The Lady's Tutor (15 page)

“Hello!” The hollow echo of her voice ricocheted off the dingy gray
walls. “Are you there?”

There. There. There
raced up and down the hallway.

Determinedly, she stepped forward.

The door slammed back against the wall.

There was no stopping the scream that escaped Elizabeth’s mouth.

“What ye be doin’ here, missy?” A tall, balding man with a bulbous
red nose and matching eyes stood in the doorway. “Ain’t no fancy men in this
buildin’.”

Irritation rippled through her fear. First the Arab butler had
mistaken her for a woman of the night, and now this man.

She drew her shoulders back. “I am Mrs. Elizabeth Petre. The Women’s
Auxiliary meet here; I gave a speech and then I needed to . . .” The man did
not need to know that she had left the meeting to use the water closet, and
having used it, had gotten lost in the massive building on her return trip
because she could not stop thinking about a man she had no business thinking
about. “I seem to have taken a wrong turn. Would you be so good as to direct me
to the meeting room?”

“Meetin’s all done. Ain’t no one here ‘cept you an’ me.

“But—”

“An’ I knows what ye be after. What th’ likes o’ all o’ ye hussies
be after.”

Elizabeth realized that the man was stark, raving drunk.

“There are people waiting for me, sir. If you would be so good as
to direct me—”

Staggering, the tall, reed-thin man stepped forward. “I be th’
custodian o’ this place. Ain’t no one waitin’ fer ye. Tol’ ye there be no one
here save fer ye an’ me. If ye’re lookin’ fer a place t’ bring yer mutton
mongers think agin, missy, cause I got a shotgun an’ I ain’t afraid o’ killin’
th’ likes o’ ye.”

Elizabeth’s heart skipped a beat, galloped to catch up. She wound
the strings of her reticule around her fingers.

It contained paper, a pencil, a handkerchief, a coin purse, a
comb, her house key and a small mirror—nothing that would aid in her defense.

Panic was not a solution either. She took a deep breath to still
the pounding of her heart.

“I see.” Her hands inside the leather gloves were cold and clammy.
“Thank you for your trouble. I will find my own way back. Please accept my
apologies if I have inconvenienced you. Good evening.”

Slowly, slowly, she backed up, expecting at any moment for him to
reach behind him for his shotgun.

He swayed back and forth, watching her retreat, glaring bloodshot
daggers.

When Elizabeth rounded the bend in the corridor, she swirled
around and did not look back. Her heart hammered in time to her footsteps as
she ran what seemed like miles through the winding hallways in search of the
meeting room.

She was not alone.

Common sense told her that this was a respectable building filled
with business offices rented by businessmen who had no doubt long gone home for
their supper.

Logic failed.

She could sense hidden eyes, hostile eyes, and knew that behind
one of those doors lining the meandering hallway or around that bend,
somewhere,
someone was watching her.

Someone, perhaps, who
did have
a shotgun.
Or a knife.

The building directly adjoined the Thames. It would be a simple
matter to kill her, rob her, and drop her body into the icy, murky waters.

She would be dead and she would never know how a man’s toes could
be used to satisfy a woman.

Elizabeth gasped in relief when she spied the easel holding the
sign posting the designated room and hours of the Women’s Auxiliary meeting.

The double doors were closed . . . and locked.

Because she took so long to first find the lavatory and then to
find her way back, the women must have thought that Elizabeth had gone home . .
. and so they, too, had gone home.

As the custodian had known they had.

She twirled around, cloak billowing behind her; underneath it her
horsehair-stuffed bustle swung back and forth like a pendulum. The entrance was
just around the corner—

She wrenched open the water-stained front door. And gasped.

The fog was a wall of swirling yellow.

Elizabeth took a disbelieving step forward—and tottered on the
edge of a cobbled step.

“Will!” Please, God, let her coachman be nearby. “Will, can you
hear me?”

It was like shouting into a wet blanket.

Cautiously, she maneuvered the three steps that comprised the
stoop. “Will! Answer me!”

She turned her head to the left, to the right, jerked it back to
the left. Was that a horse whickering?

Slowly, she slid her feet along the sidewalk. “Will! Is that you?”

“Aye, Mrs. Petre, it be me.”

The coachman’s voice was so close, it could have come from
directly in front of her. Yet it was so muffled by the fog, it could also have
come from across the street.

“Where are you?”

A hand reached out and latched on to her right arm. “Here, ma’am.”

Elizabeth’s heart leapt into her throat.

Full comprehension of just how vulnerable she had been in that
building, with Will incapacitated by the fog, coursed through her. She had not
felt this degree of fear walking the streets before dawn and blackmailing her
way into the Bastard Sheikh’s home.

“Will.” She blindly grabbed the coachman’s gnarled hand; it was
reassuringly warm and solid through her kid gloves. “You should have come for
me when the fog started getting heavy.”

“It came all of a sudden like. One minute it just be fog—the next
it be like this. Can’t see my hand in front of my face.”

Yes, London fog happened like that sometimes. More often, the
peculiar phenomenon occurred in November, sometimes in December or January.
Elizabeth had never seen a night like this in February.

She peered in front of her, where she knew the coachman stood. He
remained hidden from her view.

Yellow fog had swallowed London and everything in it.

Elizabeth struggled to control her fear. “Have Tommie walk the
horses.”

“Can’t do that, ma’am. Tommie, he came down sick all sudden like
while ye was in the meetin’. Sent him home.”

The sensible thing would be to have Will secure the horses and the
two of them wait out the fog in relative comfort inside the building where the
Women’s Auxiliary meeting had been held.

It was suicide to travel with no groom to act as guide for the
fog-blinded coachman and horses. Men and women had been known to lose their way
on nights like this and drop into the Thames. Yet she could not go back inside
that building. Even on the off chance that she could find it.

