The Angel of Highgate (25 page)

“That’s a damned lie!”

Greenley’s voice rumbled like an earthquake. “I’m afraid your denials are wasted on me. Clara has made a full confession.”

“And what does Aurelia say?”

Greenley seemed to blow up with rage, coming half out of his chair. “That is none of your damned business! For her part in this sordid affair, I fully intended to sack Clara and throw her out on the street. However, my daughter has begged me to show mercy. I grudgingly acceded to her wishes, but only after she swore a solemn oath never to see you or have congress with you again. Is that not so, Aurelia?”

Thraxton looked at Aurelia, who looked straight ahead and acknowledged only with the slightest nod of her head.

“This is monstrous! Sir, if you truly love your daughter—”

“I do love my daughter!” Greenley interrupted. “And that is why I must protect her from men such as you—blackguards and seducers who prey on the naïveté of young women.”

Thraxton could sit still no longer and sprang to his feet.

“I do not believe for one second that Aurelia feels this way.”

Greenley rose from his chair. “Then perhaps you will believe it from her own lips. Aurelia, what do you have to say?”

All eyes fixed on Aurelia, who never looked up as she answered in a small voice, “I… I wish never to see you again…”

Thraxton unleashed a look of utter hatred at Greenley. “Those are your words, not hers.”

“Believe what you will. This gentleman is Silas Garrette, a medical doctor. He has examined my daughter and finds that she is no longer a virgin.”

Thraxton’s mouth filled with a metallic bitterness.

“Have you had carnal knowledge of my daughter, sir?”

Thraxton’s knees trembled. It angered him having to lie, but he had to think of Aurelia. He took a breath, tried to quell the rising surge of dread in his chest and turned his gaze back to Robert Greenley. “What is it you wish, sir? I will do anything—”

“I wish never to see your despicable face again. If I do, I will pursue this matter further—in the courts. I will bring legal action against you so that you may never see my daughter again. Given the evidence I can mount of your bribery of my domestic and your infamy as a seducer and womanizer, I have no doubt that any judge in England would take my word over yours—Lord or no Lord.”

Thraxton felt all hope slipping away. Anger would not serve him. He had to be diplomatic. “Perhaps… perhaps there were some… minor… improprieties in the way I pursued my courtship of your daughter. But my intentions toward Aurelia have never been anything but honorable.”

“Honorable? You?” Greenley snorted. “Get out! Get out before I beat you like the filthy cur you are!”

For a moment violence seemed imminent. Thraxton stood, jaw tensing as he wrestled with his emotions, but then his shoulders slumped. He cast a final despairing look at Aurelia, who never once raised her eyes to meet his, and then turned on his heel. He paused at the threshold of the door and looked back. “Believe me when I say this. Neither you, nor the courts, nor the law, nor God, nor Death itself will prevent me from being with Aurelia if that is what she wishes.”

Thraxton stepped outside and the front door slammed behind him with a thunderous crash that threatened to collapse the entire row of houses.

A fine mist of rain was falling as he stepped into the street. Hansom cabs passed in either direction. Pairs of horses clopped by pulling ponderously laden omnibuses. He looked at his waiting brougham.

But Thraxton had nowhere to go.

* * *

Mordecai Fowler and his two cohorts stepped from the alley to find a black carriage waiting at the curbside. The side glass had been let down and now a hand extended from the open window clutching a white top hat, which it rocked from side to side as a signal.

“Wait here, you two.”

“What is it?” Crynge asked.

“Business,” Fowler answered, then trooped over to the carriage and clambered in. He settled himself on the leather seat and nodded at the tall man sitting opposite.

“Doctor Garrette.”

“Mordecai,” Silas Garrette said, nodding in response.

“Job for me?”

“Yeeeesssssss.”

“The usual? Another knocked-up dolly-mop?”

Garrette shook his head, light flashing from the rose-colored pince-nez. “Not this time. There is a girl I want taken.”

“A girl someone would be lookin’ for if she went missin’?”

“Oh, I very much think so.”

