Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Penny’s blood was still pumping hard through his entire body as he and Greer made their way carefully through Whitechapel.
He couldn’t put distance between himself and the police activity around The Oyster and The Huntsman fast enough.
As curious as part of him was to know who had initiated the raid and which of the numerous figures from London’s underground world of crime and vice the police were after, it was more important for him to look ahead instead of behind.
“Why do you want me to come away to Cornwall with you to begin with?” he asked Greer in a low voice as they cut through a less crowded side street on their way to Mrs. Hunt’s boarding house.
All of Whitechapel seemed to have been roused by the commotion caused by the police. Even several streets away from the heart of the matter, people hung out the windows of the buildings Penny and Greer walked past, and neighbors gathered on the street, eager for gossip about what had transpired.
“Oy! Penny! What are the coppers doing down there at any rate?” a wily old thief who Penny considered a friend, except when they were stabbing each other in the back, called out.
“No idea, Bertie!” Penny called back, putting on a confident smile. “Someone must have offended Scotland Yard.”
“We’ve all bloody offended Scotland Yard,” Bertie laughed, “and that lot deserves it.”
Penny laughed and waved at him, like it was the middle of a fine summer day and the Metropolitan Police were miles away.
The tension that seemed to hang over the buildings and their inhabitants was anything but casual, though. Everyone knew there was as good a chance as any the police could come knocking on their door next. And they would likely find something.
“Is everything well, Penny?” Doris, one of the more popular whores in the area, asked as she leaned out an upstairs window in nothing but her chemise, her ample breasts spilling out for anyone to view.
“As well as can be, Dori,” Penny called back to her. “But I’d have a care about who you entertain for the next few days.”
Doris sighed loudly. “Don’t they know that some of us need to work to survive?”
Penny laughed at her teasing complaint, but the truth was that she was right. The rest of the world might not have approved of the way folk in their part of East London made their living, but everyone had a living to make.
“You seem to be friends with everyone,” Greer commented as they turned the corner onto the street where Mrs. Hunt’s boarding house stood.
“That’s me,” Penny said, sending a wry grin over his shoulder to Greer, who took a few steps to catch up to him. “I’m everyone’s friend and no one’s responsibility.”
He didn’t mean to sound resentful for having to take care of himself and Helen without help, but the bitterness he tried to keep swallowed most of the time welled up.
To distract from it, he glanced at Greer and said, “You didn’t answer my question.”
“What question?” Greer asked, the tension around his eyes and mouth telling Penny he knew full well.
Penny smirked. “Why me? Why do your friends want me to go to Cornwall with you? Everyone knows you work alone.”
Greer grunted, but he didn’t answer.
There was something about the man’s sullen look, combined with the way he was still flushed from their mad flight over the roofs of Whitechapel, and everything that had happened afterward, in the cabinet, that left Penny grinning.
Greer might have been older than him, but sometimes he looked like a pouty boy who hadn’t gotten his way.
After too long a silence, Greer said, “It is the nature of the commission I’ve been given.”
Penny’s brow flew up. “So, you’ve started taking commissions beyond the scope of your normal tricks?” he asked. “These friends of yours must be powerful indeed.”
“They have influence.” Greer didn’t sound happy about it.
They’d reached the door to Mrs. Hunt’s boarding house.
Despite the late hour, the lamps were lit in the front parlor, and Penny spotted movement from the other side of the thin curtain that partially blocked the window.
He wasn’t ready to go inside and answer questions yet, so he stopped just short of the door and turned to Greer.
“Everyone knows you work alone,” he said, puzzling over the mystery Greer had presented to him aloud, “and yet, these powerful friends of yours insisted you recruit me. For a job in Cornwall.”
“Yes,” Greer said.
Penny shook his head. “I don’t like it. Who are these friends and how do they know me?”
Greer frowned. “They’re…influential figures. Owners of a particular…club.”
Nothing about Greer’s explanation reassured him. Not when he was less than half an hour past nearly being nabbed by the coppers and dragged off to who knew what prison and for how long.
“I can’t do it,” he said, planting his hands on his hips and shaking his head. “You’ll have to go back to your friends and tell them I said no.”
Greer growled and rubbed a hand over his face, like he was exhausted and tired of Penny’s stubbornness. “Please.” He spit out the word as if he didn’t like the taste of it.
