Whitechapel Wagers 02 - Wanton Wager (2 page)

“Watch yerself, missus!”

Ada Hamilton’s eyes snapped open. She had collided with a man in a filthy woolen coat, and his shout and the pungent smell of his clothing roused her from a kind of waking sleep. She blinked, startled and frightened to find herself in the man’s arms, and pushed away from him. He flashed a toothless grin and held her arm to steady her before letting go.

Though daylight had fled long ago, the Whitechapel Road was as crowded and noisy as earlier in the day. The costermongers were gone now or perhaps they were part of the throng who spent a long day working and now turned their attention to other business—finding a pint, a companion, and a place to sleep for the night.

Ada paid them no mind. A few more steps and she would be at her door, but her legs were sore and she battled to keep her eyes open. She could not recall a more wearying day. Every inch of her body ached, and her feet, confined in tightly laced boots, protested most of all. The charity hospital where she worked as a probationary nurse had been overflowing with the sick, wounded, and dying, more than they usually saw in an entire week. And after her shift she had gone door to door among their neighbors and inquired if any of them had seen or heard anything of her sister, Beth. Some wished to help, others wished her gone, but none had provided a shred of information about the girl’s whereabouts. With the ominous thunderclouds hanging overhead, it was easy to fancy that God was displeased with Whitechapel and everyone in it, as one doctor had mused during the long, tiring day.

“Pardon me, sir.” She had already passed the man she unknowingly plowed into, but her exhausted mind remembered too late that she should offer some apology for her misstep. He wouldn’t hear her through the fog, but guilt demanded she atone for her carelessness. Then she caught sight of the pub’s glowing windows and nothing else mattered beyond getting inside.

Warm light spilled out of The Golden Bell, and the scent of pipe smoke, roasted sausages, and stale beer beckoned. Ada did not trust her tired legs to make it up the side stairs that led directly to her family’s living quarters. Instead, she stumbled straight through the doors of the pub like any other patron desperate for grog.

As the door closed behind her, she was enveloped in heat and sound. The fireplace was roaring on the stormy November night, and the pub was filled to the rafters with men and women who must have wished to escape the chill as much as Ada did.

She scanned the bar for any sight of her mother but only glimpsed the bulky figure of Harry, their giant of a barman, who ruled The Golden Bell with a ready smile and an iron fist. When Harry was about there was very little mischief from their patrons, no matter how much liquor they consumed.

Ada raised a hand to wave at him, the motion requiring much more effort than expected, and caught his eye. His grin fled as he left his station behind the bar and pushed his way through the crowded pub. It seemed only a moment later he was by her side, a massive arm around her shoulders, escorting her toward the wooden door at the end of the bar.

“Go on up to your mum, miss. She is that anxious to speak with you.”

Ada stopped and looked up at him. “Is there news of Beth?”

Harry shook his head and his broad shoulders seemed to sag. “No, miss. Not a word. But Mrs. ‘Amilton is anxious, int she?”

Always. Mama was always anxious. Ada could not remember a time when her mother was not nervous, worried, or at her wits end. As the eldest of three surviving siblings, Ada spent much of her childhood fearing she was the cause of Mama’s hand wringing. But Father had caused his share of misery too, drinking the pub’s stock and frittering away its profits before he disappeared.

There were rumors he had been in a fight in Limehouse, a brawl over a card game. Some said he had died there on the pier and been discarded in the Thames. They looked for him for months before Mama found a crumpled note inside a drawer. In it, George Hamilton made a half-hearted attempt to explain why he was not suited to marriage or fatherhood. Mama thought he would return one day. Ada knew they must go on, father or no father. There was a pub to run, and Beth and Vicky needed stability, if such a thing was possible with Mama’s constant fussing.

But now there was reason to fuss. Beth had “gone astray,” as Mama put it. Ada thought her claims of catching an earl another of the girl’s fanciful boasts, but now her sister was nowhere to be found. It had been four days and no one had heard from or seen her.

“I’ll go up. Thank you, Harry. Will you be all right closing up on your own?”

He shot her a look indicating her question was foolish. Though her parents owned the The Golden Bell, Harry was defacto steward and manager, overseeing every aspect of running the busy pub. He had been a godsend when her father hired him years before. It was her father’s one legacy that Ada could be grateful for, that and his insistence she and all his children go to school and obtain a decent education.

“Thank you.” Ada spoke the word around an unladylike yawn and pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle it.

“Seems you’re in need of a good kip.”

