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Her eyes adjusted to the light.
Tables. Lots of tables. Lots of people. Mounds of coins and valuables and cards and dice on the tables. Gambling in every corner. Women in bodice-popping corsets leaning over the men as they played. Several barmaids shuffling about with full drinks in their hands. And men. So many men. Some in sailors’ rags. Some in the finery she’d seen the gentlemen wear in Hyde Park. Most in the middling ground in-between the extremes.
Silence crept into the air about her, bit by bit, so slowly she didn’t even know it was happening until the room was suddenly still. Quiet. She looked about at the many men at the tables. Most, if not all, the eyes in the room were trained on her. Red-rimmed, drunken eyes. How late into the night was it?
“Well, well, what have we here?” An enormous man, tall and wide, came at her from the left, throwing his arm about her shoulders. Reeking in a slightly different way than the rest of the surroundings that sent her nose to twitch. “The new girls come in the back, little mouse, but this is a nice show for the chaps that be interested in yer goods.”
The man started forward, the clamp he had about her shoulders not giving her the option to resist moving with him as he maneuvered her through the many tables.
“We’ll just need to get ye upstairs and into proper clothin’ fer one of our girls. Madame Juliet will fix ye up right straight. Get some color on yer cheeks.”
It took Pen three full seconds to realize what he had just said. What he thought she was. And they were already three-quarters of the way across the room and headed straight toward the stairwell she could see at the back of the room.
She reached up and grabbed his hand clamped onto her upper arm, trying to peel away his meaty fingers from her body. “Sir, you don’t understand. I’m not here for—”
“What was that?” He leaned his ear down to her. The cacophony had refilled the room about them, and the many stares were firmly back on the tables.
She twisted harder on his fingers, sinking her shoulder down, trying to escape him.
He kept her captive—far too easily.
She looked up at him, raising her voice. “I’m not here for that. I’m here for Mr. Hoppler.”
“What? Hoppler?” He threw his head back and he laughed. “Sure, mouse, sure. All the ladies are, but ye have to work yer way up to him.”
He pushed her ahead of him into the stairwell, somehow managing to not break the hold he had on her. Up three steps and she couldn’t halt his pushing.
Her head flew back and forth as she tried to turn back to him. “No, you don’t understand.”
He kept moving her upward.
Desperate measures. She dropped, her knees landing hard on the stairs.
It stopped all progress.
For one second.
He slid his hands under her arms and lifted her as though she were a two-year-old child, and moved her up the rest of the stairs, turning the corner and tackling the next flight in short order.
Gasping for a breath against the panic fully taking a hold of her, she twisted in his grip, trying to find his face. “I’m here for Mr. Hoppler, good sir. Nothing more. I’m not a prostitute.”
“Nothing more? Not a prostitute? How are ye gonna see him, then?”
She tried to wedge her fingers onto his hands under her arms to no avail. “I need to see him.”
“Ye’ll see him after yer properly dressed.”
Dropping all reason and calm, her voice found the scream deep within. “No—I’m his sister. His sister and I need to see him.”
The brute stopped.
His fingers splayed wide as he gently set her onto the steps and he pulled away his hands from under her arms slowly, like he might crack her open if his fingers strayed too close to her body.
His voice dropped down a notch as his head bowed to her. “Apologies, miss. I didn’t know. I’ll bring ye to him right off.”
Air filled her lungs, not that she trusted the breath to stay with her long. “Thank you.”
“Follow me.”
