Page 60 of A Sham Engagement

Jack gave them a short head start, then headed after them.

Before he’d gone three paces, six figures emerged from the darkness, surrounding him. Four of them were wearing dresses.

“Jack!” Elenora seized his free hand.

“Milord Jack.” By the dim light of the prostitute’s vacated streetlamp, he recognized the faces of the three oldest girls who lived with Mrs. Sharpe. And two quite short young men he didn’t think he’d ever clapped eyes on before.

He took an anxious look over his shoulder into the fog. “I can’t stop. I have to follow those two men.”

“I’m coming too,” Elenora said.

“Us as well,” Ivy said.

“And if you’re going, so are we,” the taller of the two strange young men put in, his voice giving away his anything but native origins, as did his smart top hat.

“Who the hell are you?” Jack managed to get out, before Rosie interrupted him.

“If you’re follerin’ some cove, then you’ll be hard to spot if you’re in a crowd of us girls.”

Peg just nodded and seized Jack’s arm.

He had no time to object. Besides which, they were quite right in their estimate that being a mixed party would draw less attention. The one good thing was that they could keep the distance between them small, as if Warren looked back, all he’d see was girls intent on giving some upper class men a good time. But who were these two strangers who seemed mysteriously au fait with his mission? He didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

“These are my brothers,” Elenora, who had a tight and proprietorial hold of his left arm, explained. “Ivy has Jolyon, and Rosie has Matthew, who is nearest me in age. I decided we needed their help and when it was all explained to them, they were delighted to accompany me and my new friends.”

“Good evening to you, Lord Broxbourne,” Jolyon Wetherby said, mercifully keeping his voice low but betraying by his jaunty tone that he saw this as some kind of jolly adventure akin to he and his friends daring one another to go and drink at taverns in Limehouse. Which it was not.

“Glad to make your acquaintance,” Matthew chimed in. “And glad to render our assistance. Do anything for our sister. She’s a good’un.”

Peg was still firmly attached to Jack’s other arm, so he had no way of resisting the onward impetus of the two girls. However, this didn’t stop him from being angry. “What part of stay behind safely with Mrs. Sharpe did you fail to understand, Elenora?” And why hadn’t her scapegrace brothers sent her packing back to safety? Were they madmen?

She tightened her hold, perhaps suspicious that he might try to send her home even now. “I sat in that little parlor with your Mrs. Sharpe worrying about you, going off on your own into the backstreets the way you have. And in the end, I could stand it no longer. I came to the conclusion I had to do something. I couldn’t let you go on your own.” She shot him a glare made crystal clear as they passed under another streetlamp. “And as you’re neither my father nor my brother, and you’re not even really my fiancé, you don’t have any right to tell me what to do.”

The affrontery of the girl. But wasn’t that why he liked her so much? The way she didn’t beat about the bush but jumped straight in with what she was thinking? The dangers of her forthrightness bore down on him. “These streets are more than dangerous for a girl like you, and could well be for your brothers, too.”

“For everyone,” Peg, who must have been listening, put in.

Jack nodded. “She’s right.”

“Safety in numbers,” Elenora said, with defiance. “There are four of us girls, and now we have Joly and Matt, three of you gentlemen. And my brothers both have pistols like you, and have given me one which is safely stored in my reticule, which is happily just the right size for it. Ivy said we should be safe if we have pistols.”

Only of course, Jack no longer had his pistols, nor much likelihood of ever seeing them again.

“Ivy doesn’t know.”

“Ivy does,” Ivy put in. “Who was dragged up round here, Milord Jack, you or us?”

“You shouldn’t have encouraged her,” Jack snapped. “She’s not like you girls. She doesn’t have the wisdom of the streets you all do.”

“Wisdom of the streets, is it?” Rosie mocked. “That’s what you’re callin’ it now.”

Jack fumed. But he couldn’t deny that four girls together were a lot safer than one or even two on their own. And when you added in three men as well, all armed, even if he now only had his swordstick, that made their odds of safety much higher. He peered through the thickening fog. The alley had narrowed and was going downhill, Warren and Benjamin just shadowy figures in the gloom. Were they approaching the Thames?

The way through the maze of dirty backstreets had confused Elenora’s country sense of direction and she now had no idea which way she was facing, so when the alley they’d been traversing suddenly emerged onto the damp and foggy embankment of the River Thames, she came to an involuntary halt, pulling Jack to a stop as well. The smell of mud and… other far less savory things… rose up in an almost tangible barrier to hit her in the face.

“Tide’s out,” Ivy remarked as she tugged Jolyon along the narrow path beside the river. Up ahead the slinking shapes of the two men Jack had set himself to follow flitted from one pool of smoky light to the next, like wraiths in the mist, their lantern bobbing. Who were they and where were they heading?

Beside her, Jack hurried his pace and she had to almost run to keep up with him. Little Peg was running in truth. Then, as if suddenly hitting a wall, Jack ground to a halt, and Jolyon and Matthew and their girls almost cannoned into him. “Get back.” The two words emerged from his lips as a barely breathed whisper. Elenora flattened her body against the wall on her left, holding her breath and far too aware of the noisy tumult her heart was making.