Page 65 of Never Tempt a Scot
She helped the girl conceal herself in the shadows behind a few wooden crates stacked against the stone walls of the nearest building. Then she crept down the alley, uncertain of what awaited her.
Distant sounds echoed in the darkness. Something heavy was being dragged along the ground. A man cursed softly. Light blossomed as a candle was lit. The ghostly faces of two men, made grotesque by the flickering light, caused Lydia to halt and hold her breath.
“Here, move the light closer, Burke,” one of the men said.
The candle lowered to illuminate the body of a young woman upon the ground next to a large trunk.
“Lucky us. We didn’t even have to kill this one, she was already dead,” the first man said to the one he had called Burke.
“Oh, aye. The doc will pay the same. She’s a fine one, in good condition.”
“Set the candle down. Help me load ’er up,” the first man ordered.
The light was put on the ground nearby, and the shadowy macabre dance of the two men was haunting as they lifted the poor deceased woman and folded her body into the trunk. “Now, grab the child. I’ll smother her.”
Lydia stifled a gasp. They were going to kill the child. Lydia had to protect the girl. She had to stop them. She tried to think, despite the terror rising inside her.
The two men left the candle on the ground and headed toward her in the dark. Fortunately, they didn’t see her, because the passageway was nearly pitch-black. Lydia held her breath, her blood roaring in her ears. A moment later, their steps were close and the smell of their unwashed bodies filled her nose. Lydia stuck out a foot, and the man nearest her fell flat on his face. He grunted, and the other man tripped over him, landing on top. The two men started to fight, each snarling and hitting each other as they blamed the other for what had happened.
Lydia, still flattened against the wall, slid step by careful step down past them. She wanted to run, but if she did they would hear her.
“Oy, you smell that?” one of them growled. “Bleeding roses .. .”
“Maybe it was the woman.”
“No, she didn’t smell nice. She smelled dead.”
Suddenly everything was dangerously quiet. Lydia halted, afraid to move. They were listening for her.
After an eternity, the two men moved again.
“Go back and fix the body in the trunk,” one of them said.
Lydia sighed in quiet relief and started to move again. And that’s when she was tackled to the ground.
“Gotcha!” one of them grunted in triumph as he crushed her beneath him. “Bring the light!”
A candle was brought around and held up to her face.
“Well now, what a pretty pigeon,” the man holding her said with a chuckle. “Seen something ye shouldna, eh?” He nodded to Burke, and before she could scream, something struck the back of her head.
16
When Lydia came to, she lay on the floor of a wagon next to a large trunk. A heavy burlap covering lay over her body, almost smothering her. Her first instinct was to rip the covering off her face, but then she remembered the little girl, the woman in the trunk, and the two men who had attacked her. The wagon rolled to a stop. Burke and Hare’s voices were muffled, yet she could still hear what they were saying.
“We’ll have to go back for the child after we drop off these two.” Hands grasped the burlap above her head, and Lydia went still as the covering was flung back.
“Get the trunk first.” The trunk was dragged off the wagon, and the two men carried it toward a building nearby. She started to sit up, but then she heard voices as the men returned, so she lay limp again. Her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t imagine how the men didn’t hear it.
“Doc says seven pounds for the first and another seven for this one.”
Rough hands lifted her up and carried her toward the building. She tried to hold her breath again as she was set down on top of a table.
“Here’s the other one, Doc.”
A new voice replied to that announcement, one more cultured than either Burke or Hare.
“Well now, that is a beauty. And still flushed with her recent passing. See the blood still rosy beneath the skin? Quite lovely.” The heat of a candle’s flame near her face almost made her flinch.
