Balantyne went to the desk and opened the drawer she had taken the object from. For a moment his face was puzzled. There were lines of pain in it, a new and delicate vulnerability to his mouth.
Christina had been one of Max’s women. Charlotte knew now that Balantyne either knew it or guessed it. What about Alan Ross?
Balantyne stood perfectly straight, his eyes wide, his skin drained of blood. “She’s taken my gun.”
For an instant Charlotte was paralyzed. Then she leaped to her feet. “We must go after her,” she commanded. “Find a hansom. She has only just left. There will be marks in the snow-we can follow her. Whatever she means to do, we may be in time to stop her-or-or if it is good, then to help her!”
He strode to the door and shouted for the footman. He snatched from the man’s hands Charlotte’s coat, ignoring his own. He grasped her arm and pushed her to the door. The next moment they were outside in the whirling snow, blinded by the dusk and the dim lamps, stung by the slithering snowflakes turning to ice.
Balantyne ran across the road onto the snow-covered grass under the trees. Christina’s carriage was still in sight on the far side of the square, slowing to turn the corner. There was a hansom moving from pool to pool of light along the west side.
“Cabbie!” Balantyne shouted, waving his arms. “Cabbie!”
Charlotte scrambled through shrubs and grass, soaked to her ankles, trying to keep up with him. Her face was wet and numb with cold, and though her gloves were locked in her reticule, her fingers were too frozen even to fish for them. All her efforts were concentrated on keeping up with him.
Sir Robert Carlton was already in the cab.
Balantyne pulled the door open. “Emergency!” he shouted above the wind. “Sorry, Robert! I need this!” And, relying on long friendship and a generous nature, he held out his hand and almost hauled Carlton out, then grabbed Charlotte by the waist and lifted her in. He then ordered the cabbie to follow down the far street where Christina’s carriage had disappeared. He thrust a handful of coins at the startled man, and was almost thrown to the floor as the driver was transformed into a Jehu at the flash of gold.
Charlotte sat herself up in the seat where she had landed and clung to the handhold. There was no time or purpose in trying to rearrange her skirts to any sense of decorum. The cab was hurtling around the corner from the square, and Balantyne had his head out the window, trying to see if Christina was still ahead of them, or if in the maelstrom of the storm they had lost her.
The horses’ hooves were curiously silent on the soft padding of snow. The carriage lurched from side to side as the wheels slid, caught again, and then swerved. At any other time Charlotte would have been terrified, but all she could think of now was Christina somewhere ahead of them, holding the general’s gun. Fear sickened her, excluding all thought of her own safety as her body was flung from side to side while the cab careened through the white wilderness. Was it Alan Ross she was going to kill? Was it he, after all, who had murdered first Max, and then the others-and at last Christina knew it? Was she going to shoot him? Or offer him suicide?
Balantyne brought his head in from the window. His skin was whipped raw from the wind, snow crusted his hair.
“They’re still ahead of us. God knows where she’s going!” His face was so cold that his mouth was stiff and his words blurred.
She was thrown against him as the cab wheeled around another corner. He caught her, held her for a moment, then eased her upright again.
“I don’t know where we are,” he went on. “I can’t see anything but snow and gas lamps now and again. I don’t recognize anything.”
“She’s not going home?” Charlotte asked. Then instantly wished she had not said it.
“No, we seem to have turned toward the river.” Had he also been thinking of Alan Ross?
They were lurching through a muted world with muffled hoofbeats and no hiss of wheels. There sounded only the crack of the whip and the cabbie’s shout. Vision was limited to the whirl of white flakes in the islands of the lamps, followed by raging, freezing darkness again till the next brief moon on its iron stand. They were slowed to a trot now, turning more often. Apparently they had not lost her, because the cabbie never asked for further instructions.
Where was she going? To warn Adela Pomeroy? Of what? Had she hired some lunatic to kill her husband?
Answers crowded into Charlotte’s head, and none of them could be right. She put off again and again the one she knew in her heart was the truth. Christina was going back to the Devil’s Acre! To one of the whorehouses … and murder.
