“At the House of La Rue, in Porter Lane, and thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Nightingale.”
The words were waved away, and then Eliza pulled on her outer clothing, wrapped her scarf tight around her neck, and left.
“Miss Downing!”
She looked toward the park in the middle of the close and saw several hands raised. It was freezing out, but the men were playing bowls.
Waving back, she shook her head. This street, she thought.
It would be good to put some space between herself andMungo. The man was too much of everything for her, and he’d kissed her—twice, which told her he felt the attraction between them even though, like her, he was fighting it.
What did that mean for them?
Worry about that another day, Eliza.She purchased some nougat from a sweet shop and looked in windows as she passed, as she had nowhere she had to be at a specific time. It was liberating.
She’d lived so many years on someone else’s time clock. Today was for her.
She clutched her coat tighter around her shoulders and turned toward Porter Lane. The fog swirled low again, as it had that night Mungo had saved her. It wasn’t as thick, she could still see, but it was there, winding around her legs like a silent cloud.
A prickle crept up her spine. Was someone behind her?
Eliza stopped. Slowly she turned and saw a man. She smiled, and he responded in kind. One of his hands then reached out to grab her.
“What do you want?” She tried to shake free, but his grip was punishing.
“Make a scene, and I’ll shoot someone. Do you want to be the cause of a stranger’s death, Miss Downing?”
Her stomach turned to ice at his use of her name and the pistol she saw as he opened his coat.
“How do you know my name?”
“We know all about you and what you’ve done.” He kept his eyes on her, while Eliza tried to find someone, anyone, who would help her. “You’ve made a powerful man very unhappy.”
“No! I haven’t done anything.” She tried again to get free.
“You’ll regret it if you make a scene.” He spoke the words calmly, conversationally, and his smile never slipped.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Now be a good girl, or someone will die because of you.”
There were people close by. She could hear their footsteps and the sounds of conversations going on around her. If she screamed, if she ran, if she fought… the gun would go off. Someone would fall. Someone who’d done nothing more than walk down the wrong street on the wrong day.
“That’s her.” A second man had arrived. Bigger. Older. His face looked harder, with deep lines, harsh angles, and a mouth that never smiled. His eyes slid over her in a way that made Eliza’s skin crawl.
“Aye,” the man holding her said. “And I want her after.”
The bigger man grunted. “He don’t care whose she is afterward. He just likes collecting the pretty ones for his parties. Then you can have her. But we have history with this one. Don’t we, Eliza?”
She studied his face, but it was the eyes that she recognized.
“That’s right. Your father caused us a lot of trouble once, but we dealt with him. You were a brave little thing, demanding justice outside our headquarters, until Jessie sent me out to talk to you.”
“You killed my family,” Eliza whispered.
He nodded. “Along with a few others.” Then addressed his friend. “It was her father who put some of us behind bars, and he was the reason we had to change our name from Black Harridan’s Boys to Baddon Boys.”
The other man looked from his friend and back to Eliza. “She’s Downing’s daughter?”
