“I ran into a wall.”
“Why?”
Camille picked up the shot of amber liquid before setting it back on the bar without drinking. “I was running. It was slippery. Hence, wall.”
Scarlet leaned forward on her elbows, her look hard, and waited.
Camille sighed, knowing this wasn’t a battle she’d win. “Hawkins and his friends wanted an extra session away from the Pony.”
Scarlet grabbed the whiskey, threw it back in one shot, and set it on the bar with a loudclank. “Shit.”
Enough said.
Scarlet knew about the unwanted attentions of men. Before her father had returned from America, she’d worked at the Prodding Pony, wherefantasies came alive...at the drop of a coin.
It was where Camille had found her in the alley out back—that same awful night months ago when her own life had shattered—her lip and dress torn and silent understanding passing between them of what had happened. After half-carrying, half-dragging Scarlet to a free, but secret, clinic run by the Underground, Camille had marched back to the Pony and informed the Madam she was a shitty excuse of a woman and that if she was going to let her ‘girls’ be assaulted not two feet from her door for free, then she was an even sadder excuse of a businesswoman.
Expecting the silk-wrapped woman to have her thrown out of her ‘establishment,’ Camille, without two pence to rub together, had been dumbstruck when the older woman had apologized to her, by name—infamous as the first of the scandal sheets had circulated in the rookeries’ deadly playhouses before being sent to entertain theton—and offered her a job on the spot.
Luckily, Scarlet had found her own employment at the tavern less than a week later. The patrons still got handsy when deep in their cups, but the shotgun behind the bar remained enough incentive to keep the petting to a minimum.
“Those bastards.” Scarlet’s fists white-knuckled around the glass. She didn’t bother asking the outcome of Camille’s night. A lone woman against three assailants were impossible odds and all too commonplace in this part of the city.
There was also no pity, not between two sisters-in-arms.
They both knew what had happened, or would have, if a certain golden-haired gentleman hadn’t intervened. Determined not to think of the duke, Camille focused on her friend, who was cursing Hawkins and his cohort in colorful detail.
“Careful, Scar,” she said, “your accent is showing.”
Scarlet nodded to the room. “There’s no use pretending for empty stools.” She shook her head. “Leave the Pony, Cam. You can work here. Manny is certainly smitten and would hire you, no questions asked. Flutter your lashes at him and he’d be on one knee in seconds.”
If only wishful thinking paid. She’d never pay off their debt working for sixpence at the tavern. And marrying a tavern owner, no matter how kind the man was, would never happen. She had plans for the money when the collectors’ greedy appetites no longer dragged them to her door, plans too important to worry over things as trivial as comfort and safety.
“I can’t,” she said.
“If it’s about the money, I can ask Pops—”
“No.” Camille didn’t doubt Scarlet’s Pops, the leader of Dockside’s ‘Merry Men,’ had a stash of blunt big enough to pay off her debts and those of every other sorry case in the rookeries, but those funds were what kept the underground clinic and the shelter for injured officers running and out of the grasping hands of the elite, who’d describe the additional attention and funds as ‘unnecessary.’
Her cause was as important, and urgent, but she wouldn’t rob the baker to pay the grocer.
“I’ll make do,” she said.
Scarlet sighed. “I knew you’d say that. At least let one of the Merry walk you back and forth to the Pony until someone informs Lucien his prize dog is up to his old tricks.”
Camille rolled her eyes. “Because Hawkins won’t take being fired personally.”
“He knew the rules,” Scarlet said. “Maybe Lu will do us all a favor and put him down.”
“Wishful thinking again.”
“What?”
Camille waved her off. Having one of the Merry follow her around would secure her comings and goings, but they’d also scare off business at the Pony, something Madam Clarice would take more than personally. The men may have been skilled and nimbler than the feral cats patrolling the waterways for the ever-infested rats, but they were also big, loud, and carried the air of death around them like winter-worn cloaks.
All except one.
“Any chance Pops will let me borrow Syd for a few days?” Camille asked.