Beside her, Balantyne said nothing. Whatever nightmare was in his mind he struggled with it alone.
One more corner, another snow-blanketed street, a crossroad, and then at last they stopped. The cabbie’s head appeared.
“Your party’s gone in there!” He waved his arm and Balantyne forced open the door and jumped out, leaving Charlotte to fend for herself after him. “Over there.” The cabbie waved again. “Dalton sisters’ whorehouse. Don’t know what she’s doin’, if n yer ask me. If ’er ’us-band’s gorn in there, she’d best pretend she don’t know-not goin’ a-chasing after ’im like a madwoman! ’T’ain’t decent.’T’ain’t sense neither! Still-never could tell most women nothin’ fer their own good! ’Ere! Best leave the lady in the cab! Gawd! Yer can’t take ’er in there, guv!”
But Balantyne was not listening. He strode across the glimmering road and up the steps of the house where Christina’s footsteps still showed in the virgin snow.
“’Ere!” The cabbie tried once more. “Miss!”
But Charlotte was after him, running with her skirts trailing wet and heavy, catching Balantyne on the step. There was no one to bar their entrance. The door was on the latch and they threw it open together.
The scene inside was the same large hall, with its red plush furnishings, gay gaslights, and warm pinks, that Pitt had seen. It was too early in the evening; there were no customers here yet, no lush, soft-eyed maids. Only Victoria Dalton in her brown tea gown and her sister Mary in a dress of blue with a wide lace trim. And in front of them stood Christina with the gun in her hands.
“You’re madwomen!” Christina’s voice choked, her hands shook. But the barrel of the gun still pointed at Victoria’s bosom. “It wasn’t enough to kill Max, you had to mutilate him-then you killed all the others! Why? Why? Why did you kill the others? I never wanted that-I never told you to!”
Victoria’s face was curiously expressionless, ironed out like a child’s. Only her eyes showed emotion, blazing with hate. “If you’d been sold into prostitution when you were nine years old, you wouldn’t need to ask me that! You whore around for fun-you let animals like Max use your body. But if men had relieved themselves in you since you were a child on your mother’s lap-if you’d lain in your bed and heard through the cardboard walls your seven- year-old sister scream when they thrust into her with their great naked, obscene bodies-swollen, panting and sweating, their hands all over you-you’d take joy in stabbing them, too, and tearing off their-”
Christina’s hands tightened and the gun barrel came higher. Charlotte lunged forward, kicking. She was too far away to reach the gun, but she knocked Christina off her feet and the gun fell, unexploded, onto the floor.
There was a scream of rage, and Charlotte felt strong, clawlike hands tearing at her. The floor hit her hard on the thigh, skirts smothered her. She reached for anything to strike or to pull. Her hands found hair, twisted into it, and jerked. There was a scream of pain. Another body landed heavily on top of her, more skirts, boots in her thigh, kicking hard.
There was more shrieking and Christina’s voice swearing. Charlotte was pinned to the ground, half suffocated by mountains of fabric and the weight of bodies. Her hair was undone, streaming down her back, over her face. A hand grasped at it and pulled. Pain ripped through her head. She punched back, her fists closed. Where was the gun!
“Stop it!” Balantyne’s voice thundered above the din. No one took any notice.
Christina, on hands and knees on the floor, was screaming at Victoria Dalton, her face contorted with rage. Mary Dalton swung her hand back and slapped Christina as hard as she could, the ring of it singing in the air. Christina scrambled to her feet and aimed a kick. It caught Mary on the shoulder, and she fell over onto her back, moaning.
Victoria lunged for the gun, but Charlotte threw herself on top of her, jerking her head back hard by the hair. Charlotte’s skirt was torn to the waist, showing her underwear and a long stretch of white thigh. Shouting, though she was unaware of it, she looked frantically for the gun.
Suddenly it went off with a deafening roar. They all froze, as if each one of them had been hit.