“There has been little of that since Beth went…” Ada could not finish the thought. Her sister was missing. No one had seen her in over a week, yet to voice the words gave the fact permanence, a certainty she still wished to deny. She could not bring herself to read the papers and see details of the unsolved murders of women who lived and worked just streets away from their home. But that wouldn’t be Beth’s fate. They struggled, but there had never been a need for the girl to sell her body for food or a place to rest her head. It was more likely the silly little creature had gone off with this man she boasted about day and night. Pray God they went all the way to Gretna Green and Beth might come back a respectable woman. Ada had been trying for days to learn more about the man Beth had referred to in the days before she vanished.

“Aye, miss Ada. We’ll find the lass. Go see to the missus. Leave the rest to me.”

“If only your father were here.” Her mother stood ringing a wet rag between her hands as she repeated her daily lament. Ada allowed her mother to moan but knew her father’s presence would do nothing to alleviate the problems of running their pub or solve the mystery of Beth’s disappearance.

Though he hadn’t helped much when he’d been alive, she imagined her father must have been an industrious man at some stage of his life. He had decided to purchase the pub, after all, and Mother said Whitechapel had been different then.

“’Nother ale here, man. ‘As the well run dry?” Angus McCutcheon’s wail came straight up from the pub through the floorboards of their upstairs living quarters and rattled Ada’s nerves. His cry was so vehement it made her mother jump. Ada couldn’t bear to see the fear and distress in her mother’s eyes.

“I will speak to him, Mother.”

“No, girl. Don’t say it. Harry is much better suited to such trouble.”

It was undoubtedly true, but leaving everything to one man and the skeleton crew who assisted him didn’t seem fair. Though Ada had no interest in managing the pub, she wished her mother would make more of an effort. At two and forty, she was still young, and if she were half as industrious as she was fretful, Ada thought they might all be happier.

“Very well. I shall leave it to Harry. Especially tonight. I am dead on my feet.”

Ada’s mother looked up at her through damp lashes and spoke in a voice she could barely make out, but she did not need to hear the words clearly. It was a question her mother had asked every night for the past four nights.

“Any word of Beth?”

Ada could not look her in the eye. There was no word of Beth, hadn’t been since the Monday before. Ada had knocked on doors, sent notes along to a few family members who lived nearby, questioned their usual patrons at the pub—all to no avail. Beth had gone to visit Nancy, who lived just along the Whitechapel Road. Nancy did piecework sewing and Beth sometimes helped her for a few pence or as much as a shilling if it was a fancy job. Ada had always been awed at the delicate beauty Beth could render with fabric and thread. The girl had a real talent. But she was of the age when every man turned her head. This earl, if he truly existed, had certainly done so.

“Tomorrow I will go and speak with Nancy again. Beth may have sworn her to secrecy about some foolish plan, but I will make her tell me the truth. And I will go back to the station on Leman Street.”

Though her mother insisted they would be no help, Ada went to the police the moment they realized Beth had not returned to her bed on Monday night. The young man at the station dutifully took down all the details Ada provided, scant as they were, and a constable called the following day—to the consternation of some of their rowdier patrons—to discover if Beth had returned home. When they told him she had not, he assured them the police would continue to make inquiries. Still, Ada had made plenty of her own.

Her mother’s expression indicated her complete lack of faith in the Metropolitan Police force.

“They cannot even catch the creature slashing women all around us. How can they find one slip of a girl?”

It was no use arguing with her. The only thing that seemed useful was a few hours of sleep.

“Get some sleep, Mother. We shall start again tomorrow.”

Ada watched her mother walk toward her bedroom and took a moment to peek in on Vicky, who lay snug in her cot cuddling a ragged stuffed bear, before cleaning up in the wash basin and lowering herself onto her own narrow bed.

Sleep swept down on her swiftly and she let herself sink into it. It was still early evening, though it had been one of the longest days she could ever remember. The pub still reverberated with conversation, the clink of dishes, and the occasional angry shout, courtesy of toughs like Angus McCutcheon. But the sounds were familiar to Ada, comforting. She turned her head on the pillow and knew she would finally sleep.

“Miss Ada.”

A hand lay heavy on her shoulder and her first thought was to push it away. Sleep was a sweet balm, a deep, dark abyss she did not want to come out of. But her arms were pinned beneath the blanket and she came more fully awake.

One thought consumed her. Beth.

She bolted up and recognized Billy in the dim light of the room. As assistant to Harry, part-time barman, and occasional help to the cook, he must have been the obvious man to spare to come and wake her.

“Is it Beth?”

“No, miss. It’s a gentleman ‘ere to see you.”

“A gentleman? Who?”

“Never saw ‘im before in me life. I was of a mind to send the toff on his way, but then I thought. Well, maybe ‘e knows sumfink of your sister.”

“Did he ask for me directly?”

Billy shook his head. “Just asked for Miss ‘Amilton.”

Could it be this Frederick gentleman Beth had spoken of? If it was, would he have answers about Beth’s whereabouts? Ada couldn’t stifle the hope bubbling up inside.

