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Jack’s hand enclosed Filly’s. His gruff sweetheart scrambled her wits.
Jack Portman, calling her sweetheart. No. A happy little dream that enlivened bleak days and nights. He likely called every woman sweetheart. Angel. Darling.
She dare not let it affect her.
Filly dug her short heels into the grimy carpet of the coze. “Jack. Jack, stop,” she hissed in desperation. “If Mr. Boggs has guards in the pub, won’t he have them outside all of the doors?”
His hand dropped away from the hall door.
“We shouldn’t let them think we’re working together, should we? That is—I had hoped you would return with Daphne and me, to keep Mr. Boggs honest.”
“That crawling shite worm doesn’t have a stiff whisker to brush against any honesty.”
“Which is the reason you need to return with us. To do that, we mustn’t be associated now. We should leave separately, through the front door. And the guards will report to Mr. Boggs,” she would have preferred to use Jack’s more colorful description of the man, “that I was completely alone.”
He turned to her, a bulk blacker against the pub door, which she only saw by the weak street lights flooding through the half-covered windows. She wished to see his lean face, steady gaze and square jaw, the epitome of English manhood that had survived all those years in the foul trenches.
“I don’t want you going through the pub by yourself. They know you’ve spent close on a half-hour with Boggs. They’ll think—hell, they will think you were making a down payment on your debt.”
What an oblique way to say that Boggs took payment in flesh as well as cash. “I know what he is, Jack. Daphne warned me.”
“She shouldn’t have sent you to deal with him.”
“Who else could she send?”
“I hear she’s newly engaged. Some wealthy nob.”
“Yes, Ronald Wynstaneley, a man enthralled by her and the very reason that I had to come. Ronald means everything to her. She dared not involve him. Quite frankly, her friends would see this as an opportunity to ruin her happiness. She deserves a better life, Jack. I won’t let Boggs and those jealous witches ruin it.”
“You won’t?”
She tilted her chin although the darkness blinded him to the movement. “No, I won’t.”
“I still don’t like you going through the pub alone. Or into the streets. How did you come here?”
“Taxi.”
“Is he waiting for you?”
“No, for I didn’t know how long this meeting with Mr. Boggs should be.”
“You’ll not find a taxi waiting nearby, either.”
“Oh. Is it far to the tube?”
“You’re staying with me.”
“Jack, I don’t think—.”
“I’ll get you where you need to be. I have an auto.”
“That’s wonderful, but—. We still have to leave the pub. You need not worry someone will grab me. I have a hatpin. Several inches with a sharp, pointy end.”
“I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t use that on me.”
She sniffed. “You identified yourself in time, Jack. I’ll go out, and—.”
“Turn left. Go to the corner. Peek into your purse, like you’re looking for something. A hanky or that watch you checked before,” he added, proving that he had indeed watched her in the pub before Mr. Boggs came out to greet her. “Maybe not that. Might attract the wrong eyes. Just the hanky. That will give me time to get onto the pavement. Then go another block before you take the next left. It’s lit. I’ll catch you there.”
She waited, but he said nothing more. “Shall we go then?”
“Filly—.”
“Yes?” She yearned toward him.
He didn’t answer, just opened the hall door. His hand, warm on her lower back, propelled her into the hall.
In the last half-hour, more bodies had piled into the pub. The mixed smells of beer and smoke, liver and fried onions, a sausage cooked with cabbage, and sweat steaming off long-worn wool assaulted her. Filly couldn’t see the entry, but she remembered its direction and began working around the workers standing at the bar, eager for their pints.
The barmaid stopped her. “There y’are. Ya never paid fer them two poynts.”
“My goodness, I forgot. How much?”
The amount seemed trifling. As she found the coins in her purse, a body brushed past her. She glanced up. Those broad shoulders and the black hair gleaming in the yellow light could only be Jack. The shadow on his jaw was whiskers grown since morning.
