The Ripper Affair

The youth looked up. With his curls tumbled and high colour in his shaven cheeks, his true age was a little more visible. Yes, he was rather a shade too old for mollying to gentlemen, and a swift pang passed through her. Mikal must be out of sorts, to embarrass the lad so.

He climbed swiftly to his feet, scooping up the knife and slipping it back into its hiding-place behind his left hip. “One condition.”

After that display, I suppose you might be allowed to ask, even if I do not grant. “Which is?”

He pointed at Mikal. “He’s a fair boxer. He teaches me that. I’ll not shirk, I’ll not talk, and I’ll keep your mentath safe as a babe in cradle.”

She found herself smiling, and Finch’s relief visibly mounted. Of course, she supposed he had to have been very sure of the boy to bring him, and who knew what their true relationship was? “Cousin” was as good a word as any, and it mattered little, if the youth was dependable.

“I think that is quite possible, and even acceptable, though Mikal is a much harsher taskmaster than myself. As long as his tutelage does not distract from your other duties, you shall do very nicely, Philip. While Finch arranges for your effects to be brought, we shall settle you in a room and you shall see your charge immediately.” Clare will not like this. But I cannot watch him day and night, and this young enigma will at least keep him occupied while I seek to discern what nastiness is afoot.

“Yesmum.” Pico bent to retrieve his hat, as well, and darted a venomous look past her, at Mikal. Who would, of course, be entirely unaffected.

The little molly seemed to completely discount her as a threat.

Which was very much how Emma preferred it at the moment. She nodded once again, more to herself than to any man present. “Very well.”

Chapter Nineteen Like A Weathervane

Archibald Clare woke from a sound, sorcery-induced sleep and sat straight up in the bed’s familiar embrace. “Who the devil are you?”

The young man in the high-backed chair cocked his head. “Shh. Listen.”

What now? He opened his mouth to take this stranger to task, before he noted that the youth’s shirt and waistcoat were tailored with familiar, tiny stitches–Catherine’s work, beyond a doubt–and the way his hair was plastered down bespoke a good scrubbing. Whoever he was, he had the blessing of the mistress of the house, and had been given attention so his clothing did not offend her sensibilities. His boots were well brushed and sturdy, but their age shouted quite plainly that they were his own, instead of Miss Bannon’s largesse.

“Tideturn,” the young man breathed, and the vowels placed him as one of Londinium’s native sons, born within a few yards of Lincoln Inn unless Clare missed his guess. Or perhaps he had merely been a child in such a place, for Clare’s sensitive nose caught traces of… pomade? And ash, and old blood.

What on earth can this be? “Does she think…?” Words failed him.

The youth gave him a scorching, contemptuous look–and the entire house, from cellar Clare had never seen to whatever attic Miss Bannon saw fit to keep under its trim roof, shook like the coat of a dog shedding itself of water.

Clare did not halt to consider the fascinating conundrum of the lad at his bedside. Instead, he scrambled from the covers, hopping as he found he was barefoot on cold wooden flooring, and hurled himself for the door.

It was not locked, which was a mercy, for he would have bruised himself on its heavy wooden carapace had it been. He scrambled up the corridor, booted steps behind him too heavy to be Valentinelli’s, the stairs at the end of the hall heaved, creaking and crackling. Screams came from the depths–the servants, of course–and there was a single hissing curse as he slipped.

The youth’s fingers clamped around his upper arm like a vice, and he was hauled to his feet as the house shook again. Up the stairs, the other familiar hall shuddering as its very walls warped.

What is she doing?

Her dressing-room door ran with foxfire light, leprous green, and for a moment Clare was caught in a net of memory: Emma Bannon dying of the Red Plague and his own monstrous, helpless uselessness in the face of that event. But then it had only been the lights dimming and the sobbing of the maids—

A blow, and he was spinning. His elbow hit the hall floor, but he was on his feet again and striking with a bladed hand, just as Ludo had taught him, strike for throat, mentale, if a man no breathe, he no trouble you—