Ripped (15 page)

“But wait-ho, Katherine! Why
are
you here tonight? I mean, why exactly? Do you want me to spirit you away like the heroine of one of those romance novels you young ladies are so fond of? A page out of Mrs. Radcliffe's book, eh?
The Mysteries of Udolpho?
Is that it? The Duke told us you were here to find a titled husband. Don't misunderstand, Katherine. I find you very attractive, I do. Who wouldn't? A fellow would be lucky to have half as pretty a wife—if a somewhat less sharp-tongued one. Hell's bells, I've half a mind to cry quits with Prudence this instant! Give her my compliments, tell her I'm not good enough for her. She'll get over me, eh? So let's have a kiss on it, shall we? Dive into the courtship waters, and see if we want to come up for air?”

Collin moved toward Katie with a jaunty swagger. He knelt down in front of her chair and for the briefest of moments their eyes locked: Katie's, in horrified disbelief; Collin's, in a lascivious rapture, especially when his gaze fell to her lips. He puckered up his own and leaned in for the all-important, seal-the-deal kiss.

“Are you nuts?” Katie leaped out of her chair. “Jeez, Collin! I wouldn't kiss you if you were the last man on earth! Ugh! It would be like kissing . . . my grandfather!”

Collin froze. Baffled, he opened his mouth to speak, but managed only to sputter out a sound between a squawk and a squeal.

“
G-grandfather
!”
he finally roared. “As bad as all that?”

His lips were no longer puckered, but pinched in a sour-lemon expression. “Good Lord, Katherine, no need to be so inflexibly honest. Less candor and a simple ‘no, thank you' ought to have sufficed, oughtn't it?” Collin awkwardly stood up. “I am not unaware that young ladies don't usually go in for redheaded blokes . . . but a chap doesn't want to hear he's no prize in the connubial bullring. Henry the Eighth was a bleedin' redhead, and he had six wives.”

“It isn't that,” Katie assured him.

“You can take your feminine favors and go to the devil for all I care!” A bitterness almost beyond description passed over Collin's freckled face. “You're all the same, you and your ilk! One Jenny-Jump-Up is just like another. That's what the Duke says. I'm a blundering fool. A dunderhead!”

With a stab of guilt at having wounded his pride, Katie reached out her hand but drew back at the sound of something scraping just outside the windows. She swung around and listened. It was louder now. A clumping, thudding noise of footfalls approaching along the roof, then a faint tapping as of fingers on glass.

“Quick!” Collin cried. “It's Toby. He mustn't find you here! You've got to go. Now.”

“No!” Katie sputtered. “I need to talk to Toby.”

The desperate, pleading look Collin shot her tugged at her emotions. She needed to ask Toby about the dead girl in the morgue, but Collin's face looked so pained, almost scared, that she nodded and hurried in the direction where he was frantically pointing.

“In there! Yes, there. Hide!” He jabbed his finger repeatedly at a small, arched doorway on the far side of the four-poster bed. “And stay put!” he hissed.

Why? Why hide?
Katie wondered as she scooted through the narrow opening into a small alcove just a few feet below the level of Collin's bedroom. The space would be a bathroom in the next century.

Half hidden from sight now, she watched Collin spring to the far window. Throwing open the velvet drapes, he unhooked the bolt. A moment later the window leading out onto the shingled roof was flung open. First one black boot sidled over the sill. Then the rest of Toby's dark figure emerged.

Looking like the Grim Reaper, Toby stamped his feet and closed the window with a hollow slam, which billowed the tasseled curtains on either side. “I can stay only a minute,” came his deep voice from beneath a hooded cloak as he strode across the room and spread his hands to the fire.

In the silence that followed, Katie glanced back over her shoulder and scanned the future bathroom. Instead of a white porcelain sink, bathtub, and linen closet that ran the length of the opposite wall, the small room was made up as a sort of artist's garret with canvases, jars of paint, pots of glue, and charcoal drawings filling every available space. Dozens of caricatures—beady-eyed politicians, crooked-nosed bandits, sour-faced schoolmasters—stared out at Katie from thick sheets of paper tacked to the walls.

