Page 14 of The Ambiguous Enigma of the Hunted Lady
“Not so little, boss.” the thug offered.
“I'm sorry?” Riphook blinked at the man stupid enough to question him.
“Almost twenty, so she isn't that little.” the thug said, fumbling. He was not the brightest lad about town.
“We got to beatin' her boss, but then she got away.” Nash tried to divert Riphook's attention, lest he lose another follower for no good reason.
“How?”
“A man in the alley came to save her, boss.” the thug went on, trying to smooth over his last blunder with a new one.
“So why did you not kill the man?” Riphook challenged. His face was growing red with discontent, and the pencil was quivering in his hand.
“Couldn't kill him, boss.” Nash was pale preparing for his next sentence. “We was over by St. James.”
“You bloody idiots!” Riphook burst out, lurching to his feet.
“It weren't out in the open or nothin'.” Nash went on. “Just the one man showed up and we had to split.”
“And you were beating her.”
“Sure, boss, beating her good.” the thug was truly trying to be helpful.
“You were beating a seemingly-defenseless woman, you, a group of grown men, in an alley by St. James’s Square, and a man saw you, so you ran away. Is that the sum of it?”
“Yes boss.” Nash whispered; his face betrayed his realization of truly just how bad it sounded. They had botched it.
Riphook put the pencil in his hand through the wall of one of the barrels, sending a spurt of molasses onto the floor. Riphook smashed the thug in the head with a nearby tankard, and he dropped to the floor.
“Did you just kill him?” Nash barked out, astonished by the sudden turn of events.
“I don't know.” Riphook snorted. “Nor do I care. What I care about, is Leah Benson. What I care about,” he leaned over the barrel to stare Nash in his own, rotting face. “is not making a fuss before all of London's high to-doers. Eh? Do you hear that there, laddie?”
“Yes, boss.” Nash whispered. Riphook knew that Nash was aware of how bad he had botched up. He was lucky to be alive. Riphook did not allow anything that could come back to him to exist.
“Good. Now go and get her, before she truly does board a ship over the channel.”
Not wanting to linger in a room where he had possibly killed a man, Riphook slowly gathered his drawing possessions and neatly arranged them in a pouch that he hung on his belt.
“I don't wish to see you without her, you hear me, street rat?” he called down from the top of the stairs.
“Yes, boss.” Nash announced, moving to his friend on the floor.
“Right then. Out we go, Deaver, we've got loads to get done tonight, don't we? A couple goods to get, some fools to rob, and our good Prince none the wiser!” Hoisting up a cane by the cellar door, he popped it into the air with glee as he crested the stairs to the landing.
“Sure, boss.” the doorman replied, and the two of them sloshed out into the night. As the door swung open the sound of pelting rain shot into the cellar accompanied by the howling wind of the ever-building storm.
* * *
Nash crouched down beside his oaf of a lackey.
“Digby, you dead man?” He poked the hulking human with his finger.
Digby let out a horrid groan, his hands moving to the injury on his head.
“He hit me good.” Digby moaned, struggling to sit up.
“That's what you get for talkin', you understand?” Nash helped him to shuffle upright against the barrel he had been briefly pinned to.