Fowler lifted the bowler hat from his greasy mop of hair and resettled it. “Risky. Nobody cares if a whore goes missin’—the Grips dredge ’em out the river every other day. But a girl from a good family gets snatched, people notice. The Grips notice.”

“I will pay double the usual rate.”

Fowler ruminated, sensing there was a lot more he wasn’t being told. “How do we get hold of this girl?”

“She steals out of the house at night to meet her lover.”

Fowler grinned. “A toff, I’ll wager.”

Garrette nodded.

Fowler’s filthy fingernails scratched his stubbly chin with a
rasp-rasp
sound.

“Five times the usual.”

Garrette didn’t need to think about it. “Done.”

“What do you have in mind for her?”

The man behind the rose-colored lenses flashed a guillotine smile. “Something special. Something quite extraordinary.”

C
lara was dusting on the third floor. From further up the hallway came the sound of sobbing. She stopped dusting and listened, twisting the feather duster in her hands with agitation. Finally, she could stand it no more. She set the duster down and knocked on Aurelia’s door. The only reply was more sobbing. She hesitated for a moment, then opened the door and slipped inside.

A single candle provided the only meager light in the tightly curtained room. Aurelia lay prostrate upon her bed, weeping. Clara watched for a moment, shifting uneasily.

“Here now, Miss Aurelia. You shouldn’t still be crying. It’s been two weeks!”

But Aurelia’s sobbing continued. Clara wrung her hands as she listened to the pitiful wailing.

“Please don’t take on so. It tears me apart to hear you. I suppose you must hate me for what I done. But I didn’t have no choice, honest I didn’t. You know what a temper your father has.”

Aurelia looked up at her maid, eyes puffy and swollen, tears running down both cheeks. “I must speak to him, Clara.”

“You best never speak to Lord Thraxton again, Miss Aurelia. Especially after what Mister Greenley said. You’ll get us all in trouble. Your father could take him to court. Ruin him.”

Aurelia threw her face into the pillow. “You do not understand. I must speak to Geoffrey. I must let him know!”

Clara’s eyes widened in sudden realization. “Here… you ain’t… is ya?”

Aurelia lifted her head and shot Clara a look that whispered more than words could.

Clara put her hands to her face. “Oh my Gawd! Oh my Gawd! What is to become of us? What is to become of us all?”

Aurelia pulled herself into a sitting position, wiping away tears with the back of her hands. “If Geoffrey only knew. He could speak with my father, make him see reason. Otherwise… otherwise… I am ruined! But, I don’t even know where he lives.”

Aurelia wailed and threw herself back on the bed flailing at the sheets in her despair. After several moments of silence Clara lifted her head and spoke. “I… I knows.”

Aurelia pulled her head up from the pillows and pushed a wild strand of auburn hair from her eyes. “What?”

“Your gentleman. Lord Thraxton. I knows where he lives.”

“But… how?”

“The first day he come here he give Mister Greenley his calling card. Your father got angry and threw it on the floor. I picked it up. I shoulda chucked it out, but I kept it. I dunno why.”

* * *

Half an hour later Aurelia stood by the front door, dressed in her black lace dress and deep cowl, her face screened by a black lace veil. A nervous and agitated Clara hovered around her.

“You won’t tell Mister Greenley it was me what give you the card, Miss Aurelia, will ya? I don’t know what I’d do if your father gave me the sack. I got no family to live with. I’d wind up on the street.”

Aurelia took hold of Clara’s hands and squeezed. “I won’t, Clara. No matter what, I shall protect you.”

The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed quarter to the hour.

“Oh, Gawd,” Clara said. “It’s nearly seven o’clock. Mister Greenley will be home any minute.”

Aurelia snatched the front door open, stepped out, looked both ways up the street, then scurried down the steps.

“You be careful, dear!” Clara called after her, and quickly closed the door.

