Page 106 of A Treacherous Trade
Tucking Amelia’s hand into the crook of his arm, he led her toward the door, deliberately placing his body between her and where Hartigan stood sniveling in irons.
I made to follow, but Croft’s hand snaked out and gripped my elbow. Jumping away, I wrenched my elbow from his grasp, and made a guttural sound I hoped no one had heard. Least of all him.
He curled both his hands into fists before burying them in his pockets.
I wanted to tell him I wasn’t afraid. Just… overwhelmed. In throbbing pain. I didn’t want to be touched until I could bathe, until I could wash that room and its contents from my skin.
“Who hurt you?” he demanded. “Do you need a doctor?”
I said nothing. He’d already broken the skin of his hands on the bones of the last man who’d thrown me against a wall. I couldn’t have him handing every brute in London a retribution that went beyond the law.
And yet I couldn’t help but flick a damning gaze toward Butler.
I could tell myself that if Croft hurt him, it was for all the women, both alive and dead, in those photographs.
“Thank you,” I whispered, wishing I could say more. That I had a reply to the multitudes of sentiment I read in his gaze.
But I had nothing.
Or maybe I would have done something daft, like given him everything.
I didn’t know much about what happened between men and women, but I knew enough to realize that intense gratitude could feel like something stronger, like something I was too cowardly to define.
“Promise me something,” he said. “In the future, leave being a detective to me.”
It was a promise I happily made in the moment.
One I really didintendto keep.
But one knew where the road paved with good intentions led…
And Jack the Ripper stood at the end of mine.
Epilogue
Jane Sheffield and Isabelle James were buried a few days later in St. George’s Cemetery in Whitechapel.
I’d bought their plots and headstones, simple as they were, at a bloody premium.
I even put one in place for Alys, though no one could say where her remains had ended up.
I knew I didn’t have to, but the thought of these women—flawed and even downright villainous as they’d been to some people—dumped into a pit of lye was untenable. Much of what they’d supposedly done or not done had been no fault of theirs. I thought they should be afforded what little dignity I could give them in death.
A few of the women from The Orchard stood in black against the merciless cold with me as a stolid vicar blessed their graves.
I’d met all sorts who claimed to speak to God, to speak for him, to know how to get you into his good graces and therefore into the paradise he offered.
For a price. Always for a price.
Always paid to them and their institutions rather than to those who were in need. The way I figured, God had no need of my money. I saw his chapels, his cathedrals, his vast entire cities of riches and holdings, and I thought… if he was on his throne in paradise, what need did he have for hordes of earthly treasure? What temples could we possibly build to impress him?
When his son was here, didn’t he walk in the dust with the rest of us? With the prostitutes? Did not he ask us to give tothem? To the widows and the orphans and the outcasts?
I didn’t do this expecting any kind of redemption, nor because I’d meant to commit a cardinal sin this very night. I just wanted something real to mark an end to this disaster, and as I looked around the gravesite, I believe it worked for us all.
Across from me, Indira and Sophia stood hand-in-hand, shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing each other’s warmth. To the untrained eye they might have been any close friends, but I could see the love between them, the genuine feelings that linked their hearts just as tangibly as their fingers.
My heart swelled as their foreheads met, drawing strength from the other.
