Razors & Ruin (Rare Horrors #1)

Chapter 29

29

Sweeney

D inner is a fucking triumph .

The place is heaving, to the extent that Nellie has to turf people out when they’re finished, and a queue forms despite the cold night.

I’m surprised at myself as I watch my woman go about her business. She’s prim and neat in her high-necked dress, her dark waves pinned beneath a lacy cap, eyelashes casting shadows on her cheeks. Her lips are dusky, like frosted roses, and her mouth is animated as she works the room.

Of course, sir. Drop more ale? Oh, the Cotswolds, how charming! I love the seaside myself, the ocean air does a body good. How’s your wife keeping? More gravy? A slice of this, a dollop of that?

When Nellie realizes that hungry people are patient, she fires up the oven and keeps me running while she whips up another batch of pies. It’s against my nature to serve at tables, but I allow the hectoring voices and calls for attention to meld into a pleasing dirge.

All I want is her . My Nellie, with her lissom hips and warm, industrious hands. That mouth, those breasts, her yielding holes. The hardness of her character, the extraordinary courage of her scarred heart.

A treasure, she is. A diamond in the rough, an ancient hoard of gold buried deep in the dirt. Mine and mine alone, to use, abuse, and just maybe, adore until my dying day.

Tonight is the start of something that may come to mean everything to me. Nellie, the pie shop, my parlor—it’s all greater than the sum of its parts.

Home. I never had one nor sought one out. I am a man who was never anywhere willingly; I was always held captive, beset by deceit and misunderstanding.

Never before did I have a person like my treacle who understands me yet doesn’t use my nature to break me apart. She loves me too deeply and with an agonizing honesty that humbles whatever is left of my soul.

How arrogant I was to try and save the broken pieces for Johanna when Nellie holds them to her, sharp edges and all, and lets them cut her.

The ghosts of Veronica and my infant daughter no longer loom in my mind; already, they are coming apart like smoke. I cannot picture Veronica’s face now as anything but a frozen mask of pain; her smile is lost to me.

Johanna, too, that child of mine that I now remember I never even held in my arms. I don’t remember why not, but the image is there of her mother clutching her tight, beseeching me to leave them be.

How could I have forgotten that? What else lurks, too deep for me to dredge it up?

So much for my squandered past. My future is right here before me, resplendent in her success, splendid in her horrible acumen.

I swore I’d make an honest woman of her, but in truth, I could not make her any more loyal. The moon herself is not as committed to the tides as my Nellie is to her Mr. T.

Despite the thorns in my head when I think of Johanna’s name, I’m flush with relief, drifting out to sea and ready to drown.

I shake my head and return to the room as a man tugs my sleeve.

“Dash it all, wake up!” he says. “We’d like some more potatoes if you can spare a moment.”

Nellie looks tired but happy as the last customers bid her goodbye.

I close the door and lock up gratefully, glad of some peace at last, and I smile as Nellie heaves the groaning cash box onto the counter.

“This isn’t even all of it,” she says. “There are six bags under here. Six . Mostly coins, of course, but would you bloody credit it?”

“The credit is all yours , girl.” I stack plates on my arm. “But you’re going to need to hire a brat or two for this serving malarky. My constitution isn’t suited to the job.”

“You don’t say?” she chides. “You’ve had a face like a slapped arse all night. It was hilarious. You didn’t enjoy any of it?”

I thrust my hands into my pockets and adopt a mock sheepishness. “I can’t promise that I didn’t spit on anything.”

She glares at me. “Now. That is the kind of fuckery that will get us in trouble. Can’t have someone whining to The Beadle and getting him to come poking around.”

“I didn’t hock up in anyone’s dinner, I promise. Doesn’t mean I didn’t want to.”

“Good.” She points at the counter. “Be a lamb and get the rest up on the side. Those bags weigh a ton, and I’ve done myself in carrying all those bastard trays.”

I do as she asks and lift the cash bags onto the worktop. Beneath them, I see the newspaper I pinched from the boy outside.

It’s only a pamphlet, really, a few pages at the most, but the headline is like a sucker punch.

LORD WETHERBY SUICIDE! LONDON SOCIETY ROCKED!

“Jesus cunting fuck!” I cry. Nellie jumps at my fury, knocking over crockery as she darts behind a chair.

“What?” she says. “Calm down, dammit!”

“Calm down?” I brandish the paper at her. “He’s dead. Wetherby. Killed himself.”

“You have to be fucking joking.” Nellie emerges gingerly and approaches me as I scan the page, staying safely on the other side of the counter. “What does it say?”

“Lord Francis Wetherby was found hanged in his greenhouse today following the gruesome murder of his wife Beatrix only last night at the Regent’s Ball,” I read.

“Acquaintances believe Wetherby, a prominent member of the gentry, was involved in an unsavory business that may have brought about the death of Lady Wetherby.

Beadle Higgins, an old family friend, vociferously refuted these rumors and said he was deeply saddened by the news. He has pledged guardianship of the Wetherby’s son, Julian. We are told Beadle Higgins will duly be granted trusteeship of the Wetherby fortune and estate, as dictated by Wetherby in a legal codicil he drew up before he took his life.”

“The stuff they dredge up,” Nellie says. “How did they find this out so fast?”

I thought there’d be time enough to boil up my revenge. Ample opportunity for me to let it simmer, cook down, and reduce to a flavorful stock, but no. The mincing ponce took the easy road.

I could have got to Wetherby. With his fairweather friends treating him like a leper and the police no help, there were so many ways, even with his hatred and suspicion working against me.

Hell, I could have kept it simple and used Nellie to cozy up to him. Got him to pop by for his dinner and a very fucking close shave.

Wetherby may not have been directly responsible for Johanna’s death, but he was the symbol of her loss, the respectable face of a morally bankrupt undertow that flows through the city like raw sewerage.

I wanted to watch his dying pulse twitch beneath my blade.

Denied.

And the Beadle, the fucking bastard Beadle gets the spoils. Obviously, it’s another con of some kind, played for and got, but it boils my piss. How the other half live and die.

I ball up the paper and toss it into the oven, then reach into my inside pocket where the anonymous note about my daughter rests, snug and tight against my ribs.

I unfold it, taking in the words for the hundredth time, only to find it plucked from my fingers.

“Nellie, give it back.”

“This is done,” she says, holding the note close to the flames. Her skin pinks, a blister appearing on her knuckle as the paper chars at the edge, but she doesn’t seem to feel the pain.

“Johanna is dead. Wetherby, dead. The police have nothing; no one suspects us, and despite your incessant scheming, Currer Brook remains a ghost.”

She pulls her hand away and fans the letter to put it out. “Can’t you see? The universe moves for you, my love. Bend to it.”

Her words cleave my fury but do nothing to dim it. Instead, the effect is like Hercules cutting off the heads of the Hydra; for each snicked from the beast’s shoulders, two grow back.

My monster gains strength until I feel it straining beneath my skin, fangs bared, ready for the kill.

I reach her in one stride and snatch the letter from her hand, the other wrapping her throat. She draws a deep breath before I have a chance to cut her off, and she gives a victorious giggle as I exert pressure on her windpipe.

“I will turn this shithole city red, treacle,” I murmur. “I hope you have stamina enough to keep up because your bakehouse will run like a fucking river of carnage. You are right, you always were, and it’s about time I started enjoying myself.”

Nellie grins as I kiss her, her pulse rapid beneath my thumb, but it’s not until I commit the letter to the flames that it begins to slow down.

We watch the spiky writing blacken and merge, destroyed by a miniature version of the inferno waiting for us.