth of beard upon them.

His eyes burned with a peculiar glow.

He smiled. His teeth had gone very bad, and the stench of him seemed to suddenly reach her. She almost fell back. He smelled like something dead. As if he had been rolling in the carcasses of rotting animals.

He wore a long open coat, and dark, mud-spattered trousers. His appearance in itself was enough to bring terror to her heart. But there was more. His hands were at his sides. In one, he carried a very long blade. A hunting blade. He moved it back and forth, almost convulsively. It had cut through the fabric of his pants. It was cutting flesh, as well. A smattering of blood could be seen against his leg, where he continued to scrape the honed blade.

“You were easy to find,” he told her. “Your house was easy to find . . . and his house was easy to find. Your friends were even easier to find. Following them here was very easy.”

“What do you want?” she demanded. She tried to keep her voice bold.
If he was, indeed, the Ripper, he was accustomed to women easily giving in to his demands, practicing their trade, being pliable. Perhaps if she tried to show that she was ready to fight, and able to do so . . .

“What do I want?” he said, and appeared to be very amused by the question. “What do I want?” And he laughed aloud. “You. Dead. But I want to hear you scream first.”

She held her stance, feeling the poker in her hand. At least he didn't seem to be interested in the aunts—or the baby.

He only wanted
her
dead.

She raised the poker, ready to swing. “I don't want to die. Or scream,” she told him.

He seemed to be amused still further.

“But you will. Die and scream,” he assured her.

“Not easily,” she promised.

He took a step toward her. She tried quickly and rationally to weigh her fight. Swing the poker . . . if he caught it, and held it, and his strength was anything up to what it had been, he might well wrench it from her.

Stay where she was, and the knife would soon come against her throat.

She felt the steam rising from the kettle behind her.

She swung around, snatching up the kettle, splashing the scalding water at him. She drew a scream from the man, and dared to step closer, swinging the kettle. He let out a howl again, crashing against the cellar door.

As he righted himself, she gained a better grip on the poker, thinking that she would attack, and stand a better chance than if she just waited for him to recover.

But then she started, hearing a sleepy voice. “Lady Maggie?”

Merry. Come to the hall from the bedrooms, her nightcap and robe in place.

She came to a dead standstill, and Alexander, hands clenched into fists, suddenly made a lunge toward her.

“Lord! Lord have mercy!” Merry shrieked.

He might be in agony, but he would wrest hold of her, seize her . . .

And the knife would come against her throat. And she would be dead, because of Maggie's determination to stop the ills of the world.

“Here! You want me? Come and get me!” Maggie called. She threw the poker down and stared at him defiantly.

He turned away from Merry.

And Maggie purposely flew at him, veering just at the last minute, sliding around him with a slap to his injured face, and bolted to the front door of the cottage. She wrenched it open, and fled out into the night.

To her relief, she heard his bellow of pain and fury.

And the thunder of his stride as he came after her.

* * *

Jamie hadn't bothered with the niceties—or the slowness—of a carriage ride. Nothing could bring him more quickly across country than Newton.

Still, it had been a long, hard ride. And much of it had been in near-dark. At last, he had neared the cottage, and to his dread, he had found light blazing from the cottage and Merry standing at the open doorway, rocking, tears burning brightly in her eyes.

Jamie reined in on Newton, but didn't dismount. “Merry! He came here, right?” he demanded, leaning down. “Alexander?”

She looked at him, focused. “His name . . . I don't know his name!”

“Where are they?” Jamie demanded.

She shook her head. “She ran . . . she hit him and ran. He went after her . . . she was trying to stop him from coming after me. She led him away. He could have . . . he could have butchered the whole house while we slept!”

He could have,
Jamie thought with horror, and a truly sinking feeling. But he wouldn't have done so. He wouldn't have done so, because it wouldn't have been enough.

“Which way?”

She pointed straight, out into the darkness.

“How long ago?”

“A while!” Merry said, catching back a sob.

“Get back in. Lock the house up, everything, check every window, Merry.”

The woman nodded, and a shot of steely reserve seemed to come to her. “Yes, yes, there's the baby, and my sisters!”

She walked back into the house, and Jamie swung Newton around.

Luckily, there had been some rain. And he could see the tracks before him. He nudged the horse on.

The tracks went down the trail to the road. He was able to cover that ground quickly.

Then, at the road, the tracks were harder to read.

He dismounted, moving closer to the ground.

He straightened. Maggie had run across it, and into the foliage beyond. He threw the reins over the horse's neck, and gave him a slap. “Go on, boy, back to the cottage.”

He moved into the foliage himself.

* * *

Maggie could scarcely breathe, and she was afraid that if anything gave her away, it would be the sound of her desperate breathing.

She knew that she was ahead of him by a good thirty feet. It had taken him some time to realize that she hadn't circled back around the house, that she had opted for the overgrown wealth of trees and brush on the other side of the road. She realized that she was buying time, and then she wondered why she was bothering.

