Ragamuffin Angel Read Free Page A

brothel.’ The old woman’s voice was loud and indignant. ‘An’ you know it, I’ll be bound, but it suits you to say otherwise, don’t it, you evil-minded so-an’-so.’  
    ‘Don’t, Mam.’ Sadie spoke to her mother but her gaze was on John, and his eyes, as hard as black marble, stared back at her through the curtain of snow. She knew this man. When she had first started work in the most menial of jobs at his father’s warehouse in William Street she had been warned about John Stewart almost immediately by the other girls. He was an upstart. The other sons were all right the girls had said, and the father, Henry Stewart, was reportedly just the same as when he had started the family business some thirty years before a few hundred yards away in Norfolk Street. But John Stewart was like his mother – he fancied himself a cut above ordinary folk. Not that that stopped him trying it on, one of the more attractive women packers had warned Sadie. Hands like an octopus he’d got, and he’d talk dirty given half a chance. You had to watch your step with John Stewart, but it didn’t do to get on his bad side either; he could be a nasty bit of work. And from day one he had wanted her- the lust in his eyes had made her flesh creep at times and she had had to repulse him over and over again.  
    ‘That’s right, Sadie. You tell the old crone to mind her tongue.’  
    Again John seemed to be enjoying himself, but then his gaze snapped from the woman who had been a torment to his flesh and who’d haunted his dreams from the first day he had set eyes on her four years before, as the child still held within Dan’s grasp said quite clearly, ‘You’re a very nasty man you are, a wicked man, an’ you’ll burn in hell’s flames.’  
    ‘Hush, Connie.’ Sadie rose as quickly as her bulk would allow and hurried to take the child from Dan. ‘Go in with your granny an’ Larry, go on,’ she implored on a hiccuping sob.  
    ‘No, Mam.’ As Sadie made to push her daughter towards the cottage door the child resisted, and then, as Gilbert and Matthew hoisted Jacob’s unconscious body upwards and on to Gilbert’s back at a sign from John, with Matthew supporting the limp frame, Connie caused further consternation as she said, ‘Me Uncle Jacob’s a grand man, he is, an’ I’m goin’a tell of you. I’m goin’a tell you hurt him an’ that you made me mam cry.’  
    ‘None of that.’ As John stepped forward, his arm rising and his face ugly, Dan’s voice was not the voice of a fourteen-year-old boy but that of a man, as he moved the child behind him. ‘You leave the bairn alone, you’ve done enough here the night.’  
    ‘Me?’ John’s face was mottled with temper. ‘That’s good, that is. You were all on for this tonight, so don’t come it, Dan.’  
    ‘You said we were just going to frighten him.’ Dan pushed the child into her mother’s arms as he spoke, his voice losing its harsh note as he added, ‘Take her inside, Mrs Bell. This is not something a bairn should see.’  
    ‘Aye, an’ whose fault is that?’ The old granny cut in again, but she was looking straight at John. ‘You’ll rue this night’s work afore you’re finished, you see if you don’t. God won’t be mocked an’ He knows a black heart when He sees one.’  
    ‘Mam, please .’ Sadie’s voice was agonised as she bundled the still resisting child into the cottage, turning in the doorway as she looked towards Dan and Art, who were standing together and apart from the other three, and said, ‘You’ll look after him? Jacob? He needs a doctor.’  
    Her concern for the other man seemed to inflame John still further, and his features were contorted as he said, not in a loud tone but with deadly intent, ‘You! You might fool the other poor sots but you don’t take me in, Sadie Bell. You set your cap at him from the first day you laid eyes on him, didn’t you, and all the while acting the virtuous widow. You don’t