He tugged a hat over his head, and she remembered it on the table in the coze, shoved to one side. His hands clasped before him had caught most of her attention. The street lights had painted them a strange yellow, black where the window’s lettering created shadows. She recalled long, slim fingers. Bony wrists shot past the cuffs of his tweed jacket, as if he’d lost three stone since last she’d seen him. The weight that addicts lost to the nervy powder. Daphne said she only used coke when she needed to lose weight.
Did Jack use it?
The barmaid counted the coins going into her hand. She sniffed at the extra coin Filly added then dropped the coins into her pocket before slewing away to serve other customers.
Filly replaced her coin pouch then ensured the envelope with Mr. Boggs’ money stayed in the depths of her purse. She headed for the entry, but she still saw Jack’s hands. He had sounded grave and certain, careful in speech, solid in manner. Not at all like Daphne and her friends, jittery with false energy.
Left, Jack said. Obedient to his order, she walked away from the pub’s crowded corner doorsteps. Which of the burly men there belonged to Mr. Boggs? The air cooled her cheeks. The day had become night while she’d been inside the pub.
A man stood at the corner. The pool of lamplight revealed he had stopped to light a cigarette. Tall, broad-shouldered, a Homburg angled on his head. Jack.
Before Filly was half-along the block, he straightened and began walking down the side street.
She reached the corner, paused as she considered getting her handkerchief, but there was no longer any reason to stop.
Jack ambled ahead of her—although his long legs turned a slow stroll into a determined walk for her.
He hesitated at the next corner. He looked along the street, never back at her, then crossed, a man with no cares for the evening.
Filly wished to mimic that nonchalance, but the footsteps coming behind worried her.
Jack stopped to look at a lighted shop display. He bent closer to the glass. She neared. What was—oh, a haberdashery.
He strolled to the shop’s other display.
Ever aware of the following footsteps, Filly reached Jack, passed him, and continued to the corner. She half-turned ...
And heard a curse. “Watch it, yer.”
“My apologies. I did not see you behind me.”
Their voices faded, the rough one and Jack’s smoother tones. She heard no more footsteps.
Filly slowed her pace when she crossed to the next block.
Jack came around the corner. No one came behind him. She stopped.
His hat was no longer angled. The street lights gleamed on his teethy grin.
“Was that one of Mr. Boggs’ men?”
“Yes. Come on.” He caught her hand. “No ambling now.”
She had to hurry to match his stride. The low heels of her plain pumps were a God-send. Warehouses rose ahead. “How far do we have to walk?”
“My room’s this way. The garage is near there.”
“Jack, we’ll need—Daphne is on the town tonight.” They would have to track her to two or three parties. Filly could only guess how little time they actually had before they had to return to Boggs at midnight. She could exchange her cloche for a fascinator, switch to higher heels, and shove everything into a beaded purse. Jack, though, would need full evening attire, not his rough tweed jacket with its leather collar patches at the elbows.
“Having fun while you do her dirty work.”
“Don’t say it like that. I volunteered. She doesn’t want Ronald to know anything is wrong.”
“What’s in this packet?”
“Mistakes.”
“I guessed that,” he growled, “or Boggs wouldn’t have a leg to run his blackmail game. What kind of mistakes?”
“Not here. Jack, someone is following us again.”
His stride never faltered, but he took her elbow. They turned at the next corner. At the second shop, he propelled her into the recessed doorway. He crowded against her.
Filly grabbed his shoulders. His body was solid and warm under her gloved hands. He blocked her view of the street.
The steps came closer. They slowed, as if the person looked for them.
“My apologies in advance. Trust me, Filly.” Then Jack dropped his head to her, as if pretending two lovers kissed.
The footsteps drew closer.
Jack filled Filly’s consciousness. Then his cool lips pressed to hers. This is pretense, she reminded herself. Then he groaned. His mouth opened over hers. She felt a hot gust of breath, then his tongue swept into her mouth. And he kissed her with a desperate passion that lit a raw fire inside her.
She’d dreamed about Jack Portman kissing her. She wanted to capture the moment, but the moment was lost to her, lost in sensation, in his thrusting tongue, in his heat and taste, in the hardness of his body pressing her against the shop door.
