AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She did not have the capacity to reply. Her mouth tasted metallic, and she did not want to spit blood on the person who had just helped her. She found the culprit of the taste as she pressed her tongue to the wet interior of her cheek and touched upon a cut in the side, where she must have bitten down when she was hit.
He gave her a pat on the shoulder. “Ye best be on yer way before them constables get ‘ere. And get that dress fixed, eh? Don’t want folks thinkin’ bad of ye.”
She folded her arms across her chest, bashfully, to hide the rip. The leering spectators had likely seen more than they had bargained for, though she refused to focus on their faces and where they were directing their choice looks. She had been through enough today without adding utter mortification to it all.
“We aren’t finished here.” Her father grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her away from the gambling hall entrance. With her head still dizzy and throbbing, she found she had no strength in her arms to bat him away or wrestle free of his grip. Everything had turned strangely weak, a cold sweat creeping up the back of her neck as though she might faint at any moment.
She tripped and stumbled after him as he hauled her down the road, the way he had done when she was a child and had been caught misbehaving. Her cheeks were sticky with tears, and though she wheezed out protests, he did not loosen his hold on her. It remained, like a manacle, around her wrist.
Before reaching the familiar sight of Tower Bridge, her father pulled her away to the right, towing her along the street to the side of the river. A narrow alley cut a thin line between the imposing, red brick buildings. Her father shoved her bodily into the shadows therein. She looked for an escape, but the alley led to a dead-end. There was no way out of here, not unless she could gather the strength to fight her father with her fists as well as her words.
“Pa, I mean it. I’m not doing a thing for you anymore. I’m not giving up a penny of what I earn,” she rasped, leaning against the cold, damp bricks to hold herself up.
He took a step forward, menace on his wizened, blotched face. “You’ll do as you’re told, Rose.”
“No, I won’t.” Her voice trembled, her confidence falling far short of what she said. “I can’t do it any longer, Pa. You can’t keep drowning your sorrows in whiskey and brandy. Do you think I’m not sad? Do you think I don’t wish, every single day, that Ma was still here? But she’s not, Pa, and you need to learn how to live with that. I can’t keep giving you the money to forget.”
“Don’t you bring her into this,” her father spat.
“Why not? Isn’t that what all of this is about?” Rose choked on a sob. “You had everything, and though you had some issues, you were so close to remedying them. And then, we lost her, and you decided to give up. You gave up on me, Pa. You let me suffer. Youstilllet me suffer. Do you think that’s what she would have wanted? Do you think she’d be proud of you right now?”
Her father raised his hand to strike her. She closed her eyes, waiting for the blow to come. Perhaps, he would exhaust himself by beating her, and then she would find her opportunity to slip away.
Only, it did not come. Instead, a voice sliced through the dense darkness. “Let her go. This will be your only warning.”
Rose opened her eyes to find Lord Langston standing behind her father, his blade glinting at her father’s throat. Her father had gone rigid with fright, and a pungent scent of urine filled the stagnant air. Ordinarily, Rose might have pitied him, but she was fresh out of kindly emotion for her father.
“Who are y-you?” her father stammered, as she watched. She did not want to see that blade used on him, but she could not move or speak to dissuade Lord Langston to retreat. Perhaps, deep down, she knew there would be no real threat, for, above all things, her father was a coward. He ran from everything: grief, duty, honor, his daughter… Why not this, too?
“That is none of your concern,” Lord Langston replied. “Cease your threat upon her, and you will leave unscathed.”
Her father put up his hands in surrender. “I will go.”
“That might be the most sensible thing I have heard you say this evening.” Lord Langston took the blade away from her father’s throat, but he kept it raised as he stepped to one side to allow the older man to back out without harm.
As her father reached the entrance to the alley, he fixed Rose with a cold glare. “This is not over, Rose. You will pay for everything you have said and done, and you will pay for this gentleman’s interference. And it will cost you far more than the pittance I asked for, this night.”
What more can you take? You have already destroyed my life.She watched him scuttle away like a rat and knew, at that moment, that she could never go home again.
