Chapter 2
The Tod and Vixen was closed tonight.
Thaddeus Beck swore to himself that he’d never ignore brown spots on the ceiling ever again. Life, it seemed, was determined to be an ongoing series of necessary education.
Luckily, the Vixen was no longer his only club. Luckily, this disaster would not strain the delicate balancing act that was managing finances in a world of ownership and business.
Again, it was so much education. And Beck was grateful that he had always been a decent student.
He left a note pinned to the doorway of the Vixen, directing hopeful degenerates to his other venue, and forced himself to trust that they could all still read by the time they tried to gain access.
The Flaming Fox was several blocks away, nestled in an outer corner of St. James Wood. It was smaller, brighter, and more sparsely attended than the Vixen, but the benefit of co-ownership had made it a dependable and easily maintained jewel in Beck’s tenuously forged crown of proprietorship.
Tonight, both of its owners were present to oversee the evening’s ceremonies. It was an unusual thing, and clearly a little unsettling for the gamblers and staff both.
“Y’know, Teddy,” his business partner said, looking up from half a lime that she had been brutalizing with a paring knife. “I’m not sure our patrons like us very much.”
He sighed, turning to face Ember Donnelly and finding her already grinning at his expected annoyance with her observation.
She was over a head shorter than him, freckled from tip to toe, and curly haired.
She was unapologetically Irish, scandalous as a hobby, and went by neither of the names her two husbands had given her.
The second one didn’t even seem to mind.
Beck had spent a decade hating her. Had tried to plot her ultimate eviction from the entire industry of owning hells in London. And yet, here he was, frowning at what she was doing to that lime while feeling begrudgingly charmed by her cheek.
“They don’t have to like us,” he said, as reasonably as he could manage. “They just have to keep coming.”
“Aye, they do,” she agreed, gesturing over to a central table with the green-flecked knife. “That one, though. We might need to boot him. I’ve never seen such a lucky bastard, night after night.”
Beck glanced over in the direction she had indicated, finding a table of four around one of their dealers. Three of the four were glaring at the other, who looked very depressed indeed with his sizable stack of winnings, and winced as he set down yet another winning hand.
“That’s it,” Ember decided. “I’m going to kill him.”
Beck sighed.
And so did the lucky bastard.
“Who is that?” he asked, turning to the side so she couldn’t swing around him to exit the bar and progress with her murder. “I haven’t seen him before.”
“Aster,” she answered, wrinkling her nose. “Some duke’s son with too many brothers to properly matter. No one will mind, Teddy. I’ll do it clean. We ought to before he finds out about the Forge and the Vixen and drives them both out of business too.”
“Do you think he’s cheating?” he pressed, raising his brows. “Doing anything out of turn?”
“Other than winning too much?” she asked, sighing and slapping the knife down with resignation. “No.”
“Well, then,” he said, just as a commotion drew their heads around again.
One of the other men at the table had apparently decided enough was enough as well. He’d kicked his chair over and was leaning over the table, his hand flat on the others’ cards, spittle flying as he jabbed his finger into Aster’s face.
Aster himself had the oddest look on his face as he accepted the tirade. He looked intrigued. Almost hopeful?
“Are you going to punch me?” he asked, blinking at the furious man. “I suppose I ought to stand for that.”
Beck sighed.
“Mr. Reed,” he said, glancing over at the house steward in the corner. “If you would?”
Reed flashed him a smile, always pleased to have something to do, and stepped out of the shadows.
“Him?” Ember asked, clearly skeptical, her eyes traveling over the lean build of Beck’s most valuable asset.
Reed was usually stationed at the Vixen but had come along tonight, as the lady was under the weather until the ceiling leak could be addressed.
Ember’s eyes took in his freckled face and lingered on the pink-gold curls resting on his shoulders before turning back to Beck with a squint. “You’re going to boot that human grain silo out with God’s own cherub?”
“Yes,” said Beck, adjusting his golden cuff link rather than watching this unfold.
By now, Aster had come to his feet and was brushing imagined dust off his glinting silk waistcoat, like he wanted to be properly turned out for the punching. He looked genuinely excited about the prospect, asking his would-be assailant, “Should we do this in here, or step outside?”