A throat cleared. “Now, none of that, sir. You and the young lady need to move along.”
Jack lifted his head. Filly hid in his jacket. “Good evening, constable.” He stepped back, even though her hands clung to him. She saw him straighten his tie. “All’s right with the world.”
“You didn’t have too much at the pub, did you, sir?”
“Only a pint. Constable Bleeker, isn’t it?”
“That it is. I know you, don’t I?”
“Portman,” Jack said while Filly sagged against the door. “My room is a block over. This is my young lady, Constable. Phyllida Malvaise.”
“Miss Malvaise.” The constable touched his custodian helmet. “How is your evening?”
“We’re going to dinner, Constable Bleeker,” There, the lie proved that she listened to the entire conversation. “Mr. Portman needs to change.”
“Does he now? And you’re going to his room?”
“I suppose I must wait on the landing. I trust he will not take as long as I will to change for dinner.”
The constable gave them both another measuring glance, then he again touched his helmet. “You have a good evening, Miss Malvaise, Mr. Portman.”
“Thank you, constable.”
Filly bit back her giggles until the officer was well along the street ahead of them. “Jack, he has doubts as to my virtue.”
“Bleeker’s a good man.”
“I thought it was one of Boggs’ men again.”
“As did I.” He turned her at the corner, and they walked beside row houses before they gave way to a square ugly building. He unlocked the door beneath a tall window then let her precede him.
A steep stair confronted Filly, and the tall window admitted street light. After a glance at Jack, she began the climb, one flight, then two. She stopped at the third landing, for she could not venture higher and three doors confronted her. Jack crowded past and unlocked the door across from the stairs.
He let it swing into the room. “No landing for you, Filly.”
She followed him into a narrow bedsit. A chair nestled before a tiny unlit fire. Beside it was a three-shelf bookcase formed of planks and cinder blocks. Alongside a kitchenette were a table and a chair jammed beneath a window that opened to the fire escape. To her left was an unmade bed, a wardrobe with a sagging door, and another door.
She claimed the chair before the fire. The springs were gone. The upholstery was worn.
“Where will Daphne be?” He poured something from a liquor bottle into a cup which he placed on the little table beside the chair.
“At a party.”
“It’s Wednesday.”
She rolled her eyes, picked up the cup, and pretended to sip it. Gin, if her nose was correct.
“Which party?”
“One of three.”
“Dammit, Filly.” He opened the wardrobe and took out the clothes he needed, choosing satin-striped pants from the bottom of a stack, finding a bibbed shirt and collar and a few more items before he disappeared behind the door.
It heartened her to see he still had a tuxedo. He would, though, for he still attended her cousins’ parties.
She heard splashing then banging about. Filly linked her hands over her knees and prepared to wait.
The door opened. Jack stood in his undershirt and tuxedo pants, working up lather in a bowl. “We’re private now. Tell me what’s in this packet.”
How unfairly persistent of him! “I don’t think I should.”
“I’m balls deep in this, Filly. You need to tell me everything you know. Start with this packet. Why can Boggs blackmail Daphne with the packet?”
She twisted in the chair and pretended surprise. “Blackmail?”
“He’s extorting money from her, from you both.” He lathered his face without looking then stepped to the basin in the washroom. She heard him strop a straight razor. “The packet obviously has something she wants to keep hidden.”
“Yet here you are, Jack, asking about the contents.”
“Photos?” He scrapped away whiskers, cleaned the blade on a towel, scrapped again, falling into a rhythm while she watched him shave his cheeks, around his mouth, his chin and along his jaw. He stared into the mirror, only looking at her when he cleaned the blade. “Is it photos? What they call art photos? From several years ago, I’d guess.”
He had guessed the most damning and guessed correctly. “Photos and a few letters.”
“So Daphne was indiscreet.” He wiped the blade then ran his hand over his face, feeling for whiskers.
