Capturing the Devil (Stalking Jack the Ripper #4)(3)
While it was true I wanted Thomas’s eighteenth birthday to be special, it wasn’t the whole truth behind my obsessing. Uncle hadn’t permitted me to leave my grandmother’s home much for fear of fracturing my leg further, and I was going mad with inactivity and boredom. Throwing Thomas a party was as much for me as it was for him.
Though I was grateful for my cousin—she and Thomas had taken turns entertaining me by reading my favorite books aloud and playing the piano. They had even put on a few plays, much to both my amusement and my dismay.
While my cousin had the voice of a nightingale, Thomas’s singing was atrocious.
A cat in heat held a note in a more pleasant manner than he did. At least it proved he wasn’t limitlessly skilled, which pleased me to no end. Without them or my novels, things would have been much worse. When I was adventuring between the pages of a book, I wasn’t sad over things I was missing outside.
“Your grandmother’s kitchen staff is capable of doing the shopping to Mr.
Ritz’s instructions. Wasn’t he the person who recommended Mr. Escoffier?
These are not the sort of scenes one should be subjected to prior to a dress fitting.” Liza nodded at the eyes being pried from the goat’s skull and set in a bowl, while its belly was sliced open to remove organ meat. “No matter how accustomed you may be to macabre things.”
“Death is a part of life. Case in point”—I jerked my chin toward the fresh meat—“without the death of that goat, we’d starve.”
Liza scrunched her nose. “Or we could all learn to simply eat plants from now on.”
“While that sounds valiant, the plants would still need to die for your
survival.” I ignored the tweak of pain in my leg as a particularly icy blast of wind barreled over the Hudson River and slammed into us. The sky’s gray belly bulged with the promise of more snow. It seemed like it had been snowing for a month straight. I was loath to admit that Uncle was right: I’d suffer the consequences of today’s activities later this evening. “Anyway, my fitting is in twenty minutes, which gives us plenty of time to—”
A man in a dark brown cutaway coat and matching bowler hat jumped aside as a bucket of waste splashed onto the street from the tenement window above, narrowly escaping a most unpleasant bath. He crashed directly into me, knocking my cane to the ground along with what appeared to be a medical satchel filled with familiar tools. Forgetting about his bag, he held fast to my arm, preventing me from tumbling onto our items and potentially getting impaled on anything sharp.
While I steadied myself, I eyed a rather large bone saw peeking out from where it had come undone in his bag. There was also what appeared to be an architectural drawing. Perhaps he was a doctor building his own medical offices.
After he made sure I wasn’t in danger of falling, he let me go and quickly snatched up his satchel, stuffing the medical tools back in and rolling the drawing back up.
“Apologies, miss! M-my name is Henry. I didn’t mean to—I really should learn to watch where I’m going. I’ve got my mind full of a million things today.”
“Yes. You should.” Liza swiped my cane from the ground and gave the man a scowl Aunt Amelia would be proud of. “If you’ll excuse us, we must be on our way.” The man turned his attention to my cousin and snapped his mouth shut, though I couldn’t be sure if that was due to her beauty or her temper. She openly scrutinized him while he seemed to collect his thoughts. “If you’ll pardon us, Mr.
Henry,” she said, latching onto my arm once more and tossing her caramel-haired head back in a most haughty manner, “we’re late for a very important appointment.”
“I didn’t intend—”
Liza didn’t wait to hear about his intentions; she led us through the maze of butchers and vendors, her pale sage skirts and parasol in one hand, and me in the other. We were moving at a pace much too difficult for me to manage when I finally wriggled free of her grasp and steered her off West Street.
“What in the name of the queen was that about?” I asked, indicating the man we’d practically run from. “He didn’t intend to bump into me, you know. And I believe he was quite taken with you. If you weren’t so abysmally rude, we
could’ve invited him to the party. Weren’t you saying just yesterday that you wished to find someone to flirt with?”
“Yes. I did.”
“And yet… he was polite, a bit clumsy, but harmless and seemed to have a sweet temperament. Not to mention, he wasn’t unpleasant to look at. Don’t you enjoy a man with dark features?”
Liza rolled her eyes. “Fine. If you must know, Henry is too close to Harry and I’m quite through with men whose names begin with the letter H for a while.”
“That’s absurd.”
“So is walking through a butchers’ alley in January in a pale dress, yet do you see me complaining, dear cousin?” I raised my brows. “Well, I can’t help it!” she cried. “You know how nervous I am to see Mother again, especially after I very briefly ran off and joined the carnival.”
At the mention of the Moonlight Carnival we both grew quiet for a moment, silently recalling all the magic, mischief, and mayhem it had brought into our lives in just nine days aboard the RMS Etruria. In that respect, the carnival certainly lived up to its show-bill claim. Despite the trouble it caused, I’d forever remain grateful for Mephistopheles and the lesson he’d taught me, intentional or not. By the end of that cursed voyage, any doubts I’d had about marrying Thomas disappeared like a magician casting an elaborate illusion.