Page 34 of Taken By the Ripper
A smile broke free on her lips against his mouth. The thought most certainly occurred to her that this could bloom into something raw and beautiful and utterly romantic.
Yes, he may be a monster. But he washermonster. And nothing else mattered.
T
here were two murders today.
The moment Clara picked up a copy ofThe Star, her stomach sank when she recognized Jack the Ripper’s killing pattern within the article. The bodies were found in two different places within Whitechapel last night with similar wounds as the other victims, and one of them had been cut from breast to navel.
“Jack,” she whispered, hand held to her mouth in disbelief as she stood in the infirmary with a bloody apron after an appendicitis surgery. “Please tell me you didn’t do this.”
She’d been with Jack last night. For a couple hours. Had he done this before or after they were intimate?
She shook her head and set the news article aside, nausea climbing up her esophagus for the first time in…well, a long time. Death and gore rarely affected her. But this? Knowing who was behind these murders? She needed an explanation.
Not now. Not tomorrow. She’d needed an explanation last night. Why hadn’t Jack said something?
Why hadn’t she asked?
Panic pounded through her veins. Dizziness spun her surroundings. And despite her bloodied apron, she sank onto a chair and focused on breathing deeply through her nose and releasing the breath from her mouth.
Mazie had been out last night. One of the women in the article could have ended up being her. Her sister was lucky. But next time? She might not be.
A rush of determination encompassed her as she leaped to her feet, tossed her bloodied apron aside, and rushed toward the front door just as Mazie stepped outside into the drizzling rain carrying an umbrella and a new pair of gloves. At least she thought they were new, as she had not seen them before.
Clara stepped into Mazie’s path, and her sister released an annoyed huff. “You can’t keep doing this! I know you’ve been sneaking out.”
“That’s none of your business!”
“It most certainly is my business!” She threw her hands up in exasperation. “There are things out there that are dangerous. You put me in a dither night after night when I can’t help but worry for your safety.” She ran a hand down her face, but it didn’t erase the terrible worry plaguing her heart. “Where are you going every night? Are you entertaining men?”
Again, her gaze darted toward the gloves her sister wore. Unfortunately, Clara didn’t give her sister enough pin money to afford such gloves. It was difficult enough to feed the three of them as it was.
Thunder rumbled across the skies overhead, and Mazie scowled as she adjusted her grip on her umbrella. “You told me to get a job, so I did. I work nights at The Ten Bells pub.”
“But at night?”
Another huff. “Of course, you would disapprove. This is why I didn’t want to speak of it.” Her sister spun on her heel, and the pitter patter of rain hitting her umbrella filled the silence of her momentary shock before the drizzle transitioned into heavy sheets of moisture falling from the sky.
Mazie seemed to want so desperately to fly out of the coop, but didn’t she realize this was dangerous?
Had she been too hard on her, regardless?
Realizing she still wore a single bloody rubber glove from her surgery, she slipped it off her hand, wadded it into a ball, and threw it into a waste bin inside the infirmary. She spent a long time scrubbing her hands with soap infused with rosemary until her skin turned red and her heart became numb with hurt and confusion. Thoughts of her sisters became prominent in her mind, and she couldn’t help but wonder if she was handling the situation incorrectly.
In her youth, all she had ever wanted was to follow in her father’s footsteps. She had worked hard to follow her dreams, and then both her parents had died, leaving her in charge of her sisters. Despite the strain on her shoulders, was she not allowing Mazie and Norma the same freedom and choices her parents had given her? Was her hold on them too tight?
She flicked the water off her hands before drying them on a cloth, but then she turned.
And froze.
A canister of coffee beans lay on the table across the room, and she wasn’t sure whether to leap for joy or hide in the darkest corner of the estate from both mortification and despair. She could not court two men, even if one of them was a monster. Hermate, as he liked to call her.
She needed to let Claude down gently.
Why did the thought turn her stomach over with disappointment?
Slowly, she approached the canister and inspected it. The coffee beans within rattled as she turned it one way, and then the other. No note accompanied the gift, though she knew without a doubt who it was from.