“Maybe we just let him throw the punch,” Ember muttered, just as Reed stepped between the two, glowing with what looked like benevolent kindness. “Before your man there blesses him to death.”
Beck allowed himself a smile. More of a smirk, really, if he was being honest with himself, as the afore-deemed human grain silo twisted toward Reed with a glitter of violence in his eyes and lunged.
It took nothing more than a quick side step and two precisely delivered stiff-handed jabs to the kidneys. It was over before it could begin at all, with the angry man twisting and moaning on the floor like someone had just slit open his belly.
“Oh,” said Aster with a frown, glancing between Reed and his opponent. “Pity.”
“How about that?” Ember said, sounding impressed. “But now how will he get him outside?”
“I can do that part, if the occasion requires it,” Beck replied, watching Reed bend down, hands on his knees, and gently whisper a suggestion to the man he’d disabled. “It doesn’t often require it.”
The man stopped moaning in almost immediate order, swallowing down what remained of his pain and gaping up at the smiling, freckled face of death itself. Within moments he had crawled to his hands and knees, grunted back up to his feet, and limped out the front door.
He didn’t even take his winning slips.
“There you go, Miss Donnelly,” Beck said, fully gloating now. “Our losses have been mitigated.”
“Don’t get cheeky, Teddy,” she snapped, smiling despite herself. “It doesn’t become you. Where did you find that one, anyway?”
“In a dark alley,” Beck replied. “Where else?”
The early nature of tonight’s demonstration allowed for the rest of the evening to unfurl without incident. Aster sulked the entire time, continuing to win hand after hand. He put his stack of slips on the bar at the end of the night, sighed heavily, and promised to see them tomorrow.
“What was that?” Ember demanded. “Did he just give us our money back?”
Beck wasn’t certain, but he didn’t like the man’s odds against her paring knife if he came back again as promised.
“Once the Vixen is open again,” he said to her, “I will attempt to redirect him. Luck always runs out eventually.”
“Has anyone told him that?!” she answered, wild-eyed. She continued to rant about it in little bursts of outrage while they closed up shop until her barrister husband arrived to retrieve her.
“Joe, you fool,” she said lovingly. “You ought to be sleeping.”
“Can’t sleep without you,” he replied, dimpling at his wife and offering his arm. “Besides, I like to see the place. Good evening, Mr. Beck.”
“Good evening, Mr. Cresson,” Beck replied, watching him with what he hoped was properly veiled curiosity.
He had never managed to figure out what made Joe Cresson tick. He wasn’t like the gamblers or the tourists. He wasn’t like Ember either, not even a little. He never said enough to get a hold on, but he was unfailingly pleasant and obviously very competent at his trade.
Their legal matters in undertaking the Flaming Fox had been easier than Beck thought functionally possible, and any tiny matter that had arisen since they opened a year ago had quickly been dispatched by a neat stack of paperwork and a tidy word from Mr. Cresson himself.
“Where did she find him?” Reed asked, after they had departed.
“In a dark alley, doubtless,” Beck replied with a shrug, making the other man grin.
They emerged into the dark, locking the doors and shuttering the windows as Reed flagged down a linkboy standing nearby, one of the children who haunted corners at these ungodly hours, offering a torch and a knowledge of the streets to anyone traveling on foot in the night.
Beck and Reed had both been linkboys, once upon a time. Perhaps it would have been more honest to say that they’d met in a sparsely lit alley, only dark when they themselves were not in it.
They did not need their way lit, of course. Not after a lifetime of prowling these streets. But it was a professional courtesy that went unspoken between both of them that they would always hire out the task, and pay double for the privilege.
“Should you be using the apartments right now?” Reed asked of the rooms above the Vixen. “I thought the whole area around the sag had to be kept clear.”
“It does,” Beck answered with a wince. “But luckily it was only the guest room and part of the sitting area. My bedroom’s dry. I don’t even understand how a leak could come at a place sideways like that.”
