Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Breath knocked out of him, sky spinning, bile rising in his throat, George spat on the ground and tried to ignore the pain radiating from where the man’s fist had collided with his stomach.
“George – no!”
Miss Capria’s scream was distracting and George didn’t need a distraction: he needed to concentrate on the two large men now before him, fists raised, leering grins on their faces.
“We’ll take ‘im together,” one of them muttered, and the other nodded.
“He looks wealthy,” said another one with a leer. “Look at that greatcoat, it’s worth at least – ”
“We can discuss the numbers later,” interrupted the first. “Get him!”
George took a deep breath. It had been a long time since Eton, to be sure, and he wasn’t wearing any gloves: but Lord George Northmere was one of the finest boxing champions the school had ever seen, and he wasn’t about to go down without a fight.
A sharp pain spasmed his back as someone he had neither seen nor heard shoved him from behind.
“No!” Miss Capria had shouted as George’s head whirled. “Lord George – George, we need to – ”
Exactly what Miss Capria thought they should do, George never discovered: her voice ended in a scream as the three men – for there were definitely three of them now – descended on George.
Ducking, he spun round to avoid a punch, and narrowly jumped over a leg pushed out with the intention of tripping him over. A short jab with his own fist and one of the men grunted, doubling up in pain but George felt the ricochet in his shoulder which stung from the lunge of the punch.
Another came around, faster now and more sure, but George accepted the punch to his side to get close enough to smash into his ear, disorientating the man who fell to the ground, one hand to his head.
“Lord George!”
Blood was pulsing through his ears and most of his body hurt, but there was something about this determination to survive, this dedication to living that George loved; it was far more interesting than sitting at home all day, waiting for people to call.
“Lord George!”
Miss Capria was shouting but he couldn’t listen to her, he had two more men to fell; but there were not two men, there were five. But the thought of Miss Capria rocked his mind, and he caught a slight blow to the shoulder.
“George!”
George spun around to stare at Miss Capria, who was white but staring fixedly at him.
“If we do not go now – there are nigh on twenty of them, and more approaching!”
Absorbed as he had been with his own small corner of the fight, George had not noticed the crowd swell as sailors from each side – how the lines were drawn, he had no idea – had joined their comrades’ ranks.
It was no longer a fight. This was a mob.
Time for a decision.
“Come on,” George shouted, taking Miss Capria’s hand which was warm and soft to the touch, wrenching her forward as he began to run.
Heart pounding, boots thudding, the mob screaming: George tried to force the panic back down his throat as it rose.
Where was he going to go? He had no idea where he was, no idea where he was going, and if he did not do something soon, both himself and – and here his stomach lurched – Miss Florence Capria would be in grave danger.
“Where are we going?” Miss Capria’s voice rose above the shouting.
Senses overwhelmed, George made out the thumping of her luggage and grabbed it from her, the thudding of their feet, the pounding of his heart, the bile in his throat, the pain in his chest, and his eyes, the weight of the banging luggage that bruised his legs, trying to pay attention to the buildings they were passing on their right; most were warehouses, as far as he could see, useless as a hiding place – but there, what was that?
A door, a door open with a light, and what seemed to be a chair and a table?
“Here!” George shouted, stumbling through an open door leading into a small, dingy room with one candlestick glowing in the window – but it was enough.
Miss Capria ran behind him, breathless. “What are we doing here?”
“We can hide here. That rival gang will keep them busy, the fight will soon wear itself out and then we can leave again, when it is safe,” George said hurriedly. He slammed the door shut but immediately there was a knocking on the outside.
“Come on, let us in darlin’ – we are far more fun than that dandy you’ve got there!”
George heard Miss Capria moan in terror, and he sprang into action. “We need to barricade ourselves in. What is here, what can we use?”
He turned on the spot, trying to see into the corners of the dark and cobwebbed room, but Miss Capria was faster than he was, desperately searching for something in the room they could use.
“Quick – the door!” She panted, attempting to drag a heavy chest across the room. George started forward and together, they were able to pull and push the wooden chest across the door they had so recently dashed through. Her luggage was dropped on its top.
“Is there a key?”
Miss Capria shook her head. “Not one that I can see, but there is a bolt!”
George pushed it home, and it clunked in a reassuringly safe way. “There. That is the best we can hope for, I think.”
They were both panting with the effort, and George’s top hat was completely missing, having presumably fallen off in the chase. His stomach hurt with every breath, a tearing sensation that made him wonder exactly what a broken rib felt like.
Florence looked over at him, wrapping her arms around herself, shaking in no small part to the cold and to fear.
“What is in that thing?” George panted.
She stared at him. “Cosa?”
“That,” he pointed, indicating her luggage.
She blinked, as though he was asking the most ridiculous question in the world. “That is my luggage. It contains all my worldly possessions; why, signore, without it I would be totally lost! And what do we do now?”
