Chapter Five

Her feet weren’t blocks of ice anymore. Ankle boots the same color as—she lifted her voluminous skirts—her dress, now covered her feet. She noticed that underneath the pile of tulle, silk, and chiffon were more skirts made of… muslin, maybe? The one thing she wasn’t wearing, she was sure of it, was underwear. She felt really bare down there. What the hell?

Okay, it was time to do some investigating. She slunk past the grunting noises, covering the side of her face with her cupped hand so she wouldn’t witness anything she shouldn’t, and headed toward the mouth of the alley. Seeing two men wearing tall hats walk by, she stopped and ducked behind a stack of wooden crates. They laughed every time they bumped into each other. Drunk, she thought. She waited a few minutes, then set out again. She was about to reach the end of the alley when the raspy voice of a lifelong chain-smoker called out to her.

“Oi, China doll. C’mere! Do you speak the King’s English?”

She froze. Usually, she would have bristled at the racist slur, but she was already having one bizarre night and didn’t want to add to it. Also: she was Asian? Huh, that was new information she didn’t already know. She tried to picture herself in her mind’s eye but failed. This was not good. At least earlier, she had an inkling.

She pivoted on her heel, expecting to see a haggard old lady, so it surprised her to find a skinny blond woman who couldn’t be older than twenty-two. She wore a ragged, torn ballgown with a square neckline that showed off her ample breasts.

“Hey, quit gawking at my bubs!” The young woman waved her hand. “Do you speak English?”

“Of course I do,” she replied with an affronted sniff. Her voice sounded odd. It was high-pitched and had a British accent. “Where am I?”

The girl threw her head back and laughed. It was a grating, bitter sound—much too cynical for someone her age. “You’re in the gardens of a grand mansion in Mayfair.” Her gaze sharpened as her pretty face crumpled in a grimace. “Where else would you be, you twat? You’re in the armpit of London. Whitechapel!”

Whitechapel. A frisson of fear slithered down her spine like a snake. Why did the name ring a bell? What the hell was she doing in London, talking to a girl with a heavy cockney accent, and looked like she was two weeks away from dying of some Victorian-wasting-away disease, like consumption? She swallowed hard and discovered that her throat was as dry as sandpaper.

“Are you lost, China doll?” the blond harridan taunted. “What’cha do, fall out of a boat from China or somethin’? I reckon you’re not from around here.”

The girl was none too steady on her feet. If she had to guess, she would say the poor thing had been drinking all night and had done little in the way of eating solid. “I woke up and found myself curled up next to that mountain of rubbish over there.” Rubbish. She couldn’t remember ever using that word before.

The blonde narrowed her gaze as she continued her scrutiny. “You don’t seem stewed. Damn me, you don’t look like no lotus-eater, neither. You got a name, China doll?”

She said the first name that popped into her head. “Sue.”

“Soo?” The blonde shrugged. “Yeah, all right. Easy enough to say. My ma named me Violet at my birthin’.” Her face softened a bit as she continued to study Sue. “Did you get lost on your way to the ball? That gown of yours could fetch a mint. That ain’t no hand-me-down, damn my eyes.”

Sue shook her head. If this were a dream, it was the most realistic dream she’d ever had. The smells that assailed her nostrils were that of human ugliness and misery, which permeated her surroundings. The bitter cold that enveloped her torso felt like a hair-shirt of icicles. Dread hung in the air and clung to her skin like humidity. In her core, she wanted to curl back up into her ball and cry. What the hell was she doing here, and what the hell was going on?

“Have you got a place to stay tonight?” Violet demanded. “It’s colder than a queen’s cunt out here, and you’re like to freeze yourself to death afore morning comes.”

To Sue’s surprise, Violet extended her hand to her and jerked her head sideways, indicating that Sue should go with her. Contemplating a night of freezing to death, getting raped by drunks, or eaten by giant mutant rats, she clasped the young woman’s hand encased in old brown gloves made of rough wool. Violet hauled her in, and Sue stumbled forward, struggling to regain her balance.

“Where are your gloves, you daft git? Your mitts must be freezing. Stick them under your arms.” She brought Sue’s hand closer to her face. “Your rings, are they actual gold?”

She gasped and yanked her hand back. She didn’t even realize she was wearing jewelry. Looking at her fingers, she marveled at the beautiful rings that decorated each of them, all gold with some kind of gem. She had never seen these rings before. Were they really hers?

“I’m not sure.” Shoot, she didn’t know this girl. If she admitted the rings were genuine—she had a feeling they were—Violet could stab and rob her and maybe leave her to get eaten by rats. “I really don’t know.”

“You don’t know nothin’, do you?” her newfound friend sneered, giving her a soft tap in the back of the head. “Must have coshed that noggin of yours and scrambled your wits. Happened to my cousin Angus. He got a brick dropped on his head last year and now has to wear nappies, and his wife gotta feed him like a wee bairn.”

She touched her own head to make sure it was still there and nodded. She could remember a semblance of life before waking up in a dirty alley in Whitechapel, but the harder she tried to recall anything, the fuzzier her memories got. Delayed reaction to shock, no doubt. She probably had a concussion. What the hell had she been doing before she got dumped in a dark alley?

“You’re probably hungry, too, from the looks of you,” remarked her new friend, as she surveyed Sue once more. “Come on, lass, you can stay with us tonight. Mrs. Hicks don’t like me taking home strays, so I’m bound to get an earful again, but she might like your mug. You’re an odd-looking bird.”

With Violet cradling her elbow, she took a few more wary steps until she was out on the road. Lighting the street were what appeared to be gas lamps on poles, but with the fog’s denseness that surrounded the area like a thick roll of gauze, the weak yellow lights weren’t much help. Sue couldn’t see more than a foot in front of her. She hoped Violet knew where she was going.

Her mind whispered a new name: Jack the Ripper. But Sue couldn’t make sense of it. Somehow, her mind equated it with all this fog and murky darkness of a frigid, unforgiving London night. She knew that name, but she couldn’t connect it to anything else. She pressed her fingers to her closed eyes and stumbled.

“Clumsy tart,” hissed her companion, hauling her back up. “Pull yourself together, will you? The bawdyhouse is just two more blocks down.”

She persevered. She had no choice. She was literally heading into the unknown. She didn’t know where she was going and couldn’t see her way there. She had no frame of reference from which she could build a theory about what was happening to her. Who was she? Where did she come from? Why did she feel a sense of wrongness? She felt like she woke up in the middle of a nightmare within a dream and couldn’t find a way out.

And she was tired of being cold. The frigid temperature was causing her bones and joints to ache. Her gown offered a little protection, but her ass was freezing, and she could barely feel her face now. Why would she wear such a ridiculous thing? The sleeve was entirely made of lace, and the skirt was just a big poof of satin, tulle, and chiffon. She was not at all geared for a dreadful, frigid London evening.

She wrinkled her nose at the combined smell of manure and rotten fish. Clutching Violet’s skinny arm, she used her free hand to cover the lower half of her face to protect herself from the cold and the stink. But the stench hung in the air as thick as spider webs, and she couldn’t breathe too deeply without gagging.

“How much further?” Sue managed through her dry lips. It felt like they’d been walking forever. It was a good thing this girl—hopefully—knew where she was going. She was a lifesaver.

“Quit yer whining,” Violet said in a fierce whisper. She put an arm out to stop Sue and brought a finger to her lips as a signal for her to shut her mouth. She produced a scarf seemingly out of nowhere and gestured Sue to put it over her head.

Sue froze when she heard raucous male laughter, followed by a litany of curses and lecherous ramblings about needing a woman and what they would do to her if they found one.