Page 94 of The Business of Blood
“Just neversellyour virginity, and you should remain safe.” He shrugged as though figuring out how to safely deflower me was the problem of the day. “Besides, it’s meant to be given away.”
Isn’t it considered a sin to giveorsell your virginity unless you’re married in the eyes of society?”
“Oh, please, there is no sin except for stupidity. And it’s idiotic to let anyone in society truly know what sort of sex you’re having.” He tapped some ash to the ground. “Or not having, in your case.” The end of his cigarette mesmerized me as it glowed upon his inhale. “What else did the Ripper say to you? Did he threaten you? I’m worried about you, darling. Perhaps youshouldcome to Paris.”
“He didn’t threaten me.” He’d killed for me. “He told me I was safe. That I need not fear him.”
“Do you believe him?” Oscar murmured down at me.
I shook my head, more out of confusion than denial. “He mentioned my father. Said he’d have the answers I seek were he not already a dead m—”
“Your fahhhther.” An offensively salacious purr escaped with some smoke into the night mist. “Talk abouta tragedy. How you remain a virgin when you surround yourself with such beautiful men is beyond the scope of my understanding.”
“I beg your pardon?” I gasped. “You’ve never met my father!”
“I have, too,” he argued. “He calls ‘round all the time. You and Nola had tea in the garden with him not a fortnight ago. Tall, lean, and golden enough to tempt a saint. I’d defrock him faster than—”
I surged to my feet, all weariness emptying from my veins replaced by cold, absolute panic.
Father.
All this time, I’d thought the Ripper had meant the word in the paternal sense. It had never occurred to me he’d been referring to the ecumenical interpretation.
MyFather. Despite my endless protestations, everyone seemed to hand ownership of one particular father to me.
Father Aidan Fitzpatrick.
“I have to go.” I dashed up the steps.
“Fiona. It’s the middle of the night.”
I paused in my back doorway, seized with indecision. What if the Ripper was even now visiting his sharp and terrible wrath upon Aidan? I burned to get to him, but I’d be a fool to go alone.
Someone had once said, “we are all fools in love.”
That didn’t mean I couldn’t call for help. But assistance from whom? Croft? Aberline?
What if I ended up confronting the Ripper? What if he spilled my dark secrets to the police should they ever come to my aid? What if Aidan made a confession for me? I’d be in as much mortal danger from Scotland Yard as from any murderer.
Leaping down a few steps, I took Oscar’s face between my freezing hands all but leached of blood. “Oscar. This is very important. I need you to send word to the Hammer at the Velvet Glove to meet me at St. Michael’s in Whitechapel right away. Tell him it’s urgent. Life and death. Do you understand? Tell him tobring his Blade.”
I’d mostly convinced myself that Jorah wasn’t the Ripper because he’d been with me during the hours of Comstock’s death.
“The Hammer?” Oscar’s inebriated eyes sharpened at the name. “The Hammer’s Blade? Fiona, those are unspeakably dangerous men. What do you—what dothey—have to do with—?”
“Just do it!” I commanded as I sprinted back up the stairs. “Please. Aidan is in danger!”
I only stopped to snatch a coin purse, another knife, and an extra pair of spectacles from my desk in the study before I burst onto Tite Street. I ran like a daft loon toward the thoroughfare where I was sure to find a cab to hire.
Don’t take him from me, I begged. Tears formed by cold wind, panic, and the threat of grief streamed down my face. With whom did I plead? God? The Ripper?
Did anyone hear me?
One phrase from the letters ripped through my bones again and again, fraying at the edges of my sanity as I fought time and darkness and distance with desperation and despair burning in my chest.
Already a dead man.
Oh, God. While we were distracted by Comstock’s murder scene, had the Ripper been with Aidan?
