Notorious Pleasures (Maiden Lane #2)(95)

Something scraped and Griffin turned his head toward the sound, alert and silent. A low shape darted across the alley.

“Cat,” Deedle whispered. “Think the Vicar will attack tonight?”

“He’s been waiting since they killed Nick,” Griffin murmured. “He’s hoping most of my men have fled—which they have, damn him—and he wants me desperate and afraid. I’d say there’s a good chance that tonight’s the night.”

Deedle gripped Griffin’s shoulder just as Griffin saw the shadow move. Three men were creeping up the alley. One leaped and clawed at the wall of the warehouse. They were going to stop the chimneys again in preparation for the rest of the attack, if Griffin wasn’t mistaken.

Griffin charged low and fast and without sound. He caught the first man by the hair and clubbed him with the butt of his gun. The man went down like a felled tree. The second man shouted, but Deedle shot him. Griffin turned and aimed at the man scaling the wall. He squeezed the trigger and felt his chest expand in savage triumph when the man fell.

Then someone hit him from the side. His pistol flew from his hand as he was thrown violently against the wall. His attacker was a giant with a giant’s fists, pounding at his face, his belly. Griffin gasped, winded, the world spinning. He drew his pistol and shot point-blank into the other man’s face.

He felt the sting of gunpowder against the side of his face, the spray of something wet and sticky. He pushed aside the body and glanced up, his ears strangely muffled. Men were pouring in at the far end of the alley, running toward him and Deedle, at least twenty of them, maybe more.

It was a trap, he thought, oddly composed. The Vicar had been waiting for them to emerge from the walls of the still warehouse. And they had. They had.

Griffin walked to the middle of the alley and turned, drawing his sword to face the oncoming slaughter.

“M’lord,” Deedle wheezed beside him. “Who the ’ell is that?”

And Griffin looked over his shoulder and realized that a second group of men blocked the other end of the alley, marching in line, coming toward them. Behind them were men on horseback.

“Soldiers.” He spat blood into the dust at his feet. “The Duke of Wakefield is coming to arrest me if I’m not mistaken.”

“Dear God in heaven,” Deedle muttered. “We’re dead, m’lord. Dead!”

And Griffin threw back his head and laughed. The sound echoed off the filthy brick walls that enclosed the alley he was about to die in.

SILENCE HURRIED HOME, through the darkened streets of St. Giles.

She’d meant to take only a quick trip to visit one of the home’s wet nurses and her tiny charge. But the moment she’d entered the woman’s apartment, she’d immediately caught the astringent scent of gin. That had led to recriminations, protests, and a rather awful scene before she’d finally walked out with the orphaned infant. No matter how sorry she might feel for the wet nurse—a widow with a child of her own—Silence couldn’t risk the well-being of such a tiny baby. The nursling was only a month or so old—a fragile age for a baby.

She’d known of another possible wet nurse for the baby, but the second woman lived nearly a mile away from the first, and in the opposite direction of the home. She’d hurried there as fast as she could walk with the babe in her arms. And in the end, Silence had been very satisfied with the placement. The new wet nurse, Polly, had been employed in the past by the home and had always given satisfactory service. Although her own children were now weaned, Polly assured Silence that she had enough milk for the orphaned infant.

A good day’s work, but an exhausting one, and the reason she was now caught out after dark.

Silence pulled her light woolen cloak more securely about her shoulders and eyed a dark doorway as she passed it. She was trying very hard not to think of some of the awful tales she heard from Nell—an inveterate teller of horror stories. The woman who’d been strangled by a lover. The woman who’d been dragged into an alley and savagely attacked by three drunken men. The woman who had gone out to buy a meat pie for her four children and simply disappeared, her shoe found the next day in an alley.

Silence shivered. All of Nell’s stories had two common elements: They were all about women out alone.

And they all took place after dark.

A cry came from up ahead, and Silence’s steps faltered. She was in a wide street, but there were no cross streets nearby. Only a single flickering lantern hung over a tiny cobbler’s shop. Voices could be heard and lights, growing stronger, coming nearer.

Silence looked about desperately. A man shouted an angry curse. Then a crowd came tearing around the corner of the street up ahead. There were men holding torches, but also women. They milled and shouted, and in the middle was some kind of wretched thing that they were dragging by a collar.

Someone smashed a window and Silence flinched. She was already backing away, turning to hurry up the street she’d just walked down. But that direction was away from the home. She looked over her shoulder as two men dragged the wretch they’d caught to the middle of the street and began beating him with cudgels.

“ ’Ave mercy!” she heard their victim cry.

There were more curses and amid them a single hoarse shout she could make out: “Informer!”

Dear Lord, they were lynching a gin informer.

Doors opened up ahead, but when she looked there hopefully, more people came out and ran toward the horrible scene behind her. The street was suddenly filled with shouting madmen. Someone jostled her and Silence tripped. She fell against a house wall, pressing herself back.