St. Giles Rookery
London, England
May 1816
The cobblestones were cold and damp beneath her bare feet.
Ava ran quickly, barely letting one foot touch the ground before the other took its place. Her breaths came in short, shallow gasps. A cramp burned in her right side and her shoulder ached from where it had been grabbed and twisted, the ripped collar of her dress flapping uselessly against her collarbone. Tears born of pain and fear and frustration ran down her face, making her cheeks glow silver in the moonlight.
After every fourth step she looked behind her, searching the shifting shadows for a glimpse of the men who chased her but the alley was dark and faceless. Nothing stirred in the night.
At least nothing she could see.
She turned right when she reached the end of the narrow alley, then left, then right again, navigating the twisted streets of St. Giles with ease. Anyone who did not live within the four corners of London’s most violent, dangerous rookery would have no doubt been lost within minutes, but Ava knew the alleys like the back of her hand. After all, she’d been born in one of them.
For twenty years she’d lived here. For twenty years she’d managed to go unnoticed. For twenty years she’d managed, against all odds, to survive. And now, on the eve of her twenty-first birthday, she was going to die.
Of all the bloody rotten luck.
From somewhere deep inside the bowels of St. Giles a woman screamed and a baby’s wail echoed. Ava didn’t so much as flinch. She’d grown up listening to the cries of the damned and the bitter sobs of the downtrodden. They were her lullaby, and she didn’t fear them. Truth be told, she didn’t fear much. Except for the men that chased her.
“Stupid,” she muttered to herself as she ran. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” Another furtive glance over her shoulder revealed nothing, but the tingling at the nape of her neck said something was still stalking her and Ava had learned long ago to always trust her gut instinct.
Not doing so was what landed her in this predicament in the first place. She knew she shouldn’t have eavesdropped, but she hadn’t been able to tear her eyes away from the horrific scene unfolding before her. Now she was a witness - the only witness - to a gruesome murder by a peer of the realm; a peer who was willing to do whatever it took to make sure his heinous crime was never discovered.
Collinsworth had already killed one woman tonight. Ava knew he would not hesitate to kill another.
A grimace of pain contorted her pixie-like features as the cramp in her side abruptly sharpened. She couldn’t keep running. Not for much longer. Her body may have been accustomed to sprinting short distances, but it still had its limits, and it appeared she’d finally reached the end of them.
If she could just make it back to—
The pain was sharp and cutting and tore a scream from her throat before she could think to clap a hand over her mouth. Ava stumbled and fell, landing hard on her right side in a foul smelling puddle that instantly soaked her to the skin. Managing to heave herself into a sitting position, she skittered back until she was wedged between two wooden crates piled high with rotten vegetables and lifted her skirts.
Blood was already seeping from between her toes and staining the cobblestone an inky red. Swallowing a second cry she bit down hard on her bottom lip and, grasping her ankle with both hands, wrenched her leg up to stare at the shard of glass protruding from the bottom of her foot in disbelief.
This was going to hurt.
“Ye can do it,” she coaxed herself in a whisper as she tentatively took hold of the glass. “Ye have dealt with worse than this, ye ninny.”
And she had.
If cats had nine lives, then Ava had ten. Through sheer dumb luck she’d managed to survive scrapes that should have killed grown men, let alone a skinny slip of a girl with more tenacity than common sense. Somehow she’d managed to do the impossible in St. Giles: survive without selling her body in the process. Instead she stole what she absolutely needed, and worked like a dog for everything else. If she could do that, then surely she could do this.
Ripping off a ragged strip of skirt, Ava wrapped it around her hand and readjusted her grip on the sharp shard of glass. It was warm to the touch and slippery with blood. Closing her eyes, she counted backwards from three... and yanked with all her might.
The glass slid out of her flesh like a knife being pulled from warm butter. Ava gritted her teeth so hard she bit her tongue, and tasted blood even as she watched it run across the bottom of her foot in a thick stream of crimson. Tearing off another piece of skirt she tied it around the ugly looking cut to stem the bleeding and stood up. She could not afford to sit and wait for one of Collinsworth’s hired thugs to catch up to her. If she wanted to survive, she needed to move, and she needed to move now.
