The Last Hellion Read Free Page A

like rats from one lair to the next. Small wonder Bow Street couldn't keep track—and didn't feel compelled to do so. According to some estimates, London had more Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion
    than fifty thousand prostitutes, all too many under sixteen years old. Insofar as Lydia had been able to determine, none of Coralie's girls was older than nineteen.
    "You've seen her, though," Angus said, breaking into Lydia's grim reflections.
    "Why didn't you sic that black monster of yours on her?" He nodded toward the mastiff.
    "It's no good taking the woman into custody when there's no one brave enough to testify against her," Lydia answered impatiently. "Unless the authorities catch her in the act—and she takes care they don't—we've nothing to charge her with.
    No proof. No witnesses. There's little Susan could do for us except maim or kill her."
    Susan cocked one eye open at the mention of her name.
    "Since the dog would do so only at my command, I should be prosecuted for assault—or hanged for murder," Lydia continued. "I had rather not be hanged on account of a filthy, sadistic bawd."
    She returned Bellweather's Review to her employer's desk, then took out her pocket watch. It had belonged to her great uncle Stephen Grenville. He and his wife, Euphemia, had taken Lydia in when she was thirteen. They had died last autumn within hours of each other.
    Though Lydia had been fond of them, she could not miss the life she'd led with the feckless pair. While not morally corrupt—as her father had been—they had been shallow, unintelligent, disorganized, and afflicted with a virulent case of wanderlust. They were forever wanting to shake the dust of someplace from their feet long before dust could possibly have time to settle. The ground Lydia had covered with them reached from Lisbon in the West to Damascus in the East, and included the countries on the southern shores of the Mediterranean.
    Still, she told herself, she would not have an editor to fume at present, or jealous Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion
    publishing rivals to make him fume, if not for that life.
    Something very near a smile curved her mouth as she recollected the journal she'd begun—in imitation of her late and dearly loved mama—on the day her father abandoned her to Ste and Effie's incompetent care.
    At thirteen, Lydia had been nearly illiterate, and her diary rife with spelling atrocities and horrific crimes against grammar. But Quith, the Grenvilles'
    manservant, had tutored her in history, geography, mathematics, and most important, literature. Quith was the one who'd encouraged her writing, and she'd repaid him as best she could.
    The money Ste had left her as a marriage portion, she'd converted into a pension for her mentor. It was no great sacrifice. A writing career, not marriage, was what she wanted. And so, free of all obligations for the first time in her life, Lydia had set out for London. She'd taken with her copies of the travel pieces she'd previously had published in a few English and Continental periodicals, and what remained of Ste and Effie's "estate": an assortment of bric-a-brac and trinkets and precious little coin.
    The pocket watch was all that remained of their belongings. Even after Angus had hired her, Lydia had not troubled to redeem the other items she'd pawned during those first bleak months in London. She preferred to spend her earnings on necessities. The latest such purchase was a cabriolet and a horse to pull it.
    She could afford the horse and carriage because she was earning more than satisfactory wages, far better than one might have reasonably expected. Certainly she'd expected to drudge for at least a year, writing for the newspapers, at a penny a line, accounts of fires, explosions, murders, and other accidents and disasters.
    Fate, though, had sent a piece of luck her way in early spring. Lydia had first Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion
    entered the Argus's offices when the magazine was on the brink of