Fearless (Scarlet Suffragette, Book 1): A Victorian Historical Romantic Suspense Series (35 page)

“God have mercy,” I whispered quietly, the prayer drowned out by a loud crack and the sound of the stage collapsing. I glanced over my shoulder, but I could not see Entrican, only an approaching dust cloud announcing the arrival of reinforcements from the police station.

Order would be returned soon, but not before more people were injured. I saw a man go down not more than three feet away. Blood gushing from an open wound on the side of his face. Another swung a bottle towards the head of an already staggering gentleman, dressed in fine clothes and clutching a top hat. The glass shattered. The top hat rolled towards my feet. I looked down at it, and then back up at where the owner had been. But a mass of bodies had already consumed him. Alive or dead, I did not know.

“Cassidy!” Drummond shouted. “Pull it together, woman!”

I jumped again at Drummond’s gruff command, realising I was falling behind. But it took little effort to catch up to him. Every turn he made, he came up against a seething mob of people. Glass breaking. Cries of pain sounding out. Blood splattering starkly in the softening light. The mass of rioters moved and swayed, as though alive.

There was no way out.

I scanned the crowd again for Inspector Kelly. I would have gladly settled for Constable Mackey, as well. But all I could see were angry faces and hard bodies and chaos. I clung to the back of Drummond’s long coat, allowing him to offer a buffer. But even sheltered as I was behind his large frame, I was constantly rocked into and knocked aside.

I feared for Wilhelmina; so fragile in Drummond’s hold. But salvation came in a firm and determined shout, in tones I’d long become familiar with.

“Over here!” Mrs Poynton called, somehow her voice carrying over the melee. “I’ve found an alley!”

Thank the heavens for the Suffragettes. Of course Ethel would be here.

I followed behind, keeping my head down and my shoulders hunched, and my hand fisted in Drummond’s jacket. The alleyway was one that led to Fort Street, I realised, and the welcome shelter of the Imperial Hotel. It could not come soon enough, to my mind.

Sounds disappeared as soon as we rounded the corner of the last building, as though a veil had been lowered over this part of downtown Auckland, shutting out the chaos and mayhem, bringing only the cool sanctuary of silence.

Relief was a tangible thing.

Drummond staggered slightly under the weight of Mina, or perhaps he’d received a knock to the knee. I didn’t offer comment. The darkness engulfed us and sounds became distorted; his harsh breath, the expiratory wheeze that accompanied it.

I hadn’t realised he had a lung disease, but considering his penchant for alcohol and tobacco, I was not overly surprised in the least.

Halfway up the lane he halted, sucking in air as though he might be drowning. For a brief moment, I pitied him, but then he lowered Mina to the dirt covered ground.

“Is she too heavy?” I enquired, looking back over my shoulder to determine if we had been followed. Thankfully the mob had remained near the stage, and were even now being rounded up by the police, and, no doubt, Inspector Kelly.

“She weighs but a trifle,” Drummond gruffly replied between laboured breathing. “A small wisp of a thing.”

“Yes, she doesn’t eat nearly enough,” I agreed, not wanting to draw attention to his own ailments. Avoiding eye contact, I crouched down by my cousin to check her vitals. Now out of the chaos and recovering from the shock, I felt more sure of myself, and took over her care without having to be told or growled at.

“You did us a great service, sir,” I forced myself to say, checking Mina’s head and lifting an eyelid to gauge her pupillary reaction.

Drummond made a sound over my shoulder, as if to answer. And then nothing but the thud of something large hitting dirt.

I spun around, my fists clenching, already wishing I hadn’t lost my parasol.

“Doctor?” I said on a shock of exhaled air, as I stared at him swaying on his knees before me. Blood trickled down from under his hairline, his hat askew, his lips parted, a paleness to his features that hadn’t been there only moments prior when he’d laboured for his next breath. “What on earth…?” I began, only to watch Ethel step forward, a bloody umbrella in her hand.

“What are you doing?” I exclaimed, rather harshly, and made to move to Drummond’s side and offer aid. He’d slumped against the brick wall, by now, his breaths hitched, his sight glazed. His eyes locked, though, on Ethel Poynton.

“
Why, love? Why?
” he said in a soft groan that halted everything.

The world slowed down; the alleyway, the shadows as they moved, the sounds from the distant riot. But not my heartbeat. Not the swell of sudden horror.

I scrambled back towards Mina as Ethel dusted off the parasol, and then leaned it casually to her side, well out of reach of the doctor.

“You’d be a hindrance, love,” she said to Drummond, but her voice was different. Harder, if that were at all possible. Colder. A hollow representation of the upright woman I knew and had only just heard speaking. “Hush now,” she ordered, “while I get to work. Your part will come much later.”

“Mrs Poynton?” I whispered, not daring to believe what was happening. “What are you doing?” I repeated, but this time my words lacked conviction.

A look of chilled indifference came my way and then, without warning, her arm arced through the air, and the back of her hand landed upon my cheek.

I gasped out a sound more scream than moan, and fell to my knees, my shocked gaze locking with Drummond’s. He looked as lost as I was feeling.

Ethel Poynton? It simply could not be!

Out of the corner of my eye, blurred though it was, I saw her shadow move. But by the time I’d recovered, staggering upright, mud and muck covering my skirts and stockings, she held a knife to Wilhelmina’s throat. To my dearest cousin.

“Stop this, Ethel,” Drummond ordered, but his words were faint and slightly slurred. I couldn’t spare him another glance. My attention all for Mrs Poynton and that knife, stark against the paleness of Mina’s skin.

This
was
happening. This was real. But still my mind revolted.

“
You?
” I said, disbelieving, saddened, and beyond fearful.

“Me,” she growled back, and then fisted Mina’s hair and tilted her head up, pressing the knife in hard enough to cause bleeding.