Will did not expect to find Miss Hamilton living above a taproom in Whitechapel. He directed the hansom driver to the address Ashdowne gave him and was surprised to be dropped at the doorstep of a rather noisy, ramshackle public house. He knew he looked a fool to all those who spared him a glance, dressed in his best clothes and bearing gifts for a lady. The barkeep turned out to be the least welcoming Will had ever met in his life. When Will asked for Miss Hamilton, the giant of a man turned an alarming shade of red before begrudgingly pointing to a dark stairwell near the bar.

Now, waiting in a modest yet homey room that looked to serve as the family’s living area, dining area, and makeshift kitchen, Will fought the urge to leave, to seek another hansom and return to his lonely, eventless life. To forget about this business of Ashdowne’s kept woman and the crime-ridden East End district where she lived.

What would he say to her? What could he say? He had been sent by her lover to see if he might be her next? The whole business was dishonorable, and yet he could not resist the desire to at least meet her. To see the red-haired beauty who gave men comfort. A shiver ran down his spine at the thought, and his leg and arm began a slow burning ache. Perhaps they had already been aching. He had learned not to notice and usually ignored his body, trying to drone out sensation. But thoughts of Miss Hamilton brought nothing but sensation.

And then she walked into the room.

Ashdowne had said her hair was red, but it was nothing like the tame amber shade of Emilia’s hair. Miss Hamilton’s hair was fiery, a most striking shade of true, rich red. It swept down over her shoulders in jumbled waves, and the sheen in her blue eyes and bee-stung plumpness of her full mouth suggested he’d woken her.

He was a cad, an utter wretch for disturbing this woman and expecting anything at all from her.

“Frederick?”

Could she not see clearly he was not Ashdowne? They might both be wanton wretches, but their outward appearance was not similar at all. Ashdowne was dark, with black hair and nearly black eyes. Will knew everything about his own looks was light, from his blonde-brown hair to his grey eyes.

“No, Miss Hamilton. I’m sorry. As you can see, I am not Frederick. My name is William Selsby.”

Disappointment was plain on the woman’s lovely face, and Will wished he’d taken that cab back to his lodgings on Moreton Terrace after all.

She rubbed her finger across the arch of her eyebrow and closed her eyes for the briefest of moments before speaking. “Forgive me, Mr. Selsby. I do not wish to be rude, but it is quite late, and I do not believe we are acquainted.”

“No.” How to begin? How to explain the reason he had burst into her life?

When he made no further reply, they stood and stared at each other for a moment. Will savored the opportunity to study her. He had never seen a young woman stand so stock straight and confident. No debutante he had ever met could manage such a feat. The diminutive woman before him would put many of his own soldiers to shame.

But her stance and air of self-possession was a striking contrast to her delicate beauty—wide, full lips and strikingly beautiful blue-green eyes together with her small frame and lush curves made her seem more a manifestation from a fairy story than a flesh and blood woman he had roused from her bed in a cramped room in Whitechapel.

She let out a sigh. “Then why are you here, Mr. Selsby? What business could you have with me at this hour?”

She studied him then, skimming her gaze down his body in an assessing manner that made his skin burn beneath his evening wear. She focused her gaze on the items in his hands. Ashdowne had advised him to bring flowers and a small gift to encourage amity with Miss Hamilton.

“You come bearing gifts, sir. Who do you expect to woo?”

Every irrational urge inside of him wanted to woo her, this petite woman with such exotic beauty and the backbone of a soldier. But the look in her eyes, the slight grimace on her face when she looked his way, told him she had no interest in furthering their acquaintance.

“Miss Hamilton, forgive me for intruding on your evening. I was directed here by Lord Ashdowne.”

No flicker of recognition registered on her face. She simply continued to stare at him as if waiting for more. His explanation thus far meant nothing to her. The name Lord Ashdowne meant nothing to her.

“The man you spoke of earlier. Frederick. That is the Lord Ashdowne to whom I refer.”

The moment the words were out of his mouth, Miss Hamilton launched herself across the room, closing the space between them. She touched him, grasping the lapels of his cloak, her skirts pressing into his legs, the length of her body nearly touching his. She would have crushed the roses he carried, but he lifted his arm to salvage them.

Will fought the urge to drop the silly roses and the small box containing an opal broach he’d spent far too much time selecting years ago and never given to the woman he had hoped to marry. Now he wanted his hands free to touch Miss Hamilton, to wrap an arm around her waist, to touch the red waves that tumbled over her shoulders. But she had not approached him out of desire. There was a kind of frantic desperation in her eyes.

“You know this man, this Frederick?”

They stood so close the heat of her breath feathered across his face when she spoke. They were so close Will was tempted to dip his head and take her lips in one swift movement.

