Chapter Twenty-One
Hugh knew they were approaching the Brickbats by the first jaw-rattling dip in the cobbled streets. The hackney coach rocked
wildly as the quality of the road crumbled beneath the wheels like a piece of stale bread.
Beside him, Viola gripped the door to steady herself, the pale expanse of her arm freed from its cloak, inviting him to remember
the silken feel of that skin beneath his fingertips.
As if he’d been able to think of any other bloody thing.
His hand tightened into a fist in his lap, trying to dispel it, but the sensation of her refused to be driven out, twining
with memory and smoldering desire.
He never should have allowed her to come tonight. Glenmoor’s warehouse had been largely empty of men, and he’d had no trouble
slipping into the office. The distraction she and Reddy—damn him—had provided had given him more time, yes, but it had drawn the worst sort of attention to her.
It had been a wild, animal terror he’d felt when he’d discovered them gone and the ship cleared of all but a single man to
keep watch. The intensity of it had been stunning, as if his own life were being ripped from him.
And Hugh was not a man accustomed or inclined to being stunned.
That strangling sensation hadn’t eased, not even a hair, until he clapped eyes on her face in the pub, aglow with candlelight
and the satisfaction of felling a man twice her size. She’d been blissfully unaware of the wandering eyes of the nearby men,
the way those gazes had devoured her.
A primitive flare of possessiveness, as unwelcome as it was unseemly, had seen him come close to leaping up from the table
to circle it like a rabid hound, biting and snapping at the men who had dared to inch closer.
God—protectiveness, not possessiveness. He fought the urge to bang his head against the side of the hack, hoping to knock some sense back into himself. He was more exhausted than he’d believed, clearly.
Viola Lockwood was his responsibility, and a rather frustratingly willful one at that. That was the beginning and end of it.
Any other claim would be met with hostility from her corner.
And it would be inappropriate. Antithetical to everything his uncle had taught him. He’d already given in to the temptation
of drinking tonight; he couldn’t risk another slip of Uncle Giles’s code.
For God’s sake, he wasn’t a boy anymore; there was no reason to feel so bloody nervous around her.
Hugh passed a rueful hand over his face, his body shuddering as the carriage rattled over the deteriorating road. He stared
out the window, only to find he could see her lovely profile reflected in the glass.
Look at me. The silent plea passed through him. Look at me.
He needed . . . His jaw clenched. What he needed was something cold to douse himself with, to scrub the last hour from his memory.
There’d been something so carefree about the evening despite its thousands of risks—there’d been a lightness to her, a parting
of the hatred that had clouded her heart. Her throaty little laughs and easy smile for him—they had made it all too easy to
imagine her stretched languidly beneath him, those same lips kiss-swollen, her eyes fixed only on him as he moved above her.
Hugh subtly shifted himself to ease the discomfort of his breeches, clearing his throat.
This had to end—whatever this was, which, exasperating and infuriating in turn, refused to be defined.
He’d find the nectar, she’d finish the damned perfume, and there would be no more distractions. No more small hands covering
his, no more cracks in his resolve that let the past and old pain bleed out, no more curls claiming freedom from the hideous
mobcap she’d been clever enough to don.
No more.
So, then, why was he barely resisting the temptation to let his leg drift right, to press against hers, if only to see if
he could bring back that dark look in her eyes? The want—it had been, hadn’t it? He hadn’t imagined it. That expression had set his body ablaze with the possibility.
Look at me.
But Viola’s face was fixed determinedly ahead, silently absorbing the scowling faces of lodgings and shops lining the outer, worn edge of the rookery.
She’d been uneasy when they’d arrived at the wharves, and it had needled him to not know why.
She’d grown up in Riverside, yes, and her father had died there, but what about the interceding years had brought about the gray cast to her face?
Her unease had returned now that they’d arrived at Crescent Street, but this was a different shade of it. She’d been afraid
at the dockyards, but if the way she shifted was any indication, she was merely nervous now.
Crescent was a quiet avenue, and quieter still at this late hour. It hid an assortment of devilry and mischief behind the
backs of the buildings that served as an entrance to the rookery, where the heart of the Brickbats throbbed and bled out with
crime.
The carriage came to a stop outside a wisteria-draped boardinghouse. Number eighteen. It suited her, he thought. A little
touch of loveliness at the edge of survival.