I watched as a crooked line of red danced down Mina’s throat, at a loss for what to do, what to say to end this. My heart fluttered ineffectually inside the cavity of my chest. Sweat beaded my brow. My mouth was so parched I couldn’t even swallow. A trembling had started in my limbs, my entire body quaking.

Faced with Mina’s death, I was certain there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it.

Fear like I had never known seeped into my very bones.

“Don’t hurt her,” I heard myself saying. Such simple words. Such pathetic pleading.

Ethel smiled. This woman I had thought I’d known. She flexed the wrist holding Mina’s hair, digging the blade in harder at my cousin’s throat, and making her sleeve fall back and reveal a ragged, still healing scratch the width of a fingernail.

Where else had Margaret marked her?

“You don’t get a say,
doctor
,” Mrs Poynton announced, and then the knife moved, and all I saw was scarlet.

Thirty

Out With It!

Anna

I threw myself towards them, a primal cry upon my lips. The alley turned into a blur of shadows and shapes and nothing else. A tunnel of sorts appeared before me, as I crossed the small space between us, my fingers set in claws, my lips in a snarl, my body a streamlined battering ram.

I collided with Ethel, knocking her sideways, my hands gripping her arms and tearing holes in the pagoda sleeve of her jacket. The force with which I threw myself sent us both reeling. Mina slumped down on the ground where we left her, as Ethel and I fought for control of her knife.

I couldn’t think of my cousin, of how she had fared. My sole focus was on the long thin blade Mrs Poynton held, and the fact that she could have more upon her person.

Ethel?
It still made so little sense. How had we got it so wrong?

The woman was strong, though. That much we’d assessed correctly. But epinephrine fuelled me, fear and worry urged me on, and anger like I had never known consumed my entire being.

How dare she? The leader of our local chapter. How could she kill her fellow Suffragettes? Women who trusted her. Who believed in her. Who would gladly follow her anywhere.

And, I guessed, that was the convenience, wasn’t it? They made such easy targets.

The knife flew from her hand as I screamed my frustration and rage, clattering against stone and landing in a puddle of muck with a soft splash. I scrambled back from her, my gaze catching on the still form of Drummond - he’d be of little help - my chest heaving, my lungs working at capacity, sweat dripping down into my eyes. I brushed at the moisture, and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and then fumbled for my switchblade.

“Ho!” said Mrs Poynton. “Now, did your father teach you to wield that?”

“He taught me honour. Which is more than I can say for you,” I spat back. “What did
your
father teach you? Death?”

“But of course,” Ethel said in that hollow voice she’d used when first she arrived in the alley. “I was his precious one. I was his special one. I was the one no one suspected.”

I tilted my head to the side, taking in the way Ethel stood. Feet spread wide, hands raised as if for a pugilist’s battle. Not a lady, but something entirely different.

None of this made sense.

“What else did he teach you?” I asked softly, glancing toward Mina, judging the distance needed to get to her side.

“He was very good at what he did,” she murmured. “Very precise. My work would have pleased him.”

“The women you killed?” I blurted, so many questions inside my mind, making me less than eloquent.

“Those women?” She laughed a bark of sound that echoed in the quiet alley.

The reminder that I was alone - for all intents and purposes - with a murderer did not sit well. I glanced around the deserted space, then brought my eyes back to Mrs Poynton when she shifted. But it was only to lean against the wall; to better watch me.

“Sometimes a message is best served in blood,” she murmured.

I shook my head, unable to comprehend this monster. Someone who publicly stood for temperance and prohibition. Someone who fought for equality.

“A message?” I whispered incredulously. “You are mad.”

She bristled, a knife of her own appearing in her hand, this one serrated, with a hook on the end. The kind used in surgery to sever tendons and muscle, allowing access to more urgent injury deeper within the body. How many more did she have? How had she come by them?

I glanced down at Drummond.

“How do you know the chief surgeon?” I asked, my eyes back on the most dangerous person here.
Ethel
. I just couldn’t reconcile what I was seeing.

“Oh, I know him quite well, Miss Cassidy. It’s surprising what a man will tell you when his cock is thoroughly pleased.”

Oh, my Lord. She’d been his lover. And I suspected he hadn’t known a thing.

How wrong had I been on so many fronts? How wrong could one person be?

“So what is this message?” I asked, shifting a little closer to Wilhelmina. I was sure Ethel’s earlier blade to the throat had not done more damage, but I needed to confirm it. I needed to know I hadn’t brought my cousin’s death.

“You of all people should know the answer to that,” Ethel said. “It’s your fight too, is it not?”

A shocked gasp sounded out below me; I could have danced for joy at the sound. Mrs Poynton’s insinuation was nothing, in light of the fact that Wilhelmina still breathed our air.

“My fight?” I said, touching Mina’s shoulder to reassure her. The knife in my hand was steady, but the fingers that patted my cousin shook. “I did not wish for those women’s deaths.”

“Their deaths?” she barked. “Their deaths are merely a means to an end. For how can they ignore us now, when we are their victims?”

I let a slow breath of air out and stared at the woman I had watched corral a crowd and unite masses. This woman who led by example and displayed a level of dedication had that left me feeling ashamed. This woman who had worked tirelessly towards a franchise that meant a change for our world. Our society.

Who was she? How had she become this?

“You killed them,” I stressed pointedly, “for a cause.”

“I did what needed to be done!” she shouted. “But there were benefits.” The tone immediately polite. I narrowed my eyes, my mind whirring. One minute she was enraged; a bull about to charge. The next she was as quiet as a mouse.

A soft breath of air escaped me.

Double consciousness.
Dédoublement,
as it was called. Could it explain the letters? The fact that the writing appeared altered from one missive to the next. What else?