He was instantly awake, his face pale but alert as he thrust his feet into the oversized shoes that were undoubtedly stolen.
“He will come here,” I told Elizabeth with new urgency. “We have to go!”
“Who is coming here?”
There was no more time for questions as I pulled her by the arm from the chair. Kip ran ahead to the door, and like the sneak thief he’d become, he stopped and listened with an ear to the door. He shook his head that told me no one was there yet.
I opened the door and we stepped out into the hallway.
“I don’t understand...” Elizabeth whispered.
There was no time to explain. And then another sound from the stairwell with an icy gust of wind, followed by footsteps on the stairs.
“Who lives in the end flat at this floor?” I whispered.
“That would be Mr. Porter and his wife.”
“Go there now,” I told her. “Explain that there is someone dangerous in the building.” I turned to Kip.
“Yer to go with her.”
He shook his head. “I go with ye.”
For a second, perhaps even less, I glimpsed a memory from when I had stood in that cold hallway at the Foundling Hospital with a friend who had shared the darkness of that place.
I couldn’t persuade her to go with me.
“I’m goin’ with ye,” Kip said, pulling me from that memory. “Mr. Munro said as how I needed to protect ye.”
Protect me. A young boy.
“We’ll protect each other,” I told him.
There was no more time as Elizabeth reached that end flat and urgently knocked at the door. It opened.
Whatever she told Mr. Porter, she stepped inside, but not without an attempt to get Kip to come as well.
It was too late, and the door closed behind her. I glanced down into Kip’s anxious face. Stubborn, grubby little thief.
I had hoped that both he and Elizabeth could hide from Elias, and I would draw him away with the hope of finding a constable nearby. That part of my hastily made plan had now changed.
I had no weapon and softly cursed. The knife I carried was still in my bag in Elizabeth’s flat.
“Dinna worrit, miss. I got this. I’ll split the wanker’s head open this time.”
A short, thick, wood club was clenched in his fist.
“I dinna make the same mistake as at the market.”
Incredibly brave if foolish, all three stone of him.
There was another possibility that I had seen in some of the buildings in London, including the building for the Times Newspaper. It if was there and we could escape, I would be able to find a constable.
Another sound made the decision for me. I grabbed Kip by the other hand, and we went up the stairs to the next floor, and then the top floor.
There was a door at the end of that hallway. I gathered my skirt and we ran toward it, then out onto the roof of the tenement.
The rain was blinding, the roof dark with shadow.