“If you’re willing to wait, I’ll double your fee,” Hugh told the coachman as he climbed down. Turning back, he offered a hand
to Viola. She hesitated, her fingers lightly curling around his in a touch that he felt like a shot to the heart.
“And how long do you expect your business to take?” the coachman asked derisively, giving Hugh a dubious once-over. “Three, maybe four minutes?”
Hugh’s voice was so dry it could have been smoked in a pipe. “A man can only dream of five.”
The coachman had spent much of the drive lecturing them on the best way to make quick coins (investing in brothels, sheep,
foreign mines, and forged death certificates, in that order) and now had the audacity to look sanctimonious and disapproving,
the prig.
Hugh had been poised for Viola to unleash her claws for the crude assumption, but he wasn’t sure she’d heard the exchange
at all.
Her attention was on two distant figures standing on the opposite street corner. The gray cast had returned to her face. Hugh
stilled, his mind spinning out a hundred possible options, if it was Glenmoor’s police watching her residence or simply more
Sloggers looking for easy prey.
The figures hurried toward them. A moment later, Hugh recognized their gaits and the hard clench of his heart relaxed. They
were dressed in simple dark clothing, their greatcoats hiding the pistols and blades Hugh knew to be strapped to their person.
He placed a reassuring hand at Viola’s back before he could think to stop himself, guiding her toward the dark stoop of her
boardinghouse. Her body was rigid beneath his touch, priming itself, he knew, to fight or flee the approaching trouble.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” Hugh said, stepping into the lantern light to sign the words. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Thought that was you and Miss Lockwood,” came Willie’s voice, “though I couldn’t begin to imagine what you’d be doing here,
and at this hour.”
“I could ask the same of you,” Viola answered. The tightness between her shoulders eased. She craned her head up to look at
Hugh, no doubt with a silent question in her eyes. He couldn’t meet her gaze, not just then.
“Any trouble?” Hugh murmured, signing the question.
“Quiet night,” Tommy said.
“Thought we might have caught ourselves a bit of mischief a few streets back,” Willie said, “but it was only some poor sod
having his blunt lifted by a doxy and some terrified, whey-faced policeman intervening. No snatchers, though.”
Viola took a step back at that. Hugh barely resisted a sigh.
“Oh!” Willie straightened. “We did hear something interesting from an old friend. Said the last snatch was over a year ago,
but that most of the children vanishing now are turning up at one of Glenmoor’s new orphanages. As you can imagine, the rest
have gone to ground.”
Now it was Hugh’s turn to be taken aback. Glenmoor had raised the funds for the two recently completed orphanages, but he
had nothing to do with them other than claiming credit for them. “Why would they hide from a decent bed and food?”
“Because the children have learned they can only trust and rely on one another,” Viola said. “They’ve grown up in a world
where adults only hurt and neglect them.”
Hugh felt unbelievably foolish. “I see.”
“An orphanage isn’t always a better end,” Willie concurred. “Some of the old ones are more workhouses than anything. We steered
well clear of them ourselves.”
“Were you raised in the Brickbats?” Viola asked, surprised. Of course she’d caught the implication.
Willie and Tommy exchanged an incredibly unsubtle look.
“Yes,” Tommy said carefully. “We lived here for a time.”
The boys had done what he’d asked, so Hugh took pity and rescued them. “The hour’s late, you should make for home.”
“You’ll get no argument from us,” Willie said around a yawn. “Evening to you, Miss Lockwood.”
Viola murmured something to them Hugh didn’t quite catch as he ascended the stairs to the door. He took stock of the boardinghouse’s
simple iron lock with growing despair. Judging by its tortured shape, a hammer had been taken to it more than a few times.
His breath caught. For years, this had been her only protection against the city’s festering hell pit.
An embarrassing singe of heat traveled up his neck at the feeling of Viola’s approach. He struggled not to squirm beneath
the force of that attention. He felt . . . unknotted by it.
“We’ll have to wake Mrs. Piedmont,” she said. “Try not to look her in the eye if you don’t want your soul turned to a sheet
of ice.”
She reached for the door knocker with a deep, steadying breath, but Hugh nudged her out of the way, kneeling. “That won’t
be necessary.”
“Ah,” she said, amused. It was at his expense, but it was a relief to hear after the fear he’d felt in her only a few moments
before. “I’d forgotten I was accompanied by an accomplished locksmith this evening. Go on then, Mr. Anders.”
He glared at the lock, that feeling of heat intensifying, rising to lick at the tips of his ears. He’d hardly need to do much