Except when she tried to take a step her leg buckled beneath her and she fell to her knees with a sharp cry pain.
“You look like you could use some help.”
The rough, gravelly voice of a stranger had Ava whirling around and skittering back between the crates of rotten vegetables, dragging her useless foot behind her. In an instant the knife she kept strapped to the inside of her calf was in her hand and pointing straight at the heart of the man who’d emerged like a thief in the night from the shadows.
The darkness of the alley prohibited her from seeing what he looked like beyond a tall, lean silhouette – not that his appearance would have made a difference. If threatened she would stab a handsome man just as easily as she would an ugly one.
“Git away from me before I cut ye up like a slab of beef,” she warned, slicing the knife through the air for emphasis. It was no measly threat. Ava knew how to wield a blade and shoot a pistol with deadly accuracy. Truth be told she preferred gunpowder over steel, but pistols were heavy and cumbersome to carry which was why she’d left hers behind before venturing out for the night.
Yet another stupid mistake made. If she weren’t careful they’d become a habit. One she could ill afford.
“You’re bleeding,” the stranger noted.
“And ye are one second away from having your throat slit ear to ear,” Ava hissed.
He startled her by laughing. Startled her even more when he reached out and, in a move too quick for her to anticipate, plucked the knife from her grasp. “Do not make threats you cannot keep, kitten.”
Like taking candy from a baby, Ava thought, disgusted with him and herself. “Do not call me kitten,” she retorted. Even cornered and disarmed she would never willingly surrender. If the stranger intended to kill her he wouldn’t have an easy time of it, knife or no knife. After all, she was a rookery girl, and rookery girls knew how to hold their own. Even if they were feeling rather light headed from blood loss and dizzy from the excruciating pain of having a shard of glass shoved between their toes.
“Then sheath your claws,” said the stranger. “I am not going to hurt you.”
“What are ye about then?” she asked suspiciously, squinting up at his shadowy countenance and wishing and she could see his eyes. Ava knew from personal experience you could tell a lot from a man by looking him straight in the eye. Men were able to lie with their bodies as well as their tongues, but their eyes always told the truth, whether they wanted to reveal it or not.
“Would you believe me if I said rescuing a damsel in distress?” He sounded amused, as though he didn’t even believe himself. The heel of his boot scraped against the cobblestones, drawing Ava’s eye down.
Expensive leather, she noted, albeit quite dirty. He couldn’t have been a lord, not if he was in this section of London alone at such an hour, which meant one of three things. Either he was a criminal, a wealthy merchant who dabbled in less than honest business practices, or he’d killed the man who owned the boots before him. She scratched her jaw, smearing a trail of mud across her cheek. “What are ye doing out this time of night?”
“I could ask the same of you.”
Ava grunted. She didn’t like people who had answers for everything. Annoying buggers. Still, he hadn’t attempted to rape or murder her yet, which she took as a good sign.
“Help me up,” she demanded, extending one slender wrist. The man took it and pulled her to her feet. When her injured foot made contact with the ground she gasped and fell forward. Thankfully, there was something there to catch her this time. A very firm, very male something.
The stranger’s arms wrapped around her tiny body, securing her tightly against his chest. She pressed the side of her face against his waistcoat, surprised when she felt the rub of silk against her cheek. Wealthy merchant it was, then. A criminal wouldn’t have liked the constriction of such a formal garment and it was too finely tailored to the stranger’s muscular frame to have belonged to anyone else.
Maybe her luck hadn’t run out after all.
Clutching at the lapels of his great coat to hold herself up, Ava tilted her head back, batted her lashes, and purred, “Ye feel so strong. A man like ye could protect a girl like me. Maybe ye should bring me home with ye.” So I can fix my foot proper and rob ye blind, ye bloody fool.
