Page 26 of Eliza and the Duke
“Not for us.” He looked straight ahead and continued walking, his long strides eating up the cobblestones and leading them back to the busier area.
She kept pace beside him, fumbling for what to say that would bring back the closeness they had shared in the music hall. Kissing him had felt natural and right. He’d felt it, too. Sheknewhe had. It was why he had ended it. She simply wanted it back.
“But why? Simon…” She pulled him to a stop. “I simply want to know you.” It was as honest as she could be. What would come of knowing him? Nothing, except she would have the memory of him to ruminate over in the coming years of perpetual boredom.
Part of his allure was the adventure, the fact that he represented something totally different from the life being laid out for her, but that wasn’t all of it. There was something about him, the essence of him and who he was, that wouldn’t allow her to look away. He was from this place but he had made his way to Montague Club and a new life, driven by some spark inside him that she didn’t understand. Yet. She wanted to understand, though. He’d intrigued her since the first night they had met, and she couldn’t let it go. She didn’t want to let go of this fascination. He was important to her life in a way that she couldn’t understand yet.
“You want to know me?” he asked. There was a challenge in his words.
Fine, she’d accept. “Yes, I want to know who you are and what you feel and why it means so much to you to leave here.” She raised her free hand up to encompass the area.
He shook his head. “You don’t know the first thing about this place.”
“It’s no Mayfair or Belgravia, but in some ways I prefer it here. The people are real.”
“Is that so?” He held out her cloak for her.
She turned and allowed him to drape it over her shoulders. “Yes, it is so. I’m not as naive as you seem to think. I lived near the Bowery back home, and my mother sometimes took us into the Tenderloin district when she had a friend performing at a playhouse there.” Though the area hadn’t been known as the Tenderloin when she was growing up.
“The Tenderloin?” he asked. His fingers absently tied the edges of her outer garment together.
“A district in Manhattan with brothels, taverns, music halls, and cheap playhouses,” she explained. “According to a friend of my mother’s, the police get paid extra by the brothels for protection, so they eat beef tenderloin for dinner instead of the cheaper fare a policeman’s salary provides.”
“What sort of friends does your mother have?”
She smiled, sensing that she might get further with him if she told him a little more of her family secrets. “She was an actress until she met my father.” Mr. Hathaway was her true father, not Mr. Dove, but that was a story for a later time. After Mr. Hathaway had taken up with her mother, he’d forbidden Fanny from performing. He didn’t want her anywhere near those sorts of theaters to fan the flames of gossip about his illegitimate family.
His gaze fell upon her face as if seeing her anew. “I told you the truth.” She took his hands in hers and held them between their bodies. “We are more alike than you think.”
He looked away and blew out a breath of air. “It’s not the same here.”
“No, it’s not. I understand that.” Before she could stop herself, she touched his face, drawing his eyes back to her. “I know that the poverty you experienced here is different. Growing up without your mother, or any parent. It’s not the same. I know that. I only wanted you to understand that I didn’t grow up with all of the advantages that you seem to think I did.”
For the first time since walking out of the music hall, there was a chink in his armor. A shimmer of longing came into his eyes as his gaze dropped to her mouth and back up to her eyes. Her hand moved to rest on his chest. His heart thumped a steady rhythm under her palm. She wanted to kiss him, but she knew better than to spook a stray kitten.
“Will you show me more of this place?”
“Do you mean to go farther in?”
“Yes.”
“It’s too danger—” He paused and something caught his eye. There was movement back the way they had come. He grabbed her arm and began walking at a fast pace toward the Whitechapel High Street.
She glanced back over her shoulder but couldn’t see very much. It looked like a man was walking behind them, but she didn’t see anything that made her think he was following them. “What’s happened?”
“We need to leave,” was all he said.
After they entered the busy area, Simon made to cross the street, but paused at the curb. Two men were directly acrossthe road from them. She had never seen them before, but they looked hard and menacing. Their eyes locked on Simon, and she knew for certain they didn’t like him.
Simon cursed under his breath and changed course again. The man behind them had disappeared into the crowd. Simon took hold of her hand and walked so fast she was practically running beside him. They went toward the White Hart, the pub they had seen earlier that she’d wanted to go in. It occupied a corner with a street on one side and an alley on the other. He took them through the open double doors from the street, threading them through the crowd inside. They darted out the other side and toward the alley.
The mouth of the alley was marked by an arched tunnel that might have been charming in the daylight, but at night it was a little forbidding, like an entrance to another world. The narrow cobblestone lane was barely wide enough for four people to stand shoulder to shoulder. Tall brick walls of tenement buildings hemmed them in on either side and stretched several floors overhead. It felt oppressive, like they were running into the mouth of danger rather than away from it.
A handful of women in tattered dresses lounged against the sides of the buildings. They wore large hats like the ones Eliza had noticed back at the theater. A few of them called out to Simon while giving her curious glances. They were prostitutes peddling their trade as they waited for customers to come stumbling out from the pub.
Simon hurried them through so fast that she barely got a good look at them. It was dark and frightening here with no proper light to show them the way, which meant she had to pay attention to the crumbling roadway so that she didn’t trip. The only light here was an open fire far in the distance. It became quieter as they left the merriment of the tavern behindthem. The change in atmosphere was immediate. Instead of feeling jolly and festive, the very air felt stifling and dark. Almost as if something cynical watched them from every doorway and window they passed.
“Where are we going, Simon? Why are we here?” she asked, her voice lowered so that whatever was in the shadows didn’t hear them.
