Olivia Twist(40)

The one Jack had hit in the stomach straightened and hurtled in Jack’s direction.

“Watch out!” Olivia screamed.

He landed a blow to Jack’s kidney before Jack whirled on his heel, his coattails flying in a wide arc. Using his momentum, he clutched the man by the throat and lowered to one knee, slamming the man into the ground with so much force that his head smacked loudly against the cobbles. Jack stood and pressed the umbrella handle against the man’s throat. Afraid his skull had fractured, Olivia cautiously moved closer, but he groaned and rolled onto his side, only a slight trickle of blood staining his light hair.

Olivia just stared at the ruffians laid out around them. Like a dancer in a macabre play of death, Jack had defeated four powerful men with his fists and . . . a brolly?

“Let’s go,” he ordered.

Brom at her heels, Olivia clapped a hand on her cap and ran, cringing as icy water splashed into the holes in her shoes. They didn’t slow until they reached the Temple Bar arch and the gloom of Fleet Street. She glanced over her shoulder more than once, staring into the shadows to make sure they weren’t followed.

As they turned onto Chancery Lane, a chill wind blew against Olivia’s face, and she clutched the collar of her coat tightly around her neck, her eyes flicking to the man beside her. The strong nose was familiar, the midnight hair resting against his neck as it had always been, but it would seem this Jack had become someone very different from the charming pickpocket she had once known.

The farther they walked in silence, the stronger her curiosity became. She needed answers. “How did you do that?”

“Do what?” Jack shrugged as if he’d just tied a neckcloth, instead of mopping the street with four grown men.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about! You took out those factory workers like they were featherweights. Since when do you know how to do that?”

They rounded a corner, and Jack’s umbrella clattered to the ground as he pushed Olivia into a darkened doorway. His face a hairsbreadth from hers as he hissed, “Since the Dodger was forced to become a street lord just to survive. Since every gang in bloomin’ Holborn looked to me for protection from your blasted brother. Since my fists, and whatever makeshift weapon I could get my hands on, were the only things standing between me and a slow, painful death.” His palm smacked the wooden doorframe at her back, making her jump. “You think I chose to become this . . . this bloody bludger?”

Olivia met his eyes, something tortured and wild lurking in their depths. She could taste apples and spice as his panting breaths blew against her mouth. His body was so close it stole her words, her very thoughts.

When the tense silence between them became unbearable, she whispered, “I . . . I’m sorry.” She wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for, except perhaps that she’d escaped that life and he had not.

Jack’s shoulders slumped as if the air had been knocked out of him, and he closed his eyes. Without volition, her hand lifted to his cheek, cradling the rough stubble along his jawline. “It’s all right, Jack. You did what you had to do. As we both always have.”

His eyes opened, spikey lashes a dark shadow against his skin, his expression completely unguarded. The hurt and fear, the resolve, and the need she read there made it clear this boy was no danger to her. The pad of her thumb brushed his cheekbone and she lifted on her toes, drawn to his lips. He leaned toward her, his eyes sweeping her face, and then he jerked back. Confusion flashed in his eyes before his countenance locked tight, closing her out.

“It’s getting late.” He stepped out of the doorway and clucked to Brom, who was sniffing around a nearby lamp pole.

Cheeks burning, she hefted her satchel back onto her shoulder. Something dark lurked just beneath Jack’s surface and she’d seen it emerge tonight. Part of her wanted to dig deeper, help him exorcise his demons, but then she glanced down at her naked ring finger. She pushed out a sigh. Perhaps it would help if she tied a string there to remind her she was an engaged woman.



Jack followed Olivia and Brom into a dilapidated building, barely able to squeeze through the boards nailed to the window. The first level of the hovel was one open room, empty save for piles of refuse and several massive holes in the floor. A large rodent scurried across their path and down into one of the pits. Jack suppressed a shudder as his boot crunched a large bug, and memories took him back to a similar flea-ridden dump he’d huddled in for a few very long months before Fagin took him into his gang.

Olivia whistled, and feet pounded across the ceiling above their heads. A curly blond head appeared above them, a single candle clutched in his fist.

“Ollie! Yer early!”

Olivia grinned and waved up at the child as an unmistakable clearing of a throat sounded.

“Sorry. Whot’s the password?”

“Katrina Van Tassel,” Olivia answered in a jarringly rough voice.

Jack recognized the password as the coquette from “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and as he watched the giant mutt, Brom, run up a narrow board that had just been lowered from the opening in the ceiling, he felt a bit of the darkness lift from his heart. He’d never put it together before, but Olivia had chosen to name her beloved pet after the character Brom Bones, likely because she didn’t subscribe to the widely held view of Brom as the villain of the story.

Looking past her ratty wig and ash-smudged cheeks, he met her honeyed gaze and his heart gave a squeeze. This girl insisted on seeing the best in everyone, even in the fictional world. Perhaps this explained a bit of her tolerance for him.