Sitting on the curbstone across the street was a small boy, barefoot despite the cold. A crudely fashioned broom of sorts lay across his thin legs, the kind used by crossing sweepers who earned a tossed coin by sweeping the streets clear of horse manure and filth so that the better class of people might cross without soiling their clothes. The young boy was Titch, a tiny, undernourished street urchin Mordecai Fowler had placed there as lookout. He had swept the crossings for a full two weeks. Now at the sight of a lady in a black lace dress, Titch tossed away the broom, sprang to his feet and ran up the street, bare feet slapping the cobblestones, until he reached the narrow alleyway that wound a tortuous path to the Seven Dials Rookery.

It was already dark; coach lanterns gleamed on the carriages and wagons that trundled by. Aurelia hurried along to the corner of the street. She needed to catch an omnibus that could take her to Piccadilly Circus, from where she would have to walk to Thraxton’s house. Just as she turned the corner, Aurelia saw the lumbering omnibus approaching. She raised her hand and the driver saw her and steered toward the curb. But as it drew up, Mister Greenley was sitting on the lower deck of the very same omnibus. They saw each other through the glass at the same instant. Greenley realized who it was and leaped to his feet, shouting and pushing as he fought to get off.

Aurelia turned and ran away. When she darted a look back, Greenley was stepping down and shouted after her. But Aurelia, terrified of her father, ran blindly on, with nothing more on her mind than flight. She should have realized that she was running directly toward the Seven Dials, an area where even she, with all her skills, would not be safe after dark.

“Aurelia!” her father yelled. “Stop! Stop at once!”

She hitched up her lace dress higher, but he was still gaining. She spotted a narrow alley up ahead and darted into it. The alleyway was treacherous with missing cobbles and deep potholes filled with icy water. She threaded a path around the hazards as the alley steeply descended past shuttered, glassless windows and derelict tenements. As she rounded a blind bend she collided with a short, stout, but well-padded figure.

Mordecai Fowler.

He clamped a hand around her thin wrist and with the other hand ripped off her bonnet and veil. “Hallo, hallo! I knows you. You’re the little moxie what nearly got my wrist broke!”

The High Mobsman was not alone. Walter Crynge and the hulking Barnabus Snudge stood close behind.

Pounding footfalls echoed in the alleyway, and a moment later Robert Greenley rounded the bend. He slid to a halt when he saw that his daughter had been seized by ruffians. “Unhand my daughter, you filthy swine!”

“Swine am I? A swine?” Fowler’s lips curled back from his higgledy teeth. “I fink you need a lesson in manners, mister!”

Greenley sprang forward and dropped into a bare-knuckle fighter’s stance, fists up and ready, weight balanced on the balls of his feet.

Fowler roughly shoved Aurelia at Crynge. “Hold her,” he muttered. He reached into his coats and drew out his favorite weapon, Mister Pierce, then lunged at Greenley, swinging wildly with the spike. Greenley dodged to one side and slammed a deadening punch to the shoulder that knocked the spike from Fowler’s hand. He followed with a wicked uppercut that snapped the mobsman’s head back and sat him down hard on the cobblestones. The force of the punch made him bite down hard on his tongue and now he spat out a mouthful of blood.

Greenley windmilled his fists, threatening. “Release my daughter or I’ll give you louts the beating of a lifetime.”

But then Barnabus Snudge stepped from the doorway wielding his cosh and slammed it across the back of Greenley’s head with a sickening
thwack
. Greenley sagged to the ground and lay there, moaning.

Fowler sprang to his feet, took a running start and kicked the prostrate Greenley in the kidney. “Give us that here,” he said, snatching the cosh from Snudge, then proceeded to rain blows down upon Greenley’s head and shoulders.

“Noooooooooo!” Aurelia screamed. “Stop! You will kill him!”

Fowler continued his flailing assault, dealing Greenley blow after blow until his arm was too tired to swing. He tossed the cosh back to Snudge, then retrieved Mister Pierce and his hat. As he settled the bowler back atop his unkempt mop of black hair, Fowler leered at Aurelia, taking in the wide violet eyes and the beautiful face. “Come along, my little dolly-mop. We’ll have a bit o’ fun you and me. Your old dad won’t know you when we’ve done wiv ya!”