Hanging from the window wall were five familiar faces painted in whimsical colors: Katie's own, Major Brown's, the Reverend Pinker's, Queen Victoria's, and Napoleon Bonaparte's, all with cartoon features.

Katie turned and quietly moved down the steps for a closer look. Candles burning in a line across the windowsill threw flickering light onto the exaggerated faces, which rose in humorous parody above long necks attached to animal torsos. Katie's own grinning likeness was joined to a pink caterpillar body. And despite the over-arched brows and four-inch eyelashes, her eyes had a softness and appeal to them which made Katie smile.

Next to Katie's comical face, the Reverend Pinker's horsy one looked almost three-dimensional, with one eye partly shut and the other peering out from saucer-sized spectacles. Major Brown's caricature looked like a vicious Rottweiler with a cringing, sinister leer.

In the corner, clamped to a wooden easel was a large canvas half-covered with a splattered drop cloth. Katie stepped closer and flipped up the cloth. The canvas beneath showed the beginnings of a portrait of Lady Beatrix, the right side of her face drawn only in pencil, the left side outlined in colored chalk. But it was definitely the soon-to-be oil painting of Beatrix that would hang in Katie's room back home in the twenty-first century. Had Katie never set eyes on Beatrix's portrait to begin with, she would never have recognized her as one of the waxwork victims at Madamn Tussauds. And
never
would have wished herself back into the past, hoping to catch Jack the Ripper.

Katie swiveled sideways and her foot kicked against a metal waste bin with a chalkboard balanced on top. Chalk, eraser, and slate clattered to the floor, and the wastebasket rolled noisily.

Footsteps.

“
Ahem
!”
Katie heard Collin clearing his throat just outside the door. “You see—
h
'
mf
—confound it, Toby, I've . . . er . . . got . . . a . . . visitor!”

“Bloody hell! What are
you
doing here?” Toby glared from the top of the stair risers at Katie as she scrambled to right the chalkboard and dustbin. “What the devil's going on?” he thundered.

Collin raised his hands in a “don't shoot” gesture. “It wasn't me, I swear!” he yelped. “I didn't lure her here. I thought she wanted to be my . . . um . . . carving knife. But I was wrong. Don't give me that look, Toby. She's daft! Bats in the belfry! A bun short of a dozen, I swear it!”

“Is that like a french fry short of a Happy Meal?” Katie blurted out, momentarily forgetting what century she was in.

“What?” Both boys gaped at her.

Katie shook her head. “Never mind. What's a carving knife?”

“Wife,” Collin said, glancing sheepishly down at his feet.

Toby exploded down the steps, his dark boots stomping like Darth Vader's—which, like McDonald's, was an icon far in the future. “I don't care if you're as daft as a barn owl, Miss Lennox. Answer me this,” he demanded. “How is it that you are acquainted with Mary Ann Nichols?”

“
Are
acquainted?” Kate shot back, stalling for time. Did that mean Mary Ann Nichols was still alive? Jack the Ripper hadn't struck yet?

“Cor blimey, answer the question!”

“I
told
you,” Collin yelped, “all her teacups aren't in the upstairs cupboard.” Collin tapped his temples to indicate that Katie didn't have all her marbles.

“Let me repeat the question,” Toby said slowly, enunciating each word as if talking to a small child.
“
How do you know Miss Mary Ann Nichols?
”

“I don't.”

“How
did
you know her?”

“I didn't.”

“After the play this evening, you asked me—no, begged me—to find out if the murdered girl at the morgue was Mary Ann Nichols.” The urgency in Toby's voice was growing.

“Mary Ann who?” Collin chimed in.

“Is she the murdered girl?” Katie asked, trying to keep her voice casual.

“You tell me.”

“I wasn't at the mortuary,” Katie countered.

“What do you know
of
her?” Toby lowered his voice and it had a razor sharp edge to it.

Katie's heart thudded. Her mind raced. What should she say? What
could
she say?
Well, Toby, it
'
s like this: I know all about Mary Ann Nichols because I went to a Jack the Ripper exhibit at Madame Tussauds more than a hundred years from now!

“Collin?” Katie spun around. “Did you do these drawings? They're really, really good,” Katie choked out, as if she'd never seen such incredible caricatures before.

“You think so?” Collin's face brightened.