“Seeped in through the rain gutter, I’d imagine,” Reed speculated, stretching his arms over his head and indulging in a long yawn. “You can sleep at mine, if you need.”
Beck frowned, cutting his eyes to his friend. “I don’t even know where yours is.”
Reed chuckled, a dark, dry little thing. “And you never will,” he replied. “Even if you end up staying there for a while.”
They did not say anything else for the remainder of the journey, only nodding at one another in place of a farewell when the path came up alongside the Vixen. Reed vanished into the dark with the little torch bobbing behind him, off in unknown direction toward his mysterious nest.
Beck entered the Vixen at the rear, near his offices, and attended them first, before going upstairs to seek rest. He did not need vision to find his tinderbox or the lantern that was always situated in the same spot. He had learned to find light in the darkness very young, after all.
As the room sparked and glowed into relief, his eyes fell on the spectacles that sat upside-down on the edge of his desk, and he gave a little frown. Of course, squinting into the dark during one’s formative years had its costs, as well.
He wondered if Reed ever struggled to see things properly.
Somehow, he doubted it.
He found his seat and flipped his ledger open, turning to the back half, which was devoted to the Flaming Fox, and entered in the number he and Ember had agreed upon at the end of the night.
They had not included the returned slips from Mr. Aster, but only because if he kept coming back, eventually he might ask for them.
It had given them cause to debate a hard rule for how long unclaimed slips may be held in escrow, which meant they could not reclaim the ones from the man Mr. Reed had disabled earlier in the evening either, until such a time had passed.
Such were the costs of legitimate business.
He reached for a small stack of letters in his wooden tray, the ones that had come this morning with the mail and were addressed to him personally, rather than to the club.
He flipped through them, grimacing at the one from Lord Penrose, which was without question an invitation to this year’s gambling festivities at Blackcove.
He made a mental note to send his apologies.
There was a thin one from his sister, Victoria, posted from Reading.
Likely it was one of her brief and dutiful accountings of what was happening in her life.
They had started when he’d sent her off to school some years ago, and he had wondered if they would continue once she’d taken up her place as a governess outside of London.
He frowned. He suspected other little sisters sent much thicker letters, full of exuberant detail and whimsy.
Not Vix. Not his Victoria.
She was too much like him, he supposed.
It was the third letter that gave him pause. There was no return address. His name was not written in familiar script. And the weight of the paper made it feel like something from a niche of Society with far more expenditure for stationery than Beck thought prudent.
He was careful with the letter opener, wiggling off the seal like part of him would feel terribly guilty about damaging such fine parchment. The paper within was even finer. It smelled sweet, in fact, like it had been brushed with flower petals before it had been sealed away for delivery.
His bafflement truly was growing by the second.
Mr. Beck,
You may not remember me. I often suspect you do not, for your impact on my life was doubtless far more profound than mine on yours. In any event, I have been lost in recollection of the event very often of late, and could not resist my growing urge to reach out to you.
I confess, I have a pretense. One I carefully crafted before beginning to write this letter. One I intended to uphold. I shall tell you what it is, but only because I spent so much time imagining it into existence and because it is a charitable one, should you choose to entertain it.
Some days ago, near my home in Clerkenwell, a tenement building collapsed under damage from this year’s unseasonably heavy rainfall. I have learned in the days following that much damage has been done by what we all thought was a blessing of nature. Isn’t that horrid?
In any event, I am working with my community to assist with aid for those who were injured or became ill in the face of displacement following the incident.
We have erected a temporary clinic near St. Giles, but it is poorly outfitted and must needs be moved somewhere more permanent soon if we are to continue.
So you see, I was going to write under the pretense of asking for a donation. Isn’t that clever? It is perfectly respectable and utterly without subtext or scandal.
But that isn’t the truth, Mr. Beck.
The truth is that I must see you again. I must speak to you, even if it is only in the passing of an afternoon. If I do not, I fear I will spend the whole of what remains of my life thinking about that evening in Blackcove and wondering if I could have been better.
I await your response, should you choose to send one. If you do not, please know that you have touched a life in a way that will hold dear for the remainder of its days.
With all my regard,
Hannah Lazarus