she twisted her head from side to side in protest, but to no avail. He stuffed the loathsome cloth into her mouth until she was almost gagging.
“Don’t you look dainty?” He pinched her scarred cheek hard. With both feet, she aimed a kick at his exposed ankle. He yelped and backhanded her across the face.
“Stop that racket,” Sir Thaddeus barked. “I can hear someone on the outer stairs.” A knock sounded on the front door. Fixing his glare on Nellie, Sir Thaddeus muttered, “You’ll keep your mouth shut. One peep out of you and Kray sinks that knife into his gut.” He pointed at Julian.
Kray hunkered down next to Julian’s inert body and positioned his blade at Julian’s exposed stomach. Her mouth dry from fear and the noisome cloth, Nellie could only nod her acquiescence.
Sir Thaddeus disappeared past the curtain just as the knock was repeated, louder this time. There was a creaking noise as if the door was swinging open, and then Nellie heard Pip’s voice, sharp with shock.
“Father! What the…what are you doing here?”
“I could say the same of you,” Thaddeus retorted.
“I-I came to speak with Madame Dariya. W-where is she? What have you done with her?”
“You’ve already spoken with the woman. Why did you return?”
“How do you know that? Have you been following me?” Pip’s voice pitched upwards. “Oh my heavens. Is there nothing you won’t do to manipulate me? Why can’t you just leave me be?”
“You’re my heir, the last of the Ormonds. Your wishes are the least of my considerations,” Thaddeus thundered. A thud followed as he kicked over a piece of furniture. “From now on there’ll be no more visits to fortune tellers. You’ll do as I say and marry the Montague girl, and that’s the end of it.”
“It—it’s not the end of it.” The desperation in Pip’s voice made Nellie’s stomach contract. “I have a few questions for you, Father, and I d-demand your answer.”
There was a brief silence. “Oh? And what questions might they be?” Thaddeus asked in a deceptively mild tone.
Pip swallowed audibly. “Nellie’s disappearance and death. D-did you have any part in that?”
“What! What poppycock. Who told you that? I’ll have his guts for garters, I swear.”
“So you deny any involvement in my wife’s d-death?”
Nellie leaned her head back against the table leg and shut her eyes as relief of sorts trickled through her. Pip had just proven he’d known nothing about his father’s plans to get rid of her. Cold comfort now, but it was something to know he hadn’t betrayed her so completely.
“That fortune hunter was not your wife,” Sir Thaddeus said. “You promised yourself to the Montague girl.”
“Only under duress.”
“Why did you come running back to me then as soon as your little gold digger’s back was turned? Answer me that, son.”
“I came to you asking for assistance.”
“And I gave you the best possible assistance. Now you’re free of that tawdry association, you can start behaving like a proper Ormond.”
“A proper Ormond. I see.” Pip’s voice quavered. “And does a proper Ormond discover his wife bleeding and leave her to die alone?”
Fraught silence. Nellie’s legs shifted spasmodically. Across the room Kray bared his teeth at her in a silent snarl.
“Well, Father?” Pip continued. “Why won’t you answer me?”
“Your aspersions don’t deserve an answer.”
“Why? Because they’re true?”
“Because they’re ridiculous,” Sir Thaddeus growled. “
“Me, r-ridiculous? Well, p-perhaps this will alter your mind.”
A strangled gasp of disbelief. “Phillip! No. Put that down—”
“Answer me, Father. Did you murder my mother?”
“Stop this farce, boy. You don’t even know how to fire a pistol. Give that to me, you idiot—”
Scuffling, bumping, furniture knocked over. Two men grappling with each other. Grunts and shouts. Confused and flummoxed, Kray stood irresolute over Julian. Clearly he was hesitant to interfere until told to by his employer.
“No—” A loud explosion severed Thaddeus’s bellow. Something heavy crashed to the floor.
Gripping his knife, Kray charged for the other room. As he rushed past, his hip jarred the table. The lamp, left on the edge, teetered for several moments and fell to the floor. Its glass broke on impact, and oily fluid spilled everywhere, alight, the greasy floor only fuelling the flames further.
From the next room Kray yelled, Pip shrieked, and a second gunshot rang out, followed by another weight toppling over.
“Sweet Jesus, what have I done?” Pip screamed. “Father, are you alive? Speak to me, please.”
Nellie shouted through her gag, stamped her feet and yanked against her bonds, but all her efforts appeared to be for naught. Pip was clearly too distraught to notice anything besides his fallen father, his weeping and keening from the other room drowning out all other sound.
“I’ll get you home, Father,” he wailed. “I won’t leave you here, I promise.”
The shuffling sounds told Nellie that Pip was dragging his father out of the apartment, leaving her and Julian alone, tied up in a burning kitchen. She fought against the cloth stuffed in her mouth, but only choking noises stuttered past her arid, aching throat. In a desperate attempt to make any sort of noise, she pulled at the table but it was too solid, the grime-encrusted legs looking like they’d never been shifted in years.
By now she knew Pip had gone, and it was futile trying to attract his attention. The oil from the lamp burned, licking at the residue of drippings and tallow left on the kitchen floor. A rivulet of fire trickled slowly across the uneven floorboards towards a pile of greasy rags and newspapers mouldering in a far corner. Even as she looked on, the lit stream reached the pile of rubbish, and seconds later a thin trail of smoke spiralled up.
Her heart thumped with growing fear. Suddenly it hit her. Her claws. She could use her claws to cut through the rope tying her hands. Why hadn’t she thought of that earlier? She set to work, but it was not as easy as she’d anticipated. Time and again, instead of rope her claws found her own flesh. After several botched attempts, her wrists were stinging and blood oozed through her fingers, but she could not afford to give up.
On the other side of the kitchen, Julian stirred and groaned. He lifted his head to peer groggily around him, stiffening when he caught sight of her. She tried to give him a reassuring countenance, but his face filled with rage. Struggling to an upright position, he started to shuffle towards her.
At that moment, the pile of rags and newspaper burst into flame. Thick smoke billowed out and swamped the kitchen in seconds. The fire roared and spat like a furious beast. Heat and noxious fumes buffeted Nellie’s face and scorched her lungs. Tamping down her fears, she concentrated on her bonds. Her claws snagged the twine once more, finally sliced through the fibres, and her hands pulled free.
At last. Within seconds she’d wrenched the reeking cloth from her mouth. Out of the acrid smoke, Julian crawled towards her. She cut through his bonds, and together they surveyed the burning kitchen. By now the fire had engulfed a dresser laden with crockery and pots. Flames leaped higher and licked at the crumbling ceiling hungrily. There were no brooms or rakes or any other means of fighting the fire, so by mute accord they turned and stumbled from the smoke.
“My God,” Julian exclaimed as they burst past the curtain into the front room. “Who did that?”
Kray’s mountainous body lay sprawled across the centre of the room. A bloody hole gaped where his face used to be, and he was very dead.
Nausea roiled in the pit of Nellie’s stomach. She stared down at the man who had mutilated her, and she could find not one scrap of pity for him. He’d died instantly, a mercy he hadn’t afforded his own victims. But there was no satisfaction in her, only a deep relief that he would never walk this earth again.
“Pip,” she said to Julian. “He returned, and when he saw his father here, confronted him about my disappearance and the death of his mother. He had a gun.”
Julian grunted. “I didn’t think he had it in him.”
“He shot his father and then Kray.” She shivered at the memory. “I think Thaddeus is still alive, as Pip took him away.”