“The photos are from the first of the war, when she came to London. She ran short of money. Everyone does.” Filly remembered her own first months in London, the money short and the respectable jobs in short supply. Demobbed soldiers had flooded the streets, seeking employment. She lost her secretarial work. By luck she’d found a position where no man could replace her, as mannequin at a couturier’s. She thanked the fates that Cecelia Tarrant had let a room to her at a reduced rate. Cecilia hadn’t needed the money once she married Gawen.
Water gushed from the faucet. He cleaned his face then the blade, rinsed the cup, and wiped both with the towel before re-folding it and wiping his face dry. The sink drained.
“Jack, why do you call them art photos?”
“They’re nudes. Every soldier’s dream, sorted through in the trenches to remind him of home.” He stepped out of sight. She heard more bumping around.
Filly abandoned the chair and ventured to the washroom to defend her friend. “I don’t know if they are nudes. I just thought they were revealing. Daphne did call them art photos.” She caught a flash of movement in the mirror. “We’ve shared a flat for two years and more. Daphne’s not fast, Jack, not like so many others. She’s not. She made a couple of mistakes that never would have surfaced if that Boggs monster hadn’t decided to profit from them after her engagement to Ronald was announced.”
“I will agree Boggs is a monster.” He stepped in view from behind the door. He now wore a white shirt front and a scrap of white cloth over his shoulder. “Most percenters are, but I doubt he stumbled across her photos and letters and held them until he found a use at a later point.” He tucked the shirt tail into his pants and buttoned them while Filly watched the mysteries of men’s clothing. He grabbed the tie from his shoulder and placed it around his neck. He lifted his chin and stared in the mirror, but his fingers fumbled with the knot. “I hate these things.”
He’d worn a knotted scarf earlier. “Let me.” She crowded into the little washroom and replaced his hands. “I used to do this for Father, after he let his man go.”
“Your parents economizing?”
“After the war. Their funds rebounded before I came to London. Chin up,” she ordered. His scent surrounded her, manly and crisp with the verist hint of bay, not at all like her father’s heavy sandalwood. She had to concentrate so her hands didn’t shake. It wouldn’t do to volunteer then ruin his tie.
Their kiss remained a powerful memory.
“I’d like to know how Boggs acquired those photos and letters. I suppose the letters are just indiscreet, not salacious?”
“There.” Filly tugged the starched ends then patted his chest before she stepped against the basin.
He didn’t check her work in the mirror. He leaned forward, bracing a hand on the porcelain basin behind her. “Does your friend know how Boggs acquired them?”
Filly breathed more rapidly. Dear Lord, I sound like Grandmother’s pug. “If she does, Daphne didn’t share that with me. Do you think someone sold them to Monster Boggs?”
“Maybe someone who was in debt to Boggs and saw a way to wiggle out of debt.”
“But that means someone held onto the photos and letters for years. Well, the photos. The letters are recent. Wait. I think I see, Jack. Maybe the photographer was in debt. She did say she used a man she knew for her engagement photo. Maybe he dug the old photos out and approached Monster Boggs.”
“And the letters? You said they were recent.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t even know why Daphne would even put that on paper. She knows better.”
“Why are you helping her?”
“She’s my friend. She asked for help.”
He glared at her. “And you committed before you knew the whole story?”
“I know. I’m a fool.”
“Not a fool.” He tweaked her chin. “Trying to be a good friend. Would you have helped if you’d known the whole of it, indiscreet letters and art photos?”
“Yes. I want her to be happy, Jack. She says Ronald makes her happy. He indulges her. She had so little when she was growing up.”
His thumb smoothed the creases between her brows. Then he straightened and propelled her out of the tiny washroom. “Her happiness is not something you can control. All we can control is finding Daphne and returning to Boggs before his deadline.” He shook out the tuxedo jacket then held it out to her. “Want to be a valet again?”
“I know you’re right.” She slid the fitted jacket onto his shoulders then smoothed the cloth. “But what if Monster Boggs has another packet to threaten Daphne?”
Jack turned and loomed over her. “How many mistakes has she made, Filly? You shouldn’t have tried to help tonight.”
“If I hadn’t,” she said with inescapable logic, “we wouldn’t have re-met.”