Page 7 of An Unwilling Earl
“You know,” Suzette said as she dug into her half of the meat pie, “you should go back to where you saw him. There’s that gentleman’s club there. Bootles? Bartlets?”
“Brooks,” Charlotte said softly.
Suzette pointed her fork at Charlotte. “Brooks. That’s right. Maybe he’s a member. Ooh. Wouldn’tthatbe grand? He’d be a rich toff, then.”
“And he’d want nothing to do with a lowly lad like me.”
“But we both know you’re not a lowly lad at all.” A gleam of curiosity filled her eyes. “You’re not lowlyora lad.”
Since they’d met, Suzette had been trying to get Charlotte’s story out of her, but it hadn’t worked. And it wasn’t going to work now. Charlotte had no intention of telling anyone where she’d come from and why she’d left.
“And why would I stalk the poor man in front of Brooks?” Charlotte asked.
Suzette shrugged. “Who knows what can happen?”
Charlotte dismissed the thought, but a seed had embedded itself in her psyche. It wouldn’t hurt anyone to just get a glimpse of him again. To satisfy her curiosity.
Suzette said softly, “I heard they found another one.”
Charlotte’s full stomach churned, and the greasy meat pie heaved.
“Another one?”
“Took her from the Thames like they did the others. No head. No hands neither.”
Charlotte swallowed her meat pie back down, wishing she hadn’t eaten so much so fast.
“How many does this make?” she asked.
Suzette shrugged, her too-large sleeve slipping down her shoulder. She yanked it back up. “Four, I think.”
Four women dead. Charlotte tried not to think about the girls, but it was always there, in the back of her mind, poking at her, making her feel guilty.
“They say they’re all working gals,” Suzette said. There was a resigned look in her eyes that Charlotte didn’t like.
Suzette pushed herself away from the table and groaned. “I’m not going to be able to get into my costume for the show tonight. We keep eating like that, we’ll be fat.”
Charlotte grabbed Suzette’s hand, and the girl paused, their gazes locking.
“Be careful out there,” Charlotte said. Suzette worked at the theater, which meant she was gone most of the night, arriving home in the early hours when one part of the city was just beginning to awaken, and another part was just beginning to go to bed.
“Nothing to worry about,” Suzette said with what seemed like forced lightness. “No one would want a used-up girl like me.” She smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her worried eyes.
Charlotte let go of her hand. “Just be careful. Have someone walk you home if you can.”
Suzette huffed out a laugh. “Right, then. Will do, love.”
Suzette left to go to the theater, groaning about her overstuffed stomach, but thanking Charlotte for sharing her wealth as she closed the door behind her. There was no lock on the door, and at night Charlotte barred it with a rickety chair as soon as Suzette left. Tonight, she was especially jumpy.
It was the thought of the four dead women. Sightless, glassy eyes staring at her in accusation and condemnation. Like it was her fault.
She rubbed the goose bumps on her arms and sat at the lone window, a luxury in this part of the city, and looked up at the darkening sky. There were no visible stars from here, blotted out as they were by the hundreds of belching chimneys. But she remembered what they looked like from out in the country where she’d lived with her papa.
However, the stars could not rid her of the thought of those four women, their accusing eyes staring at her from their graves.
It’s your fault,they seemed to say to her.
All your fault.