“Yes, we are acquainted.”

“And he sent you here? To speak with whom? With me, or with my sister?”

“Your sister?” The mention of her sister sparked brightness in her eyes, and Will realized Miss Hamilton was on the verge of tears. A surge of desire to comfort her overwhelmed him.

“Yes, my sister. Elizabeth. We call her Beth. I am Ada Hamilton. If you know anything of my sister, please tell me.”

After she spoke Miss Hamilton looked down where she gripped his clothing so fiercely her hands had turned white. She seemed to realize what she had done and released his cloak, leaving the material twisted and creased, and took a step away from him.

Will missed the warmth of her, the scent of her.

“Forgive me, Mr. Selsby.”

He wanted to help her but had no idea how he might. It seemed he wasn’t even sure who he had been sent to call upon. He reached into his vest pocket to retrieve the note on which Ashdowne had scribbled Miss Hamilton’s address. He was certain the man had included no Christian name.

“I’m afraid Lord Ashdowne only gave me your address.”

She approached him again, reaching out for the card he’d produced.

He recalled the rest of what Ashdowne had written there and pulled the paper back, but the fearsome little woman would have none of it. When he pulled back, she came closer, so close he would have given her anything she asked.

As his gaze locked with hers, she yanked the cream-colored note from his fingers. She turned toward the light cast by an oil lamp but did not move away from him. Her crimson hair was even lovelier up close with sparks of light catching a strand here and there.

He knew she would move away from him when she read what Ashdowne had written. She would know he was craven and immoral, that none of his reasons for coming here this night were the right ones.

She read, her voice breathy and deep. “With my compliments, Selsby. Be good to my Beth and she will be very good to you.”

She shifted her gaze back toward him, taking in the small black box bulging in his pocket and the now drooping roses he clutched in his hand.

“My God, he gave her to you. Like some bit of property he had tired of.” Her words, the tone of her voice, dripped with loathing. And when she looked at him, her extraordinary green-blue eyes were narrowed in disgust. Disgust and something more. Fury? Fear? He could not be sure. “So you came here to claim your gift from this noble lord?”

He did touch her then. He reached out. She was so close. He touched her arm, to mediate his plea, to beg her not to loathe him. She pulled away as if he’d burned her and took three quick steps to the opposite corner of the room.

“I came for all the wrong reasons, Miss Hamilton. I do not know you. I have no right to your sister.” The words dried up in his mouth and choked him with a bitter flavor, as if he’d stuffed a handful of newspaper down his throat.

He could not tell her the truth of why he had agreed to Ashdowne’s cruel wager, why he had not touched a woman in nearly eight years, or why he believed the only female comfort he deserved was the kind bought with flowers and gifts and coin.

“You came here expecting to find some dollymop.”

Will was shocked to hear the crude term coming out of Miss Hamilton’s mouth.

He wanted to tell her he had merely come for comfort, for a moment in the company of a woman who did not look at him with pity or disgust for his frailty. The irony was that Miss Hamilton stared at him with all the disgust her beautiful countenance could muster, yet for reasons which had nothing to do with his scarred body and battered soul.

He knew what he had to do, knew what he must do, yet he was surprised to acknowledge that he did not wish to. He had to walk out of her life, to disappear so that she might forget he had ever imposed on her and assumed such horrible things about her sister.

“Forgive me, Miss Hamilton. There is nothing I can say to excuse my intrusion here. The best I can do is to leave you in peace.”

Will took one last look at the woman, drinking in her unique beauty and air of poise that seemed undiminished despite the circumstances of their encounter. Then he pivoted on his boot heel and started toward the door of the small room.

“She is only eighteen.”

Miss Hamilton was near tears now. Will could hear it in the shaky quality of her voice.

“He told her he wished to marry her. She never told me that, but she said it to our mother. My sister isn’t a whore, Mr. Selsby. She is an impressionable girl.”

Will did not know what to say. He only knew what he ached to do. He wished he could have met Miss Hamilton under any other circumstances. He wished to comfort her tears away. Most of all, he wished her sister had never encountered a cad like Freddy.

He angled his head to look at her, but she had turned her back on him.

Abandoning her stiff posture, she stood gripping the frame of a straight-backed chair as if it might support her in her misery.

“I am sorry, Miss Hamilton. I offer my sincerest apology to you and your sister, for calling here tonight, and for the damage Lord Ashdowne has done.”

For several moments she said nothing, just bent slightly over the chair and wept quietly. He would not know she was sobbing except for the movement of her slim shoulders and the crushing sound of an occasional whimper.

That was it. He could not stand and watch the woman weep alone. He took a step toward her, but she lifted her pale hand, palm up, to stop him.

“Please go, Mr. Selsby. My family and I do not require your pity.”