The dense yellow mist stank of river water and the garbage that
spewed into it. Elizabeth’s stomach roiled with apprehension. She could not
drive a coach; therefore, “I will walk the horses.”

Will’s snort clearly penetrated the fog. “You, ma’am!”

“Would you rather I drove the carriage?” she rejoined sharply.

“Mayhaps we can go back into that building where the meetin’ was.”

Elizabeth shivered, remembering the feel of those eyes. “There is
only the custodian there, and he threatened to shoot me if I did not leave.”

“ ‘Ere now! Just let me get my gun and we’ll see who’ll be shootin’
who!”

Her fingers tightened around his hand. “I will take my chances
with the river, Will.”

“Aye, but if ye take a dip, the horses an’ carriage will too.”

A choked laugh escaped Elizabeth’s throat. “You’re not concerned about
your own life, Will?”
Or hers? she
wanted to ask.

“I swim like a fish. Good enough to save the both of us; couldn’t
do nothin’ ‘bout the horses though.”

Elizabeth refrained from pointing out that the coachman could not
save her from drowning if he could not find her. Aside from that, a woman’s
clothing was not designed for water sports—she would sink straight down. Nor
could he save himself if he could not see the riverbank.

She imagined icy water and foul sewage clogging her nose, filling
her lungs. She remembered the cockroach and the custodian and the watching,
waiting eyes.

“I am not going back into that building.”

“Aye.”

Warm fingers patted the backs of hers. Elizabeth reluctantly let
go of Will. Immediately, he guided her right hand to the horse’s head.

It started at her touch, as if it was as unused to humans as
Elizabeth was to animals. Will curved her fingers around hard leather.

“Stand to the side of old Bess here, ma’am, else she’ll walk over
you. Keep close to the walkway—when it ends, it means a thoroughfare; we can
count the number of streets and figure out wheres to make our turns.”

The comforting heat of Will’s body slipped away into total
obscurity. “Keep yer left hand out, ma’am—it’ll keep ye from knockin’ face into
a lamp pole and fallin’ on yer fanny.”

Elizabeth should rebuke the coachman for his impertinence. Perhaps
a week earlier she would have.

She squeezed her eyes shut.
A week earlier she would not have
asked a man if he was disgusted with a woman who wished to rut like the beasts
in a field.

The impact of wood and metal shuddered into life as Will climbed
up the side of the coach. The horse beside her whickered softly, stepped to the
side. A hoof plopped down dangerously close to Elizabeth’s foot.

Her eyes snapped open. “Remember your place, old Bess, and
I will endeavor to do the
same,” she whispered to the nervous horse.

Her arm was jerked up into the air. The harness jingled wildly
while Elizabeth fought to bring the horse’s head down.

“Ready, Mrs. Petre?”

She inhaled sulfuric coal smoke, the sustenance of yellow London
fog; it burned all the way down. “Ready, Will.”

A clicking sound shot over her head; the horse instantly sprang to
life, dragging Elizabeth with it.

It was like walking inside a foul-smelling, bitter-tasting cloud.
Her only link with reality was the bite of a leather harness, the animal heat
of the horse’s body, the cold, damp fog that swirled about her like a living
entity, and her own voice, calling out what she hoped were intersecting streets
and not dead-end alleys.

Elizabeth was too busy protecting her feet and her head to savor
the full complement of terror the situation warranted. After being stepped on
twice and running headfirst into a lamppost, she realized that the farther away
they got from the river, the less dense the fog became.

“Who—aa!”

She came to an abrupt halt, as if she and the horse were one. A
yellow ball of fire glowed on the side of the coach—the lantern, now visible.
Another yellow ball hovered over her head—a gas lamppost.

“Ye can git in the coach, Mrs. Petre. Me an’ old Bess an’ Gertrude
here can make it on our own now.”

Exhilaration anesthetized the sharp throb radiating from her
instep and the bump on her forehead.
She had done it, she who had never done
anything more hazardous than give speeches and take tea and issue sympathy; she
had led them safely out of danger. 
“Thank you, Will.”

Once inside the coach, the aftermath of terror washed over her.
She clamped her mouth shut to hold back a tide of nausea. And experienced a
totally ludicrous desire to tell the coachman to take her to the Bastard Sheikh
and a home where she could say whatever she wished.

The coach had no sooner pulled up in front of the Petre townhouse
than the carriage door flew open. Beadles beamed up into Elizabeth’s startled
face. “Welcome home, madam! Welcome home!”

Elizabeth was taken aback. The butler seemed genuinely glad to see
her. She allowed him to assist her down. “Thank you, Beadles.”

“Take care of that head, Mrs. Petre.” The gruff voice drifting
down from the coach was sympathetic. “It be a nasty bump you got there, I’m
thinkin’. Could hear the crack of yer skull agin that pole all the way up here
in the box.”

Hot color flooded Elizabeth’s face. She had not thought the
coachman had noticed her encounter with the lamppost. “Thank you, Will. I’m
sure it is nothing.”

Beadles followed her up the steps. “Mr. Petre is in the drawing
room, madam. He rang up the constable. He was afraid something had befallen
you.”

Elizabeth reached beneath her bonnet and gently probed the skin
under her hair—there was indeed a bump there. It was the size of a pigeon’s
egg. “Who was afraid that something had befallen me, Beadles—my husband or the
constable?”

Beadles pulled his shoulders back. “Mr. Petre, madam. Shall I ring
up the doctor?”

Elizabeth surprised herself with her response. “What do you think,
Beadles?”

The butler’s stiff shoulders relaxed into a semblance of normalcy.
“I should go with an ice pack, madam.”