“Do?” George said with a wry smile. His breath was slowly returning, but the adrenaline pumping through his veins would stay with him for longer.
There was a moment of silence: the knocking at the door had ended, and more footsteps were ringing through the street.
“There is nothing we can do, save start a fire,” nodding at the cold grate, “and wait for the fight to finish.”
A smashing noise rang out across the street, and someone whooped and laughed.
“Are we in danger here?” Her voice was quiet, but it was not afraid any more. The fear that been forced out of her, it seemed, and George looked, impressed, at her determined gaze focused on the door.
“Almost certainly,” he said quietly, take a few steps over to the grate and pulling wood and coal onto it from the coal scuttle beside it.
“But we are definitely safer in here than we would have been out there. This old room looks like quarters for a sailor, if you ask me, so close as we are to the docks.”
There was dirt everywhere in this room that they could see now they lit the two other candles in the room, save the mattress which its inhabitant obviously attempted to keep clean. George’s nose wrinkled. This was certainly not the night he had hoped for.
Without turning around, he could tell she had taken a step forward, a step towards him: conscious of her presence so much that he could feel where she was standing.
“And when the fighting stops,” she said quietly, “it will not take us long to get back to where we were, will it? I have been thorough in my search for a ship to take me to Italy, but I will have to start again if I cannot return to that exact spot.”
George did not answer. Pulling his greatcoat off and throwing it onto a chair, he scrabbled in its pockets and found his tinderbox.
“There,” he said, sparking a flame onto the kindling, and seeing with satisfaction it had caught. “We will soon have this place warm, and…well, as comfortable as we can be.”
Florence took another step forward so she was beside him. Her presence was intoxicating, breathing heavily as they both were, and he found it difficult to concentrate as she repeated, “It will not take us long to get back, yes? You can find the place again, can you not?”
Standing up and brushing the dirt off his knees, he smiled at her, trying to ignore the slightly torn skirt revealing a delicate ankle. “Let’s worry about keeping ourselves warm, and safe, shall we?”
“Admit it,” Miss Capria said bitterly, disappointment etched across her face. “We are lost, aren’t we?”
George bit his lip. It seemed rather churlish to admit he had been completely lost when he had stumbled across her – quite literally.
There was nothing to be gained by revealing he had never stepped a foot into the London dockyard before this night, and less than that to reveal he not only had no idea where they were, but had no comprehension of how they were going to find their way back.
“At this moment, all that matters is that we are safe,” he said with more certainty in his tones than he felt.
A scoffing sound came from behind him, and he smiled despite himself, still slightly out of breath from all that running. No one was usually this rude to Lord George.
“And you have to find your Teresa.”
Her words jolted George’s mind back to the initial reason he walked out of his front door in the first place. Teresa: he was here to find her. The intoxicating Miss Florence Capria had completely driven that out of his mind – and who could blame him?
Now he concentrated, he could see the twist of her fingers as she wrapped them around each other, nervously; the curve of her breast as she tried to catch her breath; the softness of the skin across her collarbone . . .
George shifted uncomfortably. This was not the time to get riled up; they were still in danger of the mob that seemed to be growing in size with every passing moment, and Miss Capria was still speaking.
“That is absolutely the last thing I needed,” Miss Capria was saying, as he looked out of the cracked window to see if they were still being pursued. “All I wanted was to find a ship that could take me home – ”
“Why?” Turning to face her, he saw the incredulous look on her face before she spoke.
“Why? Does anyone ever ask you why you go and visit your family? Lo stupido.”
The rush of power and the rush of pleasure that the fight had brought him now meant there was far more adrenaline pumping through his veins than he was used to, or George probably would have not replied in the way he did.
“You may not like it, Miss Capria, but we are stuck here, yes a little lost, until that fight blows itself out. So you may as well get used to it, and start being a little more civil.”
She stared at him, open mouthed. “Well,” she said in a huff, eyebrows raised. “I suppose I shall just make myself at home then!”
The sarcasm was not lost on George. His eyes swept quickly around the room; a large mattress took up one corner, lain on the ground rather than on a bed. There was a table with a ewer and pitcher on, a small chest that probably held clothes, and a chair. There was little else.
But that was not going to deter him from having his fun. He bowed low. “Please do, my lady, and please ring the bell for any assistance you should require.”
“Ha!” Florence – Miss Capria, he must not think of her as Florence – laughed. “I cannot quite make you out, Lord George; one moment you are calm, and sensitive, and the other you are flying off the handle!”
“Maybe I am just matching yourself, Miss Capria,” said George, barely knowing what he was saying, he was so riled up by this woman. “And the little civility you pay me will, I am sure, be returned in kind! I must say, I am not accustomed to being spoken to in this manner.”
A smile curled around her mouth as she sank into the chair upon the greatcoat and gazed up at him. “Really? Well then I am afraid, signore, that you will just have to become accustomed.”