Then, of course, she knew. It was instinct. Simple survival.

But as she drew him from the house, she knew that she was going to have to do much more if she really wanted to survive.

She watched from the rear of an oak as he came across the road and found where she had crashed through the foliage. There was a low, young branch on the tree, and as he moved, she grasped hold of it, pulling it back.

“Hide and seek, Lady Maggie?” he called. “Hyde . . . Jekyll and Hyde!” he called, and laughed. “That's me. . . I might have been a Dr. Jekyll, but in all of us, there's a Mr. Hyde!”

He came closer, and she knew that he hadn't discovered her exact whereabouts yet.

“Ah, my lady! I can head back for the house, you know!”

She allowed herself a small noise, and he crept toward her. She had to force herself to wait. Wait until, in the misty moonlight, he saw her there. He lengthened his stride, grinning. She pulled back the sapling as hard as she could . . . waited, and let it go.

It slammed him dead center in the chest, and his feet went out right from under him, and he screamed in fury and pain. He must have been winded, because, he went down, and stayed down.

For several long moments. She looked about for a weapon, any weapon, aware that she didn't dare leave him to rise and come after her again.

Or go back. For the sisters, and baby Ally.

But she could find no handy rock or log, not quickly enough, and so, she took off again. As she ran, she heard a bubbling sound. There was a stream or a brook ahead.

A stream. She burst out from the bushes and saw that there was a rickety little wooden bridge ahead of her. She raced for it. As she started over it, a log beneath her feet gave. She almost cried out, but caught herself in time.

He was coming, and coming fast. She ducked down, and began ripping at the old rotting planks. The first fell into the rushing stream and rocks below. The second came apart in her hands.

She could see him, then. He was coming out to the thin strip of embankment that bordered the bridge. She wrenched hard at a third log, then looked at the gap she had created.

“Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! You're just what I needed, you know? There was that instant's gratification at first. The look in their eyes as my fingers wound around their throats. Then, there was one—she was choking, couldn't breathe, but she squealed a little. Still, got to see her face as my knife went across her throat. Had to shut them up. Then there was more. Of course. And it was so much fun. Destroy me, would you? I almost brought down all London!” He was staring at her, then, from the embankment. She had one of the planks in her hands, and he would have to attempt quite a leap to get to her.

He started to laugh. “Do you believe all that? Ah, should I tell you the truth or not? Are you wondering if you're going to fall prey to a man who's an animal—
because you made him one!
—or am I Jack the Ripper, a fiend to the utmost degree?”

He started toward her once again. She waited. And waited.

He walked slowly, assessing the situation. He seemed totally in his right senses, no longer worrying the knife, but keeping it firmly in his right hand.

“Ah, can I leap that distance?” he asked her, and smiled.

He walked to the base of the bridge.

“Are you Jack the Ripper?” she asked him.

And he grinned, taking his first step upon the bridge. Then another, and another. He was about five feet from her. The span she had broken was perhaps four.

He started to laugh suddenly. Then, he turned, walked back, and started to run.

He
was
going to try to leap the distance.

* * *

Jamie broke out onto the embankment just in time to see the man running.

He tore out after him.

Alexander leaped . . . and fell, but caught the last plank, just beneath Maggie's feet.

She screamed.

The bridge gave entirely, and crashed into the stream.

* * *

She was in the water, and he had her ankle. She had so little breath, and was so blinded by the rush and the darkness above. He was trying to drag her back.

Her fingers curled around a rock in the streambed. She kicked out furiously.

Suddenly, his face appeared before hers in the water.

She screamed again, and choked on water, and struck out with the rock. Her hand moved slowly . . . so slowly through the water.

The rock connected with his face.

He stared at her.

His arm rose as they both kicked and struggled in the depths.

Then, just as she saw the knife rising above her arms, his wrist was wrenched back, and the man was ripped away from her.

Her ankle was free. Desperate for breath, she kicked her way to the surface. Gasping and screaming, she clawed her way to the embankment.

She saw a man rising from the water, and she backed along the damp, cold earth. “No!”

“Maggie!”

That voice . . .

“Jamie?”

She hadn't the strength left, but she found it. She came to her feet, and leapt forward, into his arms. Then she drew away.

“Alexander?” she said desperately.

“He's dead.”

“Are you certain?”

“I'm certain,”

She looked around his shoulder, and she saw him. Blood oozed from the slash against his throat. He was in the water, caught between two boulders in the stream. Eyes open, he stared up unseeingly at the night sky.

“Dead?” she whispered again.

“Dead,” he promised her.

She leaned against him, fell against him. Her knees gave. He held her. He lifted her chin, and searched out her eyes. “Maggie, was he . . . Jack the Ripper?”

She started to shake. She couldn't laugh, and she couldn't cry.

“Maggie?”

“I don't know. I don't know. I wonder if . . . if we'll ever know!”

She couldn't walk. He picked her up in his arms.