“I liked you better when you were threatening to slice my throat open.” One of his hands skimmed down her back, following the bony protrusion of her spine. The hand slowed as it drew closer to her derrière and abruptly reversed directions, coming to rest lightly on her shoulder. “Flaunting your wares doesn’t become you, especially when you have no intention of making good on the deed.”
Not such a fool after all, then. Ava gritted her teeth and squinted up at the stranger. He was nearly a foot taller than she, no surprise given her diminutive stature. Now that they were close enough to touch she could see his hair was black as coal and clipped unfashionably short. He had a square jaw, cleanly shaven, and a nose that bent slightly to the left, indicating it’d been broken at least once. His eyes were rimmed with thick, dark lashes, and seemed to glow silver in the moonlight. The broken nose hinted at a life roughly lived, but his scent - sandalwood and pine - revealed he bathed regularly, a contradiction not often found within the debauched streets of St. Giles.
“Who are ye?” she wondered aloud. “And what are ye doing here?”
“I could ask the same of you,” he murmured, his voice taking on a distinctly husky edge. Ava flinched when he brought his hand up to her face, but he only used the edge of his sleeve to gently wipe at the dirt on her cheek. “You are quite pretty beneath all the grime and muck,” he said, sounding vaguely surprised. “How old are you? You should not be out here alone at night, you know. It is far too dangerous.”
Ava rolled her eyes. She was accustomed to being mistaken for a child, but she didn’t like being treated like one. “The devil take ye, I’m twenty-one.” At least, I will be if I survive the night.
“The hell you are.” Grasping her shoulders he set her back away from him to study her more closely. Biding her time until she could say ‘I told you so’, Ava held perfectly still while his gaze traveled from the top of her head to her bare toes peeking out beneath the ripped hem of her dress. His gaze started its ascent, paused at her waist, jerked back down to her feet. “You’re bleeding.”
She glanced down as well and saw the cloth she’d used to bind the wound was already soaked through with blood, which probably explained the tiny black dots that were beginning to dance in front of her eyes. The initial agony of the injury had been replaced by a dull, throbbing pain that was slowly working its way up her entire leg. Without proper care it wouldn’t be long before infection set in, and the logical part of her mind knew that amputation wasn’t far off after that.
“I cut my foot on a piece of glass.”
The stranger expelled his breath in an angry hiss. “Why didn’t you say you were seriously injured?”
“Of course I am,” she retorted. “Did ye think I was hiding between two crates of rotten vegetables for my health? I can’t hardly walk, ye bloody fool!”
His mouth formed a grim line. “Let me see it.”
“No.”
“I need to see how deep the cut—”
“No.” Pushing away from him, she staggered back a step, arms wind milling to catch her balance as she hopped on one foot. “I can take care of it myself.”
“Because you’ve been doing such a fine job of it so far.” He crossed his arms. “It is going to get infected, you know. This alley is filthy. What were you doing running around without shoes in the first place?”
“None of your business.”
“Did you steal something?” Eyes narrowing, he took a step forward leaving Ava no choice but to flounder a step back. “Is that it? Is that why you were hiding?”
Forced back between the two crates, she dipped her hand into one and lifted out a putrid tomato. Foul-smelling juice dribbled down her knuckles as she held it up. “I’m no thief.” At least not today. The crime she’d committed had been far, far worse than stealing. Although she had no intention of telling him that. “Go away. I’ve managed to stay alive this long without your help, and I’ll continue to do so after ye are gone. So bugger off!”
Ava wasn’t usually so hostile. She could actually be quite sweet when she put her mind to it. But the events of the past two hours, not to mention the cut on her foot, were not exactly putting her in the sweetest of moods.
“I have a townhouse not far from here. You need a doctor.”
“Don’t tell me what I need.”
“Are you always this stubborn, or only in life and death situations?”
She thought about it. “Always.”