“Absolutely. They're fabulous. And that portrait of Lady Beatrix?”

“That's not mine. I'm hiding it for Beatrix. She's sitting for an American chappie named Whistler. Do you know him? James Whistler? It's a surprise for the Duke's seventy-fifth birthday.”

“Whistler?” Katie gasped. “
Whistler
is painting Beatrix's portrait? That exact one?” she pointed. “Wow. He didn't sign it! Er . . . I mean . . . um . . . he
hasn
'
t
signed it yet. And, well, anyway, your work is every bit as good as his,” Katie lied. If Whistler had painted the portrait of Beatrix hanging in Katie's room, then it was worth a fortune. And it had been sitting in Grandma Cleaves's attic collecting dust for who knows how many years!

Toby eyed Katie with chilling hostility.

Collin grinned. “Mr. Whistler says I've got to study anatomical drawings of muscle and tendons, the whole musculature, like Leonardo da Vinci's
Vitruvian Man.
I'm good with heads, but can't seem to manage bod—”

“Enough!” Toby bellowed. “I want answers, Miss Lennox, or I'll march you down to the Bow Street station myself. Better yet, I'll go fetch Major Brown and bring him here.”

“You'd best answer him, Katie.” Collin nodded vigorously. “Major Brown is a rotter, make no mistake. By gad, you don't want to be dragooned by the likes of him. There's nothing to fear from us. I'll see no harm comes to you. Tell us about this Nichols girl. Let's have no more prevaricating.” Collin had pitched his voice low to sound firm, but it came out more querulous than convincing. “Well?” he insisted. “Tell us what you know this instant!”

When she'd avoided Toby's fierce gaze for as long as she could, Katie raised her chin and announced, “I didn't know Mary Ann. I never met her. Never spoke to her. But I was fairly certain that she was going to be murdered.”

“Why didn't you tell me this earlier? Or report it to the authorities?” Toby flung at her. His cape was muddy, and the bowler hat that had been jammed on the back of his head at the theater was missing. Locks of dark hair hung down around his shoulders. “Well?” He drove a gloved fist into his palm, and then, as if with sudden inspiration, he let himself smile.

Drawing off his muddy gloves, Toby reached inside his cloak and drew out a pocket watch. “It is now twenty-five minutes past two. You have precisely five minutes to elaborate in regards to how you could possibly know Mary Ann Nichols would be murdered. I suggest frankness, Miss Katherine. And if I am not satisfied by your account”—his smile grew tighter—“I assure you, I shall wring your neck and beat you to a bloody pulp,
and then
I shall march you down to the Bow Street Police Station.”

“Wait, ho! See here!” squealed Collin, jabbing his finger in the air. “You mustn't talk to Katherine like that. This won't do, Toby. Won't do at all. I know the Governor set you the task of watching over me so I don't get into any more foolish . . . er . . . scrapes. But dash it all, it is now I who will have to rein
you
in, old chap. Make sure you don't make a hash of things. Threatening to beat a young lady to a bloody pulp, indeed! Can't have that, Toby. You'll have to apologize. By Jove, I don't care if Katherine slit this poor girl's throat or a dozen like her. I can't allow you to threaten a guest under the Twyford roof, particularly one who
happens
to be the Duke's goddaughter.”

“And I don't care if she's God's own lamb to the slaughter. She's got three minutes.” The candles burning in a line across the windowsill threw undulating tongue-flames upward into the raftered ceiling.

“Okay,” Katie said, trying to sound bold. “I'll tell you everything I know. But I guarantee you will
not
believe a word of it.”

“Two minutes, forty-one seconds.” Toby's big shoulders grew rigid as his eyes narrowed.

“First,” Katie said, holding up her hand, “you have to swear that what I'm going to tell you stays between the three of us. Just us. Promise?”

“No. You want a jellied eel, you'll have to talk to the magistrate.”

“Jellied—?”

“
Deal
!
” Collin said in a stage whisper.

“Then my lips are sealed,” Katie said. “No jellied eel, no deal.”

Collin let out a sound resembling, “
Ugggh
!
” then leaned over, cupped his hand to his mouth and whispered in Katie's ear: “You just said, ‘No deal, no deal.'”