Page 62 of A Treacherous Trade
I no longer had to pretend.
Terror stole the strength from my bones and what little breath I had in my lungs. I hung like a marionette, my limbs trembling and the champagne roiling in my empty stomach, attempting to escape into my throat.
An insidious numbness swamped me, threatening to lift me out of my own skin. It’d happened before, when I was pulled into an entirely different alley by someone claiming to be the Ripper. I’d somehow stepped outside of myself, watched the man hold his knife to my neck from the safety of the street lamps.
I couldn’t let that happen again. Not here. I had to keep my wits about me, or I would not escape this intact.
Or at all.
In a sudden moment of clarity, I remembered something my father, a policeman, had said to a thief who stole into our neighbor’s home and held an elderly mother hostage. He’d offered him the contents of my mother’s jewelry box as well.
And the moment the greedy bastard relented, Frank Mahoney bashed him over the head with it, wrestled him to the ground, and led him away in irons.
Behind the man’s smothering palm, I nodded, hoping he’d read permission in the gesture. I arched my back, crushing my breasts to his chest. All I had to do was make a would-be rapist think I wouldn’t fight him. That I would let him have his way with me.
So I could get to the knife in my boot.
It had the desired effect. At least his hands released me, and he pulled away. Though I still couldn’t see his face, I had the sense that I’d confounded him. I took the opportunity to crouch down and reach for my blade.
Just in time for his fist to crunch against the brick wall where my face had only just been.
I hadn’t disarmed him with my submission… I’d infuriated him. The inhuman bellow of rage signaled that now it wasn’t my virginity in danger, but my life.
Seizing the knife, I surged up and, with a vicious cry, buried it in his chest.
Or would have, had he not moved enough for the blade to only find purchase in his shoulder.
I’d never stabbed anyone before. Never perpetrated any such violence. The knife slid in with more ease than I’d expected. I gave a gasp of utter shock before it registered that I wasn’t out of danger.
By the time I’d gathered my wits enough to realize I had to try again, the man jerked away with a grunt and a curse. He staggered backward, and now he stood blocking my escape to Fleet Street.
The alley was a nook, not a true passage between buildings, so my only option was to try to make it around him. Not easily done in dress boots and an evening gown, but I had little choice.
And he had my knife, should he retrieve it from his shoulder. A more seasoned fighter would have had the presence of mind to keep their grip, to pull the blade out and try again for an organ. Because anything less wouldn’t fell a man of this size.
Recovering from his own shock, he loomed ever larger, his breath coming in great, pained gasps.
“And here I was told you were clever.” He reached across his chest to grasp the weapon.
It was now or never.
He couldn’t know that this was my greatest fear. Not rape, per se. Not even murder.
But what struck me with the most terror in the world was the thought of bleeding out from stab wounds in a dark London alley, discarded like so much rubbish. Like one of the Ripper’s victims.
With a sob, I dashed forward, everything in me reaching for the gas lamps of Fleet Street beyond his hulking form.
The back of his hand connected with my face with such force, I flew into the wall.
The last thing I remembered was the sickening sound of my head as it bounced off the brick.
ChapterFourteen
Screams roused me.
In that dark place between unconsciousness and awareness, one of my most vivid memories plagued me like a dream. My mother, telling me not wander into shadows or put myself in danger, because a banshee might come for my soul if I died from a misadventure.
Or worse, I’d become one.
