Sir Mark van Bergen wore his frock coat and tall hat. He was too clean, too well dressed. He shone of money down to his shoes and had attracted the attention of every cut-purse from here to Covent Garden. He was going to get robbed, stabbed, or worse—even killed!
Mark paced the pavements, crossing from doorstep to doorstep, calling,“Eliza! Eliza!”
The tart coughed out a laugh, “For a sixpence, I’ll be his Liza!”
With her heart in her throat, Eliza watched as Mark started down a darkened passage, out of sight of the street. The space between two buildings was scarcely wide enough for a man to walk abreast. It was a notorious den for the very worst crimes, for once a bloke got in, he wasn’t coming back out again.
She had to warn him!
Pushing the women away, she fussed with the window latch, but it was painted shut. She jammed her face against the grimy glass, crying through a hole in the pane,“Mark!”
Yet her words were drowned out by the whistles and shouts on Little White Lion Street below and from the rooftops, pigeon lofts, and gangways above. There was a toff in Seven Dials, and he was ripe for picking.
Eliza abandoned the relative safety of the dosshouse. She descended the twisting stairs in a fleet-footed flurry, holding her skirt hems over her calves, careless of her spotless lisle stockings and sturdy leather boots. She had to run, to race the thugs and thieves that were already cornering him without Mark even realizing it. He was being hemmed in, and soon he would be held up.
He’d be robbed and killed for the crime of being rich.
The vicinity of Seven Dials was a rabbit warren of streets, alleys, cuts, and yards, each more forbidding than the last. Eliza pumped her legs faster than ever before, grateful for weeks of hearty meals and restful sleep as she’d healed under Mark’s care. She was in good condition—fighting fit—which gave her an advantage over the starved, sickly, exhausted masses.
She prayed that she was faster than the lads who trailed him.
Christ almighty, let her reach Mark before they did!
Eliza slipped into a narrow passage. She felt her way along the bricks to a shortcut that she’d known since her girlhood when she and Mother had lived a stone’s throw from here. It put her one step ahead of Mark’s assailants, and she slid into the shadows at the exact moment the man she loved reached a dead end.
He uttered a curse when he realized that he was trapped. Two burly thugs closed in on him, and Eliza saw the glint of a knife blade winking in the scant light.
“Give up the watch, guvnor,” one of them said.
“And ‘at coat and ‘em boots.” A second man gestured with the point of his knife. “Might as well ‘ave off wi’ the lot, guv.”
They ordered him to strip, yet Mark stood his ground.
Foolish, foolish man!Eliza watched in terrified silence as her friend and lover—the man who could’ve been her husband—lifted his fists in defiance. He was a brave man, but he knew the odds. He was going to lose, be exposed, and be humiliated, and then he was going to face a painful death in this dirty, reeking gutter.
Eliza loved him too much to let him suffer. Valiantly, she emerged from the shadows that had been her hiding place. She’d unbuttoned her blouse and removed the hidden wallet filled with fifteen hundred pounds of stolen banknotes. Her precious fivers, tenners, and twenties, issued from the Bank of England, lay in her right hand.
Her left hand found Mark’s and held him fast.
“Eliza,” he said, stunned. “What are you doing? Get away from here!”
“You shouldn’t have come, Mark. You should’ve let me go when you had the chance.”
The thugs studied her. They grinned in the gloomy confines of the passageway, but she knew that they were too burly to follow her through the shortcut.
“Oi, Kitten!” sneered the bloke with the knife. “Oughtta listen to yer geezer.”
It was too late now.
Eliza opened her palm to reveal her ill-gotten riches. She chucked the fifteen hundred pounds at the thieves, watching as the money fluttered and fell to the damp cobblestones at their feet. The men were distracted. They were greedy and began to grope after the filthy, sodden banknotes.
This diversion allowed Eliza and Mark to get away.
She led him to the shortcut, sliding single-file, shoulder brushing shoulder alongside the brick-faced shop fronts. The rough wall rasped her face and hands. Her skirt hems grew wet and heavy, and her stockings began to sag, yet she pushed on.
Mark struggled behind her, but he was a fine, physical specimen of a man, and he wedged his way through the passage until they reached Little White Lion Street. They ran for the safety of Seven Dials, that lively junction where the various streets converged.
“Where is your carriage?” she asked him.
