She took off, running.
JESS skidded down the kitchen stairs, full tilt, in her stocking feet. The treads were worn smooth from servants trotting up and down. Hold on. Grab the railing. Hurry.
The big cavern of the kitchen was lit like a stage. Whitewashed walls blazed under the bright lamps. In a single glance, Jess took in the gray flagstone floor, copper pots boiling on the stove, blue-and-white crockery, long, brown wood tables with a white landscape of flour.
At the back door, Eunice faced a beefy, red-faced beast of a man, bellowing and drunk.
The cook and two kitchenmaids huddled in front of the fireplace. A girl in cheap red satin cowered on the floor, bawling her head off. There were no footmen down here. Nobody to help Eunice. The place was full of terrified, shrieking women.
“Gimme what’s mine!” He was unsteady on his feet. Savagely, brutally half-witted with drink. Only a born fool would walk into this house and threaten this woman. “I been good to her. Girl belongs ter me.”
Eunice was alone, confronting twenty stone of drunken brutality. Her body said, You don’t get past me. Said, You can’t have her. Just by standing there, she said it.
I didn’t realize how small she is. How old. She has bones like a bird.
“. . . sticking yer nose inter me business . . .” He raised a clenched fist.
He’s going to hit her. He’s drunk enough to hit her.
Stupid, stupid, stupid to touch Eunice—somebody Lazarus protected. Stupid to invade the West End to retrieve a girl. Drunk and stupid as dirt.
Jess rounded the bottom of the stairs. She yelled, “Look at me! Hey! You! Dogface. Look at me, you bloody pig!”
He didn’t hear. He wouldn’t hear if she shouted it up his nose. Mindless drunk. He’d batter right through Eunice to get what he wanted.
“. . . wring your neck. Yer got no rights to what’s mine . . .” Staggering, he drew back, prepared to swing.
The cook and the maids screeched like parrots. Why isn’t Quentin here?
Pots bubbled on the stove, giving off steam and the smell of onions and chicken. She grabbed a big one by the handle, using both hands to pick it up. Heavy as hell. Sloshed all over the floor. Soup. Something full of vegetables, anyway.
The handle was hot. I’m gonna spill it on my bloody feet. Soup splashed over the edge. Too hot to hold. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts—Past Eunice. Don’t slop it on Eunice, for God’s sake.
She swung the pot and sent an eruption of lumpy, hot soup into the drunk’s face.
He howled like a banshee and clawed at his eyes.
I need—What? What? To the side, by the door, shawls and coats hung. She grabbed a big black cloak off the hook and threw it over his head. He doubled over, yowling, and plunged across the kitchen, charging from side to side like an enraged bull. He crashed into the table. Dishes skittered and toppled to the flagstones, shattering.
“Run, for God’s sake.”
The kitchenmaids did. The girl who was the cause of all this sat with her arse glued to the floor, mewling like a cat, while Eunice struggled to pull her to her feet.
God save me from fools. “Get her the bloody hell upstairs. ”
The pimp fought free from the cloak. He came out roaring like a fiend, brick red, dripping vegetables. The swollen, half-blind eyes were holes of madness. He shook his head and saw her . . .
Never hurt a man, Lazarus used to say. Kill him or run. Never just hurt him.
He charged. She had no chance to run or dodge. Eunice was still behind her. She needed something to fight with. Anything. Her hand found a big pitcher on the table. She heaved it at him and hit him square on the nose.
He didn’t even wince. He just kept coming.
Twelve
ROUGH HANDS GRABBED FROM BEHIND AND pushed her out of the way. Cold panic drenched her. She started to hit out.
The next instant, she knew. She knew the size and shape and the brusque sureness before she had a good look at him. It was the Captain. She’d never been gladder to see anybody.
He put himself between her and all that mad rage. He stood between her and the vitriol dribbling through those thick, blistered lips.
“. . . sodding bitch . . .”
“Out.” The Captain cut through curses like a knife. He knocked aside the fist aimed at her, grabbed the upraised arm, and twisted it backwards. “Out of my house.”
The table shuddered as men knocked against it. Plates and bowls crashed. A howl trumpeted from the drunk as Sebastian’s knee connected with his groin. He bent over, gasping and bleating.
The Captain gripped the man by his leather coat and spun him around and sent him stumbling out the kitchen door. He fell, sprawled on the sharp corners of the entryway steps.
A last housemaid, ducking and bobbing in the shelter of the pantry, shrieked like a whistle. The drunk groaned and hugged the bricks. When the Captain followed him outside, he frantically crawled his way up the stairs on his belly, yowling. Before he got to the top, Kennett picked him up by the scruff of his neck and tossed him bodily onward, down the path, to land flat on his face on gravel.
“I didn’t do nuffin’. I didn’t do—”
The Captain hauled him up. “If I ever see you . . .” The Captain slammed his fist into the man’s ribs. “. . . near my house. If I see you . . .” He took the jerking, spasming body by the throat and shook him like a dog shakes a rat. “. . . near my family. If I see you near any woman in my household. If I pass you on the street . . .” He held the figure upright and punched a final, short jab. “I will kill you.”
This wasn’t a fight. This was Kennett punishing a man. He threw the bloke away like offal and turned his back on him. He didn’t even bother to watch as, shambling and weaving and crying, the man staggered forward and fell against the back gate and fumbled it open and fled.
She’d followed the fight out of the kitchen, up the areaway stairs, just to see if the Captain ended up twisting anybody’s head off. Always better to know what was happening than to try to figure it out later. In the garden, she laced her fingers into the iron railing and held on, taking it all in.
Behind her, in the kitchen, sobs receded in stages. Eunice was finally getting that damn, damp parcel of misery upstairs.
When he was through with the pimp, the Captain came up to her and stood, looking past her.
A pair of footmen jostled up against each other, trying to get out the back door and into the garden. The footmen in this house were wiry and muscular old sailors. These two would have been helpful a few minutes back.
“Where have you been?” But the Captain didn’t wait for excuses. He dressed these fellows down with a few dozen choice words and sent them slinking back to the kitchen. Pure ship’s captain, he was, doing that. All he lacked was flapping sailcloth in the background and a wide open sea.
Then he turned his attention to her.
She told him what he wanted to know, first off. “He didn’t touch Eunice. Not a hair on her head.”
“I saw.” He walked towards her. “He got within ames ace of knocking the hell out of you, though.”
“Didn’t he just.” She pulled back against the railing and made space for him to walk past. She was giving her attention to the knotty problem of whether she should sit down, careful, on the stairs till she got over being dizzy or if she should shortcut the process and just collapse in a heap.
The Captain surprised her with a gentle hold that kept her upright. “Here we go. That’s right.” The garden, green and brown and gray in the dusk, swam by as he guided her along for ten or twelve steps, across the garden, walking on the grass, till they got to the bench at the side. “I’ve got you.” His voice slicked along her nerves like a warm touch. Then she was sitting on the bench and he was next to her.