“You don’t want me, so why should I say yes?” Penny asked.
Heat filled Greer’s expression. “Oh, I do want you,” he said.
Penny laughed and swayed closer to him, resting a hand on Greer’s chest. “I know you do, love. That cabinet will live in my dreams for a long time.”
He slipped a hand down to the front of Greer’s trousers, which were still just a bit damp. Greer must have been horrifically uncomfortable, but he was still there, pursuing Penny for the Cornwall job.
Greer grabbed Penny’s wrist and pulled his hand up and away from where it could have caused more trouble.
“I need your help,” he said in a flat voice, shoulders bunched with tension.
“My friends want your help. Your help specifically. They seem to think you and I are the only ones who can succeed at this mission.”
“What do they need us to liberate from Trebarral Castle, or whatever it’s called?” Penny asked, fixing his stare on Greer and silently demanding he reveal all.
Greer let out a breath, shoulders dropping. “It’s a person,” he said. “They want us to rescue a young man who is being held captive by…by slave traffickers.”
Penny’s gut clenched. He wasn’t na?ve enough not to know what Greer was talking about.
As bad as things were in the gutters and slums of London, he knew they were infinitely worse for young people who were singled out by the wrong sort.
He knew because he’d come within a hair’s breadth of being nabbed by a gang who’d had that intention for him.
He’d been just fourteen, and a handsome, older gentleman had lured him into a closed alley with the promise of feeding Penny’s newly awakened curiosity about himself, his cock, and other men.
Two other men had been waiting in the darkness.
They’d grabbed him and carried him off to a house halfway across London.
After testing the merchandise, as they’d called it, they’d made the mistake of leaving him alone.
Penny hadn’t hesitated. He’d used the skills he’d learned on the street to pick the lock on the window and to climb down to the mews and safety.
If he hadn’t been so bound and determined to make his way back to Helen, he might not have fought so hard or thought so quickly to save himself.
“I cannot leave London,” he said once again, but with a much heavier heart.
He pushed a shaking hand through his hair, trying to rub away those old, horrific memories.
Whoever Greer’s friends were, he would wager his last farthing they knew of his past brush with slavery.
They likely knew of his escape as well. They knew, and they were working through Greer to trap him into doing their bidding.
Greer knew nothing of Penny’s suspicions. “Why are you being so stubborn, man?” he huffed, crossing his arms. “It’s only Cornwall.”
Penny pursed his lips and stared at Greer.
He liked the man. More than he should have.
He’d been craving something like what had happened between them in the cabinet for ages.
And damn him and his soft heart, he wasn’t sure he liked the way men with more power than either of them were manipulating Greer into doing something that was probably more dangerous than Greer knew.
He’d brought Greer to Mrs. Hunt’s for a reason, though, and whatever hope he’d had that he could avoid tipping his hand was clearly a vain hope now.
“Come inside,” he said with a sigh, then turned, shaking his head, to step up to Mrs. Hunt’s front door.
Inside the boarding house, Mrs. Hunt and several of her boarders were already gossiping about the night’s events.
“I see that you escaped the noose,” she called out to Penny as he and Greer passed the entrance to her parlor.
“I will always escape the noose, Mrs. Hunt,” Penny told her with a smile he didn’t feel. “You know that.” He winked at her, despite not particularly liking her, then continued on to the stairs without stopping to join the company.
“You had better not be transacting business under my roof,” Mrs. Hunt called after him when she saw Greer.
Penny picked up his pace instead of replying. He didn’t owe anyone an explanation for his behavior, particularly not Mrs. Hunt.
“Charming landlady,” Greer drawled as they reached the door to Penny’s rooms. “I can see why you wish to stay in Cornwall.”
He was joking, but as Penny grasped the doorhandle and opened the door, a sense of seriousness swirled in his gut. He held a finger to his lips, then gestured for Greer to enter the room with him.
A lamp burned low on the table beside the bed where Helen slumbered.
Helen didn’t like the dark, and she often awoke in the night, particularly when Penny wasn’t there.
Mrs. Hunt had complained about her disturbing the house with her crying a few times too many, so Penny made certain they always had enough oil to keep the lamp lit through the night now.