Who was it? Her father and Charles? It would have to be Charles; Gavin was abroad. That didn’t seem right, though. Her family didn’t quarrel like this, in quietly seething voices. They yelled properly when they argued.
Genevieve tried to swallow. Her mouth was horribly dry, an unpleasant accompaniment to her aching head. Had she had too much champagne at a function?
One of the voices became harsher midsentence: “Foolish to bring her here.”
“What was I meant to do? It was starting to get light. I bundled her into the carriage and came to the only safe place I could think of.”
“You were meant to get her out of the way.”
“I didn’t have time.”
Memory flooded back, cruel and swift. She had been trying to get to the newspaper office. She had been followed. She had been hit on the head.
She moved her head gingerly, and pain radiated from the back of her skull and circled it in response. A low breath escaped before she could help it.
The voices abruptly stopped. The distinctive sound of a careful foot on a creaky floorboard rose in the air.
Genevieve kept her eyes closed, hoping she could feign continued unconsciousness and learn more. The light behind her eyelids shifted; someone was standing over her.
“She’s awake,” a voice said, in a tone of amused disgust. “Though she’s pretending not to be.” A hefty sigh from farther away followed.
“Well, what should we do with her?” the second voice whined.
“You are getting rid of her, as you were meant to do in the first place.” The floorboard creaked again as the footsteps retreated, followed by the sound of a door shutting. Alarm reverberated through Genevieve’s chest, accompanied by a brief, forceful wish that she could retreat to the comforting, dark stillness of oblivion from which she had so recently emerged.
Enough. Enough of that, you. If she was going to get out of this alive, she needed to see where she was and who she was up against. Gathering her courage, Genevieve peeled her eyes open.
A dirty, wooden ceiling greeted her vision. One old, dusty cobweb hanging from a rafter swayed gently in a draft, and a sudden chill shook her body. Wherever she was, it was not well insulated.
She tried turning her head to one side so she could further investigate her surroundings. The dull pounding sharpened to a lance of pain behind her left temple, and Genevieve closed her eyes for a moment, letting the pain pass. Moving more slowly, she tried again, looking first in one direction, then the other.
It appeared she was on the floor of a small, windowless space that was uniformly coated in grime. A rickety looking table, topped with a bottle and two dirty glasses, and a pair of rough wooden chairs squatted miserably in the center of the space. The only light came from a low-burning gas lamp hanging from a hook on one of the walls.
Distant laughter and an underlying hum of chatter floated in from somewhere nearby, and Genevieve had a sudden certainty that she knew where she was.
A dark amusement washed over her. She had left her house hoping to discover the name of the bar that served as the Oyster Knife gang headquarters and had a feeling she’d been brought to the exact place she had wanted to go.
Moving delicately to minimize the agony in her head, Genevieve pushed herself to a seated position. Once there, she leaned against the dirty wall and stilled, allowing the steady beat of pain to recede.
The door she’d heard shutting earlier reopened, the unmistakable raucous sounds of a tavern swelling. Clive’s face twitched slightly at the sight of her awake and sitting, but he seemed to recover quickly, shutting the door behind him, again muffling the noise beyond.
A mixture of emotions arose: fear, certainly, as her unruly brain replayed the moment directly before she was struck on the head. It had been Clive following her in the park, Clive whose face loomed the moment before the blinding pain. But she also felt contempt. He had been a good journalist, and a successful one, but had allowed himself to get caught up in the games of the wealthy.
Underlying her dread, a sharp stab of hope jolted through her chest. If she could get to the noises of the tavern, could she find help?
Clive, keeping his eyes on her, sat at the table and poured himself a drink. He sipped, giving her a contemplative look.
“Well?” he prompted, taking a deep pull from his glass. Genevieve pressed her palms against the rough boards behind her. Ignoring the pangs that throbbed through her head, she slowly pushed herself upright, leaning back for support. Clive gestured with the glass toward the empty seat, but she elected to remain against the wall, taking a few deep breaths until the ache lessened.
“Well, what?” she finally responded. Her voice was unfamiliar to her own ears, scratchy and hoarse. She managed a swallow, desperately wishing for water.
“Anything to say? You’ve brought this on yourself, you know. If you’d just stayed out of it …”
Genevieve gaped at him. “It’s my fault you hit me on the head and brought me to a dirty room to die? Is that really what you’re saying?” she croaked.
An angry flush flooded Clive’s face. “You were asking questions you shouldn’t have. I tried to warn you away.”
“Who brought you into this, Clive? It seemed you had a good life. Why get involved with all … this?” Genevieve waved a tired hand around the room.
His jaw tightened. “You wouldn’t understand, having been born with that silver spoon in your mouth. Some of us have to make our own way in this world.”
“But you had made your way.”
Clive barked a short laugh. “Had I? You were nipping at my heels, as were others. Arthur would have listened to you sooner
