Capturing the Devil (Stalking Jack the Ripper #4)(2)
I kept my skepticism on that latter point locked away. We’d spent more than a week aboard an ocean liner cavorting with a carnival known for debauchery.
Being acquainted with the ringmaster for five minutes proved he was a devil of a young man. In more ways than one.
“I wanted to see the meatpacking district for myself,” I lied. “Perhaps it’ll give me an idea for the perfect main course. What do you think of roasted goat?”
“After witnessing its beheading or before?” she asked, looking like she was moments away from vomiting. “You do know that’s what cookbooks are for, correct? Inspiration without the labor. Or carnage. I swear you miss being surrounded by death.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would you even think such a thing?”
“Look around, Audrey Rose. Of all the neighborhoods in this city, this is the one you chose to stroll through.”
I tore my attention away from a plucked chicken that was seconds away from joining the dismembered goat, my expression reserved as I took in our surroundings. Blood steadily dripped down many of the wooden blocks lining the storefronts, splattering onto the ground.
Judging from the multihued stains, the streets weren’t washed even after a busy day of hacking animals apart. Veins of crimson and black wound through cracks in the cobblestones—tributaries of old death meeting the new. The scent of copper mixed with feces pricked my eyes and thrilled my heart.
This street was death made tangible, a murderer’s dream.
Liza sidestepped a bucket of frost-coated offal, her warm exhale mimicking steam rising off a boiling teakettle as it mingled with the cold air. I wasn’t sure if the amount of entrails or their near-frozen states offended her more. I wondered at the darkness swirling within me—the secret part that couldn’t muster up an ounce of disgust. Perhaps I needed to take up a new hobby.
I feared I was becoming addicted to blood.
“Honestly, let me hail another hansom. You shouldn’t be out in this weather anyway—you know what Uncle’s said about the cold. And look”—Liza nodded
toward our feet—“our shoes are sopping up snow like bits of bread in soup.
We’re going to catch our death out here.”
I didn’t glance down at my own feet. I hadn’t worn my favorite pretty shoes since the day I’d taken a knife in my leg. My current footwear was stiff, boring leather without a delicate heel. Liza was correct; icy dampness had found its way in through the seams, soaking my stockings and causing the near-constant dull ache in my bones to intensify.
“Stop! Thief!” A constable blew a whistle somewhere close by and several people broke off from the crowd, scattering like plague rats rushing down alleyways. Liza and I moved aside, lest we become the unwitting victims of fleeing pickpockets and petty thieves.
“A whole roasted pig will be more than enough food,” she added. “Stop worrying.”
“That’s precisely the issue.”
I pressed closer to the building as a young boy ran by, one hand on his newsboy cap, the other clutching what appeared to be a stolen pocket watch. A policeman followed, blowing his whistle and dodging through vendors.
“I can’t stop worrying. Thomas’s birthday is in two days,” I reminded her, as if I hadn’t already done so one hundred times over the last week. The constable’s whistle and shouts grew further away and our slow procession down butchers’
row resumed. “It’s my first dinner party and I want everything to be perfect.”
Mr. Thomas Cresswell—my insufferable yet most decidedly charming partner in crime solving—and I had danced around the subject of both courtship and marriage. I’d agreed to accept him, should he ask my father first, and hadn’t expected everything to unfold quite as quickly as it had. We’d known each other for just a few short months—five now—but it felt right.
Most young women of my station married at about twenty-one years, but my soul felt older, especially after the events on the RMS Etruria. With my approval, Thomas sent a letter to my father, requesting an audience to make his intentions clear. Now that my father, along with my aunt Amelia, was en route from London to New York, the time was fast approaching when we’d begin an official courtship followed by a betrothal.
Not long ago, I would have felt invisible bars closing in at the thought of joining myself to another; now I irrationally worried something might bar me from marrying Thomas. He’d almost been taken from me once, and I’d kill before I allowed that to happen again.
“Plus”—I pulled the letter from the premier chef of Paris from my purse and
waved it playfully at Liza—“Monsieur Escoffier was quite specific about obtaining the best cut of meat. And Uncle isn’t the one who’ll deal with a stiff leg,” I added, leaning a bit more heavily on my cane. “Let me worry over that.”
Liza looked ready to argue but held a perfumed handkerchief to her nose instead, her gaze snagging on the mechanical canopy above us. A conveyor belt with hooks swept by, a constant loop of gears clicking and metal clinking, the noise adding to the clamor of the streets as butchers staked hocks of fresh meat to it. She watched the dismembered limbs jostle their way into the buildings where they’d undoubtedly be broken down further, seemingly lost in thought.
Likely she was searching for another reason I ought to stay inside and rest, but I’d done plenty of resting in the weeks we’d been in New York. I needn’t hear from others what I could and could no longer easily do. I was more than aware of that.