Chapter 6 #2
"An angel is the last thing I'd call you, Ban Dyer. My brother-in-law is a demon from hell and that is exactly what I need to best him. I am under no illusions about the sort of man you are." She huffed and sat up ramrod straight on the seat next to him.
"And what sort of man is that?" He'd irked her, but did not find the fact as satisfying as he'd hoped.
She firmed her lips and folded her hands in her lap. Which indicated, at least to him, she had no intention of answering him. Not that her opinion of him mattered. He'd given up that worry not long after two resurrection men dragged him out of that common grave in St. Giles cemetery.
"Frankly, Mister Dyer," she finally began.
"Ban."
"I beg your pardon?"
"If you're going to insult me, please use my given name." He slouched in the seat so that his knee pressed against hers. She shifted over and drew her skirts away, which made him grin.
"The sort of man who keeps a girl barely out of the schoolroom as a mistress and uses a coachman who is simple and so cowed he refuses to speak whether in your presence or not.
The sort of man who runs a band of thieves and talks of arranging a murder as if ordering a meal in a White Chapel tavern.
" Once she'd finished her little speech she returned to her pose, lips tightly pursed and hands clutched in the lap of her simple black wool dress.
Ban made her no answer. He'd perfected the art of allowing his emotions to wash through him like water over so many rocks, without taking hold or clinging to his mind.
Rage, hatred, confusion, and even lust failed to stir his soul these days.
Something in her speech, however, set the oddest sensation of pain into his chest. His jaw tightened to the point he heard his teeth ground.
The carriage turned abruptly and rocked to a stop. Ban peered out the window.
"We've arrived," he muttered, his teeth still on edge.
She shifted on the hackney bench and rose to lean across him and open the carriage door. He barred her way with his arm and shoved her back into her seat.
"Daisy is not just out of the schoolroom as she has never in all of her sixteen years been in the schoolroom.
Benny brought her to me five years ago when their father tried to sell her to a cock bawd on Hanbury Street.
They've been hiding at the Den under my protection ever since.
" He threw the door open and stepped out of the carriage.
"I don't fuck children, Isadore, and I don't beat the people who work for me.
" He leaned in close as he handed her down.
"And yes, Benny is simple, but the reason he does not speak is because his father cut out his tongue when he was three years old because the boy had a fever and wouldn't stop crying. "
He drew his knife from his boot and glanced about the neatly kept back garden of the King Street townhouse.
"Are you coming?" he asked as he strode quietly toward the door at the rear of the house.
She hurried to catch up to him by the time he slipped his knife between the door jamb and the simple latch.
"Mister Dyer...Ban." She clutched his arm. "I owe you--"
He glanced at her. In the moonlight her skin had a misty ethereal glow. Her sincerity, however, was all too clear. He shrugged his shoulder against the irritation she constantly afforded him. "Not a fucking thing. Now keep quiet. Stay behind me and do exactly as I say. Understood?"
She nodded wordlessly. The door opened slowly without making a sound.
He stepped inside and sniffed the air. The kitchens smelled only faintly of smoke and the indeterminant scents of months ago cooking.
She found a branch of candles on the stove and pulled a bundle of sulfur-tips from the pocket of her dress.
As they moved out of the baize covered door into the main house the cold and the echo of silence set the hair at the back of his neck tapping against the base of his skull.
He carried that sense of unease throughout their exploration of the obviously empty house.
More than once, he left a room to find her lingering in the light of her branch of candles and running her hands along the bare walls as if in search of something.
There was little to find as the residence was devoid of furnishings.
Not a bed, not a chair, not a desk of any kind.
They searched every room from the attics to the servants' quarters.
Nothing and no one had been in this house for months.
"He's not here, Isadore. Time to go." Ban descended the stairs and made his way to the first-floor landing before he realized she'd stopped in the middle of the wide first-floor corridor behind him.
The light of the candles she held caught the sheen of tears in her eyes.
He opened his mouth to speak. A shadow moved out of the darkness.
"Isadore, move!" he shouted and waved her to the side of the corridor. A gunshot echoed and a searing sting slammed into Ban's shoulder. "Fuck!" He sent his knife flying down the corridor.
"Not her," a rough male voice growled from another open doorway. "Not yet."
Isadore shrieked as the first man, who was dressed like a Limehouse dock worker, staggered toward her, clutching his throat where Ban's knife still sat. The man dropped at her feet. She covered her mouth with her hands and stepped around the body to move closer to Ban.
The second man ducked out of one of the rooms and started toward the back of the house. Ban pulled his pistol from his waistband and took aim.
"Don't!" Isadore cried and tried to reach for his arm. Ban pushed her behind him and shot the fleeing man in the back of the head. The man crashed into the wall at the end of the corridor and slid to the floor.
"You killed him. He was running away, and you killed him." Her expression, half horror and half fear, struck him like a blow to the head.
"And I'd do it again," he replied. "Tell me, Isadore. What are you really looking for in these houses? And why does your bother-in-law want you married and then dead?"