Page 1 of A Duke's Keeper
Chapter One
London: 1891
Camille ran.
Fear was a quick fuel in her veins, but the night air in her lungs squeezed too tightly.
She couldn’t stop. If she stopped, they’d catch her, and if they caught her... She tore around the corner and slipped on loose rocks scattered along the cobblestones. Her shoulder slammed into the alley wall. For a moment, she saw stars.
The three men behind her taunted and jeered, their words muffled, but their hungry intent clear.
Camille’s fingers closed around one of the rocks. She pulled herself up and away, cradling her wounded arm to her chest, the rock secure in her other hand. The pain shot across the joint like sparks of lightning.
She wouldn’t feel the pain after that, neither in her shoulder nor her aching feet, as her weathered boots beat the cobblestones. Darkened doorways rushed past, places where no one inside would offer Camille aid. Not here in Rotten Row, where the name remained more considering than the people.
If she could make it to the docks, the Cock ’n Hen tavern would house her, and, if not the establishment itself, Scarlet would.
The steps haunting her own closed in.
Camille listened over the ragged beating of her heart.
Step, step.
Step, pause, step.
Only two of the three followed behind now. They had split up.
Camille tore around another corner, and another, and another. The maze of alleys was disorienting in the dark, but she didn’t need light to see. The map of Dockside appeared vivid in her mind, like a permanent picture etched behind her eyelids.
If she took the alley to her right, she’d find a dead end. The alley to her left and she’d circle around and most definitely come face to face with the last of the three. Which left the alley straight ahead.
She could now make out their words with sick clarity.
“No use running, chicken.”
“We only want a good ‘pluck.’”
She shuddered and pushed through a bisecting intersection, catching sight of a shadow darting past the end of the other alley, mirroring her movements.
The map in her head shifted. Mind racing, calculating,prayingfor a path of escape, all routes led to one conclusion: She wouldn’t make it to the tavern, not before the third man cut her off.
She had one last option.
Dockside’s main square lay ahead. Twenty feet . . . ten . . . one.
She burst into the open space. The last standing lamppost gave off dim light, revealing the shadow emerging from the other alley.
She was out of time and out of breath.
Whirling with her back to the third, empty alley, she planted her feet.
Seeing their prey caught, the men slowed and smiled to one another, their teeth flashing in the moonlight.
Peter Hawkins, Anthony Grey, Manny Flank. Their names and faces from Madam Clarice’s files rushed to the forefront of Camille’s mind, along with the unpleasant detail that Hawkins was a fighter for the ‘Underground.’
Reeling, her mind flashed through every page ofA Woman’s Best Offense Is Defense. She spread her feet apart for balance, her heart hammering against her chest.
She wouldn’t give in to her fear. Pain was pain. She’d felt it before.