The stranger raked a hand through his dark hair, muttering something she couldn’t quite catch. Her hearing had started to go fuzzy, and shadows were creeping across her line of vision. When her stomach gave a queasy roll she dropped the tomato. It landed on the ground with a wet smack, spraying seeds and pulp over her bare feet.
“On second thought,” she gasped, “perhaps a doctor would be best.”
“I thought so.”
Arrogant man. “Do ye have a carriage near by?”
“Yes, but why—”
“Because I’m about to faint.” And as her eyes rolled up into her head, she did exactly that.
––––––––
Heath caught the girl as she swooned gracefully (more or less) into his arms. Scooping her up with ease, he cradled her against his chest and began walking with purpose towards the hackney he’d hired to wait for him in an abandoned alley two blocks over.
The driver looked up as he approached, his dark gaze sweeping over the woman in Heath’s arms with indifference. “Is that her then?” he asked before he leaned over the edge of his seat and spat a watery brown stream of chewing tobacco on to the ground.
“No,” Heath said without hesitation. “The other chit got away. I lost her in an alley.”
“What are you going to do with this one then?”
“She’s injured.” Careful to protect the girl’s head from hitting the low-slung roof of the hackney, Heath eased inside.
Like most carriages for hire this one smelled unpleasantly of sweat and cheap cologne. The velvet seats had been rubbed threadbare from years of use, and the floor was coated in a thin film of dirt. “I am going to take her back to my townhouse and have a doctor called.”
“A doctor called for the likes of her?” Twisting around in his seat, the driver squinted dubiously through the dingy window. “She’s nothin’ more than a common guttersnipe. They have ‘em a dime a dozen around here.”
“Just go.” Heath’s gaze flicked to the other side of the alley where he knew no less than half a dozen thieves were biding their time in the shadows, trying to decide if he was worth the trouble of robbing.
The driver turned back around and clucked his tongue. “Have it your way, then. Make sure you keep a close eye on her, and don’t come crying to me when she takes all of your silver.”
Since Heath had no intention of seeing the repulsive man after tonight, he doubted that would be a problem. “Go,” he repeated before he leaned forward and snapped the cloth divider closed, sending plumes of dust into the air. The girl stirred, eyelashes fluttering.
Long, black lashes Heath noted as the hackney lurched forward and moonlight spilled inside, illuminating the dim interior in a soft, silvery glow. There was still dirt smeared across one cheek, but he could see that beneath the grime her complexion was rose petals and cream. Her features were surprisingly delicate, almost elfish in design, reminding him not of a fairy queen – she was far too insolent to hold such a title – but rather a puckish sprite, sharp tongued and mischievous. Her hair was dark and straight, although he thought he detected hints of deep red. It was also a mess; infested with snarls and knots no comb would have an easy job of untangling. As for the rest of her...
He adjusted his grip so one hand gently cupped the back of her head while the other rested beneath her bent knees. She stirred again, lips parting, but no sound escaped and with a little sigh she rested her head against his chest and curled into him, far more trusting asleep than she had been awake.
It made Heath feel protective, an emotion he rarely experienced given his line of work. Brow creasing, he gently brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek. She felt so small in his arms. Like a tiny songbird, all soft feathers and hollow bones. She needed to put on at least a stone. Mayhap even a stone and a half. Perhaps then the gauntness would leave her face and he wouldn’t feel as though he were holding fine spun glass instead of a flesh and blood woman. The hand supporting her neck tightened ever so slightly, his thumb dragging down across her soft skin in a gentle caress even as a scowl darkened his face.
Dangerous, he thought as he stared down upon her peaceful countenance. Dangerous that she invoked these feelings of protectiveness inside of him. Dangerous that she made him forget, even if just for a moment, who he was and what he did. Setting his jaw, Heath deliberately pulled his gaze away and pinned it to the opposite wall.
He’d have a doctor called, as he promised, and send her on her way first thing in the morning. These soft emotions swirling inside of him like bright lights bobbing in a sea of black would be forgotten, and he would go on with his life as he had been.
It would be as though tonight never happened.